As It Happens5:32Blind musicians and teachers communicate through vibration using Canadian-made device A PhD student in Ottawa has developed a device that allows blind and low-vision students to feel music cues, replacing the need to see them. Instead of having to follow a conductor’s baton, or a teacher’s hand gestures during a lesson, music learners … Read more
When I was five, my parents bought me a piano. It was a very East Asian thing to do. East Asian parents tend to buy their children either a piano or violin and sign them up for lessons, and for me it was the piano. It was a dark mahogany Baldwin, and a novelty for … Read more
The Outsiders, a gritty adaptation of the classic young adult novel, became the essence of a Broadway insider on Sunday, winning the Tony Award for best new musical on a night when theatre history was made for women as Broadway directors and score writers. The musical, an adaptation of the beloved S. E. Hinton novel, is about … Read more
Richard M. Sherman, one half of the prolific, award-winning pair of brothers who helped form millions of childhoods by penning the instantly memorable songs for Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — as well as the most-played tune on Earth, It’s a Small World (After All) — has died. He was 95. Sherman, together with … Read more
In a wistful take on the first of Schumann’s Five Pieces in Folk Style, for example, Fung was on point where lightness was concerned and remained faithful to the composer’s intention of representing Vanitas vanitatum, loosely translated as the fleetingness of life. Zlatomir Fung in recital with Hong Kong pianist Rachel Cheung at Hong Kong … Read more
As It Happens6:21An Oscar changed everything for this public school instrument repair shop Steve Bagmanyan is putting retirement on hold — and he couldn’t be more thrilled about it. Bagmanyan is the supervisor at a warehouse in Los Angeles, where a small, but mighty, team of music lovers repair musical instruments for thousands of public … Read more
A stolen Hofner bass guitar belonging to Paul McCartney and used to record The Beatles’ first two albums has been found and returned after 51 years following a global hunt. The guitar, dubbed the “most iconic lost musical instrument of all time” by The Lost Bass Project, the team behind the search, was used on … Read more
Johannes Plenio / Unsplash The piano remains one of the world’s most loved and most played instruments. It’s a versatile instrument that can be used to make beautiful music by beginners and virtuosos alike, and it can accompany almost any instrument and perform in pretty much any genre. Many would-be pianists find it daunting to … Read more
Once upon a time, long before the Internet was envisaged, knowledge was less compartmentalized. A doctorate, for example, might encompass such seemingly diverse areas as philosophy, art history, German studies and philology. But, these days, a PhD student will typically submit a thesis on some narrowly defined subfield that investigates the minutiae of some … Read more
