Yearly Archives: 2009

In my last post regarding Japan, I mentioned the special piece written for NEXUS (with orchestra) by Toru Takemitsu entitled “From me flows what you call Time”. If music is the international language then Takemitsu had a hand in making it so. He is known for intergrating the western and eastern musical palettes, which is… Read more »

    In December 2008, at the end of the fall semester, my first semester at the Eastman School of Music as a part time Associate Professor, I held a mock orchestra audition for the four graduate students with whom I had been working.   They had all expressed an interest in taking orchestra auditions. … Read more »

As you have doubtless noted, when looking at Bill Cahn’s busy schedule, JAPAN jumps out – home of taiko, kodo, the okedo daiko, kumi daiko, and a huge variety of bells and gongs. (Patrick Graham gives a nice look at Japanese Percussion here – scroll midway down the page).

  I recently received an email from a student at Florida Gulf Coast University asking, 1) What marimba music should be in every musician’s library? and 2) What do you consider to be a work that has helped the Marimba become more accepted in the music community and why?   Here is my reply.  … Read more »

What an energized time here in the NEXUS studio! Not only have we received word from Gordon Stout that he has completed a new work for NEXUS but we have just received wonderful news from The Eternal Dance of Life (written for NEXUS and wind ensemble) and rewritten them as solo pieces for NEXUS alone…. Read more »

    What do NEXUS, Phil Nimmons (clarinet), David Braid (piano), Suba Sankaran (voice), Parmela Attariwala (strings) and Mark Laver (saxophone) all have in common?   Maybe it is their eagerness to go to that place no one knows – the place where music is born – and to do so accompanied for the first… Read more »

I just got home from the NEXUS concert at U of T’s New Music Festival. It was terrific. If you were there tonight, we would welcome your comments. Some of the NEXUS members might be posting their own thoughts, but they are in a recording session all weekend so we may have to wait. For… Read more »

  On Sunday January 18, 2009, having just returned from Japan, I was a guest on the Michael Burritt Faculty Artist Series recital at the Eastman School of Music in Kilbourn Hall.  Michael, who heads the Percussion faculty at Eastman artfully performed a very challenging program of five major compositions for solo percussion.   The… Read more »

    Thursday (Jan. 15) was a long day.  The first lesson started an hour later than normal, at 11:00 AM with a lesson on the Jolivet CONCERTO FOR PERCUSSION.  There was a good exchange over how to best execute the snare drum rimshots, and the resolve was to play them all with the right… Read more »

Bob Becker has a busy travel, teaching and performing schedule.  If you’ve seen him play mallets you know he’s a virtuoso. But his expertise extends beyond mallets. Two of Bob’s workshops explore West African Drumming and North Indian drumming.

I promised to look at Creative Programming Ideas from time to time, and here is an event that had some great ones: the details in his blog. A number of ideas and combinations from this symposium could make a regular concert series performance into something very special. For example  there was a demonstration of the… Read more »

    My residency at the Showa Academy of Music is now in its last few days. I am in the middle of my second week of private lessons, ensemble rehearsals and workshops. This week began when, on Monday during my daily power walk, I noticed that the traffic on the streets was very light…. Read more »

  It is Sunday night and I am writing this as I sit in front of the TV in my hotel room watching some great sumo-wrestling matches.  Since my previous blog entry I have been able to take a leave from the school and my hotel room.  Last night I visited my good friend Seichiro… Read more »