A doctor friend has sent me an excerpt from the current edition of the British Medical Journal in which their writer ‘Minerva’ reports: ‘Great composers have tended to die young, but great performing musicians often carry on getting better as they get older. An article in PLOS One (2013 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0071630) asks whether older professional [...]

At the weekend I went to watch a tango club at which an old friend of mine teaches. I know nothing about tango, though I’ve been to a few Argentine tango shows in London, and recently I had a lot of fun playing in a late-night performance of some Piazzolla tangos. After watching the tango [...]

Another Cerne Abbas festival has come to an end. Remembering last year’s dreadful weather, during which one of the group had to drive to Dorchester to buy some thermal undergarments, I had packed some rather warm concert clothes, which I regretted as soon as I realised how sunny this year’s festival was going to be. [...]

Someone has drawn my attention to the fact that last Saturday, in the Family section of the Guardian, a reader submitted a favourite recipe along with a recollection of her childhood, in which her late mother played the piano music of Billy Mayerl on the family’s beloved upright piano. The reader, Nikki Copleston, mentioned that [...]

I’m coming towards the end of my week in Fiesole, a week of baking heat during which I have realised that much of the music we’ve been studying must have been written in a cooler climate. In this kind of intense heat we can hardly face playing, or even hearing, some of the more energetic [...]