These few weeks I had been participating in the Toronto Summer Music Festival, where I get to perform in and audit in masterclasses conducted by world-class musicians. I ran into a friend who appeared puzzled when I mentioned that I had been interested in auditing masterclasses of other instrument[...]
Archive for the ‘Musical Musings’ Category
Suggested Readings for Developing Analytical and Memorization Skills
To help you with Analytical Memory, below are books I read that I find helpful. I didn’t read all of them in great details. My goal was simply to get a superficial understanding of concepts in composition, analysis, and harmony, and be able to come up with some form of analysis that serve as aid [[...]
April 17th, 2009 - 6:44 pm § in Musical Musings, View all journals ...
Listen to Music with Whole Body
This is an amazing lecture by deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Don’t miss it! Further down are thoughts I had after seeing this lecture. Feel the Vibrations! We don’t hear music, we experience it! Take note and experience the ‘whole journey of the sound’! How I experi[...]
Blind Practising
Nobuyuki Tsujii (born September 13, 1988) is a Japanese pianist, who won the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009 along with Haochen Zhang of China. Tsujii was born blind. Watch his performance of Liszt’s La Campanella: I remember at a master class of Marietta Or[...]
April 16th, 2009 - 7:20 pm § in Musical Musings, View all journals ...
Prometheus - Multi-Sensory Music
In an earlier article on Blind Practising, I mentioned that as a child I read in some book that taught one how to gain the power of literally `seeing` the future. All you need to do was to close your eyes and to visualize light! Supposedly, you would then start seeing the future! The trouble [[...]
January 1st, 2009 - 8:03 am § in Musical Musings, View all journals ...
A Stroke of Genius
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke in her left brain - centre for analytics, logics, and language. Her right brain, responsible for intuition and creativity, took over. She shared her transcendental experience in this amazingly moving lecture. If you don’t have 20 minutes to s[...]
September 30th, 2008 - 7:45 pm § in Musical Musings, View all journals ...
VNV Nation - Illusion
Very beautiful! Check this out: Reminds me of Narcissus in Greek mythology, yet have another layer of meaning to it. Here are the lyrics of the song: I know it’s hard to tell how mixed up you feel Hoping what you need is behind every door Each time you get hurt, I don’t want you to [...]
September 30th, 2008 - 9:11 am § in Musical Musings, View all journals ...
A Pianist’s Manifesto: We are Artists too!
I have heard many people said that the written score must be faithfully interpreted by a pianist. That you can’t do it like this or that because ‘this or that is not what the composer wants!”. What I don’t understand is if you listen to singers, why can they take so much libe[...]
September 29th, 2008 - 2:51 pm § in Musical Musings, View all journals ...
Playing for Alexina Louie - “Fastforward”
Come Hear Fastforward! “Fastforward” is such a fun piece! The composer mixes up jazz / blues elements with contemporary piano writing. Within this short 5 minute piece, the mood changes in so many ways, spiked up by jazzy syncopation. Here you can listen to twenty three interpretat[...]
Why do I Like Jazz?
I have always loved jazz, especially Keith Jarrett and a jazz group called Medeski Martin and Wood. You may ask “what is the connection between jazz and classical music?” To me, it is in the art of spontaneity. Composers such as Liszt, Chopin, Mozart, and Bach were masters of improvisati[...]
