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Ben Lunn
INSPIRATIONAL: (L) Musicians take part in a Nakba 76 pro-Pal
Marxist Notes on Music / 19 November 2024
19 November 2024
BEN LUNN draws attention to the way cultural expressions of solidarity with Palestinians in the UK are being censored by Israeli-sponsored lawfare
A memorial against femicide Mexico, in front of the Palacio
Festival Review / 17 July 2024
17 July 2024
BEN LUNN reports from a new music festival in New York, and singles out a breathtaking composition that protests directly against femicide in Mexico
KINDRED SPIRITS: Luigi Nono and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Dar
Marxist Notes on Music / 28 May 2024
28 May 2024
The centenary of his birth is a chance to assess the remarkable combination of Marxism, activism and modernism in the works of Luigi Nono
Features / 15 April 2024
15 April 2024
As the debate around voluntary euthanasia returns, we now have some seriously disturbing evidence from those places where it has become recently legalised to convince us that Britain is not ready, argues BEN LUNN
(L) A scene from Alan Bush's opera Joe Hill, Deutsche Staats
Marxist Notes on Music / 21 March 2024
21 March 2024
BEN LUNN argues that opera has long been an arena of radical ideas and music and shouldn't be an art form lost to the wealthy
HANDLING HORROR: (L to R) Boethius, Luigi Dallapiccola, Mary
Marxist Notes on Music / 8 February 2024
8 February 2024
BEN LUNN remembers the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola, whose embrace of serialism and the 12-tone scale coincided with his rejection with fascism
Music Review / 29 January 2024
29 January 2024
BEN LUNN reviews an afternoon with the champion of Scotland’s composers
LIFE IN PICTURES: (L to R) Gustav Holst, left, and Ralph Vau
Culture / 22 January 2024
22 January 2024
Time to celebrate Gustav Holst, an innovator who helped bring brass band instruments into the orchestra and wrote for working-class musicians
HEROINES AND HEROES: (L) Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho in
Culture / 20 December 2023
20 December 2023
BEN LUNN singles out the remarkable swansong of Kaija Saariaho, and James Weeks’ monumental feat of social organisation
 light and sound performance by public art charity NVA takes
Features / 6 October 2023
6 October 2023
A properly funded arts strategy is needed to create the infrastructure for creative industry to grow, argues BEN LUNN
HITTING THE RIGHT NOTES? (L to R) Cartoon by JAB; Thangam De
MARXIST NOTES ON MUSIC with BEN LUNN / 19 September 2023
19 September 2023
In today’s Britain musicians, like cicadas, lesser spotted woodpeckers or hedgehogs, are rapidly becoming an endangered species
(L) Alan Bush; (R) Alan Bush conducting the Workers' Music A
Culture / 8 August 2023
8 August 2023
BEN LUNN celebrates the ongoing mission of the WMA Summer School to make music-making accessible to working-class people
FINGER ON THE PULSE: Buena Fe perform in front of thousands
Culture / 18 July 2023
18 July 2023
BEN LUNN urges artists to express solidarity when threatened by cancel culture
HANGING BY A THREAD: An audience in Edinburgh appreciates an
Marxist Notes on Music / 23 May 2023
23 May 2023
BEN LUNN draws attention to the desperate straits into which classical music is being pushed by a hack-and-slash government that cares nothing for the culture of the working class
 William Morris aged 53; The Manifesto of the Socialist Leag
Culture / 17 April 2023
17 April 2023
BEN LUNN pleads for a more visionary agenda than simply resisting cuts
The closure of the BBC Singers is a heinous act of cultural
Music / 14 March 2023
14 March 2023
BEN LUNN decodes the misleading rhetoric by which the BBC masks a philistine Tory agenda in the arts
ON SONG: (L to R) On the picket line with fellow composers 1
Music / 14 February 2023
14 February 2023
BEN LUNN celebrates the beautiful and subversive music of Eddie McGuire
(L to R) Lincoln Cathedral in the 17th centiry and William B
Ben Lunn: Marxist Notes on Music / 31 January 2023
31 January 2023
On the revolutionary value of personal integrity in an English composer of the late Renaissance
HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: Scottish contemporary dance artis
Culture / 2 January 2023
2 January 2023
Tone-deaf budget embarrasses and insults in equal measure
Music / 13 November 2022
13 November 2022
New releases from Alex Paxton, Spaces Unfolding and Mihailo Trandafilovski
Apartment House, at Cafe Oto, play Femenine by Julius Eastma
Ben Lunn's Marxist Notes on Music / 7 November 2022
7 November 2022
The Tory slash-and-burn approach to the arts poses deathly threat to some of the most revered institutions in this country
The Royal Air Force band at the state funeral of Queen Eliza
Culture / 21 September 2022
21 September 2022
Musings on the role of music at the royal funeral and how a democratisation of this art form should have our highest concern as the nations' cultural landscapes depend on it
Alongside the wonderful music, there was a great comradery
Culture / 25 August 2022
25 August 2022
The edifying spirit of the Workers’ Music Association (WMA) Summer School remains intact as it returns after the pandemic
Music / 8 August 2022
8 August 2022
New releases from Bryn Harrison, Matthew Whiteside and Sylvia Lim