Not coming to a TV near you


Elsewhere there are imaginative conspiracy theories as to why the film Peace and Conflict about Benjamin Britten's time at Gresham's School - production still above - is not being aired on British television. Follow this link for another possible reason conspicuously missing from that coverage.

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Four great albums that are victims of clickbait correctness

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Clickbait correctness - if ain't clickable, don't hype it on social media - means some great albums are not receiving the attention they deserve. My recent rewarding listening has included the new Alice Coltrane release Kirtan: Turiya Sings . Kirtans are sacred Vedic chants, and  Turiya Sings  was originally released exclusively on cassette in 1982 for the students of Alice Coltrane's ashram at the The Vedantic Center, northwest of Los Angeles. For this cassette release synthesizers, strings, and sound effects were added to Alice Coltrane’s voice and organ. Although this mix was never commercially released, it achieved cult status as a bootleg recording. The reason for the absence of a commercial release remains unclear, but the most plausible explanation is that the complete master tapes were not retained, making quality remastering impossible. But in 2004 Ravi Coltrane , who is Alice’s son by John Coltrane and producer of this new release, discovered tapes of just Ali
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Scott Ross and the paradox of genius

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On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of his great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the château, the harpsichordist gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos below were taken by me on a
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If this had been a Deutsche Grammophon session.....

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Berlin Philharmonic's first woman conductor

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In the photo above Simon Rattle is being interviewed by LÜ Jia, Music Director of the Chinese government funded National Centre for the Performing Arts in Bejiing. Below Rattle is seen while on tour at a press conference in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. The Chinese government is guilty of the mass genocide against 1.2 million people  in Tibet and continues with its policy of eradicating the priceless Tibetan culture by Sinicization , while Guangzhou has been singled out as a centre of human rights abuses . In January 2018, the authorities in Guangzhou forcibly disappeared the wife of a US-based journalist. This forced disappearance came shortly after the journalist interviewed a Chinese billionaire fugitive who exposed corruption among China’s ruling elite. Rattle is also a repeat visitor to Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. In their 2020 report Amnesty International reports that "Over two dozen prisoners of conscience continued to be detained in the United A
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