James Rhodes

Thursday

James Rhodes

James Rhodes’s diary: Trying to catch out Stephen Fry, and the scandal of music education

From our UK edition

This was the best kind of week. It started with a three-hour road trip with my manager/surrogate father/shrink/bodyguard to Monmouth to record album no. 5. Glenn Gould (whom I worship with the fervour of a pre-teen Belieber) talked about the ‘womb-like security of the recording studio’. Which was why, in a somewhat pussy move, he retired from performing in public. And he was spot on. Bless my mum, but my first womb was a Valium- and gin-infested warm place of loveliness, and the recording studio is absolutely the next best thing. Me, the safety net of the retake, a (phenomenal) Steinway, heaters, Kit-Kats, tea and Beethoven can give any pharmaceuticals a run for their money. Even if Gould somewhat greedily chose all that and the pills too.

Saturday

James Rhodes

The greatest living pianist

From our UK edition

Why, despite his devoted fans, Grigory Sokolov won’t play live in Britain Grigory Sokolov is a pianist in his fifties; he is overweight, Russian, sleeps only three or four hours a night, is a strict vegan and is obsessed with the occult. He can calculate with one glance the number of seats in an empty concert hall and remembers instantly, to within an inch, where a piano used to be on a stage he hasn’t played on for years. Sokolov is also the reason we must overhaul, right now, the ridiculous visa system that prevents so many foreign artists from performing in the UK. Lord Clancarty started a debate on the matter in the Lords this week, and cited Sokolov as a reason. Clancarty was right.

Saturday

James Rhodes

The accidental pianist

From our UK edition

James Rhodes is being hailed as one of Britain’s most exciting new musicians, and has just signed a six-album deal. Here, he describes his journey from psychiatric hospital to concert hall So I’m sitting in what’s laughably called the Serenity Garden at a London psychiatric hospital that shall remain nameless, and one of the patients approaches me quietly and asks me what I do. Not what I’m locked up for (psych hospital etiquette forbids it), but what I do. She’s cute in an anorexic, self-harming kind of way, so I tell her that I play the piano. ‘What, like in a band?’ she asks, remarkably unslurred by meds. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Just me. I’m a concert pianist. Classical shit.’ ‘Wow! Seriously?