dammit this is so good and makes me want to play this partita again

My mother took Tylenol during pregnancy, and now you can access free PDFs of Fanny Hensel’s complete solo piano and chamber works:

My most one-brain-cell trait is that whenever I see video of someone playing the piano I am like “WOW how do they do that?!?! magic?????” even though I am a professional piano player

big if true

Wrote down some thoughts about craft and also went on a grumpy little rant about being so bored with AI talk buttondown.com/doodlyroses/...

I have no idea why @wetropolitan.bsky.social’s misreading in the group chat made me laugh so hard I cried but now we all have this for posterity

lately I am taking a weird sort of joy in the tiny things that annoy me that are not actual problems. there are so many massive problems, terrible situations, true horrors. somehow the capacity to still frown and and mutter "but song titles go in quotation marks!!!" to myself is a tiny bit soothing

Lately when I’ve talked to friends about some of the more tedious creative/intellectual challenges I encounter in my work some of them have, in an attempt to be helpful, said “do you think AI could help with that?” and every time I’m just like :/

I stg every day I think “we live in hell” and then go “ah well, if this is hell then might as well make this place nice”

put zen in charge of all the classical music marketing

Realizing that these categories describe my personal tastes in classical music with frightening accuracy

bring back blogging

feels extremely bleak that promoting music as a classical artist these days involves streaming platforms wanting to know which of these categories you fit into

would

Me when a recording artist puts out an album of every work a composer wrote in a specific category

Horse people: can you do WTC Me: yeah were you thinking just the preludes or did you want the fugues too

Louise Farrenc died 150 years ago today. One of my top 5 favorite composers ever.

Guys (gender neutral) if being on social media is screwing up your mental health then don’t be on social media If it’s screwing up your mental health but you can’t *not* be on social media then mute keywords and only use lists you’ve made of mutuals/accounts that don’t activate the bad feelings

I want a movie adaptation of these three legends who flee a care home to return to their abandoned convent in the Alps

I think I’m going to dust off my blog and just start posting my inconsequential nonmusical creative projects again

I have to say I do not like how political content sucks up all the oxygen here. It's important to stay informed and politically active, but I don't think it's healthy for most people to be in thrall to it 24/7

"but we can't support trans rights, it's unpopular!" just a reminder that US approval for marriage between black and white people at the start of the civil rights movement was 4%, reaching a whopping 20% by the end of the movement it's 95% now you don't wait for popularity for a rights movement

My toxic trait is that I'm a classical musician who doesn't trust any classical musician who talks about musicians from 80-100 years ago like they had some secret recipe for musical perfection that no one today is living up to.

U heard it here 1irst, folks

Bay Area friends, there's a concert in Oakland tomorrow with multiple Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel world premieres and talks by @henselpushers.bsky.social herself! Someone go on my behalf please and thank you

I’m a workaholic but you can’t tell because I take naps

Listening on repeat.... (because beauty and delight should shine on despite where we find ourselves...)

This is not just an incredible read, it’s an incredible experience. Follow @doodlyroses.com!

This is extremely goals-level music scholarship and I was born here for it

Thread with good music and history. My late teacher, Michael Harper, did a lot of research into composers of the African diaspora. As a singer, he focused on vocal music; I first heard Florence Price’s songs in his studio. I wish I could show him this thread; he would have loved it.

Sharon too-politely doesn’t mention it directly in this superlative thread, but you can support her efforts to record and produce this and pieces from other under-performed composers by signing up for her wonderful paid newsletter here: buttondown.com/doodlyroses

thread (and spoiler alert, amazing new recording)

Sharon's 🧵 are the best 🧵

Normally I do threads for composer birthdays/deathdays (depending on how much I have pulled myself together) but today I am going to do a thread for the birthday of a piece of music that I have been obsessed with it for several years

Yesterday I asked Music Theory 1 students if music is a universal language. Start of class most, if not all, said yes. After a heated 1-hour discussion with examples from everyone, at the end of class, only 2/26 students said yes. It's that easy. It's that obvious.

Sometimes friends tell me they know nothing about the music I play but that they love the outfits and I’m here to give the people what they want

Congratulations @doodlyroses.com I cannot imagine how many hours of work went into this project…

📣 hear ye hear ye, my recording of Florence Price’s Fantasie nègre No. 1 is out, and there’s a video

Saw a post I won’t reference saying art is something only folks born into money have time for. I am a data point of one but say that’s not true. Advice I give to early career artists: live as cheaply as possible, in a place with other creatives around. Be stingy so you can be free to fail.

“a respectful fan”

This explains why random Chinese people all over the world have just come right up to me and started asking me questions in Mandarin, always makes me feel like I’m in some kind of club

New recording out next week on September 3 :)

I considered writing a long carefully constructed argument laying out the harms and limitations of AI, but instead I wrote about being a hater. Only humans can be haters.

Sharon’s writing is my appointment television. Click through and consider supporting her! (In defense of this praise arriving three days late, my basement was flooded out on Saturday, and tonight, this has reminded me how much I love my job despite everything literally falling apart around us.)

all together now

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

I know it’s been said before, but the fact that you can’t listen to music while working on music is some real bs

impostor syndrome shuts down so many creative wonderful people because they are so sensitive and conscientious and assume others are too, and oh boy is that not the case

I feel like the self managed classical musicians of the world (me) don’t get enough credit for having to be adept in copywriting, audio/video recording/editing, and graphic design

Have you or someone you love been menaced by an unexpected brace of flats? If so, you may be entitled to compensation