So you’re back from music camp! At their best, music camps are radical catalysts for learning. Your mind brims with memories, teachings, discoveries, and good intentions for continuing your development. You’re determined to return the following year a much-improved musician. Sadly, our best intentions for self-improvement often go unrealized unless we apply discipline, strategy, planning, […]
Music Camp Withdrawal Syndrome: A Survivor’s Guide
Music camp withdrawal symptoms hit hard once you return to “the real world.” Just listen to this distraught message I received from Chuck Bontrager, heavy metal violinist and concertmaster of Chicago’s Hamilton orchestra, two days after the MWROC festival concluded: “Doc! Doc! You gotta help me, Doc! I think I might be going through some kind of withdrawals. […]
2016: Take a Career and Creative Inventory
2016 was the worst year ever?!! Enough bellyaching. Set aside death, disappointment, and global chaos for a moment. Take a creative inventory of your life and career. Reflect on the good things that happened over your past 12 months. Document them, and celebrate! At the end of each year, I take a “career and creative […]
Doc Wallace Goes for the Emotional at MWROC 2013
I owe a musical debt to fiery collaborators of the great cellist Pablo Casals: Karen Tuttle, Julius Levine, Felix Galimir, and Alexander Schneider. Whenever these gurus conducted, coached, or taught me, they demanded 110% emotional commitment. Anything less was a crime. Just as they shared Casals’ passionate approach with me, I aim to impart their fervor […]