Soon after landing in England in the autumn of 1326, Isabella of France, estranged wife of Edward II, and her mercenary army mustered in Cambridge. The fenland town had acquired a second college just

In the British Isles, one of the strongest examples of community music making can be found in brass bands. Their proud tradition goes back almost 200 years, and their survival has never been more nece

‘I felt that I should like to kiss the hands that had awakened a new world of music for me.’ The year was 1888, the occasion was the Paris debut of a 27-year-old pianist named Ignacy Jan Paderewski. A

The unconventional instrumentation favoured by Tortoise is an indicator of how many different lineups have always jostled for space under the jazz umbrella. The national treasure that is The Pete Alle

‘Searching for music is like searching for God… there’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable.’ So reckoned the great David Bowie, and few have ‘searche

There was once a time when native New Yorkers like Aaron Copland and Ferde Grofé composed odes to the American West; when Europeans like Darius Milhaud and Frederick Delius extolled the deep South; an