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.

Unicorns

Today, I talked to Itzhak Perlman about unicorns.

We were rehearsing the third movement of the Tchaik Serenade, and he was looking for some character words for us to evoke as we were playing. No one was really saying anything, and he wasn't happy with the adjectives being said. I kept saying "ephemeral" under my breath, and when urged by a section member to speak up I said it loud and clear. "Ephemeral". This got Mr. Perlman's attention. "Ok, ephemeral," he said, with a smile on his face. "But what time of day? What is the setting?" he asked. "Early morning," I replied. He seemed pleased with this. "Yes, I think that is the perfect time of day to describe this," he said. He urged the orchestra to come up with an action, and again there were some murmurs of things but no one really spoke up. "Unicorns!" I said, to the surprise of the orchestra and Mr. Perlman. "Unicorns?" he asked quizzically. "Yes. We are in a shrouded glade in a misty forest. We come around from behind a large tree, and there we see a unicorn - a mythical being we never thought existed." My whole body was shaking at this point, but I still spoke loudly and clearly from the back of the section. "Alright then, unicorns it is," he said and raised his baton. I didn't want to look around me for fear of the mixed looks of admiration and disbelief from my colleagues. We began the Elegie, and it sounded beautiful, ephemeral, and in search of something greater than ourselves.

Although I know that the mention of unicorns might have been a ludicrous image, I think that it made people think outside of mere the shape of the phrase, the intonation of the notes, and the rhythm of the notes. Sometimes stretches of the imagination open up new worlds of sound and feeling.

About 15 bars into the movement, Mr. Perlman said "I think we found the unicorn".




After the rehearsal, of course everyone could not walk by me without mentioning it. Some people just thought it was funny, but others thought the orchestra actually sounded better and more committed to the opening, which is very evocative. I'm not crediting myself with changing the orchestra's sound or musicality by any means. More than anything I am happy that I had the courage to speak up with an image that meant something to me, and I hope it at least resonated with some people.

Argentinian skirt steak for the soul....

I went to dinner tonight with a good friend of mine this evening. We have been at Aspen together for the past two summers, and this past summer we played in the Sybarite Chamber Players together. We talked a lot about the social scene of the orchestra, and how we both just want to be friends with everyone instead of being categorized into a certain group of people. We also talked about long-distance relationships and the usefulness of Valentine's Day. The place we went to is about two blocks away. It is called Liberty Cafe, and serves Argentinian cuisine. The skirt steak there is to die for; it is a place I always have to go to whenever I have visited Miami in the past. it was nice to have one-on-one time with PT; I can always count on him to make me laugh and to dissect the wierdness of string playing culture and to give me some insight on the inner workings (or lack thereof) of the male mind.

I think I am going to go to bed soon. I watched a couple of episodes of MTV True Life on my computer. One of them was about people who are happy being overweight and the other was about people striving to get the perfect physique. What an interesting juxtaposition! I am hovering between being satisfied with how I look and wanting to go work out...at least no one here in Miami Beach has congratulated me on a wrongfully assumed pregnancy just yet. I think I would be happy if I just had a toned midsection. Nothing else is too jiggly or big - just my darn stomach! Maybe I will do 1,000 crunches a day like Britney Spears.

I want people to think I am beautiful, but I have to love myself first...and have a flat stomach.