Believe it or not, I actually have a concert next week, though it will be a ‘closed door’ recording made without an audience. It’s part of the Edinburgh International Festival’s online offering which replaces the programme for this year’s cancelled Festival. A series of  performances by various artists will be filmed and recorded during August […]

Zoom music-making has been a feature of lockdown. Hardly a week passes without someone sending me a link to a recording:  Zoom choirs, Zoom orchestras and ensembles, each performer singing or playing away in their own home and on their own little screen. To create a composite whole, each person usually has to record their […]

We’re hearing a lot about the days of heedless international travel being over for classical musicians. In today’s Guardian, Charlotte Higgins does an admirable job of summing up some aspects of the situation. It’s worth remembering that darting about to play in San Francisco one night and Frankfurt the next is quite a recent thing. […]

The other night, after watching the last in the category finals of ‘BBC Young Musician’, I tweeted that I had now watched the wind, brass and string finals and had not once heard them mention the name of any of the pianists who played with the young competitors. My tweet attracted a (for me) high […]

The Scotsman newspaper is offering readers some lockdown entertainment, or solace, in the form of contributions from various artists who’ve recorded themselves playing, reading poetry, singing, or whatever in their own homes. There’s an accompanying article written by one of the newspaper’s critics; in my case, by music critic David Kettle. My contribution, The Scotsman […]