Latest Issue

Rethinking Opera

Christopher Fox

If we want new opera to relate to our twenty-first century experience, we must return to first principles, says Christopher Fox

Don’t Upset the Rhythm

Matthew Jordan

When innovative music is seen as a moral threat to society

The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson

Peter Rosser

The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, Edited by Mark Fisher, Zero Books, Hampshire, England

From the 1950s until the 1980s, Franco Luambo Makiadi and his TPOK Jazz orchestra profoundly shaped the sound of African music across the continent, and subsequently the popular music of the world through artists such as Paul Simon and Talking Heads. Yet Franco is little known outside Africa and his 1,000 compositions are hardly represented on recordings. Now just over twenty years since Franco’s death in 1989, Kasongo Musanga tells the story of ‘The Sorcerer of the Guitar’, from whose shadow Congolese music is still emerging.

The Master

Tony MacMahon

'To have crossed his path as a listener was enriching; to have had him as a mentor was unforgettable,' writes Tony MacMahon of the uilleann piper Séamus Ennis. In New York and Dublin in the 1960s, MacMahon lived with, played with and learned from Ennis, and here he recalls some of the rituals and skills of the artist that made him unique.

Have a Little Faith

John McLachlan

Promoters of art mislead audiences by suggesting that there is meaning where there is none. Sometimes you just have to trust the artist, writes John McLachlan