The Spitalfields Festival won the Royal Philharmonic Society award for best Concert Series and Festival this year. They thoroughly deserve it for wonderful and adventurous programming in great venues. Next week I have two concerts in the Festival: on Tuesday 5th I’ll be in Spitalfields Market playing music I’ve created with DJ Bee over the last couple of years, including Vanishing Tracks and Funky Requiem - laid back beats, midi-pedal systems, improvisations over electronica and loads of reverb…

http://www.spitalfieldsfestival.org.uk/marketbarley.htm 

And on Wednesday 6th I join cellist Rohan de Saram (ex-Arditti Quartet) for an evening that includes all the preludes from Bach’s solo suites, as well as a world premiere by John Metcalfe for cello and electronics, and his Constant Filter (the piece that was the big hit of my On The Road tour last year), as well as Kodaly, some improvisations, and Bartok duos arranged for two cellos.

http://www.spitalfieldsfestival.org.uk/barleyrohan.htm 

I’m really looking forward to this, in the incredible setting of Wilton’s Music Hall http://www.wiltons.org.uk/

The CD recital Strings Attached with Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan (live at the Royal Festival Hall), is now available from Navras Records on a shiny new DVD. Click below to go to their site, and you should see it. Sometimes they change the order of their pages, so you can search under DVD.
http://www.navrasrecords.com/?page_id=8

This Sunday my recording of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Kai, for cello and orchestra, with the BBC Philharmonic and Charles Hazlewood will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3. You can click on this link to hear it up to a week after the broadcast, so until May 27th. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/discoveringmusic/pip/t771s/

Between The Notes has another concert in the Köln Philharmonie tomorrow. It’s a wonderful hall and a wonderful project, to play Fraser Trainer’s Gadget, a concerto for BTN and orchestra, with interpolated improvisations between the movements from the very talented Gurzenich Orchestra Ensemble and the Herzchlag students, all conducted by Markus Stenz. This is the sixth time we’ve been out here in a year, and the orchestra is very remarkable, just so generous and musical and willing to take risks and experiment. I think that they will be starting a creative strand of community music that will be unique in Germany.

Exciting news about a new television programme that I am involved in - a very new kind of competition for UK teenagers to find a major new talent. A nationwide search will result in nine musicians being chosen to take part in a three week summer academy that I am directing, during which the nine will be whittled down to three to take part in the final. The interesting thing is that in the Academy, as well as the obvious private practice and masterclasses concentrating on repertoire, we will work in less usual ways for classical musicians: working with improvisation, non-classical styles, and thinking about more contemporary ways of presenting music. It should make a big impact on the public in terms of their perception of what classical musicians are today, and in many ways it reflects the changes that have been happening in the profession over a number of years and is very timely.
The five one-hour episodes will air on the BBC in late Autumn. For details of application you can go to www.classicalstar.tv