Contact me

dear Bruce,

first of all thank you so much for letting people contact you. In our current society there is a tremendous gap between concertists (celebrities, people playing the music of old masters better than others and being applaused) and the audience. Who can claim to have communicated with Arrau or Argerich or Ashkenazy? (to name only a few, starting with an A) These are mythical persons, untouchable, unreachable, living in other spheres. These people will not read messages from their admirers, you do!

I'm just listening to your Glass/Duckworth record and I wanted to tell you that it is a real delight to hear Glass piano music by somebody else than Glass himself. Here is my small request: PLEASE make a record of the Glass's ten Etudes, it would be a gift to mankind!

Thank you so much for giving your audience a chance to speak.

Cheers

Yannis Haralambous
Computer Science Professor (and amateur pianist)
Brest, France

Hi Bruce,

I just discovered your terrific blog. I've really enjoyed it a lot. The masterclass entry made me laugh because when I was at NEC, there was a person who came to give vocal masterclasses regularly and, no matter what the student we did, we eventually learned the solution was always to go either "a little faster" or "a little slower." And at the end we were all assured by the phrase, "There...now, you've got it." That's the most maddening thing to me about many masterclasses, how the teacher will so often claim a great success at the end and the audience, having now been directed to focus on some special aspect of the playing, will invariably agree that a life has been changed. When, in fact, the student often will sound more confused than ever, which is only natural. Of course, there is good reason to encourage the student at the end of one of these public lessons.

Anyway, I'm an NEC DMA alum in collaborative piano who's been blogging for a couple of years now. And, in the spirit of your most recent post, I just discovered that I'm a composer too, having just 'written' this canon.

My blog is here.

Looking forward to more of your blogging,

Michael Monroe
Assistant Professor of Music
Gordon College