Music is Hard

What are our various professional organizations good for? What are they good (and bad) for? How can we be better members of our professional organizations? How can we make our organizations better? Bonus: Dave shares a personal beef.

What does it mean for music to be "accessible"? Why are we seeing a resurgence of accessible music? What do composers owe performers? What do performers and composers owe audiences?

We borrow this week's big question from The Dark Knight. Why so serious? Does humor have a role in classical music?

This week, we are inspired by the recent premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's gargantuan Mittwoch aus Licht. Why did it take so long to be premiered? How do we think about works that flirt with the border between "impossible" and "really, really hard"?

As musicians, we both love and loathe going to performances by our friends and colleagues. What do you say to performers and composers after a performance? How do you take compliments and criticism from your audience?

When was the last time you thought about your bio? Tim and Dave talk about the importance of a good bio, how to write bios for different audiences, and how to not suck at writing them.

Zachary Woolfe's extremely negative New York Times review of Charlie Siem's recital at Le Poisson Rouge got us thinking about the nature and value of reviews. What are they worth to us as performers, composers, and fans of classical music?

This week, Avid made some startling announcements about Sibelius, one of the most popular software tools for composers. This got us thinking our relationships with our tools? What would we do if we woke up tomorrow and our tools no longer existed?

This week, we were inspired by electronic dance music artist Deadmau5. Often, performances of electronic music (popular and "classical") involve little or no input from live performers. What then, is the purpose of such a performance?

This week, we discuss repetition. Why repeat things? How do composers and performers approach it differently? This week, we discuss repetition. Why repeat things? How do composers and performers approach it differently?