arrange • compose • conduct
What could you do if you didn’t “know” you couldn’t? There are so many things we don’t attempt, because we already “know” we’ll never achieve them. But time after time, we are proved wrong when we assume we can’t do something. My eleven-year-old son has been singing along to really […]
I like to think about how it was for a thunderstorm to move in before we had radar, weather maps, and other meteorological predictions. Sometimes, it was a complete surprise. Other times, there were signs that you could use to predict. Signs that we might not even know to look […]
I loved studying Euclidian Geometry in high school. I loved the formality of geometric proofs, the creativity and sense of discovery they provided. And I loved that the entire geometric world could be built by manipulating Euclid’s five simple Axioms. He basically said, “If we can agree that these five […]
I am committed to doing better as a leader, educator, composer/arranger, and choral musician to address systemic racism and white privilege in the choral world, and specifically in the work I do. I was moved to sign the Black Voices Matter Pledge after seeing its tenets shared yesterday; it was […]
“Curiosity killed the cat.” File that under well-known expressions that send a terrible message to those we seek to teach. Curiosity should be the cornerstone of how we interact with the world. Curiosity should be the default state. “But satisfaction brought it back.” The less-used second half of the expression […]
Prompts for creativity are a vital tool for amateurs. What can a professional creator use? Amateurs and aspiring artists have access to many different creative prompts. It might be as fully formed as a Bob Ross painting show, giving you all the details of how to create a painting. It […]
My most fruitful days as a composer and arranger come when I’m just playing. Others might be more systematic about their arranging and composing – exhausting all possibilities in a long list. And I have those days, too: when I’m not sure what to do next and I simply try […]
We don’t live in the information age. We live in the extraneous information age. The era of information overload is upon us, and the reason isn’t because of how much information there is. It’s because of how music irrelevant information we have to process each day. Extraneous information: the noise […]
I love nonfiction books because they can give me in-depth perspective on a new or historical idea. I can learn more about reality. I love literary novels because I can learn about human nature from well-written fictional accounts of humans. I can have experiences, from the inside, that I would […]
Can we apply the idea of the Overton Window to music-making? The Overton Window, according to Wikipedia, is “the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.” The typical range is Unthinkable • Radical • Acceptable • Sensible • Popular • Policy. There are certainly […]