All Present, a song circle for people living with ESML (Early Stage Memory Loss) is in its second quarter. Almost everyone from the spring returned. It’s a peculiar feature of this group that if I hadn’t been told every one of these singers had some form of dementia, I wouldn’t have known. Some of them  Read the Rest…

About 15 years ago there was a massive controversy in The OK Chorale involving a camp song called “The Titanic.” Something similar has come up and again it involves camp songs. Who would have thought that camp songs– camp songs!—would exercise so many people? I have finally realized that what most people call camp songs are  Read the Rest…

All Present Song Circle knows so many songs that we can’t get through them all in a session so last week we started at the back of the song sheets.  That was a bit of a mistake in that the sheets are confusing enough without having to work through them backwards.  The singers have a  Read the Rest…

When you’re self-employed your income is more directly connected to your initiative than is someone’s with a contract or tenure. There can be great satisfaction in having control over your own hustle, or marketing in today’s more genteel parlance.  I’m not used to having offers drop into my lap unconnected to the aforementioned hustle, but  Read the Rest…

I’ve had a cold for two weeks.  It feels like I’ve had a cold –the same one—for three months.  In fact, since September I’ve been sick more often than I have in the last five years.  I attribute this to an influx this year of piano students under the age of ten.  They are adorable,  Read the Rest…

I have a regressive teaching technique I called The Points.  It’s a way of not just encouraging students to play the piano but a way of helping them to focus on matters of technique that they would otherwise most likely ignore.  That they otherwise do ignore. It costs them nothing to have me sit there  Read the Rest…

My new student Alexis is six years old, directive– bossy actually–and bright.  She walks into the house in high-heeled sandals, and swathed in layers of leggings, dresses, and sweaters.  She comes into the house talking about the dog she saw on the way to my house.  She tells me what she has done in the  Read the Rest…

It’s Christmas Eve (morning).  There are streaks of rose madder in the sky.  All is calm and bright before The Onslaught of Holiday.  This morning I read Robert Browning’s (very) long poem “Christmas Eve.”  A dream is set off by the poet going into a dreary church service on Christmas Eve, falling asleep during the  Read the Rest…

As I write I have my nose in three Sungold tomato plants.  When I finish this post I’ll put them out for a day of hardening off.  They are emblematic of the journey I take every quarter with The OK Chorale.  If you’re new here, the Chorale is a community choir I started in 1992.   Read the Rest…

At last Sunday’s Terrified Adults and Spotlight Whores Sunday Afternoon Musicale I asked how many of the seven participants considered themselves Terrified Adults.  Six hands went up. And so we began. Stephanie and I sang “The Flower Duet” from Lakme with me playing the bare bones of the accompaniment.  We had been working on this  Read the Rest…