David Hicken - The Final Toccata... Based On a True Story (1990)

David Hicken recently burst onto the solo piano scene with an incredibly beautiful trilogy of CDs of original music. Hicken is an overnight sensation, and it has taken only about twenty years to get there! It is rare that an artist will have two CDs on my list of Favorite CDs for any year, but Hicken’s “Goddess” and “Angels” both made the list for 2007 (“Faeries” hasn’t been released yet, or it would have been on there, too!). I have had the privilege and pleasure of editing the piano songbooks for “Angels” and “Faeries,” and know first-hand what a pleasure it is to play Hicken’s music. He has had a very interesting life thus far, and I think you’ll enjoy getting to know him and his music.

Born in Wellington, England, David Hicken spent most of his childhood in a quaint little village called Tettenhall in central
England. Known as “the black country” because coal miners’ faces were always black with soot, the village had a pub, a church that was more than a thousand years old, and a park that was the site of a fierce battle between the Saxons and the Normans. David has an older brother who showed early promise as a guitarist and an older sister who was a talented singer. They both quit music around the age of sixteen when they discovered the local discotheque. Hicken’s mother was the vice-principal of a very large school near the family’s home. She was also a piano teacher and taught many students every evening after school. Hicken’s father was trained as a blacksmith and made part of the gates that surround Buckingham Palace. He was also a very talented carpenter who spent a lot of time working in that trade. He had a fine tenor voice and although he didn’t sing professionally, he was featured in local newspapers as well as on local radio.