I did take composition lessons when I was in high school, so I wrote piano pieces. I wrote some chamber music. I don't think any of that was particularly interesting.
Tod MachoverStrangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's.
Tod MachoverI love the cello, I love the physical sense of an instrument that's about the size of your body that vibrates enough that even if you play an open string, you feel it.
Tod MachoverI'd studied piano first and switched over to cello when I was about seven. I played mostly chamber and solo classical music. I got really involved with rock music when I was a teenager. I wired up my cello.
Tod MachoverI think part of the bad thing is that skill is emphasized so much that a lot of people, by the time they get to Juilliard, well I think they kind of forget why they got into music in the first place and if they're performers - this is a simplification, but a lot of them are trying to win a competition and play more accurately, or better, or more beautifully, whatever can be measured, than somebody else.
Tod Machover