I recently listened to an interview with William Westney.
The leanmusician.com describes William Westney as “…a concert pianist, professor and artist-in-residence at Texas Tech University & the author of ‘The Perfect Wrong Note’ a book about – as the subtitle says – ‘rediscovering your musical self’.”
The interview is approximately 52 minutes long, so if you do not have time to listen to it, then I have cherry-picked for you my favourite nugget! Here it is (at 25:44, if you want to listen to it):
“How can everything that I’m doing feel great?”
At that moment, he is speaking about what attitude he takes into the practice room.
That is a winning attitude if ever I did hear one. What I take away from this is not a pursuit of self-indulgence, but rather a firm commitment to the art and to the craft, constantly making connections among body, mind, and instrument. I take from this a commitment to play with such connection and dedication that we’re not just playing the right notes in tune, but that we are connecting with our full mental focus and physiological engagement.
There’s another one in there too which of course is nothing new, but always nice to be reminded, “We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t love the music.”
Hear, hear. 🙂
