Past presence: Dead Space Chamber Music and Kate Arnold

Two brilliantly-timed records that for me sum up the word ‘spirit’: both in the eerie, evocative atmospheres they conjure up, and the sheer inventive brio with which the music was created. * Dead Space Chamber Music are an intriguing collective from Bristol, UK, who seemingly belong to all genres or none. Within the first few…

Alleviate – Simon Templeton

I have found myself drawn more and more, as both player and listener, to the kind of post-Classical ambient piano music which Simon Templeton writes, and never more so this year when I have felt a certain estrangement from the kind of classical music I usually enjoy hearing in concert. Ambient is a misnomer, for…

Promentum..!

Many of you reading this will be aware that the pandemically-adjusted 2020 Proms season has just shifted up a gear. Since mid-July, the BBC has raided its archives and broadcast selected performances from past years. Now, however, there is an all-too-brief fortnight of live performances from an audience-free Royal Albert Hall, available on various platforms…