Composer: Joe HisaishiArranger: Greg SmithTitle: “Memories”, from The Boy and the HeronInstrumentation: Piano Solo This item is available from Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus.

Title: Smooth Sailing Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano duet Level: Piano 1 – 1.1 (five finger position) Product medium: PDF score (audio of accompaniment track only)

“Beauty will save the world.” – The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.” – Charles Ives, American composer

Johann Sebastian Bach’s preferred to play the viola when conducting an orchestra. Source: Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites.  Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, p. 216.

An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it. — Robert Bresson, French filmmaker J. Butler, Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1991, p. 170.

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Pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy on his colleague Sviatoslav Richter: Richter magnetized me, like he did so many others, and I wouldn’t have missed his concerts for anything. I think he communicated more than anyone else complete devotion and sincerity to his art. When I look back, this is what attracted me most to him […]

The conductor Stokowski (who was the conductor of Disney’s Fantasia) was a pioneer of orchestral recording.  This was not without its problems: Stokowski was moving more and more toward what is recognized as his most significant achievement – the broadening of popular interest in serious music.  He developed a firm conviction that radio, recordings, and […]

I have often made the point in masterclasses that students should not listen to lots of recordings of a piece they are learning. I’m always a little horrified when I hear a student say, “My teacher told me to learn the Chopin G minor Ballade, so I went to the library and took out eight […]