Though the underrated gem "Children's March" was written by Australian composer Percy Grainger, it makes an oddly apt soundtrack for North Dakota's Badlands.


On a Badlands walkabout with Percy Grainger's "Children's March"

I listen mostly to musicians, women and men who spend hours practicing by themselves each day, getting the phrasing just right, pausing for a breath, experimenting with sound and space. That, I guess, is what I search for in my own writing: that pounding effect.


How classical music fuels my creative process

As he drove to the bedside of his dying grandmother, Taylor Brorby found comfort in the contemplative third movement of Beethoven's final symphony.


Solace in a symphony: How Beethoven's Ninth helped me grieve

Mahler's "Song of the Earth" has special meaning on this day celebrating environmental consciousness.


How Mahler speaks to us on Earth Day

Recently, in a first-year composition course I teach, our discussion veered into the timely topic of Ferguson, Missouri. The room was graveyard silent. None of us dared tread out into the world of deep conversation. We listened to the silence. After a moment, I rose and turned on Franz Biebl's 'Ave Maria.'


Biebl's 'Ave Maria': Music for contemplation in troubled times

Franz Schubert was a teacher. In his journals he noted the drudgery of teaching and his indifference towards his students - but the opening movement of Schubert's String Quintet in C Major D. 956, commonly known as the Cello Quintet, seems to mirror my own classroom and reminds me of rich discussion.


How Schubert's cello quintet is like a classroom discussion

I live where the land is on fire. Western North Dakota, the area of the country experiencing the Bakken oil boom, is marked by flares and pump jacks, oil rigs and semis, rapid development and expansion.


Taylor Brorby

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