Tonight, after our Thanksgiving dinner, David and I sang old American folk songs out of a fake book around the piano instead of the traditional hymns. Not perfect but good spirited.
Today for some strange reason, I got the impulse to work out a treatment for piano for “Four Strong Winds.” This is a song made [...]
I just watched a life-changing video (for me, not necessarily for you): THE BALLAD OF RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOTT. Just as scientists posit the existence of celestial bodies, or elements, or forces in nature by their INFLUENCE on things around them, I have realized the amazing influence of Jack Elliott on both the musical world and [...]
Looking for one of my favorite songs of all time, look what I found! Rufus singing it. He’s still learning it, but good to hear him sing anyway.
Here is Regina Crespin singing it. Mmmmm…
And here is Janet Baker:
And we must have Jesse Norman.
For composers who choose to go the university route, I advocate studying with a variety of composers, and not just sticking with one. In a meeting today, we realized that between our two departments, we have four traditional white American composers, one Japanese American, one from Turkey, another from Lebanon, one from Mexico, and two [...]
This is an audio only YouTube clip but is a joy to hear Anton Webern conduct Franz Schubert’s “German Dances.”
German Dances. Arranged by Anton Webern in 1931. Schubert wrote most of them in 1824, for the piano.
One of the very few documents of one of music’s greatest innovators actually conducting. People said that his [...]
I just picked up Daniel Levitin’s new book “The World in Six Songs.” A thrilling read and is truly coloring the way I think of music nowadays. Quite refreshing.
I had grown tired of listening to our local classical radio station playing Vivaldi and Telemann all the time, and news just makes me nervous these [...]
Take a look at the syllabus of the theory class I’m teaching this quarter. It has students from all three music departments: Music, World Music, and Music History. I am having a blast combining them. The syllabus has the current week at the top. Look at some of the videos we’ve discussed in class. We’ve [...]
I am in Mountain View today, killing time while my husband gets some work done at Palm. Google provides free wifi to the city so I’ll take advantage of that and write a post.
I used to love going to metaphysical bookstores. I’d walk in knowing that the book I needed to read would pop out [...]
I’m flying up to San Francisco to celebrate our good friend and colleague Andrew Mogrelia’s 50th birthday. Andrew conducts internationally and is a professor of conducting at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. It will be fun to see all my SF friends again and it’s a great town to visit (my heart belong not [...]
A sweet performance by Joseph Smith and pictures of the composer, Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884 - 1920) — one of my favorite gone-too-soon American composers, and the namesake of my license plate [GRIFFES].
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