Playing for ballet class tips #1: Listen to yourself and the room
If you play for class a lot, it's easy to get into a habit of being so focused on what the dancers are doing, and what the teacher wants, that…
Advent calendar 2012: playing for ballet classes
It’s that time of year again when I try to blog for 25 days in a row for Advent, on something to do with dance and music. This year it’s…
Peachnote for all your classical ‘name-that-tune’ problems
Here was today’s musical problem – what’s the tune that Deanna Durbin singing in this film? I need the score immediately for a recording. I know it’s Strauss, but which…
Russian and Ukrainian folk song site
a-pesni is a huge and wonderful site of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Belarusian songs of every description – old folklore, war songs, variety, revolutionary songs, army songs, you name it.…
More on borrowings in the Nutcracker
I think most people know that there are quite a few musical borrowings in the Nutcracker, and that Tchaikovsky got the theme for the Arabian from somewhere – a Georgian…
On revolution in The Nutcracker and the limits of Google
French revolutionary musical borrowings in The Nutcracker —wny? As I said in my last post, where I think I’ve discovered a French counter-revolutionary song as a source for one of…