The solo violin has long been acknowledged as the perfect instrument to express emotions like love, longing, heartbreak, rapture, and romance. The Romantic era lasted from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century and produced numerous works that
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Music Under Quarantine
Quickie Pick-Me-Ups March 30th, 2020Sitting at home 24 hours a day is seriously getting on my nerves. And in turn, I get on the nerves of everybody else in the house. Just this morning, I barked at the dog! Instinctively we know that staying -
Musicians and Artists: Julian Schnabel and Maria Callas March 29th, 2020 In 1982, American artist Julian Schnabel mixed what we might consider high and low culture in his four Maria Callas paintings. These highly abstract works, entitled Maria Callas #1, #2, #3, and #4, were painted on a beautiful dark red/purple -
Capturing the ‘Sonorous Airs’ – Writing About Music March 29th, 2020 Writing about music is like dancing about architecture Oft quoted, frequently mis-attributed, this statement brilliantly captures the difficulty of writing about something abstract, what Ferruccio Busoni called ‘sonorous airs’ – the music itself. There’s an over-abundance of writing about music -
Musicians for Troubling Times
#PandemicSurvivalPlans, Resources, and Hilarity March 28th, 2020During social distancing, musicians and arts organizations are coming up with ways to continue to reach our audiences and our students. We also always resort to some silly games. Here are a few that my colleagues and I are engaging -
Creating Anew for the World We Want
An Interview with Işıl Bengi March 27th, 2020Pianist Işıl Bengi left her home country of Turkey to attend conservatory in Belgium. As an ex-pat, she’s faced the problem of longing for home, but knowing that she must stay where she’s successful. To honor this dilemma, her new -
The Composer March 27th, 2020 How does a person become a composer? What are the attributes you need to write music? Can music composition be taught, and perhaps more importantly, can it be learned? As many universities and schools around the world already teach music -
The Future is Live(streaming) March 26th, 2020 Today is March 26th, 2020, the 15th day of a first self-imposed, and now state-imposed isolation period. And I’m already sick of the live-streaming pandemic that has hit us. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy solidarity as much as -
The Traveling Quartet – Chiayu’s Journey to the West March 26th, 2020 One of the greatest stories of ancient times is the tale of how the Buddhist scriptures came to China. Immortalized in Journey to the West, in a 16th-century text attributed to Wu Cheng’en, the mighty foursome of The Monkey King