Dr. Luis Dias is a physician, musician, writer, history enthusiast and founder of Child's Play India Foundation www.childsplayindia.org. He blogs at www.luisdias.wordpress.com.
News
Hailed as “the greatest guitarist of all time” and “a guitarist’s guitarist”, English rock legend Jeff (Geoffrey Arnold) Beck passed away on 10 January 2023 aged 78, of bacterial meningitis. A flurry of tribute articles followed in the wake of his death. I was pleasantly surprised to learn from
Music Education
My son’s piano lessons afford me an opportunity to look at piano sheet music up close. Piano scores seem to have a unique visual beauty that music written for other instruments doesn’t quite match. I’m writing this after taking a look at ‘Children’s Corner’ (L.113)
Know Your Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) seems to sneak up on me in the unlikeliest of places. I‘m not much of a Netflixer, and tend to watch episodes of series very erratically, often with weeks to months in between. One such series is ‘Outlander’, based on the eponymous historical fiction novel
Music Education
In so many ways, I envy this generation of children growing up, and wish I could be a child in this day and age along with them. When I was a student of the violin, my repertoire was restricted to what was available in the only music store in town,
Music Education
During the Christmas break, several movie channels simultaneously broadcast ‘Tom & Jerry The Movie’, the 2021 Warner Bros. Pictures live-action/computer-animated slapstick comedy film based on the titular cartoon characters of the same name created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. I must admit I was underwhelmed for quite a
Know Your Composer
In the good old pre-pandemic days (remember them?), we at Child’s Play would have been resting during the festive season after all the hard work put into our annual Christmas concert earlier in the month of December. One of those concerts featured an arrangement for strings of ‘Silvesterlied’ or
Music Education
If you’re a Suzuki student or parent, you’ll at once have a specific tune playing in your head on reading the title of this piece. It turns up pretty soon in Book 1 of the Suzuki violin (and viola, cello, and I imagine other instruments too) method, the
Features
Some months ago, I wrote a tribute column to the great Bengali film-maker Satyajit Ray (whose birth centenary we celebrate this year) and his film music. But a more recent article in the Kolkata press (Telegraph India) reminded me of another aspect of that music that I didn’t touch
Opinion
India’s classical music legend Maestro Zubin Mehta turned 85 this year, on 29 April. A grand concert was organized by his long-time friend, pianist Daniel Barenboim, featuring the orchestra of the Staatskapelle Berlin (of which Mehta in honorary conductor) at Staatsoper Unten den Linden. It was conducted by Mehta
Throwback Thursday
July 2021 marked the birth centenary of a truly great man, Vere da Silva (23 July 1921 – 13 January 1994), who has left an indelible impression upon me. If you Google his name, you find very little, which is unfortunate as he accomplished so much in so many spheres. I
Music Education
Any violin student beyond a certain level will have heard of Kreutzer. His 42 etudes or caprices (42 études ou caprices) are almost a rite of passage, a core part of the teaching repertoire ever since their publication around 1796. I have my much-used copy from my student days, and
Know Your Composer
While we’re still in lockdown / curfew / restrictions / whatchamacallit, the rest of the world is slowly, cautiously, opening up. The Wigmore Hall London, widely regarded as one of the world’s leading centres for chamber music, threw open its doors to live audiences, “in line with Government guidelines.” One of