“A bell's not a bell 'til you ring it - A song's not a song 'til you sing it - Love in your heart wasn't put there to stay - Love isn't love 'til you give it away!”

― Oscar Hammerstein, II, lyrics from “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” from The Sound of Music

If there’s one statement that always furrows my brow, it’s this one: “Oh, I don’t want...

It looks so easy when other people do it. It’s not complicated; you practice a piece until it’s ready. Then you play it.

We all know it isn’t really that simple. There are difficult passages and techniques to conquer. You have to earn to play it fast enough or slow enough or steady enough. You need to express the dynamics and the musical flow. And you have to deal with...