First post of the year:  I do not know about you, but for me, 2011 will be full of great events. A lot of work ahead and the joy of seeing that the 2010 work really paid off. 

The 2011 season will be so exciting! First of all I am proud to announce the recording of my first solo CD: an album planned since months, about which I thought a lot. For my first album, true to myself, I decided to promote and trust the young American composer Michael Mranti who particularly interested me. I have therefore commissioned a work for solo piano, written to fit among the other works of the program.

This album is built like a journey through the night of three leading composers of the twentieth century and a young composer of our time. The

Yesterday, my friend, the American conductor Jaemi Loeb inspired me a great night thinking about musical education. We were chatting over the phone and I told her I hate teaching piano. But since everything is never so simple, I realized that it was not really true. I love sharing my passion with others, but isn’t teaching a way to share your passion? So how can I say I don’t like teaching while I like sharing my thoughts about music?

I think everything is a question of conditions. For example, master classes are fitting me like a glove. A few hours with a group of students, giving my point of view, advices on specific works, and sharing thoughts about music is really something magical and challenging for me.

Two of the 2011 Australian Open men’s quarterfinals showed us what type of behavior is expected from professionals and what is unacceptable.

Smashed racquet ~ Screen shot ~ Wawrinka v. Federer ~ Australian Open 2011 men's quarterfinals

The effects of not showing up

The first example comes from the Roger Federer vs. Stanislas Wawrinka quarterfinal match.

Rod Laver Arena seats over 14,000 people, and appeared to be filled to capacity.  The commentators spoke of the difficulty of obtaining tickets to major events and of their expense.

But Wawrinka wasn’t “there.”  He didn’t “show up” for work!

He may have felt intimidated by playing against Federer.  Certainly he could

Image Credit- Roger Bourland music blog.

Alex Ross on Modern Classical Music

I’ve been wanting to write about this article by Alex Ross, published in the UK Guardian in November 2010, for some time now. Ross introduces some of the ideas from his new book, Listen to This, which is sure to garner as much attention as his first wildly popular book, The Rest is Noise.

Articles on classical music’s troubles appear daily in various news publications, so why is this book such a breath of fresh air? Three reasons:

• Ross is a master of historical detail regarding trends and attitudes toward art in the past few hundred years, giving his view deep validity
• He is a gifted writer with a knack for vivid and evocative descriptions

I didn’t even notice the moment come and go, but I passed a milestone in October.

Although I find it impossible to believe, sometime this past fall, I passed 20 years since my last serious rock band broke up.

The fact that it’s been 20 years would seem to make it absolutely clear that I never looked back, and I suppose that’s true. I never tire of the music I play now, and this is the music I’ve loved since my earliest childhood. I can no longer imagine another major detour from what I’m doing.

But that’s not to say I don’t miss the music I used to play, and I often think about blocking out some time to write and record some rock stuff. Watch this space, one day it will happen. Meanwhile, I

Collaborative pianists wear many “hats.”  On many occasions, we are required to switch from one mindset to another and back, all in the same day.

I have found that, while we have been trained to go from learning music to performing it as soloists, different skill sets apply depending on which “hat” we are wearing.

The requirements of orchestral playing

In orchestra auditions, instrumentalists play solo excerpts from the repertoire.  There is no lead-in ~ auditions are extremely nerve-wracking for that reason.  The musicians have practiced until every excerpt is flawless!  If a player drops a note in his/her audition, there is always someone

In my previous post on this subject, I tried to demonstrate the flexibility of the canon of classical music, and from there argued that we as performers bear a great deal of responsibility for shaping that canon.  For some, that means a reinforcement of the norms, a continuation of the status quo.  These are the myriad artists who fill our concert halls and practice rooms with the patriarchs of classical music.  But what are they saying?  Or, more to the point, what are you saying?

I would like to make the case, then, for including some living composers in your repertoire.  Not necessarily to the exclusion of the past masters, but in addition to them.

Reason #1: Why not?

Actually, there are a fair number of ...

Image Credit – May

The following three articles appeared as a series in the Denver Post on the subject of the plight of live classical music performance in the last century.

The series was very popular, which is not surprising since it offered a relatively compact but informative perspective on a critical subject. As a performer I realized the writing was clearly on the wall.

Hanging by a string: Can classical music adapt? – The Denver Post.

Classical music is going new places to lure new faces – The Denver Post.

Orchestras, opera companies must make splash to be heard – The Denver Post.

Performing musicians such as myself have been obliged to weather the tectonic shifts in music’s cultural landscape,

I’m in an interesting place with a new piece I’ve begun, a place I’ve found myself several times before.

The piece is for saxophone quartet.  I began with a strong, general concept, then I started sketching various musical ideas.

None of the musical ideas, though, really matched up with the overall concept.  And I’m not really sold on any of them for their own merits, either.

My strategy, in this kind of situation, is to keep futzing with the sketches, in the hopes that at some point there will be a breakthrough, a moment of coalescence when details and outline fall into agreement.  It’s an act of faith, really – there’s nothing in my work on this piece so far that guarantees the