VICTORIA STRING QUARTET by Graham Marshall The Victoria String Quartet contains some of the most experienced chamber musicians in the UK. The four players have performed together in different ensembles for many years, and they boast an impressive pedigree, having variously played in The Chillingirian Quartet, The Sorrel Quartet and the Psappha Ensemble to name […]
ALCHEMY, FUNDING AND FUSION Back in the UK I was occasionally involved in successful crowd funding campaigns. For instance, we raised a required six thousand pounds to script, cast, direct and produce a film to be used in schools to examine the notion of hate crimes and how to reduce them. I recall with great […]
José Saramago and a home in Tias. The moment the tour guide invites you over the threshold of the place where José Saramago once lived, you know you are entering a house of books; a house that was obviously his place of work, and also obviously his place of relaxation. To be shown round the […]
ISLAND ART Around this time last year, as I collated a review, for the all across the arts pages on the Lanzarote Information web site, of the myriad arts and culture events that had taken place on the island over the previous twelve months, I was struck by how much my love of the arts […]
YOU DON´T NEED WORDS TO SAY Throughout the past four years, whilst I have been living here on Lanzarote, a former member of a writing group I ran in the UK has stayed in touch via e mail and her prodigious facebook outpourings. Katie Haigh has some fairly severe physical ailments and even occasional […]
FOOD FESTIVAL & A TASTE OF THE FUTURE The Annual Festival Enogastronomy Saborea Lanzarote: 2019 A gastronomical event was always included as part of the annual Rochdale Feel Good arts and cultural Festival in the years I spent covering it for all across the arts in The Rochdale Observer. Robin Parker and myself were jointly […]
ALL ART HAS ITS PLACE Greater love hath no man for his readers than to write an article when he could have been exploring his local landscape to catch glimpses of Angelina Jolie (pictured above). This week she and her co-stars, Salma Hayek, Richard Madden and Rob Stark, have been filming on Fuerteventura and Tenerife, […]
LENDANEAR: NOW AND THEN I fell in love with poetry through listening to the lyrics of old songs my dad would sing as he drove the family on weekend trips throughout my childhood such as On The Street Where You Live, Unforgettable and A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square. In one of my early jobs […]
SARA DEL SALINAS I have no idea if the Spanish have a phrase that is in any way equivalent in meaning or nuance to the English idiomatic saying of ´take it with a pinch of salt.´ In fact, when I first pondered the appropriateness of the phrase for this article, I realised I wasn´t even […]
HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE I spent the first half of what I laughingly call my ´career´ in the UK, writing songs with my musical partner Colin Lever. Calling ourselves Lendanear we played the folk circuit in the North West of England and recorded three folksy / country-ish contemporary albums. We wrote about fifty […]
SIDETRACKS & DETOURS: 7 / 12 / 25 classical, jazz, folk, rock, americana; songwriters & invisible angels7th December 2025 - 7:00 am
SIDETRACKS & DETOURS Pass It On 2/11/2025 Jenny Bray, Nash and Asher, Opus 222nd November 2025 - 7:00 am
A LITTLE BUNDLE OF SUMMER. sidetracks & detours 3rd September 2025 featuring Jazz Artist, Jenny Bray. Broadcaster and writer, Steve Bewick, Expo Folk and Sound Roots3rd September 2025 - 7:00 am