Within the garden of a private residence in Durand Gardens, Elizabeth Alker and Eleanor Chan discuss tracing histories of music from the perspectives of their books Everything We Do is Music: How 20th-Century Classical Music Shaped Pop and Duet respectively.
In Everything We Do is Music Alker, highlights the innovators of classical music and their fans and collaborators in pop who challenged the notion that such musical worlds were mutually exclusive. Alker shines a light on the rich tapestry that exists between their borders through exclusive interviews with Sir Paul McCartney and many other musicians.
In Duet, a beautifully illustrated history of music, Chan explores how music is interwoven into the fabric of our lives, from the instruments we decorate and the spaces we perform in and the kaleidoscopic paintings, medieval illuminated manuscripts and haute couture we have produced inspired by music across human existence.
This event will be situated within the garden of a private residence within Durand Gardens, please wear comfortable attire. In the event of rain, the event will be moved to nearby Van Gogh House, please keep an eye on your emails. Please contact us at info@vangoghhouse.co.uk with any accessibility questions.
Sunday 21 September 2–3pm
Durand Gardens
Dr Eleanor Chan [she/her] is a historian specialising in Renaissance art, music, and visual culture. A Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Music Department at the University of Manchester, she earned her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2017. She is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and the author of Mathematics and the Craft of Thought in the Anglo‑Dutch Renaissance (2021) and Syrene Soundes: False Relations in the English Renaissance (2024).
Elizabeth Alker [she/her] is a presenter for BBC Radio 3, where she hosts the late-night experimental music show Unclassified and their afternoon week-day programme Classical Live. She joined the BBC as a researcher in 2003 and soon after became a reporter and presenter for BBC Radio 6 Music. She has produced.and presented numerous arts and culture documentaries for Radio 4, Radio 2 and The World Service and has written for The Guardian, The Sunday Times and Dazed and Confused Magazine. Everything We Do is Music, published by Faber, is her first book.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Contact: info@vangoghhouse.co.uk