Glamour time - are we listening or looking?

I took part in a discussion for the US radio station WQXR's programme Conducting Business about playing the glamour card in classical music. Have a listen above.

More info here.

WQXR takes up fanfare for the uncommon woman conductor

I've just taken part in a discussion for WQXR's programme Conducting Business on the topic of women conductors, together with Emmanuelle Haim, artists manager Charlotte Lee and the station's presenter Naomi Lewin. It feels a bit weird to speak on New York radio from the comfort of my study (cat confined to kitchen to avoid him inadvertently making his NY debut) - anyway, it was an interesting talk with some fascinating perspectives emerging. Here is the article on the website, and the resulting podcast is embedded below.

Is Daniel Barenboim the only person who can fix things?

It wouldn't surprise me.

While the killing continues in the Middle East, he's founding a college in Berlin based on the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra's principles. A new college in a former Berlin Staatskapelle warehouse. Around 80 Israeli and Arab youngsters will - we hope - mix here to study music, with a spot of social sciences and international politics on the side. A new concert hall, apparently, to be named after Pierre Boulez and to be designed by Frank Gehry and Yasuhisa Toyota. A new idea that talking to one another might actually help. Projected opening date: 2015. Barenboim may be the only person who can make this happen. More from Brian Wise at WQXR, here.

And meanwhile the killing goes on. And so artists speak out. And when they do there is always someone - usually with an agenda - who'll say "shut up and play the piano". (The other day a piece in the Guardian used a protest movement as a way of, er, slamming a protest movement; it said that the director of an Israeli dance company actually agreed with the protestors outside the theatre and that this somehow meant the protestors were stupid. Oddly, the article now seems to have vanished.)

But if artists don't speak out, nobody will. Artists - performing, creative, literary, musical, balletic - seem to be the last bastion of humanity that possesses a moral compass. With corruption rife and politicians toothless, artists are the only ones left. And there's one thing better than speaking out: doing something positive. Is Barenboim the only one in the world who both will and can? Atta-Danny.