I got a call in mid July from Ben Cawly, director of admissions at Guiding Eyes for the blind, “How would you feel about having a dog with pointy ears?” My dog is an elf? “As in pointy ears that stick up.” A Vulcan? “As in a German Shepherd.” Oh …
My mother’s sister, my aunt Ann, is a big fan of The Today Show. It was a revelation for me, as a small child, to realize that Ann-Ann was actually Aunt Ann, and more so to learn that Ann, Ann-Ann, Annie, and Annie-Banannie – all so frequently spoken of by …
I am grateful for the ocean. I am grateful for this ocean that is near me now, the Atlantic, how it is warm and briny and always changing yet still always the same ocean. I am grateful that it is a place where I can run and skip and dive …
I first met Alicia Rabins in 1992 during my first summer as a student at The Walden School (a music program in New Hampshire where I now teach). One of the age old traditions at Walden is that we sing “Goodnight Music”, a lullaby written by an alum, at the …
So, my brother Mike got married this past Saturday, to Melissa Veneracion (congratulations, the two of you). They had a week-long destination wedding down at Emerald Isle NC, where our parents happen to live, a week of fishing and boating, jet skiing and surfing, picnics and a few parties too: …
When I first caught wind of the proposed initiative for a member of Walden’s faculty to be in residence during the year at The Dublin School (our campus hosts for the last several decades), I only had to think about it for a few seconds before piping up and saying …
I don’t know just what it’s been: settling into a new practice routine with a long and gentle warm up (running variations on a single phrase through eleven different drill orders, about forty five minutes in all before starting to work on tunes); returning to a familiar sequence of light …
So, Jess and I were looking at each other on Tuesday morning (ok, hypothetical looks on my end, you got me) and asking ourselves, “We’ve got this class that feels like it has two very divergent groups in terms of who the kids are and what they need, and there …
The past few days have offered the opportunity to get off campus and visit with Ben Aldridge and his wife Anna up in Winterport ME. As there are no classes at Dublin School today (Monday), in favor of Earth Day related activities, we had the chance to make it a …
During my first week of teaching musicianship classes in an environment other than Walden School, I am making some surprising discoveries. At Walden, so much of what our students learn in musicianship class (reading rhythms, Solfege, taking dictation, using their voices, applying concepts at the keyboard and in their creative …
So, as many of you may know, I’m currently doing an artist in residency at The Dublin School in Dublin New Hampshire. This is the school whose campus we rent during the summers for Walden’s Young Musicians Program and Teacher Training Institute. I’m up here for about a month, teaching …
I decided fairly early on in the planning process that one of the best ways for me to stay balanced during the month that I’m here on campus is to get an exercise trampoline. I’ve got one at home that I use all the time, and have been pretty tempted …