If you don't mind my asking, there are many things I'm curious about. What was your course of study in the music department at the University of Leeds? I don't imagine they had (or you needed) a concertina teacher. What drew you to study a genre that you didn't expect to perform after your graduation recital? Did you have any exposure to classical music previously? Do you play other instruments (besides the melodion)?
My course at the university of Leeds was BA Music. The recital you watched here was for my performance module which made up a third of my final year, the other two modules were dissertation and musical editing and source studies. For the performance module each student is allocated an external tutor that specialises on their instrument or voice, in the first year of my course the melodeon was my main instrument so I had lessons arranged with Pete Coe, by the end of the course, as you saw, the concertina was my main focus, but I didn't have any concertina lessons at all.
I chose this repertoire because by my second year on the course I had come to the conclusion that the material that I was playing at that point (mainly folk dance tunes) wasn't technically challenging enough for the level that I was expected to perform at on my degree. A large part of my decision to look into the Baroque repertoire was the influence of hearing John Kirkpatrick play the Mattheson Gigue (the second piece in my recital). When I was looking for technically challenging pieces to learn on the concertina, this was the first to come to mind. I tried to learn it at the beginning of my second year on the course, but failed, so I decided to look for some simpler pieces that were composed in a similar style, which led to me exploring the rich Baroque repertoire. A year later I returned to the Mattheson Gigue and having a few other baroque pieces under my belt, meant that after much practice I was able to play it. Once I had these pieces learnt, I came to the conclusion that the Baroque repertoire provided material that presented enough of a technical challenge, while still being within the scope of the Anglo concertina.
In answer to your other question, I had dabbled in a number of other instruments prior to the concertina and melodeon, but not much seriously. My first instrument was the violin (I did actually take that pretty seriously at the time) which gave me some grounding in the classical music world. I did get to grade 5 on the violin, but lost interest after that and the concertinas and melodeons took over. As well as my prior experience on the violin, I had studied classical and baroque music extensively throughout my degree from a historical and theoretical standpoint. This certainly helped when it came to my performance, but of course, the fact that there has been little prior example of baroque music on the anglo concertina means that I was able to make a lot of it up for myself.
