Instrument: Percussion ensemble

Steve Reich and Julia Wolfe feature in Colin Currie Quartet's Full Dark Ride at London's Kings Place, to launch the “Sound Unwrapped” extravaganza. 

With works by Carter, Reich, Taira and Bartók, the young percussion trio gives us a fine survey of the past century’s musical variety.

His fans presented him with not one but two impromptu birthday serenades before and after the Brahms. "I'm getting old," Gustavo admitted ruefully to his public. He's only 36. 

It takes artistic courage to devote almost a whole concert to music associated with cinema, but then Richard Tognetti, the artistic director and concert master of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, never lacked creative thinking or musical audacity. 

Ruth Mackenzie, Holland Festival’s vivacious and invigorating new director, closed her first edition with a twelve hour Prom, reinventing it as a mini-festival at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.

Piano sisters Katia and Marielle, with the help of Kalakan, a trio of basque musicians, give us varied melodies, rhythms, colours of the musical horizon. It's a concert which achieves remarkable consistency in spite of its eclectic programme.