There’s retro and there’s retro. Some music – what you might call the Oasis tendency – simply reproduces the obvious signifiers of the past as signposts of cool. But there’s other stuff that shows deep understanding of both the technique and the spirit of what came before, that really taps into the same wellsprings that created the sound it’s replicating in the first place.

The Hermes Experiment are the cool kids of the contemporary music school, who have brought a "build-your-own-repertoire" approach to generating music for their unique combination of soprano, clarinet, harp and double bass. As their name would suggest, they are firmly in the experimental tradition, using improvisation, extended techniques and graphic scores.

London’s Morton Valence are one of those bands music journos love, not that it’s done their career much good. I’ve bigged them up a few times, myself, starting at least a decade ago, but widespread critical acclaim has not added up to countrywide recognition. They are now up to album eight, still based around core duo Anne Gilpin and ex-Alabama 3 dude Robert “Hacker” Jessett, and their latest album is as consistently pin-sharp as everything else they’ve done. If only more would hear it!

Sullivan’s Overture to The Yeomen of the Guard isn’t quite the equal of Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger – what is? – but its brass-rich brilliance and wholesome ceremonials wouldn’t have been possible without that great example. Cue the first of director Jo Davies’s missteps as a 1950s newsreel gives us the “backstory” of alleged spy Colonel Fairfax’s imprisonment: loud broadcast voice over Chris Hopkins’ already speedy account is a big mistake.

I’ve not heard a didgeridoo in concert before so was grateful to the Australian Chamber Orchestra for giving me the opportunity, as part of a busy programme at Milton Court last night. Didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton was put alongside Beethoven, Janáček and others as the touring string orchestra, led by Richard Tognetti, settled into a three-day Barbican residency.

I’ll confess to a certain schadenfreude when the American televangelists who seemed so foreign to us Brits were led away to be papped on their perp walks, ministers in manacles: One big name after another skewered on their own hubris, gulling the gullible out of their savings and shoe-horning right-wing ideologues into political and judicial office. Thank God (ironically) that we’re too smart for that kind of nonsense in Europe. 

How’s that turning out then? 

As its title suggests, Peter Gill’s Something in the Air is an elusive piece – it’s about catching at instinct, responding to intuition, bringing together overlapping hints of present and past lives. From these different stories, spun out of lived experience and imagination equally, the octogenarian playwright leaves the audience to craft a whole.

This is the third time I’ve heard Path of Miracles live this year and I’d happily hear it another three times before Christmas. I reviewed the amateur Elysian Singers sing it in February, and the BBC Singers took it on for the first time in May – but last night’s triumphant version by Tenebrae was surely the best of the lot.

Among those making her Cambridge Folk Festival on the diminutive Club Stage back in the summer was Angeline Morrison, a Birmingham-born singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who these days makes her home in Cornwall, drawn at least in part by its folk music. Her short solo performance was noteworthy, and earlier this month it was announced that Morrison has been awarded the Christian Raphael Prize 2022, presented in association with the Festival.

The London Film Festival ended with the announcement of assorted prizes, all well-deserved. My colleague Demetrios Matheou has already written here about the Chilean political thriller, 1976, which won Best First Feature, and we’ll be writing in depth about the  Best Film winner, the Austrian historical drama Corsage, when it opens at the end of the year.