The Kurt Knecht meme contest results

I won two free tickets to the orchestra by finding a stuffed turtle hidden under a sculpture inspired by Monet’s Water Lilies.Coincidentally, this happened only a week after Jennifer had made one of her infamous declarations. In an almost unimaginable confluence...

My Oscar de la Renta gig and my hair model gig

When you are a professional musician, you sometimes dream about the day that your son will come up to you and say, “Papa, what I really want is a horn.”  You hope that he might want a saxophone.  You pray that he doesn’t have the personality that would ask...

ESPN post concert interview

I have been imagining what it might be like if classical musicians got a post game concert interview and could respond like athletes. Here is how I imagine it would go.Erin Andrews: That was quite a performance!Arthur Rubenstein: I just want to give all the glory...

Band v Orchestra question

I may be kicking a hornets nest, but a thought occurred to me this week. I’m teaching a graduate seminar in Baroque Performance Practice, and I’m delighted to report that students are arguing away about the intentional fallacy, the relationship of the...

Thomas Weelkes: drunkard, urinator, organist

No matter how good you are at your job, you’re probably not as good at Thomas Weelkes. Weelkes was an English organist/composer in the late 16th and early 17th century. In 1616 he was reported as”noted and famed for a comon drunckard (sic) and notorious...

The annual evaluation highlights

I’ve been so busy with MusicSpoke and the beginning of the semester that I haven’t had time to blog in a while. I did, however, finally receive a packet of much overdue evaluations of the students at Nebraska Wesleyan from the Fall semester today. I always...