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After a period of intensive work involving other people, every moment of violin practice becomes a delicious treat. So does the pleasure of being alone. And of being in a strange place. Or a beautiful space.

All of these things are pleasures to be savoured carefully. Because in the wrong time or wrong place, or wrong quantity, they can be oppressively overwhelming. But when they all come together unexpectedly, and after a period of absence, they bring with them a welcome magic.

Bad weather cancelled my flight, and I ended up changing planes at a different airport in a different country. For a wonderful couple of hours, I felt like I had completely escaped, for no one but the airline’s computer knew where I was. For once, I was completely uncontactable, and free to roam within the confines of the system that contained me.

The terminal was massive – so long that you could barely see from end to end. I walked for several minutes to the very furthest point, where boarding gates lay empty and there wasn’t a soul to be found. Outside, snowflakes sailed earthwards through the yellow glow of runway spotlights. Planes slid softly past, and baggage trucks crawled caterpillar-like through the dusky haze, pattering their way towards the glowing arrivals hall where they would disgorge their cargo.

Big secular spaces with beautiful acoustics are very hard to find, harder still to access, and even harder to find silent and empty. But there was no-one about, and I wanted to know how the building sounded. I pulled my violin from its case and began to play.

The acoustics were magnificent. Tentatively at first, for fear of attracting attention, I drew my bow across the strings, letting the tones resonate against the concrete and glass around me. The violin sensed the capacity of the space, and as I coaxed my travel-weary arms into a vaguely fluid movement, I began to draw more and more sonority from the instrument. First with Bach, then some simple scales, then finally a melody by Mendelssohn, a clarity of sound started to emerge, as both the violin and I began to feel the space together.

Through the window blinds, my eyes became fixated to the machines outside. Mesmerised, my brain zoned out, and my ears were drawn more closely to the phrasing. Again and again I repeated the Mendelssohn melody, searching for the perfect shape.

As I explored how to emphasise the notes, I started to mimic the smooth dances of the machines outside. With infinite variety, they each wove a slightly different pattern in the snow. The snow blower circled around and around, each movement a little fatter or thinner than the last, but always with beautiful proportion. The baggage cars zipped in and out of the blower’s circle, each leaving a pleasingly fresh set of wheel prints in the snow.

The more I played, the more details I started to notice, and the less satisfied with my own musical shapes I became. Yet strangely, at the same time, the overall shapes were ever more convincing. I realised that I would never find just one perfect interpretation. I would never play the melody the same way twice.

Each time would be different, and each time could expand the possibilities, if I wanted it to. The more I drove the phrase in different directions, the more I could feel what it could be, and the more ideas I would have to draw on when performing it. I didn’t even have to end up liking any given version of my interpretation; I just had to believe in it.

An hour had passed, and my flight was called.

As I packed up my violin, and turned to walk back towards the gate, I heard the sound of a person clapping. A lone cleaner, leaning on his maintenance trolley, smiled at me broadly. I hadn’t been completely alone after all.

It was one of those dream-like thoughts that flit through your mind in a utopian stupor whilst daydreaming on the train. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place in Central London where I could teach!”

Most people sensibly let such thoughts pass after a few minutes; I have the unfortunate habit of picking up the phone and trying to make crazy ideas happen.

So it was that, a couple of days later, I found myself impulsively signing a lease on half a building next to Buckingham Palace in Westminster. As you do.

I gave myself three months, and negotiated a break clause for the same. I figured that I could lose money for no more than 2 months, otherwise the venture would be doomed. That was in April.

Now it’s mid-October, and we have well over 40 committed students, plus many more occasional ones. In just six months! It would be a lie to pretend it’s an easy ride, but I now know for sure that the gamble will eventually pay off.

And what an opportunity.

I really didn’t think about it at the time – I just wanted a central-ish box room where I could teach students without having to charge them ridiculously high rates. And then it turned out that the adjoining two rooms were also available. So instead, I seem to have established an actual, very real ‘bricks-and-mortar’ school. This is totally different to private teaching! It is an maelstrom of musical, educational and commercial checks and balances that need to be satisfied and systemised across a really wide spectrum of teachers, learners, and resources. There is one hell of a lot of responsibility. And I am doing everything I can to get things right.

For all my lack of planning, I have some very firm ideas about how a specialist ‘violin school’ should exist, and what it should stand for. You can read the first draft of my philosophy here. At the heart of it lies an embrace of creativity, for therein lies the greatest music making and also the evolution of our great traditions.

The team I am assembling is completely extraordinary – a collection of maniacs with mind-blowing amounts of experience, intelligence, and hard-won wisdom. They’re also genuinely nice people with a lot of integrity, so I have high hopes.

But the sheer amount of work involved in setting this up is fearsome even for me, and I’ve put some things (including PhD and some performing) on hold until the end of the year, by which time I hope the ship will be able to sail its own course without me doing everything myself. So if your email is one of the many hundred sitting unread in my email account, I can only apologise and say ‘I will get back to you soon’…

In the meantime, things are progressing fast. The organisation has been renamed (from London Violin Studio to ViolinSchool), a website – which will soon become an interactive e-learning platform – has been created at www.violinschool.org, and the formal curriculum is in an advanced stage of development. Some brilliant workshops and masterclasses have already taken place, a smallish but nonetheless very real violin library is in preparation, and I have just confirmed that the School’s Christmas concert will take place at the new St James Theatre (www.stjamestheatre.co.uk) that recently opened across the road. Without wanting to reveal too much too soon, I have some really exciting plans that will open up some of the world’s finest ‘violin minds’ to the public, and ViolinSchool will be the vehicle to make this happen.

As the all-consuming challenge of creating administration, finance and technology systems begins to subside – not least thanks to Maria Thomas, a music-business genius whose steady hand guides the school away from my maddest ideas – my attention turns to the legacy of 19th and 20th century violin pedagogy. I started to synthesise and filter these monumental works long ago, and so although I know exactly where the school is headed from a pedagogical perspective, I do still have to find a way of presenting the great violinistic masters (Dounis, Galamian, Flesch, et all) in a way that is relevant to today’s violinists. Violinists of any age and level (for that is our slogan).

Not wanting to give myself a too easy time of it, I thought I’d set the bar high to motivate the team. So we’re aiming to become the world’s pre-eminent Violin School within a couple of years. So wish me luck with that. Ahem.

I recently had the great pleasure of playing on a recording session for Thomas Hewitt Jones, to record music written especially for the 2012 Olympics. He has created a fantastic soundtrack for the ‘Olympics Mascots’ films, which you can hear being played at the Olympic Park throughout the games (or take a look at Tommy’s website to get the album on a CD or download). 

As the Olympic buzz (and about 3 million tourists) arrived here in Central London, I invited Wenlock the Olympic Mascot round for a glass of Chateauneuf-du-Locog, where we talked about the emotional effect of musical harmony on unsuspecting Olympics-goers, and how olympic ideals can be expressed through music.

SHJ: So, what was it like working with my brother?

Wenlock: It was a blast. He really spoke our language. He watched us fly about in the sky on rainbows sprinkling Olympic fairy dust everywhere, then translated it all into music for Michael Morpurgo’s films.

SHJ: I’ve seen the videos. Somewhat hallucinogenic! But how on earth do you actually go about translating the adventures of cyclopic lumps of flying metal into music?

Wenlock: Hmm, I’ll take that as a compliment… well, Tommy has a knack for observing the subtleties of different characters. Then he creates sounds that really make you feel what each character feels. He uses tools like harmony and musical pacing to make a complex emotional experience for each listener.

SHJ: Wow… for a Mascot, you know a lot about musicology, Wenlock! But I know what you mean – there are some places in the films where the feeling is really dark; edgy almost. Like the bit where you and Mandeville get trapped in a container and start to be taken away on a ship…

Wenlock: …and the scary music reflects just how we felt at the time – very afraid! But then when the tension resolves… in comes our big tune – I call it the Wenlock and Mandeville signature tune! It’s so catchy, just like a ‘hook’ you get in a pop song. Hear it once and you won’t be able to get it out of your head!

SHJ: You’re right, it’s a serious earworm! But you must have heard it hundreds of times… aren’t you sick of your ‘anthem’ by now?

Wenlock: But you see, that’s the clever thing about this music! Sure, it’s really catchy. But because there are so many things going on beneath the surface – structural musical things, harmonic things – you never get bored of it. Each time you listen, you hear something else in the music. It’s a bit like ‘The Simpsons’ cartoons: children find the slapstick humour funny, but adults also enjoy them for the subtle innuendo and clever wordplay… they’re artforms you can appreciate on many different levels!

SHJ: Nice. So I guess Tommy is trying to appeal to as many different types of listener as possible, right?

Wenlock: Well, he knows a lot of people are going to hear this soundtrack. So I think he wanted to get through to as many of them as possible. Maybe someone who likes the tune and then buys the album will listen to it a few times – and then they are going to start to hear more and more details in the music. At best, this kind of music inspires people to listen a bit more deeply, become a bit more aware of the sounds around them.

SHJ: Are you saying this track will make you a better listener? Is there some kind of socio-political agenda behind all those big tunes?

Wenlock: Well, what’s the Olympics all about?

SHJ: Buying fast food, spending billions of pounds on security, and increasing tourist revenue?

Wenlock: Rubbish! Cynics like you don’t understand: the original Olympic ethos has got nothing to do with all that stuff. It’s about everyone coming together, it’s about the values of participation and cooperation, and it’s about aspiring to be the best you can be. It’s a social philosophy. It’s about how sport can help us develop inter-cultural understanding, peaceful co-existence, and social and moral education.

SHJ: But where does music fit into all of this?

Wenlock: Sport and the Arts can ultimately be a force for good OR ill. It’s up to us. But they can motivate and inspire humanity however we see fit – soundwaves, physical motion, emotion… they’re all extraordinarily powerful energies. So why not make the most of them? That’s why Mandeville and I took up the piano…

SHJ: You’ve inspired me! What can I do to embrace these wonderful philosophies?

Wenlock: You could buy Tommy’s album…

SHJ: I thought you might say that!

Make Wenlock happy! Listen to ‘Rainbow to the Games’ by clicking here: