MusiCares & dental clinic for DC musicians Nov 12

On October 15th covering Music

My conversations with people in the music industry often remind me of just how tough it is. The MusiCares Foundation helps out musicians who need help in all sorts of ways. Today I was speaking with Dee Dee Acquisto, Director for Health & Human Services for MusiCares, and she told me about a free dental clinic for musicians coming up in the DC area, my neck of the woods.

I bet your reaction is similar to mine: (1) how great it is they are doing this (2) ouch — that it’s necessary.

As you might imagine, the demand for help from MusiCares is very high these days. They do good work and deserve our support. Read more »

admitting you’re a musician

On October 12th covering Creativity, Music

One cannot help but be moved by the courage of this message.

why playing music in a group can be so great when it’s good and so wretched when it’s bad

On October 4th 1 Comment covering Bands, creative partnerships, Music, Music Ensembles, Teams

This is the heart of why I’m doing this blog and all the other things you’ll see if you look around my site. (This post is inspired by Merlin Mann’s great talk on how to blog. )

I was a musician before I was a psychologist — low on the food chain and too much of a generalist (ahem, dilettante) to compete at a satisfying level in either the hard-core classical world or the jazz/ studio world.

I got to play in garage bands, jazz ensembles large and small, orchestras, chamber groups, new-music ensembles, early-music ensembles, theatre orchestras and a bunch of ad-hoc groups and gigs. They all had one thing in common. When they were going well, it felt unbelievably great. But every group could devolve at any time into sheer misery, a big soul-destroying bowl of suck. Read more »