A little while ago I mentioned Austin Kleon’s book ‘Show Your Work.’ Very early in that book he brings up the notion that no genius creates in isolation. Mozart would not have been Mozart without Haydn, Brahms would not have been Brahms without Schumann, Bach would not have been Bach without the Bach family and …
Today while I was doing research for an upcoming episode for my podcast, Classical Declassified, I came across the rather interesting figure of Arthur Honegger. Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer who was a member of a group known as ‘Les Six.’ This was a group of six mostly Swiss composers active from roughly the …
After spending some time in the 16th century last week, an interesting story brought me forward to the 19th and 20th centuries today. The composer Robert Schumann has long been one of my favourite composers of chamber music. Unfortunately he had a too short life with a tragic ending. Once on track to be one …
The fun part about not being tied down to a highly specialized music degree anymore is that nobody’s forcing me to play the instrument that I’ve learned to a very high level (the modern viola). I possibly should be, but it’s summer and I have no gigs, lessons, or work lined up yet, so there’s …
I have heard many musicians say that the best time of their life was music school. Music school (by which they mean college/conservatory) is where you are daily surrounded by like-minded students, practicing your craft, busy with nothing but music all day, with nothing else to worry about. Hypothetically anyway. I also had many high …