rose webI’m always encouraging students to find something personal in their music—something from their own lives and experience. Often, they look at me like I have lobsters crawling out of my ears. But, I made this practice chart, they say.  Should I use my third finger here? Why doesn’t (name your pianist here) follow the dynamics in the score?

All valid questions, but at a certain point you have to know what you are trying to say in order to answer them.

Choreographer and dancer, Bill T. Jones’ connection to the song cycle Winterreise is one of the most perfect examples of a connecting personal experience to a piece of music that I have ever heard. I recommend listening to Bill’s original words in the audio to get the true impact of this story. (The text in the link is mostly just a summary with a few quotes)

Beautiful and so perfectly befitting the fusion of beauty and pain that is Schubert.

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