Essays

The Unusual Case of Musicians

If music can produce such powerful emotional experiences, what happens to the people performing it?

For more than 40,000 years, there was no special category called “live music”. It was simply music.

Music is an event, unfolding through time, continually renewed in the minds of listeners.

Every so often one encounters a story that reveals how terrifyingly fragile our musical inheritance really is.

If we care about the future of the military band then we owe it to ourselves to listen carefully to its early critics and historians.

I confess: sometimes I think attempting even a small concert is impossible.

If you are sad, why would you deliberately choose music that makes you sadder?

This is the most economical way I know to describe a career spent pursuing a sound that never quite materialised.

After publishing my reflections on structural conflicts of interest within the wind band world, several predictable objections emerged.

When roles overlap, perception shifts, authority compounds, and scrutiny softens.