My Passion with Martin Edmondson: Blowing my own trumpet about importance of music in my life

As long as I can remember, music has been very important in my life, both listening to it and playing it.

In terms of playing music, my earliest memories are of being incredibly reluctant to do any piano practice, and my parents having to apply a lot of pressure to get me to do my scales. However, I am now very grateful for that discipline, as I get a lot more enjoyment from playing the piano now than I did then.

Once I hit secondary school, we were all offered a number of different instruments to try out, and I immediately took to the trumpet.

A number of psychological studies have been done regarding the characteristics of people who play certain instruments. In the case of brass, it tends to be extroverts who are prepared to go out on a limb (if you make a mistake on a brass instrument, everyone hears it), and they have a tendency to be first to the bar.

I am pleased to confirm that in my case these hold true.

Most of my piano playing has been done in a band that started while I was at university.

Six of us got together and divided our time between writing songs and having arguments about the band name. Various incarnations came and went including The Windy Miller

Band, Strawberry Mondays, the rather regrettable (and fortunately shortlived) Hornblower and finally settling on Mr Bleeney.

During university, we developed from playing small gigs in pubs to supporting The Divine Comedy at the graduation ball. We even made a bit of money at the end of graduation by selling copies of an eight-track CD to our fellow graduates.

The majority of my playing nowadays is done with the rock/pop covers band Coaster. We have evolved from the merger of Mr Bleeney, and a band from Oxford University called The Fridge Magnets. We play mainly at weddings and corporate events, but once a year we hire a large venue in London and put on a gig called Rollercoaster.

Rollercoaster 5 took place at the Indigo venue at the O2, and drew a crowd of about 800 people. It was a fantastic feeling pretending to be a proper musician for an evening.

We also try to double the event up as a charity fund raiser, and over the course of the years have raised more than 15,000 for charity.

In terms of listening, my favourite musician is Ben Folds. For more than 15 years he has been producing incredible music, either on his own or with Ben Folds Five. He manages to combine sharp, witty lyrics with melodic, vibrant piano-driven music. He has just released an album in collaboration with Nick Hornby, called Lonely Avenue.

Music has punctuated the key moments of my life and life would be poorer without it.