I’m currently researching the history of the trombone for an article I’m writing for a client. Whilst working through the famous composers who incorporated the instrument into their operas and symphonies, I came across Giacomo Puccini’s page on wikipedia. Puccini happens to be my favourite composer - La Boehme and Madame Butterfly are brilliant - and ‘Nessun Dorma’ is one of my favourite pieces of music. I also love that Mandy Moore’s character in ‘Chasing Liberty’ refers to herself as a “Puccini groupie”, but that’s beside the point. What I found absolutely fantastic was the date of Puccini’s birth - the 22nd of December (1858). I was born 126 years later, on the 22nd of December, on what was a hot summer’s day in South Australia, the proverbial world away from Puccini’s winter birth in Italy. There’s some weird sort of symmetry in the fact that I enjoy the music of someone who shares my birthday, though our dates of birth are separated by more than a century and several continents.