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Today is Make Music Day!
Today is Make Music Day! Last year there were celebrations in over 700 cities worldwide. This year – who knows! It all began in France in 1982 as Fête de la Musique. Jack Lang, the French Minister of Culture, had discovered that one out of two French children played a musical instrument, and he thought that having…
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Amsterdam and pianists
As musicians, we often talk about connections: connecting emotionally with certain pieces of music; connecting (or sometimes not) with the audience; connecting with one another when we perform together; and about connections, or networks, within our profession. And on this blog site I have often written about music and brain connections. So I was delighted to be invited to give a presentation…
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Musician’s Brain Webinar
Something different for this blog – a post to be listened to, not read. On March 11, I presented a webinar for the College Music Society titled A Musician’s Guide to the Brain: What We Need to Know and Why. This was the second in a series of webinars hosted by the CMS Committee on Musicians’ Health. If you…
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New year – new musical beginnings
What better way to begin the new year than by talking about new lives and musical beginnings! Babies and music are a source of endless fascination – and the subject of a lot of research. We know that babies like to be sung to (think lullabies), they like bouncing or waving their arms when they hear music, they…
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Stress, sleep, and performance
Any musician who performs has been in the position of having to play a concert with too little sleep. We may be traveling and don’t sleep well in hotels. Or perhaps a performing opportunity has popped up unexpectedly and the only way to have the music learned and memorized is to work well into the night. Students are…