On May 5, 2012, as part of the new “Percussion Rochester” festival, NEXUS performed Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s “Rituals for Five Percussionists and Orchestra” with the Eastman Philharmonia, conducted by Neil Varon. The Zwilich piece was premiered by NEXUS in 2005 and shortly thereafter recorded by NEXUS with the IRIS Orchestra under the direction of Michael Stern (Naxos CD #8.559268).
It has been a very mild winter in western New York so far in the 2011/2012 season. The temperatures have been in the 40s for extended periods. February had the highest number of days (25) ever recorded in which there was a temperature above freezing at some point during the day. Snowfall totals have been well below …
Eastman School of Music - January 17 to February 28, 2012
This was the second year in which I facilitated a Creative Music Making (CMM) course as part of the Eastman School’s Arts Leadership Program. As in the first year (2011) the course consisted of seven weekly 2-hour-long sessions focused on freeform improvisation based on my book, Creative Music Making, published …
Monday, January 2 - Bill begins his first term as the Chair of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s Honorary Board of Directors. Responsibilities will include serving on the Governance, Education, and Strategic Plan Implementation committees.
Tuesday, January 17 - Bill’s course, “Creative Music Making,” based on his book (Routledge, 2005) begins as part of the Arts Leadership Program begins at …
My eleventh residency at the Showa Music Academy in Kawasaki since 1998 included:
* performance on a gala percussion concert in the academy’s opera house (Teatro Giglio)
* 44 private lessons
* 11 small ensemble coaching sessions
* 1 Creative Music Making (freeform improvisation) workshop
* 1 videotaped interview for students in the English language class
* 1 formal address to …
On Sat. Dec. 11 at the end of the first week of my residency at Showa, I woke up and 7 AM and worked on my computer for several hours. It was a free day with no lessons and only rehearsals scheduled for the afternoon. From noon until 5 PM I was involved in a run-through of next week’s concert, …
I have been visiting the Showa Academy of Music in Japan almost every year since 1998. When NEXUS toured to Okinawa in 1997, I was introduced to Kazunori Meguro by Yoji Sadanari, who had studied at the University of Toronto in …
The questions below about starting a career in music performance were submitted to me by Peter Ferry, a third-year applied percussion major at the Eastman School of Music. They are all good questions which are frequently asked by career-track music students. The responses are never easy or simple, and can be complex enough to fill volumes. There are no …
On Saturday Sept. 10 Ruth and I drove to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in the evening to attend a concert of The Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival. The weather became drizzly and yet it seemed that about 7 to 8-thousand people braved the dark clouds to be in the Blossom audience. (Fantastic!)
The main reason for our trip was to hear only …
Recently I saw in the local newspaper that there was going to be a guided tour dealing with the American Revolution at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester. Of course, there are a number of luminaries buried there - Susan B. Anthony (women’s rights leader), Frederick Douglas (antislavery advocate), and Col. Nathaniel Rochester, the founder of the city in the early 1800s.
“The Instrumentalist,” a magazine serving the music education marketplace, contacted me in 1999 about the possibility of writing a short article on the subject of percussion performance at the high school level. Since my college degree was in ‘Public School Music’ and since I had regularly been invited to coach high school percussionists or to present workshops on helpful performance …
In many visits by NEXUS to music schools, conservatories and universities all over the world, both during my time as Principal Percussionist in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and after, I have been regularly approached by students asking for advice on …
When I received an invitation from Percussioner International to write an article on the subject of my choosing, it seemed to me only natural to want to write about the ensemble which has exerted such a major influence on my life, NEXUS, the Toronto-based percussion …
In an article in the Wall Street Journal about architecture (An Architect’s Blueprint for Overexposure, April 23-24, 2011), the writer, Joe Queenan, reports that “An Iowa-based philanthropist and architecture aficionado has offered a $300 million reward to any city anywhere that dares to hire someone other than Frank Gehry to design its gleaming new art museum.” The article goes on: …
