Favorite Chamber Music

n Fall semester of my undergrad sophomore year. Karl Hinterbichler, trombone professor and my brass quintet coach at the University of New Mexico (UNM), suggests I attend the workshop to be given by members of the Beaux Arts Trio the following day. Mind you, I’m a...

The Zone

n Sabato Sagaria, MS Aspen, May of 2012; day two of the Master’s tasting exam. Sabato Sagaria from the Little Nell Resort–the exam venue hotel–is one of the last candidates of the day scheduled for our panel. This was Sabato’s third and final attempt at...

Advice to Students Taking the Master’s Tasting Exam

n Last week the Master’s Exam in Aspen concluded after four days with five individuals named as new Master Sommeliers. Before going further, I want to congratulate them: Alexander LaPratt of Atrium in Brooklyn, Pascaline Lepeltier of Rouge Tomate in New York, Andrew...

The Teaching Space: the Power of Changing Perceptual Positions

n Twenty years before publishing the theory of relativity Einstein first imagined himself riding on a beam of light. In Ron Suskind’s recent book, “Life, Animated,” he and his wife Cornelia were only able to begin communicating with their autistic son Owen by using...

Vitis Plutonius

n www.plutoidsinfo.com My first grade teacher, Mrs. Barwin, was a kind caring woman. She ended up being the calm eye in a hurricane of scary-ass nuns that would begin just the next year in second grade with the cruelest, most sadistic nun of them all—Sister Peter...