Knowing our core

When your schedule changes, how do you feel?

2 ways to involve the congregation

Encouraging the congregation to go past its usual boundaries.

Repeat performances: 10 unique approaches

At some point in life, you will find yourself repeating a performance or two. Every performer I know, as well as some I’ve read about, has a unique way of dealing with repetition: A costume designer who works on Broadway splits the difference between depending on the reliability of a long-term job and thriving on [...]

Marilyn Horne Interview

While I am recuperating from the flu bug that’s going around, I thought you might like to see this interview of Marilyn Horne at WQXR’s web site. New post will be up soon, promise!

Mix It Up!

I’ve been watching tennis again.  The Rogers Cup just finished in Canada, and the Western & Southern Open is in Cincinnati all this week. It looks like the players who ”mix it up” the most come out winning more matches. I’ve been thinking about the value of mixing it up in music, too. We maintain life balance: [...]

Emily’s Movie: Music for Piano

Immediately after recording chorus music last week for an upcoming DVD about Emily Dickinson, we began recording some piano pieces she might have heard or played. Again, my goal was to keep the listener in mind, achieving variety of tempi, dynamics, and styles. Since free downloads of this music are not available, I hope my descriptions [...]

Call in the Cavalry!

All of us have received last-minute phone calls from people who sound absolutely desperate.  We need you!  The earth will stop turning if you don’t play! So you drop everything, cancel appointments and dinner/movie arrangements, get ahold of the music somehow (usually by calling every other accompanist you know ~ the call came so late, the [...]

Backwards Day!

A delightful seven-year-old, arriving for her lesson, immediately announced “This is Backwards Day!”  Who knew? I went with it, of course.  Resistance would have resulted in one unhappy student.  What actually happened?  We had tons of fun! What transpired We said, ”Goodbye!” We shuffled her books so the top one was in back We chose a piece [...]

Teaching the individual

Teaching is a fascinating thing.  For me, tapping into the unique way in which each person learns produces the best possible results. Most of my students are age 16 and older.  Because they are taking lessons for one reason ~ they want to ~ they have no juries, exams, grades, or requirements. So there is no list [...]

Creative hymn playing

They look the same in the hymnal, mostly ~ women’s parts in treble clef, men’s in bass, several verses of text printed between the staves, additional verses at the bottom of the page. They’re meant to be easily singable so the congregation can participate. But does that have to mean that we use the same [...]