A Happy New Year to my website readers, and my thanks as ever for your visit here. Appropriately (and amazingly to me) this happens to be the 600th post I've put up on my site since it was set up in 2014. I'm posting somewhat less frequently these days, but I'll continue to signpost interesting events coming up, and report on unusual visits here and there.   In the next few months, the orchestral headline in my diary ( March 13th, Barbican ) is a performance of The Welcome Ar

I received this magnificent bouquet at yesterday's AGM of the Royal Society of Musicians , stepping down after ten years as the Society's President. It really has been a pleasure to fulfil this largely ceremonial post, but also a great honour. RSM was founded in 1738 by George Frideric Handel and colleagues in response to cases of poverty resulting from ill health amongst fellow musicians. Generations of musicians have taken up the baton, and the Society is now particularly w

December is here, and having in the past written a few brief Christmas-adjacent choral numbers, I've been getting news of numerous carol concerts happening everywhere. The repertoire is often surprisingly imaginative, and it delights me yearly that choirs of all kinds are still up for this - and their audiences too.   A handful that I'll be going to around London illustrate the considerable range of this seasonal "artform". On Thursday 11th December in Conway Hall, Electric