This quote from an interview I did with pianist Antoine Préat perfectly expresses my relationship with many composers and their music. When I returned to playing the piano seriously in my later 30s, after a break of some 20 years,

Does music come from some place other than through a musician or a composer? When I first started making music, much of it flowed through me by what I had learnt from other composers. Now, that is still part of

You’ll recognise it instantly: that happy “lift” at the end of a piece in a minor key, an unexpected lightening of the mood, like a ray of sunshine peeping through the rain clouds. That expressive “lift”, an expression of happiness

To celebrate Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, I would like to introduce ten contemporary female composers who have not been introduced on Interlude before. While certainly not exhaustive, this list of ten composers illustrates the wide scope of

The number of symphony orchestras in China has grown exponentially over the last couple of years. One of the newest kids on the block is the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra founded in 2016. This enormous orchestral flowering has in large part

It seems a simple question, doesn’t it? And the simple answer is that music lessons are for learning music / a musical instrument. But learning an instrument, either via formal music lessons or self-teaching, offers so much more. Gustav Holst:

What’s your local subway system like? Like being in a tiled basement, somewhat dimly lit, and all you hear are the rumbles and screeches of the trains? In a new collaboration between the HK Philharmonic and the MTR in Hong

Our popular series forgotten cellists from 2018 continues with several outstanding artists you may not know of. One-thousand students claim cellist Harvey Shapiro the “cello doctor” was the single greatest influence in their lives. The esteemed pedagogue taught at Juilliard