Music Makes Lives Better Because… it takes you places (even when you can't physically go anywhere!)

Music makes life better because it can take us to different places. We can go travelling in our heads, because for the time being at least, that’s all we can do...

With photographs and memories we can revisit places we’ve been and the people we travelled with. But good music means we can hear, see, and even smell and feel places we haven’t ever been, and are never likely to, either. Music can capture the essence of a place for us, and shows it at its best.

Our Director, Gail Dudson, has provided a guide for us through our May Sounds Like... playlist to give you a feeling of how each performance of each song or piece of music can transport us all in a time when we cannot physically transport ourselves particularly far. And in #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek, we think there is no better time to give a gently nudge to you, dear reader, to remember that music can heal the mind and break us free from our homes, even if only for a short while:

Never been to Rio de Janeiro? Well, try the Girl from Ipanema in this month’s playlist. It is interesting to watch too – Astrid Gilberto’s note perfect, beautifully delivered performance without the merest hint of showing off or grabbing attention – she lets the song take the stage. Stan Getz’s sax playing is in the same mood. It’s bossa nova (“new wave”) music, a fusion of jazz and samba first heard in the late 50’s / early 60s. Have a listen, and walk down that endless, sunny warm beachfront...

Or maybe you would like to visit the Hebrides? It will be a little colder, and not quite so calm as it involves a boat trip. Fingal’s Cave is on the (uninhabited) Isle of Staffa, Inner Hebrides. The unique rock formations are (believe it or not) the same rock formation as the Giant’s Causeway (mostly hexagonal interlocking columns of basalt rock), a couple of hundred miles across the sea. The music by Mendelssohn is the journey by sea, in August 1829. You can really hear the swell of the sea as the boat makes it’s way from Oban. Being uninhabited, Staffa is much as it was then, with wildlife free to live as it will, untroubled by human intervention. And whilst we can’t go anywhere, it is also nice to think that, at the moment, all our wild and open spaces are like that – more a natural habitat than they have been since the Industrial Revolution.

So at the moment, of course, we can’t go far; but in any event, most of us are unable to go to space. Which is well named, because that’s exactly what it is! Not empty, but vast, expanding and without boundaries. Space has been musically explored by countless composers (and artists of every discipline) because it can be pretty much what you want it to be. There isn’t anyone who has been who can contradict you. Buzz Aldrin said that the moon landings should have included an artist of some kind, because they would have captured it for the rest of us in a way the scientists and engineers could not. But artists will have a go anyway... There are so many choices. We’ve gone with a big one, Gustav Holst’s Planets Suite, and here’s a magnificent performance by the National Youth Orchestra.

But there’s also David Bowie’s Space Oddity, Radiohead’s Subterranean Homesick Alien (lead guitar sounding as if it travels for ever), and even the ‘Space Dance’ from Wall E which is a beautiful 2 minutes from Thomas Newman’s superb film score...