Bread of Angels: A Memoir, by Patti Smith review – a wild ride with the poet of punk

Smith’s incantatory voice shines through in this surprisingly revelatory follow up to Just Kids and M Train

Bless Me Father by Kevin Rowland review – the Dexys Midnight Runners frontman tells all

A picaresque story of massive success and deep despair that Rowland narrates with an impressive lack of self-pity

The Fourth Choir review – James Joyce’s The Dead is brought vividly to life

The exceptionally polished LGBTQ+ chamber choir teamed with Niamh Cusack for a beautifully paced production of Joyce’s short story

Meshell Ndegeocello: No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin review – a fire reignited

Baldwin’s stinging words on race and America are matched with the kind of musical eloquence that the great writer himself so admired

Scenes from the Wild review – bats and gannets in the captivating vision of Dara McAnulty

Tenor William Morgan was the soloist in Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s powerful song cycle based on the work of the teenage nature writer

Britten Sinfonia / Gourlay review – Turnage and Clayton sing out for refugees

Poems on displacement by Benjamin Zephaniah, Brian Bilston, Dickinson and Auden drive a weighty new song cycle by Mark-Anthony Turnage, delivered masterfully by Allan Clayton

Prom 49: The Lost Words review – Beethoven to beatboxing as climate crisis set to music

Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s bestselling book inspired this ambitious family Prom that celebrated the natural world

Oscar and Lucinda review – Peter Carey’s novel refracted into operatic colour

Carriageworks, SydneySydney Chamber Opera sees reckless beauty in the Booker prize-winning tale of a wager between an unlikely couple

Bill Murray, Jan Vogler and friends review – a curious and uniquely pointless evening

An eccentric programme of readings and music was lapped up by an audience there to gawp at a Hollywood legend

Moor Mother review – howl of apocalyptic fury is kept to a whisper

A weedy sound system prevents the Philadelphian poet, musician and activist from tapping into true dread

La Sonate de Vinteuil CD review – Milstein sisters play detective in search of Proust’s lost phrase

The mysterious ‘petite phrase’ of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu is the starting point for this hugely enjoyable disc of French violin sonatas

The World Was Once All Miracle review – Anthony Burgess’s musical powers

Raymond Yiu’s song cycle built on the novelist’s poems and the European premiere of Burgess’s Symphony in C showcased another side to one of Manchester’s most famous sons

BBCSO/Oramo review – a bewitching poetic meditation

Barbican, LondonKaija Saariaho’s song cycle True Fire wove works by Emerson and Heaney into a pulsing sonic web, with baritone Gerald Finley exemplary at its heart

From Schubert to Sinatra: why the song cycle speaks to the heart

A new English version of Die Schöne Müllerin offers a reminder as to why it’s Sinatra – not his classical contemporaries – that matches Schubert in ambition

Grant & I review – Robert Forster writes moving, definitive portrait the Go-Betweens deserve

The heart of Forster’s memoir is his friendship with the ‘naive boy’ Grant McLennan, but it skirts the topic of heroin that hangs over it like a shadow