“During last night’s episode of Heard Over The Piano, Sasha Cooke spoke a bit about the singer’s stigma of being a ‘good musician’. While that initially sounds like a compliment, early on in her career she had the impression that many believe that ‘being a good musician’ was really a euphemism for ‘not a good singer’…”
Read More“I had a fascinating conversation this evening with the mezzo-soprano, Sasha Cooke, as part of CAIC’s online discussion series, Heard Over The Piano. We started the series this season at CAIC in order to provide a virtual approximation of the salon-aspect of how we normally present recitals in Chicago when we are able to do live concerts. Ever since the beginning of the organization…”
Read More“Yesterday, I received news of yet another cancelation. This set of concerts was to take place towards the end of May. While I was holding out hope that the world might be reopened enough for this set of concerts to continue forward in some fashion, I was not completely surprised when the orchestra finally made the decision…”
Read More“For much of the past year, most of my Monday evenings have begun with a book club meeting. Like many people I know, as the nation descended into a spring and summer of racial reckoning in the wake of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a circle of my friends from childhood formed a book club to digest and process the concepts that we were reading about in books like…”
Read More“Monday’s return after taking a weekend can always feel a bit jarring, but today’s beginning to the work week felt especially fast-paced and action-packed. Part of the reason for that is definitely because I became distracted by my phone this morning, and lost some of the precious early hours of the day to reading the news…”
Read More“Perhaps the most famous line from the tv show, Downton Abbey, is uttered by Dame Maggie Smith’s character, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, during one of the lavishly formal family dinner scenes, where she asks suspiciously: ‘What is a weekend?’ While I and many of my friends have shared a hearty laugh quoting that line over drinks in the past, as the pandemic keeps us locked down…”
Read More“Bridging the gap between being a student and a professional in the early 2000s, my view of what it was that I could do as a singer was quite narrow. I had been very lucky to follow a path that from all outside perspectives seemed pretty straightforward: go to college; land a spot in a prestigious, year-round young artist program; find a manager; begin your career. As a young singer, I was taught…”
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