October 11, 2012 Human beings have shown amazing ingenuity in fashioning musical instruments, often in less than ideal conditions. Many of these instruments were conceived and designed by people at the bottom of the social spectrum, most of whom were slaves in the Americas. Here are four examples that demonstrate amazing creativity by people who […]
music
The Voyager Spacecraft: Amazing, Musically & Otherwise, after 35 Years
June 28, 2012 The other night I hosted a dinner party. One of our guests worked at JPL. I brought out my copy of the box set Murmurs of Earth, published by Time Warner about 20 years ago. It’s one of the box sets I saved when moving and downsizing last summer, because it’s rare […]
Repetition Plus Expression Equals Satisfaction
May 10 2012 On a week bookended by a beginning guitar class at McCabe’s Guitar Shop and a painting retreat in Encino, I was buffeted by a key challenge of the reinventing Boomer. The guitar classes were held in a room that does triple duty as concert hall, classroom, and showroom. All manner of stringed […]
Henri le Chat and Erik Satie: Partners in Ennui
April 19, 2012 My friend Jasmin S. Kuehnert, a cat lover like myself, sent me this video of Henri, a very French kitty. The music—most appropriate for this video– is by Erik Satie, who left the Paris Conservatory—his teachers called his piano playing worthless-— to play in the more accepting milieu of piano bars such […]
Music and Art: Tools for Survival
January 26, 2012 Classical pianist Alexis Weissenberg recently died. He was considered one of the great virtuosos of the last century. He was a child prodigy in Bulgaria when he and his mother were taken prisoner by German soldiers in 1941. Weissenberg had a small accordion and could play excellent renditions of Schubert piano works […]
Whatever Happened to Music Education?
December 1, 2011 In writing a recent blog, inspired by LA Philharmonic’s Music Director Gustavo Dudamel’s orchestral version of a popular Puerto Rican band’s hit song, I began to muse on the subject of music education: in Venezuela and the U.S. There are a million kids enrolled in Venezuela’s music system, called El Sistema. Some […]
Education and the Arts: A Cultural Crossroads
November 17, 2011 Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention. –Ancient Buddhist Proverb What does it feel like when your world is out of balance, off kilter, or out of control? Koyaanisqatsi, the Hopi word meaning- A life out of balance -is born of the Native American understanding that the world and all living things […]
Music and the Brain: An Enduring Partnership
November 3, 2011 Ever since I became entranced by Coltrane’s song “India” in my bedroom when I was sixteen and living at home, I’ve been aware of the power of music to affect the heart, soul, and spirit. Music has always exerted a powerful force on me, even before I could really put its magic […]