Musicians’ Communicating Tricks During Performance When you glance out at an orchestra during a concert, what do you see? Bows moving up and down in (hopefully) perfect unison? Eyes moving between music stand and conductor? Wind players breathing and moving

Aaron Copland can undoubtedly be counted among the most important American composers. He displayed a pronounced interest in music as a child, and his interest in music composition led him to Paris in 1920, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger.

Fanfares are a way of stating the obvious: a short ceremonial tune or a flourish on trumpets or brass instruments to introduce something or someone important. What happens when the fanfare becomes something else? Tobias Picker: Old and Lost Rivers

We were looking at a book of musical quotations the other day and found some things that make one so glad to have a sense of perspective. Here, John Gregory, writing in 1766 in his A Comparative View of the

Stanislav Neuhaus, son of the legendary pianist and pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus, would likely have won the Chopin Prize in 1949. However, the Soviet regime did not allow him to make the trip to Warsaw, and thus he shared the pedagogical

A Musician’s View on the Differences Between Recording Music and Performing in a Live Concert Recordings are, by nature, performances in quite an unnatural environment. Microphones squat beneath you and leer over your shoulders, wires and cables snake around the

Johann Strauss Senior was a very wealthy man indeed. Operating under the assumption that “there is a sucker born every minute,” he filled the dance halls of Europe and performed in front of royalty, even playing for Queen Victoria’s coronation.

For audience members, it’s difficult to imagine musicians anywhere other than on the stage wearing their tails or long gowns, looking serious, playing music with utmost concentration. I remember walking to my car after an evening concert, in my lumpy,