Category: Features

December 4, 2016 / Features - Archive

Seconds after we crawled out of the primordial slime the first-ever singer had barely begun to sing when someone started banging on a tree-trunk with a pair of branches. Before long our proto-drummer discovered a hollow log made a more resonant sound than a solid one, and soon enough this…

November 24, 2016 / Features - Archive

As a girl Ingrid Jensen desperately wanted to be a singer, but she was too shy. Not wanting to give up on music altogether, her solution was to aim to be another kind of vocalist, via an instrument. Eventually she tried the trumpet. “Oh!” she recalls thinking. “You can combine…

August 15, 2016 / Features - Archive

Heard any Bach on a banjo lately? If that conjures up a tinny twanging to drive you screaming from the room try a dose of Bela Fleck. Who else uses the much-maligned instrument to play Bach and Bartok, to duet with jazz maestro Chick Corea or to colour the desert-tinged…