When I was 17, I visited Oberlin College, the school where my mother went. The two-day trip was a powerful experience for me in many ways, and left an indelible memory burned in my mind. First, this was my first visit to a college. I went there, had a lesson with the organ professor, and spent the night in the dorms as a guest of a current student. Oberlin really puts the “liberal” in liberal arts (and that’s probably a gross understatement), and the people I met left a strong, positive impression on me. In that two-day and one-night trip, I went to a midnight organ concert, played Quake with other students on the college network (this was a brand new experience for me – it was just 1997, after all), went to the art museum, and went to one of the weirdest and best movies I had ever seen.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is … well, I don’t know how to best describe it. It’s a French-Jazz-Musical-Opera-Art Film. The colors are truly technicolor and exaggerated to the point of being obnoxious. The story is heart-wrenching. Michel Legrand‘s film score is awesome: at times hilarious – like the opening number, an upbeat jazz number where the hero, Guy, sings about fixing cars; at times so corny that it traverses the corny spectrum and becomes good again – like the strings’ main theme; at times, somewhere in between – like the love duet between Guy and Geneviève.

Seeing this movies as an impressionable teenager, accompanied by the witty and clever commentary of the Oberlin students, instantly made it one of my favorites. If you don’t know this movie, I would highly recommend seeing it. There’s nothing quite like it. I don’t know what exactly it is, but I like it.

On June 14th, 1777, congress passed a resolution that “… the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

What else could we possibly listen to on this day, except The Stars and Stripes Forever, by John Philip Sousa?

Fun fact (at least for me) – this piece was premiered in the city where I live, not one mile from my house!

Rage can be a funny emotion, as long as you’re not the one who is feeling it. Musicians are lucky – when we have emotions bottled up within us, we can play music to blow off steam or come to terms with our feelings.

We usually don’t associate Art Music with feelings like rage, but when you feel this way, you have to find an appropriate outlet. When you’re too worked up to play something calming, and too frazzled to play something structured, you have to find something barbaric. Enter Béla Bartok, and his Allegro Barbaro. Bang those keys, make it ugly, until everyone knows how angry you are!