Well, on Feb. 3 I’ll have achieved this feat — something even mad dogs and Englishmen would baulk at. Except, of course, for those terrifying romance writers who churn out a new novel every month. How do they do it? This is how. ROMANCE NOVELIST (PACING ACROSS HER CONSERVATORY, TO…

Or: How — not — to get to Nuremburg. It was last Sunday a.m. and I was just driving home from playing a lovely concert with the English Symphony Orchestra in Worcester Cathedral. Basically, everything was — up to that point — absolutely FINE. I’d been staying at my friend Cecily’s house — thatched roof, shared lake, spreading vistas…

‘Why bother?’ Simon wanted to know, when I said that I had been asked to audition, in Worcester Cathedral no less, for the orchestra’s conductor and principal cellist. My own view was, ‘Why not?’ (Remember: I was young, keen, and still only twenty-something.) Also, when else was I going to…

More than anything else, it’s the voice. From the very first sentence, we’re drawn into a wryly knowing yet convincingly youthful voice, as brilliantly drawn as those of the bubble-gum-chomping adolescent sisters in her masterful The Poisonwood Bible. (HOW a middle-aged, middle-class female can so utterly inhabit the skin of…

st of all, there are OK-ish bad reviews — “Just not my kind of a book”… “Too complicated”… “The end was a little sudden”… “Squeaky clean — TOO much so, in my opinion…” These are the good bad reviews. One can learn quite a lot from these — particularly when…

’Twas the Last Gig Before Christmas… It looked fine on paper: a nice little hike from Orpington to Waterloo, and out on another train to St Ann’s Church, Wandsworth. My diary held this innocuous little note: Mozart Requiem, 2.30 and 7.30, £120. Andy, the leader of the orchestra, and more…

Jokes about terms used by pro musicians (originally published by Verbatim magazine) The terminology preferred by classical musicians is, on the whole, pretty blackly humourous. To classical music fans this may come as a surprise but then, classical music’s image has never married with its reality. To the general public, orchestral players appear to be sedate, stiff-backed…

On novelists’ book signings, Jane Austen, Emma’s dead mother and Little Bo-Peep As the local library was having an event, I was invited, along with other local writers, to sell paperbacks on the author’s tables. I was game for a laugh. I like book signings and I also had a…

(Or, how to win friends with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc.) “Social media” are two words capable of striking terror into many artists — musicians in particular. Everybody knows that we’re meant to promote ourselves — and our concerts and our every group — our chamber groups or solos most particularly…