Whatever we’re looking for, music can be the anwswer (or at least part of it)

Need a break? Want to escape out of your busy life for a few minutes? Want to hit the reset button?

Want a pick-me-up / a change of view / a moment of calm / energising / a provocation / a challenge? Want to feel better?

Want to feel more alive?  Feel more human?

Music is the answer. Great musicians explore what it means to live [love and die…] …exploring their world and how they fit in it.

These are the fundamental questions we all ask – what is life and where do we fit? Great music explores these questions in depths that often words can’t. Along the way we can revel in the whole of experience from joy and transcendence to pain and despair, from love, sex and creation to death and beyond, even from city traffic to quiet spaces and outer space.

Great music helps us feel more human.

With Cacophony we can have a proper listen and explore this world together.

Cacophony serves up great music that you may or may not know, but I think you’ll love. …a bit of friendly info and context for each piece and why I think it’s important, how I think it enhances our lives. But I trust your ears and I trust the music, so I’m trying not to tell you what to hear or feel. Only that listening to Cacophony helps us ‘Hear more, feel more and ‘be’ more!

Listen at your leisure; listen again, tell me what you think!

Cacophony is written and presented by Steve Thomas

About Steve Thomas

Music is one of the most important things in my life.

Until the birth of my children it occupied most of my time – as a listener, player, and as a career.

In my career, I’ve been extremely lucky: I’ve worked with and got to know some great people including famous musicians like Sarah Chang and Marin Alsop, Simon Rattle and Nigel Kennedy; I’ve travelled widely, if not glamorously – often responsible for counting fully grown adults onto buses; but, most importantly, I’ve been privileged to hear countless – countless – great performances of great music, some well-known, some hardly known at all:  some of these experiences have been life changing, some even transcendental.

Great music is one of humanity’s finest achievements. It has all the range, power and subtlety to help us express and feel our emotions; to confront and comfort; to make you smile and make you weep; to get you dancing or get you sleeping (in a good – not bored way!); to get you on your feet or on your back. There’s something for everyone and something for everything. 

Yet, many people think this music is not for them. You may think this music is not for you: you may think it is old, written by long-dead white guys in wigs, complicated, scary, intimidating. It can be all of these things, but should only be complicated, intimidating and scary when the writer means it to be…

All you need are open ears and an open heart, and maybe someone to help you through the door…

I’m on a mission to help you do that.

Support great music

If you fall in love with any of the music you hear on Cacophony please buy yourself a recording, even a cd! Many things are available to download in high quality sound for around 79p a track at sites like prestomusic.com, it’s much better for the performers than listening to Spotify (who pay the actual artists almost nothing). Great music is really a live and communal experience – the best way to support great music is to buy a ticket to a concert, so when it’s possible go do that!

It costs a bit to run Cacophony, so if you’d like to help bring more great music to more people, please visit our Ko-fi page where you can make a donation.

Hire Steve

Need a curated playlist? Want a personally-tailored introduction to great music? Something written, presented? Someone interviewed?

If you like the sound of my voice, I can read stuff out loud into a mic for you too.

Drop me an email and let’s see how I can help: steve@cacophonyonline.com.