Myles Temesi Hawken Project 2025

 This blog post will concern the weekend. Specifically, Friday until today, Tuesday. Once I arrived at my house, an hour away from the Cleveland Institute of Music, I rested for the rest of the day. On Friday, I woke up early and decided to get right to editing because I knew it would be a complicated and difficult process, especially if I wanted the outcome to match the result I wanted. I uploaded all the files from my recording devices to my computer which took a solid eight hours. It was safe to say that this was the only thing I did that day because of the length of downloading time. On Saturday morning, I finally began the actual editing process. With my editor ready to go, CapCut, and the files all downloaded successfully, I felt I was ready to start piecing the takes together to form the lecture video. My goal throughout this entire editing process was to create the illusion that the video was all in one take, though with two camera angles. This required me to be very precis...

 This blog will concern Thursday of last week as well as Friday through the weekend.  On Thursday, I went to the Cleveland Institute of Music to record and film my lecture. This, by far, was the most difficult day and the day which presented far more challenges than I expected. When I arrived at the room I reserved to film it in, I realized it was going to take quite a while to set everything up. I pushed the piano into the place I wanted, hung black sheets as the backdrop, and other various things that resulted in the visual components of my video. It took me an hour and a half to set up, and by then, I had just over 4 hours to record everything. To achieve the result I wanted, it took me several takes and attempts at filming the most convincing video I could make. For instance, one of the many challenges of filming this was putting the correct accents on the words I wanted to emphasize and etc, to communicate my point more effectively. The playing components, or the “perform...

 Tomorrow, Thursday (May 28th), I will start to film my lecture video in a room I reserved at the Cleveland Institute of Music.  Just earlier today, and a little bit last night, I took the last final look at my script to determine whether it is sufficient enough in communicating the point I want to make. I thoroughly read through each sentence and essentially put “the icing on the cake” to make sure it flows smoothly and is, thus, easy to understand for the listener. This process was harder than I thought, since I am trying to create the most solid, most refined video I could possibly create. I also want to create something that not only musicians can relate to, although I have a suspicion that most people who watch this will be musicians or have some knowledge about music, but something that many other people can relate to. As I mentioned earlier, tomorrow I plan to film this video. I have a good feeling and some quality ideas in how I want the video to actually look. I look ...

 As I continue to refine my project and starting to see a more accurate representation of what my final project will actually look like, I would like to share a surprising moment or unexpected moment that happened earlier this week.  The main work that I have done in this project is writing. Everyday, most of my schedule is occupied with writing as well as thoughtful thinking about my project: What is Sincere Music.  Heading into this project, I originally thought that everyone, or every musician at least, would have the same perception of what “sincere music” means to them. However, shortly after starting the script writing process for my lecture video, I began to realize everyone has different definitions for what this phrase actually means. This was after I listened to numerous professional speak about their connection to classical music and also experiment on my own time what I think sincere music sounds like. This is surprising to me because I thought that many music...

This blog post will concern this week, the 20th and 21st. Since refining my topic, great strides of progress have been made. To reach my goal of making an hour-long lecture video (though no promises, it is ambitious), I will need to write at least 600 words a day until the filming days (next Thursday and Friday) to keep on track. On Monday, I took my outline (a very rough draft of one) and smoothed it out so that I know exactly what I want to say within the lecture. With an outline ready to go, I decided to write a draft of the first three sections of the lecture: the introduction, what I think sincere music sounds like, and virtuosity and technical brilliance versus musical expression. These all tie into the theme of sincerity, specifically what makes someone's playing sincere or how we know the piece of music is sincere.  On Tuesday, yesterday, I refined my thinking and thought deeply about how I want the lecture to progress. I also brainstormed what I want to say within the sect...

This second blog will concern last week, the days of the 14th, 15th, and 16th.  In my pre-project blog, I initially said that my project would be to analyze professional pianist's performances and critique them. I would take a keen listen to the way they played specific pieces, making note of the musical and technical choices they made. However, a couple hours into trying to expand this topic, I realized it was rather shallow and it would be difficult for me to find authentic interest in it. I switched my project to now revolve around the question of: what is sincere music? This is a question that has long challenged me, musically speaking, and is inspired by a set of lectures I watched earlier in the year from the great 20th-century composer and conductor, Leonard Bernstein. What I found so interesting and powerful within those lectures wasn’t just the fact he used fancy, complex language to communicate his point, and it wasn’t even because of his unique presence within the music ...