Album Notes

Martin Tilbrook Gardener was born at Westerham, Kent in 1953. His parents soon recognised an unusual talent in their son when at the age of three he was aware of his mother’s mistakes as she played the piano at bed-time. Discovering Martin to have perfect pitch, they encouraged him to play the piano, piling cushions on a chair so he could reach the notes. “It was a great delight to play, even though my hands were too small and legs too short to reach the sustaining pedal,” he laughs.
Martin quickly assimilated the relationship between location of piano keys and their harmonies, and instinctively played back music he heard on the radio. Soon he was making up his own tunes, extending and varying them in any key. By the age of five he could play the piano surprisingly well.

Shortly before his sixth birthday Martin auditioned for the Blackheath Conservatoire. He played ‘Side-Saddle’ by Russ Conway in any key they asked for by ear; thus began his first piano lessons. Whilst at the Conservatoire, he was entered for various Music Festivals. “I hated the rigid dullness, competition and pressure of these events,” recalls Martin, “they gave little opportunity for personal expression and put me off playing in public. I felt like a performing monkey.”

At the age of eight, with Grade 5 piano under his belt, Martin auditioned at the Royal College of Music for a Junior Exhibitioner Scholarship, playing Bach’s 2 part Invention in F. Thus began a happy twelve year relationship with the RCM. Martin’s natural propensity to compose sometimes landed him in trouble, however. He remembers, “I had the temerity to suggest alternative melodies or harmonies to the sonatas I was studying, which didn’t go down too well with some professors.”

A few years later when Martin completed his degree, he applied for a grant to stay on for a fourth year at the RCM. When asked why he wanted to stay, he replied, “I would like to write music for films.” The Grant Panel expressed incredulity and exclaimed, “That’s a very dangerous way of making a living! You’d do better to go and teach...” The grant was declined. Martin was mortified. “For the first time in my life I felt I was being swept in the wrong direction, and didn’t have the maturity or confidence to swim against the tide. I knew the life of a concert pianist wasn’t for me, as I wished to write and perform my own compositions, but everyone told me I couldn’t earn a living as a composer.”

The music, however, wouldn’t go away. It continued to spin around in the head of this thoughtful, sensitive musician and is now bearing many fruits, the first of which is Martin’s personal tribute to the world’s greatest film-maker, Charles Chaplin.