On music

Here's a tip: it's one of the finer pleasures of concert-going to catch a new group on its first appearance. There's everything to play for, most of all the musical impulse and enthusiasm that brought the musicians together in the first place. If they are young they want to make their mark. If they have been around for a while they will spark one another's imagination. Audiences are sometimes cautious about a name they don't recognise, but they shouldn't be - it's really a guarantee against jaded spirits.

The cue for these thoughts is an improbable name looming up at St John's Smith Square tonight. It is The Fibonacci Sequence. Never mind what it means (though I can't be the only one who wished they'd road-tested it in private). What it covers is the second kind of new group: 12 musicians, a mini-orchestra no less, well known around the profession and launching their new venture. They are doing it with a flourish, starting with an arrangement of Richard Strauss's vivacious Till Eulenspiegel, taking in delicious things by Ravel and Saint-Sans and a new piece by Martin Yates, and ending with the splendidly passionate Sextet by Dohnnyi (another good thing known to the initiated). The group includes harp and piano, and its pianist, Kathron Sturrock (below), is the driving force behind setting it up along with the violinist Jonathan Rees.

There is singing too, with the mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon. All in all, a fine prospect for music-making, and if the group takes off, you can say you were there at the start. And that name: it's an allusion to a harmonious set of numerical proportions, since you ask. But you didn't, did you?

Tonight, 7.30pm, St John's Smith Square, SW1 (071-222 1061)