Spreading the Joy, Linking the Far Corners and Forgotten Voices
Welcome to my website! I am excited about this opportunity to share my music, my thoughts and my thirst for constant learning and renewal. One of the best parts of being an artist is the abundance of connections with amazing people, made possible when one is in the creative and performing arts. I hope my site will help bring some of those special people together as we celebrate the beauty and magic of music. The arts are a fundamental source of bonding and mutual understanding in today's world. Every day I am thankful that I can take pieces of the music that is always in my head, and add them to the ever-growing store of artistic expression that is spread across the world.
No one becomes an artist or contributes their artistic expression to that worldwide magical archive without the influence and guidance of other artists. I learned from many teachers and professors who helped me at every turn. You will hear more about these wonderful people in later blogs. For now, please bear with me while I just cite some who have already passed on to another life, but whose kindness and artistry will live always in my music: Lucille Ewing, a legend in American youth theatre who helped me become an actor and performer before I was even a musician or a full-fledged schoolboy; Grace Gosnell Quine, who taught me to be a serious pianist and work hard in building a musical career; my uncle Samuel M.Trickey, who encouraged me and who imposed high standards on all the fortunate students he met in his many years at the University of North Texas; Artur Rubinstein, who in the two minutes of life we spent together penetrated my thanks for his inspiration with an incredibly humble and warm gaze and a twinkle in his eyes that I will never forget; Leslie Bassett and Ross Lee Finney, who both showed me that composition, even more than piano or all my other passions, was indeed the most important leg of my path through music; Karel Husa, the pinnacle of kindness and the source of unending inspiration; Steven Stucky and Sam Pellman, as genuine a pair of friends and wonderful people as one could ever meet, who were recently and tragically lost to us all; and especially my parents and my sister Barbara, none of them professional artists, but all of whom were gifted and devoted lovers of music and strong supporters of the arts, and pillars of my family. The list of people still living who have helped and inspired me would fill many pages of this blog. I believe it is impossible to survive or really accomplish anything important in the arts without support and encouragement from such people. No matter how many endless hours we spend in isolation in a practice room or at a writing table or computer, it is through the world of people who love the arts that we artists are allowed and encouraged to breathe, to speak and sing, to pour out our passions and share our discoveries.
Over the next couple of years I will be engaged in helping spread music by living composers to a wide audience. I will also continue many years of involvement in trying to help other musicians get discovered -- most importantly, for them to discover themselves as artists and to find ways to share their art. This is an amazing journey, and you can read all about it if you follow these blogs and/or request my newsletter. One of my great joys is to bring music most people have never heard to an audience which rarely hears any music that is not atop the charts or every radio station and loudspeaker. In future blogs I will talk about the role of composers in music, not just in the past but in the world of today and tomorrow. I will help unveil the massive but poorly known panorama of music being written all over the world by the classical composers of today. Finally, I will show through my own good fortune and examples that every style of music, whether popular or classical or traditional or something else, has an equal place in the vast arena of sound that is one of the most fundamental elements of life. Please join me in the beautiful harmony of this fantastic voyage.
No one becomes an artist or contributes their artistic expression to that worldwide magical archive without the influence and guidance of other artists. I learned from many teachers and professors who helped me at every turn. You will hear more about these wonderful people in later blogs. For now, please bear with me while I just cite some who have already passed on to another life, but whose kindness and artistry will live always in my music: Lucille Ewing, a legend in American youth theatre who helped me become an actor and performer before I was even a musician or a full-fledged schoolboy; Grace Gosnell Quine, who taught me to be a serious pianist and work hard in building a musical career; my uncle Samuel M.Trickey, who encouraged me and who imposed high standards on all the fortunate students he met in his many years at the University of North Texas; Artur Rubinstein, who in the two minutes of life we spent together penetrated my thanks for his inspiration with an incredibly humble and warm gaze and a twinkle in his eyes that I will never forget; Leslie Bassett and Ross Lee Finney, who both showed me that composition, even more than piano or all my other passions, was indeed the most important leg of my path through music; Karel Husa, the pinnacle of kindness and the source of unending inspiration; Steven Stucky and Sam Pellman, as genuine a pair of friends and wonderful people as one could ever meet, who were recently and tragically lost to us all; and especially my parents and my sister Barbara, none of them professional artists, but all of whom were gifted and devoted lovers of music and strong supporters of the arts, and pillars of my family. The list of people still living who have helped and inspired me would fill many pages of this blog. I believe it is impossible to survive or really accomplish anything important in the arts without support and encouragement from such people. No matter how many endless hours we spend in isolation in a practice room or at a writing table or computer, it is through the world of people who love the arts that we artists are allowed and encouraged to breathe, to speak and sing, to pour out our passions and share our discoveries.
Over the next couple of years I will be engaged in helping spread music by living composers to a wide audience. I will also continue many years of involvement in trying to help other musicians get discovered -- most importantly, for them to discover themselves as artists and to find ways to share their art. This is an amazing journey, and you can read all about it if you follow these blogs and/or request my newsletter. One of my great joys is to bring music most people have never heard to an audience which rarely hears any music that is not atop the charts or every radio station and loudspeaker. In future blogs I will talk about the role of composers in music, not just in the past but in the world of today and tomorrow. I will help unveil the massive but poorly known panorama of music being written all over the world by the classical composers of today. Finally, I will show through my own good fortune and examples that every style of music, whether popular or classical or traditional or something else, has an equal place in the vast arena of sound that is one of the most fundamental elements of life. Please join me in the beautiful harmony of this fantastic voyage.
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