Category: Insights

Surviving Bliss

by admin

It is difficult to describe the MacDowell Colony experience to someone who has never had it.  After spending five weeks there this past spring working on a viola concerto and on a flute duet, I could simply say that it was heavenly.  MacDowell is so absolutely blissful that at times I felt embarrassed to be enjoying such privilege.  The hundred year old colony, a baby of Miriam and Edward MacDowell, feeds three healthy meals a day and provides a cozy live-in studio complete with a grand piano to every resident fellow.   The property looks and feels like sacred fields of

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IN AND OUT OF THE VOID

by admin

What stands between composing music and the world feels like a void that I simultaneously crave and loathe. On the one hand, I seek those moments when I am alone and self-absorbed over a score in progress. On the other hand, I reject the thought of being a loafer, oblivious of my surroundings, because in the end it is all about making a connection; it is about being in tune with the world. What I mean is that composing music, like any other art, requires knowing when to immerse oneself into a vacuum and when to surface out of it.

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