Ben’s Blog

I went to see Wu Man on Wednesday night at NEC. Wow, what a musician!

I was completely blown away by her performance on pipa. From an incredible range of tone and dynamics to the various right-hand techniques (somewhere between flamenco resgaudo and classical tremolo) to blazing fretwork and really cool bends, definitely recommend checking her out. She also had a really amazingly physical grace that is hard to describe. When plucking alternative slow notes, for example, she’d make a very graceful and full circle with her right hand. Almost ‘metal’ in her show-wo-manship.

There’s some good stuff on YouTube, and lots of available recordings.

Really inspiring show.

bentorrey :: Jun.15.2008 :: Stocking the Pond, Filling the Well :: No Comments »

This book was recently recommended to me by a new friend. What a delightful read, and so impactful!

I’ll give one example of something that occurred to me since reading this book.

For awhile I’ve been tossing around the idea of starting a VERY SMALL scale Suzuki program here in Malden. One of my concerns in so doing was of course keeping up all my family commitments going. But when I looked at it from the possibility perspective, I thought, well what if I hired our 16-year old to help with aspects of starting and running the business. Wouldn’t that be great experience for him? He’d have to learn about how to setup and register a business, how to manage the books, how to answer phone calls, how to sell parents on the program, how to manage scheduling, how to handle marketing and publicity.

Anyway, I don’t know if we’ll do that, but it’s the type of book that helps you think about possibility in new and exciting ways in your life. I highly recommend it!!!

bentorrey :: Jun.02.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy :: No Comments »