Dispatches: short notes from places where music happens. Not just the performance, but the spaces, people, and thoughts swirling around them.

Barbican. 4pm. Violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen and I meet at Barbican for a podcast interview. I’d originally proposed Southbank Centre, only remembering late on Friday afternoon that belt-tightened budgets have made it necessary to cut back public access to the entire site for one day a week. I remain optimistic that at some point in the future that Monday opening hours will return. I can’t bear the dystopian view that week long access will only be for ticket holders.

Barbican Centre’s association with the considerably better off City of London means the doors at least remain open seven days a week, though as Tamsin and I wander through front of house looking for somewhere to sit down we discover rather more of the carpeted ground floor is roped off for a private event. Our backup plan doesn’t yield much: the lower-ground floor with its less than ideal scuffed parque floor is similarly inaccessible. We head outside.

It’s nearly thirty years since I was coming to this part of town on a daily basis, working up in Epworth Street close to Old Street roundabout. Back then it felt like I was on the edges of the City, pavements filled with thrusting financiers and their starched collars at lunchtime. The Barbican seemed like a miracle squeezed in between the business and the bustle. Nearly thirty years later the Barbican winks in the sunlight, pompously owning its footprint. It seems reasurringly oblivious to the vocal detractors whose struggle with basic navigational skills says far more about them than the architects of this iconic Brutalist statement.

The cathedral-like scale of the place guarantees a sense of calm even when a capacity audience is waiting to take their seats in the theatre or auditorium. Today there’s a reassuring hum about the place. Big posters tempting visitors with delights yet to come, the sound of music students tootling away in the Guildhall School of Music next door. Everyone preparing for something.

The Barbican, like the Royal Albert Hall or the Southbank Centre, is a place of pilgrimage. This is where I first heard Rachmaninov’s Paganini Variations, where I played percussion as a teenager with the LSO, where I’ve moderated pre-performance talks, interviewed artists, attended concerts and spent long days in the library. I can think of no friend outside of music pals who benefit from free access such huge spaces as this. These locations, the Barbican in particular, are a second home. My second home.

The cafe is a little loud even for my directional mics, so Tamsin and I settle on a seat outside in the uncompromising autumn sunlight. The clip on mics I’m increasingly reaching for in interviews change the conversation style. There’s less chance of distracting an interviewee with a wavering microphone, and consequently less chance of me delivering an ill-judged quip or poorly phrased question. Space and time gives both interviewer and interviewee a chance to breath. Thoughts have a chance to land. Follow-ups feel less forced. There are still moments in the interview when almost as soon as I’ve spoken I really wish I’d not, but the deal remains the same: keep everything in. It’s the only way I’ll keep myself on my toes if I know that I’m treating myself in the same way I’m treating the interviewee.

Tamsin speaks at a gentle pace, introducing the gentlest of rubatos into phrases when a point still needs to formulate. There is no need to interject – to do so would interrupt the thinking that is necessary in the moment. It feels incredibly special to be able to meet with a relative stranger and simply listen. To move at someone else’s pace, to follow someone else’s beat. She speaks with searing honesty on pregnancy and motherhood and COVID and the influence all of that has on her work as an artist now. There are moments in the pauses when I look down at the iPad to see if the microphones are picking up too much of the wind. It appears the windshields really are worth the money.

There are moments in transit to such experiences when panic momentarily takes hold. Doubts flood in. Then, 45 minutes later, you’re walking away having taken the unusual step of agreeing to be pictured with the actual interviewee (increased confidence from having abandoned three stone in weight) and I end up feeling alive. As alive as I did in Edinburgh watching Vilde Frank play Korngold Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra.