The highly committed Ensemble 10/10 under Clark Rundell contributed a nightmarish intensity of colour. Surprisingly, given the cult following evident in the popularity of his recordings on ECM, this was the largest-ever celebration of his music in Britain. Kancheli is apparently terrified that audiences will fall asleep listening to his music, much of which is quiet and slow. Hot on the heels of this jamboree came a celebration of the music of the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, Sounds from Silence. Overhead projections and a couple of dancers, whose edgy exchanges presumably contained some veiled political agenda, added little. But the forces at his disposal, or perhaps the weight of a BBC commission, to pertinent words by the poet SuAndi marking the 60th anniversary of Manchester's Pan-African Conference, seemed to swamp his imagination as a composer. In The Calling, the BBC Philharmonic ended up providing a mundane backing for a melting-pot of jazz, Malian and opera vocals, with a small solo group of exotic African instruments, joined roughly together by some strangely unengaging narration. Jegede is an accomplished musician, rooted in both African and European classical music.

Brian Eno plays the Stop the War Coalition concert at the Astoria, Lon don WC2, 27 November ( www.stopwar uk). As part of the BBC's Africa 05 festival, Radio 3 commissioned a new work from Tunde Jegede for a weekend celebration of African culture in Manchester. In my experience, you never know where the next good idea is going to come from."'Another Day on Earth' and the single 'How Many Worlds' are out now on Ryko. "It's just that I talk at length and quite coherently, and all this stuff can be useful for future projects. He has a lunch appointment, then some phone calls to make, after which he needs to get some work done in the studio There is a request, too, for a copy of the interview tape "Not because I'm checking up on you," says Eno, as I leave. It was, he says, a depressing experience and one that he's unlikely to be repeating."You saw the unchangeable loyalty that people feel to parties, and how much it takes to change someone's opinion about something they've invested in.

People are very unwilling to abandon a position they've held because they think it invalidates their history I wish I could change that mindset What this country needs is a good opposition. I don't want to be a bloody politician - but I just think everybody else is watching Celebrity Love Island. It's up to us few who haven't surrendered to television to say, 'Hold on, there's a world out here and it's going badly wrong. Do we want to continue to be proud little partners of a bunch of medieval rednecks or are we going to choose to do something about it?'"At this, Eno's assistant calls time on the interview. Who are you with?' I spent the next hour and a quarter pretending I was slightly deaf while I tried to think of an answer to all her questions."Prior to releasing Another Day On Earth, Eno added "political crusader" to his list of occupations: he took to the campaign trail trying to persuade disaffected Labour supporters to switch allegiance to the Lib Dems in protest against the war in Iraq.