It is a truth universally acknowledged – well, by this writer anyway – that a pretty major part of any researcher’s job is to keep reminding people what we already know. I’m not just talking about a straightforward educational model of making sure that the people being born at the
You know how there are some topics which make people feel sort of uncomfortable and embarrassed just by their being raised, let alone if they are in any way related to us individually? One of them (don’t worry, this is not about to turn into a post on weird social
Here’s a question. Some of you might be able to answer it from direct personal experience; for others, it’s a hypothetical. But in all cases, it’s interesting. (Well, I think it is, anyway.) Imagine you love a particular academic subject. Maybe it’s music; maybe it’s physics, or history, or French,
One of my deadlines to meet this past week has been the completion of a lengthy essay – more like a book chapter, actually – for this summer’s Salzburg Festival. Between 15 and 22 August, Teodor Currentzis and musicAeterna (of the Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre in Perm) will give
If you are a keen musician, and you want to give a concert at the glorious Foundling Museum, where I am fortunate enough to be Public Events Programmer, you are required to fill in a form that I designed not long after starting the job. It’s not particularly complicated. You
OK, I’ll admit, it would have been a much weirder film if Disney had decided to animate a tiny ocean-dwelling Beethoven who had to be rescued from a dentist’s fish tank. (Although possibly I should copyright this idea in case there are any avant-garde film makers reading it.) But yes:
You may have noticed, on Thursday of this week, that the Google doodle celebrated the 117th birthday of one Ladislao José Biro – the man who brought us a writing implement so strong, durable and quick-drying that it has stood the test of time and even proved invaluable during the
This weekend, I’m at the Royal Musical Association’s Annual Conference, which is taking place in the smart surroundings of Milton Court, part of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It’s always a very rich event – since it’s not a specialist conference (one of the few such general gatherings
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to August. The sun is shining, the air is thick with the scents of cut grass and barbecues, and after a thoroughly enjoyable but rather busy July, I am on holiday. Or, if you want to make it sound more official in out of office messages,
Well, here we are on the cusp of the new year… the turkey is dispatched, Santa’s gone home for a very long and much-deserved lie-in, and through an entirely random process of clicking on things, I have discovered an amazing album of Menuhin and Grappelli playing duets (look it up
