Five Beacons of Light – A Cantata for the Sea
Five Beacons of Light brings to life the vibrant characters and communities associated with four iconic UK lighthouses. At the heart of the project is the "fifth beacon" - young people
What Today’s Piano Buyers Are Really Looking For
Guest post by Thomas Taaffe
Buying a piano has never been a simple decision, but in recent years it has become noticeably more nuanced. Through running an online piano marketplace and directory, I’ve had the opportunity to observe hundreds of enquiries from buyers across the UK, from complete beginners to experienced pianists returning to the instrument.
What stands out is not just what people are buying, but how they are approaching the process. The priorities have shifted in subtle but important ways.
One of the most consistent themes is a growing desire for reassurance. Buyers are more cautious than they once were, particularly when navigating online listings. Questions around condition, history, and authenticity come up time and again. People want to know not only what a piano is, but where it has been, how it has been maintained, whether it has been restored, and who is standing behind the sale.
This has naturally led to increased interest in trusted sellers and verified businesses. While private sales still play an important role, there is a clear preference emerging for some level of accountability. Buyers are often willing to travel further, or spend slightly more, if it means dealing with someone they feel they can rely on.
At the same time, there is a noticeable return to acoustic instruments. While digital pianos remain popular for certain situations, many families and students are actively seeking out upright or grand pianos for the long term. This is particularly evident among parents of younger students, often guided by teachers who recognise the musical and technical benefits of an acoustic instrument early on.
In fact, a significant proportion of enquiries are for well-maintained second-hand instruments. Buyers are increasingly aware that a carefully selected used piano can offer exceptional value, provided it has been properly prepared and supported. Many begin their search by browsing a wide range of pianos for sale in the UK (https://pianosphere.com/ads/), comparing options across different sellers before making contact. This is where clear information and transparency become even more important.
Another shift is the level of research buyers are doing before making contact. Many arrive with a strong understanding of brands, models, and pricing. It’s not uncommon for someone to enquire about a specific Yamaha or Kawai model, already having compared multiple options. However, despite this preparation, there is still a need for guidance, particularly when it comes to interpreting condition, tone, and long-term suitability.
For teachers, this presents both an opportunity and a challenge. Students and parents are more informed, but also more exposed to conflicting information. Helping them navigate those decisions, especially when buying remotely, has become an increasingly important part of the teaching role.
Location and logistics also play a bigger role than they once did. Delivery, access, and aftercare are frequently discussed at an earlier stage in the process. Buyers are not just purchasing an instrument, but thinking about how it fits into their home and daily life. Practical considerations, such as space and placement, often influence the final decision just as much as musical ones.
What all of this points to is a more considered and deliberate approach to buying a piano. The impulse purchase has largely disappeared. In its place is a slower, more thoughtful process. One that places equal weight on trust, information, and long-term value.
Platforms such as PianoSphere (https://pianosphere.com/) have emerged in response to this shift, aiming to bring together buyers, sellers, and piano professionals in one place. The goal is not to replace traditional routes, but to support them — offering a clearer, more connected way to navigate what has always been a complex purchase.
For those advising students or considering a purchase themselves, the key takeaway is this: today’s buyers are not just looking for a piano. They are looking for confidence in their decision.
And perhaps that is no bad thing.
Thomas Taaffe is the founder of PianoSphere, a UK-based piano marketplace connecting buyers with trusted sellers and piano professionals across the UK. He is a classically trained pianist and a graduate of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
Art. Folk Art and Non-Art
Guest post by Noah Bradley
AI has caused a bit of a fuss in Art. Classical music has long subsisted on a few immortal masterpieces a century. Before long, will we be swamped?
I think most people would agree that classical music is an art of a different kind to pop music, advertising, and cooking. To compare Beethoven and Michelangelo is fair enough, but Beethoven and fried chicken less so. The word we have for the former kind (the latter would be “pre-concert KFC”), is “high art” which sounds perhaps a little pretentious, so we shall simply call it “art”.
With Beethoven as a starting point, it becomes clear that Bach is really the same sort of thing, and that Stravinsky is too. And Hucbald of St Amand? Well not really. Nonetheless, it has been traditional to lump all four of them together; sharing as they do, a place in the history of European music.
Of late, it has seemed rather arbitrary that Hucbald gets to be associated with “classical art”, whereas Ravi Shankar doesn’t. So nowadays (because of its extraordinary refinement) we call that type of Indian folk music “Indian classical”, and classical “Western classical”. I believe this has muddied the waters, and I shall explain why.
This takes us to 19th-century Munich, where “kitsch” was invented to describe paintings that were very clearly not art (it has since taken on another meaning). The difference between “art” and “kitsch” the theorists say, is that kitsch doesn’t need a soul; it doesn’t need refinement or sincerity, only lustre.
Which brings us to our first distinction, that real art has a soul, and that if something is utterly soulless, then it is not art. I can hear a soul in Bach, but in a (average) pop song, only lustre. Now our second distinction; that there are two types of art- one where you can feel cultures, and another where you can feel individuals. The first type is called “folk art”, whereas the second type doesn’t really seem to be called anything.
There is a bit of a grey line, because in a work of art you can sometimes feel a culture and an individual. In other cases it is simpler: of all the great cathedrals of Europe, none are by a single hand. They were also designed according to tradition- one of the main precepts of folk art.
But isn’t it common to hear it said that Mozart and Haydn sound rather similar? And isn’t Bach unimaginable without the heavy air of Protestantism? Well even if Mozart and Haydn share twinkly melodies, simple harmonies, and regular symmetry, they both have their own, separate, heartbeats. The trappings of the eighteenth century or the atmosphere of German Protestantism is not what moves us; what does is the soul of the individual.
If all this sounds terribly abstract, it is a comfort to know that it is true in practice. No computer, no matter how many instructions you give it, will ever make a real work of art. It is all mediocre because the surest route to mediocrity is copying. Composers who do nothing but copy, do not write art, they write kitsch. And if in Saint Hildegard you can hear the cold damp air of Eibingen Abbey, and not her own heartbeat, then maybe she is a folk artist. But it is important not to confuse clarity of thought with mediumship, and I only hope to make such subjective judgements a little clearer.
Noah Bradley is a young composer, writer and polymath, deeply passionate about the art of music. He has written for Music Teacher magazine and InterludeHK
233 medical appointments later: My five-year fight to return to the piano
Guest post by Martin Mayer
It took nearly 30 years to get here: the tail-end of another successful 20-city concert tour across China’s top performance halls, thousands of eager fans embracing a cross-cultural meeting through music. And for all the lessons, the endless gigs, and the gambles I took to start my career – all of it nearly ended in less than 30 seconds.
It was just another post-tour early wakeup call. The two-hour show had ended at 10 pm, with multiple standing ovations – the audience wouldn’t let me go. To be on a stage speaking only through music has always been my dream.
That night, I signed every autograph and took every selfie requested for as long as the fans were there. As I write this now, I hold onto that joy – because in a matter of hours, my world would be turned upside down.
It was nearly 2:00 am when I got to my hotel room – too much adrenaline to sleep. I packed and braced for a 5:30 am wakeup: a flight to Guangzhou for a layover, then the long-haul home to Vancouver.
Once in Guangzhou, an airport shuttle picked me up for a nearby hotel where I’d catch a few hours of sleep.
I never made it to that hotel room.
As the shuttle pulled away, the driver slammed on the brakes – a pedestrian had darted across the road. No seatbelts. I flew straight into my luggage, hands stretched out to brace myself. Natural human reaction. For a pianist, an absolute nightmare.
Within seconds: immense agony. Left hand – dislocated 5th finger jutting outward at a 90° angle. Right hand – sprained 4th finger.
At the hotel, at least 20 staff were waiting, alerted by radio. Three cars stood by to rush me to priority ER. I had to fight – in a language I didn’t speak – to stop the doctor from reinserting the bone without X-rays. My tour manager had flown back to Beijing, so I called him in a panic. He tried to explain my profession. They didn’t quite get it. Writhing in pain, I pulled out my phone and held up a tour poster. I’ve never seen people look so shocked. The nurse called out and seven additional people filled the room.
What followed: X-rays, local anaesthesia in both hands, warm compresses, injections, a rush of documents – because I had seven hours before an international flight and two more airports to navigate. Nothing touched the pain or the anxiety. I was alone and vulnerable, in a place where only the hotel staff spoke English. I made both flights, collapsed into my lay-flat seat, and awoke what felt like five minutes later in Vancouver.
Getting off that plane was the start of a five-year journey: 233 medical appointments, a major surgery, a traumatic incident involving a doctor charged with my care, and a rotating door of specialists trying to piece together what had really happened. My family doctor of 16 years wrote it off – no imaging for six months, just pain medication that did nothing. Like handing someone Tylenol for a broken leg. I fired him. My new family doctor actually saw me through to the other side.
It took nearly 4 years to get the diagnosis: the impact had compressed the thoracic outlet – the space between my first rib and collarbone where veins, arteries, and nerves travel into the arms and hands. Surgery to remove the rib was the only fix.
What nobody tells you about an odyssey like this is just how much it impacts your mental health and sense of self and worth. More than once, I was ready to walk away from everything. Music, which had defined me for nearly three decades, became something I couldn’t even listen to. Too painful a reminder of what I might never get back. Over those five years, I questioned everything about who I was as an artist – and there were times I wasn’t sure that person was coming back. Or whether I even wanted to. This broke me more than anything before, because it was who I had been for my entire life up until then. My partner carried me through the darkest of it – certain of my return when I no longer was. The doctors, family and friends who refused to let me disappear mattered more than they’ll ever know.
I learned a great deal – some of it I wish I’d found far earlier:
Treat your body as an elite athlete would. Because when you consider how we use our bodies to make music, that’s exactly what we are.
Practicing alone is not enough. Take care of the rest of your body, too.
Warm up before you play – every time. Stretch, warmup, stretch, warmup, repeat.
After a long break, start lower than you left off. A runner who finished a marathon three weeks ago doesn’t restart at race pace. Neither should you.
If it hurts, stop. Stretch, rest, ease back in – don’t push through it.
Most doctors don’t understand what musicians go through. Call yourself an elite athlete. They’ll understand a tennis player tearing their ACL far sooner than a pianist with nerve entrapment in their elbow.
Find specialists who work with musicians – a hand therapist, physiotherapist, and hand surgeon. They should be part of your team.
Be your own best advocate, and don’t give up.
I went from not being able to hold a teacup after my accident, to 5 years of doubting whether I’d ever be able to play. And I am playing again. Did it come easy? Definitely not. Do I play better because of adjusting my technique and how I hold my body better? Absolutely!
What you do now will keep you stronger and healthier in the long run. We’re always taught how to practice and how to play – what’s been missing is how to take care of the parts of us that make it all possible: our body and our mind.
In the music industry, there is a stigma that once you are broken, you can never heal or get back to what you were doing. I am proof that is not the case. And the more we raise our voices when we overcome the impossible, the more we can squash that stigma.
Martin Mayer is a Canadian pianist and composer.
Read an interview with Martin here
Resources for musicians:
Nicholas Scott-Burt’s 24 Preludes for Piano acknowledge the rich tradition of the genre
24 Preludes for Piano by Nicholas Scott-Burt
Da-Hee Kim piano
Premiere recording
Listen to the opening measures of the sixth Prelude from Nicholas Scott-Burt’s 24 Preludes for Piano, and you might be forgiven for thinking this is actually by J S Bach, with its combination of rigour and elegance, counterpoint and Baroque flourishes.
The ghost of Bach is also present in the very first Prelude of the set, redolent of the C major Prelude from Book 1 of the WTC in its processional momentum, its rhythm, and expression. Played by pianist Da-Hee Kim with a luminous glow and clear articulation, it’s a wonderful opening to this intriguing new release of contemporary piano music, drawing you into a composer’s soundworld that is richly coloured, texturally diverse, witty, and at times quite beautiful.
British composer Nicholas Scott-Burt composed his 24 Preludes during 2019 and 2020. Following a tradition established by J S Bach and continued by, among others, Chopin, Debussy, and Shostakovich, Scott-Burt’s cycle reimagines the prelude as both a brief musical statement and a means for expressive variety. Each piece acts as a standalone miniature whilst also contributing to the overall narrative of the complete set: the Preludes are organised into four ‘Books’, which can be performed as an integrated sequence, ‘pausing for longer at the end of each book, as one might pause between the movements of a sonata or symphony’ (Nicholas Scott-Burt).
Each book has its own distinct character: Book 1 is neat and neo-classical; Book 2 is more extravagant and romantic; Book 3 is somewhat more introspective; and Book 4 is bright and sunny, though not without some darker moments.
The composer was kind enough to allow me to see the score, and it’s clear that he draws on a wide range of pianistic textures, rhythmic gestures, and harmonic languages in his writing. Some preludes evoke lyrical introspection, others have driving rhythmic energy or contrapuntal interplay. There’s a powerful array of dynamics from hushed delicacy to declamatory chords, and many of the preludes experiment with colouristic sonorities that brilliantly celebrate the piano’s resonance, sonic variety and expressive range.
With their imaginative harmonic progressions, rhythmic variety and shifting tonal perspectives, each prelude embodies its own character and atmosphere. The result is a sequence that invites both performer and listener to explore a wide range of moods – from reflective calm to virtuosic brilliance – within the intimate scope of the piano miniature.
While rooted in the tradition of the prelude cycle, Scott-Burt’s collection has a distinctly modern voice, with his musical influences clearly evident. It echoes composers such as Bach, Chopin, Shostakovich, as well as Handel, Purcell, Schumann, Liszt, Prokofiev, Bartók, Messiaen, and jazz. Scott-Burt skillfully integrates all the colours of his own compositional language to craft music that is individual and contemporary, while acknowledging the rich traditions from which it emerges.
Award-winning Korean pianist Da-Hee Kim performs the preludes on this premiere recording, bringing both sensitivity and virtuosity to the music, always alert to its shifting colours and textures. She delivers pristine articulation, supple phrasing, some impressive pedal technique, a luminosity of tone, and wonderfully weightless playing, when required, highlighting the individual character of each prelude, and ‘musical personality’ of each Book.
In addition to the 24 Preludes for Piano, this album includes two further works by Scott-Burt, his Minimalis I, ‘a self-imposed experimental exercise in structuring’, and Love Song, a contemporary on the tradition of the piano ‘Love Song’ by composers such as Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, and Liszt.
This is a wonderful addition to the contemporary piano literature, and I truly hope the composer can find a publisher for his 24 Preludes, so that more pianists, both professional and amateur, can explore and enjoy it.
24 Preludes for Piano is released on the Divine Art label on CD and streaming.
Read Meet the Artist interviews with Da-Hee Kim and Nicholas Scott-Burt
The Cross-Eyed Pianist 