Just when you thought things could get no more dysfunctional in the world of arts cuts. you can trust the ACE to celebrate its own absurdity.

With theatres, orchestras, arts companies and museums laying off experienced staff up and down the land, Liz Forgan’s Arts Council has announced four job vacancies for Relationship Managers in London (£31,000 p.a. ‘with excellent benefits’) and Cambridge (£29,000).

What does a Relationship Manager do? Conciliate and arbitrate? Mend ruptured alliances? Refer to a qualified counsellor? Sort out child care?

Nothing so useful. Here’s the job description. Read it, then ask why we are squandering scarce resources on civil service desk jockeys when belts are tight, artists are on the dole and some companies cannot afford to put on a new play. Read it, and despair.

We are looking for a specialist Relationship Manager with a depth of knowledge and experience of the music sector. The successful candidate will have significant experience of working with a diverse range of music organisations, performing companies and relevant partner agencies including local authorities. In particular, we are interested in candidates with specialist knowledge and experience of opera and music theatre, learning and participation.

The post-holder will be the primary ACE contact for a range of high profile music organisations and must be competent to assess all aspects of organisational performance: both artistic outputs and ambition, and management/finance.

I’m shocked to read that London’s Travel bookshop, where Hugh Grant wooed Julia Roberts, is being put on the block.

The absentee owner lives in France and his children have no interest in continuing the business. I’m more than half-tempted to buy it myself, maybe in a consortium of friends.

The Travel bookshop knows the world like no other and has a manager, Saara Marchadour, who lives and breathes its books. She also puts on intimate author evenings that end up in a tapas bar two doors down. Saara, by the way, is Julia Roberts and then some. She speaks French and Finnish. And she knows her wines.

Movie chic aside – and it gets a lot of tourists who want to meet Hugh Grant – it is a rare haven of intellect and excitement in one of the most diverse parts of the city. And it’s a genuine community bookshop, with an enviable children’s section and much to do with cookery.

I’d hate to see it go. Let’s save it.

In the July issue of The Strad (print only), I examine the highly stressed role of music critics in a shrinking media environment. At the heart of the matter is the question of expectation: what performers, editors and readers want to find in their daily review columns. Here’s a pull-quote from the column:

Criticism is clinging to a rock-face in a tempest and is dangerously short of friends. As an editor who has hired and fired critics, I was acutely aware of their individual value and shortcomings, their vanity and vulnerability. But the more I dealt with their difficult and delicate occupation, the more I admired tenacity of critics and the more disturbed I became by the unreality of expectations on the other side – the stage.

What, let me ask all you who play for a living, what do you expect of a critic? Does he or she need to read music? Play an instrument? Perform Schenkerian analysis? Know Schopenhauer by heart? Deplore Andrew Lloyd Webber? Always turn up in a clean shirt?

So, tell me, what do you expect?

photo: Edward Greenfield, from spitalfieldslife.com

There has been the usual mixture of uncertainty and last-minute changes about Valery Gergiev’s chairmanship of the Tchaikovsky Competition, but over the past 24 hours it does appear that the judging benches have been settled.

In both piano and violin sections, Gergiev has tried as best as possible to recruit past winners in order to break the corrupt stranglehold exerted since Stalin’s time by Russian academicians and establishment flaks.

The piano lineup has Van Cliburn as honorary chairman, but no-one is sure if he will turn up.

The rest are:

Dmitri Alexeev

Vladimir Ashkenazy (who will only attend the final round)

Michel Beroff
Yefim Bronfman (final round only)
Peter Donohoe
Barry Douglas
Nelson Freire
Denis Matsuev (final round only)
Mikhail Voskresensky
Evgeni Koroliov

The first meeting yesterday was, I’m told, amicable and businesslike.

The violin jury has the same mix of pizzazz and sound judgement. Anne-Sophie Mutter and Maxim Vengerov will turn up only for the last round, if at all. I’m not sure what the composer John Corigliano is doing there, and the Verbier Festival manager Martin Engstroem must have been added to give the winners an early showcase. The rest are:

Yuri Bashmet

Andres Cardenes

Leonidas Kavakos

Boris Kushnir

Barry Shifman

Sergei Stadler

Victor Tretiakov

Nikolai Znaider.

The competition website, by the way is excellent and there will be live streaming.