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MYA Saxophone Quartet featured on From The Top
The What’s Cookin’ Saxophone Quartet, made up of Midwest Young Artists members Amanda Peterson, Mira DeJong, Kateri Tumminello, and Joshua Plotner, was recently featured of NPR’s program From The Top. I do a lot of work with this metropolitan Chicago program–I host their weekly podcast at WMYA.fm, and many of my students play in the various ensembles.

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MYA bassist Dan Bergren on being podcasted

I recently featured a group of bass players that are involved with the Midwest Young Artists program (many of whom also happen to be my students) on the Contrabass Conversations podcast. Bassist and blogger Dan Bergren, a sophomore at the University of Illinois and one of the featured bassists on this podcast, wrote a post about being podcasted, plus a little about his experiences with MYA. Dan’s got a great blog–check it out!


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Did you know that the New York City public school system employs 958 music teachers….and has 1.1 million students? Did you know that 20% of New York City public schools have no full-time arts teacher? This interesting piece from a recent NYT edition covers the educational adventures of several music performers in a middle school educational environment, including DePaul University and Civic Orchestra of Chicago alum Alana Vegter (pictured here). This piece strikes very close to home for me, since I just wrapped up a teacher training program here in Chicago myself (at DePaul), and have been working in the Chicago public schools this past year.

This story also discusses the glut of musicians that graduate from music school every year to a world where classical music plays an ever-diminishing role–a tope that I discuss in great depth in my book Road Warrior Without an Expense Account. (photo credit: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)


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The New York Times covers bassist Don Palma’s performance of Elliot Carter’s “Figment III.” Don commissioned this solo bass work and performed it in a recent concert by the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae, of which he is a long-time member. (photo credit: G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times)

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