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Ben Lunn
Lunn
Marxist Notes on Music / 19 November 2024
19 November 2024
BEN LUNN draws attention to the way cultural expressions of solidarity with Palestinians in the UK are being censored by Israeli-sponsored lawfare
femicide
Festival Review / 17 July 2024
17 July 2024
BEN LUNN reports from a new music festival in New York, and singles out a breathtaking composition that protests directly against femicide in Mexico
Lunn nono
Marxist Notes on Music / 28 May 2024
28 May 2024
The centenary of his birth is a chance to assess the remarkable combination of Marxism, activism and modernism in the works of Luigi Nono
assisted dying
Features / 15 April 2024
15 April 2024
As the debate around voluntary euthanasia returns, we now have some seriously disturbing evidence from those places where it has become recently legalised to convince us that Britain is not ready, argues BEN LUNN
opera
Marxist Notes on Music / 21 March 2024
21 March 2024
BEN LUNN argues that opera has long been an arena of radical ideas and music and shouldn't be an art form lost to the wealthy
dellpiccola
Marxist Notes on Music / 8 February 2024
8 February 2024
BEN LUNN remembers the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola, whose embrace of serialism and the 12-tone scale coincided with his rejection with fascism
Music Review / 29 January 2024
29 January 2024
BEN LUNN reviews an afternoon with the champion of Scotland’s composers
holst+
Culture / 22 January 2024
22 January 2024
Time to celebrate Gustav Holst, an innovator who helped bring brass band instruments into the orchestra and wrote for working-class musicians
Lunn
Culture / 20 December 2023
20 December 2023
BEN LUNN singles out the remarkable swansong of Kaija Saariaho, and James Weeks’ monumental feat of social organisation
Arts building
Features / 6 October 2023
6 October 2023
A properly funded arts strategy is needed to create the infrastructure for creative industry to grow, argues BEN LUNN
cartoon
MARXIST NOTES ON MUSIC with BEN LUNN / 19 September 2023
19 September 2023
In today’s Britain musicians, like cicadas, lesser spotted woodpeckers or hedgehogs, are rapidly becoming an endangered species
bush wma
Culture / 8 August 2023
8 August 2023
BEN LUNN celebrates the ongoing mission of the WMA Summer School to make music-making accessible to working-class people
Lunn
Culture / 18 July 2023
18 July 2023
BEN LUNN urges artists to express solidarity when threatened by cancel culture
marxist notes
Marxist Notes on Music / 23 May 2023
23 May 2023
BEN LUNN draws attention to the desperate straits into which classical music is being pushed by a hack-and-slash government that cares nothing for the culture of the working class
Ben Lunn
Culture / 17 April 2023
17 April 2023
BEN LUNN pleads for a more visionary agenda than simply resisting cuts
music
Music / 14 March 2023
14 March 2023
BEN LUNN decodes the misleading rhetoric by which the BBC masks a philistine Tory agenda in the arts
pix
Music / 14 February 2023
14 February 2023
BEN LUNN celebrates the beautiful and subversive music of Eddie McGuire
Byrd
Ben Lunn: Marxist Notes on Music / 31 January 2023
31 January 2023
On the revolutionary value of personal integrity in an English composer of the late Renaissance
dance
Culture / 2 January 2023
2 January 2023
Tone-deaf budget embarrasses and insults in equal measure
x3
Music / 13 November 2022
13 November 2022
New releases from Alex Paxton, Spaces Unfolding and Mihailo Trandafilovski
oto
Ben Lunn's Marxist Notes on Music / 7 November 2022
7 November 2022
The Tory slash-and-burn approach to the arts poses deathly threat to some of the most revered institutions in this country
band
Culture / 21 September 2022
21 September 2022
Musings on the role of music at the royal funeral and how a democratisation of this art form should have our highest concern as the nations' cultural landscapes depend on it
WMA main
Culture / 25 August 2022
25 August 2022
The edifying spirit of the Workers’ Music Association (WMA) Summer School remains intact as it returns after the pandemic
3
Music / 8 August 2022
8 August 2022
New releases from Bryn Harrison, Matthew Whiteside and Sylvia Lim
Lunn
Ben Lunn's Marxist Notes on Music / 2 July 2022
2 July 2022
Marxist Notes on Music / 20 April 2022
20 April 2022
BEN LUNN pays tribute to Accrington-born giant Harrison Birtwhistle – but wonders if working-class kids today have the opportunity to explore music that he did
quartet
Marxist Notes on Music / 10 March 2022
10 March 2022
We cannot allow culture be used to widen the divide, to transform Russians into non-European savages, while painting all Ukrainians blindly as heroic martyred defenders of Europe, writes BEN LUNN
brass
Ben Lunn: Marxist Notes on Music / 15 February 2022
15 February 2022
The Musicians Union picks its next general secretary
Features / 25 January 2022
25 January 2022
Activist BEN LUNN looks at the three contenders to lead Britain’s 30,000-strong Musicians Union
schoenberg
Culture / 4 January 2022
4 January 2022
Arnold Schoenberg’s music is much like whisky, the first try is rarely fun, however the richness is eventually enjoyed when you stick with it
gathering
Marxist Notes on Music / 14 December 2021
14 December 2021
covers
Music / 14 November 2021
14 November 2021
New releases from iyatra Quartet, Various Artists (Between Music and Ritual) and Yannick Nezet-Seguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra
trio
Ben Lunn: Marxist Notes on Music / 1 November 2021
1 November 2021
BEN LUNN: Marxist notes on Music
in concert
Music review / 1 October 2021
1 October 2021
Glasgow Cathedral Festival 2021
The Pageant of Labour 1934
Ben Lunn: Marxist Notes on Music / 19 September 2021
19 September 2021
Arts that fight with humanity, and for the broadest amount of humanity, demonstrate we as humans have more in common with each other, writes BEN LUNN
RAM
Ben Lunn: Marxist Notes on Music / 30 August 2021
30 August 2021
The 'hear nothing, see nothing and say nothing' approach to misogyny in classical music institutions shames us all, writes BEN LUNN
covers
Culture / 16 August 2021
16 August 2021
Kevin Richard Martin, Return to Solaris; Various, The Night With... Live Vol2; Rui Travasso Letters From Quarantine
STARTING POINT: London Symphony Orchestra with 50 LSO On Tra
OPINION / 31 May 2021
31 May 2021
Cuts to arts education don't just impoverish culture but society as a whole, says BEN LUNN
Freelance professional musicians, conducted by director Davi
Features / 17 February 2021
17 February 2021
The arts in this country have value simply because they are ours: BENN LUNN calls for a recalibration of how we view the music industry
musicians
Features / 28 December 2020
28 December 2020
Leaving the EU highlights the underlying structural problems of the music industry that make it almost impossible for musicians to sustain themselves and their art, says BEN LUNN
Orchestras
Features / 17 June 2020
17 June 2020
The Covid-19 crisis shows the world of classical music needs a dose of radicalism if it is to survive, says BEN LUNN
Ochestra
Features / 26 February 2020
26 February 2020
Musicians in Britain were overwhelmingly in favour of Remain – but can we turn our present moment into an opportunity to improve cultural representation across society, asks BEN LUNN