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Caution is evidently needed when moving around at a Pins gig. A woman who wandered off to the bar or the toilet returned and appeared slightly startled to realise the group's singer Faith Vern was now among the crowd, complete with microphone stand and considerable swagger. It wasn't even the first time the band had wandered among the faithful, as guitarist Lois MacDonald had gone for a stroll early on, taking care to not bump any punters with her guitar in the process.

If you find endless riches in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's words and Richard Strauss's score for their "Comedy for Music", as I do, you'll be very happy to catch Bruno Ravella's deliciously staged fantasy again. This was my third time. It had a difficult birth at Garsington during the Covid era - no touching for the 32-year-old Marschallin and her 17-year-old lover Octavian in the opening bedroom scene - then went to Dublin, where Irish National Opera had assembled a remarkable cast with three Irish leading ladies.

“Pruning, pruning, pruning, pruning, pruning” declaims a suited and booted Robin Dallaway into his microphone on stage at Birmingham’s Castle and Falcon on Sunday night and it’s as if time falls away back to the mid-1980s. Suddenly, it’s a Friday evening. The Tube is on Channel 4 and an exceedingly strange black and white film that has been especially commissioned by the show is introduced by Max Headroom.

Freshly-exhumed from the vaults, this latest Children's Film Foundation selection follows an established template, giving us nine pacy short features taken from different eras in the CFF’s existence (in this case, between 1954 and 1980), along with a selection of choice extras.

Spirit of place first: Nevill Holt, which I was visiting for the first time, is a beauty. There's an Oxford college look about the facades, from 13th century to more recent additions, a lawn on the hill gives splendid views over the Welland Valley, while gardens and catering rival Glyndebourne and Garsington.

South Korea’s soft power isn’t restricted to K-pop and K-drama. The latest Festival of Korean Dance, hosted by venues around the UK, is a demonstration that its contemporary dance scene is impressive too.Now in its ninth iteration, this year I caught two of the festival’s programmes, one indie, the other by the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company, who presented a piece on a double bill that was so good, I returned the next night to catch it again.

A new album from Evanescence doesn’t come around all that often. But when they do, they are always worth at least a pause and cursory listen: their reputation precedes them ever since their seminal hit “Bring Me To Life” first took over the airwaves in the early noughties.

Whereas the more venerable European jazz festivals, founded from the 1960s onwards, are typically faced with challenges of mid- or later life, Montrachet Jazz is a newcomer and is different. 2026 was just its second edition, but its early steps are bold and impressive. Not only is a very clever artistic vision already in place, but it is also one which authentically complements and enhances the unique magic of its setting.

War Horse was without a doubt one of the boldest experiments in the National Theatre’s history. As Tom Morris, co-director with Marianne Elliott of the original production says in the programme, “Essentially putting a non-speaking central character on the Olivier stage was going against everything that everyone understood about that space. The design is for epic theatre in which text makes the space come alive. In this show, it’s movement, it’s puppetry.”

It's nine years since soprano Lise Davidsen gave a Wigmore Hall audience her first credentials as a recitalist, in true partnership with a pianist to whom she's remained faithful since, James Baillieu. Alexandra Coghlan welcomed her then, and while I'd been bowled over by her role in Pappano's Royal Opera Verdi Requiem and was stunned by her Sibelius Luonnotar, I had some questions about the first half of her Barbican recital.