Category: Cory’s Thoughts

I think the best way to tell you what I love most about the Stanford Recording Arts Workshop is just to describe the opening and closing pieces of the 2023 Workshop album, called Evolution and Resolution. They’re really mesmerizing, and they’re a collaboration between a young music professor from South Korea playing the guzheng, a 69-year-old piano teacher from San Jose, CA, a Harvard undergraduate, and a kid who came here straight from high school in Hong Kong… All students at the Workshop that year, who decided to do a song together — two songs together! And I just was thinking the whole time: ‘Where else would these four people ever come together and collaborate on a beautiful work of art?

I seriously really admire and love every single one of you, so… I sure, sure as hell hope you keep making your art and your music. And I sure hope you keep sharing it with me.

I never posted about the Riley Max & Cullinan Show in my hometown Los Altos, ’cause it went late Sunday night and we launched the Stanford Workshop Monday morning. It was deeply meaningful to me to perform with my daughter at a site dedicated to the grandfather she never knew, where he was Mayor and coach to so many. Three generations of Los Altoans came, from people I’ve known forever to people I just met. Stanford Workshop students came too.We filled the house, raised lots of funds at $45 a seat for the arts in Los Altos, and closed with this beloved singalong song that represents what the Los Altos community did for me when times got tough in my teens and still represents to me and others in so many ways. Listen to this chorus of audience members onstage rocking the house! What a night. A rekindling of the feeling I had there in the 80’s, and a night I’ll never forget. Thank you Los Altos!

The goal of the show is to get kids inside the musical creation process and to inspire them.

The advice I’ve given my kids, and I try to live up to myself, is: Don’t think of what you can or can’t do in a time like this. Think of what you should do.

Beethoven wrote what may be the greatest symphony ever written (his Ninth) when he was deaf. I think he did this to make all future musicians look like hacks.

The nice thing about the shows, as compared to a movie or recording, is that each one is a little different. I loop-record songs live on the spot at my shows, adding various instruments and bringing members of the audience up to record things into the loop.

Kids are open to anything that is presented correctly to them. Classical, rock, jazz, John Tesh… Kids are fearless with their energy and focus. Adults are more complicated, trained by experience to always try to figure out what they SHOULD do or like; kids can still respond to their curiosity without bias. So actually, in some ways the best part about playing family music concerts is watching the kids loosen up the adults’ inhibitions, and then the next thing you know I’ve got some formerly macho dad up onstage with me singing Mr. Roboto (this has happened at a Dr. Noize show). Everybody has fun together.

Follow their lead and don’t squelch it. Let your kids open your minds to new things. Don’t be afraid to be ridiculous. Don’t think certain musical genres are too deep or serious for your child, they’re not. Remember that your child has a greater capacity for learning than us old people do, but we can get some of it back with our kids’ help.

My experience as a teacher and as a parent is that kids are not only more educated, but they are also more happy and engaged when they’re actually doing things that they know are actually building real knowledge and skills and value and passion for something larger into their world.