No, the title doesn't refer to my birthday. That one is coming up in June, and will be for age 72, egads. Nope. The Last Mile to Year 50 refers to my long service as a professor at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Next year I reach year 50 on the faculty. Double egads and mon Dieu. I'm satisfied with my performance as an SFCM college professor for the most part. I teach some of the more unglamorous subjects at the school: the three-year Musicianship (eartraining) unde

As Fall 2025 semester approaches its end, I'm curious as to how much time I've spent teaching and writing over these past many years. So I ran some numbers, all rough estimates, but enlightening nonetheless. At the San Francisco Conservatory of Music I estimate that over 97 semesters I have spent about 19,000 hours teaching in classrooms. Between the Fromm Institute at USF and the University of California, Berkeley I have spent about 2950 hours teaching in classrooms. So m

The other night I awoke abruptly after a particularly awful dream that had percolated up from who knows where in my subconscious. It was...

When I took over the chairmanship of the music theory/musicianship department, I inherited a problematic young teacher who had been a...

I'm at the end of another semester. Fall 2024 is pretty much a done deal, although I still have a certain amount of scribbling and...