Instrument: Reader

The Davos Festival's programme, underscoring the extraordinary talents of some dozen young musicians, is a polished and highly inviting offer. 

The Sixteen contribute intimate Music for Reflection to Voces8's Live from London series.

For the first time in the Proms' history, the programme for the first of this season's Late Nights included the premiere of A Man from the Future, a groundbreaking new piece about codebreaker Alan Turing.

Haddington’s 1815 Holy Trinity Church stands on the site of a thirteenth-century Franciscan friary. It is set back on the deceptively narrow Church Street which terminates at the Nungate Bridge, as did the dangling lives of many criminals in bygone eras. This elegantly simply venue housed an imaginative centenary celebration programme entitled “Literary Britten”.

They say you should never meet your heroes. But they don’t say anything about them meeting each other, so I had very little idea of what to expect at Kings Place on Monday night when comedian Stewart Lee performed John Cage. In the event, this was a hugely enjoyable short recital, though I do wonder if it wasn’t a bit funnier than should really be expected from a Cage gig.

The Lammermuir Festival has a proven track record of experimentation; venues and works frequently surprise, and this year has seen some branching out in the format of events.Master and Commander comprised an evening of readings from the maritime novels of Patrick O’Brian, interspersed with music referenced in the books.

There is a famous scene in the noir classic The Third Man in which Joseph Cotten returns to his hotel and is swiftly bundled into a cab that speeds off recklessly through the streets of Vienna.