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 became abstract, it...

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 piano version of the...

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 once. But perhaps...