Minna Chung: On the Mysteries of Intonation and a Few Things We Can Do to Play More in Tune
Like most Suzuki youngsters, I went through a phase where I had little stripes of tape placed on my fingerboard to guide where my fingers ought to go. Which I’m guessing was my first lesson on intonation, and the idea that there’s a precise place on the fingerboard, where if you put your finger right there, all is good in the world because the resulting sound that comes out of your instrument rings, and just sounds right. Of course, the rebellious part of me resented those lines, and I remember…
Handling Conflicts in Ensembles: A Few Things We May Be Able to Learn From the Research on Marital Satisfaction...?
Subscribe to the weekly "audio edition" via iTunes Even though it's been decades in some cases, I can still remember some pretty heated exchanges that I’ve had in chamber music groups over the years, and how fired up I got even if I haven’t the foggiest idea what it was that we were arguing about. In most cases, I think we found ways of working things out, and these arguments didn’t have too much of a lingering effect on either our relationship as musical colleagues or as friends outside of…
Is This Really a Significant Factor in How We Choose Our Teachers and Mentors?
Subscribe to the weekly "audio edition" via iTunes Whether it’s choosing a piano teacher, thesis/dissertation advisor, career mentor, or decluttering consultant to spark more joy in our lives, how do we choose the people we choose? Logically, it would make sense for us to select the person with the greatest expertise, or the best track record of helping people achieve success. But then again, as neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor has said , “Although many of us think of ourselves as…
Why It May Be Important to Laugh a Bit More During Stressful Times
Subscribe to the weekly "audio edition" via iTunes With school about to start, and the world still feeling pretty topsy-turvy, it’s likely that there will be some stressful moments in the days and weeks ahead. To deal with stress, we’ve all been told that we should do things like go for a run, meditate, yoga, listen to chill music, take deep breaths, pet our dog, and maybe not drink that 6-pack of Red Bull. But many of the stress-reducing strategies that you typically find on internet top-10…
Stephen Hough: On the Question “Is Memorizing Music Really All That Important?”
Every month, The Juilliard Journal publishes a short mini-interview with faculty, where in addition to sharing thoughtful answers about life, music, and the arts, they also often reveal little-known tidbits about their lives. Like their most embarrassing moment. What they they think they’d be doing if they weren’t a musician. How they were on their university’s water polo team, or biked across the country (here’s a directory of all of the interviews through 2017; the more recent ones are…