Cut To The Chase
With me from left - Bayla Keyes and Lois Shapiro of Triple Helix, and concert presenter Ruth Haddock, director of the Jefferson Academy of Music. We're in front of a mural of Alexej von Jawlensky's "Schokko with Red Hat." First off, sorry to be gone so long! I...
Culture Shock, Part 2
In my last post, I wrote about my trip to the Flint School of Performing Arts, where, in addition to teaching, I had the...
Culture Shock
The city of Flint, MI has had it rough for many years, and, unfortunately, usually makes the news for bad reasons. From Flint native Michael Moore's film "Roger and Me" to the recent stories about lead in the city's water supply, Flint's image is not in the best of...
Dressed To Kill
A recent article in the New York Times about a new attempt to make formalwear more comfortable for performing musicians reminded me of one of my favorite gripes - why do we wear this stuff, anyway? The article is about Kevin Yu, pictured above in one of his...
Help Wanted
In a previous post, I wrote about my visit to Community MusicWorks and my plans to start a similar program in Cincinnati. Time for an update - there are a lot of things we'll need help with, but I'll start with the most pressing: Wanted - violinist for community-based...
Another Opening, Another Show
Wouldn't it be great if an orchestra concert started like this? https://youtu.be/fSbFgt0wp_4&w=550&start=007&end=014 OK, maybe not - but we classical musicians can learn something about a good opening from the boxing world, and we need to. I'll get to that in a second...