Music Education
John Holmes, ABRSM’s Chief Examiner, reflects on the connections between assessment and progression in music learning. As teachers, we know that assessment is an essential part of learning and progression, guiding students from one stage to the next via clear signposts. The two distinct types of assessment – formative and
Reviews
Concert-going often involves a spot of sleuthing – what, if anything, links diverse works in a programme? Kristjan Järvi’s concert with the MDR Symphony Orchestra on June 11 at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, appeared to be underpinned by geographical links to Leipzig. For the first work, a transcription for full orchestra
Features
Jazz Pianist, Larry Willis said that “If you take care of the music, it will take care of you.” Something we tend to forget nowadays. Coming back to India after a two-year-long course at BEPA, Paris, makes you feel entitled to a lot of things. I felt entitled to be
Music Education
Grade 5 Theory has a unique place in music education. Not only is it a prerequisite for the Higher Practical ABRSM Grades but also mandatory for many contemporary, pop and jazz courses. Each year across East and South East Asia, approximately 34,000 candidates sit for the Grade 5 exam.
Music Education
Excerpts – including a quasi-analytical reduction in musical notation – from a lecture given by Mark Lindley on April 15th, 2008 at Bilkent University. The reduction of the first movement was played on a piano and was followed visually by the students while hearing simultaneously a recording of a proper orchestral performance.
Interviews
We seldom come across musicians who have a global approach towards music and appreciate the oneness behind the creation of the same. While many of the younger generation are slowly edging towards Western Music despite their Indian roots, one vibrant violinist named Ritu Gopal has followed the same path but
Know Your Composer
ON Stage brings you excerpts from the NCPA Quarterly Journal, an unsurpassed literary archive that ran from 1972 to 1988 and featured authoritative and wide-ranging articles. In the second part of a two-part series, George Ruckert draws a comparison between Bach’s music and Indian ragas. Johann Sebastian Bach was
Reviews
Oper Leipzig’s staging of Puccini’s 1903 opera Madama Butterfly proved yet again how effectively theatre can enhance music, with imaginative sets, good casting and extremely good acting. The story is (almost too) familiar: a US Navy officer, Benjamin Franklin (!) Pinkerton, hungry to ‘make his own/the flowers of
Music Education
Sometimes a tremolo is just a tremolo, but sometimes there’s more to it than that. Pianists, when you’re playing orchestral reductions of opera scores, the pages can seem littered with tremolos. At worst, they can make you feel like you’re a living player-piano in an old saloon;
Reviews
A prelude to his appointment as Gewandhauskapellmeister this autumn, Andris Nelsons’ 2nd June concert with the Gewandhaus Orchestra at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, had all its familiar magic. That he continues to hold his Music Directorship at the Boston Symphony Orchestra in parallel, allows for fruitful musical cross-fertilisation, an example of
Features
I loved music since I was a kid. I lived my childhood in a small city of Pakistan, Quetta, in Hazara Town. There, I was busy playing and studying in a small public school. I had a few friends. In that place, I used to sing every day. It was
Interviews
Nikhil Sardana: What does the name "Stop-Gaps" stand for? Alfred D'Souza: The Stop-Gaps initially started as a spontaneous and temporary choral group formed to raise funds for a pressing social need. Our aim was to provide relief to the washermen, or "dhobis," whose homes