arrange • compose • conduct
I love the word and the experience of skeuomorphism – when an inanimate object looks enough like a face that our brains say, “face” when they see it. Houses seem especially likely to me to exhibit skeuomorphism, though I just glanced at my refrigerator and saw a face in the […]
It’s the start of the school year, and that means every teacher I know is thinking about how to be a better teacher. The best teachers I know are even more obsessed with getting better. I’m always assessing and trying to get better, too. So the question to ask is, […]
Alice Parker wrote music for years while on the move. Doing dishes, baking bread. She was a composer and arranger of renown, but she was first and foremost a stay-at-home mother of five. So she wrote the music when she could, and completely in her head. She didn’t notate it […]
I’m writing a personal educator mission statement that will hopefully help me recenter on stressful, long, exhausting days when I can’t see the forest for the trees. I’ll hand write it and post it where I can see it every day. Here’s the draft as it stands now; it will […]
College is overwhelmingly thought of as universal trade school now: get the training you need to succeed in a specific job. Actually, high school is increasingly thought of as a trade school, too. What curriculum should I take to get into the right degree program at the right school? In […]
“This time is for this.” When you work with multiple creative projects, it can be effective to get specific about when you work on them. Otherwise all times and no times belong to each project – so you’re equally at risk of both over-focusing on one project and ignoring it […]
New York Voices’ last studio album came a full twelve years ago – 2007’s A Day Like This. (They have released a Christmas album and a live album with Bob Mintzer since then.) So the fact that Reminiscing In Tempo is released today is a great reason to celebrate! Check […]
My vocal jazz ensemble audition consists of five important components. Solo Song Sight Reading Ear Testing Improvisation 24-hour prepared excerpt (learn your part) All of these are important in assessing the overall skills of the singer. I can better assess voice quality in the solo song, but better understand their […]
Creating is the act of repeatedly rediscovering how. In some fields, there might be a sense of repetition – to the point of predictability. But to create is to approach each project, each day, with the humility of not knowing how to proceed. The job is to discover how, and […]
Like many choral conductors, I’ve been finding more and more of my repertoire via digital-only retailers – independent publishers like MusicSpoke and Graphite as well as individual composers‘ sites. I have long been frustrated with the quality of putting 8.5×11 photocopied octavos in my students’ hands. But with digital-only publishing, […]