There’s Something Worse Than No Arts Experience
There is something worse than a student who never participates in the arts at school.
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Category: Essays
The Soundtrack of Thought: Why “Study Music” Is Really About Emotion, Not Lyrics
Because emotional responses to sound are shaped by personal history and aesthetic development, no single study playlist works for everyone.
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Why Passion Doesn’t Save Music Education: An Australian Reflection
If change in music education is to occur, musicians may need to do something profoundly uncomfortable.
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Recordings Changed How We Experience Music
When music can always be heard, it no longer has to be longed for.
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Why the Orchestra Became Art and the Wind Band Did Not
If the wind band is ever to possess a living canon, it may be found in the music that history never allowed to stay still long enough to be heard.
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Imperia Corrupta Cadunt: When Protest Comes From Within
The Latin phrase Imperia corrupta cadunt — corrupt empires fall — is not prophecy. It is history, repeated often enough that it should no longer surprise us.
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Programming Is Not Neutral: Conductors, Courage, and the Music We Choose Not to Perform
Programming – what we place on the stand, what we ask musicians to rehearse, and what we present to the public are never accidental decisions.
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Taste, Emotion, and the Listener’s Journey
Taste without emotion is sterile; emotion without taste is naïve. Together, they make music not just heard, but lived.
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Funeral Marches and the Sublime: from fear to catharsis
When François-Joseph Gossec unveiled his Marche lugubre in 1790, he transformed a functional piece of ceremonial music, funeral marches, into an overwhelming aesthetic experience.
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Taste, Emotion, and the Conductor’s Dilemma
Taste without emotion is sterile; emotion without taste is naïve. Together, they form the art of conducting.
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