“There is no anxiety in the present. Anxiety is either in the past, worrying about what was just played, or in the future, worrying about what you are about to play. Nothing can be done about either! Don’t judge or evaluate while you’re performing.” — Charles Schlueter, principal trumpet with the Boston Symphony. Cited in: […]

The Polish pianist, Josef Hoffmann may have been a child prodigy. Upon hearing him play, Anton Rubinstein, who typically disliked child prodigies said told his manager, “This prodigy I believe in. Hear him!” (1) Yet in 1908, The Daily Graphic looked back on having seen the young pianist: When Joseph Hoffmann was an infant prodigy, […]

The one bee in my bonnet is over-pedalling, and I give my students a hard time about that. It’s the lack of being able to play a true legato with the fingers.  People rely on the pedal for that, and the pedal is not there for that.  The pedal is for putting the gloss on.  […]

‘”…turning 40 and new fatherhood have other effects: ‘It opens things up emotionally’, he says.  ‘I find that my whole perspective on life and my whole emotional range generally has changed.  I laugh more easily and cry more easily.  And that probably has an impact on the music making in one way or another.  Everything […]

Bach was once complemented on his organ playing: “There is nothing remarkable about it.  All one has to do is hit the right notes at the right time, and the instrument plays itself.” Quoted by Johann Friedrich Köhler, Leipzig, after 1776.  Hans-Joachim Schulze, ed. Dokumente zum Nachwirken Johann Sebastian Bachs, 1750-1800. Bach-Dokumente, III. 1972, no. […]

Title: Abstraction XComposer: Greg SmithPerformer: Greg Smith (7 August 2010)Instrumentation: PianoProduct medium: MP3Related products:– Abstraction X (PDF score)

“In all types of creative work the worker and his object become one, man unites himself with the world in the process of creation.” — Erich Fromm

Composer: Joe HisaishiArranger: Greg SmithTitle: “Master of the Tomb”, from The Boy and the HeronInstrumentation: Piano Solo This item is available from Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus.

Harpsichordist  Jane Chapman performs both early music and Avante music, including using techniques to use distortion on the harpsichord! “Many early music people are interested in contemporary music, too, and many composers are also interested in early music instruments because they don’t have the baggage of the [classical and romantic periods]. Increasingly, younger generation composers […]

“He accomplishes enormous difficulties, but so quietly, so smoothly and with such constant delicacy and refinement that the listener is not sensible of their real magnitude.  It is the exquisite delicacy, with the liquid mellowness of his tone, and the pearly roundness of his passages of rapid articulation which are the peculiar features of his […]