“It’s very gratifying to improvise in front of people. I feel I’m including them in what I’m doing, taking them someplace they might like to go and haven’t been before.” -Jim Hall, guitarist The Musician’s Way, p. 102 Improvisation is the most playful way that we can...
From 2026-2031, the college-age population in the U.S. will decline sharply, about 15%, due to the reduced birth rate during the great recession.* Combine that with competition from online learning, and numerous brick-and-mortar colleges are expected to shut down...
“Don’t give up the dream, but build your competencies so you can pursue many dreams.” -Gerald Klickstein On March 18, 2019, I was pleased to record an interview in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with pianist Kai Talim for his outstanding “Skip the...
“Confident performance is not a fluke, but the product of imaginative and consistent synthesis of technical and emotional work.” -Frank R. Wilson The Musician’s Way, p. 146 Musicians who grapple with performance nerves typically hear plenty of clichéd...
“Three qualities are essential in a professional musician… the first is good health and the other two are the same.” Mark Hambourg, pianist -The Musician’s Way, p. 241 Whether we make music as professionals, students or amateurs, we strive to create transcendent...
“You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.” -The Musician’s Way, p. 196 In Chapter 10 of The Musician’s Way, I emphasize that musicians should view errors not as shameful failures but as neutral information. Having such a healthy...
