MP: I started learning the clarinet just before my seventh birthday. I actually wanted to learn the saxophone, but when my parents took me to our local music shop, Musical Instrument Repairs in Birmingham, I was told my fingers were too small. Back then – over 25 years ago now – there weren’t really any specialist wind instruments for younger or smaller starters, so I was told that my best option was to start on a standard B-flat clarinet and switch to saxophone later. I cried all the way home, but to this day the clarinet has remained my main instrument – although I did eventually take the sax up as a teenager. For the first few years, I had lessons in the store cupboard of that same music shop with a local woodwind peri called Joolz (aka Julian Smith), who some people might remember as the Kenny G-esque saxophonist from Britain’s Got Talent.
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