As a child, my fantasy was to have a pet like this … I’m so not kidding.

I’ve updated my blog’s masthead for autumn - if you cannot see the difference above, you may need to click refresh on your browser a couple of times, or clear your browser’s cache. I’ll be changing the masthead every season, and will post previous / older ones in mastheads.

Celebrating the seasonal transition with music, here’s a typical eclectic playlist on my IPod now:


• - L.v. Beethoven: String Quartets Nos. 14 and 15 - Alban Berg Quartet
• - J. Brahms: Lieder - Anne Sofie von Otter / Bengt Forsberg
• - J. Brahms: String Quartets - Amadeus Quartet
• - Justin Timberlake: SexyBack (I hadn’t realized that sexy had apparently gone missing in the first place.)
• - Eminem: Sing for the Moment, Lose Yourself
• - Stevie Nicks: Edge of Seventeen
• - G. Ligeti: Sonata for Solo Cello - Matt Haimovitz
• - C. Vivier: Zipangu - I Musici de Montreal
• - U2: With or Without You, Pride
• - F. Schubert: Fantasy in F minor for four hands - Murray Perahia / Radu Lupu
• - Brazilian Girls: Don’t Stop
• - M. Ravel: Ma Mère L’oye - Claudio Abbado / London Symphony Orchestra
• - Bjork: Human Behavior, I’ve Seen It All

Me: So what kind of sound do you want to produce in this phrase? What kind of image do you have inside of you as you play it?

Student: Umm…. It’s like I’m playing with a ball, bouncing it up in the air….

Me: Ok, good - do you think that’s coming across?

Student: ……<long pause>….no…..<another long pause>

Me: Why do you think that is?

Student: ….well, right now I guess it sounds more like I’m throwing the ball up into the air and it comes down and instead of being able to nicely catch it, it’s whacking me in the eye.

Millie is joyfully enjoying the summer by finding THE HOTTEST SPOT in the entire apartment to pass out in.

In between my practicing, I am busy trying to figure out some way to keep the ice cubes in my water glass from melting in under 20 seconds.






“Do you think it would be possible for you to, er, play a program maybe, um, I don’t know, more….accessible?”

“What do you mean? I programmed Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, and Bartok…”

“Well, um, that’s the thing… the Bartok, well, I don’t know, for our audiences… um, it might be too OUT THERE, too contemporary, if you know what I mean…maybe something more well-known, a more familiar piece…”

……sigh……