It's not every night that you open a gig for Nick Cave! A truly wonderful concert, intimate and moving. And the beautiful surroundings of St. Bart's made it even more special. One to remember for a long time to come.

The joint conference of the RMA, SMI, and EADH (Queen's University Belfast, 29 Aug-1 Sept 2026) is extending its proposals deadline to noon (BST) on Friday 2 January 2026, as it has come to our attention that one key adjacent support network has not had a chance to disseminate news of the call.

🚨 NEWS!🚨 For everyone attending the Research Students’ Conference next month, due to an extended Christmas shutdown at BCU (our associated university), the last day of booking is Thursday 18th December.

Priceless

we can kill them all if we just work together and ✨believe💫

I have my last lecture of term today! It feels like it's been an especially long Autumn term.

(blowing the dust off my youtube channel to re-share a video) Here's my 7-minute video on the 'Word' chord in 'O Come, All Ye Faithful' www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXpG...

My next book has a presence on the Boydell & Brewer website. 'Constructing Polish Musical Identities outside Poland since 1880: Sounding "Polish"'. Available Spring 2026! boydellandbrewer.com/book/constru...

For the first time ever in my career, I have just clicked 'send' on an application for promotion. Time to have a cup of tea and de-stress, just a bit... (before then heading into work to run a concert this evening)

The Brexit project - via a very obviously empirical reality - is losing any economic, socially and political narrative that held up, to leave naked it's pure nationalistic, racist, England-centric rotten core.

'Holocaust survivors call on Nigel Farage to apologise over alleged antisemitic comments' www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

From a friend: a cinema near me was offering 'Baby Club' tickets to see the 'Nuremberg' film. It's certified '15' and bears the warning that it features "images of real dead bodies". It somehow doesn't scream 'child-friendly' to me?

I am referencing my own writing and other media appearances in a lecture tomorrow morning. I always show this image in lectures any time I have to reference my own writing.

one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.

"Higher education generated £24bn in export earnings for the UK in 2022-23, far above aircraft manufacturing with £12bn, legal services with £9.5bn and telecoms with £8.8bn." #HigherEd www.theguardian.com/education/20...

The simplest definition of "enshittification" is this: Google has made it ridiculously difficult to google things and get a genuinely useful result.

RMA statement on the proposed suspension of recruitment to all UG music programmes at the University of Nottingham: www.rma.ac.uk/2025/11/17/s...

Two newly discovered Bach keyboard works are premiering in 1 hour

There is no viable path toward financial stability for anything in AI. It’s all gonna collapse and our economy is going to tank as a result of so many institutions carelessly hedging their bets on it.

Prof. Katherine Butler Schofield awarded the AMS Otto Kindledey Award https://www.rma.ac.uk/2025/11/13/prof-katherine-butler-schofield-awarded-the-ams-otto-kindledey-award/

‘BBC apologise to Trump: “We asked Panorama to edit one of your speeches to make it make sense, but they couldn’t”’

Student Committee Election - Call for Candidates https://www.rma.ac.uk/2025/11/12/student-committee-election-call-for-candidates-3/

Reminder: If you use generative AI for *any of your writing tasks* you are a Slopper not a writer and should be ashamed of yourself. The end.

I *still* believe that the BBC is excellent, despite its ever growing list of flaws. *When* it's sold off for parts future generations won't know what they missed

The Today Programme.

A university without arts and languages is not a university.

PETITION HERE: Stop the suspension of undergraduate music courses at The University of Nottingham @uniofnottingham.bsky.social www.change.org/p/stop-the-s...

Horrific, stupid news from @uniofnottingham.bsky.social — they are closing their music department. Apparently they all found out suddently in a meeting yesterday. It is one of the best music departments in the country — solidarity with my colleagues and their students www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Gonna need someone to check the dictionary definition of 'to pre-empt' because what else is this but pre-empting the decision of Council? You'd hope those Council members don't appreciate having their hands tied like this. Because this is proper governance failure.

Only a few years ago @uniofnottingham.bsky.social liked to call themselves "Britain's global university". What kind of global institution stops teaching languages?

Even the BBC disapproves...

Wrote about this slow, miserable drift away from modern languages for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social last year. This week's curriculum review won't help either. www.thenewworld.co.uk/losing-the-p...

This is dire! We need music. We also (it goes without saying) need modern languages. Music and modern languages were my late father's absolute passions - he taught both, and he'll be turning in his grave. #Nottingham #NotMusic! #NotModernLanguages!

...Just... woah. My musician dad and uncle got their music degrees from Nottingham 65 years ago. It's a department with a long and proud history. Awful news.

Well this is awful news: tinyurl.com/yr65mjkx 'All modern language and music courses are being suspended for new students at the University of Nottingham.' Nottingham friends: please be assured that we will join you in protesting against this decision in the strongest possible terms. Solidarity.

I tend to agree with this. If AI works like its cheerleaders claim/hope it will - replacing whole swathes of human labour - then they need a real economic plan for dealing with the consequences of that. This can only mean heavily redistributing the profits.

“The researchers aim to show that the ‘inevitability’ of AI is just a marketing frame perpetrated by the industry and that pushback is a lot more possible than we often see.” Yes!

Statement on the Proposed Cancellation of the Initial Teacher Training Bursary for Music https://www.rma.ac.uk/2025/10/31/statement-on-the-proposed-cancellation-of-the-initial-teacher-training-bursary-for-music/

University of Glasgow Research Colloquia in Music Glasgow hosts a series of colloquia on behalf of the Royal Musical Association featuring national and international guest speakers, along with staff and postgraduate students.

The tech right is at once obsessed with Tolkien and utterly unable to comprehend what his books are actually about

On the train on my way into town for this. Looking forward to a day of great papers!

Overcrowded lectures. Growing admin. Unpredictable numbers. On LBC last night, Jo Grady spoke about how higher education workloads are becoming inherently stressful. This ballot is our chance to say: enough. Vote YES for manageable workloads and fair pay. #WeAreTheUniversity #UCU

Yet again, we can't afford to let LLMs become a source of epistemic grounding for society.

After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results: - AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2% - ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1% - ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%

Annnd into work for 8am, ready for a 12-hour day (finishing around 8pm). Two lectures, office hours, meetings, emails, some actual writing (!), but, most (genuinely) exciting of all - SMA seminar this evening, starting 6pm UK time: I'm joining an online panel analysing Schnittke's Third Quartet!

Very excited for this Saturday, hosting the 2025 Conference for the Slavonic And East European Music Study Group (SEEM) of @basees.bsky.social! Very much looking forward to welcoming brilliant researchers to Royal Holloway and sharing our beautiful central London campus.

My recent approach, once I can tell that something is AI written: "If you can't be bothered to write it, I won't bother to read it." Reading (especially non-fiction) is an act of trust between the reader and the author. Yes, even work emails, blogs, reports, etc.

"The AI Revolution has started" declares a lady on LinkedIn. "Welcome to the AI Age. How does that make you feel?" It makes me feel that people who have invested an awful lot of money in a very dodgy and unethical technology are starting worry that 'Fetch' simply won't happen.

'That is one big pile of shit' (Jurassic Park, 1993)