Flute and Music Related News...

Cell Phone Media Frenzy!
This coming Sunday, October 1st and Monday, October 2nd, the Chicago Sinfonietta will open its 20th Anniversary Season. We have a fantastic opening concert featuring the Van Cliburn winner, Alexander Kobrin and Sphinx competition winner Melissa White performing works that should delight the audience. However, it’s the closing piece of this concert that is generating ALL OF THE BUZZ,...

The Western Concert Flute - design and mechanics
The ‘Western Concert Flute‘ is the type of flute played in an orchestra. When one pictures the word ‘flute,’ in their mind, one of the pictures that may come to mind is this: a long silver tube with many thin rods, openings of different sizes, and an embouchere hole (this is the place that the [...]

Flute Neglect
I feel as though I’m neglecting my flute because I haven’t had the time to actually play it. I’ll be changing that sometime tomorrow when I manage to dust off some of my old sheet music to pretend I still remember how to play . Now that I think about it, I need to tighten some [...]

What shall we call this stuff?
After 500 years of Western Art music I think we need a new name for this stuff. Clearly we have carved out names for each style specifically: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque. Classical, Romantic, Post-Romantic, Modernist, Neo-Classical, Neo-Romantic, Serial, 12-tone, Minimalist.... Post-neo-minimal-Modernist.While it is not really important to narrow it down to one pigeon hole, it is interesting that we cling to the narrow appellation of Classical Music, considering that it relegates this entire genre to music created between 1750 and 1820,...

Serving our Communities
Each summer, the Elgin Symphony Orchestra embarks on a thorough Strategic Planning exercise. One of the topics that comes up on a regular basis is the manner through which we should serve the community. The ESO is not unique in this discussion. I assume every well run organization, symphonic or not, non or for-profit, must remain clear on its relevancy.  continue reading "Serving our Communities"

Work Off Season?
  Inevitably several people ask me each summer if I actually work “off season,� meaning September through mid June.  I used to get a little irritated by such questions.  Of course, I would think, how do you expect us to raise money, plan programs, select artists, work on special collaborations, organize community engagement programs, develop marketing plans, administer orchestra and chorus auditions, and do research for recordings?  My “smart...

Solti Gardens
This week it was a pleasure to celebrate the creation of Solti Gardens with the re-location of Sir Georg Solti's famous bust to its new home in Grant Park.  With this move, we bring a small but tangible part of Solti a little closer to Orchestra Hall and to the Orchestra he loved.  The bust faces south, looking toward the Spirit of Music, which is a memorial to another of the CSO's visionary leaders - the Orchestra's founding music director,...

Rediscovering Gluck
Last night, I decided to woo (or rather, wake up) my neighbours with my rendition of Gluck’s Minuet and Dance of the Blessed Spirits. Each time I play it, I think of the story that accompanies it. The wife of Orpheus, Eurydice, was bitten by a snake and died. Upon her death, Orpheus was so distraught that [...]