Jonathan Cambry’s Blog

Cambry’s New Developments

June 9, 2008 – 12:10 am
I guess it has been such a busy time lately that I didn't even get a chance to blog. There have been a lot of important new developments in my world lately and it's about time that I started talking about them since they have become reality. First and foremost, I will be performing in Denmark with my buddy Dave Weissman (Doctor Boxer) in a PianoBoxing performance on July 13th. It should be extremely interesting to say the least, we might hit up a couple other cities in Europe while we are out there as well. Amsterdam leads that pack of choices for sure, it should be a good time regardless. Our itinerary has us in Europe from July 11-21. Me and my buddy Dave were able to get a sponsor for this trip (a sponsor that loves Amsterdam) so it will be all expenses paid and additional funding to ...

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Interesting Performance Tonight

April 27, 2008 – 8:39 pm
This evening I participated in a concert sponsored by the Chicago Music Association, it was at the South Shore Cultural Center in the Paul Robeson Theater. To be perfectly honest, I was really happy with the performance but a little disappointment with my performance with one of the Scriabin Etudes, Op. 42, No. 5. It's clearly my favorite Etude and I listen to many interpretations of it everyday because I feel like it expresses a particular emotion that I feel like I am capable of playing. After playing this piece over and over again for a variety of audiences, now something is even more clear to me which is the fact that this piece is not something most people would care to understand it on the level that makes for great entertainment in general. Instead of infusing everyone with the breathlessness and anxiety that I feel when I listen to ...

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Brainwave Entrainment Lecture

April 21, 2008 – 1:49 pm
László Holics, a concert pianist, gave a guest lecture on Thursday, April 17th at Roosevelt University regarding something I have never heard about which are  brainwave entrainment techniques. To keep the explanation short for those of you that don't feel like clicking on the link, it is a way of synchronizing the different parts of the brain so that it functions the way it needs to. László Holics was invited by Dr. Ludmila Lazar to speak to all pianists in Ganz Hall regarding this interesting study. It's too bad Dr. Lazar didn't give Holics the memo that was supposed to say "90% of your audience will consist of pianists, you should explain why this is important for pianists". What did I personally think of the lecture? It was great and very informative, Holics did a great job lecturing those people that showed interest in this technology which includes me of ...

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Roosevelt University Website

April 15, 2008 – 5:01 pm
You know, I get a lot of emails from people over the internet that want to know possibly different things related to piano, my websites, my school, and my professors. I will post some every now and then and leave the writer anonymous. The last one I got just ignited some frustrations I had myself with my schools website. Here is what anonymous wrote in an email: "Dear Mr. Cambry, I have noticed your films on the internet and your website is indeed quite impressive. Roosevelt doesn't seem to have very much information to be found on the internet, and I am very unacquainted with the faculty since Graham Scott's name is no longer on the website. I am a perspective graduate student- with an incomplete application for fall 2008. I was accepted as a transfer in 04 but remained at Elmhurst College. How much work in accompaniment does the school require of graduates and undergraduates? I am a perspective ...

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Sweet Home Chicago

April 14, 2008 – 6:05 pm
It's great to live in Chicago, the most beautiful city on the planet. You forget how beautiful this city looks when the weather has been bad for 4 straight months. It was chilly but really sunny today which makes perfect sense for Chicago. It's chilly in politics as well, Billary and company get desperate by the day, now accusing Barack Obama of being an "Elitist" and out of touch with Pennsylvanians and the American working class. That's really funny for her to say that, a woman that was supporting her own husband to continue to promote NAFTA which helped to take away working class jobs in small towns around the midwest. She stopped supporting it sometime during her campaign to run for president. I was pretty happy to see Obama go after her really hard on a number of things and what really topped it all for me is when ...

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Collaborative Piano Class

April 11, 2008 – 3:36 am
Usually from 2-4pm on Wednesdays I have this collaborative piano class where we are lucky and get to test out our piano scrapping skills. By scrapping, I mean that folks in class prepare what they have to for the class the day beforehand, or even the hour before the class happens where you have to take a piece and break it down to a form that you can get through. Maybe I will get an A instead of a B if I stop putting myself through that every week. I also learned you can score more points if you look really focused and prepared even though you didn't practice at all and stumble through some parts. When I look confident while doing that, I get a much better score. Stage presence at it's finest, right? To be actually serious, I am exaggerating a bit though, I do practice very hard, ...

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Getting Your Piano Tuned

April 8, 2008 – 11:13 am
So, I have my own personal piano tuner who normally does great work. He tunes the piano just the way I want it because he knows my playing style. Sometimes however, he doesn't focus hard enough and it kind of reminds you that the job of the piano tuner is not just to tune the piano and make sure it sounds right. I don't know if it's my Schimmel piano specifically, but he knows that it is also his job to make sure that it doesn't fall out of tune quickly as well. It took no less than 3 days this time for my piano to sound the way it did before it was tuned. Yesterday, one of the notes became sticky as well, so I just came to the conclusion that sometimes your tuner can just be careless. Just make sure your tuner is happy when he is tuning your piano ...

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Interesting Weekend

April 6, 2008 – 4:27 am
This has been by far one of the better productive weekends of the year. Different projects I am involved with right now are developing extremely well right now. I am happy to announce that within a week, PianoFever.com will have a new look and it will be ready for advertising. I plan on having a flash rotator on the homepage with the purpose of showing the latest news stories, updates, interviews, and videos to the main page. It will bring more life to the page and show that we are about more than piano videos. I am proud to also bring another person on board to provide more to the history aspect of piano in general. In one week you can expect these changes to take effect. I would also like to talk about another project that I am involved with that I haven't discussed in detail yet. I am forming ...

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Week of Pure Insanity

April 2, 2008 – 12:13 pm
I have a pretty action-packed week so far and it will only be filled with an extreme amount of work and an extreme amount of fun to go along with it. That's how I believe my life should be in the first place. I have the luxury of writing this in between classes, I will be heading to my collaborative piano class to observe another student practice with their selected instrumentalists. My professor Kuang-Hao Huang is pretty incredible actually, as my private lesson teacher and as the teacher for this class. In terms of playing with others, he is clearly one of the best I have heard to date and he provides an insane amount of tips to help me improve with that as well. I am lucky enough to accompany a singer, so I can have fun with it unlike when you have to play with a classical sax ...

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Not an April Fools Joke!

April 1, 2008 – 8:38 am
A great philosopher yesterday shared some very important words of wisdom at 1:00am this morning after I discussed starting my own blog. He said, "Really? After all you do with technology online and off, you're just starting your blog now? My 12 year old cousin has a blog." It's true, this is something that should not be new to anyone. Most people that I know either have a blog or used to blog about random things. I even know of people that are currently blogging for a living. You will find me writing personal things, but this will not be the typical blog that will feature any words of depression or sad feelings. One huge reason is because I don't typically have these feelings often enough but the serious reason is that I want to use this as a platform for discussing new ideas, new developments, and my various takes ...

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