Seven Signs of Successful Ensembles – Part 2

Thank you to those of you who reached out personally thanking me for Part I in this post – I was pleasantly surprised with comments, encouragement and (nice) demands for Part II. I take great unabashed joy to write about this part of the music ensemble. As I mentioned last week, there are core components here that are influenced by […]

Messiah Year 1: Lessons Remembered

I suppose that every now and then it is a good idea to have a first-time experience all over again. I didn’t really plan on having my first year teaching all over again in year number 23 of my career in music education, but it happened. There are still things that I don’t know that I don’t know, and it […]

Member article in the NBA Journal

I am pleased to announce that “Never a Losing Season” was included in the NBA 2012 Spring Journal. There are a number of great articles in the issue, and my article can be found on page 19. It is an honor to be able to share these insights with colleagues across a larger circle, and I am hopeful that some […]

Musical Accountability

What follows is a revision of the speech I delivered to the underclassmen at my school’s band banquet in May of 2012. If this speech is of use to any of you who address your students at a formal gathering over the next year, please feel free to quote as needed as you prepare your program. The purpose of the […]

Let’s start by asking better questions…

I am not one to make a new year’s resolution – the idea of self-regulation only once every 365 days is somewhat unsettling.  If you think that needs to happen only once every 8,760 hours, you might have some personal issues that no amount of blogging can ever fix – sorry to drop the hammer, just a personal view. That […]

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