What do you do?” The Outline asked in 2019. “I’m a podcaster–vlogger–model–DJ,” they replied, rhetorically and hyphenatedly. The gig economy has brought with it a host of new containers (like the egregious “multi-hyphenate”) to describe artists who traverse multiple creative pursuits—artists who a generation ago might have been called a dandy, a flâneur, or, more […]
Author Archives: Hugh Morris
Hugh Morris is a freelance writer and editor based in London.
Posted inPlaylist
A March Madness Playlist
“What if we did a playlist of 32 musical marches to tie in with March Madness?” asked one VAN editor who definitely understands sportsball and did not have to google how many teams are in a bracket (or when March Madness takes place). As classical-music-cartoonish as the idea sounded, it did get us thinking about […]
Posted inBreaking
Agility, Fragility
Much like Harrison Birtwistle, I feel like I’m always writing the same piece, albeit one that’s more wordy, more political, and much more depressing. Following the lead of Arts Council England, who made a mess of both the announcement and communication of their National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) funding reallocations in November, the BBC too garnished […]
Posted inEssay
In For a Pound
09:31 11/2/2022 It’s a sunny, fall day in Lyon, and an email appears reminding me that I am young. To be young in the opera world is to enter a transient realm, between the strictly policed age brackets of young artist programs, and an audience demographic fetishized by arts marketers; where young can mean anything […]
Posted inPages Turned
Fabric of Her World
“As with Ethel, Rebecca’s friendships were the very fabric of her world,” writes the musicologist Leah Broad in Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World. Queer academia’s gleeful dismantling of history’s “just friends” trope has ventured as far as the Gen Z mainstream, with Atlanta TikToker Oublaire’s sage reminder that “History Hates Lovers.” (“Historians […]
Posted inPages Turned
Pianist of the Century
“Igor Levit’s career is a stark demonstration of the dissolving of boundaries between art and commerce, journalism and public relations,” wrote Hartmut Welscher in an article for VAN in 2020. One can add publishing to the ever-growing list of formats whose traditional ethical boundaries Levit has blurred, as House Concert, written by Florian Zinnecker under […]
Posted inInterview
Transience
The composer Rebecca Saunders was not where I imagined her to be. Plans for a meeting in person were moved online, owing to her retreat to the countryside to complete a deadline. So it was a surprise when Saunders appeared, not in some remote rural studio, but in her Berlin flat. “I think a lot […]
Posted inBreaking
Level Out, Level Down
Today’s offer of investment from Arts Council [sic] of £17 million over the next three years will allow us to increase our national presence by creating a new base out of London, potentially in Manchester.” That last Friday’s public statement from English National Opera was spun by some as a successful outcome sums up the […]
Posted inReview
Love, Anger, Agency
Kate Molleson begins Sound within Sound: Opening Our Ears to the Twentieth Century with a loud call for change. “I write this book out of love and anger. The love, because I want to shout from the rooftops that classical music is gripping, essential, personally and politically game changing. The anger, because I can’t shout proudly about a […]
Posted inReport
The Pitch of Living
“I’ve been interested in the 432 Hz conspiracy theories for a while,” began an email from my editor at VAN. “Would you like to spend some time using the 432 Player, a website that adjusts all your music to 432 Hz?” I consider myself a very online person, and yet, through a mixture of willful […]