Music and Opera

It is a glorious moment in the life of any music-loving parent when your progeny develop their own fierce musical tastes, and start looking rather askance at yours. My case may be extreme, as my two children have had to put up with my music for years. As previously mentioned in these columns, my tinnitus makes it all but impossible for me to work in complete silence, and I have become accustomed to playing up to a dozen CDs a day to get anything done. As a result, daughter (12) and son (10) find other people’s houses eerily quiet, even if someone is digging up the road outside and a

The arrival of the Proms prospectus, with its glamorous pictures of the stars of today, makes me wonder how much those very palatable-looking people are costing the BBC. The question is prompted by the style of the photography — the sexing up of the Weapons of Mass Destruction dossier has nothing on how string players enjoy curling round their instruments. It is all a far cry from the stolid, besuited look classical musicians used to affect, as if one could trust them to get their passagework right while delivering mature interpretations of intellectually taxing repertoire. The modern version says nothing if it doesn’t say expensive. The issue of what the

Willie Nelson. An Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground. That is all.

I first became aware of Bob Marley when I heard ‘Put It On’ by the Wailers, and their version of Tom Jones’s ‘What’s New Pussycat’, in 1967. These tracks in turn led me to discover the ska songs recorded at Studio One, such as the blueprint of Bob’s all- time world classic ‘One Love’ and their first Jamaican chart-topping single, ‘Simmer Down’. However, it was the landmark album Soul Rebel, produced by Lee Perry, that really blew me away: haunting harmonies and powerful lyrics, set to a lean, bass-driven set of dense reggae rhythms, the sparseness of which provided the perfect backdrop for the glorious vocals of Bob and his

The death of Gustav Leonhardt at the age of 83 brings to an end the career of one of the giants of the early music movement. As an organist, harpsichordist and conductor he was long at the forefront of the experiments and revelations that the drive to perform music on period instruments made possible. He will be remembered for being fearless in his single-minded pursuit of what he thought his chosen repertoires required. And he was producing peerless recordings of those repertoires right from the beginning which — one forgets — was in the late ’40s. The term ‘early music’, and its demanding fellow traveller ‘authenticity’, have had a long

The man who was probably the greatest banjo player in history has died, aged 88. Steve Martin says everything that needs to be said here. Here he and Earl are performing the immortal Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

In April, for the first time in ages, I am going to a wedding. At least it will make a change from all the funerals. The middle-aged pop fan feels this all the more deeply, because few of our favourite musicians seem to make old bones. Or, more accurately, they make old bones, but at three or four times the speed that everyone else does. Some of these rock deaths are relatively mundane: falling down stairs (Sandy Denny), car crashing into a tree (Marc Bolan), ski-ing into a tree (Sonny Bono). Others are bizarre. It was Chicago’s guitarist Terry Kath, of course, whose career came to a premature end during

From an early Transatlantic Session. I think you’ll find it speaks for itself. How could it fail when it’s got Emmylou, Rufus, Kate and Anna? Simple but pretty nifty.

Speaking of Texas, here’s that fine old troubador and all-round country oddity Lyle Lovett reminding us That’s Right, You’re Not From Texas…

Johnny Cash would have been 80 tomorrow which is reason enough to resurrect some Saturday Morning Country. Here, from 1987, is a performance of Lefty Frizzell’s classic The Long Black Veil: