First off, if you’re here because you were looking for the Tamarack Arts website, hi! In the next month or so, this site will relaunch with a new, simplified look, and will gradually populate with new posts, events, podcast topics,…
Things have been quiet here, but behind the scenes, I’ve been working furiously. The remainder of 2024 is set to be a busy time. I’m slowly populating the calendar here: Top of the list is submitting a proposal for…
Wendy is an absolute institution in the Los Angeles string world, and her latest project to catalogue and promote the work of women composers is just one example of her tireless efforts to make a difference in the music community.…
If you have lesson anxiety or find it hard to strike a balance between caring about the result (essential!) and holding yourself accountable for every tiny flaw (misery!), have a listen to this. Lots of love to all the tender…
There is a nature preserve not too far from where we reside that has a bench with an excerpt from Thoreau’s Walden pressed into it. In the spring and summer, the place runs wild with ferns, soft moss and lichen,…
Making a podcast is such a cool way to have conversations with interesting people that you’d otherwise have no excuse to talk to. One thing I really miss about being in an academic environment is having (and hearing) discussions with…
read part 1 here and part 2 here! I had beaten P to the house by only a few minutes, and figured that a surge must have done something to the power. It was incredibly warm and I was covered…
read part 1 here. The route from DC to Litchfield county has a number of variations, most of them involving whether to cross into NY via Manhattan or Yonkers. Strangely, it is frequently faster to go through Midtown, but I…
The last two years have been just…really…something. Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of a particularly gnarly moment in what has been a period of almost exclusively gnarly moments, and it made me realize that only a few people have…
For about a month now, there has been a post nearly ready to publish. For some reason, I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I’m not certain if this is a sign of maturity or lack of…
As promised, here are some lesson notes. This student is a marvelous and highly motivated student whose main outlet is playing in a community orchestra. These notes are from a period of time when I was also introducing them to…
Back when I started this blog, social media was a sort of nascent entity—we had no idea if it would stick around or fall into the waste bin of internet things that didn’t last. It was easy to do what…
Thom is a friend and colleague who offers some practical tips for anyone who wants to write music but feels like they don’t know how to start!
This is one of my favorite episodes, ever. What a treat.
If you’re a late intermediate to early advanced cellist and have wanted to study with a group of other students at a similar level, there are four more spots left in the Tamarack Arts spring studio class. It’s a really…
Sandra Halleran joins me for a deep dive into teaching and learning. She’s also new Tamarack Arts faculty, so you’ll be seeing her around this summer! Thanks to everyone who’s been listening, sharing, and giving feedback.
So. We’re in Connecticut. If you had told me 10 years ago that I’d be turning new private students down and living in a posh small town in southwestern New England, I’d have said you were crazy. As it turns…
David was my cello teacher for the last year and a half of my CSUN education, and before that, he coached me in chamber music, conducted the orchestra, led the opera pit ensemble, and taught my first two semesters of…
Noa Kageyama’s Bulletproof Musician has long been a source of insightful, thought-provoking advice, so I wasn’t at all surprised when one of my students sent me a post last week talking about getting tricky passages up to speed that was…
Just a little cross-pollination between the sides of my life. For the winter semester, we have offerings for violin and cello, for beginners and intermediate students. It’s also a screaming deal at $125 for 9 sessions. Specific dates will be…
This November, I’m going to be streaming an hour of my practice on Zoom one night a week! This will be my real, actual practice, with no commentary (with the exception of my own mutterings) and no interaction with viewers,…
After a million years and so much change around here, allow me to present the next episode of Lonely Cello, featuring my best friend in the whole world, Cari Ann Souter. In between bouts of laughter and a few wild…
April and May have been absolutely wild. It’s funny how you can spend so much time wanting something to happen, and working for it to happen, and when it happens as a sort of avalanche of sudden progress, the first…
What a wild couple months it’s been around here! Tamarack Arts launched, a semester culminated, new students onboarding, some students moving on…but the year of professional development continues! For July, I’m going to be writing about (and doing a podcast…
COVID certainly normalized my utter devotion to the Leggings Lifestyle™️, but even before a vaccine was on the horizon, there were days where I woke up, looked past the volumes of stretchy stuff and searched out something more zesty. Even…
Been a little quiet here, but not because there’s been nothing going on. Late in February, I gave a talk to EMSO, a fabulous group of focused and hardworking amateur musicians in Minnesota. Preparing for seminars like these forces you…
Part of an ongoing series! Next one will feature two ladies who went to music school and fit the bill of “professional musician” but make most of their money doing other things. Why is the label important? Why is this…
I have had exactly one (1) student who just took to vibrato naturally, right off the bat. For everyone else, myself included, the process leans towards a months-long series of conceptual introductions, tweaks, and assessments. I teach the rotation method,…
While every text on the list will be available for open-ended discussion, the podcast and Instagram live stuff will be contemporaneous with my reading/finishing them. Next up is the classic The Inner Game of Tennis (buy it here or find…