Spring "Break" and the 20 hour pillow

The CMS was officially on Spring Break last week, although I taught make-up lessons 4 days out of the week, so it wasn't a total break for me. But I actually liked having somewhere to be each day and I still had plenty of down-time. AND I had a project.

The week of our wedding, my mom showed up with her old sewing machine in hand. When I was a little kid, she had sewn or altered many of my clothes and even when I was in high school, she regularly took care of  the requisite hemming that inevitably came from my being a full 7 inches shorter than her. In recent years, I thought that sewing would be a pretty awesome hobby, imagining myself as Molly Ringwold in "Pretty In Pink", deftly wielding scissors and fabricating beautiful dresses in an evening from overlooked thrift store items. Hmmm, I didn't recall her dress looking so much like a tablecloth. Sorry, 80's.

Back to reality, the first hour of my craftsy.com class went over how to wind a bobbin. I learned what a bobbin was, for starters. I don't think I've undergone a learning experience in which I entered with such complete incompetence. I found myself endlessly replaying bits of the helpful HD-videos, presented by a chipper and encouraging sewing instructor, all the while entertaining less than   Martha Stewart-worthy thoughts. We have to press it again? How am I supposed to cut this straight? Did I really just sew one side facing the wrong way?


Sewing is kind of dying art, I'm finding. The sewing guide my mom got me was clearly last updated in the early 90's, judging by the plethora of pink shoulder-padded shirts and acid-wash jeans. Many fabric stores have gone out of business, with ready-to-wear clothing cheaper and more easily available. But I'm kind of excited to learn this lost art, if only to experience the thrill of getting clothes to actually fit without forking over money for a tailor. And it's neat to be able to by-pass the normal consumer model and make something myself.


It is strangely exhilarating to be a beginner at something. And it's a good reminder of what my young students are going through-the new neural pathways struggling to connect again and again. The dozens of helpful hints and new symbols trying to lodge themselves in the brain. That subtle tension between frustration and growth. I'd estimate that between the reading, the video tutorials, and actual hands-on time, this simple project took me around 20 hours. I think I enjoy this slower pace of sewing. Everything is very deliberate and there is no instant gratification. It helps me to slow down and be a little more patient, which is a skill I work at in other areas of life. I'm sure I've played a few 100 or 200-hour sonatas, if I were to go back and count up the hours.

So after 20 hours of self-instruction, I give you my pillow:

Mooch clearly appreciates a good pillow. My next project is a much more complicated skirt, which I'm excited about. Mooch already tried to eat the pattern paper, but I intervened.

ASTA Conference in My Old Kentucky Home

I'm not normally an impulsive person, but I made a rather hasty decision this week to drive 4 hours to Louisville to catch the last day of the American String Teachers' Association conference. OK, I did have it on my calendar for months, thinking it would be fun, but I decided last-minute to make the drive and am so very glad I did.

I grew up in Louisville, but hadn't been back since my parents moved away in 2005. Living in New York state didn't afford me a lot of opportunities to pass though, but now that we're in St. Louis, I might visit from time to time. Everyone thinks that the place they grew up in is somehow special. The physical space where we first develop as people looms large in the imagination. I have a special fondness for Louisville, even though I'm not in touch with my high school friends on a regular basis anymore. It was rather strange staying in a hotel blocks away from the apartment my family lived in. I found I barely had to look at directions, probably since I learned to drive there, and right after the conference, I got to poke around in the old neighborhood a bit, which hasn't changed much at all in 10 years.

One of the more recognizable (of the 5) buildings of the Louisville skyline. The weather was gorgeous all weekend.

Of course, there's always something that goes wrong when you travel. Despite growing up there, I managed to forget that Kentucky is in Eastern Time (the time zone line curves pretty widely around the state). So my semi-reasonable arrival time got moved from 11:30 to 12:30 with construction on I-64 and then to 1:30 with the time zone change. Oops. I didn't see much of the hotel, as I woke up at 7:30 the next morning to see as many sessions I could.

The conference, by the way, was held in the same convention center as both my high school All-State Orchestra rehearsals and a few KMEA Ensemble Festivals. The office where my mom worked is a short walk away. Down the street, the renovated tourist area which used to be a beat-up downtown mall where our middle school orchestra would play a Christmas concert every year. It was pretty special to attend a conference all about string teaching in the place where I was musically nurtured and supported. It also just made me feel old.

Old Louisville Galleria, as it was until 2004.

Now the new 4th Street Live semi-outdoor mall.

Since I had a limited time there, I tried to see the best stuff I could, which meant sneaking out from some less helpful sessions (the hubs says everyone does that at conferences, so I shouldn't feel bad). One of my favorite presentations was a talk on how to keep adolescent students engaged and involved with music. The presenter's overarching point was that our long-term goal should be to create competent, enthusiastic adult string players who have the skill set to play in a community orchestra. That really resonated with me. Imagine how our support of classical music in this country would change if every music program and studio worked toward this goal!


Next I toodled around the vendor/exhibit area and got some new sheet music for the kideroos and a copy of "How Muscles Learn" which I've been eyeing for some time. I got to talk with Gary Frisch, who made my custom chin rest, and got a free calendar from Clemens, who rehair my bows St. Louis (the hubs calls the posters "violin porn", but they're so beautiful! It's art, dude, art.). I also talked to the guy at the new Music Development Program an offshoot of the Royal Academy of Music's long-standing program of graded repertoire and exams. While I don't know that I will have my students forking over $100 to take a playing test anytime soon, the resources and graded repertoire are awesome. The viola syllabus is brand new and includes stuff from a lot of different sources, including Suzuki books, and they're deliberate about having pieces from contrasting style periods in the mix. I'm thinking this may help me with the "Gah, when are they going to play something after the 18th century!?!?!" problem.


Next came a sort-of hippie Suzuki educator who gave a great talk about how to use the concept of resonance and the instrument's vibrations to reduce the tendency to squeeze and press. I'll admit that some of her stuff was a little bizarre, such as field trips she took to stone churches to have her teacher sing long tones and "feel the resonance". Yeah... but I got some great ideas to use for lessons or in a group.


One of my favorites talks was, about how to teach shifting. I use the Introducing the Positions books and try to shape my student's repertoire so that shifting is introduced gradually, but WHOA, this lady has it all figured out. It would take too long for me to summarize her whole system, but she basically takes her students through some introductory stuff in Fiddle Magic, then ITP exercises in 3rd position, then shifting from 1st to 3rd position, then other positions, then Sevcik Op. 8  at 45 with link notes, then Sevcik Op. 8 at 60 with link notes, then all the way through again without link notes. It's a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Well, at least for me, not sure if my students will be so enthused ;-)

One of the biggest takeaways I got from the conference was the idea of having a long-vision of where my teaching is going. Despite the fact that I've been teaching for 9-odd years, my current job is the first in which I know I could be staying for a really long time. Long enough, for example, for my current 7 year old students to start auditioning for All-Suburban and All-State. Am I preparing them well enough? Are they learning to appreciate and listen to music, and not just to play in tune? Will music continue to be a part of their lives after I'm done teaching them? I hope so. It's exciting to think about.

Vibrato Analysis and Wah-Wah Tubes

I've been working on a piece that I'm very excited about. It's called "Stream Flows" and is by American composer Bright Sheng. I first heard Sheng's music at a degree recital in grad school, and I love the way he integrates influences of Chinese classical music with his own energetic style. "Stream Flows" is a piece for solo viola, originally for solo violin. The title of the piece comes from a popular folk song from Southern China. Here are the lyrics in an English translation:


The rising moon shines brightly,
it reminds me of my love in the mountains.

Like the moon, you walk in the sky,
as the crystal stream flows down the mountain.

A clear breeze blows up the hill.
My love, do you hear I am calling you?

 

 

On the dedication page of the score, the composer writes that the viola "should evoke the timbre and tone quality of a female folk singer." Cool!, I thought...what the heck does that mean? A lot of the time we talk about how the viola is supposed to emulate the human voice, but it's usually a pretty general remark. Since Chinese folk singers use different vocal technique than Western Opera or Art song singers I'm more familiar with, I've been doing a bit of research to try and get a feel for the style. From what I've found so far, Chinese folk singers generally use the falsetto voice quite a bit more, lending a brightness to the tone. Brightness is not something violists usually go for (we could have just played the violin, after all), but I'm excited to see if I can get that part of the tonal spectrum.

 

One of the ways I analyzed the vocal style was that I took a recording of the song, actually this one.  Then I used Audacity to slow it down to half-tempo, so I could easily clock the vibrato. I got that idea from David Finckel's extensive and awesome talks on vibrato. His blog, Cello Talks, is my new nerdy obsession. He has a video where he clocks the vibrato in "Du bist die Ruh", sung by Dietrich Fischer-Deskau and talks about developing variety in vibrato like a singer. It makes a lot of sense.

 

I clocked the vibrato on certain long notes at different parts of the phrase, writing down the width and speed, and if either of those changed on the note. After practicing those vibrato speeds and widths on the viola, I eventually played along with the recording at full speed, using a practice mute so I could really hear if the vibrato was lining up. The whole process including the sound editing took about 30 minutes, I feel like I really started to hear the vibrato use differently, even at full tempo, and it made me much more mindful of what I was doing. It might seem very mechanical, but it's actually a fun voyage of discovery and I'm excited to see if I can get a wider range of artistic tools and explore the different sounds the viola can make. My next step is to bother a Mandarin Chinese speaker to find out which word goes with which note in the melody. That really helped me when phrasing the two Brahms songs with Alto.

 

 

Speaking of experimentation, Juri's recital was on Wednesday was great! The string trio I played on was second on the program, so I got to listen to all the other pieces. My personal favorite is called "Wah", and is written for two percussionists playing Wah-Wah tubes, a rarely used portable percussion instrument. I'd never seen a Wah-Wah tube, but I kind of want one now. The video below gives an idea of the sound, but obviously they're more resonant in person, especially in a live hall.

 

 

 

If I had to describe it in one word, it would be "playful". It reminds me of the random metallic hollow sounds of the old metal playground equipment I remember from childhood. I've always enjoyed percussion pieces because the sounds can be so complex and unexpected. I'd like to get one...just for around the house. You know, evenings on the couch with the Wah-Wah tube and Doctor Who. I wonder what Mooch would think of it. I mean, I'm sure she'd prefer it to the viola.

 

I'm still trying to figure out Mooch's musical tastes. She seems to like Bach and Mozart and doesn't like anything with strong brass parts (she didn't sit with us for Das Rheingold). Here is Mooch as I'm watching a YouTube video of Don Quixote.

 

Mooch does not like this. Not one little bit.

 

I'm hoping to eventually bring Mooch around to the viola. She hates it more than the vacuum right now. I could try putting her food bowl in my practice space, but I'm pretty sure she would just go on hunger strike.

 

This Saturday I'm driving out to catch the last day of the American String Teachers' Association convention in my old hometown of Louisville. I'm pretty excited and I'm sure I'll be writing all about it soon.

 

The Good-Enough Performance and New Music for Viola

I'm in the midst of a fairly crazy week. Over 9 days I will have had one major audition, 5 rehearsals for various chamber music projects, and two concerts. Plus my normal teaching load. Life of a freelancer.

I took an audition last Tuesday. Felt OK about how I played and I think I know which areas need improvement, and I did much better with the audition jitters and countering negative self-talk. I really focused on tapering my practicing and stretching more and sleeping 8-9 hours a night, which felt AMAZING. It's easy with these things to get obsessive and end up burned out before the main event, but I managed to save my energy which really helped. Everyone in my round got cut, which I had pretty much expected. Apparently everyone from the entire first 8-hour DAY of two days of prelims got cut, so I don't know if they will actually end up hiring anyone. There were probably 100 of us over two days, and it's competitive.

 It's frustrating that non-musicians (and even some musicians who haven't taken big auditions) don't get how difficult it is to land an orchestra job. All the other people in the round who were cut also went to major conservatories and name-brand summer festivals and many of them have positions in smaller orchestras already. When you're at that level, it really turns into minutiae. I'm not saying it's not a fair process. I'm sure I was cut for a good reason, and I can think of some ways I can improve for the next go-around, if there is one, but it can be somewhat frustrating for everyone involved. I've won several auditions for professional regional orchestras, which I which only had 12-20 people involved, many of them younger students, and it just doesn't compare. Not that I'm not proud of winning those, but the jump from per-service orchestras to salaried positions is pretty huge. I've heard figures of people taking an average of 20 auditions before landing their first job. Oy. I'm glad I'm not on the "audition circuit" where this is all I'm doing. There are plenty of folks who just fly from one orchestra audition to another all year, hoping one will work out. Anyway, after the audition I treated myself to a little bit of sitting around before teaching so I finally watched the first Hunger Games movie. Puts the whole audition process in perspective, does it not ;-)? Didn't like it as much as the book of course (who does?) but I thought they did a good job and I look forward to seeing the next one when it's out on Netflix.

Concert was in the recital hall at the Lovejoy library.
Perfect name: when I think of libraries,
I think of love and joy!

Friday night I played Loeffler's "Two Rhapsodies" on the SIUE faculty recital with my friends Kate on oboe and Kris on piano. We played the same piece on a program in November, and I love love love it. Check it out if you haven't already. By the time of the concert I was tired. Truly just exhausted, under-focused and dangerously bordering on apathetic, but I did my best under the circumstances and I think it was fine in the wash. I've been working a lot on "giving 95%" in concert. I'm not saying that I don't practice my very hardest or concentrate fully in performance, but, let's face it, when it comes time to play, the notes are either in the muscle memory or they are not. I've compromised several performances in the past (mostly in college) by psyching myself out trying to get that last 5% to make it perfect, not enjoying what I had accomplished and getting tense in the process. On the flip side, even though I was tired for this last concert, I was able to relax and trust the work I had consistently put into the piece over months. I got this idea of "giving 95%" from here and here.


This Wednesday I'm playing on Juri Seo's faculty composition recital at WashU. Juri is great to work with. She bought us pizza for our rehearsal last week. And I really love her piece! There's a movement that sounds like canaries! Cool. And, not to brag or anything, but I, ahem, got a little dedication.



I love the font Juri uses for her scores.

I really hope Juri writes a full-length viola piece sometime. I'd just like to mention that, since we don't have as much standard repertoire as violin or cello, new music has a much greater chance of making into our performing canon. Just saying, all you composers out there. If you pull a Shostakovich sonata-level piece, you could be in every college studio class in America in under 20 years. It's like a strategic investment, composing for viola.


Also working on some quartet stuff for a concert later in March and I need to praa-ctiiiice. All the notes all the notes. But I'm psyched for our next concert. We are generating a lot of possible concerts for next year, which is exciting. The end of this year is getting kind of crazy, but we're learning some beautiful repertoire. I'm also learning a new solo piece for May, which I'll blog about later, but it's very pretty... and very high up the fingerboard....but pretty!