By Adrian Anantawan As a violinist with an active performing career, I have the privilege of playing around the country and abroad, from major concert halls to elementary schools. While these activities have given me the opportunity to expand my musical horizons, they have allowed me to observe a growing disparity between the world of classical [...]

By Phil Best, Guest Contributor What does it mean to be ‘musically fluent’? Young children acquire musical fluency on the keyboard or any instrument more naturally because their experience of music is not yet established as a passive one. A passive approach to learning music blocks fluency. An active or fluent musician only plays music that is [...]

By Christian Howes, Guest Contributor I spent my 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 24th birthdays locked up in Ohio prisons. I was convicted of a drug-related felony and sentenced for 6 to 25 years. Committed the crime at 18, indicted at 19, and I was sent away when I was 20. At age five, I began playing violin [...]

By Cathleen Crone “Hang her! ” he shouted, pointing an angry finger riddled with arthritis, as he heard a Christmas Song, and that was at precisely 3:15 p.m. At 3:30 p.m., it was the testimony,  “You are a beautiful woman! I mean high-class beauty.  Naturally, I am too old for you. I am 100 years old!” [...]