On the upcoming pub concert: Colla, Coors, and Corn Chowder:
Every time I try to describe on this blog a piece of music we’re going to perform, two things happen. I test out a bunch of words that eventually morph […]
Literally, so many wrong notes
Why are we so hung up on wrong notes? After this year’s 10-week summer season, while I did all the whoops and high fives of getting to the end without […]
When pianists play something not written for the piano
Despite the staggering wealth of repertoire written for the piano, there comes a time when someone asks you (esteemed keyboard player) to play something written for another instrument. There’s this […]
4 pianists walk into a bar…
Every summer at Garth Newel’s there’s a keyboard weekend. It a tradition that started before my hire, and it involves 3 pianists descending onto Garth Newel to join me and […]
Unapologetically Yours
by Jeannette Fang I’ve been noticing more and more musicians saying that they don’t enjoy the spotlight. I don’t know if this is becoming a trend or not, it’s just something […]
A Man with a Passion: the 6 degrees of William Cobbett
Walter Willson Cobbett may not have composed symphonies or even picked up an instrument as a child, but his influence in the world of chamber music is so far-reaching that […]
On musical memories and Faure’s Piano Quartet no.2 op.45
The hardest thing to put into words is the feelings you’ve forgotten about that only surface when listening to music. Clouded with the dust of the everyday mechanics, your brain […]
On “Cruel ragtime” and Chopin nocturnes
Sometimes musical kinship between two vastly different composers isn’t readily apparent until you start practicing for a concert that you’ve programmed them on. One wouldn’t naturally find similarities between the […]
On Dohnanyi’s Piano Quintet no.2 in E-flat
In our first rehearsal yesterday of Dohnanyi’s op.26 Piano Quintet, Juliette, who was unfamiliar with the work, remarked on how nostalgic it seemed. “Was it a late composition?” Meh, more […]
On Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on Music
Richmond homeboy Edgar Allan Poe will get the spotlight this coming Sunday with a couple of very cool works that you may not know about. More than a few composers […]
