Music Education
The best thing about opera is that it takes any human emotion, and blows it up to huge proportions. There’s really no such thing as “mildly happy” or “somewhat down” in opera; even an explosive emotion like anger is amplified. With so many anger-inducing headlines on our news
Music Education
Gaining a distinction in a music exam is a great achievement. A distinction means that the candidate has achieved a high percentage when measured against pre-determined criteria: ABRSM: A distinction mark is 86% or higher Trinity College London: A distinction mark is 87% or higher London College of Music:
Music Education
Unless a singer has perfect pitch (and a few of you lucky ones do), they’ll appreciate being given a starting pitch from the rehearsal pianist. Often, a pianist’s first instinct is to do exactly that: they play the singer’s first note on the piano, with one finger,
Music Education
Music exams are criterion-referenced, meaning that marks are awarded according to pre-determined criteria. The advantage of a criterion-referenced exam is that anyone can get a distinction as long as their performance is good enough when matched against the criteria, as opposed to a norm-referenced system, in
Music Education
In an interview with Eleanore Büning for FAZ, star soprano Anna Netrebko said of the teleprompter she used in Dresden to sing Elsa in Lohengrin, “Jetzt verrate ich Ihnen ein Geheimnis: Ich kann keinen deutschen Text memorieren.” (“Now I’ll tell you a secret: I cannot memorize any German text.
Music Education
And why people love it to distraction. A series of personal recollections by Zane Dalal There is something absolutely riveting about the world of opera. Even if your connection with Western classical opera is limited, you might immediately notice that friends and acquaintances who profess to loving it, don’t
Music Education
Maurice Bandmann’s story has nearly been lost to history. It was Bandmann, along with Jehangir Framji Karaka, a Parsi businessman and head of a firm of coal brokers, who built the Opera House in 1911. Once an integral character in the growth of theatre in India, Bandmann’s story
Music Education
A few years back, one of my friends gave me a copy of Maestro Roland Dyens’s Lettres (Letters, published 2001). I had heard a few of his works before. To name a few, Tango en Skaï, Libra Sonatine and Hommage à Frank Zappa. Although I had tried my hand
Music Education
It can be difficult to hear the past we seek to visualise. Sound and music does not survive in the archaeological record. However, it is not impossible to interact with the soundscapes that once imbued past cultural landscapes. Archaeologists in this field generally have little direct evidence to work with
Music Education
Intermediate piano students are presented with many new opportunities and challenges as they progress into more sophisticated repertoire. The music they play evolves from single notes in each hand to counterpoint and chords. Learning to highlight individual notes in chords proves challenging for many of them, but understanding one element
Music Education
My first exposure to Leo Brouwer – the name and the music – happened sometime in 1981 when I heard the German guitarist Wolfgang Condin performing at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi. At that time, I had been a largely rock-preoccupied guitar player for a few years, with only a
Music Education
Concert installation for variable number of rooms, musicians and audience, interconnected through a Feedback Delay Network system (2016) Duration: 60-80 Minutes “Verschränkte Spielräume” – “Entangled Spaces” interconnects a variable number of musicians and rooms. Through the acoustic connections between the rooms and a feedback-delay network system, the musicians try