After all my adventures of the summer, they finished up with a lovely trip away to Greenbelt Festival last weekend. Here’s a slightly bumper Friday Favourites to make up for the blog being quiet. Do we really need to play the entire piano repertoire? (Classical Mel) – How Read more
This isn’t, strictly speaking, a music-related post or a review, but I wanted to share with you a little bit about the other passion close to my heart – faith. If you’ve looked around on my site, you have probably found that I offer a specialised focus on Church Music. Read more
Just a quick updated to say that the hectic month of August is over, and I am back lurking around the internet as normal now. Here are some of the things you should be looking out for this autumn: The rest of the series on “A History of Music for Read more
I’m off camping in a field this week at Greenbelt Festival, so this is a slightly curtailed edition of Friday Favourites. However, I hope you’ve got something exciting planned for this weekend. If you’re in Edinburgh, it’s the last few days of the fringe, so don’t miss out. You can Read more
I was having a look through the search terms that led people to look at this blog, and I noticed that a couple of them were things like “failed sight reading on singing exam”, “abrsm grade 6 theory fail” and “abrsm grade 8 fail”, so I thought perhaps it was time Read more
This is the cry of many people I encounter, and on the surface it might very well seem true. Perhaps other people seem to be able to hear music better, or pick up how to play an instrument faster. Surely they must be more “musically talented” than others? Well, actually, Read more
First and only Sondheim of the season. FRINGE RUN: 12/8-24/8 (not 18th) @ 10:10; Greenside [£5] Who, Where and When: Red Oak Theatre; Greenside; Saturday 17th August 2013; 10.10am The Show One should be under no illusions about Sondheim. His work is genius, but it’s not easy to get right. Merrily Read more
When choosing a new teacher, we all ask lots of questions like “how much do you charge?” and “what hours do you teach?”, but there’s more to finding a good teacher than just cost and time. Here are five really important questions to ask a prospective teacher to help you Read more
Welcome to the mid-Fringe Friday Favourites! You can catch up on the best blogs on music this week, and if you want to read the reviews of the shows I’ve seen this week, you can click here. The Perfect Wrong Note (The Cross-Eyed Pianist) – Why we, as Read more
Taken from the past papers (2009 sample, 2010 and 2011 so far), here are a list of the topics which have been covered by previous essay questions in Section C: Stylistic Development – Musical Responses. Toccata: Jacques Loussier Plays Bach Spontaneity and improvisation Inspiration from Baroque features Creative limitations of arranging Read more