This month, on April 9th, New York City's Ace Hotel was fortunate enough to host one of a handful of recent conversations with David Gilmour and Polly Samson, ahead of Gilmour’s sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden. Pictures with this report are by Elizabeth Anne Hellings and Ed Lopez-Reyes.

Over the years, Polly Samson and David Gilmour’s artistic marriage has been received by many with a certain degree of ambiguity – maybe even agnosticism given the obscurity of writing credits on albums (to the extent they are noticed in the age of iTunes) and the relative privacy Samson and Gilmour seem (somewhat impractically) partial to.

The event at New York City’s Ace Hotel, one of only a handful of programs like it in recent months, presented a unique opportunity to shed light on this partnership in significant depth. In fact, an event that could have been mistakenly dismissed as an addendum to a very tight Gilmour touring schedule turned out to be a pivotal dialog that contextualized the magnitude of Samson’s influence on the guitarist and underscored its paramount role in sustaining his creative drive. It provided insight into the artistic plane Gilmour inhabits these days and provided perspective of the world that Samson and Gilmour share with many contemporaries: a world that is, frankly, somewhat alien to those that are principally if not exclusively attached to Pink Floyd’s Gilmour and in which Gilmour’s music can be derivative of experiences and daily occurrences far removed from the elements the shaped the 50 year old band.

Just published is the latest issue (number 27 - cover date April 2016) of the Pink Floyd fanzine "Heyou" run by our friends over at the Italian website of the same name.

The 52-page dual language magazine (in Italian and English), which is published every six months or so, catches up with things in the Floyd world this year. With so much happening what with Roger's various activities, and David's new album and tour, there has been plenty for the authors at Heyou to include.

Heyou kicks off with a look at the wonderful Taken By Storm documentary by Roddy Bogawa, which will hopefully encourage readers to check out this fascinating look at the late, and very much missed, Storm Thorgerson, his colleagues over the years, and their incredible work.

Elsewhere in the magazine, there's a reprint of a recent interview with David about Rattle That Lock, as well as a reprint of an interview with Roger from Noisy. Alongside this is a review of the Wall film that was fairly recently released.

With the recent release of his excellent new book, The Complete Pink Floyd, there's a short interview with Brain Damage founder Glenn Povey about the creation of the new book, and how it compares to the previous editions (released some time ago now).

There's an extensive review by Bjorn Riis of one of David's Royal Albert Hall concerts last year. As Bjorn is a guitarist, there's a strong focus on David's guitar work in the concert, and the equipment used for each song.

As with most issues of Heyou, there's a chronological look at things that have happened in the last few months in the news pages, ranging from various magazines published with Floyd content, to things like the 1965 - Their First Recordings. Last issue's news pages were very brief, and it looks like they've caught up with things they missed last time, as well as more recent happenings.

More details of the Heyou fanzine can be found at www.heyou.it/fsubscrbd.html, where you can get individual copies, and subscription enquiries (four issues costing 30 euros within Europe, and 40 euros outside Europe) should go to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it - make sure you mention Brain Damage when you write!

In October last year, the world premiere of Ron Geesin - An Improvised Life took place. This is a new, one hour documentary that explores the life of this remarkable, yet largely unsung, artist through a mixture of live performance, interviews, film extracts and archive material. The film includes never before seen footage of Ron Geesin and David Gilmour at the 2008 Atom Heart Mother concert at London's Cadogan Hall, which featured blistering guitar and pedal steel work from David.

The film has interviews with David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Pete Townshend, Peter Gabriel, Robert Wyatt and Bridget St John amongst many others.

The good news for those who missed out on that screening, is that another is lined up for next month. The film will be shown at FILMIC in Bristol on Sunday May 8th at 2pm. Tickets for the event are now on sale via Watershed.co.uk.

Following the screening, there will be a Q&A with Ron Geesin himself. An event not to be missed!

More information on the documentary can be found at GeesinImprovLife.com; the film's official Facebook page can be found at Facebook.com/GeesinDoc. Finally, here's the trailer for An Improvised Life...

David Gilmour has just added a pair of shows - the first ever seated concerts - at the historic Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus) in Rome, Italy. The shows are part of the Postepay Rock in Roma festival. The concerts will take place on July 2nd and 3rd.

Tickets for Circus Maximus will be priced from €60 (subject to booking fees) and will go on sale on Thursday 7 April from www.davidgilmour.com at 10:00hrs CET. Please note tickets will be limited to 4 per person.

The Circus Maximus in Rome was built in the sixth century BC and was used as a race track for horse racing. Today it is a large public park, also used for concerts.

The official website for the event is RockInRoma.com.