I’ve started to dream about Africa. In April, I’ll be launching an opera festival in the heart of Botswana. That’s my new year’s resolution for 2013! But organizing a festival takes a lot of mental energy. I think about it constantly. I talk about it. I even dream about it. I have Botswana on the … Read more
I enjoy formulating analogies. Analogies are mental metaphors that aid in linking and clarifying ideas. According to one online dictionary, they enable comparisons based on the similarities “between like features of two things.” Lately, my thoughts have been focused on growth and change as well as judgment and fear. These feelings would appear to be … Read more
The biggest lesson I learnt in 2012 is the very same lesson that I seem to learn year after year, and which I never tire of learning. I think that the most frustrating, annoying, exciting, and wonderful part of being a musician is that we are constantly discovering how much we still have left to … Read more
This was a year of transition, more than progress, and of making hard choices for long term benefits. At the end of last year, I made a commitment to change just about everything in my life to more aggressively pursue my goals as a musician. Literally moving across the country made these hard decisions more … Read more
I am a big goal setter. I find it helps keep myself on track to where I want to go, however, in January I usually begin the new year with a thorough self-flogging about how I did not accomplish all I wanted to last year, and how another year has passed and I don’t feel … Read more
You know the drill. Literally. You’ve been drilling runs, exercises, passages from arias, motifs and more since the moment you became involved in this crazy profession of classical music. It is a perfectionist-friendly place of thousands of details that have to be correct because at least one person always knows if you are doing it … Read more