ViolaJo

Comedian Bill Bailey says the arts are undervalued despite their huge economic and societal impact. He will host the 2025 Sky Arts Awards on 16 September at The Roundhouse in London, celebrating achievements across music, visual arts, poetry, dance, film, and TV.
“For me, there are so many reasons why the arts are important,” Bailey tells Yahoo UK. “Even if you look at it purely from an economic perspective, the amount of money it brings into the economy… around £124 billion a year. The Premier League, by comparison, is worth about £7 billion. And yet the arts are still undervalued.”
Bailey highlighted the educational benefits, particularly for children: “There are all kinds of evidence to show that if you learn an instrument, or you learn music, then that will have a positive effect on other subjects. It teaches you life skills, determination, working with others… and yet it’s always seen as a kind of an extra.”
He praised Europe’s approach, contrasting it with the UK: “I’ve travelled around Europe, performed in theatres all over, and it’s striking the disparity in terms of the facilities, in terms of the way that the arts are considered in other countries. And I think that we have still got work to do here.”
Events like the Sky Arts Awards are important, he says, for highlighting the arts’ breadth and benefits: “It covers all of the arts… classical music, poetry, dance, visual arts, music, TV and film. It’s always healthy for people to see what’s happening in the world of the arts, not just in their field.”
Bailey has long championed traditional crafts through shows like Master Crafters, inspired by his family background. “There is a culture of making which goes back to the first humans… it’s under pressure, and it would be a terrible shame if these skills were lost. There should be ways for people to use these skills and even make careers out of them.”
He also expressed caution over AI in the arts: “It’s a big worry… but we should celebrate human creativity. AI can’t generate its own material; it just copies from humans. Let’s focus on what people are capable of.”

6 7 polyrhythm?!

How to Treat Fermatas (Beethoven’s Way) 🎹 Beethoven’s own advice: when you see a fermata, don’t come to a sudden stop—shape into it so the phrase arrives musically. Seymour Bernstein shows the simple approach that keeps the line alive and the cadence inevitable. Learn more tips and insights on tonebase Piano! ➡️ https://www.tonebase.co/piano?utm_source=facebook

Good artists copy, great artists steal. 👀 Did you spot this symphony in The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army?

I'm going to be one of the music teachers doing the sessions, do come along!

Ripon Concerts | Music for a Sunday afternoon We bring top class, inspirational live music to Ripon every month on Sunday afternoons from October to March, at Holy Trinity Church, HG4 2EY.

Having difficulty getting younger students to do anything more than simply running a piece and calling that "practice?" The case study of "Clarissa" might help...

As part of a 3-year study on musical development, Australian researchers (Renwick & McPherson, 2002) followed the practice habits of 157 elementary school-aged students.

Some agreed to videotape their practice sessions, so these were meticulously coded and every practice behavior was analyzed.

One participant, “Clarissa,” a 9 1/2-year old clarinetist, became the subject of a case study. Where researchers analyzed two practice sessions in her first year of playing and two practice sessions from her third year of playing.

So…did anything change from Year 1 to Year 3?

Some of her thoughts about practicing did evolve - she went from wanting to avoid difficult pieces in Year 1 (“I don’t like learning hard pieces because I find it annoying.”) to liking the “challenge” of taking on difficult pieces in Year 3.

But her actual practice behaviors didn’t change very much.

Mostly, she just played through each piece before moving on to the next - except when it came to one particular piece.

For one, Clarissa spent waaaay more time working on this particular piece. Eleven times longer, in fact.

And beyond the time she put in, there was a dramatic change in how she practiced this piece relative to the others too.

Unlike the other pieces on her list, Clarissa suddenly began using more advanced practice strategies like:

-fi*****ng silently
-pausing to think silently
-singing
-varying the tempo
-doing repeated run-throughs

So…what was it about this piece that seemed to unlock these practice skills that she clearly had in her toolbox, but didn’t bother to use on her other repertoire?

This was the one piece that she picked out herself.

Of course, this is just a case study. And students can’t pick out all of their own repertoire all of the time. And this is by no means the only way to increase a student's motivation.

But it was intriguing to me that Clarissa was capable of practicing more effectively - but only when it came to a piece or set of problems that she cared to solve. Have you noticed this in your teaching too?

Click through for all the nerdy details and a link to the full case study: https://bulletproofmusician.com/what-changes-when-a-student-selects-their-own-repertoire-a-case-study/

One of the stars of the Lionesses, who scored a key goal in England's semi-final win at Euro 2025, has revealed the role music plays in her life off the pitch.

19-year-old Michelle Agyemang spoke of her love of the piano in a recent interview with BBC Sport, revealing that she even brought her keyboard with her to Switzerland. "I play the piano, the bass guitar and the drums," she said. "I have my piano in my room so I'm spending a lot of time in there just playing and chilling."

"I don't think that there's a day that I go without playing it because it's right in front of me. Especially on game days I probably spend about two hours just playing and enjoying myself."

New Instrument Unlocked! The ship is sinking 🚢 But I’m vibing with this Locker’s sound 😄 #newinstrumentunlocked #perfectpitch #locker #titanic #violin #instamusic #aldocicchini #musiciseverywhere

So, this is what a single musical note looks like.

A spiraling, helical cathedral of space and time itself. A single note curls through the fabric of the universe, collapsing and expanding into a standing wave—its own sacred geometry in motion.

But remember, this is only one note. Add a second, resonant tone, and the field begins to bloom. Interference becomes interplay. The geometry becomes more elaborate, more intricate, more alive. Two notes in harmony do not merely echo—they co-create a dynamic lattice of time-sound, spiraling together like DNA, weaving space into form.

This is what sound truly is: sculpted time. And this is what time truly does: dances to the music of the cosmos.

If these shapes feel familiar, it’s because they are. Everything in nature follows this helical path—galaxies, tendrils of vines, the shells of sea creatures, your own DNA. The spiral is the universal signature of growth, coherence, and memory.

Sound is not just something we hear. It is something the universe remembers.

And so are we.