• Preserving a canon?

    I keep returning to the forum post about the dumbing down of music in the classroom and seeing more comments that still negate the importance of content. As the work of the Prince’s Teaching Institute extols – it is rigorous subject-based teaching that is of real educational value and not the pedagogy-obsessed national curriculum. The…

  • Tribute to Maw at QEH

    I was pleased I took the time to hear all three concerts presented as part of a tribute to the British composer Nicholas Maw who died in 2009. The works performed did a great deal to give a glimpse of his compositional voice – all passionately introduced by Andrew Burn who clearly has had a…

  • I love to… score

    The show is very close now. Two more weeks of rehearsals – lots of run-throughs at the piano and polishing up with lots of detail – then a week of band call, technical rehearsal, dress then two shows. Amazing that one week will be the culmination of a project devised way back in May and…

  • Pedagogy and Content: A balancing act

    Classical versus popular. Do we really need to try and place different musical styles in some kind of opposition? I think the polarisation of ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ music is the most useless thing we can do, and completely unnecessary for the teaching of music. It is fantastic to see breadth explored in GCSE and A-level…

  • Set for Juniper Dreams taking shape

  • SoundCloud –

  • Assessing composition

    After reading a forum post on what a music teacher considered the variability with regards to the marking of composition coursework, I wondered what made the assessment of this component a challenge. We often consider ‘art’ as something difficult to assess – it’s subjective, how can we make judgements and apply one marking criteria to…

  • Musical Pathways

    The Henley report on music education in the United Kingdom emphasised the value and importance of music making as a practical skill and how much this can enrich and aid the development of young people’s lives. This comprehensive survey lacked a detailed account of class music lessons and accentuated the role of extra-curricular music making.…

  • Brian Elias performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra on NMC

    Brian Elias (b. 1948) spent his early life in Bombay before moving to London. Three of his later orchestral works – all performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under three different conductors – are presented on a recently released disc on the British based NMC label. NMC Recordings ‘is devoted to the promotion and preservation…

  • Tate: Gerhard Richter Panorama

    Some art seems to be the visualisation of music; Kandinsky comes to mind as an artist-musician who indeed tried to accomplish such a synthesis. Wandering through the Tate’s beautifully curated exhibition of so much of Richter’s work compelled to consider musical counterparts; the realism of his painting over photographs – perhaps akin to Berio painting…