We have strange ways of marking the festive season. In Cornwall, wassailers bang pots and bless the trees with cider. In Stonehaven, the streets are filled with fireballs. And in another peculiar folk tradition, Radio 4 hands the reins of the Today programme to “guest editors”. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, those trusted with shaping the news agenda included ex-Top Gear presenter James May and pop star Ellie Goulding.
COMPOSER MICHAEL FINNISSY’S CAREER has been a lifelong rejection of the divisions drawn up in and around the world of classical music. Growing up in London in the 1960s, Finnissy did not pursue academic training in composition until the age of eighteen, and was influenced as much by Hockney, Rauschenberg, Ginsberg, Genet, and Godard as by the wide range of music that he absorbed from public libraries, from family and friends, and from the radio. In the years since, his large body of compositions has referenced folk, jazz, spirituals, and the European avant-garde, his approach to music at once