Mickey Mouse & Mozart
. . .one of my longer rants. Professional symphony orchestras in the United States face an annual challenge that we refer to in jest, belying the utter seriousness of the…
Composer A-B
Can You Feel the Vibes?
When I was in high school it was common to hear someone say: “That person has good vibes.” It was a compliment. ‘That person’ was emitting positive energy that could…
Secrets of Conducting
We know what you’re thinking! Who is “we?” We conductors know what many audience members are thinking when you attend our performances. From your perspective, it looks like a lion…
What’s More, It Wasn’t Serving As Entertainment!
“Walking home from the Civic Center Farmer’s Market a couple of Sundays ago, I heard a Mozart string quintet being blasted from what sounded like a boom box, a surrealistic…
One Blog Away
The faces of adult and youthful listeners! Children counting entrances of a musical idea on their fingers! Skeptics sometimes wonder: “Can young people in 2016, in the ‘Age of the…
Other Cheerleaders
Sometimes one can feel that one is a lone ‘voice crying in the wilderness’ – but that is seldom the case! Inevitably there are others who are also fixated on…
I was delighted to hear George Marriner Maull’s “Inside Music” when he discussed how to listen to and enjoy Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the 4th movement. To have the words of the choral Ode to Joy translated and explained (word for word) was enlightening and inspiring as well. And to learn all the intricacies of the music itself was fascinating.