A newly published study by Northwestern University researchers suggests that Mom was right when she insisted that you continue music lessons - even after it was clear that a professional music career was not in your future.

The musical instruments collection at the Metropolitan Museum originated with gifts in 1889 of several hundred European, American, and non-Western instruments from private collectors Joseph W. Drexel and Mrs. John Crosby Brown. Mrs. Brown continued to give musical instruments to the Museum until her death in 1918, by which time some 4,000 items had been catalogued and placed on display, making the assemblage the largest and most comprehensive of its kind outside Europe.

Country Energy Proms on Tour will bring Sydney Opera House's own Proms Orchestra into the backyards of children across northwest and central western New South Wales, taking in Bathurst, Mudgee, Coonabarabran, Gilgandra, Dubbo and Parkes.