Fickle Ears

I'm happy to be included in writer Pamela Espeland's "Conversations on Improvisation" series at mnartists.org . Click here...

The acronym stands for "Consortium of Symphonic Transients." It refers to a large ensemble project I started last year to provide ...

I can't even remember how it happened, but a few months ago, I stumbled on a digital music vendor called Lala . Since then, I've men...

Duke Ellington is remembered, among other things, as a composer who wrote for specific musicians and personalities rather than for some name...

Whenever I return to the Complete Plugged Nickel recordings of Miles Davis' 1960s quintet, I find myself compelled to share something I...

It seems like about once a year, I receive an e-mail from another tuba player wondering which instrument, mouthpiece, etc. I use, as well as...

Returning again to the theme of musical training changing modes of perception, it occurred to me tonight* that there's a logical and str...

(the address is 3506 Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis)

Readers of this blog might be surprised to learn that there were few times in either high school or college when I struggled to get a paper ...

There are plenty of things I'll never understand about events that took place before I was born, but I'm having an exceptionally har...

Blog Month 2009 ends today, bringing to a close my somewhat more successful yet still slightly disappointing second effort at impersonating ...

I went to a concert last night and it was really good. The thing is, I almost didn't go. I had no obligations of any kind yesterday, a r...

The holiday season in the U.S. has long since become more trouble than it's worth, and almost no one seems to be shy about saying that a...

I soon realized that in the course of the previous discussion on pop, I omitted an important predilection of mine that happens to come from ...