A new friend recently texted me as he landed in the Denver airport, having flown out to the Rockies for a gig. He googled “Colorado beer” and came up with my name. (Interestingly, a quick search also brings up my husband’s name.) I wrote a weekly newspaper column about beer and nightlife for five years. [...]
I woke up angry, again. Anger used to be a rare feeling for me, though fierce when it would show up. Since moving east, I’ve had to learn how to fight for things. Not just fight to stay alive in traffic, where a u-turn is permitted anywhere, lanes aren’t marked, and cars will impatiently nose [...]
…in the Christmas edition of the New York Times, writer Daniel J. Watkin looks at the “high notes and low points” of classical music this year. Messiest Musical Divorce: To Hélène Grimaud, the pianist, and Claudio Abbado, the conductor, whose musical partnership fell apart after a dispute over which cadenza Ms. Grimaud would play for a [...]
This week my percussion warm-ups deal with taking a steady rhythm (whump-whump-whump), doubling the speed (wiggle-wiggle-wiggle), and then returning to the initial speed (whump). That is life, isn’t it? So rarely are we afforded graceful transitions in between the busy and the slow sections, and it’s so difficult to hold things steady as we move [...]
Gmail has started a little alert at the top of my inbox, alerting me that I am nearing my inbox capacity. I have never been one to clean out or sort emails — I feel accomplished by answering them in a timely manner and then watching them file down the page. I started clicking through [...]
My most recent boss and I were talking about the topic that seems to be as touchy as asking someone’s weight — what’s on your curriculum vitae. She encouraged me to include some non-career information; as a college teacher and vocalist, she was hired with a CV that included that she designed and built an [...]
This morning I started my practice by listening to two right-handed drumstick-hits in a row. I listened to their volume. I listened to how they were spaced within two given beats of the metronome. I listened to how they sounded when they had to artfully dodge my left hand interjecting. Such detailed listening is exciting [...]
….Boredom can also encourage innovation….It can drive the thoughtful to question the accepted and to seek out beneficial change…Boredom should not be abused, exploited, ignored, sneered at, rejected or talked down to as a product of laziness or of an idle, uninventive and boring mind. It’s there to help, and its advice should be welcomed [...]