“Give yourself over to the emotion of the music while you also lead the music, directing your execution and the emotional flow.” –The Musician’s Way, p. 187 Aspiring musicians work hard to develop technical and interpretive skills, which are the most obvious abilities...
“Performing from memory can be a beautiful thing.” –The Musician’s Way, p. 82 As someone who has performed countless solos, I know the upsides and downsides of playing with and without a score. We musicians often debate whether to memorize or not, so...
“I’m very mistrustful of tactile memory. I think it’s the first thing that goes.” –André Watts, pianist The Musician’s Way, p. 82 Have you ever been blindsided by a memory lapse? Maybe you felt secure in practice, but, during a performance, you blanked on a...
The October 2009 issue of the UK monthly The Strad featured an article I wrote about memorization titled “Memories are Made of This.” I was invited to contribute to the magazine by its editor, Ariane Todes, after she attended a lecture I gave on the subject of...
Why write about music and musical expertise? Is it as abstruse as that old saw – “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” – would lead us to believe? In the Preface to The Musician’s Way, I wrote, “Words are destined to fall short when it comes to...
