Was it voodoo?

I watch a minimum of one entire football game per year–the Super Bowl.  It’s a habit I picked up a four or five years ago, I think, because I got invited to some Super Bowl parties.  Who the center and the quarterback are, and what they do, is clear to me.  Receiver–well, that’s pretty obvious.  The rest of the positions are somewhat of a mystery to me.

We love our Colts here in the Indianapolis area, and especially Peyton Manning, who seems to be as good and decent a man as he is skilled as a player.  So I was rooting for the Colts, of course.

Then they started to lose.  Or, rather, the Saints started to win.  And I found myself torn.  They’re the Colts for crying out loud.  But I also knew how much a win would mean to New Orleans as it continues to rebuild.  A win would have been a cause for celebration in Indianapolis (and Greencastle), of course.  In New Orleans, it is, I’m sure, healing and energizing in a unique way.

So congratulations to the Saints.  Maybe I’m a fair-weather friend to the Colts (after all, I was living in Baltimore when they snuck away in the middle of the night, and the resentment still lingers).  Or maybe the spiritual energy, the will to triumph, that carried the Saints to victory touched me as well.

(Of course, when that guy intercepted the pass and scored that last touchdown, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some voodoo curse going on.)

One link at a time . . .

It’s quite a while ago that I had a big problem with my website and decided to temporarily host it (via the miracle of URL redirection) on the wonderfully versatile and multi-page formatted www.wordpress.com, combinging the website and the old blog. (The “big problem” was I had done the old site using FrontPage, on a Dell laptop that belonged to DePauw.  Then they gave me a new laptop, and I switched to Mac, not knowing there was no FrontPage for the Mac, and I’ve never had the patience to figure out Dreamweaver.)

I’ve actually had a lot of compliments on the layout, etc., it all comes from one of the standard WordPress templates.  Which goes to show you can have a good-looking website for free. (So every performer and ensemble has no excuse not to have one!)

Now that I’ve committed myself to an entry-a-day for a year (since I missed one, this is now #3, with 362 to go), I’m also finally getting my links to other blogs and sites moved over here.  It was easy as pie to import all the blog entries, but the links have to be done manually as far as I can tell, and my single biggest talent seems to be procrastination. (Hey, what’s so easy about pie anyway? I can think of plenty of things easier to bake.) I’m one of those all-or-nothing guys, and the thought of doing all those links just felt horrible.  Lately I’ve gotten better at pacing myself; I’m trying to do one or two every time I write a post.  It’s actually not so hard this way.

If you’re reading this in a blog reader, you might want to visit the actual site once in a while.  (I read all my blogs in a blog reader myself.  Don’t you just hate the ones that don’t give you the entire entry?)   I will announce changes, such as hey, there are now some links up in posts as well.

Today I added links to some of my favorites:  my DePauw colleague Scott Spiegelberg’s Musical Perceptions, Holly Mulcahy’s Neo-Classical, my friend Eric Barnhill’s The Daily Improvisation, Charles Noble’s NobleViola, and Kenneth Woods’ A View From the Podium.  I was please to note that Ken still lists me as a “blog of distinction” even though it’s been quite some time since I linked back to him.

If you’re not familiar with those blogs, or the others in my growing link list, check them out!

How 20 = 40 to 60 or more

[Ack!  I missed a day, so my post-a-day project has been messed up already.  Does this mean I have to start over? ]

Via Adaptistration, Holly Mulcahy explains how much more work goes into being a full-time orchestra musician than the 20 or so hours per week of actual rehearsal and concert time.  Sometime I’ll write a post to explain how the twelve to twenty-one hours a week of official teaching time a (good, dedicated) college professor does translates into about fifty to seventy hours of actual work.

Schumaniac?

OK, dear readers, this is one of those I-don’t-have-anything-to-post posts, but since I said I’d post something everyday, here goes.

Robert Schumann.  The most tender and sensual of composers?  Certainly the most tender.  I started students on the Fantasy Pieces and the first movement of the Concerto over the last two days.  So much coor and nuance and emotional complexity to explore.  Bliss, really.  And today I was at a guest lecture on Schumann lieder, and the recorded Dichterliebe excerpts were entrancing;  I haven’t had a big Schumann phase for many years; one is obviously coming on.

There’s no one I’d rather be under the spell of.

In praise of concert formality

Elaine Fine has posted a beautifully written love note to the traditional classical concert.

Through my whole childhood and much of my adulthood the concert would begin when the house lights went down and the stage lights went up. I would savor that moment of expectation between audience din and audience quiet that would be broken by applause for the musicians, and then the music. For me there is a separation of the secular and the sacred in these moments. It is the separation of the everyday world and the world of music.

A concert she attended recently was presented informally, with the director of the series and the musicians talking to the audience.  The musicians were “charming and entertaining, actually, but as an audience member I was there to listen to music, not to be entertained.”  The performers spoke for those on the novice level.  “The audience, by the way, was not a collection of novices. I hope that the colloquial nature of this series doesn’t insult other regular concert-goers and keep them from going to concerts in the future.”

The problem, of course, that there aren’t enough Elaine Fines and other of us non-novices out there, buying tickets, to sustain traditional, formal concerts.  Like Elaine, I’m perfectly happy with the traditional format I grew up with.  But if there’s no one to play for . . .

She also points out that the event took about two hours, and would have been 70 minutes without all the talking.  That’s an excellent point.  I recently attended two conversational concerts myself, each of which was overly long (especially if meant to be inviting for new-t0-classical-music concerts) and for which the speaking seemed under-planned and under-rehearsed.

It’s quite easy to talk too much. It’s one of my specialties, evidently.  I once gave a lecture recital on the Dvorak cello concerto.  I thought I had talked and demonstrated for 10 or 12 minutes;  turned out that it was 45. Thankfully, all the students who where there have now graduated so I’m no longer teased about it.

Office Therapy

I was going to practice tonight, I really was.  I went home after dinner and lied down on the couch to finish a conversation with my son.  The cat got up on my belly–what bliss for both of us.  My hand found the TV remote.  Two and a half hours, and several episdoes of The Office later, I looked at the clock and said, “I forgot to write a blog post!”  I had gone into the music room at one point and looked at the piece I need to learn;  the couch–and the cat–called me back.

I don’t know exactly why, but there’s something about The Office that gets me through hard times.  My dad passed away on January 8, and there have been so many things to take care of.  I’m sleeping at my mother’s house;  that’s a big adjustment.

When I got back here tonight, I found her going through some papers.  She was puzzling over a letter.  It’s about a will Dad drew up in 1968;  the client’s son is trying to find a notarized copy of his mother’s will.  Dad left the small firm in 1972; the other partner died some years ago.  The letter is dated in September. Did my father get in touch with him?

Is this something I need to fix? That’s the question, so often.  Do I write the man, say my father is dead, and so is his partner, and I can’t help you? Do I try to find the address of my dad’s former partner’s widow to see if she knows if the old files still exist?  Or do I just operate under the assumption that my father had given the guy a call?

I’m glad I spent a couple of hours laughing over The Office. There’s only so much reality I can deal with per day.

Playing for Leslie Parnas

I promised myself I’d write at least one post a day for a year.  Not sure what to write about.

But the wonderful cellist Leslie Parnas has been on my mind recently.  I auditioned for him back when I was a senior in high school.  My teacher then was Denis Brott, an intense, creative, headstrong virtuoso whom I hero worshiped–wanted to be, really, but that’s a long story.  Anyway, I’d always loved Parnas’s recording of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with Alexander Schnieder and . . . well, I don’t remember who else–it was the extraordinary cello playing that grabbed my attention.  (At certain times in my cello life, especially as a teenager, the was the cello part, and everything else was accompaniment or bothersome intrusion!)

When I played for Parnas, my playing was about feeling the feelings of the music and being as expressive as possible, technique and intonation be damned.  Denis, who was just in his mid-twenties himself, was partly responsible for this.  “I don’t care if you stand on your head and spit green nickels,” he said in one master class for his students at the North Carolina School of the Arts, “as long as you SAY SOMETHING!”

I was intonationally challenged to begin with, but I began to feel that playing expressively and out of tune was almost a badge of honor.  (Teenagers!) And I did have so many peers who avoided expressiveness and creativity in their playing in order to play accurately, if dully.

I think Parnas was tough on making me get the cello really in tune before I started playing for him.  (He certainly was a few years later when I played for him in a master class.  My D string was false, but he kept asking me, “is that in tune enough for you?  It’s not in tune enough for me.”  It went on and on;  the rest of that class is yet another story.) I started playing the Debussy sonata for him, with great theatrical involvement;  I was the drunk Pierrot distraught at being rejected by his lover.  Into my fantasy world intruded a somewhat sweet voice.  “I don’t think that’s in tune.”

I remember it being a great lesson.  We discussed phrasing at great length, and I had the sense that if I studied with him my creativity would grow endlessly.  I ended up staying at NCSA with Denis another year, and then going on to Juilliard.

I often wonder how I would developed had I studied for an extended period with Leslie Parnas.  When I was practicing today, I imagined I was playing for him.  I was more in tune and more musical.  So thanks, Mr. Parnas.

David Darling Wins a Grammy!

David Darling, the extraordinary musician and creativity/improvisation facilitator, has just won a Grammy!   Prayer for Compassion won Best New-Age Album.  David co-founded Music for People, which has inspired so much of my own improvisation teaching, and is someone from whom I’ve learned an extraordinary amount.  I’m incredibly happy for him!

I didn’t know what to post about tonight–and it was taken care of for me.  David was one of the pioneers of the use of guitar pedals, delays, loopers, and other electronic processing in live cello performance;  he was the first cellist, I believe to do multi-track cello albums, at least on a major label.  His ECM albums, produced by Manfred Eicher, are legendary.

Bravo, David.  I love you!

Quick Thoughts

What if I wrote a new post every day?  (This thought inspired by a recent viewing of Julie and Julia.)  Even if I didn’t have much to say?  Maybe I’d turn out to have something to say.

Quick thoughts:

State of the Union: watched 2 minutes and turned it off.  Actions speak louder than words and I haven’t seen much action when it comes to LGBT issues, and Obama and the Democrats haven’t been able to do anything about the absolutely ridiculous medical insurance issues in this country.  So I’m not interested in speeches.  Show me the gays in the military!  My son is considering a military career after he graduates from college.  I’m proud of him.  If we were gay, what the hell difference would it make?  He’s brilliant and speaks Chinese. Right now my feeling towards Obama is, well, unpritntable.  But I would vote for him over Sarah Palin no matter what.

The Future (?) of Classical Music: Greg Sandow’s having another go at his book.  This time it looks like he’s going to make it.  (“This time I know our side will win,” Henried to Bogart in Casablanca. Mainstream classical music institutions?  Not so sure.)  Absolutely fascinating stuff.  Read it.

My Big Gay Ears: Mine are big, but not as unabashedly gay, or hearing as much, as Jody Dalton’s.  His blog on LGBT musicians just came into my life.  It’s great.  Sometimes I’m tempted to degay my punlic presence a bit in case some prospective student or student’s parent is put off.  Really, though, I don’t give a fuck.  Have a problem with gay people?  Then you really should study with some0ne else.  I’ll be around once you come out.

I knew Jody slightly through a mutual friend years ago, and am delighted to have reconnected.  It’s been 20 years or so.

Bach to Health

I once heard Harold Best, for many years the Dean of Music at Wheaton College, say “a degree in music is the best preparation for anything.”  There is often a lot of legitimate hand-wringing and sleepless nights experienced by would-be music majors and their parents.  Same thing applies to theater majors and anyone else in the arts.  (Or Classical Studies or English Literature or you name it.)

A long time ago, I read that over 70% of people end up having a career in something other than their major in college.  It was in an article by a syndicated columnist, so I can probably track it down (although it was pre-interwebs).  The statistics would be easy to find.  It was the columnists advice:  study what you find most intellectually stimulating.

These thoughts are prompted by my recent discovery (via Google Alerts) of cellist and emergency-medicine physician Eric Roter (“E.R.”), who attended both Juilliard and the  Manhattan School of Music.  He’s made videos of himself playing all 36 movements of the Bach Suites as a fundraising project for various medical charities. He calls it the Bach to Health project.

My advice to young people with artistic talent and passion who are worried about making a living is this:  get the best training you can.  Commit yourself to using your artistic abilities to making a difference in the world.  You may or may not make your living (or all of it, anyway) from a traditional job in that field.  How many full-time cello jobs are there?  (Even fewer if you play, say, the oboe, as a friend with one of the few full0time oboe symphony jobs pointed out to me the other night.)

But who cares?  I don’t think “E.R.” sees his years studying the cello as a waste of time.  They prepared him not just to play the cello, but also to be the person he is.