A Place Called Home
Places & Stories · Home & Inspiration
Lake Zurich · Music, Art & Inspiration
There are places we travel to, places that stay in our memories — and then there is the place we return to.
Home.
After days filled with journeys, encounters, work and new impressions, there is something deeply grounding about waking up to the familiar. Morning light over Lake Zurich, the changing colours of the sky, the quiet of an early hour — simple moments that remind me how much inspiration can be found without going anywhere at all.
For me, home has never been only a place to live. It is also a place to create.
A New Chapter
Yesterday marked the end of an important chapter — one that had been part of my life for many years.
With every ending comes a change of rhythm. Responsibilities shift, space opens up, and suddenly there is time to turn again towards the things that have always been closest to me: music, singing, photography, visual work — and the simple pleasure of creating.
And in many ways, this home is where I am returning to them.
Because so much has happened within these four walls. Music has been studied and rehearsed here. Songs and ideas have taken shape here. There have been intimate house concerts, long hours at the piano, conversations about new projects, photographs selected and stories written. Some ideas grew into something tangible; others remained quietly waiting for their moment.
Now there is a little more space again — to practise, to sing, to create, to make plans and to see where new ideas might lead.
There is no need to rush. For now, it simply feels good to rediscover the creative energy that has always had a home here.
And perhaps it is no coincidence that, on the morning after such a significant day, I looked out across Lake Zurich and thought:
What comes next?
A Room for Music
At the heart of our home stands our Boston grand piano — far more than a piece of furniture. Over the years, countless hours have been spent here practising, studying, searching for expression and simply making music.
It has accompanied different chapters of my musical life and has also been at the heart of many intimate house concerts, with a pianist at my side and friends and guests gathered around us. On those evenings, our home became a small concert room — a place where music was not performed at a distance, but shared closely and personally.
Today, the piano remains part of my everyday creative world: a place to work, to return to familiar music, to explore new ideas and sometimes simply to sit down and play.
From Botswana to Home
Travel leaves traces. Some remain memories. Others become part of my creative work.
The lion on the wall is one of my own photographs, captured in Botswana — a moment from the African wilderness that travelled home with me and eventually became part of the space in which I live and create.
I have always been drawn to the visual as much as to music. Photography, composition, atmosphere, colour and the way an image can hold a feeling have become another language through which I express what moves me.
Botswana holds a special place within that work. There is something about its vast landscapes, its extraordinary light and the quiet presence of its wildlife that stays with you.
Standing before a lion in the wild is one experience. Returning to that encounter through an image — selecting it, working with it and eventually seeing it on the wall — is another.
I don’t photograph simply to remember where I have been. I photograph to preserve what I felt when I was there.
And this photograph is no longer only about Botswana. Here, beside the piano, it has become part of another story — the meeting of two creative worlds that have accompanied me for years: music and visual art.
Where My Worlds Meet
Music may have been my first artistic language, but it has never been the only one.
Singing, photography, visual storytelling, art, travel and the creation of Goldbridge all come from the same curiosity: the desire to capture an emotion and give it a form.
Sometimes that form is a song. Sometimes it is a photograph. Sometimes it is a story, a visual composition or simply the beginning of an idea.
Much of that creative process has happened within these four walls. At the piano. In front of a screen. Looking through photographs after returning from a journey. Writing, experimenting, discarding ideas and starting again.
And now, with a little more time and space ahead, I want to return more consciously to all of it — to sing, to practise, to photograph, to develop visual work and to make plans for whatever may come next.
Not everything needs to become a project.
But everything can become inspiration.
Home gives all of these worlds a place to meet.
And perhaps that is what home means to me most: not simply the place I return to, but the place from which I begin again.
