ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Good Night, and Good Luck: Live from Broadway, Becoming Victoria Wood, Hamnet, and Song Sung Blue
Latest editorial
Marxist notes on music: January 22, 2023
Time to celebrate Gustav Holst, an innovator who helped bring brass band instruments into the orchestra and wrote for working-class musicians
LIFE IN PICTURES: (L to R) Gustav Holst, left, and Ralph Vaughan Williams walking in the Malvern Hills, September 1921; The house in Barnes where Holst lived between 1908 and 1913; Holst caricatured by F Sancha as ‘The Bringer of Jollity’ c1921
[(L to R) William Gillies Whittaker/CC - Peter Trimming/CC - Public domain]
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Filipino-US saxophonist JON IRABAGON about the threat of AI in the time of Musk and Trump, and how an artist can respond
PETE HIRST introduces a theatre company from Wakefield dedicated to the propagation of socialist perspectives on present British political realities
JENNY FARRELL reminds us that the US novelist, famed for pulp fiction and nature stories, was, by virtue of life experience, a committed revolutionary socialist
BRENT CUTLER recommends a sober examination of the real risks and true merits of nuclear energy, and an exposure of the capitalist system as an obstacle to human betterment
GUSTAV HOLST is a composer who is one of the most obvious demonstrations of a composer known almost entirely for one work — The Planets Suite. Written 1914-17, the composition is a tour-de-force, which sadly is often overlooked because of the likes of Classic FM and others focusing purely on the barn-stomping movement Mars and Jupiter.
On September 21 we will celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth and for me a high point as he has had a wonderful influence on me throughout my life, particularly when I reflect on what it means to be an English composer.
I got my foundational musical education through brass banding. It was also colliery bands where I learnt a lot of my politics too — chatting to the old boys about their experiences during the ’84-85 strike and other union struggles.
Similar stories
The bard heralds the festive summer
STEVE JOHNSON, CHRIS SEARLE and TONY BURKE review new releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
SIMON DUFF reviews a new composition by German composer and pianist Florian Weber that blurs the line between where improvisation ends and composition begins
In advance of their performances in London BEN LUNN speaks to PETER PAUL KAINRATH, artistic director of Klangforum Wien