The eagle-eyed reader will already have noticed that at some point since my last blog post (a mere 1,364 days ago), my website has undergone some major changes. It's not that I haven't had any thoughts worth sharing during that interim. (And here, the discreet reader will refrain from commenting on the "share-worthiness" of any of the posts archived here.) It's that, since 2020 or so, life has...
I wrote the following as an "open-ish" letter to the cast of a high-school show I music-directed back in 2014, and originally shared it with them as a post to the cast Facebook group, on the day of the "Apollo Awards," a local fundraiser event that mimics the Tony Awards, but for high-school musicals. Seems like every year at this time (and sometimes at other times) I feel an urge to revisit...
My good friend, the amazingly and multi-facetedly impressive Sarah Jebian, recently asked some of her colleagues if they'd be willing to write blog posts that Sarah could share with her voice and acting students in her monthly newsletter. Here's mine:I saw it coming. I knew a solid 8 bars before the high G♯ that it wasn't going to come out. We had learned the notes and marked the breaths and...
Every year the day I get the "testimonial" interviews back from the videographers takes me by surprise. It's been a few weeks, by then, since the frenzy of preparations for DMGS3 reached its zenith and quickly subsided and I crashed into bed with a huge, relieved sigh of "DONE!" and fell deeply asleep with a smile of gratitude on my face. So to have this reminder of the day arrive in my inbox...
After last year's Christmas post, one could be forgiven for responding to this news with a bit of (good-natured, I'd hope) ribbing, but: I've just written a new Christmas song. The world, you see, is full of un-beautiful stuff right now. And while I do still firmly believe that the contemporary American approach to Christmas is largely a manifestation of—if not even a source of—that stuff, I...
I am not good at holidays. I lack that (honorable, healthy, and near-universal) human characteristic that motivates people to schedule time off, to pause from daily routines, and to take special note of historical events on their anniversaries. So National Coming Out Day takes me by surprise when it rolls around on October 11 of each year. In my (half-hearted) defense, I "came out," at least in...