The Victorian Gothic (with 1970s additions) maze of Cheltenham Ladies’ College is a far cry from the sun-blasted soundstages of Los Angeles, particularly at this time of year when it’s surrounded by deep piles of swirling autumn leaves. Nevertheless, this past week saw the high-ceilinged, wood-panelled College corridors filled with over 400 scriptwriters, both aspiring and established, rushing to the seminars, panels and pitching sessions offered as part of the Cheltenham Screenwriters' Festival, the only event of its type in the UK.

A continuing series celebrating musicians' birthdays.

6 November 1949: Virtuoso Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval co-founded Irakere with pianist Chucho Valdez in Havana. This is in 1988, after Sandoval had set up his own band, but before he defected. His technical ability is astonishing, even if his tendencies to be a terrible show-off only got worse once he left Cuba.

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The first in a new series that celebrates musicians born this week:

31 October 1896: Ethel Waters sings "Am I Blue" from the 1929 film On with the Show, actually the first sound film with colour, although only black and white copies have survived (click below, and then click on the link to YouTube).

Outwardly the Morgan Library & Museum is a citadel of sedateness - inside it may be the locus of turbulence. Thirteen years ago I walked around one of the rooms with the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, on whom I was writing a profile. She was then starring in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre, and it made sense for us to look at the Morgan’s exhibition of Brontë juvenilia together. She seemed vaguely haunted by the show; I know I was.

Artsdeskers recommend these sites and visit them often

www.ballet.co.uk - ballet fans' website run by Bruce Marriott

http://www.charliegillett.com/ Great site by veteran DJ with lively Forum. Mainly world music.

http://www.therestisnoise.com/ Personal site of the New Yorker music critic Alex Ross.

Fleeting snippets of Vaslav Nijinsky apparently dancing on primitive film do, astonishingly, seem to capture his legendary liquidity of movement and capacity for making stillness arresting. But are they real?