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The Arts Exist To Transform

June 27, 2011

This article states so well the life-and-death importance of the Arts in our lives.  (Note that I wrote “in our lives,” not just our children’s lives.) The author, Ronnie Sanders, a member of the Texas Commission on the Arts, describes the plethora of recent studies that map the beneficial effects of arts’ training on our [...]

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Roll Over Beethoven

December 16, 2010

Thursday, December 16 marks two birthdays.  First, my brother’s, which doesn’t mean a whole lot to anyone but me.  But I always thought it was unfair he got to share his birthday with another mega-personality born that day: Ludwig van Beethoven.  Especially because my brother didn’t particularly care for Beethoven’s music. Well, roll over, brother, [...]

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California Bound

April 27, 2010

Wednesday, pre-dawn, we’ll be heading out for the Bay Area Homeschooling Conference – CHEA.  It starts Friday evening at the Santa Clara Convention Center. We’re in booth 405, so do come by and visit.  Also, please join me for two talks on Saturday, May 1st: Academic Success, Western Culture, and the Arts 12:10-12:50 p.m. College [...]

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On the Road Again

April 17, 2010

Goodness, it’s been an exciting time.  With the end of the concert season and the beginning of the conference season, it’s hard to know which way is up. First, let me greet all of you who are new to the Circle of Scholars, especially the wonderful folks I met at the Catholic Homeschooling Conference in St. [...]

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Off and Running

March 24, 2010

Tomorrow it starts in earnest—the 2010 Conference season!  We’re off to St. Louis for SLHC, followed two weeks later by the mammoth Midwest Conference in Cincinnati, and then the Bay Area conference in California.  And that’s just March and April. Educational conferences have the greatest energy—so many kids and parents, interesting vendors, a lot of [...]

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Sammy Nestico, I Love You

March 15, 2010

Even if I wanted to, I can’t pick up the phone and call Brahms.  Or Bach, or Palestrina.  So imagine how excited I was to grab the phone and call Sammy Nestico! Mr. Nestico, now 86, is one of the music world’s most congenial figures.  When I reached him, he was about to fly to [...]

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A Story of Music and History

February 25, 2010

We’ve been talking lately a lot about stories here in the Professor Carol office.  Living in a small Cowboy town provides me a with wealth of stories, the same kind of stories I grew up with in the Virginia mountains.  Here, however, the topics involve cattle and hay production, rather than coal mining and mountain [...]

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From Little Acorns

February 15, 2010

T-M-E-A.  The Texas Music Teachers’ Association Annual Convention in San Antonio, Texas (home of the Alamo).  That’s where I spent four days last week, and I simply have to tell you about it. My head is still spinning.  Thousands of accomplished high-school musicians, their families, plus their band, choir, and orchestra conductors filled the huge [...]

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Music and Mud

January 25, 2010

Most of North America froze over the 2009 holiday season.  Here in North Central Texas, we had a rare Christmas blizzard, with all of the attendant joys and challenges.  But the real story started when the temperature warmed up. Mud, mud, and more mud.  Snow that had drifted and swirled in wind-driven filigree vanished, leaving [...]

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Swing Music

January 14, 2010

Get ready to swing with Roland Muzquiz, master percussionist with the Dallas Wind Symphony and someone who can help us to learn what swing really is.  Take it away, Roland!

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