Year: 2015
What I Have Been Reading This Month… and Then Some (December)
I love books. I have been collecting them since my teens, and I have a lot of them now, both at home and in my office at the University. It has gotten expensive to move my library, which is one reason I’m looking forward to putting down roots in Tallahassee. Before our most recent cross-country […]
Read MoreFamily Reflections at Christmas
Any moment now, my son, Nate, will walk through the door, home for his first extended winter break in College. It seemed appropriate, then, to post this short reflection. Several days ago, I was reading a letter that my Mom wrote to Heidi and me for our anniversary. It contained a beautiful reflection about my […]
Read MoreProfessional Development: Thoughts About Life and Leadership
“Thoughts about Life and Leadership” Stan Pelkey I have been keeping a journal since August of 1985. Every few years, I find it instructive to read over large swaths of that material to consider what I have learned. In the past five years, having made the transition from full-time teacher to full-time academic administrator, I […]
Read MoreDecember 2015 Music: It’s Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Ok, so it’s really not… at least not for this boy from the North who is now living in the South. But to be honest, I really do not miss the snow, and I am acclimating to the vision of Christmas lights coexisting with palm trees. I […]
Read More“Can I make a living as a musician? Yes: Cultivate these Entrepreneurial Strategies that work!” (Part 3)
In my previous posts in this series, I’ve highlighted why we musicians must become more entrepreneurial to achieve greater success. In this final post in the series, I want to highlight three practical recommendations that can become winning strategies for you. No. 1 Use Computers and the Internet MIT economists McAfee and Brynjolfsson have focused […]
Read MoreThinking About Star Wars Music
I only occasionally read “top 10” type posts on Facebook, but I could not resist writing a little along that line tonight. I drove to Sarasota today from Tallahassee. It’s about a 5-hour drive south (for all of you readers who live outside of Florida)—barring traffic jams around Tampa! I was asked to attend a […]
Read MoreA Tribute to My Musical Mother
{Welcome to this expanded post, “A Tribute to My Musical Mother.” I added the original version of this tribute to my blog in November 2015. The expanded version includes additional photographs and several musical selections performed by my mother, Jean Pelkey. Enjoy! scp August 10, 2016} Many of you enjoyed reading my tribute to my musical […]
Read MoreNovember 2015 Viewing
I started to re-watch David Lynch’s 1984 film version of Frank Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece, Dune, this evening. I’ve watched this film from beginning to end at least two times during the past twenty years. I couldn’t bear to do it again tonight. I dropped out after about an hour. Have you read this amazing book? Have you […]
Read MoreAre you a professional musician? Please take my poll.
Hello, Reader! I am very interested in learning more about how my visitors who may be musicians have been trained and how they engage in musical activities as a source of income. Would you please consider taking this poll? The results may help me better understand how to support college musicians in their professional development […]
Read More“Can I make a living as a musician? Yes, especially if you think like a music entrepreneur!” (Part 2)
{Please note that this is a continuation of an earlier post on music entrepreneurship.} In my first post in this series, I noted that some of the best music schools, colleges, and conservatories in the United States are getting serious about training students as musical entrepreneurs. But what is driving all of the entrepreneurship talk […]
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