Good Life

X hits the spot

The revolutionary evolution

Saucing a Bada Bing Sunday

Making a gravy he can't refuse

Life’s what you make of it

Potential trauma today. Excited little chap popped from the car like a cork from a bottle, and bounced to his sport class this evening. Only to find it cancelled, with […]

Food

Stay cool, boys

Summer supping for a Sunday

Food

Smelling the coffee

Life Lesson #328: Real coffee does not come in granules

Good Life

The best surtitles ever

The Grifflet gets to grips with Puccini's masterpiece

Food

Vintage Sunday

A weekend this good is worth writing about

Good Life

A hymn to the brass band

Our son’s going to play the bass trombone.

Good Life

Back at the back

Playing in a symphony orchestra has had its moments. Saturday was one of the good ones.

Good Life

A Clarinet revelation in Vienna’s La Clemenza

A vision in the Staatsoper pit is opening my eyes

America

A nation (and an idea) in sound

I’m listening to the John Williams soundtrack for the film “Lincoln.” It’s magnificent: pure Copland at times with its scoring, full of soaring melodies that could only be American. There […]

Good Life

I wish I had this talent

Chris Glynn is dad of one of my great kids in the band, and a magnificently talented illustrator. This sketch is from our Christmas concert in the Millennium Centre. Check […]

Good Life

Counting down

I’m sitting in a concert hall listening to the pre-match ritual. Harpist is tuning. Trumpeter is checking some corners. One of my fellow horn players is alone up at the […]

Food

Gin o’clock

One of the unusual literary things everyone should do at least once is to read the Bond novels in their original form. Ian Fleming was at times a fairly awful […]