arrange • compose • conduct
These are the seven albums (one per artist) that mean Christmas to me as a vocal harmony lover. Christmas: The Singers Unlimited The Christmas Album: Manhattan Transfer He Is Christmas: Take 6 The World For Christmas: The Real Group Noels Sans Passport: The Swingle Singers Let It Snow: New York […]
It’s time to talk about gathering. There’s no better source for rethinking gatherings than the amazing book The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. I reread it last month in preparation, and am writing a series of blogs next week examining each chapter and what it has to say about […]
In his conversation with Dr. Brené Brown on her podcast Dare To Lead, Simon Sinek said: They don’t make movies about good leaders. They only make movies about bad leaders, like Master and Commander and things like this. Because nothing’s going well, and some big personality comes in and barks orders and […]
I came to Joni Mitchell’s Blue late. I guess it’s because I came to Joni late – most pop music wasn’t really on my radar growing up. Twenty years ago, I bought a CD of Blue based on friends’ enthusiasm, and having heard her jazz album Both Sides Now live […]
See In The Heights on the biggest, most immersive screen you feel safe seeing it on. I’ll admit to being puzzled when, in the summer of 2020, the filmmakers indefinitely postponed the release of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights at around the same time as they announced they’d be bringing […]
There are some works of art – nonfiction in this case – that stick with you and affect your thinking deeply. Here are three of mine. (They all happen to be from The New Yorker.) Late Bloomers (Malcolm Gladwell). Gladwell differentiates early-bloomers, like Picasso, with late-bloomers, like Cézanne. Why do […]
I’ve been enjoying digging into my all-time favorite TV show, The Muppet Show, since it was recently made available on Disney Plus. One of my favorite parts of the show is this: Everyone sings. Every cast member sings; they aren’t all singers. But they all sing – in harmony, in […]
2020 was not a great year for listening to new recordings. For me, anyway. It’s a combination of a few things. The pandemic. I didn’t want to listen to new music. I was strongly motivated to listen to comfort music, and new music rarely starts out at comfort music. There’s […]
Books remain at the heart of the media I consume – not perhaps the most significant by volume, but certainly by the effect they have on my life. I read 26 books in 2020. I would have thought that number would be higher, given the state of 2020, but it turns […]
It’s been a long dark nightAnd I’ve been a waitin’ for the morningIt’s been a long hard fightBut I see a brand new day a dawningI’ve been looking for the sunshineYou know, I ain’t seen it in so longAnd everything’s gonna work out just fineAnd everything’s gonna be all rightThat’s […]