Happy New Year 2024

The children are back in school this week, and I have cleaned, tidied and essentially reclaimed the house after the holidays. So my thoughts are turning to the forthcoming year and what I want to do and achieve with this blog. On a personal note, my family is hoping to see our house and move to a neighbouring county in the first half of the year, which I am very excited about, so at times our house move is likely to take up quite a lot of my time. In many ways, then, my motto for the year is keep doing what you’re already doing. For now at least. I largely plan to stick with the same schedule of posting, at least until September and a new academic year. So you can expect to see:

• A roundup of events that are due to take place in the following month in the last week of the month.
• A review of a book about music (or a book with a musical theme, or particularly musical language) usually in the first full week of the month, although this month my Music Book Review will appear next week
• A Composer of the month with a biographical information post and subsequent playlist
• As I have covered the majority of the most common musical instruments that you will find in an orchestra so far on this blog, I thought I would instead write about a different musical ensemble each week, explaining what it is, what instruments can be found in that ensemble etc. I will be starting this month with the orchestra.
• A practical music making post, whether that be a demonstration of how to make a musical instrument at home, suggestions of what to sing with your children at home, music-themed arts or crafts activities and things like that.

In addition to the above usual monthly posts, you will probably find me doing some extra posts, reviewing concerts or events I have been to with my family, or reviewing music based shows on TV from time to time.

One thing I wanted to talk about in this post is that in my monthly roundup of events each month I plan to find a way of highlighting shows that are more affordable, or free. I am not sure exactly how I’ll do this yet, whether it will be that for each venue I pick an event of the month – or somehow separately list that month’s free events. I am not sure yet, and initially I may try different things to see what works best. Every month when I put these roundups together I find at least 7 events I’d love to take my family to, and I must admit that I look at the ticket cost and think again as it is too expensive to book tickets for a family of 4. I will write about this more at some point in the next few weeks, but for today I just want to say, that I want to use my blog to highlight those events that are more affordable, or free to give all families in Birmingham and Warwickshire (I am currently based in Birmingham and hope to be in Warwickshire later this year, which is why I post about these areas) options as to how to experience live entertainment.

So, that’s pretty much what you can expect in the next few months from the blog. As always, I am very open to and happy to receive suggestions for topics to cover on here. If you are an author who has written a book for children about music, or with a musical theme and you are looking for reviewers, then I would love to hear from you. I am very much looking forward to seeing the direction the blog takes in the next 12 months, and where we will be this time next year. I hope I can bring you along with me.