News
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
Music Education
GROWING THE SKILL So often relegated to the “too difficult” category, feared and loathed as part of the exam syllabus, wistfully envied in the “naturally talented” … sight reading seldom excites optimism or enthusiasm. Yet it would make no sense to ignore it in building the full set of Useful Pianist
Throwback Thursday
Five graduating students of the SOI Music Academy look back on their seven-year journey and how it has shaped them, inside the classroom, on the stage and out in the world. MAIRA SINGH (13), Violin My teacher and mentor Olga Lyapina took me under her fold when I was all
News
I never know what I’m going to write until I’ve written it; but this time I’ve planned to write just exactly what you may be about to read. It is going to be a brief commentary on an event that took place on the 3rd of March,
Know Your Composer
Known for his melodic invention and wonderful harmonic language, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s ever popular Piano Concerto No. 2 was an act of hope and rehabilitation. By Manohar Parnerkar Besides being an important composer of the 20th century, Sergei Rachmaninoff was also a brilliant pianist and, potentially, a great conductor. This
News
Whenever I think of student piano recitals, I remember the image of the performance being the tip of the iceberg and not many people seeing the larger portion of the preparation underneath the visible part. Not many people in the audience would know how the teacher went through several books