One week, in February, it snowed here in Nashville. Locals told me that it was a “newsworthy” amount of snow and the town was shut down for days. My apartment complex was covered in snow, the grass and sidewalks all…
I love to learn, but I sometimes forget how important it is to add learning in my schedule on a regular basis. For me personally, I spend a lot of time creating and teaching and both of those things are…
I have been thinking about this idea of “hard work” and the similarities and differences between that and “working hard”. A number of different conversations recently have sparked the desire to clarify my own thoughts and I thought it might…
Creatively, the last month or so has been really tough for me and thus, for Brave Musician. There are many reasons for this, some more obvious than others, both personal and professional. As I come out of this period of…
I have a strange love-hate relationship with deadlines.
On one hand, I like the structure and clear expectation. If you do what you need to do by this arbitrary moment in time, you’re good. I was raised to “get it…
Over these last few weeks, I have been trying to find my footing in this new reality. It has meant some interesting changes for me personally. For example, I have been spending less time on social media. I have sat…
In today’s blog I want to talk about “pressure”. You may have seen or read about what an amazing time it is right now to create, learn or produce. And in many ways that’s true. But we need to be…
One of the core values of Brave Musician is community and as we head into uncharted, confusing, unpredictable, and frightening territory right now with quarantines, the reality that performing and seeing live shows is temporarily no longer possible, the challenges…
Sometimes I get inspired by the strangest things sometimes. But I find that inspiration can be found all around you if you’re looking for it. The other day I was watching a TV show and one of the characters said…
I was a sophomore in college when my saxophone professor told me, “Your natural talent has run out. Time to get to work.” Then he threw me out of my private lesson. He told me that he wouldn’t admit to…
The only way we get better at anything is to practice it. It’s part of what many refer to as “doing the work”. This may seem kind of obvious, but I can’t tell you how many times I hear “I’ll…
This year, we are preparing to host several of our trademark Brave Musician Workshops across the US. We are really passionate about creating and hosting these workshops, so we wanted to provide a peek into our own behind-the-scenes on how…
But for a long time, I thought I needed to be. Developing Brave Musician has been about so much more than music for me. In fact, it’s been about being a Brave human and facing some of…
I have been thinking a lot lately about choices, in terms of life and in terms of being a Brave musician. So, I thought I would dive into this a little bit on the blog. I believe that as humans…
The sun is setting on 2019, and I wanted to make a special post sharing some of the big things that happened here at Brave Musician over the last year and some of the lessons that Marina and I learned…
As 2019 comes to a close, I can’t help but reflect on what a big year it has been for me personally and for Brave Musician. I’m not going to make a laundry list of all the things we did…
“It’s too much work,” said the little voice in my head. “No one wants to read what you have to say anyway,'' said another. “No one will care if you don’t do this,” chimed in a third……
Brave Musician began in a basement. Sort of. For me, it began July 2015 with a question in a basement classroom of the university where I was finishing my masters. I was defending my master’s project, when the head of…