Two events from last week inspired this post:  Meryl Streep did a lovely interview on NPR where she said something that I want to put on my business card: “Voice lessons bring out the voice we already possess;” and The Terrified Adults and Spotlight Whores Sunday Afternoon Musicale opened its season. The Terrified Adults and  Read the Rest…

New Years Day I went to church without being paid.  Usually I trade off with another pianist who I will not name because he is famously shy.  January 1st wasn’t one of my Sundays, but I had had a quiet, relaxing week after the tumble of Christmas.  I thought I would enjoy the luxury of  Read the Rest…

“Writing a poem is an attention-getting act, so it might be worth asking whose attention are you getting and why?”  says Billy Collins in an interview in The Paris Review, Fall 2001.  Billy Collins, a rock star among American poets, knows something about attention. I’ve gotten almost more attention than I can stand this past  Read the Rest…

The full moon is waning and I am following it down the backside of my Christmas schedule.  Three performances were crushed into this past weekend and my book launch was scheduled for Monday, or in other words, on the day I would typically expect to crash.  Just as I was about to cry “uncle,” on  Read the Rest…

The Great Bazaar Weekends are over.  In spite of all the work they entail, I look forward to them.  All the stuff that didn’t sell last year comes back like favorite Christmas tree ornaments, along with artists and crafters I only see once a year. The Dibble House Craft sale is an institution.  I was  Read the Rest…

At a demonstration at Daniel Smith’s Artist Materials, I watched the watercolorist finish a painting in a 45 min demo.   Some cretin in the audience asked the price of her painting.  She said she would ask her full price, something like $300. “For a painting that took you 45 minutes?” he sneered. She was more  Read the Rest…

Every few months, my adult students get together for the Terrified Adults and Spotlight Whores Sunday Afternoon Musicales.  These could easily last all day what with my more confident students wanting to pull out another and another piece.  “And now for my fourteenth song.  .  . . I schedule the recitals for my young students  Read the Rest…

It was a six Xanax quarter with the OK Chorale.  They always pull it off in the end but three pieces made me wonder if this was the quarter when we would break our streak: I didn’t know much about Abba.  My popular music education stopped in 1972. (See https://www.elenalouiserichmond.com/2011/03/piano-students-part-2-the-adolescents/ )  Then one of my  Read the Rest…

This is a curmudgeonly blog so if you don’t want to hear me whine, have a look at the new photo on the teaching page of this web site.  Doesn’t that look cozy and delightful?  My nose is not that big. Ok, here it comes:  I hate daylight savings time.  I have always hated it  Read the Rest…

My friend Jenni, a student who single-handedly improved my sight-reading abilities by 75% by showing up with new music every week, recently accomplished something admirable: She went without words for a week.  Part of an Artist’s Way class, she called it her Reading Deprivation week.  She went without books, television and computer, explaining in part  Read the Rest…