Fickle Ears

The core of my educational philosophy is an emphasis on achieving “functional” musicianship, defined as the possession of skills and experie...

Instead of repeating such Western myths of the noncontingency of artworks, why not search for jazz meanings behind the music, in the life-s...

Nate Chinen has a humorous (at least to me) column on the "Jazzbro," defined as "a self-styled jazz aficionado, overwhelming...

I imagine I'm not alone in having substantially modified my listening activities in recent years to take full advantage of the advent of...

Given all the blather about the before, during and after of my CalArts sojourn, you're probably wondering what, if anything, I actually ...

City of Minneapolis inspectors evidently have claimed another casualty, this time the Riverview Cafe and Wine Bar , a lovely establishment r...

In many ways, the day jobs I have held have engaged, challenged and utilized my entire physical and intellectual capacities to a much greate...

Being a musician is not my "dream." My "dream" was to be a professional baseball player, something farfetched enough, in...

It is in one sense quite odd to me, and in another not at all, that the prescription for musicians to make friends with their audience tends...

"...but would you rather listen to Bach or Vivaldi after a long day at work?" Um...is this a trick question? My name is Stefa...

Scroll to the bottom of this page for tangible, real-world utilitarian proof that post-tonal theory should be more widely taught and unders...

Upon running into a non-musician CalArtian friend before a concert and learning that she is attending in order to hear the work of a musicia...

Happy New Year, enjoy the Month below, don't worry about seeking an explanation, yada yada yada. Look for some exciting changes to Blog ...

"Acquiring a familiarity with a particular style of improvisation frequently involves performing the same piece, or limited group of pi...

The blessing and the curse alike of improvisation is that what goes in tends to be what comes out. I would define improvisational technique ...

For the longest time, I didn't read anything I wasn't assigned to read and often skirted the requirements on top of it. It's bec...

Linkinrunn is a Finnish word dating from the eighteenth century, when ironic messages about quotidian local goings on were commonly left in ...