A PIANIST'S VISIONS OF CHRIST

I’ve always had performance anxiety. It’s been a source of frustration, but somehow I became a career musician anyway. Around 2013, I began to have some very unusual but completely clear visions from God while performing at the MasterWorks...

The year 2020 has wrought radical change. We performers are truly in the midst, wondering what our world “after-the-pandemic” will look like. I love how artists from around the world are working together in virtual ways to share hope, beauty, and comfort to vast audien...

NORMAL SERVICE INTERRUPTED!

As I write to you from southern England the sun is shining and a gentle breeze wafts across a blue sky, and I am having coffee in my garden rather than rehearsing Debussy ‘Images’.  I have been the principal bassist with the Bournemouth Symph...

THE GREAT WORK OF GRATITUDE

Musicians, staff, and crew alike should never contemplate deep things, much less the state of their anxiety, during what we call “tech week” in the opera industry. Usually this entails several long rehearsals in a row for everyone. Sometimes...

COLORS SEEMED BRIGHTER

Music has been a part of my life since a very young age. In kindergarten, teachers discovered some musical talent in me and I started study on the piano sometime in the first grade. I started the bassoon in the 4th grade. In the midst of all that...

WALKING THIS PATH TOGETHER

I am writing from Thailand, where I have come to conduct the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra several times per year over the last 5 years. The first time I came, after the first rehearsal, a member of the orchestra came up to me and asked, “Yo...

“Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity from a convalescent in the Lydian mode.” Beethoven wrote very little extra-musical comments in his score. Yet, he penned these words of thanksgiving to God before the 3rd movement, Molto Adagio, from his Quartet no. 15 in A minor, op....