Dear Music Friends,  Evidence: two boxes of blackwing pencils nearly to the stubs—that was my summer. Yes, some of us composing dinosaurs still sketch with pencil before hitting the electronics. While friends emailed me about their incredible adventures i …

Ecstatic moments in Mahler's symphonies usually follow from the gradual build and resolution of a dominant chord. Mahler's imaginative orchestration pushes these arrivals to intense emotional highs. In one of my favorite moments, two piercing high notes of …

It’s a dramatic shift of gears, going from Brahms to Tchaikovsky. I conducted the Brahms first symphony last fall, and I was on fire to come to a deeper understanding of this beautiful, complex work in which Brahms comes to terms with the legacies of both …

Back in 2012, we started hearing Dubstep throughout the playa - a year that I can state was really shitty for EDM. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular genre, here's a quick descriptive: "Based around a non-straightened half-step beat …