05.07.2017 - ‘The Noise of Time’ (2016), Julian Barnes a ‘fictional biography’ of Dmitri Shostakovich, Soviet composer In May 1937 a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad appartment block. He waits all through the night,...
04.07.2017 - New York Texts read & Music played: New York, Frank Sinatra Drop me off in Harlem, Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington Theme for English B, Langston Hughes City of Glass, Paul Auster Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote Moon River,...
26.06.2017 - Mauthausen: a tragic paradox? Texts read and Music played: Theodor Adorno: Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft (quote) Paul Celan: Fugue of Death (poem) Olivier Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps Mauthausen Exhibition Catalogue (extracts)...
13.06.2017 - 50 Years on: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Playlist: Texts read & Music played: Opening track Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ‘Tune in, turn on, drop out’, Timothy Leary ‘Almost metaphysical urban poetry’,...
07.06.2017 - Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937) Novelist, short story writer….and poet! Texts read and Music played: Chopin: Romanza (Larghetto), Piano Concerto no.1 (Arthur Rubinstein, LSO/ Barbirolli, 1937) Edith Wharton: The Parting Day Henry...
17.05.2017 - Texts read & Music played: 1. Robert Schumann: Humoresque 2. Emily Dickinson: I dwell in possibility 3. A curious Cloud surprised the Sky 4. Eduard Grieg: Morning Mood, from Peer Gynt, Suite no.1 5. The Day came slow – till Five...
11.05.2017 - New England (1) Texts read and Music played: Pilgrims and Puritans, Stephen Vincent Benet The Housatonic at Stockbridge, from Three Places in New England, Charles Ives The ‘St. Gaudens’ in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his...
19.04.2017 - Once upon … one day in a life: March 30, 1924. Jane Goodchild, 22, an orphan, a maid in a country mansion, has no mother to visit on ‘Mothering Sunday’. Her relationship with Paul, of upper-middle class, changes dramatically that...
13.03.2017 - Texts read and Music played: ‘Roses of Picardy’, sung by Peter Dawson ‘The Washing on the Siegfried Line’, Flanagan & Allen ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, Vera Lynn ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’, Noel...
13.03.2017 - Texts read and Music played: Sigh no more, ladies, from Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, Peter Warlock London, William Blake London, Benjamin Britten The Sick Rose, William Blake Elegy (The Sick Rose), from Serenade for Tenor, Horn and...