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Educator
Opening up music
Education has been central to my musical life. Whether I am teaching a university seminar, writing a review, preparing a programme note or addressing an audience before a concert, the aim is related: to communicate what is happening in music clearly, accurately and with a sense of why it matters. I enjoy making complex ideas accessible without diminishing their richness—finding the telling example, asking the question that draws a listener further into a work, and adapting the level and manner of explanation to different audiences.
For me, education is a form of enquiry as much as of teaching: students’ questions can lead to new ideas, a discussion can suggest a new way of hearing a familiar passage, and explaining an analytical idea aloud can clarify the idea itself. The movement between teaching and research is continuous. Similarly with criticism and public speaking, as each requires close listening, judgement and the ability to turn musical experience into language.
University and adult education
I have taught with the Open University since the 1990s, working with students of widely differing ages, backgrounds and levels. Courses taught include undergraduate modules on Beethoven, Understanding Music, and Inside Music, and I have contributed to residential and summer-school teaching. I currently teach Central Questions in the Study of Music and the second part of the Open University's MA in Music, which I began teaching in 2025.
I have also taught music appreciation, and theory and analysis at the City Literary Institute and Morley College. My subjects there have included music theory, analysis, music appreciation, with a focus on topics across 19th-21st centuries. The courses are aimed at general music lovers who may possess considerable concert-going experience, as well as practising musicians seeking a stronger analytical or historical foundation. I have also devised courses on aspects of Jewish music, including its history in Britain from the Tudor period to the present and émigré composers.
Criticism as education
As a critic I have written hundreds of reviews, interviews, reports and articles about concerts, recordings, performers, festivals and books. Publications include Classical Music Daily, Tempo, Musical Opinion, Piano Journal, International Piano, The Musical Times, The Strad, Jewish Renaissance, The Jewish Chronicle, The Independent and the Times Literary Supplement.
Reviewing is immediate in a way that academic writing rarely is. It responds to a particular performance on a particular evening, while also placing that experience within a larger understanding of the work, the performers and the musical culture around them. I aim to describe what I hear precisely enough for the reader to recognise the character of a performance, while also providing insight into the context, and the content of the music. Reviews can record musical life as it unfolds, and can encourage readers to listen more attentively and to encounter music and musicians they may not yet know.
Contemporary music is a particular focus of my reviewing, and I have written about premieres and new works across a broad stylistic spectrum, from minimalists like Steve Reich, Michael Nyman and John Adams to modernists such as Harrison Birtwistle, Helmut Lachenmann, Peter Maxwell Davies and Elliott Carter and postmodernists whose music re-engages with earlier traditions in sharply individual ways. This sustained engagement with new music has allowed me to follow composers, performers and ensembles over time.
My interviews with musicians represent another form of musical communication and I have done many in published form, and some in video and online (see the COZ series on youtube); numerous interviews with pianists appeared in Piano Journal and Arietta. My conversations with composers, including Simon Bainbridge and Shulamit Ran, appear in Tempo. Some reviewing overlaps with my research interests, such as my coverage of the 2013 Wagner celebrations in Zurich for the Times Literary Supplement, for example, which considered performances, exhibitions and scholarship as parts of a larger cultural event.
Programme notes and public speaking
I have written programme notes for leading artists, orchestras and festivals at major venues in Britain and abroad. These have included the BBC Proms, the Wigmore Hall and the Southbank Centre, and performances in the United States. I have also contributed booklet notes for recordings issued by labels including ASV, CPO, Hyperion and Meridian. The subject matter has ranged from established repertoire to unfamiliar and newly composed music, requiring a balance of reliable research, close description and writing that can speak to readers in the particular setting of a concert or recording.
I have given pre-concert talks in a variety of settings including at major London venues, among them the Southbank Centre and the Barbican, where I have introduced new music for BBC Symphony Orchestra concerts. I have also spoken for musical societies across the United Kingdom, as well as at conferences and public events in Britain and internationally. Lecture-recitals bring the strands of spoken analysis and musical illustration together clearly.
Selected highlights
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Open University teaching since the 1990s across numerous undergraduate music modules
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Current teaching on Central Questions in the Study of Music and MA in Music Part II
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Music theory, analysis and appreciation teaching at City Lit and Morley College
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Hundreds of reviews, interviews and articles across specialist journals, magazines and newspapers
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Extensive writing on twentieth- and twenty-first-century music and world premieres
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Programme notes for BBC Proms, Wigmore Hall, the Southbank Centre and concerts in the United States
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Recording notes for ASV, CPO, Hyperion and Meridian
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Pre-concert talks at the Southbank Centre and for the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican
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Composer interviews including Simon Bainbridge and Shulamit Ran
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Coverage of the 2013 Zurich Wagner Festival for the Times Literary Supplement