Be a soloist: take responsibility for yourself. These are not maxims often encountered in musical ensembles where unity of purpose and execution is valued, but they lie behind the philosophy and sheer style of Ensemble InterContemporain, which Pierre Boulez founded in his own image to show confidence in the necessity and vitality of a Modernism always under threat when an easy life and easy listening are so easily bought.

“I need to get a new gimmick.” Joyce DiDonato hobbled her way onto Milton Court’s stage last night, warning her audience to expect a seated performance owing to a sprained ankle. It was just six years ago she famously broke her leg during a performance of Rossini’s Il Barbiere at Covent Garden, but now, as then, she continued with no obvious dimming of intensity or focus.

After the second piece of last night's triple bill, Hofesh Shechter's Untouchable in its world premiere, my friend asked me why it had been put on the programme with the first piece, George Balanchines 1946 Four Temperaments. He wondered if there was some structural or thematic connection that he had missed between the two wildly different pieces. The Balanchine speaks obviously to the bill's last item, Kenneth MacMillan's 1966 Song of the Earth; both pair a cool neoclassical choreographic idiom with deeply felt but vaguely expressed melancholy.

Warning! Spoilers ahead, etc… Bearing in mind the high-octane thrills of recent Marvel forays into cinema, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a surprisingly unshowy show. Some have taken this to be a good thing, though I suspect these people simply don’t like comic book adaptations or superheroes much. Me? I love comic-book characters – preferably covered in spandex and the sweat of battle. I want to see them have a massive scrap and fight personal demons along with extraterrestrial threats and improbably accented supervillains.

The premise of last night’s world première made so much sense that one almost wondered why nobody had done it before now. Commissioned by the Royal Opera House and in its downstairs Linbury space, Shobana Jeyasingh, a classically-trained Indian dancer and now director of her own contemporary dance company, would respond to the 19th-century ballet about an Indian temple dancer, La Bayadère, which has wonderful choreography but presents an entirely Western, Orientalist vision of the “exotic” east.

After waiting a quarter of a century for Blancmange’s last album, 2011’s Blanc Burn, this new offering, effectively a Neil Arthur solo project, almost feels like a rush release. There’s a much changed visual aesthetic – gone is the stylised, Fifties cover kitsch, replaced by something much more stark and impenetrable. Now, I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but what about CDs?

There’s a danger in an artist having their work reinterpreted that the end result will be little more than a rough outline of the original. Look at Metallica’s axe job on the Velvet Underground for instance. Still, on the bright side, at least they increased the band’s "reach" to include jocks and morons.

The title has it about right: no matter what it is they are busily acquiring, collectors seem to be an obsessive bunch, and their obsessions can achieve quite magnificent proportions. The stereotyped image of the collector as a socially challenged monomaniac doesn’t really fit with the popular understanding of the artistic temperament, though.

Some have suggested that the title of Panda Bear’s fifth studio album means this could be the last we hear of Noah Lennox’s musical alter ego. If he is going, he’s certainly not doing it quietly, as this follow up to 2011’s Tomboy takes the intense sophistication of that album, hits delete and replaces it with day-glo drumbreaks and crayon-coloured consonance that dazzle and amaze like a disco ball shooting rainbows.

Last month, Theo Parrish released his album, American Intelligence, on vinyl and CD. Now it’s available on digital, but make sure you’ve got room on your hard drive – it’s long. Seriously, marathons have been run quicker than the two hours and three minutes here.