Hey, did you know that classical music is actually really, really cool? The composers were “insane rock stars” who behaved outrageously and had lots of sex! In fact, Franz Liszt was the world’s first rock star! …Or was it Beethoven? Maybe it was Mozart. In any case, their behavior definitely qualifies them as rock stars, […]
Tag: Music the Profession
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“All That Matters Is How Good It Sounds”
1. Prelude In 2007, I was introduced to the Venezuelan youth orchestra training program El Sistema. I’m the founder of the Music-in-Education program and the Center for Music-in-Education at the New England Conservatory, and the program was presented to me as a radical shift in the scope and focus of international youth orchestra development. At […]
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Authoritarian El Sistema
El Sistema, the Venezuelan youth orchestra program spearheaded by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, was created in 1975. It was the orchestra’s Proms debut in 2007, however, that cemented El Sistema’s place on the global stage, with Simon Rattle claiming that it was “the most important thing happening in music anywhere in […]
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On Quitting
Some years from now, you might find yourself looking back on a former hobby or pastime, something you’ve long since ceased, with nostalgia—maybe with a pang of regret. This happens to most of us at some point in our lives, that bodiless longing for the passions or diversions we used to keep. And at this […]
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Wind
There’s something about an annoying office job that makes you idealize working with your hands, even if you have—like me—no aptitude for it at all. Last winter, I applied for an apprenticeship at the organ builder Orgelbau Scheffler, in the tiny, former East German village of Sieversdorf, outside Berlin, with a romantic idea of learning […]