Preparing tax returns is one of my least favorite activities on planet earth. What method(s) do you use to keep track of expenses and income?

There have been many purposes for music—dance, worship, military formations, political campaigns, etc.—but listening can make all of music available to you whether or not you partake in those activities.

For those of us who work with composition students, we are now squarely in that time of year when project deadlines begin to coincide with exams and the mid-term demands of other courses to the point that the pressure to complete a musical work can seem insurmountable.

It has been great to read all of the comments on last week’s post about bad performances—I’m glad to see both composers and performers sharing their thoughts. In the interest of addressing both sides of this coin—or maybe that greener grass over there—I’m also interested in unpacking aspects of good performances. Yes, they do happen!

Should Cobra be considered a composition in the classical sense, or is it something different? And if it’s something different, what rules of ownership should apply to it?

The so-called passive mode of experiencing information—music, books, theatre, film, visual art, lectures—enabled me to pay attention to others and offered me world views that can span any place or any time. All of this would have been completely out of reach to me otherwise.

Two weeks ago, the new music world received the news that after eight seasons cellist Jeffrey Zeigler would be stepping down from his position with the Kronos Quartet. We asked him what’s next.

Performances are not always what we would like them to be, or what we expect them to be. We have all been caught by surprise by a performance we thought was going to go well and then didn’t. How can we be sure our music is receiving the care and attention it deserves?

New music culture’s inability to conceive of an opportunity as anything but a competition is a big problem. We need to create more opportunities for young composers that aren’t structured this way, but can we even imagine them?

“Only the really good stuff survives. Can you name anything that’s still popular from over a hundred years ago that’s no good?” a friend of mine asked almost rhetorically, pretty much convinced that I would not be able to come up with something to refute his claim.