The Cottier Chamber Project is coming to feel increasingly like Glasgow’s answer to the Proms. If the Proms took place in a former church high on shabby-chic charm, that is. And if they ran for just three weeks. And only covered chamber music.

Like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, who died this week, was both a defining and divisive figure in jazz history. His highly individual and virtuosic playing and his development of a non-harmonic style of improvisation and composition have remained milestones in the development of modern jazz. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, and developing as a musician in a series of R&B bands in Los Angeles, he studied musical theory privately, initially meeting widespread ridicule whenever he proposed his novel techniques.

Christopher Lee died this week, aged 93. It’s strange that an actor best known for horror films, for characters that were fiendish and diabolical, should be so cherished a part of the British cultural landscape. That fact speaks volumes for the charisma and charm, as well as craft of Lee’s performances, and for the intelligence, grace and wit of the man in person.

If the honours system is used to award deserving individuals, its other job is to provide an aspirational marker for the country as a whole. This, it tells us twice a year, is who we want to be: inclusive, non-sexist, colour-blind. From the look of the awards dished out in the arts for the Queen’s birthday honours list, in the summer of 2015 it looks very much as if we want to be a society which favours male privilege. Don’t hold the front page.

Hosted by self-confessed jazz nut John Thomson, a.k.a. The Fast Show's “Jazz Club” presenter Louis Balfour, the winners of this year's Jazz FM Awards were announced on Wednesday evening in the atmospheric setting of the Great Halls at Vinopolis.

As a child back in Lithuania, I always wanted to be an actor, but opera has taken me in a different direction – though recently it has opened up doors for the big screen and TV. This month Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail is being beamed live from Glyndebourne Festival into cinemas across the globe with simultaneous streaming live online to some 100,000 people (more than would attend the whole summer festival). Earlier this year, I was filming for a forthcoming documentary – La Traviata: Love, Death and Divas.

If this were only the usual international festival – and it’s still a big “only” where Bergen’s flagship fortnight of theatre, dance, art and music is concerned – it might not be easy to justify swanning off to one of the most beautifully situated cities in the world. What drew me in the programme, though, were two unique and probably unrepeatable concerts put together by local boy made more than good Leif Ove Andsnes.

More than anywhere else, the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music has been the place where I have gone annually for most of the last 20 years to retune my ears, to find inspiration and connections, and to discover new international music. For fans, it was always more than a mere music festival; there was a visionary, idealistic element. The founder, Faouzi Skali, is a Sufi who started the festival as a response to the first Gulf war and invited musicians, thinkers and practitioners from all religious persuasions as a counterpoint to extremism and intolerance elsewhere.

Reggie Watts has a few things to say about Norway. In Bergen to play Natjazz, the annual jazz festival, he’s concerned about the local predilection for fish soup. Be careful, he warns, it can be dangerously hot. Then there are trolls and the Norwegian crispbread knekkebrød, which is especially impressive as it can keep fillings dry. Sandwiches can be eaten in the rain – and it rains in Bergen. A lot. Watts is fascinated by the countryside cabins Norwegians take off to in the summer. Most of all though, the word Norway distracts him.

There’s a lot of Seventies revivalism in the ether. Fleetwood Mac are back as a famous five after many years asunder. 10cc have on at the Albert Hall, although one astutely remarked that they really should have been billed 2.5cc. In When Pop Ruled My Life, the recent BBC Four documentary about fandom, it was lear that the Bay City Rollers are still very much a going concern. And this week it was announced that three titans of glamrock would stomp once again on British boards. They include The Rubettes, a band coyly billing themselves Mud 2 and – holy of holies – The Sweet.