Q&A: Tom Hammond on Amateur Music Making Part 1

In a two-part blog Rob Edgar, questions conductor Tom Hammond and composer James Francis Brown about the world of amateur music-making.

Part 1
Tom Hammond airs his views – informed by a wealth of experience conducting professional and amateur both nationally and across the globe.

James Francis Brown - Clarinet Concerto Video

James Francis Brown is featured in a new video by the Redhill Sinfonia ahead of their performance of his Clarinet Concerto on the 4th July 2015.

More information here.

Our Musical Heritage in London

Alan Mills writes about the treasure trove that is the British Library, and the benefits it bestows on all of us; from the student, to the professor, to the man on the street.

Dr. Johnson's famous assertion that, when someone is 'tired of London', they are also 'tired of life' is just as debatable today as it probably was in the 18th century. Nevertheless, there's no doubt that being in London gives one access to a whole range of musical experiences that smaller centres can seldom match. Apart from the endlessly varied and continuous flow of concerts presenting all kinds of music, the good, the bad, and the ugly - plus shops retailing a striking range of sheet music and CDs (though maybe not quite so impressive as formerly) - there is also, thankfully, the British Library, sandwiched for fifteen years now between two mainline railway stations, and sitting back from the busy Euston Road to give it some sense of peace and quiet - though not so far back as to suggest a withdrawal from everyday life.

Historically Informed Composition

On the launch of Music Haven's new publication of a completion of Mozart's oboe concerto, K.293, William Drabkin considers the issues of originality in the process of reconstructing music from the past.

To some extent, I’m here on false pretences. My formal tuition in composition ceased nearly half a century ago and was replaced by training in musicology; at best, I can call composition one of my ‘private passions’. I have maintained a life-long interest in the compositional processes of the great Austrian composers of the late eighteenth and early 19th centuries, and have devoted much time to transcribing and interpreting the sketchbooks of Beethoven. Through my study of Classical-period music, I have come into contact with unfinished works the completion of which I have been unable to resist.

The Qualities of Chamber Music

Peter Fribbins writes about the virtues of chamber music from his perspective as a composer and as the Artistic Director of the London Chamber Music Society

The coming 2015/16 season will be my 14th year directing the London Chamber Music Society’s series of weekly Sunday evening concerts – six of those at Conway Hall before the series moved to Kings Place in 2008. Whilst I sometimes struggle to recall the intricate details of those nearly 400 concert programmes, ranging as they do from duos, piano trios, string quartets, quintets, wind ensembles and chamber orchestras, I am grateful for the unique opportunity this task has given me; to survey, comprehend and absorb the astonishing canon that is classical chamber music. As a composer, the experience has been of incalculable benefit.

Two-Part Blog: How to Teach Music (Part 2)

Following on from from his previous article, conductor Tom Hammond writes about the best methods of teaching music.

Hours of debate and forests of trees have been devoted to this topic. What is the right way to teach, and learn, about music?

Two-Part Blog: Music, Education and the Future (Part 1)

In the first of a two-part blog, conductor Tom Hammond ponders the future of music education in this country, and suggests a workable way we can all have a role in its future:

Cuts to music education that began in the 1980's seem to have no end, with state schools especially badly hit. Even in the private sector, the competing demands on children's time with extra-curricular activities plus league-table induced pressure for exam results, means that learning a musical instrument is seen by many as a non-essential luxury item.