About

For a long time I have been conflicted about classical music. My love for the expressive qualities of music has been consistently in tension with the way classical musicians perform it. My training as an orchestral conductor - always trying to find the "right" interpretation of a piece, searching for the composers elusive intentions so I can be faithful to them - has only confirmed my conviction that classical music is in desperate need of reformation. What is music? Why do we perform the way we do? Why do performers so consistently look dull and unengaged in concerts? Why do we never even ask those questions? These, and many more questions, I hope to explore on this blog.

I've become increasingly convinced that chief among our problems is that most musicians ignore the underlying philosophical movements that have shaped our art. Even the recognition that worldviews can shape music is in relatively short supply. But the bottom line is, music has never existed in an autonomous bubble but is directly shaped by the worldview of the cultures in which she finds herself.

Most of us - like myself - start our musical education by jumping into the existing "current", as it were, and simply get carried on in the same direction. But the current of tradition is so strong, few of us step onto the shore and take a good hard look at the river we've been carried by - where it began, where it's going, and whether we want to go there. 

And so, my desire first and foremost is to get musicians to simply stop and ask some basic questions about why we perform the way we do. Eventually, my hope is that we can emerge on the other side with a renewed approach to classical music, one that doesn't leave us terrified of missing a note, obsessed with our resumes, or unable to write music of our own - an approach that brings joy and humanity to our music making.