Committing Purgery

August 28, 2013 at 3:24 AM

I teach piano as well as violin and viola. I have been a church musician, pianist and music director for 25 years. I was a symphony clarinetist for 5 years (and actually played a band concert tonight), play flute, and have every size recorder except bass for recorder ensembles. I have sets of notebooks of gigging music for string quartet, string trio, duo and solo with piano. I have classical wedding stuff, pops and classical love songs for cocktails, and light classical quartets for dinners. I have serious chamber music... Dvorak and Schubert and Mendelssohn. Brahms.

In addition, I conduct a youth orchestra, a New Horizons orchestra and an adult beginner strings group. My daughter is a classical singer.

All of this above 'stuff' has its own collection of necessities.... Instrumental orchestration books that accompany hymnals, recorder quartets of Christmas music, woodwind ensembles, and stacks and stacks and stacks of Piano and Violin music.

I am little overwhelmed by where to begin, particularly since I need to have a certain amount of 'stuff' in my 'at work' studio. I'm trying to figure out a plan....and I SURELY don't want to think about HOW MUCH MONEY is tied up in all this STUFF! :)

The act of re-organizing does make me wonder, "just how much of this do I really need to keep?"

So, this little blog (my first in a year) is just me thinking (whining?) about the sheer volume of music I have to deal with. I'm not quite sure yet how to approach this challenge, but if anyone needs me, I'll be the one committing purgery in the music room.