Mozart and cool people vs the snobs (and maybe Wagner)

  So I write for Strings. Some reviews, some technical pointer style pieces- for the past 6 months, I’ve been churning out a series of articles condensing some of the workshops that took place at this year’s ASTA conference. They’re assigned by my editor, the brilliant and tolerant Meg Westberg, and usually have titles like […]

In love with Slonimsky, part 1

I’m going back through Slonimsky’s Lexicon of Musical Invective (a title that is as much fun to say as it is to actually delve into) and thought I’d share a few of the entries. In case you’re not familiar, it’s a collection of critics’ assassinations of what are now recognized as wildly successful works. I […]

Borodin 2, in a day.

As part of my gig at AACC, I come in every other week and play with their orchestra and do stuff like run sectionals and make terrible puns from the back of the cellos. I emailed the conductor and asked her what we were playing, just so I could dig through my parts and freshen […]

Rock and Roll

In an alarming number of ways, it’s been so easy to be away from the classical world. I mean, look: everybody’s foaming at the mouth about declining audiences, gigs are scarce, and the likes of me was always begrudgingly admitted into the inner sanctum anyway.† What I do miss is the music. I miss communing […]

The Nice Lady

As some of you may have gathered, I’m hustling out here in Baltimore. Gone are the days of composers calling me up for last-minute tv gigs, of weeks full of teaching my beloved students, of having the luxury of near-daily blog ramblings. So yeah, I’m hustling. Trying to make the most of my non-schooly time […]

Talent on the horizon

They say that the North American natives were taken by surprise, even though the towering masts of the Spaniards were on the horizon for nearly two days before they landed. It is thought they didn’t see the Spanish explorers’ ships because they had no concept of such a thing and that their brains literally did […]