Inspired by today's BBC Sport Prom, which explored parallels between music and sport, I thought I'd share this poem I wrote several years ago after my first couple of visits to the Proms. At the Proms We remember not to hum along. Wide-eyed, ears pricked, we clasp each other’s hands to stifle rogue conducting, dampen …
Category: music
Meanwhile, back in defence
Friday evening. Fifty or so people gather in a corporate art venue, the Bloomberg Space, for Errors Hit Orient. Nick and I are here because I saw a tweet from Studio Voltaire about the event, mentioning B.S. Johnson. We're not quite sure what to expect. The idea sounds a bit mad, but definitely unmissable. Someone …
Curlew River
Thursday 14th November. A cold clear night. A three quarters full moon rising above the city of London. We cross from the brutalist Barbican Centre along a raised concrete walkway, down some steps and join the short queue waiting outside St Giles Cripplegate. We're here for Benjamin Britten's chamber opera Curlew River - A Parable for …
encores galore
I'm listening to a blistering performance of Glazunov's Piano Concerto No.2 live on the radio from the BBC Proms, performed by Daniil Trifonov and the London Symphony Orchestra. As the piece finishes, there's sustained and rapturous applause until the audience is rewarded with a thrilling encore. For the last five or so years the BBC …
An Aldeburgh Diary
Friday 7th June For some time , I've wanted to visit Aldeburgh and see the places where Benjamin Britten lived and worked, to wander along the beach and immerse myself in the landscape that inspired him. This weekend, at last, we're going, coinciding with the opening of the 66th Aldeburgh Music Festival, which was originally …
lisson up
Straight from work yesterday evening to the Lisson Gallery for two exhibition previews. Canadian artist Rodney Graham has new and recent work on show at 29 Bell Street. Striking photographic tableaux are mounted in large lightboxes, the colours rich and intense, the images hyperreal. And also very witty. A scientist in his lab stares pensively …
see hear
Yesterday evening we strolled along to the opening of Change of Signature, billed as a multimedia installation, at Testbed 1, a local exhibition space that I hadn't come across before. And it proved to be a fascinating show. The venue is a large, stripped out industrial space: uneven concrete floors, distressed iron girders, ceramic tiled …
three nights out on the trot
Another busy week on the cultural front, beginning on Monday evening at the Southbank Centre's Purcell Room for Morton Feldman's For John Cage. The piece, for piano and violin, lasts about an hour and twenty minutes, requiring the intense concentration of both musicians and audience. Slow, often deathly quiet, the music creeps up on you, …
from cacti to fishermen
In the last week-and-a-bit we've been to three very different Proms concerts. On Friday 17th August, the Royal Albert Hall was packed out for a Prom celebrating the work of John Cage and marking the centenary of his birth. Many of the pieces were visually as well as aurally fascinating, with singers and instrumentalists dotted …
evening buzz
A fine evening on Friday. Balmy would be overstating it, but spring was in the air, it hadn't rained for over a day, and it was light well beyond eight thirty. Near perfect conditions for the private view of the open studio exhibition at Johnsons Island. Brentford Is Brilliant, banners on the streetlights proclaimed, with …
Hilaire 