arrange • compose • conduct
One of the most poignant songs I know, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most” is a meditation on lost love penned in 1955 by Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf. The title is a loose reference to T.S. Eliot’s “April is the cruelest month.” For me, one year on, […]
Sometimes Sir Ken Robinson’s passionate, funny, brilliant keynote speeches (there are many) move me to tears. Here’s an extended quote from one he gave a few years ago at the California Teachers Summit. [The quote begins just before 9:00 in] In it, he differentiates three related terms: learning, education, and […]
What is one thing you canceled due to the pandemic that you don’t want to bring back? There are so many things – singing without masks, concerts, hugging friends, family trips, and on and on – that I’m looking forward to doing again. But there are some things I am […]
I love a good Snow Day Reflection … And there was a concern that, with the explosion of skills in remote synchronous teaching, there might never be another one. The good news is that many school districts seem to have committed to maintaining the status quo, at least for now.* […]
A student mentioned that he’d been having trouble memorizing music recently. In particular, he’d been struggling with memorizing the words. He’s a fine young musician; learning melodies or even tricky harmony lines comes quickly for him. But he was puzzled over why the words weren’t staying in his memory more […]
We get to pause in warmups to answer a musicianship question that would otherwise eat up too much of rehearsal. We get to devote time to our team, with formal and informal team building. We get to learn how to be successfully internally motivated by the love of music-making, rather […]
I’ve written about Singing Brook Days – our family’s screen sabbath – a few times before, but in the wake of a month of consistent commitment to the practice from our whole family, I wanted to write an update and say: it’s the best day of the week. Inspired by […]
Certain breads use what’s called a sponge to enhance the final loaf. The baguette recipe I use (from Baking Illustrated) explains that using a pre-ferment method like a sponge enhances the flavor of the final loaf by enabling the yeast to fully mature rapidly in an unusually proportioned dough-batter (water, […]
By all rights, I should be introducing the Michigan All-State Jazz Choir right about now, and then standing in the back as they tear up the stage singing tight chords with skill and passion. Of course that’s not the case: the Michigan Music Conference is virtual, and all of the […]
I know someone who has a little extra anxiety on Sunday nights, because school is coming on Monday. Mild everyday school anxiety is totally normal for lots of kids; and the small disruption in routine created by the weekend is enough to maximize that anxiety on Sunday nights. One of […]