“As musicians, we are already doing something for the world … We make it more flowing? … Through music”. Pianist Lang Lang Shirley Apthorp, “Piano Man”, The Australian, May 14 2011.

Brass Brass ensemble Trombone Piano Piano solo Piano method Orchestra and concert band Concert band Strings Cello and piano String ensemble Vocal and choral General Sacred Woodwind Bassoon

People often begged him to play a little air on the violin, but he refused great lords and his fellow de-bauchers alike.  The only person who succeeded in making him play was the Marshal de Grammont.  He had a footman called La Lande who later became one of the best violinists in Europe.  After a […]

GREG SMITH Composer, arranger, and pianist Greg Smith is an Australian composer and pianist based in New South Wales.  Greg majored in piano and composition at The University of Newcastle, completing a Bachelor of Music with first-class honours with a university medal in 2001.  He completed a Master of Creative Arts in piano performance, studying […]

From 1882, nine-year-old Rachmaninoff moved to St Petersburg to study at the conservatoire. In the comfortable knowledge that, even if he did not practice, his efforts were more successful than those of his classmates, young Sergei grew lazier and lazier. In the end he did nothing at all, showed a marked preference for shirking his […]

It is not what the artist does that counts. But what he is. Cézanne would never have interested me if he had lived and thought like Jaques-Emile Blanche, even if the apple he had painted had been ten times more beautiful. What interests us is the anxiety of Cézanne, the teaching of Cézanne, the anguish […]

“Hope is the dream of a soul awake.”— French proverb. R. A. Krieger, Civilization’s Quotations: Life’s Ideal, New York, Algora Publishing, 2002, p.151. 

Make your musical lines as long as possible. Rachmaninoff said, “Small musician, small ideas; big musician, big ideas.” After an artist has played a program many times he can soar so high above the music that he conceives the whole event in one arch of sound. Make each phrase prepare for the next; make many […]