Joshua Bell describes his eating habits here.

When I’m on the West Coast, I always head to In-N-Out; it’s like a ritual. It’s the first thing I do. Even before concerts, I have pulled up in a stretch limo to the drive-through. One time I made the limo driver order the burgers while I ran across the street to get McDonald’s fries.

We feel slightly nauseous.

Natalie Cole, singer-songwriter daughter of Nat King Cole, died last week at 65.

The Guardian’s Mark Brown has spotted that the Morgan Stanley banker Huw van Steenis, recently recruited onto the board of English National Opera, is married to Camilla Cavendish, head of David Cameron’s policy unit at No. 10.

That’s promising in all sorts of ways. ENO has long been seeking to get a political big-hitter on board. Martyn Rose, who resigned as chairman a year ago, was meant to be a man with the right sort of friends but he didn’t last long, or bring any friends on board. An approach to Michael Portillo signally failed.

But a board member married to a Downing St insider could make all the difference, even if (as must be assumed) the couple never discuss their work at home.

The link allows ENO an emergency red telephone for when the Arts Council pulls the plug and – even if the imaginary phone never has to be used – it makes the ACE think three times before further pursuing its long-running vendetta.

It’s a tiny glimmer of hope in a very gloomy situation. Orchestra and chorus cutbacks now loom large.

Read Brown’s article here.

In today’s Observer, Martin Kettle thinks that British audiences have lost their constraints.

The last time I went to the opera, the audience booed the production – even though they had bought tickets in the full knowledge of what it would be like.

So what should be done – stop the show? eject the audience?

Read Kettle’s piece here.

The quote comes from a new book by the Oxford historian Dominic Sandbrook, The Great British Dream Factory, reviewed in the current issue of the TLS.

Glossing swiftly over the misuse of the present tense (what they are told), the statement itself is demonstrably false. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, took orders from no-one. Nor, so far as we know, did their predecessors.

Being a good musician was always a transferrable skill. If a player didn’t like the orders that came down from on high, he did a midnight flit and set up in the next town, province or kingdom. Musicians were ever a discomfort to their patrons. A few, like Haydn, might have bowed the head in the interest of a quiet life. But Bach often bucked the system and Handel set up his own business in London.

On the basis of what we know of the lives of leading musicians they may have pretended sometimes to do as they were told but seldom did. Sandbrook needs to clarify that horrible generalisation.

The Baltimore Symphony music director has run into flak back home for suggesting, in a BBC interview, that violence had been necessary to redress social inequality in the city.

‘It’s heartbreaking that we haven’t dealt with these issues, that it requires violence, which I think it does require, to be honest, to change this equation,’ Alsop told presenter Razia Iqbal. ‘Inequality and injustice is unacceptable. Sadly, this has been the most violent year in Baltimore. We’ve had over 300 people murdered. It’s a cry for help.’

The Baltimore Sun has published a hostile interpretation of her remarks and several readers have contacted Slipped Disc with criticisms. There has been a frosty no-comment from City Hall.

Baltimore erupted in riots last April after a young Afro-American, Freddie Gray, died while in police custody.

When I visited in October, the city was still palpably tense. Read here.

The 1970s French chanteur Michel Delpech has died, aged 69.

The pianist, who has avoided playing in his homeland since 2009, has said he will return in 2017.

Interviewed by a Tass correspondent in New York, he gave no reason either for his absence or for his welcome return.

The Board of Carnegie Hall have posted the following notice in Sunday’s New York Times about their late colleague Gilbert Kaplan, who died on Friday. Gil was a board member for just under half his life.

The Board of Trustees and staff of Carnegie Hall mourn the passing of our dear friend and colleague Gilbert Kaplan, passionate music lover and devoted and beloved husband of Lena. Gil joined the Carnegie Hall Board of Trustees in 1980, and served the Hall with devotion for more than thirty-five years. Gil brought his financial acumen and keen insight to Carnegie Hall’s management as a longstanding member of the Finance and Operations Committee, where he helped govern major institutional advances from the restoration of Carnegie Hall to the creation of an education center. Following his successful career in business and journalism, Gil became a celebrated scholar of Gustav Mahler, establishing the Kaplan Foundation and conducting Mahler’s Second Symphony with leading orchestras around the world. Gil was invited by the Vienna Philharmonic to conduct the original version of Mahler’s Second Symphony and his recordings of the Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic were very successful. Gil demonstrated his deep love and knowledge of music every season as a frequent concertgoer, and many members of the Carnegie Hall’s family were honored to be guests on Gil’s acclaimed radio program “Mad About Music.” We will always remember Gil for his warmth, musical scholarship, and his love of Carnegie Hall. We express our heartfelt condolences to his wife, Lena, and his devoted children Kristina, Claude, John, and Emily, and their families and loved ones. 
Sanford I. Weill, President; Mercedes Bass, Acting Chairman; Clive Gillinson, Executive and Artistic Director

The Allegri string quartet, founded in 1953 by Eli Goren and William Pleeth, has changed its first violin.

Ofer Falk makes way for Martyn Jackson, who becomes the quartet’s sixth leader in as many decades.