arrange • compose • conduct
For the last three nights, I have sat in a darkened auditorium – masked, socially distanced, and fully vaccinated – and watched live theatre. The performers were masked too – masked as they sang, danced, tumbled, ran, and performed their hearts out. And I wept. I wept for the lost […]
I’m wrapping up lessons for the semester at Grand Rapids Community College, and I’m reflecting with each student on goals and what they’re carrying forward. At the heart of all my teaching is this: tools not tunes. I’d rather my students learn one fewer new tune in a semester, but […]
When I write music, I often scratch out the rhythms long before I write notes. That’s especially true with vocal music – I’ll layout the meter on a notecard and draw in rhythms that reflect my phrasing of the text. Then and only then will I experiment melodically within my […]
Don’t outsource your rhythm: own it. Who might you outsource your rhythm to? A drummer. A fellow ensemble member. A conductor. The only outsourcing that’s worthwhile is a metronome in the practice room. And even then, you should still be engaging actively with the rhythm, so that when the metronome […]
When I am working through familiar challenges, I tell myself, “You’ve been here before.” It’s the week of the musical and the whole family is involved at one level or another? You’ve been here before. You’re two weeks out from your first concert, and the music isn’t as well-prepared as […]
The Mayo Clinic describes a medical stress test this way: A stress test, also called an exercise stress test, shows how your heart works during physical activity. Because exercise makes your heart pump harder and faster, an exercise stress test can reveal problems with blood flow within your heart. It’s […]
At least twice last weekend, I heard Anders Edenroth describe his compositional process as “like a sudoku puzzle.” (He was talking about the puzzle of coordinating bottles and singing in “Water” and later about the loop-pedal writing in their version of “Good Times” and “Catch Up, Ketchup.” And he’s right […]
What they don’t tell you about a pandemic is that at some points it’s easy to forget that everyone else is going through a pandemic, too. I see it in students and parents – the frustration at difficult circumstances is misplaced to their teachers. I see it in customers, who […]
I’m a big believer in not waiting for the muse to strike in my creative work. I don’t wait for the muse to inspire me to bake bread: I bake bread when the bread bags are empty. In the same way, I do creative work when there is creative work […]
On my morning two-mile walk, there are two dogs who are quite obsessive. You can tell even if they aren’t outside, because they have dug gentle ruts into their yards with repeated running back and forth along the same path. It seems to me that most people want to have […]