I’m purging my closets and drawers. It’s a hard process as I seem to form an attachment to every plastic spoon, receipt, or sock that comes into my life. Still, the hardest thing, for me, is throwing away newspaper clippings. I have boxes of old … Read more
Earl Scruggs has left this world. Called by some the “Prometheus of the Banjo,” he was a musical hero to many of us. He’s credited with popularizing a style of picking (3-finger) that “super-charged” the banjo style. Tunes that our pepper our musical landscape today … Read more
This article states so well the life-and-death importance of the Arts in our lives. (Note that I wrote “in our lives,” not just our children’s lives.) The author, Ronnie Sanders, a member of the Texas Commission on the Arts, describes the plethora of recent studies … Read more
Thursday, December 16 marks two birthdays. First, my brother’s, which doesn’t mean a whole lot to anyone but me. But I always thought it was unfair he got to share his birthday with another mega-personality born that day: Ludwig van Beethoven. Especially because my brother … Read more
Wednesday, pre-dawn, we’ll be heading out for the Bay Area Homeschooling Conference – CHEA. It starts Friday evening at the Santa Clara Convention Center. We’re in booth 405, so do come by and visit. Also, please join me for two talks on Saturday, May 1st: … Read more
Goodness, it’s been an exciting time. With the end of the concert season and the beginning of the conference season, it’s hard to know which way is up. First, let me greet all of you who are new to the Circle of Scholars, especially the wonderful … Read more
Tomorrow it starts in earnest—the 2010 Conference season! We’re off to St. Louis for SLHC, followed two weeks later by the mammoth Midwest Conference in Cincinnati, and then the Bay Area conference in California. And that’s just March and April. Educational conferences have the greatest … Read more
Even if I wanted to, I can’t pick up the phone and call Brahms. Or Bach, or Palestrina. So imagine how excited I was to grab the phone and call Sammy Nestico! Mr. Nestico, now 86, is one of the music world’s most congenial figures. … Read more
We’ve been talking lately a lot about stories here in the Professor Carol office. Living in a small Cowboy town provides me a with wealth of stories, the same kind of stories I grew up with in the Virginia mountains. Here, however, the topics involve … Read more
T-M-E-A. The Texas Music Teachers’ Association Annual Convention in San Antonio, Texas (home of the Alamo). That’s where I spent four days last week, and I simply have to tell you about it. My head is still spinning. Thousands of accomplished high-school musicians, their families, … Read more
