Drew McManus

Charles T. Downey has become a fixture of Washington D.C. based culture and music and rightly so as he’s plugged into just about every aspect of a major metropolitan area’s classical music scene. As moderator of ionarts.org, Charles is a major figure on the new media front but he also has a hand in traditional

TAFTO wouldn’t be complete without a patron contribution and this year that role is being filled by Ben Smith. Everything you need to know about Ben can be summed up in the name of his website: classicalconvert.com. As Ben describes it, he wanted to create a beginner’s guide to classical music, by someone who switched

The word for today is "popular" and to help build a frame of reference for its definition I want to point you toward violinist.com. Without a doubt, Laurie Niles’ creation has been a smash hit among casual violin enthusiasts and uber-geeks alike as a place they can talk shop, it’s like a virtual violin convention

It just isn’t TAFTO without a contribution from a bassist and veteran blogger and Calgary Philharmonic bassist Matt Heller fills that billet in spades. In his contribution Matt ponders what sort of worst-case-scenario inviting a friend to one of his concerts could produce . The results are not only highly entertaining (Take a Friend –

What better way to start off the 2008 Take A Friend To Orchestra program than with a contribution from an individual who has experienced concert events across the globe. Carlos Kalmar’s contribution demonstrates that the magic of live concert events occurs when “we all are unified in our thoughts and experience” and it is those