For classical musicians, music making is often fraught with pain and anxiety.   The ethereal character of music – you can’t see it, taste it or touch it, only hear it – ought to make it as close to a spiritual experience as anything in the panorama of human possibilities. But[…]

Here are Five articles originally written for the Hidden Valley Zen Center newsletter, The Oaktree.  The First three chronicle experiences in Zen meditation during my first four years of sitting zazen.  The last two deal with specific topics:  Zen and everyday life (Work Practice) and Zen and Covid.     Reflections[…]

It is now September, and my planned relaunch of a revised, more functional website (a project that has been in the works since December of last year) is now happening, nearly ten months later.  What has changed?  Everything! …Or so it seems.  On March 15 of this year, COVID-19 made[…]

Welcome to my new online journal, Notes From A Studio! In it, I will, from time to time, share my thoughts about music in general, and the piano in particular, with anyone who happens across it. Why the title?  Since I am writing it in my studio, it seemed like[…]

Here is a collection of sayings, bon mots, brief observations about music that I’ve collected over the years.  Perhaps some of them will speak to you… After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. Music is indivisible.  The dualism of feeling and thinking must be resolved[…]