Greetings From the Oregon Coast!
I hope this finds you well and enjoying the beginning of summer! As I write this, I am watching a wide variety of bees diving in and out of our big escallonia hedge, which is covered in pink flowers. It's a wonderful sight - I just have to be careful about walking around that area barefoot (my natural state!)! Anyway, I still have enough music quotes for one more issue, so I hope you will enjoy reading them as well as the other bits of music news!
“Always play as if a master were present.” - Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
“If you don’t lose five pounds and ten drops of blood, you haven’t played a concert.”
- Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
“Well, I’ve been saying this all my life, but it’s true: The grass may look greener on the other side, but it’s just as hard to cut.” - Little Richard (1932-2020 )
New Reviews: There is a nice variety of new reviews on MainlyPiano this month (with more on the way!). In addition to the recordings, I reviewed two new songbooks and a wonderful new novel. You can find links to all of them
here.
“Music begins where words end.” - Johann Wilhelm von Goethe (1749-1832)
“My previous instructors had usually managed to create the impression that composing music was a risky procedure because you were really in competition with Beethoven and Brahms, and you’d better look out. Well, she (Nadia Boulanger) had no such attitude. For her, writing music was like writing a letter, it’s a function of the musical mind, and in that way she put me at ease in front of the music paper, so that I wasn’t writing Beethoven’s music, I was writing my own, and my own was perfectly modest and perfectly immodest, like anybody else’s.” - Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)
“Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” - John Cage (1912-1992)
New Interviews:I'm afraid I didn't have time to do any new interviews in June, but I have some coming up in July and August that should be of interest. I will be interviewing David Arkenstone and Milana Zilnik in the next couple of weeks and then Louis Anthony deLise and George Skaroulis, so be on the lookout for those!
“It sometimes seems to me as if I did not belong to this world at all.”
- Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
“There is nothing more difficult than talking about music.”
- Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)
“At no time has any art been so mistreated as is now our beloved music. Let us hope that somewhere in obscurity something better is emerging, for otherwise our epoch would go down in the annals of art as a pit for trash.”
- Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
July Birthdays: Here is a partial list of musical birthdays in July:
1st: David Arkenstone
5th: Dan Chadburn
6th: Gary Clark
9th: Ed Bonk
12th: Brad Jacobsen, Kosta Jevtic
16th: David Rogers
17th: Jeff Pearce, Iwo Piano and Joey, our lovably neurotic Australian Shepherd (he’ll be 12 years old!)
18th: Kelsey Lee Cate
19th: Emilee Hartley
20th: Isolde Fair
21st: Neil Patton and Daria Fedorovich Murphy
22nd: Michele McLaughlin
25th: AnayaMusic Kunst
31st: Falu Shah
Happy Birthday to all of you!!!
“The gramophone seems to me a marvelous instrument. Moreover, it assures music of a complete and meticulous immortality.” - Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
“The expression of thought, of sentiment, of the passions, must be the true aim of
music.” - Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
“I can’t sing very well, but I’d like to try.” - Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
July Music Holidays and Celebrations: I can't get too excited about any of these, but here are some music celebrations coming up in July!
1st: International Reggae Day and National Television Heritage Day
2nd: National Disco Day (really?)
4th: Boom Box Parade Day and National Country Music Day
7th: National Day of Rock 'n' Roll
13th: Barbershop Music Appreciation Day
18th: World Listening Day
27th: Bagpipe Appreciation Day
31st: Uncommon Instruments Awareness Day
“The fact is, there are no rules, and there never were any rules, and there never will be any rules of musical composition except rules of thumb; and thumbs vary in length, like ears.” - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"I should not like to be understood by everybody." - Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
“A man responds or fails to respond to certain music by virtue not only of what the music is, but of what he is.” - Ernest Newman (1868-1959)
That's it for this month! Wishing everyone a safe and happy 4th of July! The photos this month are the last of the rhododendron photos for this year. They have been spectacular! Oh, and I added in one of the birthday boy, our dear Joey. Have a great month!
Kathy
“Modern music is as dangerous as cocaine.” - Pietro Mascagni (1889-1945)
“Music ... is made particularly and principally to charm the spirit and the ear, and to enable us to pass our lives with a little sweetness amidst all the bitterness that we encounter there.” - Marin Mersenne (1588-1648)
“In the beginning was rhythm.” - Hans von Bulow (1830-1894)
