Steven Osborne: OK By Me

Steven Osborne presents ‘OK by Me’, a deeply personal collection unlike any album he has made before. Bringing together works with autobiographical significance alongside music spanning classical, modernist and jazz influences, Osborne uses the album to create what he describes as ‘a line through my musical life’. The programme includes Liadov’s ‘A Musical Snuffbox’, recalling his mother’s musical jewellery box; Poulenc’s ‘Novelettes’, which helped secure his first Wigmore Hall recital; Peter Maxwell Davies’s ‘Farewell to Stromness’; and James Clapperton’s ‘Haar’. Improvisations and arrangements also feature prominently, including music inspired by Keith Jarrett, Joni Mitchell and Sir Michael Tippett. The album opens with Osborne’s own composition, ‘OK by Me’, which came to him fully formed one morning while practising.