Meet the Maestro
Nikhil Sardana: Where did you grow up and pursue your music studies? What led you to choosing a career in conducting? Alexander Briger: I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. I started playing the violin at a very young age and became serious about this instrument by the age
Features
Please share your background with us. I am from the Netherlands where I pursued my violin studies. Then I went on to university to study mathematics. I worked in the field of mathematics between 1981 and 1995, but then fully returned to the music world. In between, I have always
Interviews
Please share your background with us. I’ve lived all my life in London and when I was four and my older sister began learning to play, I immediately fell in love with music and the piano. My musical education happened very fortuitously – when I was six my mother took
Interviews
Tell us about pursuing your violin studies. I got to study in some incredible institutions: Royal Academy of Music Junior Department, Royal Academy of Music for Undergraduate studies and the Royal College of Music for my Postgraduate. I met a lot of the colleagues that I work with now during
Interviews
When did you come up with the idea to tour India with the Australian World Orchestra in October 2015? It was Alexander Briger’s idea who first had a discussion about this with Maestro Zubin Mehta and Nick Deutsch, our Principal Oboe for the Australian World Orchestra. What were the
Meet the Maestro
Nikhil Sardana: Could you share your earliest childhood memories related to music? A.R. Rahman: My father was an arranger for various composers and often acted as a versatile assistant to them. Back then, most composers were Carnatic musicians who created the tunes, and my father would arrange the music.
Meet the Maestro
Where did you grow up in England? I grew up in Northamptonshire where I completed my state school education. My initial music education came from choral church singing and the County Youth music system. What was is like to continue your graduate music studies at the Royal Academy of Music
Interviews
Please share your background with us. I was born in the States and spent most of my childhood in Los Angeles. My parents saw that American kids had lots of time after school so they signed me up for baseball and piano, just like the kids next door. One was
Interviews
Please share your background with us. I have always been passionate about music and from a very early age I knew that it was something I wanted to pursue as a career. I started playing the piano at the age of seven, before taking up the guitar at twelve. Music
Interviews
Please share your background. I was born in Nagpur, India and emigrated with my family to Poughkeepsie, New York at the age of three. I did my elementary and secondary schooling in Poughkeepsie. I then attended the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University for my undergraduate studies,
Meet the Maestro
When did you first visit India? My first visit to India was in 2012. Since then I have been here numerous times for a variety of projects, concerts and masterclasses. My connection with India started in Buenos Aires when I was six years old and studied yoga and meditation as
Meet the Maestro
Why is choral music important? William Byrd said as long ago as 1588 – ‘ Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing ‘. For men nowadays read everyone! The sheer excitement of making music with one’s own body together with other people, is reason