I think an introduction is in order

Greetings, all! Welcome to musicommunity, the awkwardly-named but hopefully thought-provoking blog dedicated to the broad purpose of discussing "musical life in New York City."

Perhaps before I explain why I started this blog, it would be good of me to properly introduce myself.

I am a musician. More specifically, a pianist amongst the kerbillion pianists living in New York. I have lived here since August of 2005, and am steadily becoming more involved in the musical workings of this city. I play primarily "new music," which means contemporary classical music, most of which was written after 1950. I play in my own group (shameless plug!) Yarn/Wire, and freelance around quite a bit. I also teach privately and coach chamber music at a very fine NYC institution. Before I moved to NYC, I lived on Long Island, where I was enrolled in (and just recently completed) a graduate (master's and doctoral) program in piano at SUNY-Stony Brook. Before my northeast residency, I was an undergraduate pianizer at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. And before THAT...I was just a run-of-the-mill music nerd in southeast Tennessee.

Outside of my professional musical shenanigans, I recently started singing and hitting things in an avant-pop rock band (shameless plug #2!), Hi Red Center. I am an avid fan of the confusing umbrella of "popular" music (meaning everything that is not "western classical" music to those in the classical world). I didn't really grow up in a home environment that was knowledgeable of classical music, but I did watch unhealthy amounts of MTV as a youth and spend equally unhealthy amounts of time with jazz musicians in my undergrad days. You'll thus find me at rock or jazz concerts/shows roughly as often as classical concerts. If I actually had an i-Pod, you would most likely NOT find me rocking out to Mahler on the subway, but you might very well later overhear me vigorously defending the brilliance of Mozart to a professed opera-hater. My education in classical music, my chosen career, is ongoing and imperfect.

I am also a recreational intellectual, which isn't meant to sound as self-deprecating as it does. I mean to say I have no degrees in humanities disciplines other than music, hence I don't earn any money simply from the workings of my brain. I've taken independent studies, lots of classes and taken a great amount of pleasure in the papers I wrote throughout my higher education. Further evidence is my bookshelf full of feminist theory, cultural theory, books on gender/sexuality, history, and musicology; most of these books were purchased outside of any course or pedagogical mandate.

As a wise person often says to me, "Sometimes, a person's just got thoughts." So here is my blog, the breeding ground for many thoughts. Welcome, and please make yourselves comfortable.