“When it comes to classical music and American culture, the fat lady hasn’t just sung. Brunnhilde has packed her bags and moved to Boca Raton.” So begins a recent article on Slate.com by Mark Vanhoenacker entitled, “Requiem: Classical Music in America is Dead.” Heralded by a cartoon of a morose conductor gesticulating fruitlessly to a[…]
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An interview with Heather Yarmel about auditions and life as a principal flutist.
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Some historical events are burned into the memories of everyone who lived through them. For my generation, the first such event – and, for me, still the most shocking – was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago today. I was in 8th grade, about six weeks short of my 12th birthday,[…]
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With more and more musicians entering the blogosphere, the resulting quantity of practice-related posts is hardly surprising–I’ve lost count of the number of blogs I’ve read containing advice on how to make one’s practicing more effective and inspiring, or how to simply summon the motivation to take the instrument out of the case in the[…]
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The Myth Over the past four weeks, the various “myths” addressed in this series have made at least one thing clear: the time we spend in music school is an indisputably taxing period. But the stress of lessons, performances, and academics pale in comparison to the prospect of facing life after music school: the so-called[…]
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I. The Tornado and the Plow Horse I recently plugged the words “Salieri” and “Festival” into Google, which limped back with a meager Salieri Opera Festival of 2010, presented by Fondazione Fioroni in Verona, Italy. Curious, I added “2013” to the search, and Google came back with only three results, none of which led to[…]
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I was pleased to attend the 2013 League of American Orchestras conference in St. Louis in June, 2013. I have written several blog posts about various sessions I attended at the conference. This article presents all these posts as a record of this year’s conference.
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It was an ordinary spring afternoon in my freshman year at the New England Conservatory, and like many of my colleagues, I was on my way to a lesson. All the necessary music was stuffed into my backpack, the tape in my tape recorder was rewound and ready for recording (yes, I actually used a[…]
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The League of American Orchestras had a session titled “Getty Health and Wellness Session: Health, Wellness and Music.” The session was moderated by Jessica Balboni, Director of Learning Programs at the League. She introduced the panel: Dr. Cynthia Briggs, Director of the Music Therapy Program at Maryville University in St. Louis; Lisa Dixon, Executive Director[…]
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Whenever I tell someone I’m a musician, their first response is almost always to ask what I play. “Oh,” I reply, “I’m actually a composer.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “But I also play bassoon.” The impression is that I’m a composer first, a bassoonist a far distant second. Nothing could be further from[…]
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