Food for
Thought
A Compilation of Thought-Provoking
Articles and Videos from Far and Wide on All Kinds of
Things
Conductor Benjamin Zander is
"arguably the most accessible communicator about classical
music since Leonard Bernstein. Zander moves audiences with
his unbridled passion and enthusiasm." - London Sunday
Times
Stuart Brown on the importance of play. "Nothing lights up
the brain like play." "The opposite of play is not work,
but depression." "We are designed to play through our whole
lifetime."
"In this soaring demonstration, deaf percussionist Evelyn
Glennie illustrates how listening to music involves much
more than simply letting sound waves hit your eardrums."
Pixar's Randy Nelson on collaborative learning and achieving success:
"Do Schools Kills Creativity?" - "Sir
Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving
case for creating an education system that nurtures
(rather than undermines) creativity."
Click here to access the
text of a brilliant address given by pianist Karl
Paulnack at the Boston Conservatory on the place and
value of music in society today.
TED - Ideas worth spreading -
"Riveting talks by remarkable people" [on streaming
video]
The Truth About Grit - the real key
to success and high achievement
American Rhetoric is a site that
houses great speeches - a "Speech Bank", as it were. You
have easy access to "Top 100 Speeches of the 20th
Century" [#1 MLK: "I Have a Dream", many with both text,
audio, and photos] as well as many other kinds of
speeches, even movie speeches [hear Sir Thomas More
address the court in "Man for All Seasons" or Brando's
"Stella" monologue or the Cowardly Lion talk about
courage. Try browsing here instead of watching Seinfeld
reruns some time...
Missed Opportunity - Greg Sandow's
reflections on how schools of music ignore/neglect the
opportunity to publicize the free concerts available to
all at the music school.
Future of Music - by Dave Kusek, Vice president at
Berklee College of Music. Not on the horn, but
thought-provoking.
A Young, Hip Classical Crowd.
The forward-thinking
thoughts of Greg Sandow (in the WSJ, no less) reports on
the hip classical music shows going on at Le Poisson
Rouge in NYC.
Classical Music - On Demand -
Artsjournal's Henry Fogel thoughts on current and future
technology and classical recordings.
Berlin Moves - Greg Sandow's
reactions to the players of the Berlin Philharmonic as
they move their bodies freely during performances,
almost dancing the music as they play it.
Flow - psychologist Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi gives a [video] talk on "Flow", the
state of happiness people feel when they are completely
absorbed in the task at hand, doing it for its own sake
without ego involvement or awareness of time passing.
Flow is also the title of his seminal book on the
subject.
This video is a song version (uncredited) of Mary Schmich's
fantasy commencement address (published as an essay in the
Chicago Tribune in 1997), often falsely attributed to Kurt
Vonnegut. There are several video realizations of this
audio track available at YouTube - do a search there for
"Wear Sunscreen" to see the others.
Abraham Maslow’s 8
Ways to Self-Actualize
1. Experience things fully, vividly, selflessly. Throw
yourself into the experiencing of something: concentrate on
it fully, let it totally absorb you
2. Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety
(out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake
of progress and growth): Make the growth choice a dozen
times a day.
3. Let the self emerge. Try to shut out the external clues
as to what you should think, feel, say, and so on, and let
your experience enable you to say what you truly feel.
4. When in doubt, be honest. If you look into yourself and
are honest, you will also take responsibility. Taking
responsibility is self-actualizing.
5. Listen to your own tastes. Be prepared to be unpopular.
6. Use your intelligence, work to do well the things you
want to do, no matter how insignificant they seem to be.
7. Make peak experiencing more likely: get rid of illusions
and false notions. Learn what you are good at and what your
potentialities are not.
8. Find out who you are, what you are, what you like and
don’t like, what is good and what is bad for you, where you
are going, what your mission is. Opening yourself up to
yourself in this way means identifying defenses - and then
finding the courage to give them up.
"Musicians add second careers to their
repertoires," article in the L.A. Times.
"What Historical Recordings can tell us
about "Authentic Performance" - article by Henry
Fogel in ArtsJournal
Elizabeth Gilbert: A different way to
think about creative genius
Enjoy the Ride