VIOLINIST and composer, Alison Blunt, and Italian soprano saxophonist extraordinaire, Gianni Mimmo, share the stage at next weekend's Full of Noises Festival, performing a concert at Barrow's St James Church, on Friday, July 31 (7pm).

The three-day Barrow festival concludes with John Eacott's Floodtide, which forms the finale of the festival in Barrow Park on Sunday, August 2.

Additionally, Alison and Gianni play Sedbergh's St Andrew's Parish Church at 1pm on Monday, August 3, another performance that Alison is looking forward to: "We played our first concert together in late spring 2013 and since then we've played around 40 concerts in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Scandinavia, across the US and in the UK."

Born and brought up in Mombasa, Alison's parents followed her grandmother's path to England, bringing them to live with her at Firbank, near Sedbergh.

She attended Sedbergh Primary and then Kendal's Queen Katherine School, where highly thought of music teacher Lesley Talbot provided terrific support.

"Lesley was head of music and from my first day there I pretty much lived under her wing in the music department, skiving off PE lessons whenever possible to use the practise rooms and joining every possible music activity. Lesley poured herself into all who wanted to learn and we 'music department hangers-on' lapped up her expertise and coaching with only an inkling of how incredibly fortunate we were to have her. During my sixth form years I was invited by organisations and institutions in Cumbria to perform at various events and Lesley would accompany me on the piano wherever the engagements happened to be; she showed such astounding support and care for my musical training and to be honest, I see that as pretty much the same as nurturing of the soul."

While still at school, Alison played with the Lakeland Sinfonia, then went on to Birmingham Conservatoire and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, before making a career in music.

"For me, being a professional musician or artist means being fully me and vice versa. Being a professional artist has a far hazier a job description and career path than most other jobs I can think of, perhaps any other. I also facilitate music and movement workshops with any and all age groups and abilities; my specialised area is working with under five year olds."

Alison says she creates music using or utilising improvisation: "The technique is nothing new in itself, musician composers/composing musicians have been doing this since time began," explains Alison. "Whether it's a commission for film, for a visual installation, theatre or a music performance, the process of performing one of my scores always requires performers to improvise. When I discovered freely improvised music a seismic shift took place within me."

This dramatic change of musical direction came during an enforced 18-month lay off when she couldn't use her left hand or arm: "I had some time to reflect on what I was doing, where I was going. The repetitive strain injury had happened just after starting a postgraduate year at Birmingham Conservatoire. I walked a lot, read a lot, and baked a lot of cakes. It was probably the first pause I'd ever had on the education treadmill and I realised with some horror that my long-cherished plan of getting a job with an orchestra didn't really fit with my personality and gifts. It wouldn't be what I'd always hoped it would be, fulfilling me as musician and artist.

"As a string player in an orchestra you need to blend your sound completely with your section, it's a real skill and when a section achieves this blend and no single player's sound sticks out, it's really fantastic. I love working to achieve this blend sometimes, but during that recovery time the unwelcome epiphany was that I also needed much space to express myself musically as an individual and would probably get the sack or have a breakdown from a long-term repression of this need. Eventually I was able to play again and auditioned and was awarded a scholarship and place on the Guildhall School of Music and Drama's postgraduate course in performance and communication skills; this is where I started exploring improvisation and rediscovering composition, finding my courage as a creative musician - and I've been finding it ever since."