arrange • compose • conduct
Building a legacy in your choir takes time, and comes with many benefits. When you see an established music teacher with twenty-plus years in a school, you will often hear remarkably sophisticated musical performance. One of the things you are hearing is the legacy. The effort that educator paid into […]
The live music that has spoken to me, of late, is art that seeks to unite, that carries a deeper message and purpose. It is art FOR something. Ars gratia artis, the poet said, and art for art’s sake can be worthwhile. But in fractured times, ars gratia societatis (art for […]
Any big project worth doing – anything that is going to in small and large ways put a dent into your universe – comes with a window of time I think of as the “Why Am I Doing This?! Zone.” It’s a given that you will spend some time in […]
I’ve been thinking all year about rhythmic deficits in singers – I think strong rhythmic skills are harder to find in singers than strong pitch skills, and I wonder why. At this point, I think the answer comes down, at least in part, to these two questions: How often do […]
How much of the solution can you work out in your head, before you ever sit down at your desk? I find that if I define the problem, and then give myself the time to work on it as I’m doing other things, then when I get to the keyboard, […]
Life comes in fits and bursts – you don’t know what yesterday’s success will lead to (if anything) and tomorrow’s failure might blast open an unexpected door. The best thing to do is to keep going. It’s the only way to find out what’s going to happen. If you feel […]
“I forgot how to write.” Sometimes, when it’s been a while since I’ve written any music, I can enter a period of feeling like I don’t know how to do it anymore. I feel as if any skills I had built over twenty years had vanished in the week or […]
Spring is here, I hear. Part of the artistry of Rodgers & Hart – alongside Lorenz Hart’s clever, wry, heartfelt lyrics and Richard Rodgers’ beautifully crafted melodies – stems from the fact that their songs are endlessly malleable. Tempo, mood, feel, form, harmony – all can be stretched in service […]
Here’s the mantra that keeps me going through many of life’s daily challenges. I love that I can emphasize virtually any word in the story and find new variations of meaning. Absolutely everything you do is a chance to give love. Absolutely everything you do is a chance to […]
A long time ago, I created a mnemonic for teaching the order of whole-steps and half-steps in a major scale. We Were Happy When We Were Here. (I usually couple it with a joke along the lines of, “Hopefully you’ll say this about your time in this class…”) When, last […]