Music may not be the oldest profession in the world, but it still hasn’t lost its magic. At five I received a fife as a birthday present. I thought it was a flute, it sounded like one. It gave me

“….never had I had a piano teacher so demanding and tyrannical” – Leonard Bernstein on Isabelle Vengerova The composer Philip Glass described her as somewhere “between intimidating and terrifying” whose lessons invariably left students “shaken and silent”, while Virgil Thomson

The language of music is vast, however, just like the many spoken languages of the world, not all music will speak a dialect you can easily understand. What is in the music that you and I love that speaks so

The title of this post is a quote from the British actor Michael Caine‘s memoirs which he read on BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week. The phrase was first mentioned when he was describing setbacks in his early career

Something that music teachers and composers could learn from people who mix and master music for a living is that music is the rule. Knowing the rules of music is as equally important as knowing the feel of music. Fine

A lot of odd things have been said about classical music. I was at a round table of concert reviewers a while back and someone made the comment about a concert they had reviewed. The person said the playing was

For some people, the word ‘Musicology’ is that recording by Prince that came out in 2004, with a first track of the same title, a James Brown–style homage to funk.

As every performing musician will tell you, there’s a world of difference between playing in the privacy of one’s home or rehearsal room and performing in public.