The upcoming jazz musician on songwriting, touring trios and how his success wasn’t ‘Overnight’. Click Play Audio for two tracks

I don’t come from a family with any other musicians so music wasn’t something that was immediately around me. I expressed an interest in the piano at around age six, and was lucky enough to receive classical lessons for a few years. However, I never really felt inspired playing the grade pieces I was learning and gradually lost interest. I think I began playing the guitar when I was 12. I saw Jimi Hendrix on the TV and was immediately drawn to the instrument.I couldn’t say I had any ideas of being ‘one to watch’, I just loved the instrument and therefore was constantly playing and practicing, I guess it just developed from there naturally. Initially I was very serious about rock music, people like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai were big influences on me.

When I was 18 I was lucky enough to win the ErnieBall/Musicman Guitarist of the Year Competition. That was a kind of starting point for me, as a result I was offered a place at the Skidmore Jazz Institute by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, an amazing jazz summer course for kids in New York. Although I had listened to jazz a lot I had never really had the opportunity to learn much about it or play it with other people, so this three week course really changed my whole outlook on music and I’ve never looked back.