Does Classical Music discourage young Musicians? Over the past month, I finished reading “Class, Control, and Classical Music” by Anna Bull. It’s an ethnography of young musicians in England, participating in youth orchestras and youth choirs. It’s a damning work which doesn’t shy away from the impacts of classical music on young people — for […]
A New Newsletter for the New Year?!? That’s right — with the new year I thought it was finally time to update how I do things, given I didn’t publish anything for three months. This newsletter structure is prioritised around better quality content, fewer times a year. It’s more sustainable for me and less junk […]
Hidden within Brisbane’s rather unassuming industrial suburb of Wacol is a secret. Half of this secret is grown-over bushland, with the only hint of its past some concrete foundations out by the side of the road that leads to the local prison. The other half is a collection of army buildings at the former Wacol […]
For a long time, artistic practice (think performing, composing, panting, etc.) was not considered research. Research, traditionally, has always been in written form. We might even think of the scientific methods: hypotheses and experiments and results and the write-up of these results as the most traditional research, and it’s something most people are exposed to […]
When people ask me what my favourite movie is, I usually go for Whiplash (2014). It’s an oddball choice for sure — and it’s definitely not one because it’s a feel-good movie. Indeed, I think it gets to the heart of what a favourite film is: this is undoubtedly the film that I think is […]
I’m currently working on the creative work for my thesis. It’s a theatrical work, with both a script and music which accompanies this script. It’s my first time scriptwriting, and it’s something I’m really enjoying. The problem is, I’m adapting a sequence of real-life events – a “based on a true story” type script. And […]
I’ll be honest: no-one reads this blog. Maybe you are, right now, reading these words. But I have access to the numbers, and I can tell you: no-one is reading this blog. Or at least, that’s how it feels. Because of course, some people read this blog: just not many, not many at all. Less […]
Since the start of this year, I’ve been tracking my time. The way I do this is in my journal, which has a weekly section, with 30-minute intervals running in boxed-paper down the pages. These columns start at 5am, and while some people use them to plan their week, I’ve been using my digital calendar […]
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about music education. This has something to do with my university, ANU, choosing to save money by integrating the school of music into a broader school combined with the art and design school and the centre for museum and heritage practice and making several staff redundant, but it’s also […]
Last week, I had the pleasure of assisting with a wayang gamelan performance for the 60th anniversary of the Indonesia Project at ANU. If you’ve never seen wayang before, a form of Indonesian (mainly Javanese and Balinese) theatre. It uses shadow puppets, which has a big screen with a light projected onto it, with the […]