Virtuoso is the perfect rainy-day activity for anyone who considers themselves a music buff.

Know your Bach from your Brahms? Your semiquaver from your semibreve? Then a new board game, developed as a graduate project by Caleb Heisey, a student at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, is for you. Virtuoso is a Trivial Pursuit-style game where players answer classical music trivia to advance around an orchestra pit-shaped game board. Described as, “the game of musical proficiency and spiritied competition,” it promises to tax the knowledge of even the most clued-up music buff. 

While Heisey has used a well-known format he has innovated some beautiful touches for this game that will bring a smile to the face of any muso. The game opens with an “audition” round: a rapid-fire quiz that allows players to advance across the board, moving along the “orchestral desks” as players are promoted through the ranks of the ensemble. Questions include trivia about music history and music theory brain-teasers. The playing pieces are modelled on the pegs of a violin, and the dice use time signatures and different duration notes in place of the usual dots and numbers.