The fate of the Archer review into Arts Council England (ACE) has been unclear for some time. After a government review of ACE was announced in March—led by Mary Archer, a former chair of the Science Museum Group—the public review was paused before the general election in July. After an email from a Labour government […]
Author Archives: Hugh Morris
Hugh Morris is a freelance writer and editor based in London.
Posted inReport
Welcome to Shorworld
“Fortune is like a bird in a wood. If we know how to whistle to her she will come to us.” —from pianist Ashley Wass’s biography on X, unattributed I: The Amateur About two years ago, a renowned European musician received a call from his agency with an offer for an unusual gig. A Dubai […]
Posted inOpinion
Argumentum Ad Antiquitatem
In 1998, The New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett predicted with remarkable prescience the future creations of Wynton Marsalis. Following “Blood on the Fields,” Marsalis’s jazz oratorio which, to Balliett’s surprise, won a Pulitzer Prize for Music that year, he wondered what might be next for the trumpeter and composer: “Perhaps Marsalis will write a […]
Posted inBreaking
Cardew and the Spycops
On July 11, a public inquiry in the UK heard that the funeral of Cornelius Cardew, and a memorial event held in his memory, were both attended by an undercover police officer deployed by a specialist police unit to infiltrate revolutionary communist groups. Though it was conveyed to him through a manager at the Special […]
Posted inBreaking
Tales from Wales
The junior department of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama closed for the end of term on Saturday. It looks like it will not re-open. 340 children will be affected across the Young Music and Young Drama programs, as well as five salaried staff and a further 112 hourly staff on zero-hours contracts […]
Posted inProfile
Trying To Crystallize Something
The first time that Siwan Rhys played Galina Ustvolskaya’s music in public, something strange happened. She’d been asked to play Ustvolskaya’s arresting Sixth Sonata at the launch of Kate Molleson’s book Sound Within Sound at Cafe OTO in Dalston. This wasn’t the first time that Rhys had encountered Ustvolskaya’s musical worldview—she’d first heard it live […]
Posted inInterview
Fantasies, Urgencies
At Wigmore Hall in November, a solo piano recital by Vijay Iyer was like a set of rough clouds in a humid summer, breaking in brief, awesome moments. Hearing “Love in Exile” at the Barbican a few months earlier, the trio (Iyer, Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily) made a thick haze like a hot-warm drunkenness. […]
Posted inBreaking
Silent, Or Silenced?
A Freedom of Information request from VAN Magazine has revealed that Sir Nicholas Serota, the chair of Arts Council England, threatened to review a £3.2 million grant given to Welsh National Opera after the company’s music director wrote an open letter about the impact of Arts Council cuts on the organization. The letter, written by […]
Posted inReport
Divided We Stand
Funding cuts have left Welsh National Opera (WNO) in a financial hole, with its musicians facing the prospect of pay cuts and redundancies. The story of the organization’s plight is long and complicated, but a key moment occurred in November 2022, when WNO’s Arts Council England (ACE) National Portfolio Organization funding was cut by 35 […]
Posted inInterview
The New Needs Friends
“A revolting, nauseating slog,” “a quarter of an hour’s worth of relentless, faceless, arbitrary blarney,” “stunningly pointless and stupid,” “five minutes of mindless, superficial prolefeed,” “hackneyed, dated, superficial rubbish,” and “empty vessels of cheap, surface-deep, musically moribund sound masquerading as something bold and individual” are just some of the many colorful phrases writer Simon Cummings […]