Tomorrow: meet SEVEN fascinating composers who happen to be women

I am very excited about this event tomorrow afternoon. BASCA (the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Arrangers) has drafted me in to be a Dimbleby to a panel of no fewer than seven composers, all female, each born in a different decade, to compare - so to speak - notes. A more exciting, versatile, intriguing group one couldn't imagine. It's a rare chance to get them all into the same room, round a table, to tell it like it is. They are:

Betty Roe
Nicola LeFanu
Judith Bingham
Shirley J Thompson
Mira Calix
Cheryl Frances-Hoad
Dani Howard


The discussion takes place at the Jermyn Street Theatre at 1pm (finishing shortly before 3pm) and you can book on Eventbrite via the BASCA site, here.

This is a real one-off, so do please try and join us! Here's the info off the BASCA page...

Women In Classical Music

Jermyn Street Theatre
16b Jermyn Street - London
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Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/11/2014
1:00 pm - 2:50 pm

Location
Jermyn Street Theatre

Classical music journalist and author, Jessica Duchen, will interview seven female composers of classical music in the intimate setting of the Jermyn Street Theatre.

• Betty Roe MBE, Professor Nicola LeFanu, Judith Bingham, Dr Shirley J. Thompson, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Mira Calix and Dani Howard will be sharing their life and work experiences.

Jessica will delve into each composers’ working experiences, as well as their inspirations, to discover what it means to be a female composer in a traditionally male-dominated area of music. If you have a question for the composer(s), you should ask in advance by email to info@basca.org.uk

CLICK HERE to book your place

Ticket price (excluding booking fee)

• BASCA member: £9.50
• Non member: £12.00
• (Students of BASCA’s Academic Supporters: £7.50)

CLICK HERE to book your place

***** BIOGRAPHIES *****

• BETTY ROE MBE | www.bettyroe.com

Betty Roe’s versatility has enabled her to build a highly successful career as a composer, musician, singer, conductor and teacher. She studied piano and cello at the Royal Academy of Music as a Junior Exhibitioner and Senior Student (GRSM) where she gained LRAM, ARCM and FTCL Diplomas.

In 1970 Betty founded Thames Publishing with her late husband, John Bishop. As well as her own extensive list of works, Thames has published many English composers, of both contemporary and historical interest.

Betty was elected an Associate of the RAM in 1991 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1993. In January 2011, Betty was awarded an MBE for her services to classical music and composition.

• NICOLA LEFANU | www.nicolalefanu.com

Professor Nicola LeFanu has composed around one hundred works which have been widely played, broadcast and recorded. Her catalogue includes a number of works for strings, and chamber music for a variety of mediums, often including voice. She has a particular affinity for vocal music and has composed eight operas, which have been staged in UK, Ireland and USA. Her new opera, ‘Tokaido Road, A Journey after Hiroshige,’ was premiered at the Cheltenham Festival, July 6, 2014.

She is active in many aspects of the musical profession, as composer, teacher, director etc. From 1994-2008 she was Professor of Music at the University of York.

She was born in England in 1947 to Irish parents; her mother was the composer Elizabeth Maconchy. LeFanu studied at Oxford, RCM and, as a Harkness Fellow, at Harvard.

• JUDITH BINGHAM | www.judithbingham.co.uk

Born in Nottingham in 1952, and raised in Mansfield and Sheffield, Judith Bingham began composing as a small child, and then studied composing and singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She was awarded the Principal’s prize in 1971, and six years later the BBC Young Composer award. Recent composition prizes include: the Barlow Prize for a cappella music in 2004, two British Composer Awards in 2004 (choral and liturgical) one in 2006 (choral) and the instrumental award in 2008.

Judith Bingham was a member of the BBC Singers for many years, and between 2004 and 2009 she was their ‘Composer in Association’, during which time she wrote a series of choral works. Several of these were for the BBC Singers, but there were also pieces for other professional, amateur and collegiate choirs, including Salt in the Blood, written for the BBC Symphony Chorus to perform at the 1995 Proms.

In 2007 she was made a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music for distinguished services to church music.

• DR SHIRLEY J. THOMPSON | www.shirleythompsonmusic.com

The music of composer Shirley J. Thompson is performed and screened worldwide and often described as “beautiful and powerful” (Le Figaro). A visionary artist and cultural activist, Thompson is the first woman in Europe to have composed and conducted a symphony within the last 40 years.

Her work, ‘New Nation Rising, A 21st Century Symphony’ performed and recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, was originally commissioned for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. The concept was latterly assumed as a framework for the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. She has also composed extensively for TV/film, theatre, dance and opera production.

Shirley J. Thompson is Reader in Composition and Performance at the University of Westminster and has served for over 10 years on several national arts institutions, including the Arts Council of Great Britain. She is a member of BASCA’s Classical Executive Committee and has been named in the Evening Standard’s ‘Power List of Britain’s Top 100 Most Influential Black People in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015’.

• CHERYL FRANCES-HOAD | www.cherylfranceshoad.co.uk

Cheryl Frances-Hoad was born in Essex in 1980 and received her musical education at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Gonville and Caius College (University of Cambridge) and Kings College London. She was Music Fellow at Rambert Dance from 2012 – 2013, and from 2010-12 was the first DARE Cultural Fellow in the Opera Related Arts in association with Opera North and the University of Leeds. Cheryl won the BBC Young Composer Competition in 1996 at the age of 15 and since then her works have garnered numerous prizes and awards, including the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize (UK, 2007), the Sun River Composition Prize (China, 2007), The International String Orchestra Composition Competition (Malta, 2006), The Bliss Prize (UK, 2002), the first Robert Helps International Composition Prize (University of Florida, 2005), the Mendelssohn Scholarship (UK, 2002) and the Cambridge Composer’s Competition (UK, 2001).

Most recently in 2011 Cheryl was awarded a PRS Women Make Music award to write a new brass quintet for Onyx Brass, which was toured around the UK as part of the 2011/12 Music in the Round season.

• MIRA CALIX | www.miracalix.com

Mira Calix is an award winning composer, artist and performer based in the United Kingdom. She is signed to Warp Records, on which she has released five albums.  Although her earlier music is almost exclusively electronic in nature, in more recent years, she has incorporated classical orchestration into her work for installation pieces, film soundtracks, theatre and opera. Mira has been commissioned to write new works for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic-Ensemble 10/10, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Aldeburgh Festival,Bang On A Can, London Sinfonietta, Opera North and The Manchester International Festival amongst others.

In the autumn of 2009 she won a British Composer Award for her composition, ‘My Secret Heart’. The installation, commissioned by Streetwise Opera, and featuring the voices of a 100 strong choir, was also the recipient of a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2009 and was a finalist in the arts category of the National Lottery Award in 2010. Mira is currently working on a collaboration with artist Conrad Shawcross and a large scale cross media installation to premiere at the Sydney Festival 2015.

• DANI HOWARD | www.danihoward.com

Dani Howard is a scholar at the Royal College of Music, London, supported by a Douglas and Hilda Simmonds Award and the Henry Wood Trust. She has had her compositions performed internationally in Europe and Asia in prestigious concert venues including the Royal Academy of Arts, National Gallery, St. Martin in the Fields and Cyberport HK among others. Recent commissions include a work for solo percussion for performance in the BBC Young Musician of the Year Percussion Final and a fanfare for large brass ensemble for the RCM Graduation Ceremony.

Most recently Dani won third place in the International Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition Junior Category in Prague, and was awarded winner of the Sound:Vision Competition presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) and IdeasTap. Dani has developed a keen interest in percussion writing, and a working relationship with the RCM percussion department led to the premiere of Introspection for 24 percussionists in May 2013. Earlier this year she was commissioned to write a Percussion Octet which was performed on tour in Basel, Switzerland. Throughout 2014 she has had two compositions aired on BBC Radio 3, and one televised on BBC Channel 4.

[** BASCA reserves the right to cancel this event at any stage, if deemed necessary in its opinion, and if circumstances arise outside of its control. We also reserve the right to alter or change the programme and line-up without prior notification.] 

Photographer credits: Lisa & Darren Coleman / Patrick Douglas Hamilton / Andreea Tufescu Photography

Masterclass with a legend

Professor Andrzej Jasinski visits the Chopin Society. Photos by Marek Ostas

The other night I was fortunate enough to be drafted in by the Chopin Society as interviewer for a very special evening at Steinway's with Professor Andrzej Jasinski from Katowice, the former teacher of Krystian Zimerman and president of the jury at the Chopin Competition these past several sessions. First he played us some vivid Mozart and Chopin; then we discussed all manner of things; after that, he taught two gifted students including Mishka Rushdie Momen (top left), who has appeared on the Andrew Marr Show (amongst other accolades) and is in the final of the Dudley International Piano Competition next week.

Prof Jasinski's energy, charm and insights seemed boundless. I found myself marvelling at the mystery and complexity of the process by which music must travel from the composer via the brain and into the hands. Controlling the articulation, the professor demonstrated, is vital in order to inject a communicative, speaking sound into every turn of phrase, indeed every note.

We covered numerous topics in the interview. Prof Jasinski reminisced about a day sometime in the mid 1960s when he was assistant in Katowice to a great professor who had met Brahms...and called Jasinski asking him to teach a small boy from nearby Zabrze who needed a younger teacher. The lad's name was, of course, Krystian Zimerman. It was several years later that Jasinksi realised exactly how special his charge was: aged about 13, Krystian was asked to play Rhapsody in Blue with an orchestra, learned it in three weeks and did a great job. But to nurture such a talent, Jasinski added, you must go slowly, step by step; and he lauded his star pupil's parents for not pushing him into the limelight too early.

It's also not every day you get to ask an expert of this magnitude what the key might be to playing Chopin's mazurkas - and find a response that is so practical, solid and detailed. First of all, he promises that you don't actually have to be Polish to get the hang of them, pointing out the excellent playing of Fou Ts'ong. Next, look at the score! The indications show you where to sustain a note, where it is staccato and where an enhanced mark tells you it's more than a staccato: a jump. But a jump only in the melodic line, not the left hand as well.

The professor finished our discussion by demonstrating Chopin's closeness to Mozart. Arthur Rubinstein, he remarked, used to say that you should play Chopin like Mozart and Mozart like Chopin. He took lines of Chopin and added Mozartian accompaniments, for example turning the Fantasie-Impromptu into Rondo alls Turca as if by magic. In the masterclasses that followed, Mishka played the Polonaise-Fantasie, which to Jasinski is full of Chopin's feelings for his native Poland: conflict, fear, happy memories, the pounding of horses' hooves in battle and ultimately optimism for the future.

At discussions afterwards, I was just reflecting upon the way that a life in music can keep someone so young and energetic (the professor is 78, but followed an intense schedule of masterclasses in the various London conservatoires through his visit this week), when I met someone from the audience who was still teaching piano aged 91 - she was a former pupil of Gina Bachauer. This on top of having just received an advance copy of a CD that captures Menahem Pressler's 90th birthday concert with the Quatuor Ebène in Paris (Dvorak Quintet, Schubert 'Trout', etc) that overflows with joy in music-making.

Philip Glass may advocate yoga and vegetarianism as a secret to long life and good health, and I'm sure those help. But if you want to stay young: be a musician.

Friday historical: Prokofiev plays Prokofiev

My warmest thanks to Mark Ainley and his excellent site & Facebook updates The Piano Files for alerting us to this recording of Sergei Prokofiev as piano soloist in his own Piano Concerto No.3, with the LSO conducted by Piero Coppola. Recorded in 1932, the sound quality is incredibly good and the style is fascinating.

This is music from the horse's mouth: Prokofiev's playing glitters, glimmers and meshes with the orchestra's textures; his touch is light, singing, clear and unfussy, he never hammers at the piano and he duets wonderfully with the orchestral solo instruments. He plays in long lines, the figurations delineating extended flows and spirals. Listen, too, to the strings' portamenti. This is "authentic" style for Prokofiev, remember. Enjoy!

Diversity: a plea for thinking outside the box-tick

I've been chewing over the matter of diversity and wondering whether the music industry's efforts have worked at anything more than box-ticking levels. Here are a few thoughts, which I've stewed in an article for Amati.com.

Basically, I think we need to a) update our thinking on what "diversity" really means, and b) recognise that superficial action on the issue can only go a certain distance without better back-up from the society we live in.

In the article I point out that in 17 years of "diversity" very little has shifted, and very little can shift without truly joined-up thinking on what is trying to be achieved, and how, and why. It is going to take a lot longer to make that change because these matters have to be instilled in the family, in early education and in our work ethics and values system. We need to be thinking long-term. And in the end it all comes down to politics.

http://www.amati.com/magazine/149-comment/comment-diversity-time-to-think-outside-the-box-ticking.html

Glass more than half full

I met Philip Glass while he was here for rehearsals of The Trial. Now he's off on the road around the UK. Head in the Bhagavad Gita, feet firmly on the ground (or possibly the other way round, given that he does yoga every day, presumably complete with headstands).

Here he tells me why he still tours, why yoga is so important to him and how the composers of the future will make a living.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/philip-glass-from-glassworks-to-glassfest-9839242.html

Composer poll: the reckoning

Last week I put up a list of 12 living British composers so that you could vote for your favourite. Then I was awake all night remembering the ones I'd not put in, so I put up a second list. Polling is now closed. Here are the top three places in each of the two lists:

LIST 1

1. Harrison Birtwistle, with 25% of the votes.

2. Thomas Ades, with 18 %.

3. Peter Maxwell Davies, with 10%.

LIST 2

1. James MacMillan, with 27 %.

2. Oliver Knussen, with 24 %.

3. Mark-Anthony Turnage, with 11%.

There we go, then. Thanks to everyone who voted!

In case you were wondering: the first list consisted of six men and six women. The second list was slightly less even, with just four women out of 12. In list 1, Judith Weir pulled in in fourth place, with 8% of the vote. 

Five alternatives to Mrs Bach

The fuss over the Mrs Bach and the cello suites film is getting up my nose, and not in a good way. Of course it makes a good story. But do we really need more tales about women in music who didn't really do things, when there are so many who did, provenly so, but are not recognised for it?

When women musicians make it onto the silver screen, they tend to be there for the wrong reasons: for writing their man's music, which they clearly didn't; for having married Schumann; for being sister to an irritating prodigy (take a bow, Nannerl), or for people having released recordings under their name that they didn't actually make (three cheers for Ms Hatto?).

Still, the film studios clearly prefer the fanciful, so here are a few ideas for my next novel...

Cosima Wagner: true author of Parsifal?

1. An EU directive enforces the opening of the last Bayreuth archive. It reveals that Cosima wrote Parsifal.

2. Beethoven was great at the piano, but wanted everyone to think he could write for the orchestra as well. He paid a very accomplished lady to write nine symphonies for him and planted references to an "Immortal Beloved" in his letters to throw everyone off the scent.

3.  Emma Bardac's letters emerge from the Bibliothèque National explaining that she was not only lover to Fauré and wife to Debussy, but put them both through certain kinds of intimate therapy that unleashed suppressed emotions in their music.

4. Jenny Lind turns out to have inspired not only Felix Mendelssohn with great passion, but Fanny Mendelssohn as well.

5. Tchaikovsky's remains are disinterred for research into whether he was poisoned. The coffin contains the skeleton of a woman.


...Meanwhile I'm off to Presteigne for a lovely Alicia's Gift concert with piano darling Viv McLean at the Assembly Rooms, tomorrow (2 Nov) at 3pm. Do come along if you're in the area. Info here.

Cassandra takes wing

In today's Independent, my interview with the young choreographer Ludovic Ondiviela and Royal Ballet rising star Olivia Cowley about the new ballet Cassandra, opening tomorrow at the Linbury. I watched a rehearsal and it was shaping up to be fascinating stuff, and pretty harrowing.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/royal-ballet-dancerturnedchoreographer-ludovic-ondiviela-on-making-mental-illness-the-subject-of-his-new-work-9823920.html

Who is your favourite British contemporary composer II?

I've been awake half the night remembering all the composers I didn't include in the poll of 12 British contemporary composers, so this morning I've added a second group featuring another 12. You can vote once IN EACH GROUP and you have until 3 Nov to vote in Group 1 and until 4 Nov to vote in Group II. It could be that a third group will materialise too at this rate. Then we could have a run-off at the end.

YOU SEE WHAT FABULOUS COMPOSERS WE HAVE IN THE UK TODAY?

Meet the Kelemen Quartet - tomorrow!

This is the multiple-award-winning Kelemen Quartet - led by the Hungarian violinist Barnabas Kelemen, with Katalin Kokas (aka Mrs Kelemen) second violin - who are in London this weekend and will be doing a Wigmore Hall coffee concert tomorrow morning at 11.30am. In the afternoon, at 4pm, I'll be at the Amati Exhibition at the Lansdowne Club to interview them all for the audience about life - and love - in a string quartet. Above, they play Tchaikovsky at the Kelemen's festival in Hungary, Kaposfest in Kaposvár.

Do come and join us chez Amati for a stimulating afternoon surrounded by wonderful instruments and lively discussion! More info here.

Pinky

I caught Pinchas Zukerman for a chat when he was in town giving masterclasses at Cadogan Hall not long ago. He is a mesmerising person on stage, holding forth to the audience and students alike with his memories and anecdotes about the great musicians with whom he studied, and the youngsters who were playing to him seemed to be lapping up his every word. The violin's history is aural, in more ways than one: this is how its traditions, secrets and marvels are passed down most effectively. “My teacher, Ivan Galamian, used to say that if it sounds good, you feel good,” Zukerman told us all. “I’d put it the other way too: if it feels good, it’ll sound good.”

He's back in the UK with his NAC Orchestra this week and I have a short piece in today's Indy about what they're doing, where and why...

After the outbreak of World War I, some 30,000 Canadian troops came to the UK and underwent military training on Salisbury Plain. Now a Canadian orchestra is following in their footsteps – at least as far as the town’s cathedral. Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra plays there on 29 October, part of a tour in which they celebrate the links between the two countries. At the helm is their music director Pinchas Zukerman, one of today’s most celebrated violinists and a dab hand, too, with the conductor’s baton.

Zukerman, 66, started out as a child prodigy in his native Israel, where the influential violinist Isaac Stern spotted him and encouraged him to study in New York; he rose to stardom during the 1960s-70s. Today, though, there is still a pugnacious energy about him, an unshakeable determination to forge ahead with big ideas. I catch him after a masterclass at London’s Cadogan Hall and find him still afizz despite a long day’s work.

“Canada feels very passionately about this anniversary,” Zukerman declares. “One of the high points for the orchestra is of course performing at Salisbury Cathedral, and with my connection with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra [he is its principal guest conductor] it also seemed the perfect idea to do a concert with both orchestras together at the Royal Festival Hall.” In that concert on 27 October, the ensembles combine for Beethoven’s Symphony No.9, which concludes with the ‘Ode to Joy’. 

During his 15 years at the NAC – this is his final season – Zukerman has shaken up the orchestra, expanding it to more than 60 players and implementing a pioneering programme of education and outreach work, including experiments in video-conferencing and distance learning. 

“When you are lucky enough to have the kind of education I had and the kind of exposure to the great figures of music, then if you’re capable of it, you have to give back what you received,” he says. “I was fortunate to encounter the greatest musicians, not only as mentors and teachers, but also as players: Isaac Stern, some of the Budapest String Quartet’s members, the list is huge. You absorb information that you can’t really write down. You have to show, you have to play, you have to exhibit yourself, so to speak, to the youngsters – and they eat it up.” 

Nor are his efforts restricted to advanced students. He recalls an occasion when he played the Brahms lullaby to a children’s music class taken by a former pupil of his wife (the NACO’s lead cellist Amanda Forsyth, his third marriage). “Afterwards one little boy said: ‘I’m on fire!’. God, that was fantastic.” 

And he has encouraging words for those struggling to keep music education alive. Teaching effectively and transforming a pupil “takes time, proper teaching and follow-up,” he says. “We need to create coalitions, work together and share information. But we’re not only teaching them to be good players. We’re teaching them to be good people.”

Pinchas Zukerman and the NAC Orchestra perform with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on 27 October at the Royal Festival Hall (0844 875 0073), and at Salisbury Cathedral (01722 320 333) on 29 October

Here they are in a spot of Mozart...

A tribute to Christopher Falzone

The young American pianist Christopher Falzone has died at the age of 29, taking his own life. To say that the long story behind this is tragic is not saying enough - but for the moment, please simply listen to him for a few minutes in tribute. Above, he plays his own transcription of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.3.

I would like to quote a poem by him that appears on another Youtube video in which he improvises a polonaise (the sound quality is not great).

He writes:

"The words that flow are countless,

We are eternally bonded with nature's gifts,

Our own talents give rise

to unexpected conversation,

Forever blending with our blood,

even most softly

The sorrow, the shame

disappear with trust

With laughter we become creators of love

With naivety we live for each other

With admiration we develop patience

And never do we forget who 

we were before, now and tomorrow"

Christopher

Spiralling around Formigine...plus that issue about women conductors again...

At last Ricki and Cosi decided to sit for their official portrait by Lord Thingy.

Cosi on the left, Ricki on the right. As you can imagine, it's not easy to get much work done with these little characters around. They're busy exploring...

Luckily it was last week, not this week, that I went off to Formigine in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy to visit the extraordinary chamber orchestra Spira Mirabilis on its home turf. I listened to them rehearsing for four hours (most UK orchestras wouldn't fancy one minute over three - and this was four hours in the afternoon, following a similar quantity that morning). With that span of intense hard work punctuated only by a brief break for Italian coffee, they covered all of about nine minutes - if that - of Colin Matthews.

Here's my piece about them from yesterday's Independent.

And here is a bonus bit. This is what Lorenza Borrani, leader of both Spira and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, said when I asked her if she'd ever thought about becoming a conductor - because I reckon she has the drive, the personality and the expertise to carry it off, should she so wish.

"It sounds a bit superficial, but the figure of a woman conducting doesn’t drive me. Maybe because I haven’t been amazed by one: I have pictures of great conductors, men, I have never seen one inspirational woman. I'm trying to speak very honestly: you have concerts by Claudio [Abbado], Harnoncourt...but nothing so strong happened to me in my life to make me say 'wow, that’s really so'. When you are young you have inspiration and you think 'Wow, I would like to be like that', and this it didn’t happen. Not that you have to have examples from the same sex as you, but to have the wish, if I want to have inspiration... I felt sometimes, since I direct COE, that they need to know the job because it would make my life easier; I wouldn’t like to stand in front of the orchestra, not being part of the group. And actually conducting studies in school is something every musician should do, and I'm happy that here [at Spira] we do it."

So you see the importance of role models. This is why we need to encourage more women to become conductors, and give opportunities to the ones there are to shine, because otherwise the lack of role models becomes a self-perpetuating situation. As for dumping the maestro altogether, Spira can pull it off - but it takes a great deal of doing.

If you know a young conservatoire musician aged 16-19 who feels she would like the chance simply to give it a go, I can heartily recommend the course at Morley College started last year by Andrea Brown and Alice Farnham. More about it here. 

AND THEY'RE HERE...

PLEASE WELCOME TO JDCMB OUR NEW ASSISTANTS... 

RICKI AND COSI

Ricki and Cosi are Somali cats. A bit like longhaired Abyssinians. I met some Somali cats about 16 years ago and thought they were the most wonderful animals in all the world. Have harboured a secret longing for a Somali of my own ever since.

They are pedigrees, and consequently highish maintenance. (They even have official Pedigree names: they are "Somantikks Siegfried and Isolde"...don't ask...) When Solti "crossed the rainbow bridge" a few months ago, life without him was so dismal that we knew we'd need someone very, very special in his place...and here they are. They are now three months and one week old. The biggest challenge is getting them to keep still for long enough to have their pictures taken.

Cosi is a "usual silver" girl. Ricki is a "chocolate silver" boy. (I had to have a chocolate cat, didn't I?). Top photo: settling in with the help of a stalwart favourite kitty-toy - scrunched-up foil. Bottom: at mummy-cat's home, me with Ricki.

Nobody guessed their names. They could have been Harnoncat and Dudamiaow, or Darius Mihau and Germaine Tailfur, or many other musical permutations. But the best thing we've done all year is go to Bayreuth, so go figure.

Ricki is a small cat with a loud miaow and a very big personality. Cosi is the larger of the two, shyer but very soft and adorable. Their favourite game so far is chasing each other and they are settling in very quickly. 

I'm not sure how I will ever be able to get any work done again. 

A debate about Klinghoffer - the British way

This is the civilised debate that ENO held about The Death of Klinghoffer and the nature of art before Tom Morris's staging opened here two years ago. The run itself was generally well received and passed without incident.

Parterre has provided an audio streaming of the opera from its world premiere in 1991 and a link to the libretto, so it is perfectly possible to make yourself well informed about the reality of its content if you so wish. http://parterre.com/2014/10/20/hearing-klinghoffer/

Update, 9.40pm: here is my article on Klinghoffer from The Independent in 2012
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/fear-and-loathing-in-london-the-death-of-klinghoffer-is-staged-in-the-capital-for-the-first-time-6671388.html?origin=internalSearch

Ten things we should change at gigs

[Warning: you need your Sarcasm radar in working order for this one.]

We've been hearing an awful lot from people desperate to change classical concerts into...well, rock gigs. Places where there are big screens, drinks on tap, you stand all the way through and so forth. Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead is prime, and even the conductor Baldur Brönnimann suggests that tweeting and texting should be OK (believe me, it is bloody distracting if someone next to you is busy tapping on a bright screen while you're trying to listen to The Art of Fugue).

So why don't we hear anything about what's wrong with pop, rock and crossover gigs? In my experience they are intimidating, confusing, cliquey, frustrating things. How could these be changed into pleasanter experiences, more accessible to the over-16s, a demographic that is seriously underrepresented at such events? We have to widen the scope of this audience to make it more inclusive, especially for the fastest-growing part of the population: older people.

1. Have more seating, raked, available for those of us who are vertically challenged and who therefore, in a mosh pit surrounded by tall people, can't see a damn thing. It's nice to get the weight off your toes from time to time, too and it's also nice not to have to worry, in a crowd, about being squished.

2. Hold performances in smaller venues, rather than a stadium or arena, so that we don't have to see the performers only on the big screen or at the size of a pin in the far distance. If you're only experiencing visual and aural amplification, you're not really experiencing the music, are you? It's always a distortion.

3. Why so loud? Why, why, why, why, why? I'd like nothing better than to go and hear some of the more interesting singers live, like Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen or Madonna. But I value my hearing and I just don't see why you have to risk damaging yourself.

4. Address the offputting atmospheres of the venues. Stadiums and arenas are soulless places. The O2, for instance, is like visiting a run-down 1960s swimming pool within an airport, even though it was only built for the millennium. Brighten them up. Give them a little bit of character. Still, the smaller and better ones can also be very intimidating to those of us who are not already intimately connected to this area of culture. All that cool steel, all those trendy young people - how are we supposed to know when to go in, when to applaud, what to wear?

5. Have better food available and don't let people bring it in. Preponderance of burgers, chips, burritos and pizza does little for the odours around you, let alone the slurping noises. And if you have to let people take drinks in, make sure they don't get actually drunk and try to encourage ways that they can be prevented from spilling the lager all over other audience members. Speaking of which, please improve ventilation of indoor venues. Crowds can really smell.

6. At outdoor venues like festivals, some shelter could be a nice idea, and mud should be kept at bay with boardwalks or paving.

7. Tickets for the big names are MUCH too expensive. It's elitist!

8. Don't even get me started on ladies' loos, which seem totally inaccessible with queues of 2km, or might be dominated by dodgy plumbing, and you'll probably find notices telling you not to even think about taking drugs in there - and therefore you suspect you might be observed by CCTV while you're on the bog. (My favourite events, loo-wise, are Wagner operas: the lines are always longer at the men's room.)

9. Let the performers be good. Singers need to be able to hold forth unaided by that pitch-autocorrect trick. Ideally, they should be able to sing without a microphone, should they wish to, and a range of expression in the voice is always a good thing, rather than simply yelling or, in the case of certain "crossover" easy-listening jobs, bleating out a croon, and if they're doing songs everyone knows, with a backing band, they should know when to come in. Needless to say, miming to a recording makes a mockery of the entire exercise.

10. Make sure the transport is working. I was once trying to get back from Richmond on the night of a Beyoncé concert at Twickenham. It was a Sunday. South West Trains was down. The District Line was down. The Overground wasn't working for some reason. It was chaos. Luckily I could walk home, but thousands couldn't, and you didn't want to see the bus queues, let alone wait in one.

In all, why not... just make pop events more like classical concerts? Then we can appreciate the music itself a bit more - rather than only the commercial claptrap around it. Anyway, mwahahaha, that is the music I like so I want everything, but everything, to function exactly the way it does, and I can't possibly accept the idea that anyone else might prefer something else...

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

To cheer us all up, here is the Muppets' take on The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Warning: you'll need a sense of humour for what follows, so if you don't have one, please surf away now.

Meet Jonathan Kent

I interviewed the director Jonathan Kent for The Independent, trailing the opening tonight of his celebrated production of The Turn of the Screw at Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Do catch it if you can. Interview is in today's Radar section, but somewhat chopped, so here's the director's cut.



Search online for “Jonathan Kent” and you might discover he is the adoptive father of Superman. As it happens, the real Jonathan Kent, 68, the versatile theatre director, has nurtured many super stagings across an eclectic variety of styles and genres. I catch him during a break from rehearsals for his new Gypsy at Chichester Festival Theatre, starring Imelda Staunton; simultaneously, Glyndebourne is reviving for its autumn tour his production of Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw. 

A former actor himself, born in South Africa and resident in Britain since the late 1960s, Kent was joint director of the Almeida Theatre with Ian McDiarmid between 1990 and 2002; but since testing his operatic wings at Santa Fe in 2003, he has soared in this field. 

Kent describes himself as “a theatre director who does opera”, rather than a specialist. “I was occasionally asked to direct an opera while I was running the Almeida,” he says, “but opera books you three or four years ahead and it was always impossible because theatre operates on a much shorter timescale. One of the glories of being freelance is that I can now take on more opera and I’ve had a very happy and fulfilling time.”

He insists that working with singers is not so different from working with actors: “It’s rather a canard to think that singers don’t want to act,” he says. “They absolutely do – they are interested in the psychology of their roles – and they want to be recognised for it, especially now that so much is being filmed.” 

Psychology is more than central to The Turn of the Screw. Britten’s opera is based on Henry James’s novella in which a governess tries to save two children from what she suspects are malevolent spirits bent on their destruction. “It’s about the nature of being haunted” says Kent, “and the exploration of what evil is – whether there is such a thing, and how we generate our own evil.” 

This production, first created for Glyndebourne On Tour in 2006, has travelled well – it been taken up by Los Angeles Opera, among others – and Kent says he is “thrilled” by its longevity. It makes use of contemporary devices such as filmed projections, while nevertheless placing the action firmly in the 1950s, in which era Britten composed it; the mix gives it a timeless feel. “That was a decade when social hierarchies were in place, however shakily – governesses and housekeepers ‘knew their place’ and also had credibility,” says Kent, “but it also marked the end of a sort of age of innocence.” The two ghosts sing a terrifying line from WB Yeats: “The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” 

“The opera is different from the novella because the ghosts inevitably are corporeal: they sing, they exist and there’s no question about it,” Kent continues. “The ‘thin skin’ of a window separates reality from imagination and keeps feared things at bay, but of course it’s completely translucent and permeable.” 

The projections, which Kent says he wanted to resemble the wobbly old home movies he remembers from his childhood, were mostly filmed at Glyndebourne itself, apparently more out of necessity than design. “Still,” he adds, “one could almost do a production of this opera that travels around Glyndebourne as an installation. It has a lake, an old house – everything is there.” 

Unlike certain other directors, Kent’s stagings do not have recurrent hallmarks; he brings each an individual approach on its own terms. For Glyndebourne he has created visions as distinctive as what he terms “a firework” of celebration in Purcell’s The Fairie Queen for the composer’s 350^th anniversary in 2009, last year’s venture into Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie, and a powerful Don Giovanni in the style of Fellini’s La dolce vita.

At the Royal Opera he has tackled Puccini: his Tosca is a detailed period-piece that has been filmed with the all-star cast of Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel. But earlier this year, his Manon Lescaut – again with Kaufmann, singing opposite the Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais – transferred the action squarely to the present, drawing out the squalid nature of its tragedy. Perhaps inevitably, some critics took against it. 

“Tosca demanded to be done in period,” Kent says. “There’s so much historical reference; it’s absolutely specific. But Manon Lescaut explores many of our current preoccupations – the exploitation of women, the cult of celebrity and the collateral damage of all that – so I am unrepentant about not having done that opera in powdered wigs.” 

Does he ever feel that critics just don’t get it? “If one’s waiting for critics to ‘get it’, one could be waiting a long time,” he laughs. “You can only do what you do and hope people will like it.”

The Turn of the Screw launches at Glyndebourne on Saturday 18 October before touring to five venues across the country. To book tickets go to: Glyndebourne.com  

Ulster Orchestra under threat - the latest

UPDATE, SUNDAY 19 October: A petition has been organised online and you can sign it here. 

The Belfast-based Ulster Orchestra has become the latest UK ensemble to face closure due to financial dire straits. Its public funding cuts amount to a reduction of 28 per cent (about £1m), which threaten to bleed it to death by the middle of next month.



This orchestra has a long and distinguished history; since its founding in 1966 it has released around 100 recordings and a new principal conductor, the dynamic Rafael Payare (aka Mr Alisa Weilerstein) has just started with them. There's a Facebook group, Save the Ulster Orchestra - please join it here.

The UK has already lost the Guildford Philharmonic and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta; last year the Brighton Philharmonic was saved at the last moment with the help of its fans. As you'll note, these organisations serve(d) good-sized towns rather than the country's biggest cities and brought live orchestral music to places where it was otherwise in short supply. The London Mozart Players, based in Croydon, has managed to restructure itself rather than close down, and carries on with a new modus operandi. Not all have been able to follow suit.

But the end of the Ulster - which receives a chunk of BBC money every year, btw - would be catastrophic since it would mean essentially the end of live orchestral music in Northern Ireland. It is the city's biggest arts institution and only full-time professional orchestra. As Tom Service says here, its demise would mean the "instant and irreversible" annihilation of orchestral culture in the country.

Musicians on the Facebook page point out, furthermore, that if it goes it will take with it large quantities of Belfast's instrumental tuition for children, concerts in schools and other school music programmes.

The pianist Peter Donohoe writes:

"The...increasing financial pressure on the arts is in danger of ridding many communities of institutions like this without any possibility of them being started up again, whatever state the economy ends up in. Look at what happened to the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, and observe how many small communities that were served by that excellent chamber orchestra - including the mounting of education projects - and that are now not served at all.It is short-termist thinking on a vast scale, stupid to the point of lunacy, and not only will it put so many great musicians out of a job, but will be a tragedy for Northern Ireland."

Another musician on the Facebook page declares:

"There are so many of us from Belfast and Northern Ireland who through the darkest days of the troubles were inspired by the Ulster Orchestra.We were taught and encouraged by its members and my career is a result of that. This orchestra is a beacon in the cultural life of Northern Ireland and needs to be cherished by all the community."

And brass player Andrew Tovey adds that the closure of the UO would make Northern Ireland "the only developed nation without an orchestra".

In this piece from the US's WQXR, Oliver Condy, editor of BBC Music Magazine, reminisces about the way the Ulster Orchestra played on through the Troubles even though its offices were threatened daily with terrorist bombs.

More info from BBC News here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-29637894

You can make a donation to the orchestra here, via Paypal. Please do.

A statement from the orchestra is expected towards the end of the week ahead.

DG SIGNS PIANO GOD

It's official: Grigory Sokolov has signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. For those of us who've known for donkey's years that this man is basically piano god and heir to Richter and Gilels, saying that this is seriously good news is kind of an understatement.

The first disc (and we hope not the last) is due out in January and will be a live recital from the 2008 Salzburg Festival. Sokolov doesn't do studios. Or concertos. Or the UK.

Here's a teeny taster so you can see what we all mean. This is the Bach-Siloti Prelude in B minor. The first time I heard Sokolov, in London at the Wigmore Hall many years ago (those were the days!), he performed this as an encore. It was heaven.

The secrets of the great Domingo

In case you missed this wonderful web stream from the Royal Opera House yesterday, watch it here now. Tony Pappano interviews Plácido Domingo about his extraordinary career, singing baritone instead of tenor, and much, much more.

Sober thank-yous...

Huge thanks to the friends and colleagues who have given generously to Macmillan Cancer Support via Go Sober for October, whether via my personal page or Team JDCMB! So far we have clocked up £211.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! to
Clare Stevens
Stephen Llewellyn
Brendan Carroll

Please keep on donating to this wonderful and very necessary charity - and if you have a website you'd like me to put in next week's acknowledgements, please send it to me when you make your donation and 'twill be done.

Or if you fancy joining the team, please do so whenever you like. You have to sign up first as an individual and then you can add yourself to our collective link. http://www.gosober.org.uk

Donate via my page
Donate to Team JDCMB