Blog - Altered Stage - Music. Lived Daily.

03May

Farewell Tour

by Jeff Bergau

My friends. My brothers and sisters in music. With a shredded heart and a soul full of life-changing memories, I’m announcing that we’ll be closing the club on June 30. It’s been a gut-wrenching decision after weathering through this pandemic, but alas the universe has spoken.

Chris and our entire instructor team have done an amazing job to keep the club running during this insanely challenging time in history, all while enhancing the overall experience for us. Not to mention working to grow membership to a point of financial sustainability. Unfortunately, membership hasn’t grown enough to achieve profitability. So, after nine years of connecting people with themselves and others through music, it’s time for our final coda.

Since launching the club in 2014, we’ve placed our focus almost entirely on making sure every single member has an incredible experience in every interaction with the club. With no business analog to follow, our team over the years has laid out some extreme creativity not only in music, but in business and customer service. Together, we all feel great about the experiences we helped create and live alongside you. Unfortunately, after trying many different approaches, we never were able to create enough critical mass to sustain the club without some sort of subsidy. After seeing April numbers, the swan is singing.
[..]

15Feb

My Inspiration to Sing

by Aubrey Aikens

Personally, Valentine’s Day has always been an opportunity to explore what love means beyond the limitations of the traditional romantic connotation. I am fortunate to have been able to foster an intimate relationship with art, and I enjoy taking this time of year to remember the people who have taught me about how music can help me grow.

[..]

05Feb

Musical Idol

by Vinny Kabat

When it comes to bass, I always envisioned the bass as a backup and secondary instrument when I was a kid. That all instantly changed the second I heard Victor Wooten – Bassist and five-time Grammy winner – play for the first time. It was his song “U Can’t Hold No Groove” that I checked out first, and the combination of technical prowess and variety in timbres of sound he produced from one four-stringed instrument blew my mind.

I became truly obsessed with Victor’s music shortly after that first listening experience, devouring his discography and finding just about every YouTube video I could find of him. I’ve seen him four times in person and every experience was unbelievably inspiring, and having met and shaken hands with him, he seems like a very genuine and down to earth person that could easily have a huge ego— but he does not at all. His philosophies and writings on music are really profound in my opinion, and I believe anyone trying to learn an instrument or improve an instrument should watch his Ted Talk “music as a language”— see for yourself!

He teaches is that music is a powerful communication tool–it causes us to laugh, cry, think and question. “Music is a language. Both music and verbal languages serve the same purpose: they are both forms of expression. They can be used as a way to communicate with others, they can be read or written, they can make you laugh or cry, think or question and can speak to one or many. And both can definitely make you move. In some instances, music works better than the spoken word because it doesn’t have to be understood to be effective.”

Victor Wooten asks us to approach music the same way we learn verbal language–by embracing mistakes and playing as often as possible.

04Feb

I love music

by Chris Medici

“I love music. Any kind of music.” The O’Jays

My earliest musical memory is listening to my Mom playing piano at home. As a stay-at-home Mom, she was in charge of raising four sons – not an easy task to say the least. Despite the demands on her throughout the day and night, she managed to escape to the living room to play the piano and sing. This is where I developed a love for the “standards” or songs from the “Great American Song Book” as Tony Bennett often described it.

[..]

18Jan

Music on the move

by Aubrey Aikens

For the past few years, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of remote music lessons, since it removes a lot of the geographical, financial, and social stressors associated with in-person learning. With all of the positives, however, comes skepticism and a fear of the unknown. Musicians often feel a pressure to compete with computers, rather than working in tandem with them, and I feel that might be a reason why the transition between online and in-person music lessons has been a challenge.

[..]