Music | Weekend & Leisure | Homepage - The Oxford Times

Tubular Bells for Two: Duo ring changes with classic album

4:48pm Thursday 13th June 2013

Musical wizards from Oz, Aidan Roberts and Daniel Holdsworth, tell Tim Hughes how they play 26 instruments between them

• Have your say

Brian May is born to be wild

4:25pm Thursday 13th June 2013

Tim Hughes talks to Queen’s Brian May about his passion for protecting animals and his upcoming Oxford show

• Have your say

Lullaby of Birdland: A tribute to Richard Rodney Bennett and George Shearing: St John the Evangelist, Oxford

12:00am Thursday 13th June 2013

When the great pianist and composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett died last December, he left some unfinished business. He had been asked to write a piece for the King’s Singers, but sadly fate intervened and the piece never got written.

• Have your say

View to a thrill

12:21pm Thursday 6th June 2013

Tim Hughes meets The View: a band as famous for rowdiness as for their Scottish power

• Have your say

John Lydon: Here’s Johnny!

12:02pm Thursday 6th June 2013

He’s gone from punk firebrand to national treasure. Now John Lydon is performing in Oxford with Public Image Ltd. He talks to Tim Hughes

• Have your say

Preview of Garsington Opera season

2:01pm Wednesday 5th June 2013

You can serve it light and sticky-sweet, or you can stir in a strong flavour of dark foreboding: Engelbert Humperdinck’s German fairytale opera Hansel and Gretel can be played in many different ways. For award-winning director Olivia Fuchs, however, the choice is clear: her new production of the Brothers Grimm tale for Garsington Opera is influenced by the history of Germany since the Second World War. Her inspiration comes, she tells me during a rehearsal break, from her own childhood.

• Have your say

The Moody Blues: ‘Our best incarnation so far'

3:19pm Thursday 30th May 2013

Moody Blues star Justin Hayward tells Tim Hughes the band is better than ever

• Have your say

Organist Nicholas Kynaston and the Andrew Chamblin Memorial Concert

12:00am Thursday 30th May 2013

When Nicolas Kynaston heads to Christ Church in just under two weeks’ time, it will all be about reviving memories.

• Have your say

Preview of Gilbert and Sullivan Festival at Blackwell's

1:56pm Wednesday 22nd May 2013

Pirates lurking among the bookshelves, Oriental gentlemen serenading you as you browse — what on earth is going on?

• Have your say

Wood: Festival goes out on a limb

6:12pm Thursday 16th May 2013

Tim Hughes talks to Robin Bennett ahead of this weekend’s Wood festival

• Have your say

Seth Lakeman tells all about his storytelling style

4:31pm Thursday 16th May 2013

He has been credited with making folk music cool. The energetic Devon lad whose adrenaline-fuelled virtuoso guitar and fiddle-playing and captivating songs have the power to enthral audiences everywhere from his local pub to the fields of Glastonbury.

• Have your say

Festival to offer the best of English music

4:41pm Thursday 16th May 2013

There are probably few villages more quintessentially English than Dorchester-on-Thames with its ancient abbey and narrow, twisting main street lined with olde worlde houses and pubs. So it makes the perfect setting for the English Music Festival, established in 2006 to showcase the very best of English music, old and new. Festival founder and director Em Marshall-Luck is particularly keen to unearth long-forgotten gems and restore them to the mainstream repertoire. So it’s no surprise to find that this year’s programme includes the usual handful of world premieres, as well as many pieces that were popular in their day but have since faded into obscurity.

• Have your say

The Noble art of guitar

4:36pm Thursday 9th May 2013

Nicola Lisle meets Oxford guitarist Manus Noble

• Have your say

Once upon a (prime) time for Leona Lewis

4:33pm Thursday 9th May 2013

Her victory on X Factor saw the nation fall in love with this strikingly beautiful and powerful-voiced singer.

• Have your say

OMD: Unique band are manoeuvring smartly

3:09pm Thursday 2nd May 2013

OMD were like nothing else on the planet. Tim Hughes talks to the group’s frontman

• Have your say

Rudimental: Band touch bass with positivity

2:55pm Thursday 2nd May 2013

Tim Hughes is impressed by a down-to-earth Rudimental as they hit chart heights

• Have your say

Preview of the Newbury Spring Festival

12:00am Thursday 2nd May 2013

What does opera composer Richard Wagner have in common with clarinettist Acker Bilk? The answer is that both appear in the billings for this year’s Newbury Spring Festival. So what, I ask festival director Mark Eynon, does he think Wagner would have made of Acker Bilk, and his music?

• Have your say

Preview of the May Music Festival

10:20am Thursday 25th April 2013

TV’s favourite physicist is the stand-out name at this year’s May Music Festival, Oxford’s annual showcase for science and the arts.

• Have your say

Sholto Kynoch goes solo on his Steinway

10:14am Wednesday 24th April 2013

It was a tough job but someone had to do it. When SJE Arts decided they needed a Steinway piano for their new concert venue, it involved a trip to Spain — and Sholto Kynoch who went out there to try it out.

• Have your say

Highlights: Danish dreampop, Welsh country and Original Rabbit Foot swing

11:50am Thursday 18th April 2013

Our guide to the week's best gigs

• Have your say