Teaching the Chopin Etudes

I feel like I’ve taken a sort of long sabbatical from teaching the piano since I left France 12 years ago. I’ve taught some students, all of them very serious at their own level, hard working, conscientious. Recently though several students have been working on Chopin...
St. Sulpice

St. Sulpice

It’s hard to believe that the premiere of my Requiem happened over 6 months ago. The whole experience seems surreal in retrospect. There was so much to take care of before going over that while I was there, I was hardly even aware of what was happening while it was...

Waiting out the storm…

I love snow days. I love snow weeks in fact. Fortunately Hurricane Irene seems have passed to the east of us, so we’re getting light rain and wind. It hasn’t been at all unpleasant so far. I’ve spent the entire day going through old files from 30 years ago. It’s good...

A day of getting things done… blogging away

To say that I’ve been working on a web site for a long time is a gross understatement. I started by buying Dreamweaver in 2001. I managed to make it do a few things, connect some pages, but balked at the idea of actually putting it up on the web. People would ask me,...

Transcendental Studies

I’ve set a goal to finish learning all of the Etudes d’exécution transcendante by Liszt by the end of the year. I’ve played already over half of them in public, some of my favorite pieces ever written by one of my favorite composers of all time. I just finished...