arrange • compose • conduct
“I need to read more, is the thing,” my wife said to me yesterday. “Same!” I replied. There are just so many great books I want to read, and I’ve been in a reading slump really since the pandemic hit. But the truth is, it isn’t about what I need […]
My wife, Mandy, is a brilliant conductor. She regularly makes magic happen in concert and in rehearsal. She has wonderful musical instincts, impeccable training, and makes visual poetry with her conducting. But even as she makes the music come alive, she puts the people first. In the course of her […]
I’m rereading an old favorite right now – a book I fest read a quarter century ago. It’s a pretty uncommon reading choice for me, as I tend to seek out new ideas and perspectives in my reading. Meanwhile, I am perennially listening to old favorites in my musical life. […]
For the past 5 or 6 years, I’ve had an annual Tip Jar in which I accepted donations from readers to help support my costs of maintaining the website. Many people were very generous in their encouragement of my writing. In 2020, I skipped it – it was a time […]
Both of the ensembles I lead got to have cathartic ends to the year – an outdoor concert in May for Shades of Blue, and just last night, a year-capping concert with the Rockford Aces. It wasn’t precisely the same as usual – we didn’t have our usual size of […]
For a long time, I haven’t been very interested in endings. I’m almost always looking forward to the next concert, the next year, the next project. I’ll celebrate in the moment, but pretty soon I’m on to the next thing. This school year feels like something I need to sit […]
Most of the time, the right people show up. During the Long Quiet, enrollment has gone down in virtually every elective activity – from music to theatre to Scouting to Advanced Placement classes to church attendance. Maybe there was too much else going on, maybe some people were afraid of […]
In my rehearsal today, as we warmed up, I looked around the room and saw two things: contorted posture and stress about the end of the school year. Thus began my Overrated/Underrated For Teenagers list: Overrated: Knowing what you want to do with your life. Underrated: Attention to posture. Attention […]
Just like that, it’s June. It’s the last week of this impossible, interminable year, at least here. (Some ended last week. Some have a week or two to go.) Of course, it wasn’t just like that. Every year is a marathon, but this was an ironman triathlon if ever I […]
My dad described one of his first chances to scrub in with an orthopedic surgeon, on the day he was interviewing for an internship in that hospital. When the surgery was mostly done, the doctor offered him a chance to see the work, and my dad noticed, and pointed out, […]