David Matthews – composer in residence at next month’s Hampstead and Highgate Festival – tells Gerald Isaaman he is wants to return classical music to the masses

CLASSICAL music has lost its lure for many people, who feel in particular that today’s new music is too difficult to contemplate and even believe that composers themselves are strictly odd people.
That’s the view of David Matthews, the eminent composer in residence at next month’s Hampstead and Highgate Festival, which will be launched with a Hampstead Parish Church concert that promotes the world premiere of a new cello piece he has written as a festival commission.
And it is because he believes that the festival helps to break down musical barriers that he has become an admirer of George Vass, the festival’s energetic artistic director, and his ambitions to provide a meeting place for artistes and public alike.

An exhitbition reveals there is nothing new about stirring up hatred over strangers, writes Frank Dobson

IT'S often said there is nothing new under the sun. When it comes to stirring up hatred against strangers, that is certainly true.
Whether you believe me or not, I suggest you visit the special exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Albert Street.
Entitled Closing the Door? Immigrants to Britain 1905-2005, it details a century of anti-immigrant campaigns and law making. It sets out the arguments used by the prejudice mongers in every decade, ranging from attacks on Jews and other refugees from eastern Europe 100 years ago to asylum seekers today. And it spells out the words they have used.
Virtually every bigoted phrase, every intolerant argument has been recycled again and again. The incomers are almost always portrayed as destitute, idle, disease-ridden and a threat to the British way of life.

After a life studying jazz, Jim Godbolt has channelled his knowledge into a detailed volume, writes Joel Taylor

WHEN Jim Godbolt suggested to a specialist record label he put together a CD box set incorporating the best of more than 30 years of British jazz to coincide with the republishing of his seminal History of Jazz in Britain 1919-1950, it seems as though he was taken a bit by surprise when they agreed.
Sitting in his fourth floor flat in Lissenden Gardens, Dartmouth Park, where he has lived for 30 years, Jim, now 82, rubs his forehead, seemingly remembering the sleepless nights that he must have gone through as he tried to whittle down thousands of recordings to just 100 tracks.

THINK of famous art these days and you’re probably as likely to think of dead sheep and soiled underwear as the Mona Lisa.
But that could all change if one woman has her way. When Agi Katz, 66-year-old Hungarian émigré and founder of the Boundary Gallery in St John’s Wood, commented on the lack of good figurative art coming from art schools one year ago, she had little idea where her comment would lead.
The chance remark sparked the offer of a donation of £10,000 from a long-term client – who wants to remain anonymous – to set up a prize specifically for students of figurative art.
And last week, first, second and joint third prize winners for the new Boundary Prize for Figurative Art were announced at the gallery – with the quality of the entries showing that figurative art is far from dead.
Figurative art is art that focuses traditionally on the human form or recognisable objects, as opposed to abstract or conceptual art.