One of the lessons I learned early in life is that in order to be able to do things you really want to do, you sometimes have to do things you definitely do not want to do. What I had learned a bit later in life is that every once in a while, you repeatedly have to do the thing…

My very first violin teacher always said that she would never send a student to a competition because competitions are for horses, not musicians. I don’t know what your take on this is, but I just love the odd bit of competition. Unfortunately, these days I am rather past the age of violin competitions, so I settled for the next…

I wish someone had told me about the chairs. When I announced that I was going to become an arts administrator, I wish someone had taken me aside and told me that if I went through with this, my relationship with chairs was never going to be the same again. I really used to be on good terms with chairs.…

It is no secret that the classical music world is going increasingly mental. Much ink has been spilled in an attempt to get to the bottom of the problem and many informed and even more less-informed people have tried to shed light on different aspects of the phenomenon. I personally believe that the classical music madness these days is most…

I must have been 12 or 13 years old when I first saw a picture of a person wearing an academic gown in my English workbook. I don’t remember the title of the chapter, but I imagine it must have been something unimaginative like ‘Life in Britain’ or ‘The British Education System’. What I do remember though is my reaction…

My life has always been characterized by an above average amount of what I like to call ‘candid-camera moments’. These are the moments where life screws with you so much that you are sure some TV person who had to give up his/her dream of being a reporter because he/she could not stand the gore of real life thrusts a…