Featured Blog Posts (194)

Anna Stafford-Heifetz writes:

"I wish someone had held a class on the music business when I was at music school. We learned much about playing our instruments, but almost nothing about the business.

"At 23, Los Angeles seemed like some mysterious force that I could tackle no problem with hard work, discipline, and a brilliantly placed stroke of luck. Soon, I thought, very soon, I would be walking down the golden aisle of fame and fortune, with people dying to meet me and shake…

Times are tough, and money's tight, but you might just want to help this wonderful and worthwhile string program:

http://bit.ly/IiOwlC

The two-time Grammy winning chamber-jazz ensemble the Turtle Island Quartet has announced the replacement of two of its members, violist Jeremy Kittel and violinist Mads Tolling. Both Kittel and Tolling are active as soloists and leaders of their own bands.

The newest members—violinist Mateusz Smoczynski and violist Benjamin von Gutzeit—will join founding member, cellist, and composer Mark…

If you don't already "like" us on Facebook, we'd like to tempt you into it by offering your a free video download on bow care.

Click here http://www.facebook.com/StringsMagazine/app_221530897946270 to "Like" Strings Magazine and get a FREE video download on how to care for your bow.

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The deadline for the Edith Eisler String Scholarship Award, an annual $3,000 award for a single qualified string student with financial need, is drawing near.

Candidates have until May 4 to submit their applications with paperwork.

Click here to download an application.

It’s amazing how similar it is to start with an idea, germinate it, cultivate it and then voila! Give birth to it like a baby.  As I prepare to release my latest album, ‘Air-The Bach Album’ on Valentine’s Day, 2012, I started to think of the process it took to reach this place.

I listened to the Bach Concertos in A minor and E major, and the Double Concerto my entire life. My earliest memories of this music are when we were on a family vacation, driving in the beautiful woods of…

From the Strings online archive: Expert tips from Richard Ward of Ifshin Violins on buying a violin, viola, cello, or bass bow. http://bit.ly/zyEF5s

Share your own bow buying experiences.

This report is from LA Phil violinist Paul Stein in Venezuela:

Like millions of people around the world, my first encounter with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra was on a computer screen. There the orchestra was on YouTube, the musicians jumping joyously out of their seats, dancing and physically bringing the music of Leonard Bernstein to life.

I was very fortunate this month to play Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with their grown-up counterpart, the Simon…

The 1st Annual Chicago Viola Festival will take place on Sunday, March 18, at Ravinia, Highland Park. The Viola Fest will be full of workshops, master classes, sessions, technique classes, lectures, and performances.

Please join us and the following…

Strings 25th anniversary issue is available as a digital edition—tablet ready and free! Now you can read news, player profiles, career and rechnique tips, music lessons, CD and print reviews, and much more on an interactive tablet-ready digital edition for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, Nook, Blackberry, and PC.

The special anniversary section includes 25 player tips from the Strings archives (from Hilary Hahn, Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, Nicola Benedetti and…

Cellist Ralph Kirshbaum remembers the first time he heard a recording of his boyhood idol, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. “I was literally rooted to my chair,” he says. “I’d never heard a sound like it—so rich, vibrant, and concentrated.”

These days, Kirshbaum is rooted to Piatigorsky through a slightly more metaphorical chair. Since 2008, he has held the Piatigorsky Endowed Chair in cello at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and is the artistic director…

Here's another excerpt from our upcoming 25th anniversary edition. It's one of 25 player tips culled from our extensive archives at AllThingsStrings.com:

Most contests are judged by professional musicians and have similar judging criteria: common categories include rhythm, clarity, level of difficulty, creativity, and intonation. Rhythm deals not only with making sure the contestant stays in time, but also with how much drive the performance has. Clarity deals with the how…

Mixing passion with practicality can be a confounding thing, as string teachers well know. Of course, violin teachers enjoy the professional delights of encouraging their students’ love of music and guiding them toward musical success, but most will admit that doing so with a full stomach and in comfortable surroundings remains a priority.

And so they must find a balance between their calling and their business, which elicits a number of difficult questions. How to gather enough…

Good practicing starts with good planning. And planning starts in the mind, but it need not stay there.

A written record of intentions and outcomes—of what succeeded and what didn’t—can be a precious source of insight and self-guidance.

Barry Green, author of the enduringly useful book The Inner Game of Music (Doubleday Press, $21.95), has developed a pocket-size Inner Game of Music Lesson Journal for his students. In one compact notebook, there are places…

Turn Practice Time into Quality Time

 Sheer time is not necessarily good; what’s good is the quality of the practicing. If somebody’s really serious, five hours a day is almost too much; no more than that. After five hours, the body doesn’t absorb any more. When I was growing up I didn’t practice more than three hours a day. And when you practice, it’s got to be 50-minute hours, with 10 minutes of rest.

—Itzhak Perlman

Here's a tip from violinist Mimi Rabson, an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston:

Just like talking, improvising is about expressing yourself through a language. The better your grasp of the vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, the better your expressions will be. You can use this approach not only with jazz, but any musical style.

First, choose a bite-size, characteristic phrase from the genre you want to improvise in. Then take that…

Know Something Deeply

In our age of specialization, you want to know something deeply so you have your own niche. Know a tradition deeply—be passionate about it.

Be Flexible

Because people roam around, you want to have enough flexibility and knowledge to be able to sit down with anybody from any other tradition and make it work. You have to understand not only the values of your own tradition but to…