MUSIC: The unorthodox maestro

It’s pretty unusual for classical pianists to sign a six-album deal with non-classical record labels like Warner Bros  – but James Rhodes is pretty unusual. He is one of Britain’s fastest-emerging musical talents, but is not churned out of an elite music college with years of classical training. His story, which he tells in this week’s magazine (read it here), starts in the psychiatric hospital where he was sent after being sectioned three years ago. Here’s how he starts his piece:

“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.