Let me start by saying that I just spent five minutes looking up the proper and accepted way to spell “do’s and don’ts”, so you can rest assured that I’ve nailed it! Do you want to be the kind of stand partner that your colleagues dream of playing wit...

“All music was new music once,” we often have to remind ourselves, and the same is true of conductors: they were all young once upon a time. But what does age have to do with a conductor’s artistic vision, or prowess with a baton? That’s what we f

Everything would have been so easy if we’d just known then what we know now! In this episode, we revisit what auditioning was like back when we started, and what’s changed for us as we’ve both taken, and judged, so many orchestra auditions. Nathan l

Nathan comes from a musical family, which might have saddled him with unmanageable expectations. But his parents were careful to keep things light and fun, while making sure he had a strong foundation. In this episode, Akiko learns about Nathan’s beginn

Akiko’s parents aren’t musicians, but that didn’t stop them from wanting her to play an instrument from an early age. So when she was five, she began the violin in her public elementary school (imagine that happening today)! Before long, she and her

In this first episode, we reveal the secrets of the symphony: what it’s really like to work day in and day out with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. As two violinists raising three kids, we find that our job means different things to us on different days.

Step back with me to August of 2004. It was summertime in Chicago, I had just started dating Akiko, and I was about to fly across the world for my first ever international competition. Things were good. Here's 2004 Nathan looking ahead to that summer's...