As easy as A, B, C?

I've written a post for the Culturekicks.co.uk site about why we need urgently to address the issue of language for talking about music. The term "dumbing down" is essentially a misnomer: a more correct term is "de-skilling". With a whole generation forcibly removed from musical literacy and terrified of learning the necessary bits and pieces - however easy they really are - how are we to keep talking about music at all? Read it all here: http://www.culturekicks.co.uk/2013/03/14/as-easy-as-a-b-c/

Culturekicks, btw, is created by the same team that used to run the late lamented and daftly dumped Spectator Arts Blog, and it has kept the latter's archive of brilliant posts by brilliant writers...including yrs truly. More power to their elbows.

Welcome, Culture Kicks

Many of us were a bit unhappy, to put it mildly, when The Spectator Arts Blog shut up shop last year. The good news is that now its editors, Pete Hoskin and Simon Mason, have started a new arts webzine called Culture Kicks. You'll find it at http://www.culturekicks.co.uk/ 

Mission statement? "What we want to do is share our enthusiasms, and we hope to do so with articles that read like magazine features. Sometimes they’ll be topical, sometimes they won’t, but we hope you’ll always find them well-written, informative and—crucially—unpretentious." Glad to see they also have an archive made up of the old Speccy Arts Blog pieces, mine included.

They asked me for a new piece about The Rest is Noise festival. I reckoned that as most of us have twigged what it's doing, it was time to look at why it works, why it matters and why I love it. http://www.culturekicks.co.uk/2013/01/28/all-the-benefits-of-hindsight/

Hello, is that the Paradise Garden? Please could I speak to Ken Russell?

Come back, Ken Russell, and please, please have another shot at Debussy? My latest post for The Spectator Arts Blog casts an eye over the late, great filmmaker's approach to two of this year's big anniversary boys: Delius and Debussy. One worked. The other didn't, but should have. Read the whole thing here.

Friday Historical for Mozart's Birthday, plus some news

First of all, I'm delighted to announce that I have "a new gig", contributing to The Spectator Arts Blog. My first piece is out today and it's a look at six of the best young opera singers I've come across in the last year or so. First up is Sophie Bevan, who will be singing her namesake in Der Rosenkavalier for ENO from Saturday. And five more budding superstars... Read it here.

And it's Mozart's birthday, and it's Friday, so here is some Friday Historical Mozart: the first movement of the Concerto for Three Pianos, with Sir Georg Solti (conducting and playing), Daniel Barenboim and Andras Schiff, and the English Chamber Orchestra. Happy 256th birthday to our darling Wolferl!