Playing Music At The Library is a blog about playing an instrument at the local library.

The blog contains general information about playing musical instruments at the library, such as:

I’ve been playing music at the library for about two months now. I’ve seen many changes in the people that come in to listen and read while I play.

At first, they were very unsure of how to react. Most of them would just sit there and not make eye contact with me. Some would get up and leave as soon as they saw a guitar case open on the floor. One woman would move around a lot and even had me stop playing once because she was so fidgety. Another woman would pace back and forth every time she thought no one was looking, but she never said anything to anyone about it. One man always kept his head down and never looked up from his book until he left one day with a smile on his face.

I tried to make eye contact with anyone who looked like they needed some kind of connection with another human being, but I found that most people wouldn’t look back at me. This made me feel very unwelcome, so I focused more on just playing the songs well than on building a relationship with the listeners. I have found that most people will ask me questions or say hi if I initiate the conversation first though, which is a great way to get past that uncomfortable feeling when you are playing in front of strangers

I was looking for some new ideas for playing the flute during the summer. One day I decided to look online to see what I could find. I saw that a librarian in Florida had written an article talking about how they allowed musicians to play at the library during their lunch break. This sounded like a great idea, so I contacted my local library and asked them if they would be interested in doing something similar. They were very receptive to the idea, and even gave me permission to advertise it on their website.

I decided I would try to learn a new piece of music each week, and that I would play for everyone to hear at the library on the following Monday. It turned out that we could not play inside because there isn’t enough room, so we set up across from the library in front of this beautiful flower garden. This worked out well because I was able to use some of the flowers as props for pictures after my performance. For my first performance piece, I chose “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky. It is an amazing piece that has been arranged many times, but this was actually my very first time playing it! I had never played it with my flute choir before so it was

Musicians playing at the library!?! Yes, that’s right. It is an opportunity to practice and perform in a place where everyone can enjoy the music. The library is a peaceful, non-threatening environment where people can come and listen to live music. Music is a great way to stimulate the brain, reduce stress, and have fun. And now the fun can be heard at the Rensselaer County Public Library!

The Troy Library hosts performances every 2nd Thursday from 7:00-8:30pm on a rotating basis (beginning in September). We try to provide a variety of musical styles and genres for your listening pleasure.

To book a spot please contact me directly or fill out this form . All musicians are welcome! If you don’t play an instrument, but would like to accompany someone who does, please let me know.

We look forward to hearing YOU play soon!

The same is true of music. When I play at the library, it is not just that I write my own music and share it. My goal is to get people to feel something when they hear music. If I can get someone to feel something, then they will feel what I want them to feel (joy, sadness, anger, etc.). It is my job as a musician to create that feeling in the listener through my music.

If I was not trying to make the listener feel something, then there would be no point of playing at the library. All that would happen is that people would come and listen to me play. The feeling that comes from hearing a good performance does not last as long as an emotion made by music because an emotion made by a song or piece of music lasts forever if it affects you deeply.

There are lots of degrees of emotions in between happy and sad. The same goes for different kinds of sadness and happiness. There are degrees of anger but there are also other feelings such as disappointment or acceptance. Everything in life has its own set of emotions that come along with it but not all emotions are equal. For example, if you lost your pet or somebody close to you died then you would feel a different kind of sadness than if

The very first time that I played the piano at the library, it was a few months after I had started taking lessons. My teacher, Mrs. M, had given me this assignment to practice playing scales and arpeggios. It wasn’t long before I became bored with practicing them on my own and so asked my parents if they could drive me to the library.

They agreed and I was so excited! It was going to be my first performance playing in front of a group of people. They didn’t know what to expect when they saw me walk into the room with a little piano bench under my arm. They were surprised and realized that I was serious about learning how to play the piano.

The only problem was that my hands were not big enough to cover all 88 keys on the piano, so I decided that it would be best if I sat on the bench and played facing the audience from there instead of sitting on a chair next to the piano as most performers do.

I performed for about 45 minutes straight that day because no one left after my first song and everyone wanted more! That afternoon more than 20 people signed up for beginner’s piano lessons at their local library, which made me feel good about myself because I knew that my performance had inspired them

Over the past year and a half that I’ve been writing on this blog, I haven’t had much to say about playing music. This is not because I haven’t been playing or because I don’t plan to continue playing. On the contrary, this past year has been one of the busiest ones yet in my musical life.

And yet, with all that’s been going on, I haven’t written much about music on this blog. Why?

Well, to begin with, a lot of what’s going on isn’t something that can be easily discussed in words. For example, there have been some very interesting developments in my relationship with the guitar. The words we have to describe things like this are just not good enough—not specific enough, not evocative enough.

But there’s also another reason: Blogging is hard work! And writing about music takes time that I could be using for other things—like practicing!

So….I’m doing something about it. Starting today, every Friday for the next 13 weeks (through mid-August), I’m going to write about something related to music (and it doesn’t have to be Friday). I’ll probably end up combining some of them into single posts and skipping a few because other things come up