In the elbow of the snug, our absent selves make ready – open cases, ease bellows, tune strings – spread the rosin; some chit-chat about weather, the match, a bit of world news thrown in. Flute enters, shrugging off the raingear, bicycle clips; Banjo tries to order drinks, plink-plink of a coin on an empty glass. A few are already warming up fingers, loosening wrists, softening lips; taking off into a gentile O’Carolan set, maybe a jig or two, before letting rip with a few high tempo reels...

We, by nature, have definite expectations of those a certain age. Cynical, I guess, but realistic. I was only walking down the main drag of my home town this morning – a quaint seaside town in north-west England – surveying…

Greetings enthusiastic music students, and congratulations. You have chosen the entertainment industry as your profession. I have been in it for the last forty-seven years, and I can tell you it’s truly a fantastic industry. The number of options and…

Edited text of Video Being at home has had me thinking. Thinking about how everything was interrupted. Almost violently, in some cases. If you were a student living in the dorms, you had to very quickly pack your things and…

Despite his importance as the first Muslim intellectual to make use of ideas from the Greek philosophical tradition, we don’t know much about the life of al-Kindi. We do know roughly when he lived (the ninth century CE), that he…