Subscribe to my RSS Feed

• Simon Hewitt Jones, Violinist

  English concert violinist. Asking essential questions about what's happening to music and the arts, and the role of the violin in contemporary world culture.

• Contact Me: T: +44 (0) 20 7060 0607 E: shj [at] courtlanemusic [dot] com W: www.courtlanemusic.com Instant: Message My iPhone

• Archives

  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • March 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007

• Categories

  • Anecdotes (4)
  • Composers (3)
  • Education (7)
  • Future of Music (18)
  • Misc. (13)
  • MP3/Video/CD (11)
  • Music Industry (6)
  • Musical Heros (1)
  • Musical Works (4)
  • Mysterious Music (14)
  • News (13)
  • Travelblog (48)
  • Viola Jokes (2)
  • Violin Tips (1)
  • Violinists (4)
  • Website Info (23)
  • World Culture (18)

I have many varied blog posts drafted and ready to unleash upon you, but I’m going to hold them over until after Christmas, when many changes will happen here, and new things will start.
In the meantime, I will be returning to the Middle East in the second week of December for a Baroque Music Festival, […]

In addition to more concerts and projects, I’ll be branching out and expanding my tuition class in the new year. As well as London, you can also come to play to me in Berlin, Germany (February onwards). And we’ll see what happens from there…
UK people (I do have students from as far as Brighton and […]

“What are they?” I ask my students again and again.
“Rhythm, Notes, Sound!”, they chime back!
But a mantra is one thing; awareness is another.
I come back to the Loure, a dance movement and the second section of the third Bach Partita, for the first time in a couple of years. If only I practiced what […]

I love railway stations and airports. Particularly because they are rock-solid temples of permanence, whose primary purpose is to facilitate transience. There’s nothing like returning time and time again to a transport hub that you know and love. The congruence of familiarity and incessant change can be very moving.
St Pancras is being hailed as a […]

One of the things that’s fascinating to me as a direct parallel between artistic and free market environments is the use of Creative Tension.

Take Banking. The banks trade off one another, forever heightening the peak of their work in order to stay competitive in a fast-developing arena. They bounce back and forth against […]

Tommy & I recently recorded an arrangement by composer Michael Jennings based on the theme of a Polish Tango, as part of an installation for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival by sound artist Janek Schaefer.
Janek’s show opens on Friday 16th at the Huddersfield Art Gallery, and runs until 5 January 2008.
As the music emanates […]

I found this scribbled in an old notebook. I don’t remember what inspired it, but I quite like it.
“Individual emotive response and quality of music do not necessarily have any correlation.
Commodity capitalism inevitably places a value on each ‘unit’ of recorded music. Perhaps by losing this through digitalization we will recognise the intangibility of value […]

Seth writes: “Commercials used to be a minute long, sometimes two. Then someone came up with the brilliant idea of running two per minute, then four. Now there are radio ads that are less than three seconds long."
"It’s not an accident that things are moving faster and getting smaller. There’s just too much to choose […]

Cheltenham yesterday, Swansea today, London next Wednesday (7th). Imogen Holst aside, I am falling in love with the Frank Bridge Piano Quartet; it is amazing! Some tickets still available for London - grab them here.