Susan Youens: A Life in Lieder

Being now older than dirt, I can look back at the circuitous road leading to the scholarly life I now enjoy and either shake my head or laugh. After a stint in a Houston high school where I did not do well in science (my mother's preference), I became a shy undergraduate majoring in piano performance, but my Godzilla-sized Stage Fright That Ate Tokyo impelled the recognition early on that I would need to find another way to remain in music.

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Graham Johnson: The Songmakers' Almanac

Thirty-five years ago four singers and I came together to present concerts under the banner of The Songmakers' Almanac. Makers of songs were taken to be composers and their poets, and further down the production line, singers and their pianists.

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Laura Loewen: Health and the Pianist

I spent the first 35 years of my life practicing – of course I found time for wine and food and traveling, but there was certainly no time for any significant exercise. I had brief flings with ill-fated aerobics and dance classes in my Undergrad and Grad degrees, but they always ended up in some sort of disaster. I got through the countless hours of practicing during my DMA in Collaborative Piano without any real exercise, and sore and fairly tight, started a year in the training program at Minnesota Opera.

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Convincing Your Audience That Attending Your Recital Is Less Painful Than Going To The Dentist

Let's face it. Sometimes trying to get people to come to your recital is like pulling teeth. In fact, sometimes it feels like people would rather go for a root canal than sit through 60 minutes of Schubert. Why do 99% of the population think that recitals are such agony? We bemoan the fact that our audiences are uneducated or that TV has rotted their brains and fooled them into thinking that changing the channel is the best way to cure boredom. Well guess what? I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it is, in fact, OUR fault that recitals are akin to poking a needle in one's eye. Yes, we the performers are to blame for empty recital halls across North America.

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A Diary of the Songmakers Almanac

This is a diary of the rehearsal process of a Songmakers Almanac Recital recently performed in London with pianist Graham Johnson.  He has supplied the program notes and the written history of his particular recital format. What follows is part of the journey. The notes by Mr. Johnson are here.  Here now are a few bites from these full days…Today is the flight to London for the Songmaker’s Almanac concert at Wigmore Hall. These concerts haven’t really been around much of late, due to reasons that are mapped out in his program notes. This particular concert is about Venice and there are three other singers besides me.  All of the pieces were either premiered there, are about Venice or are written by Venetians.  

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