On a night when the brilliant Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov was playing at the Usher Hall as part of the Edinburgh Festival, it was not to be expected that any piano fans would still be available to come to the Edinburgh Book Festival to hear my talk, which clashed directly with the Usher Hall concert. […]

Over the Christmas holidays I’ve been talking with friends and family about the topic of my next book. I’ve got some ideas of my own, but one night someone suggested to me that I could ‘crowd-source’ ideas from people who read my blog. If ‘crowd-source’ seems a little hyperbolic, let’s say ‘group-source’. What would people like […]

Yesterday’s Guardian Review carried a fascinating article by Michael Church, editor of ‘The other classical musics – fifteen great traditions’, a new assortment of essays by Church and other world music experts published by Boydell Press (who also publish my books). As well as describing great musical traditions, Church points out that because of changing geo-political realities, many of those traditions are endangered, or are […]

Excerpt from a review of my book ‘Sleeping in Temples’, in the newsletter of the London Chamber Music Society (you can download the whole newsletter from their site). ‘I don’t usually ‘judge a book by its cover’, but in this case the cover is a lovely place to start: a reflection? an artwork? water and oil? […]

Sad news that Edward Greenfield has died. He was senior music critic of The Guardian for many years, and a longstanding contributor to Gramophone magazine. Although ‘Ted’ was a professional critic, it always seemed to me that he was determined to accentuate the positive, which marked him out from many of his peers. I had particular reason to be grateful to Ted […]