It’s back to school – and the season for most local community groups to resume rehearsals for the season. Many are looking for players, and it’s the perfect place for a midlife musician who has some experience to hone their skills. Continue reading
Passions Know No Boundaries …
This week, I learned that even professional musicians may have a little “midlife musician” in them. Continue reading
Filed under Inspiration, Musicians of Note
Learning from the Pros
Jazz Pianist Hank Jones will play and talk in the Jazz Tent
If you’ve ever had the chance to sit in on a master class, you can learn quite a lot to improve your own playing. (Once you get past the point of being glad YOU aren’t the person whose playing is being critiqued in public!!) Continue reading
Filed under Musicians of Note
Practice? or Playing?
I was browsing through an (old) book about piano technique the other day. The book, written by a virtuoso piano player in about 1902, pointed out that practice involves not just the body, but the brain, and that effective practice is a lot of work. Continue reading
Filed under Returning to Music
Why Did You Stop?
Talking with friends over the past few weeks about this blog and its goals, an interesting question has emerged. Why did you stop? Why did music fall out of your life for so long?
There are no easy answers – and everyone’s story is different. But in conversations, we’ve come up with a few possible answers. Continue reading
Filed under Returning to Music
Rediscovering Music in Midlife
The studies are clear. Studying music early in your life can improve academic performance and help kids build confidence.
When we hit our teens, many of us put music aside to pursue our academic careers, start families, and get on with life. If you become a parent, the growth and development of your kids takes precedence — and we sacrifice a lot of time and energy to make sure our kids get a healthy start in life.
For me, becoming an “empty nester” re-awakened old desires: to learn to play the piano, an instrument that I’ve always enjoyed but had never successfully mastered beyond picking out a few notes with one hand. I had played the violin through public school and into college — at one point had considered music as a career — but as the years slipped by, active playing had fallen out of my life. Continue reading
Filed under Personal Journey, Returning to Music
Midlife Musicians 