Few people ask musicians more pertinent or revealing questions than Frances Wilson in her Meet the Artist series, and so the answers of her interviewees are always interesting

Stephen Hough, concert pianist

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Meet the Artist is a series of interviews in which musicians, composers and conductors discuss inspirations, influences, repertoire, performance, recording, teaching and more. The interview takes the form of a short questionnaire, loosely based on the Proust Questionnaire.

Launched in 2012, the Meet the Artist series has become one of the most popular, continuous features of this site as “an important archive of musicians and their thoughts” (Madeleine Mitchell, violinist), and in 2017 a separate, dedicated Meet the artist site was established and the scope of the interviews moved beyond classical musicians and composers to the worlds of jazz, pop and experimental music. From October 2020, all new Meet the Artist interviews will be hosted on this separate site.

If you would like to take part in this project, please download and complete a questionnaire:

Performer questionnaire

Non-classical performer questionnaire

Composer questionnaire

Non-classical composer questionnaire

Conductor questionnaire

Film/TV score composer questionnaire

I much enjoyed taking part in Meet The Artist and have also read others’ contributions with delight. How wonderful to get an insight into so many musical lives and see the huge range of subjectivity that brings our great art to life! – Daniel Tong, pianist

Frances Wilson’s foresight and curiosity, as shown in her Meet the Artist series, makes this blog a valuable resource not only for the varied artists it represents but for the breadth of viewpoint and information is has amassed. It should be celebrated and applauded.  – Kenneth Hesketh, composer

a compendium of surprising, insightful and inspiring thoughts from a wide range of artists – James Lisney, concert pianist

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The interviews (click on link for a list of all the interviews to date or use the Search box to search by name)

Meet the Artist on Facebook

Featured interviewees include:

Pianists: Angela Hewitt, Rick Wakeman, Helmut Deutsch, Stephen Hough, Benjamin Grosvenor, Joanna Macgregor, Boris Giltburg, Julius Drake, Gwilym Simcock, Llyr Williams, Dmitry Masleev, Boris Berman, Cedric Tiberghien, Worbey & Farrell, Jeremy Denk, Melvyn Tan, Jason Rebello, Ilya Itin, Julian Jacobson, Christopher Glyn, Lucy Parham, Leon McCawley, Florian Mitrea, Ivo Pogorelich, Kirill Gerstein, Jonathan Biss, Steven Osborne, Charles Owen, Danny Driver, Peter Donohoe, Alexandra Dariescu,  Anna Tsybuleva, Peter Jablonski, Alice Sara Ott, Andreas Haefliger, Kathryn Stott, Martin Roscoe, Sunwook Kim, Susan Tomes, Nelson Goerne, Nick van Bloss, Ivan Ilic, Lara Melda, Janina Fialkowska, Angela Brownridge, Ashley Wass, Florian Uhlig, François-Frédéric Guy, Daniel Tong, Simon Callaghan, Pascal Rogé, , Daniel Grimwood, Tom Poster, Clare Hammond – and many more…..

Cellists: Guy Johnston, Gabriella Swallow, Matthew Sharp, Corinne Morris, Jo Quail, Joy Lisney

Conductors: Mark Wigglesworth, Scott Inglis-Kidger, Ben Parry, Kenneth Woods, Tom Hammond

Composers: Michael Finnissy, Nitin Sawhney, John Rutter, David Matthews, Helen Grime, Charlotte Bray, Stephen Montague, Rebecca Rowe, Jennifer Higdon, James MacMillan, Richard Causton, Cheryl Frances Hoad, Thomas Hewitt Jones, Martin Butler, Patrick Nunn, Alexandra Harwood, Oliver Rudland, Robert Saxton, Peter Seabourne, Graham Lynch, Matthew Kaner, Kenneth Hesketh, Peter Byrom-Smith, Bernard Hughes, Douglas Finch

Violinists: Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Rachel Podger, Fenella Humphreys, Peter Sheppard-Skærved, Matthew Trusler, Lana Trotovsek

Singers: Roderick Williams, Elin Manahan Thomas, Ruby Hughes, Jennifer Johnston, Phoebe Haines, Robert John Edwards, Jane Wilkinson, Paul Carey Jones

Harpsichordist: Mahan Esfahani

Fortepianist: John Irving

Saxophonist: Jonathan Radford, Jess Gillam

Timpanist: Tom Greenleaves

Guitarists: Heike Matthiesen, David Braid, Stephen Goss

Ensembles: JACK Quartet, Villiers Quartet, The Hermes Experiment, Syzygy Saxophone Quartet, Septura Brass

And many more….