Sample of music I got to play in two days of musical theatre grad school:

• Rock’n’Roll (the retro kind): Jerry Lee Lewis, The Platters, Carole King, Connie Francis, the Coasters, the Righteous Brothers, on and on…one song each for 20+ people [Vocal Coaching class]

• The Secret Garden [Preparing for next semester’s show]

• All the Things You Are (Kern and Hammerstein), Right Hand Man (Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick), Manhattan Bridge (Salman and Cunningham), It Might As Well Be Spring (Rodgers and Hammerstein); Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel) [Private voice lessons]

• Stars and the Moon and I Can Do Better Than That (JRB); Larger Than Life and The Neva Flows (Ahrens and Flaherty); Welcome Home Finale (Oberacker and Taylor); Before He Cheats (Carrie Underwood); The House That Built Me (Miranda Lambert) [Sight-reading for Story Song unit]

• You’d Be Surprised and The Song Is Ended (But the Melody Lingers On) (Irving Berlin) [Sight-reading for Musical Theatre Special Topics]

• 42nd Street [Dance Rehearsal]

• Conducted Brahms’ Haydn Variations [Orchestral Conducting class]

• Rehearsed the Credo from Beethoven’s Mass in C [Choral Conducting class]

• Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, mvmt. 2 [Score Reading class]

• Excerpts from Mozart’s Die Zauberflote [Recording piano tracks for company in Las Vegas]

• Chopin Rag (Peter Howard); Ain’t I Good to You (Razaf and Redman , in Bullets Over Broadway); Requiem (Pasek and Paul) [Personal practice]

I’m lovin’ it.

“When the server is ready, the service appears.”

The Sea of Galilee

and the Dead Sea

are made of the same water.

It flows down, clear and cool,

from the heights of Hermon

and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon.

The Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it,

for the Sea of Galilee has an outlet.

It gets to give.

It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again

to fertilize the Jordan plain.

But the Dead Sea

with the same water makes horror.

For the Dead Sea has no outlet.

It gets to keep.

-Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Meaning of Service (1920)

Quoted in Peter McWilliam’s Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life In School — But Didn’t

(Full book available for free on author’s website)

I’m sure it’s been done before. But just for me, right here, I’m publicly drafting a list of songs that I, as a theatre pianist, feel I should have in my back pocket.

Collaborative pianists who specialize in opera have all played Mozart’s Sull’aria, Puccini’s Quando m’en vo, and Verdi’s Brindisi countless times. Pianists who specialize in MT should be equally familiar with Sondheim’s Children Will Listen, Lerner and Loewe’s I Could Have Danced All Night, and R&H’s My Favorite Things. And don’t even get me started on contemporary theatre music…yet.

Because the potential scope of a list of all standard MT songs is unimaginably large, I will confine this list to songs that (for me, at least) need preparation (i.e., I can’t sight-read them at performance level). Instead, my plan is to have them almost performance ready and brush-up as needed when the situation calls for it.

This list will surely evolve in the coming years. Thanks for your patience, understanding, and abiding love for music.

Jerome Kern

George Gershwin

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe

John Kander and Fred Ebb

Leonard Bernstein

• Glitter And Be Gay

• Something’s Coming

• Maria

Jule Styne

Stephen Sondheim

• (Not) Getting Married Today

William Finn

Jason Robert Brown

• Stars and the Moon

• A Summer In Ohio

• I Can Do Better Than That

Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens

Lord Andrew Lloyd Weber

Alan Menken and Howard Ashman

Alan Menken and Glenn Slater

Stephen Schwartz

Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey

Lin-Manuel Miranda

The other day, my conducting professor was frustrated with several of his students’ attempts to begin a piece of music. The players were not beginning at precisely the same moment; rather than sounding like one richly-layered voice, the orchestra sounded like several people starting to speak at once.

When an orchestra conductor wants to start a new piece or section of music, she puts her baton in the “ready” position, gives a preparation, and then “follows through” the preparation motion to arrive at the downbeat - the signal for the musicians to play.

The preparation, or “prep”, is incredibly important. The speed, size, and direction of the prep motion allow the musicians to predict with unbelievable precision where the downbeat will be; that is, when they should play. The prep also indicates how soft/loud, fast/slow, etc., the music should be. This is how a huge orchestra can play as one, despite the musicians being spread over several square yards on a grand stage. It’s all in the prep.

If the conductor moves into the ready position and then goes into the prep in one continuous movement, it’s difficult for the players to distinguish between the action of “moving into position” and the actual “preparation”. Suddenly, the boundaries of the prep are blurred - where and when it started, as well as where/when it will arrive at the downbeat. The musicians can no longer predict with accuracy when and how they should play - they’re guessing. Usually, the guesses are pretty close - but not when compared with the result of a clear prep. This is what was happening in my conducting class.

In this scenario, the solution - the behavior that instantly clarified each conductor’s prep and distinguished it from the action of “moving into position” - was to start from stillness, because it clarified the musicians’ understanding of the prep.

If a conductor moves into position and then freezes the baton in space, even for just a couple of seconds, then the orchestra can use that “still” position as a reference point from which to gauge the prep and its resultant downbeat. Everyone is on the same page and, theoretically, everyone will play together. Indeed, after the conductors in my class made the adjustment, everyone did.

It’s not just good conducting advice. How much more clearly would you be able to understand your life - your choices, your decisions, your circumstances, your possibilities - if you could relate everything to a fixed reference point in your life that was unmistakably clear?

Carve out a few days of your life without indulgence, distraction, or escapism. See what dreams (or nightmares) bubble up from under the surface. Make sure you can see clearly who and what you are now; take the time to appreciate where you’ve come from; and give serious thought to who and what you hope, dream - or even fear - to become.

Clarify your understanding. Start from stillness.

I started graduate school a few months ago. Part of the audition process for this Master of Music degree was to sight-read a particular song that’s considered a standard in the musical theatre world. Because it’s a standard, most people who auditioned were not actually seeing it for the first time (including me).

The song isn’t incredibly difficult to read, but it tells a lot about a pianist’s sense of groove. I played it at least well enough to be accepted to the program, but I hadn’t looked at the song for a few years prior to the audition, and, importantly, I haven’t looked at it since.

---

Fast forward to today.

One of the students in the class I play for brought in the very same song, to be coached by my advisor, the professor who auditioned and admitted me.

I wanted to play well in front of the other students and impress my advisor, so I took a couple of minutes before class to noodle through the song and refresh my memory.

I hadn’t had time for a proper warm-up and was feeling a little self-conscious, so I tried to run through the song quietly, without drawing attention. I didn’t want people to hear me yet.

Have you ever tried to play a piano without getting people’s attention? It doesn’t work. They still hear you. But in trying to be small, my “brush-up” sounded timid, shrinking, and decidedly un-groovy.

It was bad.

My advisor, working at his desk across the room, glanced up and said exactly what I’d hoped he wouldn’t:

“Didn’t you have to play this to get into the program?”

The subtext being, of course, that if I had played my audition the way I was playing in that moment, I wouldn’t have gotten the gig.

I gulped and mumbled something about only vaguely remembering the audition.

I trailed off and let my practicing splutter into some sad plinks at the piano.

---

During my “brush-up” of the song, I was trying to play quietly, be invisible, to not let people in the room know that I was going through the motions of the song, wanting to hide the fact that I needed to warm up.

In trying to keep my practice unnoticed, I tried to “control” the music - I kept it smaller than it was meant to be, so as not to draw attention.

For years, I’ve taken moments of dread - like my advisor implying that my work isn’t up to snuff - and used that as my cue to get away, to get small, and timid, and not be noticed until I’m under control and feel strong enough to be back in the hot seat.

---

Today, I decided to go the other way. My advisor had already heard me approach the song like a wimp. What would happen if I said, “Screw it! I’m playing this thing, and you’re gonna like it!”?

So I sat down and played the hell out of this song. There were a few wrong notes, but it felt good. Much better than trying to save face and be “in control”.

A few minutes later, after performing the song with the singer, my advisor told me I could be more “creepy” at the end, but that he loved the way I played the arpeggios throughout the piece. The coaching had gone well - and my playing was very groovy.

So what happened?

It turns out that you can’t prepare to be groovy by playing half-heartedly and small. If you want to groove and make music and move people, you have to let go.

To play music like that, it’s not your arms or your fingers you need to warm up.

It’s your Confidence, your ability to emotionally accept that you cannot know what will happen if you dig in and PLAY OUT LOUD. You might hit some wrong notes; you might have a great time. You might do both.

Most importantly, by playing confidently, even with abandon, you get to discover the depths of music that actually live inside you - not just what you consciously control on the surface.

If you want to sing out, Sing Out.

Our perception of reality affects us more than Reality itself. Sometimes, the solution is not to fix the world, but to spend time reframing our perception of it.

Today, I was feeling a little unbalanced, so I sat down and wrote out one of my favorite poems from memory* (longhand - with a pen!).

It helped me, and I hope it’ll help someone else, too. Maybe even you!

If you can keep you head when all about you
Are losing theirs, and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the Truth you’ve spoken,
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it
On one game of pitch-and-toss, and lose,
And start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn
Long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you,
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
And all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run;
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more -
You’ll be a a Man, my son!

”If” by Rudyard Kipling

*Because I’m writing from memory, some of the punctuation, capitalization, or line spacing is inexact. Sorry!

I’ve tried to fool myself many times. Some of them, right here on this blog.

I don’t write to philosophize grandly.

I don’t write to log my piano practice.

I don’t write to show off.

Instead…

I write to clarify my thinking.

I write to tangibly measure my discipline.

I write to share ideas with people - usually, ideas that I wish I’d known years earlier.

I write out of gratitude, because I’m still here. I still have a chance to “make a ruckus”, as Seth Godin might say.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

As a professional musician, it’s easy to get stuck only looking at sheet music and books about music all the time. Here are 17 books that aren’t about music that have radically changed me as a person - and made me a better artist in the process.

1. The Inner Game of Tennis (Timothy Gallwey)

2. Mastery (Robert Greene)

3. Mastery (George Leonard)

4. The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)

5. The Art of Learning (Joshua Waitzkin)

6. Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You (both by Cal Newport)

7. The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success (Albert-Lázsló Barabási)

8. The Magic of Thinking Big (David Schwartz)

9. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Greg McKeown)

10. The Obstacle Is The Way, Ego Is The Enemy, and Stillness Is The Key (all by Ryan Holiday)

11. Man’s Search For Meaning (Viktor Frankl)

12. As A Man Thinketh (James Allen)

13. Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life In School — But Didn’t (Peter McWilliams)

14. Give and Take (Adam Grant)