Posts tagged Nicola Benedetti
The Times: Nicola Benedetti frustrated by music education
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.

Read More
Arts, Charity, Education, Family, Interview, Music, Media Article, ReligionSarah NorrisLando EducationThe Times, Lando, Lando Education, music, Nicola Benedetti, music education, musicviolin, Entrepreneur, philanthropyhumility, Thought Economics, faith, beliefComment
The Guardian: Nicola Benedetti: 'Music is the art of all the things we can't see or touch. We need it in our lives'
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.

Read More
Arts, Education, Music, Media ArticleSarah NorrisLando EducationThe Guardian, Nicola Benedetti, music, musical instruments, education, music lessons, classical music, STEAMComment