from the British Music Society
News, reviews & features
BMS trust to promote Hurd’s music in 2026
Many members will remember the generous grant for the British Music Society left in composer Michael Hurd’s estate…
Obituary: Garry Humphreys
Garry Humphreys, baritone, conductor, writer, researcher, and business librarian, has died aged 79…
Bite-Back: it’s not a second hand book!
Dr Strachan suggests that my ‘assessments of Coleridge-Taylor’s music are likely to be at second hand’. They’re really not…
July release for one act opera
The Parlour, an opera in one act by Grace Williams, will be released on 4 July…
Cardiff music cuts reversed
Cardiff University has reversed its controversial decision to scrap its music course as part of wide-ranging cuts affecting a range of courses…
BRITISH MUSIC FOR STRINGS IV
While welcome for its championing of rarely-heard repertoire, most of this disc (under the title British Music for Strings IV) falls squarely into the pleasantly conventional, regardless of the craftsmanship…
GABRIEL JACKSON: Choral Works
This disc of Gabriel Jackson’s choral music seems to be something of a homecoming for the composer. He was a chorister at the Canterbury Cathedral under Allan Wicks…
CECILIA McDOWALL: Cantatas
Cecilia McDowall is a composer in whose catalogue of works music for the voice or voices occupies a central place. This disc features four of her most recent cantatas…
TRANSATLANTIC: Brass Music from Britain and America
This mixed bag of British and American music by the distinguished Onyx Brass is never less than entertaining, though I doubt I shall return to some of them often…
A CELLO GALAXY: British Women Composers
Whilst listening to the middle movement, a set of variations in the 1899 Cello Sonata by Amy Horrocks (d.1919) I found myself asking, why don’t we know this music?