Being in an orchestra is much like being in a family. This is the first sentence that I’d use (and most likely will use) when asked what it’s like to play in a professional orchestra. The second sentence that I’d use is: the family can be a happy, functional one, or an unhappy, dysfunctional one.
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We had a great first concert of the year – the weather was great, if a bit chilly and windy – and there was a terrific turnout at the Oregon Symphony’s neighborhood concert in Arbor Lodge Park in north Portland. I’m horrible at estimating the size of crowds, so I won’t bother – but if
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Soho the Dog has posted his back to school classical music quiz, which I’ll reproduce here (and give my own answers). Remember, there’s no such thing as a dumb answer, just a dumb person! 1. What’s the best quotation of a piece of music within another piece of music? Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in the last
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One thing that I like about coming home from a trip of more than a week is the amount of “fun” mail that has piled up in the mailbox. For me fun mail consists of (aside from unexpected cash or checks) magazines and catalogs. I’m a typical liberal in that I subscribe to both the
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It’s amazing what exercise can do for you. After making my Most-depressing-post-everâ„¢, I decided to take the bike out and ride the crap out of it. For me that means doing 11 miles at an average speed of 13.5 miles per hour, with a couple small hills but mostly flat terrain. I feel much better
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Yep, it’s that time of year again. When the schedule starts back up and all the old habits and fears and regrets come out of that hiding place in the back of the closet or under the bed. It’s hard to deal with. We just got back from Sunriver, where we played in a chamber
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I’m once again back in PDX, and pretty tired from a busy two weeks at the Sunriver Music Festival. Rachel Barton Pine There was some early drama as Andre Watts was forced to cancel due to health problems, and a last minute replacement was found in the person of Rachel Barton Pine, the wonderful violinist
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Over the past four weeks since coming back from MAVI I’ve decided to really get into the cycling aspect of my life – my hope is to do Team in Training next year with the aim of doing the “Peach of a Century” ride in Salem at the end of the summer (though the “Major
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 If author Robert Ludlum had written novels about 20th century music: My humble entries: The Dutilleux Dodecahedron The Pärt Transubstantiation The Feldman Parastolsis The Glass Attenuation The Eötvös Ziggurat From Alex Ross: The Kurtág Codicil The Szymanowski Desideratum The Goeyvaerts Predicament The Danielpour Instantiation The Gubaidulina Parallelogram The Pfitzner Funkademonium
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I like the “if I ran the world” game, it has wiled away many an hour with friends as we ponder what we’d do if we had lots of money and/or power to change the way the world works. What follows are what I would do if I had a budget of, say, $1 billion
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A great story from the NY Post about the Jets football team and their use of classical music in training. Here’s an excerpt:
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