New Books on the Horizon

It’s a great feeling to have completed and put out Road Warrior Without an Expense Account, my first book, earlier this year. It’s a considerable amount of work to publish a book; though I think I always knew this, going through the process personally...

Bury the violas!

Here’s a fun little story that one of my more senior colleagues recently passed along to me: Many years ago, the conductor Hans Werner Henze was rehearsing Stauss’ tone poem “Till Eugenspiegel” with the Chicago Symphony. There is a particularly...

Navy Pier on the 4th

As I’ve blogged several times in the past month, my summer so far has been spent playing chamber music in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin. This has been a blast, but after several weeks up north I’ve been itching to get back to Chicago, and I ducked...

Summer festivals – a good deal?

Adaptistration blogger and Inside the Arts mastermind Drew McManus recently put out a post about summer music festivals that really caught my eye. In this post (dated 6/27/08), Drew writes: Unlike regular season positions, music festivals have an added bonus by...

Please don’t mistake me for a…. musician!

I like going out after concerts (who doesn’t?), but over the years I’ve grown weary of the stares and chuckles that I always get when I show up to a bar or restaurant in my tails and frilly shirt. I get enough wise comments from people just carrying my...