Archive for the ‘Inspirations’ Category

Channel 4’s ‘The Piano’

Posted by Susan Tomes on 27 February 2023 under Daily Life, Inspirations, Teaching  •  1 Comment

I’ve been watching Channel 4’s new series, ‘The Piano’, in which amateur piano-playing members of the public put themselves forward to come and play an upright piano in the foyer of one of Britain’s main railway stations. Unknown to them, watching behind the scenes are two judges, the Chinese virtuoso Lang Lang and the singer-songwriter […]

Favourite books of 2022

Posted by Susan Tomes on 30 December 2022 under Books, Inspirations  •  1 Comment

Last December my blog post about my favourite books of 2021 was quite popular, so here’s another round-up of the best books I read in 2022. Once again it turns out that I read over fifty books, but some were re-readings, which either does or doesn’t count, depending on your point of  view. Here are […]

Christmas cake decorations

Posted by Susan Tomes on 27 December 2022 under Daily Life, Inspirations  •  1 Comment

We generally try to make our own decorations for our home-made Christmas cake. We used to attempt traditional scenes of snowmen, sledging, fir trees, snowballs etc. In recent years, after icing the cake, we’ve switched to making animals out of the leftover icing. Each year furnishes its own themes.  During lockdown, an otter appeared on […]

Kettle’s Yard recital in Cambridge this month

Posted by Susan Tomes on 1 November 2022 under Books, Concerts, Inspirations, Travel  •  1 Comment

I’m preparing for a solo recital at Kettle’s Yard museum in Cambridge on November 24th. Kettle’s Yard is a beautiful little museum which began in the 1950s as a personal art collection by Jim Ede, who used his own house as the display venue. It was the first gallery I visited where art objects were […]

Lili Boulanger’s Cantata ‘Faust et Hélène’

Posted by Susan Tomes on 20 August 2022 under Concerts, Inspirations  •  1 Comment

At the Edinburgh Festival this week we went to the Usher Hall to hear the French orchestra Les Siècles performing Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring on instruments of the period. (The difference in those instruments was not immediately apparent, though there was a soft grain to the famous bassoon solo which opens the piece, and other […]

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