I feel very fortunate to have taken part in an incredible festival on the Mexican Caribbean coast recently, meeting and collaborating with wonderful musicians from all over the world.

Festival Paax GNP is spearheaded by superstar conductor Alondra de la Parra, and her ‘Impossible Orchestra’ brought together players from orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre National Ile de France, Tonhalle Zurich… the list goes on!

Not only was this an opportunity to play with some world-class orchestral musicians, but the festival was a melting pot for many different musical styles and genres: we played a concerto by legendary Brazilian guitarist Yamandu Costa (with Costa as soloist) filled to the brim with incredible Latin American rhythms, and jazz vocalist Olivia Chindamo joined us to showcase her incredible technique in a concerto for jazz scat voice and orchestra, written by jazz composer and pianist Joe Chindamo.

Having been back for a couple of weeks now and readjusted to normality, I’m looking ahead to a fairly relaxed summer, with some notable exceptions, not least being a BBC Proms appearance as part of Manchester Collective‘s NEON show. It was a joy to meet and work with them on that project last year and I’m extremely excited to bring this programme back to life in the inspiring setting of the Royal Albert Hall. Until then, I’ll enjoy spending some time outside in the sunshine (in between bouts of rain – this is the UK after all)….