Are you brave enough to allow real voices on your arts blog?
The Curtis Institute of Music is.
Curtis (which, by the way, has its own iPhone app!) has a fledgling blog called Backstage at Curtis, written by students and faculty, truly in their own words.
That’s what I like most about it. It sounds like a student blog – there’s no official, corporate feel to it at all. Based on my experience at The Academy of Vocal Arts, I’m guessing that people who love Curtis care deeply about the students and follow their progress at the conservatory and long after. What better way to help them get to know the students?There are very few posts so far, but they’re good.
Third year hornist Adedeji Ogunfolu explains how Curtis’s location on Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square inspired him to start a dog-walking business that now employs fellow students Natalie Helm (cello) Alexandra von der Embse (oboe) and Maia Cabeza (violin).
Fourth year bassist Derek Zadinsky gives us a sense of the challenges of traveling with an unusually large instrument (sometimes when he flies, he simply purchases an extra seat for his double bass and straps it in!). Here he relates what happened when he tentatively accepted a ride from a seat mate with good intentions:
We got off the plane and I waited with the bags while she went to get her car. A few minutes later she shows up, not in a van or an SUV, but in a red MINI COOPER convertible! Needless to say, I didn’t take this as a good sign, and things were not helped by the tornado warnings for Denver. Believe it or not, somehow everything fit. The bass blocked the right rear view mirror, though, so whenever we needed to merge on the highway, I had to stand up and turn around to check that the coast was clear.
I hope Curtis can keep up what promises to be an engaging and amusing look at the life of a young musician. So far, so good.
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