Category Archives: Musings

Manifestos and the Future(s) of Music

As a brief in­tro­duc­tion: Ken Nielsen of the Australian group Pinchgut Opera wrote a ‘mani­festo for the fu­ture of clas­sical music’ as Greg Sandow  —  who posted it to his blog  —  de­scribes it, Tim Rutherford-Johnson has added his two cents here and below are mine. Perhaps my European per­spective on Nielsen’s Antipodean angle has caused some mis­un­der­stand­ings, in […]

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Curios in Metz

In the last week I made a couple of trips from Luxembourg to Metz to hear some of the con­certs at this year’s Centre Acanthes and check out the newly opened Centre Pompidou-Metz. Metz is clearly in a period of flux, re­ju­ven­ating it­self with art, cul­ture and ar­chi­tec­ture, which in all hon­esty out­shine any of […]

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LSO/Eötvös: Bach, Lachenmann & Brahms

It is fairly rare to come across a pro­gramme that forms a clear, co­herent unit without re­sorting to gim­micky themes or tenuous as­so­ci­ations. So it was pleasing to hear the un­ob­trusive logic that bound to­gether the LSO’s Sunday-evening pro­gramme at Barbican Hall of Bach (arr. Webern), Lachenmann and Brahms.

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Weekly Roundup

The Quatuor Danel were back in Manchester last week with two com­posers, Henry Fourès and Catherine Seba, in tow. Their two con­certs in­cluded Bruno Mantovani’s piano quintet, Blue girl with red wagon (with Richard Whalley on piano), Seba’s string quartet with tape, Quivering, Fourès playing Luc Ferrari’s À la recherche du rhythme perdu, for solo […]

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Getting it Right?

Notes on notes in London I was in London on Tuesday last week to at­tend Getting It Right? Performance prac­tices in con­tem­porary music, a day of talks and dis­cus­sions on per­form­ance, com­pos­i­tion and all the ways the two in­teract at LSO St Luke’s. Organised by Julian Anderson and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the […]

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  • Microbiography

    Chris Swithinbank is a British-Dutch com­poser who works with both acoustic in­stru­ments and elec­tronic sounds. He is cur­rently a stu­dent at Harvard University with Chaya Czernowin.
    Full Biography »

  • Hear