Summmmmer

June 27, 2012
Summer always arrives hot and heavy. My work schedule declines (to 3 1/2 days a week) but my social schedule explodes to the point where I have even less free time! This summer's weekends are booked solid with great adventures and the next two months are bursting with potential goodness... June 11 brought a great start to Summer '12 with the arrival of my nephew, Lincoln Eustace Taylor! Andrew and Rachel instantly became amazing parents dedicated to offering their child the best life he could dream of... Lincoln was born into battle; within 24 hours was having an MRI and…

Farewell Winter

March 30, 2012
I welcome the end of Winter because Summer is sweet, but I always feel a tinge of remorse to see the snow melt away and know that I won't be back on skis for another eight months. The season typically ends with some Spring slush runs and over the last 10 days I have experienced this transition at Stowe, where we were skiing over huge dirt patches in 70 degree sunshine in the brightest ski attire we could find, and in Whitefish, Montana, where I went to visit my college roommate, Marty and his family. The first day actually had…

Casey Allyn Young

June 8, 2011
I love my job. I am truly blessed to have the opportunity to make music with children. They have the most amazing ability to live passionately and exclusively in the moment. Past and future have no real value to them and so every moment is absolutely vital. True, it means they sometimes cry when you take their drum away, but they are just expressing their love for that instrument without any possible way to rationalize it temporally. They are the best improvisers and demonstrate unbridled joy in all aspects of music. I am always inspired. Casey was in my classes…

Peter and The Starcatcher

March 23, 2011
This is amazingly fun theater. It is creative and celebrates imagination in so many ways, appealing to all ages and is a play in the best, most playful, sense of the word. The story is a prequel to Peter Pan with an absurdly hilarious cast of misfits sailing the high seas using spartan props to create elaborate scenes with Gondry-style guerrilla effects. The wordplay is fast and clever, slipping in something for everyone, young or old or high or low. Nobody is excluded in this world. I love working with kids because they are so creative and always flowing with…

Fired!

April 14, 2010
In the half of my lifetime that I have been working, I have been relieved of my duties twice. The first was at my very first job at an ice cream store, where I was accused of scooping kids cones too big. While she did have a point, I maintain that she was also completely crazy and not a person that I wanted to be working for anyway. The second time came last week, when I was told by a certain Upper East Side preschool that my one-day-a-week contract would not be renewed because "movement is more than just running…

Work?

November 18, 2009
I am fortunate that I have a job that pretty much just entails playing music with kids all day. Like any worthwhile job, it has its challenges, but I take so much joy from it because they give so much joy. It is so natural for them and they express themselves so beautifully; it inspires me so i do my best to inspire them. I work in different areas of early childhood music, from classes with parents and under-4 year olds to preschool settings and individual lessons. Sometimes I record our adventures on my iPhone. I wanted to share some…

Busted up kids faces

November 12, 2009
I have been noticing many kids in my classes with facial scrapes and cuts from falling and smashing their faces into something hard. It is painful to think about the accident that must have occurred but 99% of the time everything heals beautifully and they have learned a valuable lesson that it pays to stay upright. We can gain something from all of our painful tumbles and in fact, we require them; they are all just part of growing up. Kids truly live in the moment. They explore and play to enjoy and comprehend reality. When they get hurt it…

Where The Wild Things Are

October 20, 2009
When someone showed me the trailer this summer, I freaked out. Obviously, this book was one of my favorites as a young tyke and to see it brought to the big screen by two of my favorite artists working today, Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze, made me giddy like a nine-year old on pixy stix. The film captures the images from the book as well as I could hope, and manages to convey all the conflicting emotions perfectly. It brings me back to a time in my life when everything was hyper-important and my feelings controlled me more than I…

Music Past, Present and Future

June 2, 2009
Alaina and I made a trip up to Newton, MA this weekend to spend time the company of Taylors. It was magnificent and included an epic Saturday night dance party in our living room with five families close to us since before I was born. Friday night was at Fenway Park, 10th row for Dave Matthews Band. Flashback to 1995 and the first time I saw DMB at The Orpheum... I have lost touch with Dave a bit since then and I was glad to reconnect. I did not recognize, but nonetheless enjoyed, the majority of his songs. I prefer,…

The Patterson Brothers

February 25, 2009
I teach Adam and Michael Patterson (ages six and nine) and they rock! Here is a video we made this week. Look out, Brotnick! Patterson