Music Education
The Resident Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of India, Mikel Toms, takes a moment out of rehearsals to consider the point of it all, as he asks and answers an important question: why do we rehearse at all? For years, I have been fascinated by the etymology of the word
Throwback Thursday
I think it fair to say my dad was something of a Wagner fan. He had books about him in German, underlined and marked, with his own remarks scrawled all over the pages, as my dad was wont to do to anything he read. And he had stacks of spools
Music Education
TACTICS FOR THE SIGHT READER I have already discussed in Part 1 how to build a slow but sure improvement in sight reading skills over time. That article also advised on the main problems and reasons for poor sight reading. To recap: * Sight reading every day is vital * A weekly
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Over 50 sweeping views from the Royal Opera House Mumbai can be viewed online on Google Arts & Culture by people around the world due to a new partnership between Google and the Royal Opera House Mumbai. Thanks to this new virtual tour, users will be able to see the
Know Your Composer
My interest in the wonderful music of Claude Debussy began in the 1980s when I researched and published a book with Cambridge University Press entitled Debussy and the Theatre. During the course of my studies in Paris, I was amazed to discover that Debussy planned over 50 theatrical works but
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Standing ovations, encores and a growing realisation of the hunger for Western classical music in the country were all part of the resounding success of the SOI’s recent tour to Delhi and Bengaluru. Hot on the heels of a very successful Spring 2020 Season, the Symphony Orchestra of India
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IDAGIO launches real-time video discussion series for free to connect artists and audiences directly from home. Today, IDAGIO announced it will be expanding its music platform to provide users with a new and unique real-time video series called IDAGIO Live. With the launch of IDAGIO Live, users will be able
Music Education
Pedalling is essential to creating the magical sounds called for in the piano music of Debussy. The moods, atmospheres, and far-off lands he conjured cannot be evoked without skilful use of both the sustaining and the una corda pedals. In my experience students respond very positively to this music once
Throwback Thursday
“April is the cruellest month,” T. S. Eliot wrote in ‘The Waste Land’, “breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.” I don’t know about April being the cruellest month: March was pretty savage with the Coronavirus pandemic crippling the
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“Anything is possible,” was going through my mind as I was listening to young musicians go through auditions in Chennai last December. They had applied to be part of the new Chennai Youth Sinfonietta, that soon aims to be the heart of classical music in Tamil Nadu. Western classical music
Music Education
Did you know that the word “patter” comes from the Catholic “Pater Noster,” which was apparently recited as fast as possible by the congregation? Equal in hilarity to the image of a monotone group of Catholics speeding through holy texts out of sheer rote/boredom are all the “patter songs”
Throwback Thursday
“Love. It is the greatest thing on Earth.” So says former King Edward to Winston Churchill near the end of the third Episode of “The Crown” as he defends his marriage and how it altered his position within the Royal Family. No sooner has he uttered these words that we