i’ll run the risk
of being intimate with brokenness.

~ Sleeping At Last

"The serene isolation that can be felt in a crowded and often chaotic world." ~ Genevieve

Musician Emily Caudill believes that life is a song, and the music is composed by our stories. Her life-saving chemotherapy treatment causes her to lose her hearing. Her response to this obstacle is an inspiration to anyone engaged in daily practice regardless of the day-to-day results.

Athletes and musicians -- and anyone else who has committed effort over time toward the development of a specific skill -- tend to have some advantages when it comes to these strategies. But what if there were exercises and drills to add to the mix that could systematically support the development of concentration, clarity, and equanimity in the context of rehearsal and performance?

"You're sort of in this three-dimensional landscape of sound and that's where I really like to be with my music. Like when I'm on stage, that's where I am. I'm not on stage in front of you, I'm in this landscape of sound. I can almost see the way the music happens, but that's not seeing people playing and it's not seeing somebody conducting.

It's not seeing an audience watching it. It's very much like this feeling of, What does the sound look like?  The sweep of the sound, the way it moves up and down, or rushing forward." 

~ Zoë Keating

“The brain processes musical nuance in many ways, it turns out. Edward W. Large, a music scientist at Florida Atlantic University, scanned the brains of people with and without experience playing music as they listened to two versions of a Chopin étude: one recorded by a pianist, the other stripped down to a literal version of what Chopin wrote, without human-induced variations in timing and dynamics.”

"When you're totally in the moment, when I'm totally in the moment, the vessel of expression is open."

~ Claron McFadden