Last night, I attended a live performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 for full orchestra. In practically any other year, that sentence would be relatively unremarkable. I often attend symphony concerts, and I love Mahler. But in 2021? I feel like that sentence needs to be rewritten as: LAST NIGHT, I attended a LIVE PERFORMANCE […]
Off topic
Reflections: #NowhereAt30
This morning, I saw a flurry of activity on my Twitter feed as fans around the world celebrated the 30th anniversary of the release of Ride’s debut album, Nowhere. I browsed the #NowhereAt30 hashtag over breakfast, reading story after story of how this album has touched so many lives. One repeating theme I saw was […]
Reflections: Philip Glass – Piece in the Shape of a Square
I purchased the sheet music to this piece in 2016, intending it to be a personal project that I would record for fun when I had spare time. Naturally, life got in the way and the score sat largely untouched in my practice room until the coronavirus upended all of our lives. The first week […]
“Felt like the end, but it was just the start…”
As one of my requirements for earning my first-degree black belt in taekwondo, my school asks that we write a short personal statement reflecting on what we have learned since beginning our training. I submitted a 450-word statement to them as my official black belt essay (radio edit) but felt the need to more fully […]
Pitchfork Midwinter and “the sky of timelessness”
Upon arriving in Chicago earlier this month, I got a text from my good friend Debbie, breezily instructing me to “have an amazing time!!!!!!!” Just 36 hours later, my head was swimming with everything I had seen and heard, and I will always think of the words “amazing time” differently going forward. It was my […]
On beauty and perspective
“Wow, you look beautiful!” Would that statement mean more to you coming from a complete stranger, or from a friend? I think a lot of people would take this compliment more seriously coming from a stranger. After all, strangers are more objective since they don’t know you, right? I used to be dismissive when friends […]
Reflections: Tenebrae Choir, St. John’s Smith Square (London, England), July 6, 2018
Of all the fundamentals I practice on flute, my favorite to play are long tones with diminuendos. For those unfamiliar with the term, diminuendos are when you gradually get softer and softer in volume until the sound disappears entirely. It is a difficult skill to master on the flute because the tuning becomes very unstable […]
Thoughts on Ride’s “Pulsar”
I’ve been thinking quite a lot about Ride’s new single “Pulsar” since its surprise release last week. (Via Google) pul·sar <ˈpəlˌsär/> noun: ASTRONOMY a celestial object, thought to be a rapidly rotating neutron star, that emits regular pulses of radio waves and other electromagnetic radiation at rates of up to one thousand pulses per second. […]
Earnestness, honesty, and Appalachian Spring
I spent the last couple of weeks following my favorite band (Ride) on tour through 8 shows in the UK and US. Anyone that has done this can tell you that far from being the same show every night, each show had a distinctly different vibe to it (at least in my opinion). Yes, many […]
A message for my fellow gig-travelers
Do people think it’s weird that you travel, sometimes great distances, to see live concerts? Do you derisively get called a fanboy or fangirl? I sometimes get a reaction akin to, “I can’t believe you’d fly/drive all that way just for a concert!” Once, I got that statement while sitting on a plane with a […]