I’ve tuned pianos for forty-three years. Concert grands in theatres. Baby grands in churches. Uprights that smelled faintly of mouse. I’ve learned every instrument lies. Wood swells. Steel stretches. Humidity […]

When David suggested they tour together, everyone told him it was a smart idea. “Your audiences overlap.” “You’ll each bring your own crowd.” “You’ll save money.” “Twice the publicity.” David […]

Every evening at exactly seven o’clock, Leonard climbed onto the windowsill and waited. Not for dinner. Not for birds. For music. His owner, Margaret, taught piano lessons from the living […]

There were no dramatic declarations about artistic integrity. Just accumulated grievances, exhaustion, money, personalities, and the peculiar chemistry that develops when the same people spend too many hours inside the […]

The dream began without announcement. There they were, his old band-mates, standing around as though no time had passed. Someone made a joke he had forgotten. Someone complained about a […]

It happened near the end of the term, when the students had become comfortable enough to stop asking technical questions. No longer how to rhyme “orange” or whether a bridge […]

Neil, the pianist, had been in bands long enough to know that hatred in music rarely announces itself openly. It lives in small things. In how someone counts off a […]

She had a system. Every critique that ever brushed against her life got processed, fermented, and poured back out as a stage monologue. A booker asking her to shorten the […]

Harv arrived at these thoughts reluctantly. For most of his life he believed music existed to elevate experience beyond biology. The instrument encouraged such fantasies. A cello could resemble a […]

Every band eventually develops a preferred explanation for why a performance feels unstable, and in the Hurt, the explanation was always Angelo. The chief accuser was the guitarist, Kevin. He […]