Blogs

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You’re a Pro and You Still Have to Practice?
Once I entered an elevator with my red cello case. I swung it up so it stood upright. Although I tried not to make eye contact someone was still prompted to ask questions.
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The Music is the Least of It
The remarkable Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura [Recycled Orchestra of Cateura] is a project from a village next to the Cateura landfill outside the city of Asunción, Paraguay, and is the subject of a new documentary entitled Landfillharmonic.
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The Kids of Perugia
David Ilana and I were invited to the Silk Road Piano Festival in Xian in 2014. Xian is famous for its thousands of terracotta soldiers buried in 210–209 BCE by a paranoid emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who wanted to make
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School Music Teachers: Mischief, Mayhem and Magic
Schoolteachers mold each new generation—what a responsibility. But when it comes to how we value educators who tops the list—the math or science teacher, the reading instructor or the basketball coach? In my book, music teachers are the heroes.
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I Have a Little List: Was Don Giovanni the Great Lover?
In the opera Don Giovanni, there’s a particularly cruel scene where the Donna Elvira, meeting Don Giovanni’s servant Leporello, has to hear how she is just one of a large number of women that the Don has seduced. In the
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Transcending Tunes of Light and Shade
Handel: Messiah
During the opening measures of the famous chorus, members of the audience glanced around anxiously, checking to see who would be first to rise to their feet. Then someone in the balcony stood, and someone else, and suddenly the whole
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Chinese Musical Instruments: Hide
Musical instruments in China were traditionally classified into 8 groups delineated by the material used in the instrument: Silk, Bamboo, Wood, Stone, Metal, Clay, Gourd and Hide. We will look at selected instruments in six of these groups in this
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John Williams and the Sound of Our Lives
Film music has always tread that fine line between classical and not-classical. Should it be considered ‘light’ classical or not classical at all? But film music itself is an interesting genre. There are so many films for which the music
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