The king likes blue pencil

Score marking was a popular topic at the 2009 Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop, although there were more questions than answers. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to see how the king did it. Over at the NY Phil website, you can see...

Gal recording- Day one

Just a very few quick thoughts on today’s sessions. We focused all day on the outer movements of the Gál Violin Concerto. It was a fascinating and deeply rewarding day. It’s fascinating and inspiring to work with a great British orchestra on music they’ve never seen...

From the Orchestra Library

The sharp fall off in blog posts here at Vftp over the Summer has been one symptom of the fact I’ve been mostly on the road and away from my desk for months on end. Given that I’ve had little or no time to write for most of that time, it’s no wonder I’ve done fairly...

Intonation and spelling

Regular Vftp readers will know that intonation is one of my favorite topics. As I was catching up on favorite blogs, I came accross a remarkable series of posts on flute intonation by my friend, the contemporary flute virtuoso Helen Bledsoe. This one in particular hit...