Book Description

One of the major frustrations of my professional musical life has been the continual reminder of how few talented young string players, even those with exceptional instrumental skill, seem to truly understand the importance of reflecting their very own personal emotional experiences within the fabric of their musical interpretations and performances. Consequently I have devoted a great deal of my teaching efforts to helping these potential artists better understand the critical importance of this element and to develop the skills necessary to facilitate the natural merging of their inner-most emotions with their instrumental facility. My original purpose for authoring this book was to create a lasting way in which to share my resulting theories and methodologies with regards to this ever so critical ingredient to the process of successful musical communication. Interestingly, after a reasonable amount of academic research, it quickly became apparent to me that in spite of the existence of numerous available publications dealing with the need for musicians to play their instruments in an expressive manner and a myriad of additional books and articles attempting to describe and analyze the elements of sensuality no one had previously made any detailed connection or addressed, in writing, the impact of sensuality on music performance from either a technical or musical perspective. Now that this project is complete I must agree with the opinion of a number of my trusted colleagues and friends: many theories, concepts and methods described in this book could indeed provide benefits to a far broader audience than those exclusively focused on string playing.I am hopeful that performers from all of the arts as well as any interested and receptive individuals from all walks of life may find the thoughts I have expressed in this publication helpful in achieving the lives of their dreams.