Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Joby Burgess

The second instalment of Nonclassical’s “Pioneers of Percussion” Festival last Saturday at Oval Space in east London paired two classics of the percussion repertoire with two new works, and featured the young and ambitious Multi-Story Orchestra. It is a great testament to the quality of these new works that they not only held their own, but were indeed the highlights of the evening.

The 2012 Tête à Tête opera festival is continuing on the bold course begun in 2007. Over halfway through its breathless 18-day schedule, it all seems as fresh as when it started. Its sixth season contains some typically outlandish operatic gems, most relatively brief in length.

There's classical music, and there's pop. You can throw as many violins into the bridge section as you like, and you can amplify the orchestra all you want as well. It's unfortunate, but a certain divide looks set to stay.

Do you remember when Steve Reich, “America’s greatest living composer”, came to your school concert and you performed his seminal work Clapping Music with the great man? No? Well, Joshua Kellie does. Joshua was one of the talented (and fortunate) St Paul’s School pupils chosen to perform in a concert in honour of the minimalist composer on his 75th birthday.

It’s not every evening that you hear a composition played on two serrated Nigerian Fanta bottles. Nor is it every evening that you hear pieces by Schumann and David Byrne (formerly of Talking Heads) in the same concert. Nor, for that matter, do cellists often sing. As this concert’s title suggested, ‘Uncharted’ at Kings Place was very much a trip into the unknown.

In its 31-year history, ecat (Edinburgh Contemporary Arts Trust) has commissioned over 80 new works and introduced countless emerging performers and composers to the new music public.