Music Education
A monthly column that explores any and every aspect of the performing arts. This month, concert pianist, lecturer and writer Karl Lutchmayer mulls over the tradition of historically informed performance which entails playing classical music exactly as it was originally conceived. We often talk about a piece of music as
Music Education
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 first of a two-part series, William P Mann dissects the belief that music is universal. The fame and talent of Indian musicians
Music Education
Classical music is surrounded by a thick wall of brain activity: an extensive world of analysis and research; a history still being investigated in the remotest corners; an educational field rife with scholarly publications and manuals; a recording science capable of closely imitating the experience of live concerts; a record
Music Education
A look at how the SOI Music Academy is not only fostering musical excellence, but also shaping the future of young musicians, their careers and, inevitably, that of Western classical music in India. By Beverly Pereira The year 2019 represents a high point in the sustainability of Western classical music
Music Education
In time for Women’s History Month, we should consider the women composers in our world. Hmmm. None come to mind? Expand your thoughts, think of bigger concepts. Think international. Chihchun Chi-sun Lee is a Taiwanese composer who studied in Taiwan and the US and is currently professor of composition
Music Education
When it comes to singing coloratura, it’s easy to imagine that there are those who can, and those who cannot. “She’s always been able to move her voice,” we say, as if it’s a skill one is born with. That may be true, but it doesn’t
Music Education
One of our most important goals as piano teachers is to develop flexibility in our students’ wrists. Pianists who land on chords with supple wrists coax the most beautiful sounds out of the instrument, and using rotational movements of the wrist can lead to the clearest Alberti Basses as well
Music Education
For music and nature, birds are the natural – they sing! Or, rather, we hear their communication as singing. A friend in Hong Kong trains birds to sing, playing them beautiful songs from model birds to learn. The ones with good voices he keeps and the ones who aren’t trainable
Music Education
Bugs and music – hmm, not as common as birds, but then when you start to think about it, they start to creep up on you. Probably the first piece of bug music you might have learned was Frank Loesser’s Inchworm, brought to the silver screen in the movie Hans
Music Education
Why touring is important, and why the mere thought of it drives management mad. By Zane Dalal Orchestras, as we know them today, started out as small ensembles, joined to some illustrious house or under the patronage of a court. The more important the court, the bigger and better the
Music Education
If we put the last century’s notions of “old” and “new” in a broader historic perspective, it becomes clear how short-sighted these notions were and how wrong it was to give them an aura of absoluteness, since these notions are, by their very nature, relative and flexible, and dependent
Music Education
Singers, how much do you love auditions? I know you’re all troopers, experts at the art of wowing someone in two arias or less. It’s really all about making your way through the huge list of Things You Can’t Control. Often, one of those things is the