Conducting life during a pandemic

April 23, 2020 | Categories: Blog | Tags: , , , ,

Spring in Scotland arrives slowly and reluctantly, making its way in fits and starts designed to take the walker and gardener by surprise. A day of warm sunshine can sour to freezing rain in half a minute, and frosts can strike without warning.

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“Where I quite like to be”

October 14, 2013 | Categories: Blog

I’ve been trying to work out exactly what it is I find so magnetic about Finland. For a start, it’s cold: My freezer is cold, humming away at -18c to keep my pizzas crispy. In one Helsinki winter I’ve stumbled out of Urkki’s [1] into -26c. That really hardens your ice cubes, I can tell [...]

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Asda scares me

September 24, 2013 | Categories: Blog | Tags:

Everything I write about here is personal – my worries about the future of the art form I love so much is about as heartfelt as it gets – but this post is something different, and I must apologise if it makes some of you uncomfortable. Actually no, scratch that: I make no apology. The [...]

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A Conducting Workshop

September 18, 2013 | Categories: Blog | Tags: , , ,

I just had the very great pleasure of teaching on an international conducting workshop alongside my old friend and teacher Johannes Schlaefli, who’s the Professor of conducting at the Zürich Musikhochschule. The thing I love most about teaching is how much I learn myself during the process. I was chatting about this with a friend [...]

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