Category: AMN mentors

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AMN mentors Strings: Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass Workshops

Meet Violist Justin Ouellet

Talking with Justin Ouellet is always an inspiration. He radiates a love for music and music-making and is just naturally passionate about sharing all he’s learned, and handing off what’s been passed down to him over the years.

Justin traces his musical “lineage” from William Primrose to Karen Tuttle, Kim Kashkashian, and Dimitri Murrath, with some “special sauce” from master teachers Dorothy DeLay, and Ivan Galamian. “There’s so much that just gets passed on through lessons, that you don’t get to explore from a book. It’s something that you have to do physically.”

Justin focuses on helping violists find deeper levels of physical comfort in playing, and how both the right and left hands have to integrate their muscular assignments to get a great sound from the instrument, and to find the intrinsic musical meaning that comes from that sound. In the right hand, this is all about generating friction in the string and controlling the engine of sound production. Meanwhile, the left hand gains an intimate and reliable familiarity with the “roadmap” of the fingerboard. Of course, there’s also the issue of how to stay centered and comfortably aligned when playing this challenging instrument that forces the body into such odd compromises of posture.

But once these fundamental concepts get into your muscle memory you’ll be on your way to better sound and more expressive playing, and you’ll be closer to discovering – and conveying – your own distinct and unique musical personality.

REVISIT THE WORKSHOP

AMN founder Lolly Lewis chats with Justin about the workshop in this preview video.

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AMN mentors Composers Jazz and Beyond - Non-Classical Music Workshops

Meet Producer Jef Stott

Blog post by Jef Stott.

Hello everyone!

Jef Stott here and I’m a music producer and educator here in the Bay Area and I’m really excited to present my class on music production in Logic Pro for Amateur Music Network. Producing music has been the focus and passion for most of my life and I can’t wait to share my knowledge and insights with you.

This is going to be a great series of classes for composers/ producers and musicians interested in digital music production. All students are welcome, these classes are definitely geared towards the entry level.

You’re going to learn how to mix your tracks, produce your own songs, and write your own beats and bass lines. We will also learn to edit vocal and instrumental tracks. We’re going to cover a wide range of genres, from electronic and urban to traditional recordings of live instruments.

It’s not going to be purely technical! We’re going to talk about the aesthetic choices that people are making as they are producing music. We will definitely go under the hood into the mechanics of music production.

We’ll discuss recordings we’ve listened to and learn about the role of the producer:

  • How did they do that?
  • How do they make that drum sound so big?
  • How do they make those vocals sound so powerful?

We’re going to answer a lot of those questions in this class.

We’ll focus on Logic Pro, the music software, but the concepts I’m going to be teaching in the class are going to be universal, and you can apply them to Pro Tools, Ableton or any other music software. We’ll review important basic concepts such as audio editing, MIDI production, microphones, mixing, and more.

It is going to be a fantastic series of workshops and a true intensive with three sessions in one week. I really hope that you can join me.  It is my honor to teach all that I have learned and I can’t wait to share everything with you.

Jef breaks down the power of Logic Pro software for you.

Edwin with Metallica and SF Symphony (Photo by Ralph Larmann)
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AMN mentors Orchestra and Symphonic Music Talking about Music Workshops

Meet Conductor Edwin Outwater

Catching up with Edwin Outwater can be a schedule buster! He has so many assignments and projects in the works that he rarely stops for long in one place. I recently sat down over Zoom with this peripatetic musician to preview his upcoming online conversation with AMN Curator David Landis (October 23 at 2 p.m.). Edwin made time for me while in Miami to conduct a “Welcome Back” concert with the New World Symphony Fellows. He had just completed producing the Kennedy Center 50th Anniversary Celebration, where he was responsible for wrangling more than 70 artists from all genres and styles into “one concert with a coherent narrative and message of what the performing arts are in America in 2021.” If you’ve seen the PBS broadcast, you know it was a great success.

We talked about what he hopes to focus on during our upcoming online conversation, and what makes him inspired about the future.

EO: I’m now beginning my second year as music director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the first year was COVID year, and we did all sorts of interesting projects, so maybe talking about what we did during COVID, and also where the institution is headed, which I think is a super exciting thing for people here in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And I think that’s kind of where a lot of my attention is at the moment. And also, what is the direction of the arts in San Francisco, there’s a lot of change right now, a lot of new conductors, I am almost the elder statesman now, and what is my take as someone who’s been around a while in the arts scene. And what I see happening in the near future, and maybe not so near future with the arts in general in the city.

AMN: I just love all the different facets of what you’re doing musically, Edwin, and for me, building community and bringing people together to enjoy music and and promote our music community is really important, so I think that all the things that you’re doing are actually kind of tying into that. Not that you’re specifically working on community advocacy, but it’s a natural conduit to connect people.

EO: Yeah, I really appreciate your saying that, because in the background I am thinking about that – but it’s also just me having fun, and getting to do what I love to do and not being afraid or worried about how I’m perceived, or you know, resisting whatever label people try to put on the position, which is something I’ve managed to pull off for most of my career so far. And now, to go from drag to heavy metal to Schubert V this week is something I’m very lucky to be able to do.

AMN: Yes, and we are all lucky to be along for the ride!

POSTPONED - but will be rescheduled

Get a preview of our workshop as Edwin talks with AMN Founder Lolly Lewis about some recent projects and what’s on his schedule for the future.

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AMN mentors Orchestra and Symphonic Music Talking about Music Workshops

Meet Mentor Scott Foglesong

Blog post by Scott Foglesong.

Imagine … where does music live if not in our imagination? No static thing, unchanging and immutable, music has to be played, and heard. The music is the sounds, not the marks on the paper, not the grooves on the record, not the zeros and ones in the digital media. It only makes sense as something we hear — and it makes its own separate sense to each of us in its own separate way.

That’s where we’re going with our six-week workshop Imagine. We’re exploring the heard experience of music, not what it should be or what’s correct. Sure, along the way we’re going to explore some of the nuts & bolts of symphonies, concertos, and symphonic poems — but always as experiences in our own minds, triggers that elicit reactions, emotions, feelings, physical sensations, memories. For Proust it was a madeleine; for us it can be a moment in a work by Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, or maybe the song of a skylark in the evening sky. 

Imagine! with Scott Foglesong

REGISTER NOW!

Get a preview of our workshop as Scott talks with AMN Founder Lolly Lewis about the surprising joys of listening and what he hopes people will take away from the experience.

Enjoy Scott’s humor and musical insight in this recording of his presentation Unravelling Boléro 

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AMN mentors Early Music and Period Instruments Piano Strings: Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass Workshops

Meet Pianist Eleonor Bindman

From the very first notes of the Prelude, we enter the world of Bach’s cello suites with wonder – it’s almost like walking out on a perfectly clear night and seeing the sky full of stars. Oh, to be a cellist with the mastery to play in that sonic universe!

Pianist Eleonor Bindman has felt that amazement and has distilled it for you into a piano edition that is perfect for amateur pianists – and for anyone who loves Bach and wants to learn more. 

“Anybody who plays [Bach becomes] a channel for his amazing spirit,” says Bindman. “You really feel like you’re getting something more than just the enjoyment of music: it can be a very transformative, spiritual experience.”

Bindman has arranged several of Bach’s works, including the Brandenburg Concertos (for piano duet) and selections from cantatas and orchestral suites, as well as favorites from the music of Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. As a teacher, she is a committed advocate for amateur music-making, and says of amateur musicians, “You’re doing something you love – it’s not your job, you don’t have to do it – so you need to have repertoire that you love to play, and that isn’t going to take you weeks and months to learn.” 

AMN concurs! And we are looking forward to exploring the starry skies of Bach with her on September 25. 

REVISIT THE WORKSHOP PAGE

Get a preview of our workshop as Eleonor talks with AMN Founder Lolly Lewis about her Bach arrangements and what she hopes people will take away from the experience.

Listen to Eleonor play her arrangement of the Prelude to Suite no. 1.