That means passers-by and pleasure seekers can watch musicians work together without hearing a single note. The effect is both edifying and (literally) disconcerting. 

It allows crowds of school children to watch the process without disrupting it. On the other hand, to see music in the making without hearing it is an unsettling form of sensory deprivation. You keep having to give yourself a reality check.

If felt the same as checking my mails in Starbucks on one of the window seats while, beyond the pane, another coffee consumer was smoking obsessively. He was within a finger’s length of me, yet I could not (thank goodness) smell a thing.

The same principle is applied in the Sage’s teaching rooms in the ground floor, but for different reasons. Anyone walking past can see the pupil-teacher interaction. That knowledge allows parents to be assured that kids are safe in a one-on-one teaching situation, an essential pre-condition in these troubled times.

What I did hear was the first part of a Northern Sinfonia string ensemble concert led by Bradley Creswick, an aptly introspective account of Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night with breathless pianissimi that showcased the hall’s immaculate acoustic sensitivity.

They make great music in Gateshead. Here are some pics of the hall, outside and in.

That means passers-by and pleasure seekers can watch musicians work together without hearing a single note. The effect is both edifying and (literally) disconcerting. 

It allows crowds of school children to watch the process without disrupting it. On the other hand, to see music in the making without hearing it is an unsettling form of sensory deprivation. You keep having to give yourself a reality check.

If felt the same as checking my mails in Starbucks on one of the window seats while, beyond the pane, another coffee consumer was smoking obsessively. He was within a finger’s length of me, yet I could not (thank goodness) smell a thing.

The same principle is applied in the Sage’s teaching rooms in the ground floor, but for different reasons. Anyone walking past can see the pupil-teacher interaction. That knowledge allows parents to be assured that kids are safe in a one-on-one teaching situation, an essential pre-condition in these troubled times.

What I did hear was the first part of a Northern Sinfonia string ensemble concert led by Bradley Creswick, an aptly introspective account of Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night with breathless pianissimi that showcased the hall’s immaculate acoustic sensitivity.

They make great music in Gateshead. Here are some pics of the hall, outside and in.

–  it’s possible – and necessary – to have more than one loyalty in life.

To be a proud Jew, a committed Zionist and a loyal British citizen.

And to realise there is no contradiction between them.

– A Jewish friend asked me the other day will it be safe for my children and grandchildren to live here?

You can find the full speech here. Only here. Unusually, it has not been carried on any Government or Conservative Party website. Now why is that? 

–  it’s possible – and necessary – to have more than one loyalty in life.

To be a proud Jew, a committed Zionist and a loyal British citizen.

And to realise there is no contradiction between them.

– A Jewish friend asked me the other day will it be safe for my children and grandchildren to live here?

You can find the full speech here. Only here. Unusually, it has not been carried on any Government or Conservative Party website. Now why is that? 

Dior is scrubbing references to Galliano off its website. The man is in rehab, his lawyers are on the case and the fashion world is doing its level best to return to frippery as normal. In the London Evening Standard, which has treated the scandal as little more than a celebrity tiff, a second columnist argued yesterday that it’s now up to Kate Moss to save the designer from his demons by getting him to do her wedding dress. Where do these people live? In another article, slightly weightier, Brian Sewell defended Galliano as a latter-day Richard Wagner: the art is greater than the man. Come off it.

In yesterday’s Guardian, Jonathan Freedland argued persuasively that anti-semitism is always with us. It has been dormant awhile. Now it has reawakened.

I take a different view. In a front-page JC commentary today I suggest that Galliano’s alleged offence is a symptom of a dangerous new form of anti-semitism, licensed by Islamist propaganda and leftwing fellow-travellers, which maintains that the Jews have got it coming. 

The Jews deserved their fate in the past. And, as middle-class demonstrators chanted outside the synagogue in Tunis, the Prophet will inflict it again quite soon. Their rallying cry is “Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad saya’ud,” which means “Jews, remember Khyabar, the army of Mohammed is returning.” 

Nothing about the Galliano outrage can be taken lightly.

Dior is scrubbing references to Galliano off its website. The man is in rehab, his lawyers are on the case and the fashion world is doing its level best to return to frippery as normal. In the London Evening Standard, which has treated the scandal as little more than a celebrity tiff, a second columnist argued yesterday that it’s now up to Kate Moss to save the designer from his demons by getting him to do her wedding dress. Where do these people live? In another article, slightly weightier, Brian Sewell defended Galliano as a latter-day Richard Wagner: the art is greater than the man. Come off it.

In yesterday’s Guardian, Jonathan Freedland argued persuasively that anti-semitism is always with us. It has been dormant awhile. Now it has reawakened.

I take a different view. In a front-page JC commentary today I suggest that Galliano’s alleged offence is a symptom of a dangerous new form of anti-semitism, licensed by Islamist propaganda and leftwing fellow-travellers, which maintains that the Jews have got it coming. 

The Jews deserved their fate in the past. And, as middle-class demonstrators chanted outside the synagogue in Tunis, the Prophet will inflict it again quite soon. Their rallying cry is “Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad saya’ud,” which means “Jews, remember Khyabar, the army of Mohammed is returning.” 

Nothing about the Galliano outrage can be taken lightly.