A Lark Ascending

Sounds like fun. Never heard of Tao. Saint-Saens has always been one of my blind spots (the mists that descend in the mid-19thC Romantic era) but I've been giving him the odd listen in recent years, most successfully with a CD of chamber music. Will achieve breakthrough at some point. It does sound like you get a good, varied mix at your local. Regional orchestras in Britain tend to be much safer - you have to travel to Birmingham, Manchester, London for the more unfamiliar most of the time.

I was amazed at the sheer enthusiasm of the crowd - she's hardly a household name here. I experienced something similar several years ago when the London Barbican put on a 50 Years of Bossa Nova concert with a host of famous Brazilian singers and players from that genre - a huge and vociferous crowd going nuts for music that gets little notice in the musical world at large here. Agree about the voice and the band.

The impact of the Vietnam War starting from the fall of Saigon as seen through the eyes of a South Vietnamese intelligence officer who is actually a communist mole. Really makes you realise how the Film/Novel depictions of Vietnam have been largely portrayed as America's tragedy.

Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limits Four part social (mainly) history of the Roman Empire - very good with stunning photography from Northumbria to Judea. Worth it just to watch Mary Beard ripping a pizza apart in order to illustrate what happened to the Empire when it got too big to manage from Rome alone. Beard reminds me of my Anglo-Saxon history professor at uni (she taught Anglo Saxon history, she wasn't an Anglo-Saxon).

Book 5 of the first.

Disc 1 of the CD (well, download) version - I think this was originally a 3 LP set back in the olden days. And straight on to disc 2.

Excellent. Spent most of it wondering where I'd seen Miranda (Jessie Buckley) before...turns out she was Marya Bolkonskaya in the recent BBC War and Peace. Also D.I. Thursday (Roger Allam) from 'Endeavour' as Prospero.

Disc 1 of first.

Obituary for Dave Swarbrick: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/03/dave-swarbrick-obituary

Disc 1 - Fourth Book Disc 1

Lila Downs (Royal Festival Hall, London) Varttina (KIng's Place, London) Two from the bucket list - concerts on successive nights so worth a trip.Both excellent. Lila Downs - a bit like going to a wild party where you don't know anyone (I didn't half feel British...polite applause, clapping along on the wrong beat etc!). Huge Latin contingent in the audience going bananas from the off. A really exciting two hours with real instruments (no beat boxes etc that you get on her records in places). Tremendous voice - just as powerful live as on record, especially at the lower end. Not quite what I'm used to....this was a slick, choreographed 'show' with some cheesy cameos (an accordion 'duel') but once you suspended your disbelief, utterly compelling. Proper review here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/02/lila-downs-review-mexican-american-singer-royal-festival-hall-london Varttina - no sign of London's Finnish population (probably already deported by Boris and Nigel) and only half full which was sad as this was a beautiful concert. Just the three women (no band which they usually have) with the focus on the vocals but really nice accordion, kantele (two!) and some flute-like things. The vocals were stunning - those amazing harmonies that make their records so wonderful pulled off with pin-point accuracy. Lots of percussion in the words, yelps and screeches. All in Finnish but the introductions and hand actions gave a rough idea of the song's content. Both concerts made a nice corrective to the poisonous xenophobia sweeping through this sad country at present.

One of my earliest CDs and one that used to leap out of the speakers (well, still does). Three of his famous colourful scores and the earlier and less well known Dance Symphony - you hear his influences there (French music of the early 20thC, Stravinsky etc) but it's interesting hear him before the New Deal populism made him widely famous (not complaining about the latter!).

Disc 4 (6th Book).

I've lived 16 miles away for 25 years and have never been! On the cards for some point in the near future. I was at lunchtime and evening concerts in The Crucible a couble of weeks back and had a large hole in between - nearly went then, but the weather was so lovely I headed for the hills. Now if it had been today....

Disc 6 of the first, 3 of the second.

Disc 2 - the early years. Disc 1 + 2 (1587, 1619, 1590)

Monteverdi Vespers (Beverley Minster, Yorkshire) University of York Chamber Choir Compagnia d’ Istrumenti, University of York Baroque Ensemble Beautiful concert of one of my favourite early music pieces (well, it's early for me!). Famously lacking a definitive score, this performance aimed to be close to how it might be imagined Monteverdi would have presented it. Very small orchestra of baroque era instruments. A bit of a shock at the start as they didn't immediately cut through the choir - the wonderful fanfare amidst the full choir at the start that you usually hear on bright, high-wire trumpets* was played by the cornetts, a far darker, almost nasal sound. Over time ears adjusted. You got a real sense of just how varied this piece is - full on choir, passages for solo or two or three voices, Gregorian chant; and then different instrumental groupings highlighted in different sections - cornetts came into their own in a couple of later sections. Good use of the cathedral acoustics too with both singers and instruments detached at a couple of points to provide echo effects. On record the highlight for me has always been the Sancta Maria section which I'm used to as a solo voice; here half a dozen female voices were used (the singers were students rather than professionals so I suspect it might have been a bit too exposed for an individual). * Gianluigi Trovesi has borrowed this passage several times in his jazz pieces. Cornetts...never seen one before last night. The players seemed to have 2 or 3, presumably for different keys. Part of the Beverley Early Music Festival. I've only just latched on to the York area as a hotbed of Early/Renaissance/Baroque music - there's an early music centre there. They have a main festival in July - I'm going to hear Purcell's 'The Fairy Queen' and a 17thC arrangement of 'The Tempest' there in six weeks. They also do a Xmas Festival which I'll watch out for this year.

Indeed - though, like all professions, education spawns its own. There's actually an educational buzzword bingo ready to print card here: http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/education/ They advise shouting 'bullshit' when you get a line (not recommended in a meeting!). I was reasonably used to this growing up in a military family. My parents used to talk with one another at the tea table in acronyms.

The two books of Preludes. Music I never tire of.

You should have waved. I wandered by a couple of times on my way to/from the Showroom Cinema by the station!

Icelandic thriller broadcast a few months back but just got round to episode 1 last night. Enjoyed it although it's not really got going yet. Must congratulate it for having even worse weather than 'Shetland'.

Definitely true. This was really worth going to - I've been investigating on record since. Good news is that they are back in the Autumn and Spring playing similar programmes. Try later (or earlier) Copland - the Socialist Realist phase (which I do like) only gives you part of the picture. Glad 'Das Klagende Lied' went down well. One I only know from CD and not that well. A live performance would be helpful there. Off to Monterverdi's Vespers tonight in Beverley Minster (cathedral in a small Yorkshire town about 90 minutes away). Then it's Wagner June - 'The Ring' (semi-staged) all next week and 'Tristan and Isolde' in London at the end of the month. The 2016-17 programmes are just appearing here - some good things on the cards. Der Rosenkavalier (my favourite opera) and Billy Budd (Britten) in the Autumn by Opera North; and Berg's 'Lulu' in London (ENO) which is running around the time of the London Jazz Festival so I hope to double up. Also hope to try a new opera - Ryan Wigglesworth's 'The Winter’s Tale' next Spring at ENO. The local orchestral concerts (Sheffield, Nottingham) are unadventurous for the new season (bums on seats) but I'll probably go to Walton 1, Shostakovich 8 and a complete Brandenburg Concertos concert; also, further afield, Ravel's full 'Daphnis and Chloe' in Manchester, one I've been wanting to hear for a long time.

Well I'm definitely unfashionable...or cussed! We all used to mock management-speak (some staff used to have secret Jargon Bingo cards as a way of getting through long staff meetings!); but it was amazing how you'd suddenly find yourself using some of the terms unwittingly (though I've yet to interface with a colleague [probably a dismissable offence]). Funny thing is that I find it hard to remember many of them now. I'm back in a world where people talk normally all the time.

Corporate-speak is a world unto itself. At some point in the 90s teachers stopped teaching and started 'delivering the curriculum'. Another supremely irritating one is to 'interface with'.