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 …
!["NEXUS on Tour" [1987] by Bill Cahn](http://www.nexuspercussion.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/pth/tn-nexus-1971-a.jpg)
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: …
I recently received an email from a student working on a DMA project. The email contained questions about “Afrodditty,” a piece that exists in two related versions - 1) a timpani solo in “Six Concert Pieces for Solo Timpani” (Meredith/Hal Leonard Pub.), and 2) a snare drum solo in “NEXUS Suite” (HoneyRock Pub). The two versions may also be played …
To followup on the blog posting of April 25, the day-long sessions on diversity at the University of Rochester occurred on Friday, April 29. At the last minute I decided that I would simply present a short Creative Music Making session using a homemade amadinda (Ugandan-style board xylophone) and an integrated amplifier to play back the improvised music that would …
It’s back home again after a week of vacation in Massachusetts - Stockbridge (Red Lion Inn), the Old Deerfield Inn, Sandwich Village on Cape Cod (Daniel Webster Inn), and three days in Boston, where Ruth and I heard absolutely no live music (but plenty of Kenny G’s saxophone in almost every restaurant, cafe, and elevator; what’s the deal with that?). …
I was recently invited to participate in a panel discussion on the topic of improvisation, as part of a Diversity Conference at the University of Rochester River Campus:on Friday April 29, 2011. In preparation for the Conference panel members were given several bullet points to consider:
• Deal with the concept of improvisation as a way of seeing diversity
• Music, language, …
