Vivaldi taught Venetian orphan girls – did they help write his music in return?

A chance discovery introduced me to the composer’s work with abandoned children. The more I learned, the more I wondered about the creative role they played in his music

On my radar: Ade Adepitan’s cultural highights

The wheelchair basketball star turned TV presenter on swimming with sea cows in Mozambique, a vegan-friendly Nigerian restaurant, and a brilliant podcast about race in America

Five of the best books about classical music

Great writers make words sing on the page. These five authors, including Rose Tremain and Ian McEwan, put music on the main stage

‘The drugs were so new, they weren’t illegal yet’: the debauched rise of New York’s wildest bar

It was a seedy hotbed of sex, drugs, edgy music and A-list celebrities where Lou Reed and Andy Warhol partied alongside Blondie and Bowie. How did Max’s Kansas City fall apart?

Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa review – waspish, funny account of life as Frank Zappa’s daughter

This memoir about being fathered by the 70s rock oddball and ‘pagan absurdist’ is an extraordinary tale of survival

A poem by Paul Kelly: ‘My lyrics are often stolen from songs, poems, novels, conversations’

Each week during Australian Poetry Month, a poet walks us through one of their works. Here, singer-songwriter Kelly explains his collaboration with poet Dana Gioia

Darcus Howe’s son Darcus Beese and his activist mother, Barbara: ‘He was imbued with the spirit of the struggle’

He was the first black boss of a UK record label. She was a British Black Panther and one of the Mangrove Nine. They reflect on the ‘madness’ of his childhood, and his memoir that records their groundbreaking legacies

Tchaikovsky was not tragic but had a ‘Monty Python’ sense of humour, says biographer

A new book claims that the Russian composer is not the tormented genius he is portrayed as, but a fun-loving man with ‘a fabulous life’

Rare Singles by Benjamin Myers review – northern soul and second chances

Once again, the author of Cuddy develops a deep sense of place, for a story that takes joy in its characters and their passions

The Piano Player of Budapest by Roxanne de Bastion audiobook review – music and survival

The musician traces the story of her grandfather, from his life as a pianist and composer in Hungary to surviving the concentration camps in wartime Austria

Britney Spears memoir The Woman in Me headed to the big screen

Universal has acquired the rights to the bestselling tell-all, with Wicked’s Jon M Chu set to direct

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

‘The arts stop us killing each other’: stars tell Labour how to rescue Britain’s downtrodden culture

Steve McQueen, Tracey Emin, Steve Coogan, Adjoa Andoh, Danny Dyer, Jesse Darling and many more spell out what must be done to restore Britain’s cultural lifeblood, from ending elitism to supercharging libraries – and flooding schools with music

On my radar: Evie Wyld’s cultural highlights

The author on a musical tribute to Andy Warhol, the book that made her swear out loud, and an exciting new restaurant in Peckham

The Guide #149: Is Deadpool & Wolverine a symptom or cure to Marvel’s multiversal malady?

Marvel, DC and others try everything from standalone films to sequels stuffed with stars. But could genre experimentation be the trick that keeps the action going – and audiences watching?