5 New Must-Read Blogs

I have recently discovered five new blogs that I think are worth checking out. I’ve added them to my blog roll, but to do them justice, I wanted to feature them in a special post here.

Chamber Musician Today is an aggregation of several blogs and news with a theme of chamber music, but with many different angles and contributors. [In the interest of full disclosure, TubaHead is a contributor].

I was immediately impressed by the fact that the The Bulletproof Musician was so engaging and full of articles that are so applicable to me and my students. It is written by Dr. Noa Kageyama, who received his Masters in Music at the Juilliard School and a Doctorate in Psychology from Indiana University. It’s hard to pick a favorite article, but his recent post “What Every Musician Ought to Know About Stage Fright” is fantastic.

Yamaha Bell & Barrel caught my eye with the post “What kind of box holds a $35,000 tuba?“. As a Yamaha Artist, I suppose I should help promote this blog, but I think their tuba coverage is a bit too skewed toward drum corps and marching tubas, but I look forward to more. It has a very clean and professional look. As a promotional vehicle, I think it is excellent. Check out the global corporate history page for a look at the interesting origins of this megabrand.

Iowa Trombones is the newly released blog that serves as the website for the University of Iowa trombone studio, created by graduate teaching assistant and Mac guru, Jonathan Allen. Dr. David Gier was recently appointed as the new director of the School of Music, so he has scaled down his applied teaching to just graduate students. Undergraduate lessons are now taught by Jonathan and his fellow graduate student Jessica DuCharme (who also has a very nice blog called A Midwestern Tale) The exciting thing is that as part of the solution of covering trombone studio lessons is the amazing line-up of guest artists, including Ko-ichiro Yamamoto, Moises Paiewonsky, Donn Schaefer, and Cory Mixdorf. I can’t wait to meet and hear these amazing artists.

Andrew Hitz, the tuba player with the world-famous Boston Brass has launched a new blog cleverly titled Andrew’s Hitz. I was blown away by their recent performance at the International Tuba Euphonium Conference in Arizona, and equally impressed by the masterclass by my first teacher, Sam Pilafian, who coached the Boston Brass in a public setting. If Andrew’s series of posts called “Things I Did in College Which Most Prepared Me for My Career in Music” is any indication, I think this blog will become one of the most helpful on the internet for brass students. Check out his post on listening to live music.