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Articles by The Guardian for Classical music

Audience etiquette matters if the purity of classical music is truly valued

2010/09/05 by Fiona Maddocks

The question of concert behaviour, like most codes of conduct, depends on where you are. Who are you upsetting by ignoring etiquette? Does that etiquette have any purpose beyond crusty tradition? As far as classical music is concerned, the answer is yes. The need to sit still and pipe down is purely practical: to enable everyone to hear properly and to respect the performers, as well as fellow listeners…

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Composer Jonathan Harvey calls for amplified classical music to attract young audiences

2010/09/05 by by Vanessa Thorpe, Arts and Media Correspondent

One of Britain's leading composers is calling on fellow classical musicians to abandon the stuffy conventions that surround the concert hall and to adopt new and "blasphemous" ideas, such as amplifying the sound.

Jonathan Harvey, whose piece Dum transisset sabbatum was featured in yesterday's BBC Proms matinée performance, is concerned that British youth are alienated by the traditions that still dictate that classical music should be played to rows of silent, seated listeners.

"Young people don't like concert halls…

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Stars In Our Eyes: This Season's New Music Talent

2010/09/05 by Hermione Hoby, Killian Fox, Molloy Woodcraft

HURTSWho Hurts, aka 23-year-old Theo Hutchcraft on vocals and 26-year-old Adam Anderson on keyboards.

We say A Manchester duo unashamedly channelling the spirit of Ultravox and Depeche Mode with their grandiose, emotive synth-pop. Their album, Happiness, is out tomorrow…

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Miles Davis: The muse who changed him, and the heady Brew that rewrote jazz

2010/09/05 by Neil Spencer

As the incendiary year of 1968 dawned, Miles Dewey Davis found himself in a most unusual situation: he was no longer hip. The trumpeter had reigned as the crown prince of jazz for nearly two decades, his music mutating subtly through hard bop to the mesmeric lyricism of 1959's Kind of Blue. Where he led, others followed…

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This week's new dance

2010/09/04 by Judith Mackrell

Joel Hall Dancers, New BrightonMerseyside's LEAP festival – which has been expanded into a year-long programme for 2010 – has snagged a UK exclusive with this short season from the Chicago-based Joel Hall Dancers. Founded 36 years ago, this was one of the original fusion companies, creating a glossy, accessible mixture of classical, contemporary and jazz moves. More recently, choreographer Hall has updated the group's aesthetic with an injection of street dance, ensuring the breadth of appeal that's always been a trademark of his choreography…

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This week's new exhibitions

2010/09/04 by Robert Clark & Skye Sherwin

Mark Titchner, LondonMark Titchner is fascinated by belief, and specifically how we sell it. This former Turner nominee's sculptures, posters and videos assault and seduce with the totems and typeface of religious sects, propaganda, pop-culture jingoism and cultish arcane symbols. His latest works address the illusion that things last…

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... Ms Dynamite, M People and Portico Quartet

2010/09/03 by Paul Morley

After a couple of decades, there are a couple of hundred acts to choose from when it comes to assembling a panel to discuss what it was like to be nominated for, win, or not win, the Mercury prize. It's quite a club, efficiently reflecting one of the original ideas for the Mercury, for it to map out the evolving state of British music, vaguely rooted in a sensibility that is more indie than industry – one that fancies itself as cutting-edge and that links Peelworld with BBC 6 music, one that readers of Kerrang! or Gramophone magazine might feel profoundly exiled from, one that does as much as it can without alienating comfortable mainstream audiences to involve music that is other than cleverish pop, hip urban or indie rock.

If traditional gatekeepers have been all but removed now that recommendations for what music to try next come thick and fast both through automatic systems, blogs, webzines and consumers rating and listing their likes and finds, the Mercury maintains its commitment to acting as a guide whose taste and judgement you can trust, because of founding father Simon Frith's basic belief as a rock critic in the importance of experienced, expert cultural critics…

Read full article ... Ms Dynamite, M People and Portico Quartet

Paul Morley on music: the Mercury music prize

2010/09/03 by Paul Morley

As you may have noticed, on Tuesday this week there will be a new Mercury album of the year, the 19th. Even though I spent much of the early 90s, when the award began, thinking that it was sponsored by Freddie Mercury – which seemed pretty decent and enlightened of him, and which somehow seemed to make sense of the first two winners being Primal Scream and Suede, and why, in 1994, M People beat Pulp, Blur, the Prodigy and a still-enraged Paul Weller – I've grown to accept it as a regular part of the rock season.

Along the way I've had to learn not to take it too seriously, and appreciate the fact that what began as a conscientious, enthusiastic post-indie antidote to the industry-clogged, business-based Brit awards has itself evolved into something more mainstream, compromised and self-congratulatory…

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... Robert Jarvis and Terry Mann

2010/09/03 by Paul Morley

It is clear after all these years that I am completely unqualified to be a judge for the Mercury Prize, and therefore exist in a state of ignorant bliss about how it all works, and why certain music is nominated, certain music not, why this one wins, and that one doesn't. This allows me to moan, sulk, weep, curse, shriek, shrug at many of the decisions, and wonder who on earth the judges actually are, and demand to see their qualifications, and not have to ever take on the responsibility of being a judge, and having to accept that, say, Mumford and Sons are going to win, and not These New Puritans.

Some things I am qualified for…

Read full article ... Robert Jarvis and Terry Mann

Michel Portal: Turbulence

2010/09/02 by John Fordham

Michel Portal has been a powerful presence on the European jazz and new music scene for a few years, and was a noted contemporary-classical clarinetist before that. This is a fine reissue from 1987, absorbing not just for the quality of the playing and the players (accordionist Richard Galliano and Weather Report percussionist Minu Cinelu are on it), and the focus of a leader who famously hates recording, but for the continuing freshness of influences from Zappa to Zawinul via free-jazz and folk-rock. Portal keeps changing the settings for his own playing – from the bass clarinet hook over tinkling percussion to the marimba-like electronics behind his soprano sax on the Afrobeatish Mozambic, or the sporadic baritone-sax squalls against synths and congas on Djam's…

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