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Tag Archives | shame

Afraid of your musical burnout? 6 minutes of comforting advice

Recently a letter appeared in my email from a flautist I’ll call ‘Victor’. — Dear Jessica,  I studied flute in the school and this year I will graduate from the Romanian music university from Bucharest. I am not graduating from the university in flute performance, but in pedagogy. Currently I do not feel any passion […]

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“My teacher refused to teach me”. A chat with flautist Ruth Ballantyne about rising above the naysayers (+ her new flute book, too)

Surely you’ve heard about the nightmare piano teacher? She’s the one who’d hit your knuckles with a ruler if you played a wrong note at the keyboard. Shudder. While it can’t be said that ruthless teaching practices are limited to purely musical subjects, I’ve heard far too many of my flute students relate their own horror […]

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Why There’s No Shame in Being a ‘Prostiflute’

Hold on, now. By ‘prostiflute’ I am not talking about mixing prostitution from the red-light area of your favourite city with being a flute player (now that would be a highly fascinating blog topic, no doubt). To be a ‘prostiflute’ (which by the way is not my term,* but is oh so fitting, no?) is to use your […]

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