arrange • compose • conduct
It can be hard to invite people to your thing. For a lot of different reasons. I start several months before the Aces Concert each year (it’s tomorrow, May 26 at 7pm – free admission!) letting my students know that the best way for them to get an audience to […]
What are your goals for a performance? Goals? Obviously, the goal is to perform your music well! What else? Actually, there are a lot of different and overlapping goals you can have as a performer; some are audience-facing and some are performer-facing. Audience-Facing Performer-Facing All of these and many more […]
How do you help students take a Cabaret/Lounge-style solo to the next level? I watched a student rehearse with a big band yesterday, and offered these three tips. I share them because I find them to be near-universal in applicability.
The magic of tour! It’s experiencing new cultures. It’s performing in new venues. It’s moving at breakneck speed, because you know it’ll be over soon. It’s getting away from the routine. (I didn’t wash a single dish in Spain.) But you can’t always be on tour. And as much as […]
Some of the best teaching I’ve ever done has been in bringing my students to a concert. When students hear high-level versions of what they’re working on, so many lessons get driven home. A concept I’ve been working on for months becomes instantly understandable because they’ve heard it done right. […]
I’ve used this quote in the warmup room at festival for years. “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” Attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe We spend our rehearsals gaining knowledge and building a framework of unified intentions. We know what we want […]
On blackbirds, silences, and eves. I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, V. Wallace Stevens gave us two choices, but I’m not sure that I don’t prefer the third option: […]
That’s how I view great singing. Or is it miraculously ordinary? Whenever I hear an amazing singer for the first time, or hear a singer I know do something incredible, I think, “Isn’t it miraculous? That a human can master all the skills necessary to do what they just did.” […]
When you’re blindsided by illness at an inconvenient time, you’ll be glad you followed these simple steps ahead of time. Build autonomy into your ensemble from day 1. Make sure they can survive without you. Build extra prep time into your rehearsal schedule, so you’re not slammed at the last […]
Why do we prefer performances without concentration face? It’s okay to be able to tell a performer is working hard, but it has long been clear to me that audiences prefer performances that look effortless. Part, I think, is relatively recent: just as presidential candidates had to be “good on […]