I keep on plugging away at classical guitar, resurrecting this discipline I haven’t studied in so many long years. I’ve more or less worked my way through the book that was my introduction to playing, compiled and composed by one Christopher Parkening, and have moved on to some slightly more intermediate-level exercises and pieces. This … Continue reading Talent—or Time? Searching for the Special Sauce
Music
Music Story: A Guitar Worth Playing…
a guitar worth playing …is worth playing badly. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. And anyway, the pandemic does not care. In prep school I met and become fast friends with one Stephanie (Pipkin) Jackson, who was something of a musical savant, already accomplished at classical guitar at the tender age of 13; … Continue reading Music Story: A Guitar Worth Playing…
Journal Entry: When Change Is Good
In a recent video chat with my irreverent twenty-something, I mentioned I’d heard a song on the radio that really resonated with me (it was a Blues Traveler song, in case you’re wondering), and after several days with that earworm, decided I must have this music, in spite of the negative review one critic gave … Continue reading Journal Entry: When Change Is Good
Piano Story: Taking Care of (Unfinished) Business
When I disemboweled Knoxville Ballet School, liquidated it in the summer of 2012 just before my divorce was final, I was flush with pianos. Shortly before his death, my Uncle Stan had implored me to take the piano from my grandparents’ house in Chattanooga, the one he’d grown up playing before he launched himself into … Continue reading Piano Story: Taking Care of (Unfinished) Business
Music Story: Remembering Aretha
This morning I listened to a rare interview with Aretha Franklin, talking about what it was like growing up the daughter of a celebrated pastor who was close friends with Martin Luther King, Jr., and who routinely hosted Nat King Cole and others of his ilk in the Franklin home. The interview included an excerpt … Continue reading Music Story: Remembering Aretha
Music Story: Verdi + Friends
Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem—or simply Requiem, as it’s often called—is big work that goes down like a gulp of a chewy Cabernet, a soul-satisfying swill of life that gets bigger and better with every reprised chorus of Dies Irae—the day of wrath. It was among the last of his works, near the end of … Continue reading Music Story: Verdi + Friends
The Stories Our Scars Tell
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, goes the saying. When my kiddo was only a peanut he took a bad spill in the foyer of our Knoxville home and landed face first on an unforgiving surface. His cheek met the pointy corner of a single step leading from the foyer into the kitchen of … Continue reading The Stories Our Scars Tell
Art is the Consolation Prize…
...for the human condition. Catchy, isn't it? I can claim it only partly. Came to me in the car, where all profound thoughts outside the shower do, while I listened to the inimitable Meryl Streep discuss her portrayal of Florence Foster Jenkins in a movie named the same. Jenkins was a real-life character, a New York … Continue reading Art is the Consolation Prize…