Interview with Jamie Cullum (London Liverpool Street)

What drew you to become a mentor on series four of The Piano?

‘’I’ve loved The Piano since it first began. For obvious reasons, I’m completely addicted to the piano: playing it, practising, writing at it, discovering things through it. But I also love hearing other people play, at every level.
 

There’s something very moving about people who devote a part of their lives to communicating with the instrument. You learn so much about them through what they choose to play and how they choose to play it. That’s what I think the show captures so beautifully. It combines my love of the piano with my fascination for the people who play it, and it tells their stories through their relationship with the instrument.
 

The piano is extraordinary in that way. It has this ability to reveal who you are and what you’re trying to say, sometimes even when you don’t quite know how to say it yourself. I think the show does a brilliant job of bringing that out in a way that feels respectful, human and completely engrossing.
So when I was asked to take part as a guest mentor, I absolutely jumped at the chance.’’

Tell us about your connection to music. What does the piano mean to you?

‘’My relationship with the piano has changed a lot over the course of my life. I fell in love with music before I fell in love with the piano, but the piano was always there. There was one in our house, and my older brother Ben played it to a really high standard. I was drawn to the guitar first, but as a teenager I found my way back to the piano.
 

It began to feel, at least to me, like the source of music: the place where everything could happen, where everything could be discovered. I’d sit at the instrument trying to work out what I was hearing in my head, or what I was hearing on records. Once I really dived in, I never looked back.
 

I’m largely self-taught as a piano player, but as I’ve got older I’ve become more and more fascinated by studying the instrument properly and deeply. I started taking lessons during COVID, and that opened up a whole new level of love for it. My connection to the piano has deepened so much that I sometimes forget my job is actually to be a performing musician. I think about practising all the time, about going further into the instrument and understanding more.
 

It has become a real obsession, but the beautiful thing is that there’s no end to it. The piano just keeps revealing more of itself. The more you practise, the more you learn, and the more you realise how much there still is to discover.’’

What do you hope to see from this year’s amateur pianists in London Liverpool Street Station?

The thing I find most wonderful about people playing the piano is how revealing it is. It’s like the singing voice in that sense, but in some ways even more mysterious, because everyone is sitting down at essentially the same instrument, and yet everyone makes it sound completely different.

That’s endlessly fascinating to me. So what I hope to see from the amateur pianists is individuality, creativity and honesty. I love being surprised by someone’s choice of repertoire, and by the way they approach it. It doesn’t have to be flashy. It just has to feel true.

Ultimately, I think it’s about someone communicating something through the piece they’ve chosen and the way they play it. That might be joy, sadness, longing, humour, complexity, vulnerability, or something they can’t quite put into words. I’m hoping for performances that make a real connection with us: with me, the other mentors, Mika, and everyone listening. The most exciting thing is when someone moves you in a way you weren’t expecting.