Newspaper Articles
-
Music can be Comfort and Adventure
A musician friend told me once that most people’s favorite music is whatever they were listening to when they were 18 years old. At the time, I doubted this, but given the popularity of reunion tours from bands long-since history, or the phenomenon of the tribute band (Holland’s own Park Theater has at least one…
-
Music can be a Glorious Vocation, but…
Part of my life as a professional musician involves leaving my home, family, and regular jobs and traveling to different locations around the country to play concerts. Classical organ concerts don’t involve tour buses, groupies, or wild after-parties (except with mostly folks over 60 and then the gatherings are decidedly tame events!) But I do…
-
What the Music you Hate Tells me About You
“I don’t like organ music”. Now obviously, as a professional organist, when I hear this it rubs me the wrong way, but maybe not for the reasons you might first imagine. When someone says this, I wonder – “How much do you actually know about organ music, organs, or organists?” And then I think: “You…
-
Notes from at Home : a professional musician who likes to write, about music
Living on 12th street near Kollen Park, we often hear music from the bandstand, as we eat outside on summer evenings. We’ve half-heard American Legion Band concerts for years as background music, but a combination of summer-induced laziness, and preconceived musician assumptions meant I’d never actually attended a concert in the over ten years we’ve…