This week, Lisa and I attended a performance by the Ladom Ensemble, a wonderful Canadian chamber group that performs new music along with unique arrangements of old music, all within the brilliant confines of their diverse blend of instrumentation and varied musical inspirations. I had seen Ladom’s videos online but had never seen them live. […]
This past week saw the release of the music video for my piano composition, Longing. My wife, Lisa, put’s together all of my videos. When the 4 new albums came out last fall, Lisa had the goal of creating a video for each of the 28 compositions from those 4 albums. Since then, she has […]
Thanks to technology, there’s a multitude of ways that people can ingest music these days. But no doubt, Spotify is one of the major players. Having recently gone public, they’ve now cemented themselves in the top echelons of online entertainment giants like Google, Facebook, and Netflix. I personally made the Spotify leap about a year […]
In the past week, I received news of the passing of my Grand-Uncle Steve. My late paternal grandfather’s youngest brother was a hard-working and jovial man. Like many of his generation, he fled Communist Eastern Europe in the mid 20th Century in search of greater freedom and prosperity. Eventually, he settled in Manitoba, met a […]
Mix of MANY genres. Songs and compositions that feature the female voice that will rip your heart out and bring you to tears. What have I missed? Please let me know!
This week, I received wonderful news that the Mivos Quartet has agreed to collaborate with me in bringing my large-scale string quartet project, The Thailand HRDs, to musical life. Mivos will come to Toronto in August to spend 2 days in the studio to record all 35-movements. At present, we’re working really hard to also […]
One of the exciting reasons I enjoy being both a creator and connoisseur of modern classical music is that we live in a unique time where new music can be presented with live acoustic instruments accompanied by pre-recorded electronics that the instrumentalist plays along to – think of it like really artsy karaoke:)! This tradition […]
I can’t remember having such an enjoyable birthday like I did this past week. Lisa made me pancakes, we went out for dinner and we enjoyed the AGO’s First Thursday soirée for the first time – it was an awesome day. So many best wishes from friends and family – I feel loved! Being strangely […]
…or the more pertinent question…are churches the best places to hear live music? I’ve been thinking about this lately as my friend, Liz Parker, is pretty adamant that performances of classical music would be better attended if they avoid churches. As Liz stated in a recent conversation on Facebook, “church is associated with somewhere you […]
When I was 5 years old, my parents and I visited the home of one of my dad’s co-workers. His daughter played the organ. I was completely enamored with the sound and wanted to be able to play. I demanded that of my parents. They obliged by buying my a dinky keyboard at Consumer’s Distributing. […]
Last week, I made a list of countries I have been fortunate to visit on this planet. While I’m very much a home body and creature of routine, I do enjoy traveling. There’s so much emotional and creative enrichment in seeing different places and experiencing different cultures and ways of life. Looking back, the 19 […]
Canada, specifically… Alberta British Columbia Manitoba New Brunswick Newfoundland and Labrador Nova Scotia Ontario Prince Edward Island Quebec Saskatchewan United States of America, specifically… Arizona California Connecticut Delaware Florida Illinois Indiana Louisiana Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Nevada New Jersey New York Ohio Pennsylvania Rhode Island Utah Virginia Washington District of Columbia Belize Costa Rica Mexico Australia, […]
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I continue to surprise myself emotionally. I always feel I would be most happy to be a loner. Every time I’m in the position of interacting with my fellow human in the various hats I wear in my life, I always dread the lead up to it. I just want to be home and by […]
I’m presently contemplating whether or not I should do another piano concert tour. Perhaps not such a large scale one like the Green Keys Tour, but still something substantive that would take up a lot of time to organize, rehearse and execute. While my personal enthusiasm to share my music first-hand remains very strong, I […]
