Who: The Civil Wars, a Nashville Americana band formed in 2008, and composed of country/rock singer and songwriter John Paul White, and Joy Williams, who started out as a contemporary Christian singer in her teens, before moving on to mainstream as adult songwriter. They met at a songwriting workshop organised by a Nashville record label, … More Album Club: Barton Hollow by The Civil Wars
WordPress tells me that the first draft of this post is from January; I have started and stopped editing the same post again and again, every time feeling just as uninspired. It wasn’t that I wasn’t doing things – I was – it just was that I had little to say about them, no words … More Lately
Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Color of lilac, Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England. Among your heart-shaped leaves Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing Their little weak soft songs; In the crooks of your branches The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs Peer restlessly … More Lilacs
another year, another Connolly Fest done – every year around October or so, there’s a blurry of Dame Sarah related activity. This year was a near repeat of the last – Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in London and a Lieder Festival concert in Oxford – with an added bonus of an opera, Wagner’s … More Lately
I’m holidaying in Finland, which is at the moment hot, humid and exhausting – England was hot too, but at least the nights were cool, which they decidedly are not in here. It’s been a busy few days; after the exhibition ended and all the regular summer activities were over, I had about a week … More Pilgrimages II
What a long silence it’s been. Between the last post and now, I have gone through illness and health scare, and through a spell of just general sort of fatigue. I also already in March made the decision to not to photograph any of the things I usually photograph (as a part of the annual … More Pilgrimages
It’s been a while. In fact, it’s been a whole month since I even looked at this blog. I haven’t gone away though – it just so happens that December is always rather busy. And I’m good at wasting time – for example, I spent one whole weekend painting Nutcracker illustrations, with results that I … More This year
After the gloriously busy first week of half term, the second was quieter and spent largely preparing for a surgery I had three weeks ago; it got rescheduled meaning I missed Andrei Bondarenko’s recital at the Lieder Festival. I did catch Roderick Williams singing Die Schöne Müllerin in Saint John the Evangelist, which is one … More Lately
Few weeks ago, I had surgery and I am only now trying to catch up on all the intended blog posts, including this one on the first Finnish bible in the Old Library of St John’s College, Oxford, kindly shown to me by their Assistant Librarian Ruth Ogden last month. I wondered about saving this … More One important book
It’s been one of those mad glorious weeks that tend to roll around once or twice a year, filled with goodies of every kind. Thursday week ago I saw a fab concert performance of Rameau’s Dardanus by the English Touring Opera at the Sheldonian. As it happens, this is my only opera this autumn – … More Lately
Shakespeare for absolute beginners 