In the year of the accelerating global enshittification of everything, I managed to find some joy in messing with musical instruments in one way or another.
The pirate luthier workshop has been busy throughout the year, with 12 violins, 2 guitars, 2 cellos coming in, as well as a small kora and a lute-like instrument made from a coconut shell yet to be identified. I've recently braved the challenge of opening up instruments, practicing the procedure on violin number 13:
and cello number 2 (a 3/4 from freegle in very poor condition) before applying it to more interesting instruments. Next step is to glue and patch up the cracks, oh and eventually I'll have to stick the instruments together again. Watch this space.
I'm especially excited when I discover old (from the 1960s or earlier) European instruments. Highlights this year include my new favourite violin, my new session violin, and a 19th century cello. The instruments list at the end of this entry is likely the last one where I include almost everything (give or take a kora and a coconut lute), and in the new year I will have to figure out a mechanism to archive the older entries and keep the length of the list to a manageable size.
In terms of music making, the holiday chamber groups have become a regular thing this year, covering nearly all of the Wednesdays that didn't have orchestral playing. The chamber music collection is growing more slowly these days, as I keep finding things that I own already, such as the Mozart and Haydn quartets. There has also been another FOFO orchestral playday with another Farrenc piece (the overture) and we borrowed last year's Farrenc symphony for a term to play it at Cowley at one of our feature evenings.
There have been a few EuroPlus sessions at the bandstand, but by the time autumn came around, the session merged into the Bal minuscule which now happens on the fourth Sunday of every month (except December). The Euro session has now moved to the Half Moon which is much more convenient for me, and I'm loving the new session at the Oxford Blue which is also within easy reach. I also love the Sunday sessions at the Lamb & Flag - this US based ethnographer studying British pubs on his summer holiday caught a second of me playing fiddle in his short video clip.
After hearing an inspiring oud recital in October, I've finally managed to get my head round the playing of the oud I bought a few years ago - it is basically an upside-down cello, with the four melody strings going ADGC and the bass strings just repeating the DG an octave below. As the string length is similar to the cello, the fingerings work, they are just mirrored.
I completed the second season of my lost cities blog series. Using the series as a travel guide for trips with Deutschlandticket, I have explored Idstein, Gütersloh and Hamborn this year, as well as revisiting Wuppertal (where I explored the old new town hall) and Münster.
During last year's November visit to Düsseldorf I invested in a Gildepass which gives you access to cheaper tickets in arthouse cinemas. During the one-year running time of the pass I have used it 12 times (making an effort to also attend the other local cinemas that accept it, not just the one in my street), and seen some amazing European movies of the sort that nowadays don't get shown in the UK any more. Including: Mü & Kandinsky, Oxana, La venue de l'avenir, Franz, as well as two that later actually did make it to the UK, namely From Hilde with Love and The Marching band.
A selfie from the fleamarket at Aachener Platz, Düsseldorf.
There has also been a full set of 24 features in Current Biology again, listed in this Mastodon thread. And I did get some really interesting books to review for C&I, while also making an effort to review on this blog most of the books I just read for fun.
I did not review Cory Doctorow's book "Enshittification" which I am sure is excellent (judging from the excerpt published in the Guardian), but I did manage to use his word in my review of the book How to think about AI, as AI has been the turbocharger that sent enshittification into overdrive this year. Ooops. looks like the word has been edited out at the last minute. Maybe by some enshittifying AI that didn't like being called out.
updated 2.1.2026 to add the Lamb & Flag sessions and the last sentence.
Previous year reviews (I don't always write one):
2024
2022
2021
2018
2017
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