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“I always sang. Both my father (Edwin) and his sister, Muriel were gifted singers, but Edwin was streets ahead because he was also a brilliant pianist and, from my very youngest years, I had the pleasure and honour of listening to him play. His love for music was great and
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Giving Voice is now ten years old! It has been an exhilarating decade of work for us. What started as a small-scale teaching project – a ‘testing of the waters in India to see what might develop’ – has become an arts foundation producing opera and concerts in India with home grown
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The few, grainy, black-and-white photographs date from a century ago. Yet, together with the short ‘sketches’, and a couple of newspaper articles, they tell a compelling tale, and conjure up vivid images of a musician who became a legend in her lifetime, of a prodigious talent that flowered into magnificent
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On Tuesday 28th May 2019, Sandra Oberoi and her Harmony Chorus from Bangalore visited the Music Department of the University of York (UK) for an open-day. Below is a description of what proved to be an exciting and engaging event! To start the day, the choir were introduced to the
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Rishan Bhatnagar is the first child from India to be in the over 500 year old Vienna Boys’ Choir. After spending four years with the group, he is set to graduate in a few months and looks back at his extraordinary journey. “This last year has been different from the
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The story of the South Asian Symphony Orchestra is the story of survival during terrible wars and times of strife. However, its message is simple: peace and unity through the universal language of music is fully possible. By Akshaya Pillai Dr. Ahmad Sarmast was seated in the first row. Months
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On March 13, 2019, a 13-year-old pianist from India faced Kukkiwon, a 27-member adult Olympic-level crack taekwondo team from South Korea in a clash for the title of “The World’s Best.” The Koreans dazzled with a stunning display of martial arts. But the little kid on the piano won.
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Zane Dalal traces the origin of the NCPA in a familiar story that finds its voice again, in our fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Half a century is a milestone by any reckoning. 50 years ago – in 1969 – Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon in that ’giant
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Lydian Nadhaswaram’s sterling performance in the audition round of The World’s Best (a talent show on the American television station, CBS) not only advanced him to the next round, but its video recording went viral on the Internet. He had played Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumblebee
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“Ladies and gentlemen, today I will be playing The Flight of the Bumblebee.” With these words, uttered with a charm that made the audience smile and give a round of applause before a single note had been played, Lydian Nadhaswaram launched into his rendition of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s intricate composition.
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RP Jain – scholar, teacher, music lover, bon vivant – was one of the most civilised people I have ever known. I use “civilised” in the sense that Anton Chekhov described civilised people, as those who “respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable. …They have
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After a concert, or a season ends, I always experience a kind of sadness, or emptiness. You leave something behind you, that you have worked so hard for, that have brought struggles and joy, and in the end also brought lovely music to an eager audience. Maybe it is therefore,
