The term Metaphysics first appeared in the 1560s meaning "branch of speculation which deals with the first causes of things". It was derived from the Greek title of the 13 treatises which traditionally were arranged after those on physics and natural sciences in Aristo...

How can a goat play a violin or a cello wear a tie? Surely you have never seen a green horse? Or a pair of lovers flying through the air? And yet perhaps you have seen lovers fly, at least figuratively. That is what the Russian Jewish artist, Marc Chagall seems to have...

In September of this year, the minimalist composer Terry Riley, now aged 81, performed his legendary composition of 1964, 'In C' at London's Barbican Centre. 'In C' can be performed by any number of musicians playing any sort of instrument or even singing. In this case...

Listen to the story told by the reed,

of being separated.

"Since I was cut from the reedbed,

I have made this crying sound.”

Jalalu'ddin Muhammad Rumi, the Islamic jurist, scholar, mystic, poet and founder (through his son) of the Mevleviyya order of Dervishes, the so-call...

Here, in advance of our concert at the end of the month called 'Bach to Blues: Jazz Meets the Classics' is an imaginary encounter between the great jazz pianist Bill Evans and the great Classical composer and pianist Frederic Chopin who lived more than a century earlie...

Myth, Music and Landscape in Scandinavia

Photo by Louise Turner 

I have been thinking about the connections between music, language, myth and landscape while preparing our concert of Scandinavian music and writing on the 14th May (See Events). And I've discovered that Sc...

We thought of this cello and spoken word reflection on creation and creativity almost as three interlocking sets, a sort of Venn diagram.

First there was the big question - as addressed by Genesis and Big Bang Theory and creation mythsof other cultures, of why anything...

A New Genre?

We are in the process of creating a new genre, part concert, part theatre. The best way I can describe it to myself is as a collage that uses words and music to elucidate the strange interior life of the diarist and novelist Anias Nin. We played a concert o...

The Romantics

In 1854, the same year that the 44 year old Schumann attempted suicide and landed himself in the Endenich mental asylum, Heinrich Heine, the German poet , journalist and essayist completed his Confessions. Here he wrote:

Notwithstanding the war of extermina...

I first heard of Nadia Boulanger (1897-1979), the great French teacher of composition, from Peggie Sampson, who taught me the cello when I was growing up in Winnipeg, Canada. Peggie had studied with Boulanger in Paris and mentioned her name with a great deal of reveren...