A reminder about comments on this blog. I have to approve them before they show up online. That's not because I'm going to censor any, but because many spam comments appear, and some, on my blog and others  -- a number of months ago -- almost brought down the ArtsJournal site. The details of that are a long story. But the upshot is that the captcha process -- in which you'd identify words in a graphic, to prove that you're a human being, not spam-sending software -- was defeated by the spammers, and comments have to be approved.This can … [Read more...]

As the fall gets under way, yesterday I spent the day at the University of Maryland at College Park, starting this year's work on my project there, which is to work with students at the music school, encouraging and helping them to find an audience their own age. The most obvious place to look, of course, is on the College Park campus. I met with some of my collaborators on the faculty and at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, and talked to all the students in the school's symphony orchestra, whose wonderful conductor, Jim Ross (one of … [Read more...]

More music I loved this summer: Maya Beiser's new album, Provenance, on the Innova label. If you know her playing, of course you want to hear the album. She's a soulful cellist, to say the least, and powerfully so. She wails. But there's also always a marvelous sense of both exploration and control. This album is based on a vision of medieval Spain as a place where cultures coexisted -- Christian cultures, Jewish cultures, Muslim cultures. And so the music evokes the Middle East, with haunting pieces by composers from Iran, Armenia, Israel, and … [Read more...]

Back from vacation. Always a little bittersweet, coming home agai, because home means the tumult of work. Many people wonder how I keep up with everything I have to do, and that's a good question. I find myself getting more organized, or rather having to get more organized, and rising as best I can to the challenge. Using Gantt charts in project management software is my latest way of keeping track of time, future time, in this case. It's endlessly helpful, with too much to do, to have projects, trips, and major milestones laid out on a … [Read more...]