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I had hoped to get all of my NYFOS shows programmed by the end of summer. Labor Day came and went, and I still hadn’t finished them. In fact, my Tchaikovsky show was a complete blur. I felt as if I had let myself down, and was ready to drown my sorrows in a vat of...
The last few days before a concert are always a little tricky to handle. I want to build confidence. I want to fix the little errors—notes, words, rhythms, dynamics—that seem to be repeat offenders. I also want to keep the cast reaching for the heights of expression...
I have always had a complex relationship with the piano. But I have an especially complex relationship with the piano I am playing this week at Poquatuck Hall. Oysterponds Community Activities, the hall’s parent organization, proudly bought the piano several years...
Wednesday is always the last play-day. People are still giggling over their memory slips, I calmly look the other way when I play a wrong note (which means I am looking the other way quite often), and a certain amount of experimentation remains the order of the...
Today we welcomed our fourth singer, Alex Rosen, who arrived a day late after finishing up his residency at Ravinia. He traveled in from Chicago this morning, successfully boarded the notoriously unreliable jitney at the airport station, and waltzed into rehearsal at...
The first day of a residency has a particular energetic charge. We all try to act low-key and normal, just swinging into an ordinary day’s work. But each of us is carefully monitoring everything that is going on. I am hoping that all of my hours of practice will hang...