The accidental pianist

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? Man, that’s so cool! So I guess you started at like four years old and practised eight hours a day like for ever, and went to like Julliard or somewhere, huh? I bet you look awesome in your tux!’ (She happens to be American.) Our conversation was cut short when she stubbed her cigarette out on her arm. The nurses are peculiar like that.

I was thinking about that exchange recently (it happened about three years ago) and it struck me how the job title ‘concert pianist’, rather like ‘gynaecologist’ or ‘surfer’, inevitably conjures up specific images and histories in people. I think it’s appropriate, important even, to dispel the myth of the pianist as autistic/fragile/shrouded-in-his-own-genius/tux-wearing/idiot savant. 
And I present myself as exhibit A.

For those with no idea who I am (I imagine that would be most of you), I am 35 years old and am indeed a concert pianist. In the past 18 months my first two CDs (Signum) have topped the iTunes Classical charts and garnered decent reviews both here and abroad; I’ve performed at venues from the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Roundhouse to fields at both the Hay and Latitude Festivals.