On creative permission, imagination, and cowboys ‘Dashing through the snow, you, too!’ My three-year-old daughter’s embellished lyrics, for our first homemade Christmas songs, seventeen years ago. We’re still going strong, and this year I found ‘Christmas for Cowboys’ in a 1981 Reader’s Digest songbook. It’s written by someone who makes Read more…
How does a song change when you sing it in a different language? I grew up singing Silent Night in Australia. Now my students in Switzerland are recording their own versions of this classic Christmas carol. It’s as English as they come to me, but around the world it’s sung Read more…
…and how to listen Little kids, it turns out, are able to recognise distinct emotions such as fear in music. So, what if music could offer us grownups the same unique track to emotional recognition that apparently works with little kids? And what if it could help us bypass our Read more…
Swan Lake reimagined Hello, I’ve only gone and reimagined a tiny, tiny snippet of the main theme of Swan Lake for piano 🦢 Is it derivative or is it original? Or does it just not matter, because, when it comes to creativity, you should be able to do what you Read more…
and why we can all be listening to it When I was a kid we didn’t listen to classical music. My mother taught herself to play chords on the guitar so she could sing songs (Skip to my Lou! Khumbaya!) to her primary school classes, and, when he was younger, my Read more…
How much can environment influence how we express ourselves creatively?
