arrange • compose • conduct
Why is a word-of-mouth recommendation so more commonplace in certain professions? My son, an aspiring concert lighting designer, mentioned that many gigs are still gotten through word of mouth – you assist someone, and they recommend you a gig, and it goes from there. That’s natural for two reasons. First, […]
It’s a question my kids ask me a lot. How do you still remember geometry, algebra, and trigonometry? How do you still remember the Latin you learned in 1992, or 150 digits of pi, or how to perform stoichiometry, and so forth. The answer is simple: I deeply cared about […]
How do you stop safely when your May school schedule keeps you going at 100mph? You can feel like a car at top speed, on a highway that ends in a half mile. How are you going to stop? It definitely feels that way, as you bounce from event to […]
Keep reminding yourself. In the past few months, there’s been more and more of a sense of “back to normal.” Putting aside whether normal exists and whether pre-pandemic behavior is where we should want to return to, there’s this to remember. Most of the “back to normal” events I’ve had […]
Sometimes, the outcome is frustrating even when you do everything right. Nothing to be done: sometimes forces outside your control prevent you from succeeding. Today, half a dozen small and large events too the wind out of the sails of the Aces recording session. In a session, momentum is everything, […]
I think this is one of the best questions you can ask, and that you can encourage your students to ask: What will you say about these times when they are over? About a tour, a year, a grade, a project, friendship: how will you describe them? It’s always my […]
How do you know if you’ll like a career? We spent the weekend talking and theorizing with our kids about the life on the road – after we had walked past the Jacob Collier tour buses, there were lots of questions. Tour life is strenuous and non-stop. Some people derive […]
I spent the week listening to music I appreciate but don’t always love. To be clear – I appreciate it deeply. I think it’s brilliant, and I totally allow for the fact that the reason I don’t always love it has to do with my own biases and experience. Certainly […]
Do you know that you’re telling a joke? There is some funny music where “you” know you’re telling a joke. That is, the character you portray during the song is consciously being funny. Think Tom Lehrer. Other funny music gets funnier the more your character doesn’t show that they get […]
I often like to take a hard break at the end of the year. Turn off my work brain entirely, even if it’s only for a week or two, before I start prepping in earnest for next year. The problem is, I’ve got several big projects I want to get […]