Rob Deemer highlights several aspects needed for a composer to survive in the artistic community: – ability to accept “failure” (entering competitions, etc.) – maintaining a “stubbornness” to achieve recognition – promoting not only your best works, but also occasionally enjoying the success of your “foibles” – having a sense of “who you are” as […]

“People are mistaken, if they think that my art has come easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has devoted so much effort in the study of composition as have I. There is scarcely a famous master in must whose works I have not diligently, and often repeatedly, studied.” – Mozart, in […]

Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You […]

“Every great work of art has two faces: one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.” — Daniel Barenboim. Cited in: Barenboim, Daniel & Said, Edward (2002) Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society. New York: Pantheon Books.

“Only art experienced within, in which the personality plays a creative role can be of interest …To achieve this, those of you who are not already in this sense dead, must die an expiatory death of all superficiality, of all that you have already learnt, of all encumbrances and of all that is false. Then, […]

He [John Holmes] entered my room around midnight and said, “‘Eureka!’ shouted Arnold Schoenberg. ‘I’ve found the cure for the common chord.’” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.104.

“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” — Edgar Allan Poe

In a surprise union of two quintessentially American composers from different eras, one the 1960s mastermind of “Good Vibrations,” the other the Jazz Age creator of “Rhapsody in Blue,” former Beach Boy Brian Wilson has been authorized by the estate of George Gershwin to complete unfinished songs Gershwin left behind when he died in 1937. […]

Title: Go out to all the world Text: Psalm 116 (117). R. Mk 16:15 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and organ Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:

“Creativity can solve almost any problem — the creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” — George Lois, American art director, designer and author. G. Lois, Damn good advice (for people with talent!): how to unleash your creative potential by America’s master communicator, London: Phaidon Press, 2012.