I really must commit to blogging more frequently!  It’s an unfortunate irony that during the most interesting times one is too busy to blog (or at least it feels that way). Now, I feel I can only hint at some of the adventures of the last two weeks.
The Dropback Workshop at Sankalpah was FANTASTIC.  Everyone [...]

OK, I’m back….Quite Literally:
Back to blogging.
Back on the East Coast.
Back in my parent’s house in Connecticut.
Back and ready to teach my first class/workshop in six months this Friday (and raring to start teaching again, period.)
Today’s agenda:  create the workshop for dropping back.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot, ranging from imaging how fun it [...]

I have been neglectful of this blog, even though there have been several wonderful, easy-going moments in the evening when I’d find myself unwinding by playing through a few sonata movements.
The reason is that I’ve been prepping for my Kipton Art Event from last Thursday.
Honestly, it was a FANTASTIC night.  Here’s the video of my [...]

The Kipton event is moved until April 29th and I feel that I am actually for once truly ahead of the game.
Although I am astonishingly punctual, perhaps it’s because I always have the feeling that I might be terribly behind.  All of this may come from the fact that I was a very overdue first [...]

My practicing has taken a distant artistic second these past two weeks to preparing for my April 22nd Kipton Art Event.
It’s rather awesome:  I am the first LA artist they are honoring with an event.
I’ve put together a ton of work:  the large dropback from the Duo event + four smaller dropbacks + an entirely [...]

I’m fond of the truism that  ”Too Much is too much––but Way Too Much, can be just right.”
That was definitely true today as I uncovered exactly what I’ve been searching for for my newest series of art pieces, SYMMETRY.  I had been dreaming of distressed window and door frames, and then putting stills from the [...]

It’s sort of the same principal as playing tennis with someone much better than you.  It’s really the only way to improve your game.
Since I’ve renewed my interest in writing some songs, I’ve been working on some vocal stuff again.  After years and years of not really singing at all, I was worried that nothing [...]

This week I finally decided to listen to the warning bleep at my gym when lifting weights, the one that tells me “Try to Slow Down” (my posting on 8/29/09).

I decreased each weight by a full bar and focused on going slower and more intently.  It turns out all the machine wanted from me in [...]

This week I’ve been thinking a bit about the complication of ornamentation in classical music — all those trills, turns, mordents, appoggiatura, acciaccatura and grace notes – most of which can be inverted or doubled or have an accent beat – and on and on.  There are seemingly infinite varieties for ornamentation.
For fun, here’s a [...]

I spent a lot of time this week searching for a scribbling in the margins of old music book.  My first truly good piano teacher, Mary Blish, wrote not only lots of helpful fingering but also tons of musical suggestions.   For example:

What I love about this is not so much the reminder of the [...]