Hi folks,

A slightly eclectic one this month — a mixture of archival pianism, neuroscience, Baroque madness, jazz ballad brilliance, Armenian rhythmic wizardry, and a few practical matters.

Enjoy!

Waiting On The Waiting List

For those of you currently on the waiting list — thank you so much for your patience and perseverance!

I’m happy to say that from this week I should be able to get moving on the list again. I’ll be in touch individually this week with next steps and a clearer idea of timelines. I’ll try to move people forward as soon as realistically possible.

As ever, if you’d like an update in the meantime, just drop me a message.

Playlist: 20th Century Music Played By Golden Age Pianists

I often get asked for listening recommendations and the only thing I can sensibly recommend right now is this absolutely monster archive trawl of pianists from the golden age performing some of the pinnacles of late Romantic and early modern repertoire.

We’re talking Albéniz, Villa-Lobos, Gershwin, Satie, Mompou, and many others — all filtered through a pianistic tradition that predates recording itself. These musicians grew up in a world before globalised conservatoire culture, before standardised interpretations, before competitions shaped aesthetic norms.

A great reminder that pianistic “tradition” was once a living, unstable thing full of risk and unapologetic individuality.

Why Do We Like Music? (from The New Yorker)

Why Do We Like Music? | The New Yorker

The study of musical anhedonia—the inability to enjoy music—is revealing how music moves us.

For those of you like me who love a bit of neuroscientist, I recommend this article about people with musical anhedonia, a rare inability to enjoy music, are teaching scientists how the brain processes songs. It convincingly highlights something we take for granted in lessons every week: the extraordinary fact that organised sound can move us at all.

Balder Quartet Play ‘La Folia’

Vivaldi could write some absolute bangers, I’ll give him that.

‘La Folia’ (literally “madness”) was a Baroque dance progression that composers returned to obsessively. The Balder Quartet’s performance here brings out the raw energy of it beautifully.

What’s particularly exciting here is the addition of Baroque percussion. Much Renaissance and early Baroque chamber music would originally have included improvised percussion parts that were never notated and are now lost to history.

Mary Lou William’s Plays ‘The Man I Love’

One of my favourite pianists playing one of my favourite Gershwin tunes.

If you are new to the astonishing music of Mary Lou Williams, you are not alone. She is one of the most influential yet persistently under-analysed figures in jazz history.

Recommended as an accompaniment to this video is this deep dive into what makes her music great, attempting to redress a regular frustration: “I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times with jazz musicians who say, ‘Oh yeah, Mary Lou, she was a great arranger — great big band arranger. She was a great mentor for Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie... But they still can’t say, musically, how she mentored them or what her music sounded like.”

The Brain-Melting Rhythms of Tigran Hamasyan

Talking of great pianists, Tigran Hamasyan has got to be contender for one of the greatest living pianists. This video showcases his completely singular approach — blending Armenian folk rhythms, progressive metal energy, jazz improvisation, and classical precision.

The rhythmic layering alone is enough to make your metronome reconsider its life choices.

Lesson Prices Update

And finally, a small practical note.

For all current students, lesson prices are remaining exactly as they are.

On the website, however, I’ve rounded everything up for future enrolments (so £24.50 is now £25, for example). This simply makes things cleaner and more straightforward going forward.

Nothing changes for those already studying.

That’s all for now.

As ever, happy listening and practising!

– Will