India, May 15 -- It was a weeknight in Helsinki, cold in the way Finnish spring evenings stubbornly insist on being, and I was filing into a modest cinema. My phone was off. I had no beverage, notebook or recorder. At the door, I was handed a padded black eye mask. A young man reminded us, pleasantly but firmly: no talking, no singing, no noise of any kind.

The audience was a study in motley fellowship. The majority were middle-aged to senior people who, like me, had presumably spent decades accumulating opinions about music. A couple arrived in wheelchairs. A gentleman with a white mobility cane was assisted by a volunteer. And then, wonderfully incongruously, a young person dressed in full goth regalia - dark mascara, black everything ...