Every winter afternoon, around 4:30 or whenever it’s just before the golden hour, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos float through my mind. The pretty violins and woodwinds and brass weave their melodies effortlessly and the cold bite of winter reminds me of the memory I have of the first time I heard them 25 or so years ago.
The memory is one set at an after school orchestra rehearsal for some regional honors orchestra program I was in. Mom was running a little late picking me up that day because the school hosting the rehearsal was somewhere on the far edge of…
If someone made me choose between only having tea or coffee for the rest of my life, I could never give up coffee. It doesn’t matter that I prefer to drink a cup of Earl Grey every morning because it’s a gentler wake-up for me. And it doesn’t matter how many times you tell me about the notes of melon and raisin or plum and currant or milk chocolate — I’ll always tell you that tea has more flavors and that I like it better.
But I could never give up coffee.
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We haven’t been on many dates yet…
I wouldn’t be much of a violinist if I didn’t have some good violin pieces to recommend after playing the instrument for nearly two decades. I’ve spent my fair share of time fawning over the most exquisite recordings and the world’s most amazing virtuoso violinists, and trust me, the best violin pieces are the ones you probably haven’t heard of.
You’ve undoubtedly heard Massenet’s Méditation from Thaïs, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, and the one of the world’s most annoying pieces of classical music — Boccherini’s Minuet. …
The glazed-over look that’s always in people’s eyes when I try to talk about classical music with them breaks my heart. The world of classical music has a bad rap for being inaccessible, stuffy, boring, and dominated by white people, and all of that does a great job of preventing people outside that world from ever experiencing what it’s really about at its core: the music.
One of the biggest problems in trying to bridge the gap and get people interested in classical music are the recommendations. It can be daunting to jump into a new world without knowing much…
It is always a pleasure to travel, and especially a pleasure to eat while traveling. Seeing strange sights and engaging with the denizens of a new land always makes for fond memories. But having a plate of something weird and wonderful set in front of you after a day of navigating airports or crowded museums or lengthy walking tours always has a way of setting things right again. …
It was during my third year in the Music Education program at my university that music stopped being fun for me. I realized that, despite playing violin for 13 years and despite having countless amazing opportunities and experiences open up to me because of it, there was no art or inspiration left in my playing.
Elementary Excitement
I started playing violin when I was eight. There was an assembly at school one morning introducing the new orchestra program and every fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grader was invited to join. The lady who would be running the program introduced us to the…
