“…few of us talk and write about the bigger picture of how our musical and tactical efforts are guided by three distinctly non-musical concepts that don’t get talked and written about often or openly enough: positive vision, abundant thinking, and a sense of self-worth. Thanks to technology, we now live in a world of vast […]

An artist groping his way forward can open a secret door and never understand that this door hid an entire world. So it is that, if a man who passes for the father of a school, because he determined it, one day shrugs his shoulders and renounces it, that by no means discredits the school. […]

“Personality is to a man what perfume is to a flower.” – Charles M. Schwab, The Ten Commandments of Success

“The more anonymous music is, the less likely people will be to feel attached it and to feel the need to support it. But when someone knows who you are, when you’re not just some disembodied vibrations in the air, they’re far more likely to stand behind you.” Isaac Schankler. “Beyond Sound and Science: Musicians, […]

George Gershwin, a pioneer of the fusion of jazz, musical theater and classical idioms, wrote two essays on the significance of jazz for American music: THE great music of the past in other countries has always been built on folk-music. This is the strongest source of musical fecundity. America is no exception among the countries. […]

Franz Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee (1786-1868) was a composer who wanted lessons with Beethoven.  Beethoven would only look at his compositions. Schnyder often dined in the Mehlgrube, because he knew that Beethoven often went there at the same time in the evening. One lovely spring night Schnyder, on entering the restaurant, saw his friend Beethoven […]

“What gives Sebastian Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression. As high as their expression may soar, their musical form remains supreme and all-sufficient.” – Camille Saint-Saëns, from a letter to Camille Bellaigue, 1907 Cited in: Fisk, Josiah (ed.) (1997) Composers On Music: Eight […]

You’re travelling to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound… but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land, whose boundaries are only that of the imagination… you’re entering… the Twilight Zone… – Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone

Title: Barcarolle Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: Piano I – level 2 (several five finger positions, left and right hands) Product medium: PDF score & MP3 accompaniment track SAMPLE: (audio of accompaniment track only)

There was soon to be no excuse for not practising in the chill of the winter. This excerpt is from The Musical Times, April 1869: WARMED PIANOS (G. Price’s Patent) – These Instruments invite playing in Winter, when the coldness of the keys of all others makes it unnecessarily uncomfortable, if not painful, to many, […]