Tom Service

Tom Service writes about music for the Guardian

• This image released by Lionsgate shows Ryan Gosling, right, and Emma Stone in a scene from, "La La Land." The Producers Guild of America has nominated awards season favorites "La La Land," "Moonlight" and "Manchester by the Sea" for its top award, as well as the R-rated superhero film "Deadpool." Winners will be announced in a Jan. 28 ceremony in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Dale Robinette/Lionsgate via AP)

  Tom Service on music

  Is there a pianist in the house? How audience members – and fellow musicians – have saved the show

  Tom Service

  A Sydney screening of La La Land with live orchestra was rescued by a brave (and skilled) amateur pianist. What happens when classical performers, or their instruments, suddenly collapse? Plus, Tavener’s mystic pantomime finally gets to the stage

• Conductor Daniel Harding

  Tom Service on music

  Risk-taking, rigour and radicalism – Daniel Harding is an exciting prospect for Los Angeles

  Tom Service
• A dark tower rises through mist above Battersea Bridge with a small figure, with lights glimmering across water

  Tom Service on music

  Fantastic visions and cosmic rhythms: how Whistler is making me see – and hear – differently

  Tom Service
• Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1910 credit - Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust

  Tom Service on music

  A ‘lost’ Vaughan Williams song is exciting news but what else remains to be ‘found’?

  Tom Service
• Dmitri Shostakovich at work in 1948.

  Tom Service on music

  Shostakovich’s First at 100 – how prodigious genius sounded before Stalin set about silencing it

  Tom Service

• The renovated Lincoln Center Performing Arts center, Broadway, New York CityC5YAN0 The renovated Lincoln Center Performing Arts center, Broadway, New York City

  Tom Service on music

  Giving and misgivings: opera managers must choose their poison

  Tom Service

  Opera needs big money: opera chiefs need big donors. New York’s Metropolitan Opera has just lost a 200ドルm investment, but should it have accepted it in the first place?
• English composer and author Sir Arnold Bax wearing a suit and smoking a pipe, enjoys a lunchtime drink at the White Horse Hotel in Storrington, Sussex, with Taffy (left), a local man, and Stanley Fitch (right), the proprietor of the hotel, in 1942.

  Tom Service on music

  It’s unfashionable, wild and wilful – why Bax’s music deserves a comeback

  Tom Service

  The British composer is once again missing from the Proms schedule – that’s our loss. Instead, here’s my pick of the brand new music you can catch at the summer festival

• • Tom Service on music

    From strads to shreds and Vivaldi to Van Halen, classical and heavy metal are a natural pairing

    Tom Service

  • Tom Service on music

    What does the dark side of the moon sound like? Nasa’s sonifications are helping us imagine

    Tom Service

  • Tom Service on music

    Why Bach’s music is indestructible, whether on the mandolin, modern piano – or soundtracking murder

    Tom Service

• Handout photo of Bluey. See PA Feature SHOWBIZ Music Bluey. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ Music Bluey. PA Photo. Photo credit should read: Ludo Studio 2018 NOTE TO EDITORS: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ Music Bluey

  Tom Service on music

  Can Bluey save classical music? Cartoon puppy’s all-encompassing soundtrack plays Bach and Beethoven to billions

  Tom Service
• Florence Price

  Tom Service on music

  Flattery or forgery? Row erupts over Vienna Phil’s re-orchestration of a Florence Price piece

  Tom Service
• Prague, Czech Republic. 14th May, 2025. Boston Symphony Orchestra concert conducted by Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons as part of the Prague Spring International Music Festival, Prague, Czech Republic, May 14, 2025. Credit: Michal Krumphanzl/CTK Photo/Alamy Live News3BB9B64 Prague, Czech Republic. 14th May, 2025. Boston Symphony Orchestra concert conducted by Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons as part of the Prague Spring International Music Festival, Prague, Czech Republic, May 14, 2025. Credit: Michal Krumphanzl/CTK Photo/Alamy Live News

  Tom Service on music

  Why has one of the world’s great conductors been shown the door?

  Tom Service
• Performers on stage in masks in The Oresteia.

  Tom Service on music

  The RSC’s music cuts fundamentally diminish our experience of theatre

  Tom Service

• Taliban stand guard after setting fire to a pile of musical instruments.

  Tom Service on music

  The Taliban are burning musical instruments in the name of morality. It is an assault on all culture

  Tom Service
• The sound of fierce hope ... Keri-Lynn Wilson and the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra.

  Tom Service on music

  ‘A cry of pain from every player’: the new reality of Ukraine’s musicians

  Tom Service
• Ronnie Scott's Classical Mondays - launch night, February 2026, presented by the Ronnie Scott's Classical All Stars.

  Tom Service on music

  Snippets? Apps? Visuals? Why classical music should stop trying to be pop

  Tom Service
• Jon McNaughton's post on Facebook showing his new painting, Maga Symphony

  Tom Service on music

  Make the orchestra great again? Not likely with JD Vance playing the cello

  Tom Service

• Undated film still handout from Hamnet. Pictured: Jessie Buckley as Agnes. See PA Feature SHOWBIZ Film Hamnet. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ Film Hamnet. PA Photo. Photo credit should read: 2025 Focus Features LLC. NOTE TO EDITORS: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ Film Hamnet

  Tom Service on music

  Why Max Richter’s Hamnet needle-drop left me cold

  Tom Service

  In a new weekly column about the world of classical music, Tom Service bemoans Hollywood turning pieces into slop through overuse. Plus: Philip Glass withdraws his symphony from the Kennedy Center

• Open to interpretation ... Ukrainian singers perform Ode to Joy – which was also the national anthem for apartheid Rhodesia.

  Even Happy Birthday has a dark side: my quest to tell the history of the world in 50 pieces of music

  The Nazis adopted Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Happy Birthday hides a tale of corporate greed. And Putin uses Shostakovich’s Leningrad symphony as a call to arms. That’s why I put them in my soundtrack to the complexities of human existence