Found!

When I started my job two and half years ago, I inherited a desk, a few folders of assorted papers, a couple of biros, an opera trivia quiz book and the remains of an iTunes music collection. Dipping in and out of the tracks revealed a few horrors and a few gems. One of my favourite finds was a short song, beautiful and hypnotic. All I had to identify it was the composer: Monteverdi. Since then I've played it to everyone at work in an attempt to pin it down, listened to Monteverdi CDs, but, alack, no luck. I didn't know who was singing it, who was accompanying, what it was called. Until today. Success! Found while hunting for something completely different – details of an intriguing concert in the Wieliczka salt mine near the city of Krakow, Poland, performed by the early music ensemble L'Arpeggiata and countertenor Phillippe Jaroussky. It's a programme of Monteverdi, they've already recorded it as a CD and it includes my song!!!! And, more on this to follow, I'm off to Poland for a few days tomorrow and will hear it live. It's not the same performance as on my computer, it's better. Here it is:

Cooling down in Antarctica

What would you do in Antarctica? Herbert Ponting, who made it near the end of the world as part of Scott's 1910 Antarctic Expedition, decided to cool his head (his words, not mine). Because, clearly, it gets pretty hot at the South Pole.

Sweet dreams

Illness. In the middle of the night, awake. The rest of the world slumbers. I put on the radio. Music. Sleep. A melody dives through the layers of dreams, casting its hook and bringing me back to the surface. Piano, strings. A solo violin. Restless melancholy, hints of repose. What was this music, at once familiar in feel and unknown in note? In the morning, with the curtains open, the light on and the memory now hours old, I tracked down those elusive sounds. Chausson's Concert for Piano, Violin and String Quartet, the second movement - a Sicilienne.

Around the world

The West has had a dose of the international recently. Sex-and-the-City actress Kim Catrall and one-time Mr Darcy Matthew Macfayden brought bubble and fizz to Noel Coward's Private Lives over in Bath – you can now see the classic whirl of love, coincidence and mishaps on stage in the Vaudeville Theatre in London, where it's getting pretty top-notch reviews. The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, joined by fellow writer Greg Milner, entertained an audience at St George's with a conversation about the history of recorded music - what exactly is a recording, and what do we think it should be? Ross followed up his Bristol appearance with a stint at the Wigmore Hall in London, where he delivered a talk about the future of the classical concert. That's an oh-so-lovely link to the third international figure being welcomed to the West: tomorrow night American composer John Adams will be conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Britten, Sibelius and his Dr Atomic Symphony, and one of the first handful of European performances of his 2009 City Noir. This 30-minute piece ends thus, in Adams's words. 'The music should have the slightly disorienting effect of a very crowded boulevard peopled with strange characters, like those of a David Lynch film—the kind who only come out very late on a very hot night.'

Is it art?

There's a darkened doorway in the Barbican that has the metal equivalent of a beaded curtain hanging across it. Intrigued? Behind the curtain there's a dark tunnel. Odd. In the tunnel is a wooden walkway, edged with stones and plants. You can hear the sounds of crickets. Curiouser and curiouser. I follow the path. At the other end, you emerge into a light-filled, cavernous room. And here's the strangest part, it's a space filled with Gibson guitars, cymbals and... zebra finches. These cute little birds, with tiny orange beaks, and looking (sorry for the cliche) as light as a feather are going about their daily lives, every peck of bird seed, flutter of wings or sideways hop transformed into sound by the instruments. The brainchild of Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, this installation creates an ever-changing soundscape. It might be random sound – though motifs emerge from the hubub – but composers from Vaughan Williams to Messiaen have been inspired by birdsong. Is it art? I don't know. It's certainly unexpectedly uplifting.