When I get woken up in the morning, the first thought that comes to mind is ‘Do I have to get up?’, which is then usually interrupted by ‘Mmmm, what am I looking forward to eating today?’ Yes, food plays

A is for Audition. Have a plan to learn your material and be able to play it any tempo, any dynamic under any circumstance with absolute accuracy, rhythm and expression.  Recruit your scariest friends to play through your material in

A is for audition. Get used to it. You’ll have to. And accompaniment. That’s what you are—not the soloist! B is for Body odor. None appreciated— even the most expensive perfume. Onstage it’s a no-no. C is for Cough drops.

As I stand waiting for the doors to open to the auditorium at Wigmore Hall, I take a moment to glance around the entrance. One of the first things I see, among images of Gerald Finley and Julian Bliss, and

When we are faced with important decisions in life it feels scary to take a leap and embrace change. When I was in my twenties, I didn’t anticipate that dreaming big and having lofty goals would result in my career

Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony is seen as one of the peaks of his orchestral writing (oh dear, I’m on the puns already…). Lasting almost an hour, written for a huge orchestra, it follows the dramatic story of a journey up

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, or “Stan the Man” as we in Minnesota affectionately call him, has the distinction of being the oldest major conductor working today. He is also a Pulitzer Prize nominee for his highly regarded compositions. Recently the music communities

Have you ever had a teacher who was a great musician, mystic, mentor, statesman and alchemist all at once? Pianist, György Sebők was such a man. When I first met him at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana in the late