In 2008, I reached a point at which I was no longer able to find any satisfaction in my career. I felt that, since the decision I had taken seven years earlier to make music my profession, I had seldom been successful in expressing genuine emotion in concerts or studio recordings. I felt myself to be constricted in a corset of perfectionism & conventions – partly self-inflicted, partly dictated by outsiders. Retrospectively, I realized that a large part of what I had achieved on stage & in t