Travis J. Weller

Though living in the Northeast, the one thing I enjoy about January and February – besides Pitt basketball playing conference games in the Big East – is getting the chance to just teach.  Nothing pressing, no standardized tests on the immediate horizon, the students have returned refreshed from break, and there is plenty of fertile ground to plant some good musical seeds.  This week my Wind Ensemble began receiving music for our chamber recital in mid-March.  Now in addition to the music for our concert “A Night at the Opera” on March 4^th, they will be breaking out into some small group work at least twice each week.  The more I do chamber music with my students, the more good things I see happen in their performance skills, and in their ability to analyze their work, critique their own and their peer’s performance, and begin to develop some comprehensive musicianship. Read more…

So if CNN would have been around when Mozart or Liszt died, would there be the kind of scrutiny today about their personal lives? I am not going to talk about his life, or his legacy because that should probably be left to someone who knows what happened and actually followed Michael Jackson.  But the tragedy of this situation has left me with questions about the professional responsibility each of us carries forward in their work place, and our responsibility to our students and the music.

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