Category: Advice
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Talking About Performance Anxiety
Having started the cello much later to most other musicians, I found myself battling the fear of performing at the same time as facing an insecure self-image that often comes with being a 12 year old. I believe this made the issue far greater than it would’ve been, had I been performing at an earlier […]
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“Play it like something you hear down by the river”
I believe it is now widely accepted, or at least should be, that the soul of great music and a great artist is not solely created in the practice room. We use the practice room as a place to learn how to interpret a composers emotions though our instruments. The practice room is used to […]
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Why Is Silence So Loud In Music?
I have always hated the sound of nothing. I grind my teeth in silences and put music on as soon as I am by myself. I am scared about what might happen if I am left alone with myself. Inside my mind, what might be waiting for me? I think I’d rather avoid it than […]
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Music, Philosophy and Jeanette Winterson
For Christamas this year, I bought Jeanette Winterson’s semi-autobiography, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, for my pianist friend, Jasmin. I thought I would interest Jasmin because of Jeanette’s inspirational story and her connections with Oxford, (Jasmin is awaiting a response from her Hartford interview!) and so it did. So much so in fact that […]
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Does Art Have To Be Understood?
I often wander cautiously around art galleries, often in the shadow of sincere tourists with their hands behind their back, face poised in a wonderfully intellectual and pensive expression. I feel inclined to understand the vast collections before me as they seemingly are, and marvel at the sense of x throughout the complexity of y. […]
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Waiting For Love- Poems for presents
I didn’t mind But Waiting for love Was like waiting for a dream to come To fly by and take me to a world afar Where love was the waterfall and I was the reflection I was shown the life from my dreams in the river A life where the moon kissed the stars And […]
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Always choose the better life- mental health and musicians
Sometimes our thoughts can be far more destructive than the events surrounding us. Of course these two things are often interlinked, but not exclusively. If we have a specific worry plaguing our minds, no matter how laid back our life may seem, often the internal anguish can be far more warring and destructive. On […]
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The Flaw of Supremacy
If you only played the dream And sang nothing but the love, The spirit and the depths of the soul If nothing mattered but the pleasure And all you wrote rang in perfect harmony What would you do in order to forget? Plagued with the boundary of infinite joy Would you live here with me […]
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How busking can make you into the musician you want to be
During the summer I’ve been busking regularly in some of the small towns around my area in order to save some money for returning to boarding school (as I like to party ;)) When I first started busking I experienced very similar emotions that I would if performing formally. I would worry the night before […]
Hattie Butterworth 