Ludwig's Torso

From the hustle and bustle of Istanbul to the solitude of the Welsh mountains (and I refer to the pictures above and around this text, not our coverage), Site Seeing has run now for several years. Back in 1999, it was Music & Vision's weekly Tuesday feature. Recently, and especially since January 2002, when we changed our daily schedules, Site Seeing has had to compete with various other types of article for M&V's Thursday slot. Nearly three months have elapsed since the previous issue, I notice, and as we still get a steady stream of new links added by readers and messages asking us to review all kinds of sites, I'll try to make these articles appear more regularly in future.

You might have noticed some changes to our M&V home page recently -- hopefully for the better. In particular, there's now a small picture associated with most of our articles. A link on the left-most of the five small pictures near the top of the screen will normally lead directly to the article featured on the day of your visit to the magazine. We have many more ideas for changes and improvements, and will continue to make these gradually.

Use of the web is changing fast. From the professional web designer's perspective, things are definitely leaner and meaner, and people expect more for their money. I recently visited the site of a new UK orchestra ... clever, fun, animated and inspiring but somehow rather minimal in terms of information offered! TORSO stands for 'The outrageously romantic symphony orchestra', which made me wonder if this might be some kind of advance April fool joke ...

www.torso.org.uk

The range of styles used by musicians and music groups online is certainly wide-ranging. Compare the above with, for example, offerings from the Rajhans Orchestra -- the world-wide orchestra of Flanders, Australia's Libra Ensemble, or composer sites for Leos Janácek, Iannis Xenakis, Cecilia McDowall or Luca Belcastro, and you'll see what I mean.

users.pandora.be/rajhans.orchestra

www.libraensemble.com

www.leosjanacek.co.uk

www.xenakisworld.com

www.ceciliamcdowall.co.uk

www.lucabelcastro.it

In Chicago, veteran music broadcaster and writer Bruce Duffie has set up his own site, and wrote to ask what we thought ... My feeling is that in this case, unlike TORSO above, much of the material here is more interesting than its presentation, but we're interested to know what you think of the sites featured here -- and to hear about any sites you think we should feature, so please contact us.

www.bruceduffie.com

'LE FUTUR DE LA MUSIQUE EST AUSSI DANS LES INSTRUMENTS ANCIENS' reads the email advert for this next site, inviting us to join the site owners for 'diffusion d'enregistrement en mp3 Pro', and reminding me, for some bizarre reason, of a graffiti slogan plainly visible from one of the main rail routes into London some years ago ... 'Far away is near at hand in images of elsewhere'. But don't get too excited ... this one doesn't go live until September/October 2002 ...

www.periodrecording.org

A sizeable collection of online classical magazines has sprung up during the last couple of years. If your interests are broader than strictly classical, APS Magazine have provided quite an interesting list. If you happen to be a budding magazine editor, you can add a link here to your own offering.

www.apsmagazine.com/links/musicmagazine.html

The next site attracted my attention as having been put together rather well -- its Editor is Scottish music guru, publisher and writer Martin Anderson. LudwigVanWeb has easy to use navigation, interesting material and a well organised section of reviewed links to other websites. Music & Vision, I notice, has been awarded three stars out of a possible four ... so we'd better 'pull up our socks' and continue making those improvements!

www.ludwigvanweb.com