Kristen Stoner's "Images" for Solo Flute

"Images" is a fabulous new album featuring works for solo flute performed by Kristen Stoner, professor of flute at University of Florida.  It features works mostly by living American women composers like Libby Larsen, Katherine Hoover, Victoria Bond, and by the performer herself!  There is a nod to some standards in the flute repertoire also such as Debussy's Syrinx, Honneger's Danse de la Chevre, and Bozza's Image.

Samuel Barber's Cave of the Heart

When I did my masters degree at the New England Conservatory, I took a class called "Writing About Music" taught by one of my favorite teachers of all time, Helen Greenwald.  I discovered with her help that I really enjoyed writing and perhaps to some degree that's what spurred this blog.  The point of the class was to learn how to write about music in a scholarly style and to learn how to use a library and the Internet for research.  For my "big" paper, I chose the life and works of Samuel Barber, in particular Vanessa, a much neglected opera written towards the end of his life.

Oboe + Bass = Great Chamber Music

What do you get when you pair an oboe with a sting bass? Not much usually, unless you are Carrie Vecchione and Rolf Erdahl. I was lucky enough to attend one of their concerts a couple of months ago on a short weekend trip to Cincinnati, Ohio. Dan and I were headed to a friend's wedding that was happening a few hours away in central Indiana. We planned to stay with Dan's brother in Cincinnati, so I contacted my teacher at Cincinnati Conservatory, Dr. Mark Ostoich, to let him know that I would be in town. I was hoping to see him and get caught up.

The Making of a Restaurant Playlist

I am so lucky to have the charge of choosing the music for my workplace. The music sets the mood for the diners in a restaurant and plays a huge part in the making of ambiance. The process of finding just the right tracks has been an exciting chance for me to use the knowledge that I gained in my formal education, but the most fun part about it has been discovering all sorts of new pieces and composers that I didn't know much if anything about before. I, of course, have included some expected things like Chopin's Nocturnes, Schubert's Impromptus, and Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words," but the following is a list of some of the more unusual and interesting albums that I think deserve a listen outside of the "behind the potted palm" setting.