I did some guest teaching at the University of St Andrews the other day. During one of my sessions, a member of the audience asked an interesting question. I didn’t know the answer and am still thinking about it. He said: ‘I have some modern recordings of Baroque music. The orchestra plays with a lot […]

As the Brexit story accelerates, musicians are still in the dark about what will happen to their freedom of movement after we leave the EU. For two and a half years now I have been listening to colleagues and students worrying about whether they will still be able to study here, or if they are […]

This Sunday morning, 14 October, ABC radio in Australia is broadcasting a substantial interview with me on ‘The Music Show’, presented by composer Andrew Ford. We were talking about my book ‘Speaking the Piano‘. The interview was recorded with me in Edinburgh and Andrew in Sydney. We talked for a while and apparently most of […]

I was doing a radio interview the other day about my new book ‘Speaking the Piano.’ While waiting in the studio, I got chatting to the man on duty in reception. I was holding a copy of my book. He asked me what it was about, so I told him it was about learning music. […]

I was complaining last week to a fellow musician about the difficulty of getting students to reply to emails. ‘You’d think they would reply to email precisely because it’s so easy to click on ‘reply’ and write a few words’, I said. ‘I have exactly the same problem’, he said. ‘I think it’s because a […]