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when I was around eleven or twelve years old and growing up in Washington State, I was studying composition with two teachers in Seattle, George Frederick McKay (now deceased) and John Verrall (who is, I am happy to say, very much with us and likely to live to a Eubie Blake-ean great age). The first gave me very general lessons and often upset me; I find, however, that I now teach rather like my memory of Professor McKay, in seeking to disturb my students rather than resolve things for them, which I feel is not my job. However, all students at some point need something more than the wrenching koans McKay would pose me; we also need simple skills and discipline in the technical side of music, and this must be taught with as much spirituality as the more transcendental aspects. For this side of my education I am largely indebted to Professor Verrall, who sought and found a balance between the technical and spiritual in music that he could impart to me. I always bit off more than I
could chew, and still do, and so I tried a string quartet. Jack (which I can
now call him; I couldn't then) looked at it, and patiently told me that a
total of three manuscript pages was not enough to add up to a real quartet,
that I must try a larger structure. In order to understand the strings
better, he suggested I buy a Forsyth Orchestration.
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