Realizing inspiration (and lack there of) after a semester at Yale:

Claude Frank - It's a trip to stand in front of the foremost Beethovenian living legend of the past half century and know, without an inkling of doubt, that Claude Frank lives up to every inch of the inspirational hype that surrounds his mystique. He truly is the only teacher out there, for me, who can sing a foreign Bach St. John's Passion recicativ in German while playing the bass, and successfully show me that sometimes, music really is that beautiful. He's in his own world, and he takes you with him.

Aldo Parisot - Surely the biggest and most insulting joke of the music world since the octogenarian version of Dorothy Delay. Not only does this man have less than nothing to say about anything remotely associated with music, he also happens to be the grumpiest and meanest teacher out there, for no apparant reason, and with no apparant justification or musical redemption. I think too often students at Yale are blinded by eccentricity, erraticism, insulting comments, and irrelevent anecdotes - usually twistingly mistaking these for brilliance....It is possible to be crazy, erratic, and eccentric, and still be a garbage-ass teacher with absolutely nothing to say. Parisot proves it. I don't give a fuck if he did teach Yo-Yo Ma and Ralph Kirshbaum. Rekhanize.