'Songs of Stolen Children' by Daughters of Donbas

20 March 2026

Daughters of Donbas is a music and human rights project highlighting the stories of children who have been abducted from occupied regions in eastern Ukraine and taken to Russia. Led by the Ukrainian-Canadian singer Marichka, the Daughters of Donas debut album 'Songs of Stolen Children' is a beautiful, engaging and varied collection influenced by Ukrainian folk traditions, indie pop, jazz and tango. Haunting acapella female vocal harmonies are accompanied by a string quartet and traditional Ukrainian instruments including bandura and okaryna. The vocal harmonies reminded me of a range of other Eastern European folk-influenced music, including the Warsaw Village Band (reviewed here in September 2008) and the Eva Quartet from Bulgaria (reviewed here in February 2014). You can listen to the opening track of the Daughters of Donbas album at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrWmPhH3VWk  

'The Ministry of Time' by Kaliane Bradley

13 March 2026

‘The Ministry of Time’ by Kaliane Bradley (which I've just finished reading as an unabridged audio book narrated by Katie Leung and George Weightman) is a very clever and engaging time travel story that contemplates what it would be like in practical reality to have travelled from a different time. It is set in London in the near future, when time travel has become a possibility. The Ministry has decided to experiment cautiously by bringing individuals from history through a time portal to the present day, carefully choosing people known from historical records to be about to die, so as to avoid any consequences for the timeline from their removal from the past. One of those chosen, Commander Graham Gore, was a sailor on the ill-fated Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage in 1845 - the story of which was familiar to me from the 2018 TV series, 'The Terror', which told the remarkable story of the two ships Erebus and Terror trapped in the ice in the Arctic for several years. The bulk of Kaliane Bradley's book explores how Commander Gore and his fellow 'ex-pats' from different moments in history would cope assimilating into 21st century Britain with the help of their Bridges - individuals from the Ministry assigned to look after them and induct them into modern life. It's a fascinating and beautifully written description of what it might really be like to be placed out of time. Graham Gore's Bridge is the unnamed narrator, a young British Cambodian woman whose job is to introduce the 19th century sailor to modern technology and sensibilities. It's a beautifully drawn, funny and moving odd-couple romance, which kept my attention throughout. But I always felt there must be something more to the plot, expecting further twists resulting from the availability of time travel. And when these twists did arrive they were very effective, genuinely surprising me. But they came very late in the narrative, with the final chapters feeling like a sudden avalanche of exposition that was quite hard to take in. Nevertheless the Ministry of Time is a fascinating and unusual science fiction story exploring serious and adult themes with the time travellers acting as an analogy for immigration, integration and colonialism. It's a brilliant first novel by Bradley and I look forward to seeing what she writes next. 

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

3 March 2026

Our Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert at Spinney Theatre last Saturday featured four pieces by American composers, all written in the 1930s and 1940s, celebrating The Jazz Age and The Golden Age of Hollywood. We opened the concert with Aaron Copland's 'Quiet City' - a remarkable piece for string orchestra with solo parts for trumpet and cor anglais, brilliantly played by NSO members Terry Mayo and Harriet Brown. William Grant Still's 'Symphony No 1: Afro American' was the first symphony by an African American composer to be performed by a major orchestra ion the USA (in 1931). It's a lovely work which pairs up-beat jazz with achingly emotional blues-inspired melodies. I particularly loved the gorgeous slow opening of the final movement with its powerful descending bass line in the tuba. The composer Ferde Grofé is now best remembered as the orchestrator of 'Rhapsody in Blue' by George Gershwin and for his popular 'Grand Canyon Suite'. I hadn't previously encountered his suite '6 Pictures of Hollywood' and enjoyed discovering this comic peak backstage at the making of an imaginary 1930s film musical. Our finale was 'Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture' - Robert Russell Bennett's medley of the classic songs from George Gershwin's folk opera. It's a great arrangement which revels in the wealth of Gershwin's melodies (including 'Summertime', 'Bess, You is My Woman Now', 'I Got Plenty of Nuttin' and 'It Ain't Necessarily So') and toys with the listener - three times sounding as if it has come to a conclusion, only to segue into yet another famous tune. For our celebration of American Voices the NSO was swelled by three harps, four saxophones, banjo and an impressive array of percussion. Our Conductor John Gibbons wonderfully slotted the many jigsaw pieces together on the day: in the concert I think all four pieces were the best we had performed them. But this concert belonged to Terry and Harriet - not only playing their beautiful solo parts in 'Quiet City' but appearing to dominate the rest of the programme too. Both the 'Afro-American Symphony' and 'Porgy and Bess' open with cor anglais solos (followed by a trumpet solo in the Gerswhin) and these and the Grofé feel like showpieces for the trumpets. This really was a fun concert and the cheer from the audience at the end of 'Porgy and Bess' felt well-deserved.