The Cardiff Singer of the World has some advice to offer SexiSoprano:

‘I’ve had to face my own demons of self-doubt. Ocasionally that little voice in my head would try to derail me. Taming that voice is really taming the biggest obstacle standing in my way.

‘Try not to beat yourself up over small mistakes, or even large mistakes for that matter. In the end, those things fade in time. Believe me.’

More here.

OK let’s get things in the right order.

First Raheem Sterling forces a transfer from Liverpool to Manchester City for a fee somewhat higher than his weight in gold.

Next, he buys a house in Football Wives village.

After that, he instals an indoor pool, a basketball court and a barber’s area.

Then he buys a baby grand, ‘to help him unwind’.

A Suzuki. Cheap at ten grand.

Now’s he’s looking for a piano teacher. Anyone free in the Manchester area?

David Teie, a cellist in the National Symphony Orchestra, creates music specially for cats. It’s based, he says, on scientific research into how to make pussies happy.

Unlike humans, says David, ‘felines establish their sense of music outside of the womb, through sounds heard after they’re born, like the chirping of birds, the sucking of milk, or the purring of their mother. Using only musical instruments, I incorporated those sounds and their natural vocalizations into music and matched it to the frequency range they use to communicate. The reason harp plays notes play in rapid succession (23 per second!) is because that’s the precise rate of a cat’s purr.’

So David decided to go global with a Kickstarter appeal for funds to record and promote music that cats will just love. He has passed his $200,000 target with three days to spare.

Watch:

We regret to report the death of Norman Pickering on November 18.

An audio veteran who invented the magnetic cartridge with the sapphire needle in 1945 and paved the way for hi-fi, Norman lived to the age of 99.

He founded the audio engineering company Pickering Audio and later worked as an instrument designer for C.G. Conn in Elkhart. In later years he conducted important acoustic research on the violin and cello.

He wrestled with this problem: ‘Sound is created by the displacement of air. But the string itself has so little area that it doesn’t displace enough air to be heard at any significant distance. Try a string without an instrument and you’ll find you can hardly hear it, it’s just not moving enough air. The whole point of the violin is a means of converting the mechanical motion of the string to the movement of something that is big enough to create audible sound.’

Read more here.

We are delighted to report that Bernard Labadie, music director of Les Violons du Roy, will make his return to action next month in Handel’s Messiah with St Louis and the Chicago Symphony orchestras after an 18-month battle with cancer.

Labadie, 52, tells the CSO site he’s lucky to be alive. ‘Almost against all odds, it did work out,’ he said.

A week after his 2014 concerts with the CSO, the French-Canadian maestro fell ill in Germany and was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma — a kind of blood cancer. He was in the hospital there for a month before returning to his hometown, Québec City, for what became a grueling medical odyssey.  He began with the usual treatment for this disease, a transplant of his own blood-forming stem cells, but this approach did not work. So he required a more complicated and more dangerous stem-cell transplant from someone else; one of his three siblings — a sister — proved to be a compatible donor.

The procedure took place in October 2014, but things did not go well. “Basically, I got every complication that is possible and then some,” Labadie said. Along the way, he had to be placed in an induced coma for a month, and when he was finally awakened, he faced severe muscle loss. “So when I woke up, I couldn’t hold a glass of water,” he said. “I couldn’t turn in my bed. Of course, I couldn’t stand by my bed or get up.” Thus he began an arduous rehabilitation. Labadie finally left the hospital in April, and he has continued a range of physical therapy and physical training since. “But things are going well,” he said. “It’s just a very long process.”

More here.

Joyce DiDonato, ever an online pioneer, has created her own video channel Opera Rocks, as a place for shy high school students to share their opera passions. She believes kids who love arts can be isolated at school. Here they can meet in secret.

Joyce is funding the site herself and will run it for the students and will be a constant presence on it with posts, videos, diva interviews, photos and messages.

She says:

‘I’ve noticed a fabulous trend from social media about young opera lovers: often times in high school, they will feel as if they are the only person on the planet who likes opera because they may be the only one at their school who (secretly!) has a passion for it.  Through social media, however, they can connect across cities, states, even countries. Many times a group of 15-20 of them have saved up and made the trip to their “first live opera”, and they meet at the stage door to complete their experience full-circle.  It’s been one of the most encouraging things I’ve seen in this business. I am simply giving back to them, letting them know they are not alone, and providing a platform for them to connect and share this wonderful, eye-opening world of opera.’

The Seattle Symphony has taken the unusual step of offering a new work for free download.

It is Giya Kancheli’s Nu.Mu.Zu for Orchestra, recorded two weeks ago before the Paris and Beirut atrocities. Kancheli, a displaced Georgian who has lived since 1991 in Germany and Belgium, has experienced more than his fair share of political violence and turmoil.

You car stream or download the 23-minute recording for free, here.

Nu.Mu.Zu means ‘I don’t know’ in the ancient Mesopotamian language of Sumerian. Kancheli says: ‘What is happening in the world is gradually, step by step, destroying the last hope in my consciousness, without which, for all of us, life loses its meaning. ‘I don’t know’ what will happen in the future. However, having lost hope, I keep dreaming about a world in which fanaticism, sectarian strife and violence are no longer the dominant features of world order.’