DRESS REHEARSAL, strings of The Cheltenham Performance Circle
(If you are not by chance a string player, notice the triangle of left hands . . . ) [click photo for next . . . ]

The serious and sustained study of Classical music
is, in my view, the way par excellence to awaken intelligence
as a whole in the student of any age.

This is in part because the seriousness of the music itself—
of Bach, of Vivaldi, of Stravinsky, or of Berio or Ligeti—
demands a kind of life-long devotion and diligence in the
perfection of one's technique, and one's sensitivity to
rhythm and sound.

Also of crucial importance is the awakening of the student's
awareness of the diverse and rich social contexts in which
the music-making actually takes place, from string quartet,
to concert hall, to the culture at large and the ecology of
world musical cultures as a whole.

(To explore these ideas in more depth, see my
Circle in the Square NEW MUSIC performance project.)

On the road in the American Northwest.

The first mistake in education

is to separate learning from

the body of the Earth;


The second mistake in education

is to separate learning from

the body of the student;


The third and most serious mistake in education

is to separate learning from

the nature of the mind which learns.


To learn

is to learn the numbers, the flowers,

to sing and dance, and most importantly,

to learn

—by life-long observation—the nature

and the formative workings of the mind itself

as it learns to learn.

All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 1999-2011 picture-poems.com
(created: I.19.20087)