Catapult Opera; Talea Ensemble/Neal Goren Pentatone PTC5187492 99:63 mins The history of Nadia Boulanger’s only full-length opera is a tortuous as Gabriele D’Annunzio’s libretto, in which Alexandre an

It’s so fitting, so pleasingly right, that if it weren’t true, you’d just have to make it up. The word ‘laul’ means ‘song’ in Estonian; and since Dr Indrek Laul is the maker of a brand of instrument a

HE MIGHT HAVE joined the Haunted a full 17 years after the group formed, yet to metal guitarists, Ola Englund’s face is far more recognizable than those of his bandmates — even though bassist Jonas Bj

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Louisiana soul man ROBERT FINLEY overcame his hardscrabble origins, loss and blindness to finally find success in his later life. Amazingly, he believes he still has much to prove. “Most people retire at 65,” he tells Kevin EG Perry. “Hell, I came alive at 65.”

‘We’re going to have a tonal centre and tap our feet, and that’s the way it is.’ Steve Reich is in full flow, talking to me from his home in New York. ‘The big break, the knife down the line, was betw