Busy vs. Productive

I am so unreasonably overjoyed about the weather. Around 80 degrees is pretty much perfect for me. I know many people call that "too hot", but for this Kentucky girl, the ideal room temperature point is where the air is giving me a humidity-filled hug.

Last weekend we took advantage and walked around Forest Park for a few hours, which was just exactly what I needed after a long week. Both the hubs and I are trying to be more intentional about setting aside "downtime" so we don't turn into cranky, caffeine-addled zombies. I think it's tough sometimes being a musician because we generally blur the line between work and lifestyle and fun. I generally look forward to practicing and I have been known to make viola arrangements for my students for fun, but I think it's still important to set aside "off-the-clock" time, to step off the hamster wheel of productivity for a while and recharge. And just about nothing is better than spending some time outdoors looking at pretty nature-y things.

I've been thinking a bit about my evolving work process lately. Back in college, and now in my moments of poor judgement, I would follow this work pattern, which I'll call the binge-and-purge model:

1. Work, study, and practice every waking moment, including during meals, with pretty much no breaks ever.

2. Feel unreasonably guilty when I inevitably waste time on Facebook or zone out.

3. Gradually begin to resent work.

4. Feel guilty about resenting work.

5. Work, study, practice more.

6. Eventually collapse into a coma-like state, only to be revived by 10 hours of sleep, a pint of Ben & Jerry's, and a Doctor Who Marathon.

OK, I'm exaggerating on that last one. Kind of. You see, I was using the binge and purge method of productivity. A similar, funnier example, from Hyperbole and a Half. I feel that the world encourages this model. How many times have we all been on Facebook and been greeted with the following status update:

"Coffee, practice, coach some students on their amazing and life-changing chamber music rehearsal, eat lunch in my car while on the way to a gig, more practice, teach all the students, playing a concert tonight. #blessed!"

I get exhausted just reading these things. Sure, I often have days like this and it can be fun doing a lot of things, but those aren't necessarily my most productive days. Sometimes I get more quality work done if I'm not worrying about whether I will have time to eat dinner.

Now I'm working more on this model:

1. Practice, teach, work, etc. Look logically at each day to figure out how I can get my optimal practice time in and fulfill my various obligations. Prioritize and try not to flip out if I don't get everything done on my to-do list. 

2. Look ahead to when I will have an opportunity to take some downtime, which is sometimes on the weekend, sometimes not, if I have a lot of gigs.

3. Plan a fun activity for when I'm done with the work. For example: on Saturday I will be done with my big practice tasks and boring e-mail tasks, and I will go to the library, take a walk, visit a museum, catch up with a friend, etc. Thus even if I'm having a tough week, there is a "light at the end of the tunnel", so to speak. 

4. Once I've taken, say a few hours or an afternoon off, I feel regenerated and refreshed, and excited to get back to work again.

I think of it like budgeting. On my budget, I get certain amount of discretionary income per month. If I don't blow it on lattes at the Starbucks located unfairly close to my my teaching studio, I can feel OK spending money on a CD or book I've been coveting. Similarly, if I keep my head down and work, I can "spend" my relaxation time however I want, guilt-free!

I need lots of reminders.

OK, this new system probably seems rather obvious to most people, but I find it's easier to say than to implement. There's always just "one more thing" as well as the nagging existential grief of not wanting to waste one's life with laziness and frivolity. It takes an especially type-A person to worry that an afternoon walk in the park is a slippery slope to personal and professional failure. But I'm working on it.

Tuesday is the new Saturday

I slept in until 10am this morning and it was amazing. I really never sleep in that late unless I'm sick, so I think the reason must have been the odd hours I've been working lately, coupled with the fact that it's approaching the end of the school semester. I've been trying to eat right and work out, which helps a LOT. Mooch is very encouraging of my wellness efforts.

Yes, she did lie there, two feet away from me the entire time I worked out.

I have a lot of gigs this month. This doesn't happen to me all that often, so I'm kind of excited that it seems I'm getting my name out there a bit, since I'm still pretty new into town. Between now and the middle of June, I have two concerts with the Illumine Ensemble, one string quartet concert, four concerts at the Fringe festival, and a wedding, for which I'm the contractor. Oy, it seems much worse once I actually write it down. I'm very grateful though, especially because all the music is good and it's not all weddings. If you haven't watched this video before, I believe it aptly sums up how I feel about people's choice of music for their weddings.


We played the first of the Illumine Ensemble concerts last week and it actually went even better than I expected. We were at the Missouri History Museum, and had created a show that went along with the museum's STL 250 exhibit. I was just super relieved that my PowerPoint went well. I find it pretty funny that I seem to be the most tech-savvy of our group (even though I really don't understand Windows 8). We're doing another show this Saturday at the Tavern.


 In an interesting twist, as I played my solo piece, there was an eccentric, possibly mentally unstable (?) person seated in the front row who did an interpretive dance in her seat the entire time I was playing. She apparently has some kind of record in Illinois for slashing people's tires, but seemed innocuous enough during the concert. Rather than being distracted or annoyed, I surprisingly found it to be kind of fun. I could see her in my peripheral vision, and it was interesting to see how she flapped her arms about in different parts of the piece, like the visualizer on iTunes. I think I've gotten better at rolling with the punches in performances. The oboist in our group actually knew her from other gigs she has done, and this woman apparently has the nickname "Dance of Life". I did a search and immediately found she has over 2,000 videos on YouTube, so has apparently been even busier than I have.

This past Sunday, I played a Schubert Mass on very short notice for a UCC church in Webster Groves. The choir and soloists sounded great, although the whole experience was a bit confusing. You see, when I've played masses before, it's in a Mass, and we play the Mass parts, you know, to go along with the Mass. But since this was a non-liturgical church, we just kind of played the whole thing in one go after the sermon and had awkward page turns. Also, at the very beginning of the service, it's their tradition to pass around these hand chime things and "ring into worship" (as their priest said), and since I didn't know this, and since the chimes were, let's say, less than diatonic, I turned to the second violinist at this point and said "Is that the tornado alert?" Oops, not very tactful, Eliana. The church folks were very friendly, even though it was clear I was being paid to be there, and I got some free and very good coffee.


I'm already thinking ahead to Sunday, when I will have one extra concert checked off of my list and actually have a full day off! How will I spend it? What wild and crazy things will I do? Last weekend, I finished sewing my very first skirt. Kind of weird fabric that I got for $3 a yard, but I think it fits pretty well. I'm going to do a much simpler project next. I don't even really like pencil skirts, but this was part of my craftsy.com class, and I learned a bunch of helpful skills by making it.

Summer Reading

I have many friends and colleagues who work in academia or are grad students, and I keep seeing these kinds of posts: "Only two papers left to grade before sweet freedom!" "Just need to make it to the end of the week, then I'm done!" "One class and a final before vacation!" Now I am happy for these people... deep inside ... I promise. I remember well the bleary-eyed, semi-comatose state I was in by the end of the semester, when everything in my life had somehow conspired to be due on exactly the same day. I get it.

But you see friends, my husband just finished grading his finals, and he won't teach another class until the end of August. I, on the other hand, have three weeks left, after which I have a week of make-up lessons, and then am pretty much back into my normal schedule, minus two students. Needless to say, I sometimes get a bit jealous of my friends who are on the academic schedule and either have months of time on their hands or are off to some picturesque summer festival, but when I pause to really consider, I wouldn't want the whole summer off. A couple of weeks and I'm desperate for a routine again. The hubs is staving off his own vacation restlessness by volunteering at the Animal Protective Association, the shelter where we got our wonderful cat, Mooch. Nothing takes the edge off trying to publish like visiting the puppy room.

So, I'm in the midst of planning for my student's final recitals, doing a lot of paperwork and admin-type stuff, and general multi-tasking that I won't bore you with. I've lately found myself in constant state of hyper-vigilance over all the stuff I have to do, and last night I had a nightmare that a bunch of people ate my pie (truly scary stuff). To keep myself happy and productive, I've been focusing on the most exciting part of the summer, which is, always and forever, my summer reading list. This year, I'm getting organized about it and anytime I see a book in a store or in the library that looks good, I snap a picture on my iPhone, and load it into Evernote. Did you know that Evernote can turn your photos into notes right in the app? I should have Evernote sponsor this blog, seriously.

Here are just a few of the books I'm interested in, snapped creepily at my local bookstores:

Some of these books, like Musicophilia, people have been telling me to read for years, and I haven't gotten around to it. Some were recommended on NPR, and I believe the Jim Henson biography needs no explanation, if you know how much I love the Muppets.

You may have noticed that they're all non-fiction. The hubs teases me that he's a fiction boy and he married a non-fiction girl. What am I reading now?
Goedel, Escher, Bach, a book about number theory, philosophy, and well, Bach. What did I just finish reading? The Confidence Gap, which seeks to understand the difference in confidence levels among women and men.


I don't know why I'm more drawn to non-fiction than fiction. I've tried fiction, and have loved many novels that I have read, but current events, popular science, and sociology just always catches my eye. I like learning about the world and stuff. I like reading stories that I know are basically factually accurate. I used to worry that my proclivity for realism made me dull or unimaginative, but now I figure, Hey, teaching 7 year old and playing the viola all day, I use my imagination all the time. Maybe in reading we escape into what is not situation normal for us.

So, my list stands at around 20 so far. Have I left anything out? Do you have any novels or short stories you think I might actually be interested in?

All The Feels

Wow, it has been a pretty eventful couple of weeks. Today is Derby Day! I'm from Louisville, Kentucky, so I grew up celebrating the derby as an official holiday. I believe we got Oaks day (the race of the female horses the Friday before derby) off from school, and I have fond memories of the chow wagons, the hats, and people turning into gambling and horse behavior experts overnight (*cough). On Derby day I get the uncontrollable urge to make a Derby pie, so that's what I'm doing today. Fun fact: the title "Derby Pie" is proprietary to this one baking company in Kentucky whose name escapes me, so if you see recipes for it elsewhere, it's referred to as "Kentucky Pecan Pie", "Race Day Pie", etc., but it's the same beautiful concoction of chocolate chips, pecans, and, of course, bourbon. If you would like to experience happiness, click here.

Last week my parents visited us in St. Louis, which was fun. And it happened to be a great time for me to cut back on practicing a bit because I was a total tree-pollen-histamine-zombie. I park on the street and have had to use the windshield wipers to get the yellow powder off my car every morning, so my allergies were going berserk last week, and I would wake every morning around 5:30am, when the pollen bloom tends to happen. We tried to show them our favorite places in St. Louis so far. I also ate my first cannoli EVER (I got diagnosed with celiac before I had tried one). There is an awesome bakery in the Delmar Loop that has them.

That's my mom with her GF Cannoli! They are really good, she just hates having her picture taken.

This week, I've been practicing for a gig coming up on Thursday at the Missouri History Museum and the following Saturday at the Tavern of Fine Arts. We are playing an interesting concert which ties in music with 250 years of St. Louis history. I'm playing Bright Sheng's "Stream Flows", AKA "Concert Etude in the Extreme Upper Register". OK, it's not really called that, but it should be.

I'm also continuing to work on the new Britten Suite, which has become my fun project lately. Each of the movements has a very specific character and complex variations within that character and no piano part to play off of. I find that I like to be very specific when I'm trying to decide what a piece is about. "Happy" or "Sad" doesn't cut it for me, so I found this handy list from a psychologist's website.

I don't think I've ever played a piece of music that I would describe as "lecherous" or "hungry", but a lot of the words help me get there. I've been thinking a lot lately about emotion in music. I can be very analysis-minded and focused on technique and one of the tricky things in music performance is to get beyond all that to figure out what the music is trying to express. It seems like there's an endless checklist of stuff to clean up in the actual playing, but it should, ultimately serve to tell a story or express a feeling or a picture.

My husband came up with a term that I like to use to describe a common ailment among classical musicians: music jocks. Music jocks all about fast, clean, and in tune. Now, don't get me wrong, those are all crucially important. But, I've been in chamber music rehearsals with these types of folks where we get everything lined up rhythmically, tune the chords like crazy (you have to do that a lot in string playing), and then they're like "Well, it sounds good. Maybe let's do some dynamics." But that's not musically satisfying. My teacher at Eastman used to say "In tune and in time. That's the beginning. Of course you have to have that. What do you do with the music then? That's what makes for a great performer."

Speaking of performances, I went to a fantastic recital last night at the Tavern of Fine Arts. The singer is actually a branch coordinator at the school I teach at on. I love voice recitals and I'm always impressed with how open and emotionally vulnerable singers are. I took voice lessons at Eastman for free for a semester as part of a pedagogy class and it was horrifying. I had to sing. In front of people. About feelings. And I didn't get to hide behind my viola. Singers often talk openly about the feelings and stories behind the songs they are singing, and don't seem to feel awkward about expressing extreme emotion on stage. It's part of their job, after all. Now, I'm not suggest that I do the kind of emoting that singers have to do, but it might be a good mindset to explore, even if internally.

Also at the recital, I got a free bookmark, which I'm excited about, because it has the names of the songs she did, so I can go look up the ones I didn't know before. Hooray!

Spring Things

I'm looking forward to Easter candy, which I've squirreled away for Sunday so I don't raid it now. And I'm looking forward to the weather getting warmer again. There were snow flurries while I was teaching on Monday and I died a little inside. Luckily we took advantage of the high of 75 or whatever it was last weekend, and went to the Botanical Gardens for the first time with our friends Juri and Ben from WashU. We definitely will be going back. Of course, the musicians had to stop by and play with the bell sculpture.

This has been/is continuing to be/will be a slightly crazy week. Not super crazy, just slightly crazy. And as a freelancer, whenever this tends to happen, I can hear this little voice, like a demonic Tinkerbell saying "You did this to yourseeeelf, Eliana..." I'm playing for two Easter Masses this weekend (one of which is the vigil that lasts 2+ hours), because our church's organist is impossible to say no to, and very sweet.

But, I got an exciting delivery in the mail on Monday: the new sheet music of Britten's 3 suites for solo cello arranged for viola by Nobuko Imai. I'm thinking of sending in a tape for a competition where this is a required piece, because, hey why not? Also, since I'm not interested in taking more auditions for a while, this will be a good goal. I'm very goal-centric. Maybe it's because I'm super-type A, but if I don't have any pressing obligations coming up, I start to experience a lingering sense of enui, which, if I'm really not busy, can spiral into a minor existential crisis. Those are both links to cat videos, by the way.

I have a system for practicing music that I have to say has enabled me to calm down a bit and enjoy the process, while feeling more prepared. I'm sharing because I'm curious what system others use to learn music, and I'm constantly trying to fine-tune and improve my productivity. I find practice kind of fascinating, as you can tell.

For the Britten, I had to wait 10 days for the part to arrive in the mail, since it's very new (November 2013) and only being printed in the U.K. Since I didn't have access to a part, I spent a lot of time that week listening to the piece every day. I even made a few "listening maps" because it helped me to listen actively and figure out the structure away from the score. Knowing that I am planing for a recital in September, I planned backwards starting in September and figured out when I would need to have each part of the pieces ready. I'm pretty detailed, so that took about an hour. Since I've gotten the part, this week is devoted to the unending tedium of deciding on fingerings.  Next week, I will make a square bracket around all the hardest parts, and practice those first, with the goal being that I make a ton of decisions, mark out the bow distribution, figure out the shifts, link notes, etc. I basically want nothing to be vague or left to chance. Even if I end up making a lot of changes, I think this is still a better approach, because I spend less time in that wishy-washy uncommitted stage.

For a piece this length, it will take a couple of weeks to memorize the square brackets, but after that I will focus on the circle brackets, the second-hardest parts. After that, the remaining parts will be pretty much sight-readable. The more fun part of this process, is I get to decide on structure, phrasing, and musical meaning, which I also try to settle on early. Here is a cool video from CelloBello about the importance of figuring out what the music is saying early on.

The beginning stages of learning a new piece are always a little frustrating, but I'm super excited about this piece. I love stealing repertoire from the cello and violin. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of the viola repertoire, and it just keeps getting better with new composers writing for it. Thinking of playing this piece by Shulamit Ran sometime. But some of our pieces are...eh? Hoffmeister Concerto, Stamitz Concerto, some other pieces I could do without. We're lucky that we can easily transpose pieces both from the violin and the cello!