My Practice Notes this Week! (2/11/26)
Recital Repertoire, Barber Canzone, and imagery food for thought
HAPPY FRIDAY! How are you? We are back as always for another round of Practice Notes this week, and I’ve again had an extremely fruitful week. I don’t know if it’s the warm weather that struck me with so much creativity and thoughtfulness, or if it’s the last forty days of daily relevant reading and listening that have expanded my mind and my thought palette, but I can overall feel myself becoming so much more thoughtful, and frankly, intelligent, through the work of the #Musicians75Hard. If you don’t know about the #Musicians75Hard, it’s a musician’s lifestyle program that I developed this year, and I’m currently on day 44/75. You can read more about it here:
The required reflection every day has allowed me to be extremely intentional and conscious about what I’ve learned, and I realized how much goes by unnoticed when I don’t take the time to really think about what I’ve done, thought, accomplished, or struggled with in a day of practice. I think the same goes for life, and I am experimenting with the idea of reflecting thoughtfully on my life as well in tandem with my musical reflection— perhaps those are more connected than I previously thought? The replacement of doom-scrolling time with intentional and thoughtful reading and listening has greatly improved my attention span over the last few weeks, and I’ve also been supplementing all of my relevant-ness with some sprinkles of irrelevant-ness… for example, alongside my reading of a book that is relevant to practicing or music in some way, I am also always reading a fiction book that is no way related to my musical life. I have found that supplementing my musical world with moments from other worlds helps so much in my interpretation of pieces and with my imagination… what is art without life to influence it? I digress….. let’s get into my practice notes!!!!
As you all know, my practice notes are a weekly check-in between myself and my paid subscribers where I detail everything I learned that week, musically and otherwise, as well as check-in about important music and life updates that don’t automatically make the ‘gram. Supporting this weekly publication helps support my studies and keeps my Substack alive… so thank you so much! With all that said, let’s get into my practice notes for this week :)