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Category Archive for 'Conducting'

My last post about taking beginning ballet class just scratched the surface. Now I’d like to attempt to write more about the background reasons for studying ballet, and the effects I am discovering. As I mentioned previously, my initial reason for exploring ballet was to go add something to my physical apparatus to bring back […]

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Watching how great teachers teach is to take the study of a discipline (in this case conducting) to a meta level, studying teaching itself. Here follow some spontaneous and random observations of Leonid Korchmar’s and Oleg Proskurnya’s approaches to teaching. Good teaching is not about the ego of the teacher – ‘do things as I […]

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It is always inspiring to reconnect with one’s craft, as I have the opportunity to do by observing the teaching of my mentors Oleg Proskurnya and Leonid Korchmar at the conducting workshop at West Virginia State in Charleston, June 18-23. The principles of physics affect all forms of music making, but they are particularly visible […]

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I just wanted to take a quick break from studying Mahler 1 to tell you how jazzed and amazed I am at the energy and excitement around the concert of the Syracuse Symphony Musicians tonight.  At rehearsals yesterday the musicians were so thrilled and moved that Hamilton is doing this, words seemed inadequate – what […]

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Once in a blue moon, if one is lucky, an artist gets to be a part of a project much larger than oneself that turns out to be an uplifting, even transcendent, experience that reverberates beyond one’s normal sphere.  It is even more so when one can be involved in the creation of something for […]

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Mental Effortfulness

Zazen is for allowing a clear mind. – Shunyru Suzuki, quoted in Crooked Cucumber by David Chadwick It’s February, which means that everyone in academe (students and professors) is in the trenches, trying to make it to Spring Break.  It is easy to find oneself overwhelmed – and there are signs that a number of […]

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Piggyback

When you have a strict practice that doesn’t ignore the weak points of your practice, then eventually you will have good practice. – Shunyru Suzuki, quoted in Crooked Cucumber by David Chadwick A friend of mine, Keith Hill, notes (as have others) that on one level who we are is the sum of how we […]

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