Digressions – The future for independent music

Nothing sums up the brutal futility of the Israel/Gaza war more succinctly than Two Brothers, a folk song by UK songwriter Pete Morton. The lyric imagines a mother, fed up with the squabbling siblings, Israel and Palestine: “I don’t care who started it, just try and get along.” Morton’s song has been criticised as ‘condescending,’ that it trivialises a complex Middle East conflict. But the central message – a call for peace – can’t be…

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House music

Check out the audience next time you’re at a classical recital. It’s a fair bet they will be actively listening. There will be no background chatter, no clatter of glasses and cups or the hiss of a cappuccino machine. Classical musicians and house concert performers expect and receive 100% audience attention. So it was at a private house concert we went to last Sunday to listen to Joel Woods play classical guitar pieces and a…

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