Yesterday's rehearsal was bad. Beyond bad. Let me clarify. My playing was beyond bad. Everyone else was just dandy. As the first violin, however, I anchor the group, and if the anchor isn't set into solid ground, the whole boat drifts, no matter how sound it might be.

I had no focus. Passages that I'd played…

Last week a fidgety mind was seriously messing up my productivity. It happens to me from time to time. I call it flea brain. When I have flea brain, It doesn't seem to matter what I'm doing--writing, practicing, cataloging music--my mind darts from one place to another, not settling on one place long enough to…

Pat Leader wasn’t looking for her “thing,” but it found her anyway.

One day, while grocery shopping, Pat ran into a friend she hadn’t seen in a while, and something was clearly wrong.  Her friend looked haggard and worn, with her children in tow.  When Pat expressed her concern, her friend confided that she had left her abusive spouse. She and her children had quickly packed a suitcase and sought safety in a shelter for abused women where they lived while she…