Cafe OTO
The rise of cringe
No one wrote programme notes quite like the English experimentalist John White. ‘This music is top-quality trash,’ proclaims his 1993…
What would Tanner say?
On the train home from the Royal Festival Hall I learned of the death of Michael Tanner, who wrote this…
Closing the Queen Elizabeth Hall invigorated the new music scene. Why reopen it?
Imagine the National inviting RuPaul to play Hamlet. Or Tate giving Beryl Cook a retrospective. The London Sinfonietta offered a…
Beauty and the beast
I was going to start with a little moan. About the shouty marketing, the digital diarrhoea, the sycophantic drivel, which,…
