I spent thirty years as a school band director doing what most of us do: trying to make young musicians sound better, rehearse more efficiently, and survive concert night with dignity intact. Somewhere along the way, I realised I was far more interested in why the music mattered than whether the clarinets came in at the right bar.
These days, I divide my time between teaching (to keep the lights on) and running Maxime’s Music, a small publishing project dedicated to resurrecting the forgotten repertoire and ideas of the 19th century. This involves a slightly unusual combination of translating old books, editing long-neglected scores, and recording music that hasn’t been heard in over a hundred years. It’s not the most obvious career path, but it keeps me out of trouble.
I write essays about music, education, and the strange things we prioritise in both. My central belief is simple: music is a language for communicating feeling. Which sounds obvious—until you sit in enough rehearsals where feeling is the one thing nobody seems to be talking about.
If nothing else, I’m trying to make the case that music deserves to be treated as something more than a technical exercise. And that students deserve something more than just being taught to play the right notes at the right time.