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A requiem for Philip II
As dawn breaks and church bells toll slowly all over Toledo, an elaborate funeral procession winds its way through the city's streets. Clad in black vestments of mourning, the Archbishop leads the...
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Choral heaven
Yesterday was Ascension day. Some forty days after Easter, its the celebration of Christ’s being taken away from his disciples, who were still reeling from the resurrection, and disappearing into the...
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When observations go wrong: #SecretOfsted by @TeacherToolkit
This is a #SecretOfsted @TeacherToolkit article: A teacher’s experience of Ofsted, in Gloucestershire. Over the past 4 weeks, I have published three articles since the ‘famous-five entered the gates of...
View ArticleChurchgoing, anyone?
I came across this post in my 'drafts' folder, and had a sudden memory of a Blogger failure which prevented me from posting it. Never one to let a bit of writing slide into oblivion ...I had cause a...
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Years by Bartholomäus Traubeck
Trees lay down rings every year, which can then be counted to tell how old the tree is, and how good the weather was each year. Bartholomäus Traubeck modified a record player to ‘read’ the rings as...
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"I like doing it that way" is not good enough #28daysofwriting
This morning in Edmonton I'll be giving a keynote made up almost entirely of musical metaphors for educators. I've only given the talk once, but it proved particularly powerful with my group of...
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Failure: When is it "a fail too far"? #28daysofwriting
At a concert in Gothenburg Concert Hall October 23, 2013, Christian Zacharias stopped playing in the middle of Haydn's Piano Concerto, interrupted by a cell phone ringing for the second time the same...
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The Road to Siem Reap
Listening to Vaughan Williams as I am borne along a Cambodian highwaythe red dust billowing at our passingI hear the cool, silver tonesof choristers in the echoing chill ofvaulted stone and knowas...
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When a Snow Queen starts a school: the no-grades route to University
No grades (ever), no sitting down at desks, and harnessing student boredom as a motivator to create and explore might seem an odd recipe for academic success and entry to university, but that is...
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"I like it" is not good enough
Creative conflict is the ability to agree to disagree, and use the disruption of a disagreement to make your work better. It relies on the partners in disagreement to both be on top of their game,...
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All we go down …
I was at a funeral yesterday, not as a mourner but as a provider of music, one of a quartet singing the Kontakion for the Departed at the end of a service in the Cathedral of The Isles on Cumbrae. This...
View ArticleThe Crackle in the Vinyl
Waking up to the news today hit me really hard and I’ve struggled to understand why. I loved and lived his music but was not lifelong fanatic. He was merely part of the wallpaper of my past. Peers and...
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Getting Going with GoNoodle
GoNoodle is a free online resource bank of action videos and associated activities to support and encourage learners to get active while helping engage with information being learned in the classroom...
View Article#100wordTandL Musiccam
This is a music specific post but can be adapted for your own context. Pupil and lesson observation feedback this term have highlighted the use of a simple webcam as a useful tool to aid learning. As a...
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All we go down …
I was at a funeral yesterday, not as a mourner but as a provider of music, one of a quartet singing the Kontakion for the Departed at the end of a service in the Cathedral of The Isles on Cumbrae. This...
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Cross-Pollination
I haven't posted for a bit. It's not that I haven't been sitting at my desktop: far from it. But from being someone who rarely uses earphones (they were so uncomfortable) and hasn't listened to much of...
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Cross-Pollination
I haven't posted for a bit. It's not that I haven't been sitting at my desktop: far from it. But from being someone who rarely uses earphones (they were so uncomfortable) and hasn't listened to much of...
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Hoolies I have known …
This startling photo was taken by Karen Brodie last Saturday as the participants in the Festal Evensong that had just celebrated 140 years of the Cathedral of The Isles poured out in a swish of red and...
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Hoolies I have known …
This startling photo was taken by Karen Brodie last Saturday as the participants in the Festal Evensong that had just celebrated 140 years of the Cathedral of The Isles poured out in a swish of red and...
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With the broken backs and the pac a macs…
I teach at the school attended by Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera and the reason I make that clear from the start is that ‘We Could Send Letters’ was the song to which I first properly listened to the...
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