Musicably – Musicably Blog

November 8, 2026

Why Choirs Make Us Cry

This week, someone in our choir parents’ WhatsApp group reshared a phone recording of our boys singing Gustav Holst’s “I Vow to Thee, My Country.” It was from the big concert last spring, the last major performance for our sons’ class before they graduated from Grade […]

October 31, 2026

Can Music Ever Run Out of New Melodies?

What are young people listening to these days? That question popped into my mind recently when I realized that our two teenagers love and listen mostly to music that was popular when I was their age. That was a surprise, as younger generations used to “revolt” […]

September 30, 2026

Martijn Composes Life

I am watching Martijn Doolaard build his stone houses in Northern Italy, and I realized he is really an artist. Yes, he is a painter and a designer. He is also a videographer. He puts together a mosaic of pictures of his life in the Italian […]

August 31, 2026

Hormesis Benefits and The Comfort Trap

We hear it all the time as we get older: Take it easy. Protect yourself. Rest. It sounds like loving wisdom, but biologically, it might be a trap. Dr. Steph, in a fascinating talk on healthy aging, flipped this conventional advice with one sentence: “If you […]

July 31, 2026

Music Is Not an Olympic Sport

A few days ago a video landed in my feed. A nine-year-old boy, Elisey Mysin, sitting at a grand piano in a full tuxedo, a professional orchestra behind him, playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 3. His hands moved like he’d been born knowing where the keys […]

July 14, 2026

The Paradox of Modern Musicking: Ultimate Proof, Ultimate Loss

There have been two very interesting books released recently, that I don’t want to wait to write about until my annual music books evaluation. Mainly because these two books are very much relevant to what Musicably is about. I hope you will find them as fascinating […]

June 29, 2026

Why Musicking Makes You Smarter at Any Age

What Einstein, Planck, and Feynman Never Forgot Albert Einstein played violin every single day. Not when he was young and still figuring things out. Throughout his adult life, in the middle of his most important work. When his thinking hit a wall, he would put down […]

June 26, 2026

Good Quality is a Wrong Question

Is quality a proper word to be connected or associated with music? This is a question I have been thinking about for a while, and in this post, I will try to express my view on the topic. My opinion is quite clear: when considered from […]

June 15, 2026

3,400 Strangers Who All Wanted to Be Alone – And Found Each Other Anyway

A few weeks ago I was watching a YouTube video about isolation. The speaker, Jacob Whelan, was arguing that choosing to step back from social life is not failure but something closer to wisdom – a hardwired response to a world that has become too noisy, […]