Hamilton lives and works in Moseley, near Birmingham, but grew up in a remote house in the Scottish Highlands. Musical and isolated, she had learned to play multiple instruments by her early teens, including the viola. "I was shunted on to it because I was tall – you need long arms for the viola – and because nobody else in the school orchestra played it." It has remained her inclination, ever since, to stick up for lesser-loved and quirkier instruments ("The poor viola!"). When she saw an early prototype of the AirPiano being demonstrated on YouTube by its Berlin-based inventor, Omer Yosha, in 2009, she identified a new instrument to champion. She flew out to Germany.

That was in 2009, the year she released a debut album of dreamy, Bj?rk-ish folk, called Gown

"The best way to learn a new instrument," says Hamilton, "is to write it." You spent fiddling four months, finally produced the world 'first AirPiano-specific composition, a spare, dreamy ballad with the name "Alive, Alive". It 's this route - all synth buzzes and Plinky electronic noise at Hamilton' s low voice - that they 'll at TED, a bi-annual conference on ideas and innovations that was previously performances from the likes play hosted by Imogen Heap and David Byrne.

Hopefully it 'll go smoothly. New technologies, such as it wants, has revealed the odd hiccup along the way. Low ceilings are occasionally disturbed by the instrument 's sensors. And not long ago, Hamilton says she was filming a music video in a warehouse, the smoke is pumped full of atmospheric, if you AirPiano went rogue. "It responded to the dry ice particles in the air," and the board, she says, starting to play itself. It wouldn 't happen to a violist.