They participated in an interview with Tom Hutchinson, Co-ordinator of Hear Here! for Classic fM about the effect of the environment on the musicians aural perception.

To hear Paul and Nick's interview go to www.hearhere.org.uk
and scroll down to 'My Listening Environment'

Listening. It sounds so simple. Take your seat in the concert hall, sit back and listen. Put on a CD, turn up the volume and soak up the sounds. But, are we really listening? Or, are we losing the ability to truly listen and turning music into a barely-noticed audio backdrop for other activities?

“A lot of people hear without listening. Listening is done with the mind and the heart, and is captured by the memory. It demands concentration.”
Angela Hewitt, pianist

Hear Here! - the UK’s first classical music project dedicated to listening - is presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society and Classic FM, and supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. It embarks on a journey of discovery from January 2008, and will explore the many different facets of listening to music, one of the most profound and complex aspects of human existence.

You can join in Hear Here! as it develops throughout the year. Each month a different aspect of listening will provide the starting point for a range of live performances, participatory events, on Classic FM programmes and online activities with contributions from musicians, writers, and world leading auditory scientists.

The concert experience, how the ear works, what a musician listens to and the words we choose to explain what we hear - all these aspects will be examined, together with the differences between recorded and live music, and the effects of the environment, memory, emotions, vision, hearing impairment and silence.