After 2 weeks into the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, Belgium, one of the oldest and most prestigious competitions in classical music, another exciting competition – the Van Cliburn Piano Competition – began in full swing across the pond in

The Queen Elisabeth Competition was founded in the year 1937 in Brussels, initially a competition for violinists. In 1938, pianists were included, followed by singers in 1988, and cellists in 2017. Since then, these instrumentalists would take turns competing in

To me, a good concert experience = a good performance + organiser + audience + community. A good concert experience is the product of several key components: performance, organiser, audience, and community. Each element plays a pivotal role in shaping

This article is inspired by Episode 2 of Season 3 of ‘The Bear’, a drama series from Disney+ about a young chef, Carmy Berzatto, trained in the fine dining world, who comes home to Chicago to run his family sandwich

Between 1912 and 1948, art competitions were part of the Olympic Games. Initially, these competitions were grouped into five broad categories, including architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. In terms of music, subcategories encompassed mixed music, compositions for orchestra, solo

In my previous article about the Leeds Piano Competition in 2021, I insinuated some evidence of an “old boys club”, as there were 5 men selected to advance to the finals out of 10 semi-finalists comprising 4 women and 6

The musical — and to the extent, the artistic — brain needs to be continuously nurtured. Indeed, no other art form can have such an impact on the brain and how it perceives sounds. This nourishment and development should be

When I was studying music at school in the UK in the 1980s (I took music at O- and A-Level, in addition to studying the piano privately), I was often the butt of jokes that I had “taken the easy