The self-help/life coaching section of my local bookshop is full of books on how to learn from the professionals – think like a pro, act like a pro, be more pro. We are encouraged to draw inspiration from successful professionals

Thoughts on How to Introduce the Music Appropriately Before a Performance There is a growing trend amongst concert hosts and performers to introduce the music to be performed ahead of the concert, and on radio for presenters to describe the

Where does inspiration come from, the spark to create? ….even fairly mundane activities can feed in to the discovery of new insight, new knowledge and new means of expressing ideas in all sorts of ways – Professor John Rink

I watched with interest some of the Winter Olympics coverage from South Korea, in particular the snowboarding and skiing. It’s easy to spot the winners – people like Chloe Kim and Redmond Gerard (both from the US team): they display

When considering the piano repertoire, and piano instrumental music, we tend to focus on the big works in the canon – the great concertos and piano sonatas, and large-scale works like the Goldberg, Diabelli or Handel Variations, or the Rhapsody

In our commercially-driven modern times “success” tends to be measured in monetary terms, and those people who have achieved the dizzy heights of a very large salary and financial security long into the future are generally regarded as “successful”.

Is this the most “relaxing” piece of classical music? asks Radio Three of Arvo Pärt’s contemplative and spiritual ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’.

The “concert pianist” is a relatively recent creation. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a time when the technology of piano manufacture allowed piano makers to build bigger, stronger instruments, the “concert pianist” as we understand the role today,