“At the end of the day we should never try to play FOR anyone other than ourselves.”
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Making Waves
The Ophelia Gordon Interview
with Keelan Carew
- 56 min
Discovering Music Mental Health Studio Culture
Pianist, multi-instrumentalist, black belt martial artist and Kapustin expert Ophelia Gordon talks about her story and how we find true authenticity through lived experience.
Ophelia Gordon is a British concert pianist whose work sits at the intersection of classical structure and jazz-inflected freedom. Her relationship with the music of Nikolai Kapustin is deeply personal: discovering his music at a time of profound personal upheaval, Gordon found in its precision, rhythm, and architecture a form of grounding and survival. She treats the music as a lived language — one that demands clarity, courage, and emotional truth. Her performances and recordings reflect an artist shaped as much by resilience as by refinement, committed to work that speaks honestly, rigorously, and without compromise.
Keelan Carew
Keelan Carew is an acclaimed pianist and broadcaster dedicated to classical music education. Raised in Medway and trained at the Royal Northern College of Music, his career highlights include a Royal Festival Hall appearance with Lang Lang and a concerto debut performing Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody.
A prominent voice on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, Keelan has hosted series such as Piano Odyssey and Sounds Connected, alongside frequent appearances on In Tune. As Founding Artistic Director of the Rainham Piano Festival and former outreach lead at the Yehudi Menuhin School, he expertly balances performance with producing accessible concerts for the next generation.
