Musical Pointers launch and mission statement

Musical Pointers was launched by Peter Grahame Woolf in 2002, and has aimed to remain informal and flexible in style and content, featuring musicians, events and recordings which are less likely to be covered by the leading paper publications; more personal and specialised than the established larger music websites, pointing to the future by emphasis on younger performers, student productions, smaller venues and recording companies; admitting a wide variety of today's musics, with a bias towards contemporary music and the exciting contemporary developments in early music, and with less coverage of mainstream productions in the major London venues. It has expanded since the Editor retired from working as a consultant psychiatrist.

Musical Pointers takes advantage of the Web's unique hyperlink capability, particularly compelling for readers with fast, broad-band access, which enables rapid downloading of pages from the Internet, often providing sound illustrations of recordings discussed, helpful for readers contemplating purchase of CDs and reducing the need for extended verbal descriptions. Readers will regularly be 'pointed' towards reviews elsewhere on the Web .

Peter Grahame Woolf has been writing about music for fifty years. He has long wished for a more inclusive description than the usual connotations of "classical" for the different 'serious' musics which that term nowadays encompasses uneasily. His tastes are eclectic and include 17 C and contemporary music, and music from other cultures. He produced recital LPs featuring his son Simon.

He founded Seen&Heard and has continued to write for other websites and paper publications including The Opera Critic, The Organ and Piano Journal, and in the past contributed to journals which succumbed to commercial pressures, notably Music & Musicians and the idealistic but short lived Strictly off the Record . He was amongst the first to bring to UK attention important 20th C. composers, such as Giacinto Scelsi of Italy, Galina Ustvolskaya from Russia, the great French organist-composer Jean Guillou and the senior Spanish composer Luis de Pablo , and has a particular concern to bring to attention major figures from abroad who are unduly neglected in UK.

Musical Pointers embodies the philosophy and mission statement of SEEN & HEARD, the live music section of MusicWeb, launched in 1999 by Peter Grahame Woolf, who edited it until June 2001 - (see his last Editorial before the appointment of a new editor). MP also brings together some of PGW's less ephemeral earlier publications, including reports of UK and European festivals and competitions, and reviews of unusual recordings worldwide.