Scuttlebutt - August 9

August 9, 2023

Been here in Jersey City for a 3 day Multi-Styles String Symposium at New Jersey City University, which culminates in a public concert tonight with my good friend and organizer of the event, the high roller of the viola, Martha Mooke!

The symposium is an important contribution to the state of the art in contemporary string playing, as it serves both advanced level students and current string educators who want to bring progressive string techniques to their students in public schools.

The only way to change the future of strings is to help the teachers understand how to teach contemporary music to their students, something which is virtually ignored in every conservatory in the world. So we're taking it on ourselves.

working with some of the symposium participants at NJCU

The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, led by one of my best musical buddies, conductor Andrew Sewell, has a series of 6 concerts at the Capitol Square in Madison every summer that attract over 40,000 people to each concert. I've had the honor of performing on 4 of them over the years. And for 17 years years they've been playing my song, "Home to Madison" right after every concert, making it a sort of Madison city anthem. It was fun to talk about it in this article below.

Update: The design team, myself with Joe Glaser, Josh Rawlings and Simeon Gutsman, is still working out the bugs on the Silverman Violin Strap, a neck strap for acoustic violins and violas. I know it seems like we'd have this figured out by now, but 2 patents and many years of development later, we're still working on getting it just right, and hoping to get a prototype into the hands of some player friends within the next couple of months, and if all goes well, getting it on the market by early next year.