I got my first musical qualifications at secondary school, followed by conservatoire training and university undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as postgraduate qualifications. 

1. After passing the final grade 8 of the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) exams with “Distinction” in both Piano Playing and Music Theory in just three years of music lessons, I passed the LRSM Piano Performance diploma the following year while still at secondary school, King’s College, Lagos, Nigeria. I also got my HSC/A-Level Music with the then top A grade before going for higher musical studies at the Royal College of Music, London.
2. At the Royal College of Music, I studied Piano Performance and Composition as first and second subjects. In Piano Performance with progress examined and graded regularly, I eventually got to the top level for professional concert pianists. Along the way, I’d won a prize for the best performance of Scarlatti sonatas during one academic year. In Composition I wrote several pieces including a concertino for piano and orchestra which I performed with orchestra in a public concert.
3. I then studied for the B.Mus (Hons) degree at London University which, back then was an academic and heavily musicological degree, unlike today’s performance-oriented degrees. I particularly enjoyed the more thorough approach to music history, musical analysis, music techniques like harmony and counterpoint in the style of various great composers, especially J. S. Bach, as well as innovative approaches to music composition.
4. After that, I studied and obtained a Mus.M (Musicology) degree at Manchester University. I particularly appreciated learning more advanced musicological research techniques, including decoding and transcribing ancient manuscripts into modern notation. My specialist music subject was the18th century Classical Style with emphasis on the life and works of W. A. Mozart. My thesis focused on the historical and artistic significance of the six piano concertos that Mozart composed in 1784.
5. I followed this with a postgraduate qualification in Education at the University of Central England in Birmingham. From this, I gained more experience of music teaching, especially in UK state schools. I was also awarded the FTCL (Fellowship) in piano performance by Trinity College, which might seem superfluous considering my previous professional concert pianist training at the RCM, but it gave me a chance to keep up my advanced piano playing despite the distractions from piano performance caused by academic and musicological studies. I also kept preparing for and competing in international professional piano competitions, just to keep my piano playing at the top level. I did not win a major prize, but got some good comments and commendations from judges, which was gratifying considering the high standards involved. I felt it was  a pity there seemed to be no competitions then for pianist-composers, at which I might have excelled.

I really wanted to be a pianist-composer, especially so I could tap into my knowledge and interest in non-classical music. There didn’t seem to be any clear way of doing that, so I marked time by taking a job as a resident lounge pianist at 5-star hotel in Central London playing a mixture of light classical piano music, arrangements of pop, easy listening music, and music from entertainment shows, etc. Although I enjoyed playing the music, the lack of any professional career path filled me with apprehensions about future career prospects. I thought of going back to teaching or lecturing, but government financial cuts to universities made that seem unattractive, especially financially. Living as a practical musicianship one could tolerate just making ends meet financially, but I felt nothing else could justify such self-sacrifice except perhaps devoting all of one’s time to just learning different things.

Discussions with acquaintances and friends soon led me to the thought of re-training in a totally different profession. After consider Law, Medicine, and Accountancy, I finally decided to study and train as an accountant. Many people thought I was joking, and I did not even dare to tell my family, in case I failed at it, but within five years I was a fully trained and qualified member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), London. I even won the Trainee Accountant of the Year Award in the final year of training. In a sense it felt hollow considering my age compared to most fellow trainees, but on the other hand I was widely praised for having had the courage, self-discipline, and perseverance to do what most people would have found too daunting. Anyway, I enjoyed doing accountancy and remained in the profession for many years, even though my inquisitive mind and interest in lifelong learning made me study and qualify in many other professions at the time. These were purely for my own enjoyment rather any career ambitions. The subjects included medical hypnotherapy, fitness instruction, biofeedback training, nutrition, head massage therapy, educational kinesiology and learning to learn. 

Even when I was professionally an accountant, I never lost interest in music. in fact, I regained the kind of inner joy I had at the beginning when doing music for the fun of it rather than the exhausting daily routine, the fierce competition, or the feeling of getting nowhere when totally embroiled in the music business.

So, it was not music that made me leave accountancy. Ironically, the secure financial reward from the accountancy profession made me less worried about financial prospects, so much so that I wanted to combine my knowledge of different professions to start earning “multiple streams of income”, even though I had initially qualified in those professions just for my own private enjoyment. I started with mind-body training, but music and teaching gradually crept back in. I had an urge to write piano concertos, solos, and duets. Unexpectedly, I also developed a strong need to create popular music. Although I had done some before when I was a music student and school music teacher, the feeling here was much stronger.

This time, my urge to do both classical and popular music grew so strong that I was prepared to sell my homes and move to cheaper rented dwelling, a move that has made even me sometimes question my own judgement or even sanity. However, with the amazing progress I have been able to make, some of which is now visible online, and much more of which, already completed, is planned to be rolled out in the near future. Then there is even more that I have conceived and only now just working on. Anyway, in short, I am thoroughly enjoying what I am doing now, breaking new grounds personally and professionally.

I confer with AI models on where I stand in the music sphere. They used to say there was no such musician in the world. Now, they say there is no clear evidence that I am the same person doing all the things that I do, otherwise I should be considered “one of the most significant musical talents” in today’s musical world. That is why I am now most keen to double down on my proving that I am the same person doing all this stuff, unusual at that may be.:-)

The Alpha part is the most important. It does not refer to alpha (i.e. dominant) male idea or anything like that at all. Instead, it refers to the “alpha state of mind”. You can find out more about it everywhere, but briefly it is a calm, contemplative or meditative state of mind that is most conducive to learning, understanding, and general cognitive performance. You will see that much of my education, life, and work have been highly influenced by the alpha mind state idea.

The Max part derived gradually, and some friends had been shortening by birth first name Akin (short for Akinola) for a long time. At first it was “Aki” or “Aks”, which I did not like, just as I did not enjoy hearing Akinola pronounced wrongly. A lecturer of mine even seemed to prefer to call and write my name as Akinda, which confused me especially as she always pronounced it affectionately, which I rather liked. Then some people seemed to think “Ak” was “Mac” or “Aks” was “Max”. It is important to note that my family surname also contains Akin (Akinyele). So, I finally chose Max to go with Alpha, as I had become very fond of the “alpha state of mind” concept, and was prepared to rename myself Max Alpha.

The “King” part of it also came from sounding like Akin (i.e. a-king), and because I needed three names, a first name, a middle name, and a surname. It also felt very good for several reasons. First, I now had a name that represents a major principle in my life (I understand it as being totally committed to the “alpha state of mind”, which I have used in most of work, whether creative, intellectual, personal, or professional. 

Certainly not, quite the contrary in fact, but I’ve never wanted simply to bask in the considerable achievements of my forebears. It is easy, at least right now, to find information on my grandfather, Bishop A B Akinyele and his younger brother Oba I B Akinyele. I too am A B Akinyele (as in Akinola Bababunmi Akinyele). In our traditional ethnic and linguistic context the meaning and pronunciation are entirely without problem. However, elsewhere they pose a daily problem of having to spell the name(s), correcting the pronunciations, etc. Some people from different cultural or language backgrounds accept and even adopt pronunciations of their names that have no meaning whatsoever. 🙂 

I honestly think it is almost always a distraction, and the worst form of racism is to keep on talking or thinking about racial differences as humongous intractable or perennial problems that simply will not be solved. There are different races and even sub-ethnicities in the world. That is a fact of life that is not about to change soon. What obsessing over racial difference does is distract attention from what really matters in different contexts, e.g. actions, behaviours, abilities, achievements, etc, as though these are of much less significance that the colour or tone of people’s skin. Of course, a person’s skin colour or tone is immediately noticeable, but who really thinks that is more important that the person’s own actions, behaviours, abilities, achievements, etc.?

Sadly no. It would have been good, but it has not happened and I happily accept that. Instead I focus on my creative and intellectual pursuits, and will happily do them for as long as I can.

I am totally heterosexual myself and see only females as sexually desirable. However, I am careful not to dismiss or trample on the feelings and opinions of those who might have different sexual orientation from mine. There’s enough struggle, conflict, and confusion in the world and I don’t see the need to cause even more unhappiness.