Thank you for the music, the songs I’m singingThanks for all the joy they’re bringingWho can live without it? I ask in all honestyWhat would life be?Without a song or a dance, what are we?So I say thank you for…
Adults make up about 25% of my students at any given time. For the most part, adult music students are in one of two situations. They played sax or clarinet in middle school and/or high school and are ready to…
Playlists Back in the day, I recorded songs from a vinyl LP onto a cassette tape. Or I’d be listening to the radio and press record when a fave tune came on. In both cases, I was creating a personal…
Watch Jon Batiste performing Freedom from his Grammy-winning album of the year at the 64th Grammy Awards. Compare this super colorful production of the tune to his video release of the same song last year – which featured a marching…
Canon In D (Pachelbel) Performed by Hiromi Uehara in Marciac, 2010
This blog post was going to be about how Lil Nas X was named musician of the year by GQ and how excited I am about a mainstream mag naming a queer person of color with this title. (Thanks to…
See You In September (bye-bye, so long, farewell) “See You In September” was a hit by The Happenings in 1966. I was 8 years old and that song’s melody and lyric are burned into my memory banks. Six years later,…
“Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people…
I awaken around 3:30 this morning with these words on my lips. I think to myself, “That sounds like a familiar lyric.” I open my voice memo app and record that line and this one as well: Let Kindness and…
The Summer Jazz Academy from Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra is going on now. It started July 20 and continues with classes for two weeks through Saturday Aug 1. I listened to a great class on Monday, Fundamentals of Jazz…
Times like this [Can you say pandemic?] call for alternative performance modes. With all of us under stay-at-home orders, group performances are out of the question. Our Spring Recital dates (April 26 and May 3) came and went without our…