Closing the gap

‘I’ve never been a particularly esoteric person,’ Nicola Benedetti tells me as we sit down to talk following the press launch of her third Edinburgh Festival. And yet, as she explains the theme of thi

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German conductor Anja Bihlmaier studied at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and later at the Mozarteum Salzburg, before holding posts at Staatsoper Hannover and Staatstheater Kassel. Since then, she

As Alison Balsom prepares to return to the Proms, Marie-Claire Chappet sits down with the classical trumpeter to discuss success, self-improvement and the unifying power of music

I have Sir Neville Marriner to thank for pointing me in the direction of the podium. It was in conversation after a long Academy of St Martin in the Fields tour of Germany in 2004 that Sir Neville fir

Eleven years on from the ‘transgender tipping point’ — a term coined by Time magazine when it featured Laverne Cox on its cover, and a moment of self-visualisation and representation for many a trans