I am pretty sure you know the famous Alabama Song, with its provocative lyrics. The tune brings back the decadence and perversion of early 20th century Berlin, conjuring the zest of Marlene Dietrich. It has been sung by a number

We have been celebrating Chopin’s bicentenary for the whole of this year. Numerous articles have been written, prominent pianists have been performing his music all over the world, major festivals have featured special Chopin days, not to mention all the

A very close family friend of ours who was a prominent and extremely successful barrister recently decided to retire to go back to school. He has chosen to study archaeology, one of his passions, and has just started his first

When bass vocalist Alexei Tanovitsky visited Hong Kong to perform Wagner’s Die Walküre, he was heard coughing and choking onstage. Similarly, following his concert in Hong Kong, Tom Jones was forced to cancel the remainder of his Asian tour due to

E15 is the name that has been given to the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, by journalists who were struggling to pronounce the full name properly. The nickname is derived from the somewhat daunting number of letters that come after the E.

I became a Bach fanatic in the late seventies when I discovered Glenn Gould, though I came to appreciate Bach’s choral music at a much later stage, first with the Cantatas, then the Mass in B Minor and lastly, the

No, I did not go to the Hong Kong Stadium, decked out in fancy dress, shouting and singing, flag in my left hand, can of beer in my right. In fact, I was sitting in front of my computer, trying

I met my dear friend Guy in the early ’80s in Paris. We were young, innocent (at the very least, I was), fearless and full of foolish dreams… and then I moved to Hong Kong. Over the past 20 years,