Generously funded by Katherine McGillvray’s Get a Life Fund, I’ve started a 7 month sabbatical as of today! This time will be spent practising the kora and working on compositions with a view to recording a solo album in April 2018 and then going on tour. I’ve decided to leave Facebook as it becomes quite time consuming and so I’ll be keeping a log of my activities and adventures on this site.

I’ve had a lovely first day today, writing some new technical exercises for the kora – “cat on the shoulder” and “the lion is full of dignity”. These are to get my thumbs working a bit better!

I’ve also started a new composition, read The Sunjata Story (Penguin Epics) and watched Jali Alaji Mbye telling the Story of the Kora (click on link to view).

I’ll be updating reasonably regularly. I’m off to Scotland in two weeks time to the beautiful island of Eigg so I’ll take lots of photos so you can see why I have fallen in love with it!