I was writing symphonies, chamber music, string quartets. But when Nadia Boulanger analyzed my music, she complained that she couldn’t find any Piazzolla in there. She could find Ravel and Stravinsky, maybe Bela Bartok or Hindemith, but never Piazzolla. The truth is I was ashamed to tell her that I was a tango musician, that […]

“What is an artist? An artist is a tortured being who, when he opens his mouth to scream, only beautiful sounds emerge.” (Or something like that.)… Do I believe this at all?  It was John Cage who first exposed us to this gorgeous phrase.  In 1945?  Cage the Romantic? Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary […]

Ignaz Xaver Seyfried was asked to turn pages for Beethoven in a performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto (5 April 1803). He recalled: In the playing of the concerto movements he asked me to turn the pages for him; but – heaven help me! – that was easier said than done. I saw almost nothing […]

Title: Forgive ( Прости!) (opus 60, no. 11] Composer: Pytor Il'yich Tchaikovsky (arr. Greg Smith) Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:

The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all that there is to it. — Edward Albee, American playwright  Kolin, Philip (ed.) (1988) Conversations with Albee.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, p.35.

The interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer’s intentions to the letter. He doesn’t add anything that isn’t already in the work. If he is talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn’t dominate […]

“Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.” Simone Wells, French philosopher and mystic. Cited at QuotationsBook

“…all talent, all application will not suffice if one’s whole life is not directed towards being a mediator of great thoughts and feelings. Every deed, yes, every thought leaves its trace on the personality. One must live a life of purity in every detail, even down to the morsel one is putting into one’s mouth. […]

“The possibilities of creative effort connected with the subconscious mind are stupendous and imponderable. They inspire one with awe.” – Napoleon Hill, American author Quotations Book  

“In order for music to free itself, it will have to pass over to the other side – there where territories tremble, where the structures collapse, where the ethoses get mixed up, where a powerful song of the earth is unleashed, the great ritornelles that transmutes all the airs it carries away and makes return.” […]