Most music written in the shadow of war tends to announce its feelings. Sergiy Bolotny's new single does something rarer and harder: it lets a feeling go quiet. *Reflections: Oh, Human Destiny*, the prologue to his cycle *Echoes on Ukrainian Themes*, is the most stark and uncompromising piece I have heard from a Ukrainian violinist in years. It is also one of the most moving, and it earns that feeling by withholding every conventional means of provoking it.

A reunion can go two ways. Either the old gang shuffle onstage, squint at one another through the stage lights and perform a well-meaning wake for their younger selves, or they plug in, count off and discover that thirty years of friendship is a splendid rhythm section in its own right. Ray's Music Exchange, happily, belong to the second camp. *A Live Family Rayunion 2025*, their first live recording in fifteen years, is a warm, rowdy and gloriously unbuttoned document of a band who still have plenty to say and a houseful of friends to say it with.