• Integrating musicians

    I am really pleased to have received Pedro de Alcantara’s book last week and keen to start reading to write my review. I feel a little nervous about trying to encapsulate what I hope to be a very interesting read in 500 words but fingers-crossed. I’ve managed to read the introductory pages and already nuggets…

  • Forward and Up

    Several years of Alexander Technique have had a rather huge effect on my entire thinking. I recall the lessons, particularly the two I was fortunate to have with Pedro de Alcantara in Paris, with excitement as every one gave me a renewed understanding of my body and how it interacts with space. At the time…

  • Music, when soft voices die

    It was rather by chance I stumbled upon some choral music in the Clore Ballroom at the Southbank Centre today, and I am rather pleased I did. I am desperate to try and write some choral music. The voice fascinates me, and the combination of numerous voices is an incredible sound. There was a fascinating…

  • Teaching composition

    On route to a one-off composition lesson I thought I’d try and clarify my approach to composition teaching. Why bother? Does it matter that I have a conscious strategy for helping young composers develop? Is there really any right and wrong in “modern” compositional approaches? Are we facilitating the development of unique compositional voices, or…

  • What’s the worst that can happen?

    I love reading The Onion. It’s ‘news’ never ceases to amuse me however callous and inappropriate it can be at times. A recent item from their site on “Stepping Out Of Comfort Zones” is particularly relevant after my week away with over one hundred pupils at an outdoors activity centre in the Vale of Edale,…

  • Is complex … art?

    I read a rather provocative blog entry by Phillip Cooke, composer, last week that was critical of Whitacre’s “success” as a choral composer. He proceeded to analyse – reductively – the harmonic content of Lux aurumque to propose that such ‘simplicity’ did not deserve the public recognition it received. Why do we criticise those artists…

  • WYSIWYG

    It was brilliant that Jo McNally was able to accept my invitation to give a session on choral conducting at the start of this week. It was refreshing to have some reminders of the training the ABCD conducting course had given me several years ago, and to rejuvenate my practice as a director. I particularly…

  • Is it the notes or the performance?

    I’m frantically writing on my iPhone between Brent Cross and Hampstead – as my train descends underground – as I have spent over three hours today listening to the same Fauré nocturne and I’ve been wondering what is making me rather obsessed with the piece. Is it the subtle harmonic movement, the piano writing that…

  • Composing Pedagogy

    Composition features so much in music teaching. We seem to want to respond to everything musical by creating new music. I think it was Berio that said the best critique of a work was to write another so perhaps a learning through doing approach makes sense. What interests me is that all music teachers are…

  • Burning platforms

    Marc Jaffery’s article in the recently returned to print – and rebranded – Music Education UK is timely. It is a worth a read at http://jsavage.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/musiceducationuk-issue-1-the-view-from-walesv2.pdf. Marc’s holistic view of the state of play regarding music education in the UK is welcome as this lack of cohesion through an over diversity of professional bodies has…