Dear Sir, I was surprised at your recent ‘Where Are They Now’ coda to “80 for the 80’s.” As you forecast I did indeed become one of “Britain’s rare international jazz stars”, performing concerts with my band all over the world. Many of your readers will be familiar with my saxophone theme for ‘A Touch of Frost’. However, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1997 (not Alzheimer's in 2001), and soon realized that playing saxophone and flute would become increasingly difficult. Leverdopa drugs would enable me to continue playing, but their long term effects can be distressing, and rather than take them I decided to stop playing with my highly demanding band Paraphernalia and concentrate on my first love, composing. I announced this when I was headlining at Ronnie Scott's in 2001, but my love of live performance overcame my caution and recently I have allowed myself to be persuaded to play several major European tours with the International band ‘The United Jazz & Rock Ensemble’ and my husband, Jon Hiseman’s band, Colosseum . We are on a festival tour at the moment playing in Hungary Austria and Germany. This week I played a guest solo on Manfred Mann’s latest album. Alongside this I have been composing fulltime. In the last 3 years I have written and had performed several major works including ‘Journey to a Destination Unknown’ a chorale work premiered at St. John’s, Smith Square in April 03, two concertos for saxophone quartet & string ensemble, with premiers in the UK and Germany and my Three Saxophone Quartets have been recently recorded by the Apollo Saxophone Quartet for release early next year. My new Tuba Concerto was recorded by the NDR in Hamburg last March and I am currently working on a two orchestral concertos, one for Piano and the other for Cello. The research into Parkinson and other neurological conditions (including Alzeimers!) with the active support of the UK Parkinsons Society (020 7931 8080) is going great guns. A new centre for stem cell research in Cambridge has just opened and they are forecasting major developments over the next 5 years. New medication has also been developed and as things became more difficult I finally gave in and started taking a new leverdoper combination drug called Stalevo. This works so well that we are considering playing some festivals abroad next year with Paraphernalia. Parkinson has had the opposite effect in my career – rather than retiring from the music scene, it has spurred me to concentrate on areas I never previously had time for. So you can see why I was surprised to be written off in ‘Where Are They Now’ actually ‘I’m Very Much Still Here!’ Barbara Thompson MBE