Italian jazz pianist Rossano Sportiello was visiting Edinburgh from New York last night and I went to hear him. The jazz musicians in the audience ruefully acknowledged that Sportiello’s elegant appearance had put them to shame. Beautifully pressed grey suit, pink silk tie with matching silk handkerchief tucked in the jacket pocket, a gorgeous haircut […]

The other night I went to hear a great Irish folk band, Lankum, at the Traverse theatre bar. I first came across them in a BBC Alba television programme when they were called ‘Lynched’, a name they have understandably ditched. Their talent stuck in my head, so when I saw they were performing in Edinburgh […]

I’m reading Andrew Solomon’s fascinating ‘Far from the Tree’, a 900-page study of parents ‘who learn to deal with their exceptional children and find profound meaning in doing so’. Many of the chapters focus on conditions which are obviously challenging for families: autism, schizophrenia, deafness, disability, crime, sexual orientation, dwarfs. In the middle of the […]

Recently I came across folders of notes I had made when serving on international competition juries over the past decade or more. Pages and pages of detailed notes on people’s playing. Most of them played for at least half an hour, sometimes an hour, so there was plenty of time to make notes. I did […]

Articles and letters in The Guardian recently have explored why some of today’s singers suffer from vocal problems, develop nodules on their vocal cords from singing so loudly, etc.  Curiously, the use of powerful amplification has not taken away the need to sing loudly: rather, it seems to create a vicious circle in which everything […]