About a year ago, news reports circulated about a change of arrangements at Westminster Cathedral Choir School. The choristers, who are boarders, were in future going to be sent home on Friday afternoon, returning on Sunday morning to sing Mass. This caused something of a furore, as this measure would seem to limit membership of the Choir to boys from families within striking distance of London. Many people felt that this woul...

This is the current A-level Music class at Coombe Girls’ School (which has a mixed-gender sixth form.) Five people sitting the exam in any school is good going, but such numbers seem to be the norm at CGS, which I’ve visited for several years around this time, to discuss A-level work. Rather than ‘free composition’, the school teaches the ‘set brief’ option. Sometimes I hear this referred to as ‘pastiche’, which I believe is t...

When I arrived in Oxford to deliver New College School’s annual ‘Holloway Lecture’, headmaster Matthew Jenkinson mysteriously led me out of the School and some way up Mansfield Road towards the University Science departments, eventually entering the Inorganic Chemistry Lab (pictured). This turned out to be where I was to deliver my talk on the theme of Noise – beneath a giant board displaying the Periodic Table (I think.)

Despi...

‘The Wigmore’ was busy for this BBC lunchtime recital by Ruby Hughes, Natalie Clein and Julius Drake, which included my recent commission On the Palmy Beach, and some other unusual rep. A daringly sparse voice-cello duo by John Tavener, Akhmatova Songs, particularly took my ear.

I left the Hall determined not to take such BBC institutions as this regular Monday live broadcast for granted. At the Wigmore, all tickets were minima...

The Royal College of Organists kindly invited me along to their annual Conferment of Diplomas ceremony at Southwark Cathedral. Their highest qualifications, the ARCO and FRCO, are widely regarded as the most testing of all music exams. As well as being asked, obviously, for top-notch performance of tricky organ repertoire, candidates have to manage keyboard skills (multiple limbs required) as well as written papers, fugues etc...

My fantastic colleague Andrew Toovey alerted me to a composition project he has been doing this term with a group of young composers from three state secondary schools in west London. Andrew is unusual, probably unique, in my acquaintance of major British composers, in that he (happily, I think) spent 25 years as a fulltime music teacher in London comprehensive schools, before joining the staff of Royal Birmingham Conservatoir...

It’s something of a cliché to me and my composer colleagues that the second performance of a new work is more important than the first, and unkind people may sometimes refer to your world première as the ‘world dernière’. I will admit that it’s a good moment when a new group of performers declare that they’re going to pick up one of your most recent compositions. So, thank you to Glasgow’s RCS Voices, the Broen Ensemble and co...

There can’t be any more virtuous musical organisation than the NYO, and with the invention of NYO Inspire, they’ve outdone even themselves in creating their own accessible training orchestra. The Inspire courses are free, and all those who join come from state schools, or are home-schooled. The players generally don’t have to pass an audition but are often recommended by their local music hub. Inspire groups meet during the Fe...

Minerva Festival is organised annually by Cambridge students, and ‘celebrates the music of women and non-binary people’. It’s therefore a different enterprise (but with many similar aims) from Frances Lynch’s Minerva Scientifica, about which I’ve often posted in this blog. I guess, if you are the Roman Goddess of Wisdom, people are often going to borrow your name.

I visited Cambridge to be a panel member for this year’s composi...

With a spare evening in Düsseldorf, Hänsel und Gretel seemed our best bet. Purchasing very reasonably priced stalls seats, we made our way through the busy but spacious foyers of the opera house. It’s originally from the nineteenth century, but then rebuilt in the 1950s, a comfortable combination. A great many small schoolchildren were waiting to see the opera, led by parents and energetic teachers (even on a Saturday evening!...