Plein Air

Tomorrow evening, the Taffanel Wind Ensemble will be performing at Artist in the Garden's Plein Air concert. This is one in a series of concerts. We are pleased to be part of this concert series. Please check the website for further information about this concert and the rest of the concerts.

What we learn from music

The group is busy trying to regroup for the coming year. In the meantime, here is some lessons that can be learned from music. Author, Craig M. Cortello links musical training and success. As a result, he questions why music programs are the first to be cut in public schools. He has written a book, Everything We needed to Know about Business, We Learned playing Music (La Dolce Vita Publishing, 2009).
As he says, there are scores of ex-athletes who give speeches regarding the parallels between playing sports and business success, and there doesn't seem to be a shortage of funding for sports programs," he says, "I felt it was time to tell the music education/business success correlation story."
According to Cortello, the benefits that successful businesspeople got from music, in childhood as well as in adulthood, include building self-esteem and confidence, learning how to collaborate, leadership, salesmanship, and branding skills; creativity and innovation; willingness to take a risk, discipline and realizing the value of fundamentatals, individuality and passion.
There was an article in Making Music, March issue and the article lists Cortello's website as a source of information: www.ldv-enterprises.com. Worth checking.

Young @ Heart

Sometime ago, I wrote about the movie, Young at Heart. It seems that the group whose members are all over 70 years of age is still busy singing and entertaining people. An article in today's paper discussed the group which is based in Northampton, Massachusetts. The vocal group will in Toronto at Roy Thomson Hall as part of the Just for Laughs Festival on July 10. Now, I am not sure why they are part of a comedy series but the group is certainly worthy of our attention. The group does not perform the golden oldies associated with seniors but songs which usually connect with people half their age.
One of the members comments that she has been to Europe 12 times and had the time of her life. Where else could she have done that?
The group's director, Bob Cilman understands that he has taken his group down an interesting and unexpected road but it certainly works.
I think that more of us need to go down unexpected roads.