A school in one of England’s most deprived boroughs offers proof that putting music at the heart of education offers positive outcomes...

A summer festival in Silicon Valley initiates young players into the joys and challenges of chamber music and then sends them out into...

The charismatic, idealistic, often contrarian and utterly unique violinist is 95 years young today. In celebration, here is an interview...

Car boot sales offer a brilliant lesson in salesmanship, and for this rookie also raised questions about buying and selling violins I’m...

In this interview I did with Itzhak Perlman for The Strad’s Violin Heroes supplement in 2009, he remembered and analysed the violinists...

Violinist Gilles Apap has one of the most original voices today, crossing easily between classical and folk styles, often in the same...

The ground-breaking English folk band has broken up after 12 years, leaving this fangirl sad – but grateful I’m not a mosher. I don’t...

Who are my favourite violinists? A list of 20, which I made for Sinfini Music in 2014, still largely stands, but is sure to provoke a...

Regina Carter started with Dont and Galamian but she only truly found her voice when she discovered jazz. She tells Ariane Todes about...

Bartók’s quartets are often played ‘brutal, fast and loud’, but they should be approached as Classical masterpieces, says Jerusalem...

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates its 70th birthday in 2016 and for its commemorative anniversary booklet, I had the...

Josef Gingold was born on 28 October, 1909. In celebration of the birth of a universally beloved and respected pedagogue, here is an...

A recent performance of the whole of Homer’s epic Iliad offered an opportunity to observe actors close up and to understand what their...

Perfectionism in music is a modern scourge, and Peter Cropper, who died in May, demonstrated that it is a distracting priority for...

As some of the world's finest violin makers gather in the small university town of Oberlin, Ohio, to share their knowledge at the annual...

W.B. Yeats was born 150 years ago, on 13 June, 1865. Here's his poem The Fiddler of Dooney, written in 1889, when he was 24, celebrating...

The Elbow Music social media campaign puts modern instruments in the spotlight My recent article about Frank Peter Zimmermann’s dilemma...

The great British writer Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June, 1840. His father was a fiddler in the village band and he himself also played....

How much can an adult amateur expect to develop as a musician in a short space of time? Quite a lot, it turns out, given the right...

The great violinist, former leader of the Lindsay Quartet, and one of the unique and most charismatic voices in chamber music, died on...