arrange • compose • conduct
I don’t want to write. I don’t want to practice. I don’t want to do the dishes, make bread, walk the dog. I want to have done them. I want to live in the future in which I’ve done those things. Because I like the outcomes brought about by doing […]
A good definition of maturity might be: choosing to ignore your first impulses for others’ sake. Maturity is choosing to stay quiet in rehearsal when another section is rehearsing, because your impulse to talk would undermine the other section. Maturity is choosing to practice rather than to look for Pokémon […]
I’ve listened to a lot of music. Like, a lot. But there’s still vast amounts of amazing music I have never listened to. There’s simply not time. When someone seems affronted that I haven’t gotten around to hearing their favorite music, or music held in high regard, I can feel […]
My son loves Scouting – he’s passionate and committed. But he also knows that his forward motion slows down every few months. It’s a natural cycle of the type we all go through in any activity. When he noticed that he always gets reenergized after participating in certain optional events […]
In her recent podcast interview with Dr. Brené Brown, Dr. Amy Cuddy describes the turmoil she felt about whether to continue her career path. I was sort of saying, “Do I want to go for tenure or not?” It’s stressful, to go up for tenure – you know, you’ve got, […]
My students and I talked about 9/11 this weekend on our retreat. I shared my story, and reflected on the arc of my students over the years – my first students had been in middle or high school at the moment 9/11 happened. My current students weren’t alive, but their […]
Our society has long been obsessed with marking the differences between “Generations” (basically arbitrarily marked) like Z, Millennial, X, etc. The obsession has seemed to ramp up in recent years. The truth is, there are some noticeable and consistent differences in generations over time, though I think that they’re detectable […]
How often do you have students who are “totally planning to audition…when I’m 100% ready.” Perhaps they’re not feeling knowledgeable enough, or have a tuning problem or a tone problem or a vibrato problem. In my experience, those students almost never actually get close enough to 100% to audition. Because […]
I am much more interested in New Year’s Reflections than Resolutions. It’s universally accepted that those resolutions don’t usually stick, and even if they do, it’s hard to wait a whole year to assess the outcome of a resolution. A month is a much more realistic time for a resolution. […]