The Rambler

When I started The Rambler back in 2003, blogs were a relatively new phenomenon.

Voice, body, language, place: these have long been the central preoccupations – basic materials, really – of Leo Chadburn’s work, from his early releases as his avant-pop alter-ego Simon Bookish (‘Portrait of the Artist as a Fountain’) to the stream of re…

I was meant to be at the Southbank Centre on Sunday for the London Sinfonietta’s ‘deconstruction’ and performance of Boulez’s marvellous …explosante-fixe … On-stage conversations, leather seats and Boulezian orchestration at its most refined.

It was lovely to attend last night the launch of Liza Lim’s new disc for NMC records (and of Zoë Martlew‘s forthcoming debut, Album Z).

New Focus Recordings, fcr430 Recorder concerti are pretty rare beasts in contemporary music, so plaudits first of all to the German recorder player Jeremias Schwarzer for finding not only four, but four such and contrasting ones.

Researching another piece of writing, I discovered today with great sadness that the American composer and instrument builder Chas Smith died earlier this year, on 13 May.

First of all, I loved it.

In the last couple of years I’ve found myself writing more and more sleevenote essays.

Colin Alexander, cello Heather Roche, clarinet Eva Zöllner, accordion LSO St Luke’s, London | 14 January 2023 For her LSO Jerwood Composer+ showcase event, Hollie Harding curated an elaborate event on the theme of memory, culminating in her thirty-minute…

A fabulous concert at Kings Place last night by Riot Ensemble, crowned by a coda in memory of composer, singer and guitarist Alastair Putt.