arrange • compose • conduct
If you are worried about people rejecting, criticizing the art you want to make, don’t worry. They will. No art is for everyone. People reject Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliant Hamilton, saying “I hate rap.” The crowd rioted at the first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Your art won’t be […]
It won’t happen. I think a lot of young artists are afraid that if they use up their good ideas before they’re ready to execute them properly, that they will fail with them and have nothing to replace them. They very well might fail with their first ideas; that’s part of […]
From a conversation yesterday with a young artist… Start making art. If you want to be a filmmaker, write and share a 1 minute film every week. Post it on your Youtube channel. If you want to be a singer, learn a new song every week. Put it on Soundcloud. If you want to write songs, write […]
One of the most significant ideas I left my week with Alice Parker was placing text front-and-center. Both as a composer and as a conductor, Alice doesn’t address the notes until she (or her choir) has internalized the words. With my new commission from Michael McGlynn, I was afforded a unique […]
I’m starting my last morning of Rockford Aces retreat with a trust fall. We’ve done it for the last four or five years, and I find the message to be powerful. Choirs are built on trust. You won’t really sing subito forte if you don’t trust your neighbors to join you. So without […]
I’m renaming my fall choir retreat. The Rockford Aces spend Friday-Sunday at a local camp, singing, team building, sharing, and getting to know each other better. The ~44 hours we spend together is worth 2 months of rehearsal in the way they become an ensemble, both musically and socially. And retreat just doesn’t […]
What do we want from the future leaders of our society? Overwhelmingly, we are hearing attributes like the following: Self-starter Flexible and able to learn new skills on their own Creative problem solver Insightful with a grasp of the larger world Technologists, scientists, engineers: certainly they will be an important […]
In a recent parent-teacher meeting, the teachers urged us parents to give our kids the opportunity to grapple with failure, and learn that making mistakes is an important part of having success. (They referenced this article about the Growth Mindset research of Carol Dweck.) I don’t know a better way […]
This is what I said to my son the other day as he was groaning about piano practice. “You’re going to be sitting there until your timer goes off. You get to decide whether you want to be better at the end or not.” It’s a question each of us faces every single day, […]
I have to leave my main blog focus to insist you listen to Hamilton. The record comes out on Friday, but meanwhile NPR has the entire album streaming at their website. Hamilton, the brainchild of Lin-Manuel Miranda, is a biographical musical of Alexander Hamilton, using various forms of popular music, most particularly […]