I wanted to interview Brighton pianist and educator Joss Peach but he had to rush off to be a dog so I emailed him some questions. Here are his responses.

You always look happy and relaxed when you are performing. Is this something you’ve had to work on or does it just occur naturally?

    “I find the experience of playing great music with fantastic and responsive musicians extremely relaxing and joyous- so no I've never worked at it! I'm generally a happy camper in life, so I guess that comes across while I'm playing.”

Do you have happy memories of music from your childhood?

    “My uncles jamming skiffle, boogie and blues tunes at family get togethers with everyone joining in on whatever they could play/shake/bang was a formative and happy memory.

I remember the first time I really fell in love with the piano; I must've been about 5, and had been tinkling about a bit for some time, but on this one day I sat in the lounge on my own and just really got into improvising for ages. I remember the experience felt like eating strawberries!”

What music projects are you working on at the moment?

    “I'm working on a highly produced studio album with lots of different musicians contributing material and me doing lots of chopping, editing and weird stuff to their material to create long pieces which are quite 'soundscapey' cinematic jazz pieces. I've also started a 'Brighton Duets' album- a series of duets with some of the amazing players we have local to Brighton. It will be a complete mixed bag of styles and genres which I hope will reflect the incredible quality of the musicians we have on the scene.”

    “My new career as a piano playing dog www.josspeachmusic.com has been very successful- I often busk on an acoustic piano in the lanes playing boogie and good time jazz, which is great fun and extremely silly. It's very popular for functions/weddings etc, and I get to play the sort of material which wouldn't work in a modern jazz club, but really great to play.”

    “I do various production music jobs, the latest of which was composing the music for a kids game on the BBC website. That is always varied and stimulating work.”

What areas of your playing would you like to develop in the future?

    “I'd like to do more multi-disciplinary projects with things like dance/theatre/installation art.”

What are your future plans?

    “Er… tell you when we get there! Life is full of surprises. Mainly I plan to stay open to opportunity and see where life leads!”

[Q&A Interview conducted by Charlie Anderson]