I haven’t been left speechless and breathless by a rock band in a long time. I’ve been following this group, Sam Adams on voice, guitar, and synths, Lisa Adams on voice, keys, and bass, and Chris Hermsen on drums, since they formed a few years ...
Carrie Winkler, the director of bands from Sheboygan Falls Middle School in Sheboygan, WI asked me if I would be willing to offer some feedback on their peformance of my “A Walk in the Shade” with her jazz band. I was happy to do this, but ...
Black lives matter. I would have hoped that in 2014 we wouldn’t need to say this. But, with the events that have followed the grand jury’s decision to not indict Darren Wilson, I’m convinced, as are so many others, that we do need to say ...
I heard Nate Wooley and Carol Robinson perform music by Eliane Radigue at the Creative Music Guild‘s Outset Series tonight, and the gentle, subtle humming and thrumming of the sounds these musicians produced has me feeling very thoughtful. Here are ...
There is so much to learn from working artists from other disciplines. Last Saturday I improvised accompaniments to dance at Performance Works NW with Luke Gutsgell, Ben Kates, Danielle Ross, Noel Plemmons, and Elise Knudsen. Linda Austin, the owner and ...
The castles of sound that we musicians build always fade away at the end of the concert, but at least we don’t have to worry about them crashing down in the wind. The thousands of tons of twisting and bucking metal of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in its ...
As a (mostly) professional musician, I’m used to watching other professionals keep a perfect, expressionless face when they make mistakes. And I do it too. (Maybe I do it a lot.) Its part of being a professional — we can’t let on that we made a ...
We all know intuitively that we couldn’t practice our art alone, but many artists’ approach to “self-promotion” leaves them feeling as if they are. Promoting our work isn’t the problem. We must be passionate advocates for our own work, and we ...
When I began composing the music that eventually became The Bright and Rushing World for AnyWhen Ensemble, I began a blogging project called the Diary of a Composer to give myself the opportunity think out loud about the piece as it was taking shape. The ...
Part 2 of a Series by Mary Cummings From Douglas: People are looking, so make sure you’re good looking! When you google yourself or your group, how do you look? If a poorly written entry on an unknown website is all you have online, then you are ...