I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing, and I cannot acquire the new. I have made intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me. Unlike Madame Butterfly with her quick religious conversion, I cannot […]

For me, one of the ultimate goals of a performance is to make pieces come across as something new, something unexpected and fresh. As soon as you start working with historical instruments, you are jeopardising this aspect. It is very difficult to get away from that; some performers manage it magically, but I don’t see […]

“It’s a challenge, for me at least, to do nothing but listen.  You need to set aside time for it.  You need to concentrate on the music alone (and not on your next deadline).  But when it works, you open yourself up to the transcendent ecstasy good music can bring.” Francis Merson, editor, Limelight, April […]

Music sets up a certain vibration which unquestionably results in a physical reaction. Eventually the proper vibration for every person will be found and utilized. I like to think of music as an emotional science. — George Gershwin Daniel Albright. Modern and Music: An Anthology of Sources. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, p. 388.

Alexander Gow, musician in the band Oh Mercy on spontaneity of artistic creation: [Spontaneity is] when art is expression, and that’s what I’m interested in. If, like you said, there’s a spontaneity to it and it’s an extension of a certain kind of moment or feeling, and if you’re clever enough to express that through […]

The career of a musician out to be — it is, actually, and in many ways — different from the careers of artists in other fields of art.  All comparisons of the other arts with music are necessarily somewhat superficial.  The art of music needs, essentially, not much contact with social groups, or concern with […]

Composer: Joe Hisaishi Arranger: Greg Smith Title: “The Great Collapse”, from The Boy and the Heron Instrumentation: Piano Solo Available from Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus.

Title 1: My Shepherd is the Living Lord Text 1: Isaac Watt Title 2: I know That My Redeemer Lives Text 2: Samuel Medley Tune title: My Shepherd 88.88 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB Product medium: PDF score Sample:

Composer: Greg SmithTitle: “The Fox (New Year’s Day)” from Tableaux Performer: Greg Smith (January 2025)Instrumentation: Piano

Rodney Greenberg describes a side of George Gershwin’s “romantic side”: He wrote a little waltz-song, which he would sing and play to his current dating partner.  It was, in effect, what his friend Kitty Carlisle (who later married playwright Moss Hart) described as his “mating call”, because he left a blank space in the lyrics […]