I was just reading a few of the responses to the thread "Marimba Concertos" and just had a thought of my own. First off, this is a completely light-hearted response and I only mean this in a thoughtful way, not to start an argument or anything. I have heard many people on message boards like this one talk about the "groove" of a marimba piece and how cool it is when it pops into a nice "groove." Don't get me wrong, I love music that one as a listener can really get into. However, I think we all (including myself) can get stuck into a rut where the only music we really want to play is that which get's funky and groovy. While it is hard to motivate yourself to work through a non "funky" piece, the musical and experince rewards are worth it. Playing through any Bach transcription certainly does not have a hardcore groove at all, but the musical aspect of playing music from this master should be worth it all. There is a lot of other music out there too which could fall in the same catagory. I think we should all challenge ourselves to play music which requires musicality and some thoughtful thinking rather than to always pick a piece which we can rock out too. I know too well that you want to keep the audience in mind too, however I just performed "Etude for a Quiet Hall" on my junior recital several weeks ago and had a few people tell me it was their favorite piece out of anything I played even though it was probably the most mundane and slowest moving piece. Anyways, just a few thoughts from myself. None of this is ground into stone and I'm not here to preach this as if it's the right thing to do...but certainly something to think about.

if you cannot find groove within js bach, then you haven't been paying attention. groove means alot of different things... perhaps finding the zone is a better way of putting it. for a new perspective on bach try any recording by the jacques loussier trio for piano, string bass, and drumset... buy them all and you will never think of bach in the same way again. js bach was the originator of jazz. god spoke though him 🙂