There are some interviews where you spend the first few minutes establishing a connection. Then there are the ones where, despite the years that have passed, you simply pick up where you left off. My history with Clark Datchler goes back to the Johnny Hates Jazz comeback campaign.

What happens when Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro meets 1970s Britain, Yorkshire poetry and Indian classical music? Mashallah! It's Mozart – but not as you've heard it before. Bradford Opera Festival is bringing the vibe of a ‘70s Bollywood comedy to Mozart's madcap farce, with a very Yorkshire twist.

The long-awaited debut album from the Nashville duo finally brings together the eight tracks from 2024’s Country With Heart (Part One) with its newly completed Part Two, creating a fuller picture of Trey Smith and Jennifer Fielder’s musical partnership. Having recently returned from a UK tour that included appearances at Long Road and the British Country Music Festival, alongside a sold-out London headline show at St Pancras Old Church, it is increasingly obvious just how much affection there is for this pair.

It is, as they say, the gift that keeps on giving. The Doric String Quartet continue their sublime traversal of Beethoven's quartets with a third volume that ranges across the composer's early, middle and late periods – from the youthful high spirits of Op. 18 No. 3 to the visionary strangeness of the final works.

For London-based alt-soul artist Levina, Invincible Summer is more than just a new album. Written over the course of two years, the record charts a deeply personal and musical journey through disconnection, self-discovery and, ultimately, a return to connection.

Stella Lefty has had a massive 2026. The breakout success of her Noah Kahan-interpolating single, Boston, has seen her achieve the longest-running ever #1 single on the UK country radio charts, but it has also seen her included on the prestigious Country Mount Rushmore for 20

Mazzoli's score is nothing short of genius. The music paints pictures with real creativity and power, and her use of instrumentation to depict particular scenes is marvellous, not least the deployment of melodica, piano, synthesiser and electric guitar alongside the more conventional orchestral palette.

Most importantly, The Roaring Waves never feels like a competition between two legendary guitarists. There is no sense of Hackett and Rothery trying to prove who can shred hardest. Instead, the emphasis is on atmosphere, melody and storytelling. That makes the album considerably more involving than a mere virtuoso showcase.

Having cited The Beatles, The Stone Roses and David Bowie as key influences, it is clear that Beckham is happy to wear these sounds within his own context, but at one stage does this EP try to simply emulate those artists? He rather marries his key influences with his own Britpop leanings to craft an EP that feels very much his own.

He opens with his own arrangement of three songs from Sherman's score for Mary Poppins, and the charm is immediate and disarming. Chim Chim Cher-ee is simply delightful — an earworm, yes, but 'bug' feels the wrong word for something arranged with such loving craft. Feed the Birds unfolds in a long, languorous line that carries the listener somewhere else entirely, its trills and decorations enchanting, every phrase touched with real charisma. Then Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious arrives in staccato flurries and glissandos, tying the suite together with something close to genius. One can only think: I wish I were there.

His playing is thrilling, especially in the third movement, where the registrations traded between manuals draw the listener deep into the acoustic. He darts around the manuals with formidable technical dexterity, particularly through the trickiest chromatic passages, while the low pedal growls around the building like a Norwegian troll and the mixtures positively shimmer. He captures the opening movement's dark, brooding Grave with real atmosphere too

Written and recording during COVID-19, Bareilles is in a very reflective mood as she tries to understand the world that surrounds her. As she explores the notion of loss, grief, heartbreak and personal breakdowns, she delivers what many may see as an introspective record but in reality is based on the stories of those she knows and those she has read. And the real beauty of this record is that she showcases such deep empathy that they feel so true to her that it is impossible not to connect with the depth of emotion showcased.

Grieg, born in Bergen in 1843 and long celebrated as Norway's National Composer, turned to the piano throughout his career but had little appetite for the German sonata, preferring instead the short forms he called Lyriske stykker — published across ten volumes and steeped in the folk idiom of his homeland. Donohoe has resisted the temptation to record them in sequence, instead ordering the pieces to his own design. The gamble pays off. This second volume is every bit as delightful as the first, with poetry springing from Donohoe's fingers with a delicacy that borders on illusion — his left hand so controlled you barely notice its work until you try to imagine the music without it.

There are interviews where you arrive with a notebook, a list of questions and a vague sense of professional composure. And then there are interviews where you are speaking to someone whose music has been part of your life for three decades. I was 13 when I first heard Vonda Shepard.

Heaton Jenius Tracks: Can't Get Next To You, Favourite Kind Of Idiot (ft. Rianne Downey), I Want The Job (ft. Rianne Downey), Sad Songs and Lawsuits, She Ain't Pretty (ft. Rianne Downey), One Eye Open, Send In The Clowns, Do Not Ask Me (ft. Rianne Downey), Don't Lean On Me (ft. Rianne Downey), Jet Black Sky, The Whisky Did (ft.