For musicians. the holidays can be extra stressful. Not only is there the pressure of the social aspects of the holidays, but this is when we work. Our holiday gig income tides us over what can be a very lean January. I learned the hard way what can happen if you aren’t careful.

The only time I ever had a back spasm was on a Christmas Eve. I was still in college, but I had been practicing...

Sightreading, a word that can cause the palms of even experienced musicians to sweat. Perhaps that’s because it is the one performance situation that we really can’t practice. It feels more like a free fall; take a deep breath, step off the edge and count the broken bones at the bottom.

But if we could practice sightreading, we could take away the fear factor. We could find more...

Being competitive is a good thing. Competitiveness helps us try harder and bring our best effort to a performance. Competition is how we test ourselves and find our place in our particular arena.

But competitiveness has a dark side. Remember Tonya Harding? That’s an extreme example, certainly, but it shows how the desire to win can completely cloud a person’s perspective. Even...

On Sunday, November 11, flutist Joan Sparks and I will be performing a new work, Sonata Scintillante by Chuck Holdeman. We commissioned this work and premiered it at the University of Delaware on February 21, 2012.  This post is about this exciting new piece, and includes notes about the work from the composer as well as some video links. If you would like to attend the...

The world doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards productivity.” – Peter Bregman, author of  18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done

I imagine something like this has happened to you, as it has to me: You have heard a great concert, a performance that moved you and inspired you. You rush to greet the players afterward to...

Each year at the University of Delaware, I hear auditions of prospective university harp students, young harpists with big hopes and dreams for their futures, varying cases of nervousness and in very different stages of preparation.  Allowing for the fact that everyone gets nervous and bad days happen to us all from time to time, there are a few things any student preparing for...

“Smile, breathe and go slowly.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, (b. 1926) Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist

“Take a deep breath,” has always been good advice, but now there is evidence that deep breathing can alleviate performance anxiety. Although I didn’t need the study to tell me what I found out years ago.

Over 25 years ago, flutist Joan Sparks and I founded...

“I don’t need words — it’s all in the phrasing.” – Louis Armstrong

How to phrase in music can be difficult to talk about and to teach. I would like to share three things you should know about phrasing, along with some practice tips to improve your phrasing.

1. Phrasing is inflection. Inflection is what makes the meaning of...

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Some people might tell you that a "successful working musician" is a mythical being. But those of us who are successful working musicians know that it is possible with hard work and determination. Those jobs, whether they are wedding gigs or an orchestra chair, don't just fall into your lap. You have to pursue them with a focused strategy.It takes some...

At a house concert in Tennessee

While you may not have thought of it this way, we all start out playing house concerts. It's that first holiday after you have started taking lessons when your mother asks you to play for your relatives. If you continue your music studies, you may play for women’s club luncheons, made infamous by the musician/comedienne Anna Russell. You may play for local...