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All this, my friend, will time provide, And of itself, itself will give; Soon as you in yourself confide, You know the way to live! — Mephistopheles to Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, translated by Lewis Filmore, (London: William Smith, 1847), p. 79. First published in the German as Faust: eine Tragödie, […]

“The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed…because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may […]

Sometimes, I’ll work through it, and sometimes, you know, you might have to make a couple of test bottles or test wines, and it helps you get closer.  But if I don’t stop, I might get on the machine here and make five tracks, but I know that they’re not really worth anything.  I’m just […]

“‘Culture is our petrol,’ says Toumani Diabaté, the Malian kora player who has collaborated with Damon Albarn and Björk, to name but a few. ‘Music is our mineral wealth. There isn’t a single major music prize in the world today that hasn’t been won by a Malian artist.’ ‘Music regulates the life of every Malian’, […]

George Plimpton, a writer and sportsman, asked if he could play in the New York Philharmonic for a month to write about the workings of an orchestra.  Leonard Bernstein assigned him to the percussion section.  The principal percussionist, Walter Rosenberg, recalled his experience: During rehearsals I would lean over and point to where we were […]

American jazz music is, in many ways, rooted in its “traditional” repertoire – the American “Songbook” of “standards”. There are, however musicians who emphasise the importance of a fresh approach: If jazz has a future, musicians like Matt Mayhall could help it get there. A lanky, bespectacled Reno native and graduate of Cal Arts, where […]

Title: Abstraction XIII Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score     Related products:     – Abstraction XIII (mp3)  

The composer Burton Lane describes George Gershwin’s playing: You could feel the electricity going through the room when he played.  He could transpose into any key with the greatest of ease.  He had total command of what he was doing.  Musical surprises, unusual changes of keys.  He was one of the few composers who had […]

“Success is not the place one arrives but rather the spirit with which one undertakes and continues the journey.” Alex Noble Cited at: Quotations Book

Anton Bruckner developed a condition call numeromania that compelled him to count everything – cathedral gables, stars, leaves on the trees; even the number of bars in his lengthy symphonies. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning.  Sydney: Random House, p.70.