Category: Community

Categories
Community

Tell us your story!

Amateur Music Network is all about people who love music, and we want to hear their stories! If you have an idea for a blog post, or wish to submit a short piece to the AMN blog, we would love that!

Contact us and send us your piece or your idea. We’ll get back to you with our reply and, if we wish to publish your piece, a request for more information.

Some basic guidelines:

  • 1,000 words max
  • Please stay on topic: this is about your experiences as a musician.
  • We reserve the right to edit.
  • We publish entirely at our discretion.
  • We will not publish sexually explicit content or other content we deem inappropriate to our site.

We really look forward to learning more about you!

Maker:0x4c,Date:2017-11-29,Ver:4,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar01,E-Y
Categories
Community Orchestra and Symphonic Music

Orchestra music is Awesöme!

I had such a great experience at the Awesöme Orchestra reading that I just can’t resist telling you about it. Awesöme is a collective that presents open readings for local musicians. It’s all about people having fun playing orchestra music – how is that not great???

The reading I attended was of the Kyrie movement of Requiem without Words, a beautiful new work by local composer Arturo Rodriguez that was written in response to the Ghost Ship tragedy in 2016. Which made it all the more resonant for me: current music with community impact and meaning, played by community members — for the joy of playing.

Find out more about Awesöme Orchestra Collective on the AMN website

Categories
Community Talking about Music

17 reasons to love amateur musicians!

A friend just sent me this great article by Ariane Todes! You should read the whole thing HERE. Ariane is a terrific writer who lives in London and runs the website Elbow Music. Check it out!!

17 ways amateur musicians contribute to the classical music world:

  1. We go to concerts
  2. We offer solo performing opportunities for young stars, orchestral players and international celebrities who need try-out gigs
  3. We support venues by booking concerts in them and usually filling them up
  4. We promote classical music to our non-music friends who might never have engaged before
  5. We commission composers and perform new works
  6. We raise money for charity
  7. We hire music from orchestral libraries
  8. We buy gear – strings, music, accessories, cases, sheet music
  9. We buy instruments – old and new. (Judging by some of the intense conversations I’ve had about modern instruments, there seems to be more openness and enthusiasm towards them in amateur orchestras than among professionals)
  10. We benefit local schools by paying to rehearse in their halls. (We’re usually desperate to find good rehearsal spaces. Are you listening, whoever is planning Simon Rattle’s new concert hall?)
  11. We offer an alternative outlet for conservatoire students who choose not to become professionals
  12. We pay musicians for lessons
  13. We influence young musicians – whether as parents, relatives or friends
  14. We support young conductors, both through concerts and masterclasses
  15. We offer chances for recording engineers to practise their skills
  16. We support young players by going to their concerts, spreading the word and lending them instruments
  17. We support the local economy. (Rehearsals usually end in the pub.)

Amateur Music Network Singing Workshop, Larry Batiste, mentor
Ensemble Singing Workshop with Larry Batiste - 2017
Categories
Community Vocal and Choral Music

That great new team sport: singing!

Everybody’s saying it: Choral singing is good for you! Just google “choral singing” and you’ll get tons of references for how singing with a group boosts mental health, boosts mindfulness, and is just an all around good thing.

I saw an interesting segment on “Face the Nation” recently, an interview with author Daniel Pink, whose book When (“The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing”) focuses on the physicality of creativity and how to maximize our bodies’ natural rhythms to be more effective and happy. He discusses exercise and how crucial it is to take regular breaks incorporating a walk or other movement.

He also talks about teamwork and how powerful synchronizing and coordinating with other people can be. “There’s a new exercise out there, and it’s choral singing! Choral singing has benefits that are just extraordinary, at the physiological level and the psychological level. It is useful for cancer patients, it improves your immune response, it boosts your mood; so there’s something about synchronizing with other people that makes us feel good.”

Pink goes on to say that in children the effect of teamwork and particularly singing is even more dramatic: “I think there’s some good evidence that in schools, that choir (and) choral groups, not only as an ancillary activity, but as something that actually boosts the moods of kids, improves their social and emotional learning, and could conceivably make them better citizens of the school.” And I would add, of the world!

Link to the Daniel Pink interview.

(the choral part is at about 4:30, but the interview is short and the whole thing is terrific.)

Amateur Music Network logo png
Categories
Community

Hello from Lolly Lewis

Hello and welcome to the Amateur Music Network blog!

This is my first post so I thought I’d introduce myself: I’m Lolly Lewis, the founder of AMN.

Lolly Lewis, Amateur Music Network

I’m a recording producer and an amateur singer, and I sang for nearly 15 years with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. This is where I learned how porous the boundary between “amateur” and “professional” is in music. I studied music and singing in college, and I have sung professionally (that is, for money) from time to time. But as a career, I was more interested in recording than in singing, and my passion is working with artists to make beautiful recordings. So I didn’t pursue a career as a performer, and I preferred to stay under the radar in chorus without the stress of auditioning to join the professional ranks. Nevertheless, the expectation of all singers, paid and volunteer, was to perform at a level commensurate with singing in one of the great orchestral choruses of the world! So we all worked hard and the satisfaction was immense. I’ve sung some amazing repertoire with some of the great Maestros of our time! How fortunate is that. And all as a true amateur: I do it because I love it.

The difference between amateur and professional in our culture seems so arbitrary. Yes, we all know there are players of the highest ability and skill level, those who dedicate their lives to playing music. Thank goodness for them! I love hearing that skill and dedication in concert, and imaginative experiences of such power are central to my life experience and satisfaction. Hooray for great concerts!

But that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t have profound and joyous music performance experiences of our own, at whatever level we are comfortable. That’s why I founded the Amateur Music Network – to give people opportunities to sing and play, to improve their skills, and to join with one another to experience the joy of music-making.

I hope you’ll find this website useful in your own path and that you’ll help spread the word about the AMN. The more people in our community, the more vitality and richness we’ll all find here.