danger on the stage: a minipost
I once launched my bow into the audience at a CSUN concert after a particularly zesty up-bow release. The inside chair gave me his bow and sat through the rest of the movement quietly, but the person who caught the…
Emily Wright
lessons of london: an excerpt
Here’s another snippet from the upcoming collection of essays. One of the highlights of my college years was winning the concerto competition at Kingston University with the Rococo Variations. It was a time of immense personal and professional growth- I’d…
hacks for your technique, part 2: cultivating vibrato from the arm
Vibrato may be describable in words, they’re not easy to come by. For most students, it’s a bit of a long haul to add it to the list of techniques considered well in hand (pun resisted). I’ve had several freakish students…
hacks for your technique, part 1: fixing clumped fingers
There are techniques that feel, for some, completely unnatural. It gets to the point that struggling students can’t even feel what right is, so they either give up on the technique (this is common with vibrato, for instance) or develop…
a collection of truly terrible stock photos
Keep in mind I am making fun of the art direction and not the models themselves. Lord knows they were only doing what they were told. This was supposed to be a lovely slideshow instead of some 1998 Netscape mismatched…
ravel string quartet, mvt 2: assez vif, trés rhythme
Having server issues, but I bet you won’t mind if Maurice Ravel and the Enso quartet occupy this space for the day. 🙂
stuff to round out your approach: studying scores and critical listening
Even if you can hear the music in your head when you look at a piece, it’s never a bad idea to listen to several recordings and study the score as part of your general practice curriculum. To experience mastery,…
advice our teachers gave us, part 1
Part of the reward of teaching is grafting new students onto the lineage of instructors who influenced me, and in effect, into the legacy of the instructors who influenced them. It always tickled me to hear Cathy’s tone change when…
I’ve said it before
It’s frequently said—even among people who are smart and insightful, even among people who study the psychology and neuroscience of education— that children are simply better at learning. It’s easier for them. Endless sheaves of journal pages devoted to critical…
Practicing, pretending, or playing: now with 100% more Soviet naval analogies
I can always tell how someone practices after a few lessons. The most frustrated (and frustrating) students are those who spend hours laboring every week but don’t make substantive progress over the course of a month or two. Occasionally,…