The Times: Toby Lee, the 16-year-old being called a guitar legend

It’s not easy being a teenager in 2021. It could even give you the blues. What it rarely does, however, is make you want to play the blues, the musical style that emerged from black communities in the American south at the turn of the 20th century and went on to form the foundation of 1960s and 1970s rock. Toby Lee, a 16-year-old from Oxfordshire who has been celebrated by such greats as Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa as the best blues guitarist of his generation, is a rare exception.

“I’m going to be honest: I’m quite a nerd,” Toby says, actually looking quite stylish in a flat cap and patterned shirt as he speaks from his parents’ living room in Oxfordshire, a custom-built Gibson335 electric guitar leaning on the wall behind him. “If I’m not playing guitar, I’m taking a guitar or a pedal apart to figure out how it works. I have a mechanical mind and I’m into things my friends aren’t into, but I quite like that. It’s something different to talk about.”

The Guardian: Pitch perfect: the UK children's choirs finding ways to connect in lockdown

Eight-year-old Emily Grills was looking forward to turning singing teacher this month, drilling her parents on the songs she has been singing with her children’s choir in Bristol.

“Lockdown has been lonely,” she said. “But singing makes me happy and so teaching my parents to sing means we can do it together even when it’s not my lesson time – although my mummy doesn’t sing very well yet.”

Encouraging even their youngest members, such as Emily, to become “singing ambassadors” who help plan and lead lessons, is just one of the new and positive ways that the pandemic has forced Bristol Beacon choir to innovate.

The Times: Nicola Benedetti frustrated by music education

Both my husband and I were asked to leave recorder club at our primary schools. I was even asked to mime in a concert. My problem - I didn’t practice. Not sure if that’s because I always forgot or because my mother didn’t remind me. She wasn’t big on helping me with anything to do with school. My husband on the other hand, is musical and spent 20 years as a Sound Engineer and Producer, before switching careers.

Our daughter is very musical, although she’s also not big on practicing. She was very lucky and managed to be offered a 3 year plac, on the Royal Academy of Music’s First String Experience course. She made it to grade 5 violin (then gave up to work more on her ballet), grade 4 piano, grade 3 recorder and is now just beginning grade 5 flute (her only weekly lesson instrument now). She’s spent lockdown teaching herself to play her guitar (Rolling Stones, A Star is Born soundtrack and random Siri inspired tracks), learning how to use GarageBand and back to playing her piano.

The Sunday Times: UK university rankings: the best universities by subject

As well as institutional rankings, The Sunday Times and The Times have identified the centres of excellence within each of 67 subject areas. The subject rankings are based on student opinion on teaching quality and their wider university experiences, combined with the outcomes of the 2014 research assessments, graduate job prospects and course entry standards.

The Times: Why music really is a universal language

“Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand,” sang Stevie Wonder in 1976 and now a study backs him up.

Researchers who analysed hundreds of cultures say they have evidence that music is a kind of universal language. Not only does it exist everywhere — it also appears to have an underlying structure that carries meaning between the most distant societies.

The Guardian: Nicola Benedetti: 'Music is the art of all the things we can't see or touch. We need it in our lives'

Our sense of the world and our place in it expands by the hour. This 21st-century jungle is incomprehensible in its complexity and fullness; the Earth is saturated with people and information. Just think about how much stuff is out there, from scientific and medical discoveries, books written, works of art created, the 500 recordings of Elgar’s Cello Concerto – the inordinate documentations of our collective pasts, and the continuous stream of current inventions is overwhelming.

We also have so many things in every shape, size, colour and form conceivable, and for every purpose imaginable. And many of these things are designed not to last. Mobile phones are downgraded through a process called “upgrading” – the companies that do it have admitted it!

But what about a thing that does last and is intended to? Do we understand the weight or value of a timeless thing? “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” wrote TS Eliot in 1934. If he felt that then, I wonder what he would be saying about us now.

The Guardian: Teens are making historical events go viral on TikTok – what does a history teacher think?

There is a long-held stereotype that teenagers spend a lot of time online, uninterested in real life events.

People who say that clearly haven’t seen them on TikTok, where they are engaging in the unexpected: teaching history lessons.

Nadia Jaferey, a former staffer for Kirsten Gillibrand, drew attention to the phenomenon in October, when she tweeted out a thread of her favorite TikTok history re-enactments. She linked to several videos where teenagers played out key points in history, with special effects and audio to boot.

I asked a history expert to watch the videos and comment: my old history teacher, Izzy Jones, who is now vice-principal at my old high school in London.

Education, Media Article, Music, TechnologySarah NorrisNovember 5, 2019Lando EducationTikTok, Teens, Teenagers, History, Historical Events, The Guardian, ViralComment

The Times: Power of violin helps transform problem school

An inner-city secondary school that transformed behaviour and results after giving every new student a violin and three years of music lessons could have its success replicated across the country.

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Nicola Benedetti are patrons of the scheme, which is being taken beyond London for the first time and eventually aims to reach every school in England.

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