Teaching Breakthrough?

I have often felt sort of amazed that I teach the viola. I still feel like I have so much to learn myself that it's hard to imagine I'm the person doling out the advice sometimes!

I just finished teaching a lesson to a student who has studied with me for about 3 and a half years. When she first started studying with me there were many technical things that I just didn't feel qualified to be working on with her. They were mainly issues of intonation and bow usage, and over the years I've tried to incorporate my own ideas with those that other violameisters have passed down to me. Not that I'm an "unqualified" violist, but geez louise - I really need to work on those things as well! I just never felt like things were sinking in - maybe I was explaining things in a weird way, or relying too much on spewing verbatim what I had been told by my superiors.

Tonight I just really felt like I was making sense. Not only to my student, but to myself. I was talking about straight bow and playing close to the bridge - issues I have been working on ever since the womb (or so it feels). There is a point at which you just have to stop relying on looking in the mirror and just feel the correct resistance and angle - and those things are hard to teach! But, after explaining what I personally felt when I played with a straight bow, and sharing the (perhaps unorthodox) ways I thought about it, and being honest with my student about how all of my hard work playing near the bridge breaks down when I'm under pressure and what I do to correct it, it worked.

It...worked? She played through almost the whole section we were working on with a straight bow, and in the optimal contact area to boot.

I have always had this notion that only the perfect or near-perfect executioners of the viola could really be the best teachers. I've dealt with so many technical issues throughout my musical career that I always considered myself sub-par technically (hence my addiction to etude books).

Because of this, I have always felt that I wasn't the best at actually giving advice to more advanced players about the actual physical act of playing the viola - although I trust my musical instincts, and have no qualms about giving fingerings, starting new players, general coaching of pieces, etc.

I just need to listen to my own body, and trust it, and convey my own personal physical experiences that have led me to where I am today. I always thought I was doing weird things that I had to keep silent at the risk of sounding loony, in favor of explaining things in a more "pedagogically sound" way.

If releasing the energy of my bow to an unseen point to keep it straight - much like a ballet dancer spots on turns to keep from getting dizzy - helps one student, then maybe it can help others. If talking about "drawing a smiley face" into the string helps someone draw a deeper tone, then I should describe it that way! I shouldn't be afraid of sounding kooky. In fact, I have always quite liked the idea of being a little off the beaten path in terms of playing the viola.

I just wanted to share with you, my reader(s?), that I am finally starting to feel more confident about my teaching and my ideas about playing.

I hope this confidence seeps into my own performance!

Guest Post: Pemberton

Hello, humans.

When Kadoodle asked me to do a guest post on an extemporaneous musical subject, I was apprehensive. I have a lot of napping to do, usually, and guarding the castle.

Then she reminded me that she is basically my food supplier and so I acquiesced.

I decided to write about Bach. Allegedly he is one of the most famous composers in the human world. On an unrelated “note”, I want to hack up a hairball every time I hear Kadoodle or one of her students play something by him. I can’t explain it - she could be wailing away on Bartok, or Don Juan, or even doing scales (thank goodness those don’t happen too often), and I’d be fine. Then out would come the Bach, and up would come the feeling of nausea, and I would meow really loudly to show my distress.

After doing some research, I think I’ve found out why I have had such a visceral reaction.

Mountains of Music: A Cautionary Tale

I am a hoarder of music.

I realized this after moving this past September. I used to keep all of my music in a cardboard box (a big cardboard box...), and I found a great non-metal, non-corporate-looking filing cabinet in which to store said music. Meticulously alphabetizing DVDs and CD's has always been a necessity of mine - and so it excited me that I would finally have the space to sort and order my music to my heart's content.

My heart did not remain contented for long - in fact, when sorting lasted about 4 hours longer than I had envisioned (even with the help of my wonderful Prince Charming), and when I found myself on the floor still surrounded by piles of music well into the wee hours I realized I had a problem.

Once upon a time...

There was a young woman, Princess Kadoodle, who wanted so badly to be successful at her life's calling. In the deepest part of her core she longed for a wonderful orchestra in which to play, a studio of dedicated students to teach, and a number of opportunities for chamber music and solo recitals. She wanted to be loved and respected by her musical peers, and she wanted to be recognized and noticed by her major teachers for being hard-working and to make them proud.

As the oldest daughter, it was her task to go out into the world and make her fortune. She had been trying for quite some time. Princess Kadoodle was not afraid of her family thinking she hadn't accomplished anything towards these means - she knew they loved her no matter what she did. In fact, she had already received her Undergraduate and Master's degrees, made a small but honest living for herself, and found her Prince Charming and been taken away to his Castle in the Clouds. She had even half-tamed two cats and learned to garden.

One day, Princess Kadoodle woke up and felt a deep sense of regret and longing that she wasn't really fulfilling all of her heart's desires. She kissed the sleeping Prince Charming on the forehead, fed her cats, and watered the bromeliads on the windowsill. Then she went downstairs where her viola was kept, and she stared at it and really thought about her life.

She was not happy. She was in an orchestra, and principal viola, but it was a part-time regional orchestra and she knew in her heart she would never get to play Ein Heldenleben or Mahler 5 with them. She had some students who were dedicated and whom she loved teaching, but she knew in her heart that teaching in itself would never make her truly happy as it could some other people she knew. Princess Kadoodle was grateful that she was in a chamber ensemble and would get to play semi-regularly with them, but she knew in her heart that she might never give another solo recital again. Her friends loved her, they respected her, and her teachers liked her. However, it saddened her heart to think she might not be a star student, and that her teachers were not completely invested in her.

Her heart thumped painfully and she knew she was missing something.

At the deepest, most sensitive and resonant part of her heart, where her soul danced with her dreams and all of her wishes swirled around waiting to be fulfilled, she knew what it would take to get what she wanted.

She decided she needed to become a better violist. She would no longer be content just getting by with mediocrity and a smidge of talent, as she was at the moment. She needed to become a viola sorceress, a high-priestess of practice, a viola monster. With this lethal combination of magic, mind, and monster, she could realize all of her deepest longings with the movement of a finger or the drawing of her bow.

She decided to make a potion.

Princess Kadoodle took all she had learned in her orchestral studies and performing experiences and swirled them together with the feelings she got whenever she played a symphony. Then she mixed in all of the technical exercises she was so good at teaching her students and infused them with scales and double stops and the essence of tuner and metronome. She took the musicality she had developed from her chamber music training and simmered it slowly throughout the mixture, and it turned a deep magenta color.

She drank it.

And then she waited.

All of the sudden her heart burst with a desire to play her viola that she hadn't felt in years. She felt invigorated, powerful, and in control.

And she began to practice.

Time for a New Beginning...

I haven't updated this space in almost two years. It's pretty pathetic.

If it's not Baroque, don't fix it....

We are at the end of Baroque week here at New World Symphony. It's been such a learning experience trying to capture all the essences and nuances of period-style performance. No vibrato, lots of bow speed, and new ideas of phrasing and meter are all issues that have been addressed this week. We have also learned about the égal/inégal practice of eighth-note articulation in Baroque French music. The conductor this week, Ton Koopman, is basically a Jesus figure in the performance-practice world. He is very enthusiastic and energetic, and I have really enjoyed working with him. At first it was frustrating because it seemed like he stopped every three bars or so to rehearse, but it was all for the sake of perfection! His knowledge of the style is infinitely more superior than most musicians I have performed with. The program consisted of a Suite from Dardanus, an opera by Jean-Phillipe Rameau; two Symphonies by Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach, and the well-known Suite No. 3 in D major by Johann Sebastian Bach (It has the famous "Air" that is played at basically every wedding ever, and a Gavotte made famous by Suzuki pedagogy).

So far we have had two performances of the program, and one more to go. The reviewer (hated by all of the musicians here) stated that Koopman's interpretation of the Rameau was "bluff" and "Germanic" after the first performance. Tonight (the second performance) Koopman took a microphone and defended his view of the piece, citing Rameau's musical influences at the time of its writing. Go Koopman! This piece also included the French égal/inégal technique which I mentioned. In layman's terms, we basically "jazzed up" the eighth notes at specific points in the Rameau. We made the eighth notes "swing" in a bluesy style. A cohesive argument for the style is here; scroll down to the very last small paragraph to get an idea of the argument if you want a quick version!

Tomorrow I am going to see The Other Boleyn Girl. I have recently finished the book, and I think the movie will stray a lot from it (although the general plotline is the same - Anne Boleyn becomes the second Queen of England, ushering in the Reformation and also getting her head chopped off). The point of the book is to highlight "the other Boleyn girl", Mary Boleyn, who was the mistress of King Henry VII before her sister Anne stepped in. Mary is played by my favorite actress, Scarlett Johanssen, and I can't wait to see it merely for that fact. ScarJo can do no wrong in my eyes! I have read some reviews though, and it seems as though the Anne Boleyn (played by Natalie Portman) plotline takes over. I love NatPo, but come on...the book is about Mary! The author, Philippa Gregory, stated that she was intrigued by Mary's character because really the only trace of her is the fact that King Henry christened a boat in her honor, the Mary Boleyn. Otherwise neither girls were listed in the Boleyn family records; girls were simply too unimportant to be recorded at birth. Of course we know of Anne because she made history (in more ways than one!), but Gregory's narrative standpoint as Mary was intriguing and awesome.

Read/see the book/movie! Or both!

Unicorn II

Tonight, at the concert, before the Elegie movement of the Tchaikovsky, Mr. Perlman mouthed the word "unicorn" to the orchestra. Then he smiled at me.