A few issues ago, in his introduction to the magazine, our Editor mentioned 'A Brush with Music' as an inspiring example of a project to have emerged from - and indeed for - these difficult times of cancelled concerts and restricted gatherings. Created by children's author and illustrator (and previous My Music interviewee) James Mayhew, the Doric Quartet violinist Alex Redington and pianist Siu Chui Li, it sees Mayhew paint in accompaniment to a musical performance - an online version of what he usually does on stage joined by an orchestra. As Mayhew recalled in his My Music interview (May 2019), it was the artwork of LP covers, initially an LP of Scheherazade featuring an illustration by Edmund Dulac, that ignited his love for classical music, and the trio's hope is that 'A Brush with Music' might do the same for children today.

And it's appropriately enough to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade - the 'Arabian song', as arranged by Kreisler - that they've turned for a video specially created for Gramophone to demonstrate the idea, followed by reflections from Redington and Siu Chui Li on the enriching importance of introducing children to classical music.

You can find out more about the background to 'A Brush with Music' here, and find the project's Patreon site itself here: A Brush with Music