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Playing With Musical Terms
Why are there so many words when it comes to music? And in so many languages, like Italian, German, French, and even English! Often, one has to decipher obscure words to read the score and the musical directions, which include
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All Music Is Dance Music
I have always thought that the music I create could never be used as dance music. I hear certain slow pieces on the radio and think that there is no way anyone could choreograph movement to this near static music.
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Dragging It Out to the Bitter End
What do old opera singers do when they age out? The early 20th-century soprano Nellie Melba did a farewell tour and then another one and then another one, so much that Webster’s dictionary made a verb of it. ‘To do
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Musical Schizophrenia: Mr. Jekyll & Dr. Hyde
I have observed a bipolarity in my musical self that reflects through my two main musical activities; improvising and composing. Both completing each other — not through their similarities towards a creative goal but rather through their differences of qualities
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Ernesto Lecuona (1895-1963): The Ambassador of Cuban Music
The above picture was taken backstage after a performance at Hollywood Bowl in 1931. Ernesto Lecuona, far left, played George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at the concert. Known as “The Cuban Gershwin,” Lecuona brought popular music onto the prestigious concert
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Concerts and Concert-Going in the Time of Pandemic
As nations begin to tentatively emerge from lockdown in response to the coronavirus crisis, conversations are already taking place about how gatherings of people will be managed at a time when social distancing has become the norm to protect people
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For the Love of Musical PUNS
A 2017 post by the radio station Classic FM, sited a conversation by Reddit user r3mus3, full of puns using the names of composers, which began due to a misspelled note from his father, “The Handel is broken.” I thought,
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Nine Outstanding Australian Composers Part II
In Part I of this article we looked at the Australian composers, Deborah Cheetham, Calvin Bowman, Katia Beaugeais, Richard Charlton, and Moya Henderson. In this part, we examine four more exceptional living Australian Composers. Cyrus Meurant Composer, violinist and keyboardist,
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