Boonshaft’s Blog
#90. Don’t Share
Though the life-lesson we all learned as children that states that “sharing is caring” is sage wisdom and a great message for most of life, when it comes...
#89. Make Sure You Cut Off The Ends
How many times have we been confronted with the sentiment that goes something like this: “But that’s the way we have always done it!” Though sometimes...
#88. A Lofty Goal
The remarkable twentieth-century cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich said, “You must play for the love of music. Perfect technique is not as...
#87. Stands Up
One of the first things I do when first rehearsing with a new ensemble is to ask them to raise their stands up, often almost as high as they will go. I...
#86. A Good Teacher…
I was recently part of a question and answer panel discussion at a music teachers conference. The questions were really terrific and thought-provoking....
#85. Process Versus Product
I once heard someone say that in business there is an expression that states that “we can control the process, we cannot control the product." And for...
#84. Digging
Are our students not listening to us, or are we not saying anything they want to hear? Though that sentence is grammatically a mess, it does pose a good...
#83. What You’re Made Of
Before your next rehearsal or class simply write this wonderful quote by an unknown author on the board: “The same boiling water that softens the potato...
#82. Roses In Winter
To paraphrase the words of James M. Barrie: We have the gift of memory so that we might have roses in the dead of winter. Though those profound words can...