2017 Week 3 Carols Collected

2017 Week 3 Carols Collected

Instead of filling requests for my final week of carols, I wound up matching wits with the irrepressible John Conahan. He has a tumescent personality and a fecund musical mind, so it’s always great fun for me when he has time to come out to play. Originally,...

Computers can’t add

On our trip to San Fran, we picked a day to visit the Muir Woods. Seeing the California Redwoods had always been a dream of mine. It’s a little over an hour from where our son lives, so there was time for one of our amazing family conversations. Family...

Thoughts and Prayers

We are living in the wake of another mass shooting. This one was epic enough to make the news cycle, but sadly most of them are not. We have had over 270 this year, and most of the time, it is not significant enough to take up much air space because we have made the...

Interruptions

I have been paying particular attention to interruptions lately. I maintain a fairly rigorous lex orandi. A part of that ‘rule’ is the way I’ve come to do my lectio divina. I usually start by repeating my passage while doing some yoga. It’s not...

Hurricanes and gods

Since the advent of the internet, a political event occurs and everyone is a pundit. After the devastation of Hurricane Harvey and the imminent threat of Irma, it looks like everyone is a theologian as well. Naturally, most posts are not worthy of response from an...
Teaching Composition and Beethoven Op. 2 No. 1

Teaching Composition and Beethoven Op. 2 No. 1

At a concert I was playing the other night, a young woman approached me to talk about composition and life as a composer. She is was full of hopefulness as she was preparing to enter her undergrad studies as a composition major. As often happens in these kinds of...
NET Radio Interview with Christopher Marks

NET Radio Interview with Christopher Marks

There are a couple of upcoming performances of the Toccata Adagio and Fugue  for Organ and Percussion at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln by Christopher Marks and Dave Hall. The effervescent Genevieve Randall interviewed Chris about the piece and his...
My annual W.H. Auden tradition for 12th night.

My annual W.H. Auden tradition for 12th night.

On the 12th day of Christmas, I always read this poem from the end of Auden’s Christmas Oratorio. It seems especially good this year. Incidentally, the oratorio was never set, so if a composer is looking for an 8 hour work to write, look up the tome that is the...

Lucretius nails it

“There is a weight on their minds, and a mountain of misery lies on their hearts…For each, not knowing what he wants, seeks always to change his place, as if he could drop his burden. Here is one who, bored to death at home, goes forth every now and then...

Week 2 2015 Christmas Carol Mashups collected

Here are last weeks carols collected.Let it Snow in the style of Bartok for Chelsea Coventry.Angels we have heard on high in the style of Grieg for Amy Flammino.In the bleak mid-Winter in the style of Vivaldi for Martha Davies.Grandma got run over by a Reindeer in the...