Fresh ideas of building arts communities

"Music is its own language, and, while that language is universal, it is also intensely personal. There are many ways of building communities around the arts. Sometimes you just do it very quietly – with a few people at a time."

This blog outlines a touching correspondence between a family and pianist Andre Watts.

"Creative Destruction: Fresh Ideas on Building Arts Communities", artsjournal.com.  Accessed 7 November 2009. 

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Articles, papers, program notes
ARTICLES & PAPERS: PROGRAM NOTES:
Escaping the every day world
“Those around me refuse to accept that I could never live in the everyday world of things and people.  Hence the irrepressible need to have to escape from myself, and go off on adventures which seem inexplicable because no one knows who this man is – yet maybe he’s the best part of me!  Anyway, […]
The best music
“The best music is the music that persuades us that there is no other music in the world.” – Alex Ross, music critic  Cited in: Ross, Alex, “From Classical to punk”, Limelight, January 2011, p.29.
Vladimir Horowitz on encores
”You see,” he said, ”I have a very substantial program, and after a substantial program, you can’t play a substantial encore. You play a little … ” at this, he strummed the air with his fingers, tinkling an imaginary piano. ”It is,” he said, ”anticlimactic.” Clyde Haberman, “3,500 Japanese Applaud Horowtiz for 14 Minutes”, The […]
Silence, slowness, clarity, reinvigorate
“No matter if you’re an artist, a desk jockey, or anything in between – give yourself permission to include regular (dare I say daily?) reinvigoration in your work ethic. Silence. Slowness. Clarity. The machine doesn’t work so well without them.” Kim Pensinger, from Living and Singing on Interest in the WTO Blog
Context and beauty
“When you’re young, you can be taken with the impulse of the moment and the beauty of a phrase, but the older you get, the more you see that the phrase is only beautiful because of the context within which it works.  The melody is only the outward manifestation of something quite deep inside and […]
I Turn to You, Lord, in Times of Trouble – Psalm 30 (31)
Title: I turn to you, Lord, in times of trouble Text: Psalm 30 (31): 1-2, 5, 11 Music: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
James Levine on Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
Conductor James Levine on Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin: Eugene Onegin is very special, an incredibly successful piece; there is nothing quite like it. The character of Tatyana is so extraordinary. Tchaikovsky absorbed certain things from Pushkin’s original poem, and then composed his own opera, which of course angered some other great Russian artists, like Stanislavsky […]
A dog with musical taste
“Anton Bruckner had a chubby, fat pug dog named Mops,” Fritz Kreisler, a former pupil of Bruckner’s once recalled. “He would leave us with Mops munching our sandwiches while he himself hastened off to luncheon. We decided we’d play a joke on our teacher which would flatter him. So while the Meister was away, we’d […]
A typical recital in England in 1897
John E. Borland described in a paper of June 1897: It was customary to commence with a Bach prelude and fugue (usually perverted from one intended for the organ), a Beethoven sonata (choice limited to four or five), some Chopin pieces (there were about twelve orthodox ones to select from), and a Liszt rhapsody. These […]