We have asked them to look at the records and tell us what should or can be done at this stage by an independent assessment and what sort of work they could do."The decision has been welcomed by the Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who has campaigned on behalf of the volunteers. He said they had a right to know what had happened to them during the tests and what the long-term consequences were.The volunteers were told in November last year that they would be eligible for a medical assessment if they were concerned that they were suffering health problems. The results are likely to be compared with the chances of the public suffering diseases such as cancer, with scientists looking for any links to the tests at Porton.Wiltshire police is investigating the testing and has warned that many of Porton's records are "neither totally accurate nor complete".. It was his song, but Billy Bragg knew that "A New England" will be for ever associated with another star.

It was his song, but Billy Bragg knew that "A New England" will be for ever associated with another star. Yesterday, he performed it in her place. At a memorial service for the singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl, Bragg led the eclectic mix of musicians who had turned out on a bitingly cold January day in London to pay tribute to her.Bono, the lead singer of U2, who once described MacColl as "the Noël Coward of her generation", was there. So was the comedian Phill Jupitus and Holly Johnson, formerly of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, who joined MacColl's band to play one of her typically bitter-sweet songs, "Don't Come the Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim".All of them seemed still to be stunned at the appalling end to the life of the 41-year-old star in Mexico last month after being hit by a speedboat while swimming.Opening the service at St Martin-in-the-Fields Church on Trafalgar Square, the Reverend Nicholas Holtam said that although her death had been shocking, there was much to celebrate. "Many of her songs touched the big questions of life," he said.Her mother, Jean, told the congregation that she had lost her best friend as well as her daughter, but said: "Kirsty is still with us, she is still touching the hearts of all the people she loved."Afterwards, as friends, fans and family left the church, Bono spoke of her great energy and passion.Bragg remembered her commitment to the causes she cared for and thought it typical that she had become involved in the campaign to have American sanctions on Cuba lifted."I considered her not just a friend but a comrade. While others just sing about issues, Kirsty got involved," he said, with genuine admiration. It had been a tough year, he added, for all those who loved witty songwriters, with the death of Ian Dury, too.Ms MacColl, the daughter of the legendary Irish folk singer Ewan MacColl, was formerly married to record producer Steve Lillywhite, with whom she had two children After they split up, she had travelled in Brazil and Cuba. She was working on a series about Cuban music for the BBC when she died..

Hear the words "improvising pianist'' and you'll probably think of a Thelonius Monk or a Keith Jarrett, jazz players for whom improvisation is a way of life. You probably won't think of classical pianists, whose reliance on the written score seems utterly at odds with the notion of improvising. Hear the words "improvising pianist'' and you'll probably think of a Thelonius Monk or a Keith Jarrett, jazz players for whom improvisation is a way of life. You probably won't think of classical pianists, whose reliance on the written score seems utterly at odds with the notion of improvising. It's not the case, says the American pianist Robert Levin, best known for his performances of Mozart and Beethoven (both celebrated improvisers), who arrives in London this week to play at the South Bank. Levin feels that, in order to give performances faithful to the spirit of their music, he, too, must improvise, notably in the cadenzas of the concertos, those moments when the orchestra falls silent and the soloist goes it alone. Many players use the cadenzas that Mozart and Beethoven wrote out (although the composers themselves would have improvised); others write their own to slot into every performance. Levin, however, insists on improvising every time he plays the pieces: "Performance for a musician is like performance in the theatre: the most persuasive presentations are those in which one feels, not that one is being served a well-manicured rendering of a piece that everyone knows has existed forever, but that everything is happening at that instant, before one's eyes.''He recalls the conductor Hans Swarowsky introducing him to the notion of improvising in the 1960s: "Swarowsky told me to listen to one of Friedrich Gulda's recordings of Mozart piano concertos.

I was thunderstruck by what seemed to me the outrageous things that Gulda was doing. In trying to summon the courage to follow his example, I decided it would be useful to try to compose in the style of Mozart, so I started to complete works that he left as fragments. By 1970 I had the confidence to improvise cadenzas on a regular basis, although they do not pretend to rival those that Beethoven or Mozart composed That's not the point; the point is to take the risks. The biggest benefits come not in the cadenzas as such, but when you are sufficiently inside the musical language to attempt such things, everything you play in the body of the work becomes unpredictable and new.