How do you react when you see someone playing the violin, guitar or saxophone in a tube station? Pause to listen, take a photo and then leave a few coins? Or perhaps (more likely), hurry off to catch your train, with your attention focused on your i-Pad? As journalist Gary Moskowitz has pointed out on […]
St. James’s Church in Piccadilly (designed by Sir Christopher Wren and opened in 1684) offers an extensive music programme: Lunchtime concerts three days a week and “an array of evening concerts”. On 10th April at 7pm, the Maria Camahort Quintet performed there to an appreciative audience of more than 100. Laura Rahi (Soprano) is from […]
Most readers may not be aware of this – but in May 2012, “Mr Punch” celebrated his 350th birthday. Despite all the many noteworthy events in Britain during the year (the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics / Paralympics & Andy Murray’s tennis gold medal at Wimbledon being the most prominent) this apparently obscure anniversary received […]
At the moment, if you go into a bar, pub or restaurant almost anywhere in the UK which claims to provide “live music”, what do you get? In many cases, you’ll probably find a single vocalist playing the guitar accompanied by pre-recorded backing tracks. There are practical, financial reasons for this: A single performer takes […]
Musicians, Billy Joel (the American pianist, singer-song-writer & classical composer) once observed, “ Know what it’s like to be outside the norm – walking the high wire without a safety-net”. His compatriot, the jazz drummer and bandleader Chico Hamilton, takes a similar view: “A lot of musicians aren’t proud: They’ll do other work , just […]
On 16th September 1973,Victor Jara – poet, singer / songwriter, theatre director and supporter of the democratically-elected President, Salvador Allende – was killed by the military regime which had taken over Chile in a coup just five days previously.In May 2009, an ex-Army conscript was charged with Jara’s murder and the senior officer who fired […]
Back in 1985, Gloria Estefan and her group Miami Sound Machine released a single called “Conga”. US music industry ‘experts’ dismissed it as “Too Latin for the Americans , too American for the Latins” and its prospects of becoming a hit as remote. They were wrong on all counts. It got to No.10 in the […]