I met someone the other day who said they couldn’t stand “new” music. I was about to launch into my own rationale—that all music was new once upon a time—when she said, “It’s the patterns that I connect to.” That, I could understand. She explained that she thrived on very loud, heavy music because that familiar, crashing, pounding soundscape gave her a total respite from thinking. When sound becomes music, humans seem to need to feel the pattern behind it. When art first beca

On 14 Jun 2026 Duncan Honeybourne performed Vally Lasker’s piano arrangement of Ralph Vaughn Williams London Symphony at South Somerset Music Centre, The Methodist School Room, South St, Crewkerne TA18 8DB. Duncan Honeybourne concentrates on 20th and 21st-century British and Irish piano music. He is widely regarded as a leading "champion" and advocate for this repertoire, frequently performing and recording works that are neglected or forgotten. This performance of the pia

Would Mozart have played the blues? Could Wagner have been a Metalhead? If music is a jigsaw, then very few of us, if any, ever get the whole picture. For many of us, the image is full of black holes. Music is beloved by so many, but rarely does a mind come along that can encompass anything like its entirety. It isn’t all music that is beloved. I doubt there is anyone who adores Death Metal, Puccini, Webern, Gilbert and Sullivan, Reggae, Adele, and the songs from Glee all at

In the dazzling, café-filled artistic world of fin-de-siècle Paris, composers, painters, poets, and performers constantly crossed paths. Among them stood Erik Satie and Gabriel Grovlez — two distinctive musical personalities. But did they ever meet? Did they share conversation, collaboration, or even a few fleeting artistic “moments” of their own? Thinking first about the far better-known figure, Erik Satie, there is a tendency to highlight the eccentricity of certain individ

In the 1960s and 70s we had the advent of a flood of interest in Medieval and Renaissance music, summed up by the term “early” music. David Munrow was a star in that firmament. All manner of groups were purchasing their sackbutts, shawms, rebecs, rackets, gemshorns, serpents, theorbos, harps, lutes and viols of all sorts. Music colleges were running courses, and there were early music festivals galore. The backbone of this was the musicologists’ ardent work digging out ancien

This essay respects my musical upbringing and celebrates the human voice. In the words of great William Byrd: ”Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing”. (Hopefully that can be interpreted to include everyone!) There is no doubt that contemporary styles of vocal production sound quite different to the voices of early twentieth century. Despite her global superstardom and the sparkling beauty of her voice, smidgens of the higher realms of Dame Nelli