Happy Birthday, Ivry Gitlis!
The charismatic, idealistic, often contrarian and utterly unique violinist is 95 years young today. In celebration, here is an interview...
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- Sep 5, 2016
Birth of a salesman
Car boot sales offer a brilliant lesson in salesmanship, and for this rookie also raised questions about buying and selling violins I’m...
- Aug 31, 2016
Itzhak Perlman on his violin heroes
In this interview I did with Itzhak Perlman for The Strad’s Violin Heroes supplement in 2009, he remembered and analysed the violinists...
- Aug 22, 2016
Gilles Apap: ‘Don’t listen to nobody’
Violinist Gilles Apap has one of the most original voices today, crossing easily between classical and folk styles, often in the same...
- Apr 30, 2016
Bye Bye, Bellowhead
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...
- Apr 5, 2016
20 great violinists
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...
- Mar 8, 2016
Interview with violinist Regina Carter
Regina Carter started with Dont and Galamian but she only truly found her voice when she discovered jazz. She tells Ariane Todes about...
- Nov 20, 2015
‘You have to treat Bartók as you do Mozart or Haydn’
Bartók’s quartets are often played ‘brutal, fast and loud’, but they should be approached as Classical masterpieces, says Jerusalem...
- Nov 16, 2015
Pinchas Zukerman on how to change the world
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates its 70th birthday in 2016 and for its commemorative anniversary booklet, I had the...
- Oct 28, 2015
Joshua Bell on Josef Gingold
Josef Gingold was born on 28 October, 1909. In celebration of the birth of a universally beloved and respected pedagogue, here is an...
- Aug 16, 2015
What do actors and musicians have in common?
A recent performance of the whole of Homer’s epic Iliad offered an opportunity to observe actors close up and to understand what their...
- Jun 23, 2015
The curse of perfection
Perfectionism in music is a modern scourge, and Peter Cropper, who died in May, demonstrated that it is a distracting priority for...
- Jun 22, 2015
Violin Utopia in Oberlin
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...
- Jun 13, 2015
The Fiddler of Dooney
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...
- Jun 11, 2015
Let’s show modern instruments some #love
The Elbow Music social media campaign puts modern instruments in the spotlight My recent article about Frank Peter Zimmermann’s dilemma...
- Jun 6, 2015
Thomas Hardy and the violin
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....
- Jun 3, 2015
Never too old to learn
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...
- Jun 2, 2015
Peter Cropper and the art of story telling
The great violinist, former leader of the Lindsay Quartet, and one of the unique and most charismatic voices in chamber music, died on...
- Jun 1, 2015
Baffling results in Brussels
Jury places audience favourite in fifth place at Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition in Belgium Music competitions get a lot of bad press...
- May 8, 2015
Why you should stop practising
Observing masterclasses can be a brilliant way to learn and find inspiration, and yet students rarely turn up to watch. They may be too...
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