hella frisch

new blog address

2009-09-13T13:07:00.001-06:00

I'm moving my blog activity to a new address:

http://hellafrisch.wordpress.com

Please come check out the new site and tell me what you think!

2009-06-14T21:10:00.002-06:00

I'm not quite back from the ISB convention yet (various flight delays have marooned me in Denver, for the moment), but I think I'm slowly coming down from the 6 days of bass insanity. Crunching the numbers, I believe I saw:

25 classical recitals (including 9 that were entirely contemporary music)
7 jazz concerts
9 solo competition performances, and 5 orchestra competition auditions
5 lecture/demonstrations
3 masterclasses

That's probably twice as many bass recitals as I saw in my entire 6 years of college and grad school. Who's counting, though?

hella frisch at the ISB

2009-06-09T06:42:00.001-06:00

I've been posting some reports and commentary from the ISB convention at Penn State this week. Please check it out at my satellite site, here.

redundancy

2009-04-16T16:47:00.007-06:00

I'm not sure if I had heard the expression "to make someone redundant" before a few weeks ago. Here is an example from the British show "The Office":

"Don't make me redundant, please. I've changed my mind, I don't want redundancy, I don't want that. And I haven't signed anything, so..." As funny and as tragic as that scene is, I think we've all known someone who has been "made redundant" recently, without any choice (except perhaps whether they'll stay through the party on Friday or not.)

As a (thankfully still employed) member of an orchestra string section, I think I'm a bit redundant to begin with. That's part of our job description, in fact: most of the time I play the same part as 5 other people, and the closer we get to duplicating the same rendition, the better we've done our job. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions and reasons why six bass players is the bare minimum for an orchestra of the CPO's size. Still, it makes me a bit leery that some human resource manager is going to walk into a rehearsal one day, look at all the people doing the same work, and decide to make us redundant permanently.

This actually happened while I was with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony's training orchestra. It was in 2001, right after the "dot com bubble" had burst, and the administration decided that all the string sections would be cut down. The bass section went from 8 to 6, while the violin sections were each reduced by a couple of stands. It happened between seasons, so no one had to be taken into the little room like David Brent -- nevertheless, it was a blow to everyone's morale, and to the orchestra's quality.

The euphemism in the orchestra is "reduction", when some are asked not to play. Normally, this will only happen in cases of severe balance problems. More players will not necessarily make the orchestra sound louder, since we can play just about inaudibly if asked. If a solo voice or instrumentalist is consistently being drowned out, though, it's silly to have everyone on stage playing at a whisper. And sometimes, there is just not enough rehearsal time to make all of the necessary adjustments, and so the orchestra is reduced as a time-saving measure.

I think what's lost is pretty significant -- the depth and character of an orchestra is not the same with half the players, even if they play brilliantly. It's much easier for a singer to project over a reduced orchestra, but the cushion of sound that supports the voice is made thinner, more meager sounding. The sound of many players at their ultimate limit of softness is one of the wonders of an orchestra, an effect just as thrilling as an orchestra playing at its maximum dynamic. When I'm reduced off an aria, I often find myself thinking what only David Brent would have the courage to say: "Please, don't make me redundant!"

classical music's brave, hip new world

2009-04-13T16:56:00.007-06:00

Greg Sandow has seen the future of classical music, and it's a sophisticated mishmash of "baroque/techno/grime/classical/avant-garde," playing at trendy clubs. He writes about it in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

So there I was not long ago at Le Poisson Rouge, a New York club, for a classical-music show, and the guy in the DJ booth was telling all of us to "talk and clap when you like. And go to the bar if you get bored."

He goes on to describe the audience, the atmosphere, and the music: "everything was strong and savvy, and much of it was purely classical, inhabiting indie pop territory in its DNA without showing any signs of that externally. A lot of it was gently dissonant, and sometimes roughly dissonant, often surprising, always cogent and thoughtful." It seems to have been a brilliant success, marred only by the excessive length, over three hours. If the New York Phil or Carnegie Hall would just loosen up and hold this type of show, Sandow speculates, they "might attract 1,000 newcomers" to a concert of obscure experimental music.

It's an exciting idea, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time that classical music has ridden the coat-tails of a popular music scene to achieve its own goals. At the New World Symphony, I frequently shared a stand (and briefly, an apartment wall) with Matt W., a bass player who was also a club DJ. I would joke that in 20 years, while most of us would be struggling to make ends meet with low-paying orchestra jobs, Matt would be principal DJ with the New York Philharmonic, spinning remixes every night of Mahler symphonies and Debussy tone poems.

For now though, I'm still a bit nonplussed by the trend. This might be because I personally don't go to clubs, and so the etiquette there -- the protocol of what to do and say, how to behave, when to applaud or shout or just chill -- is as mystifying to me as a symphony concert for the uninitiated. Even if I am curious about the music and the performers, I'd rather hear them in a setting where I'm comfortable.

Being told to talk, clap, or grab a drink if it suits my mood, seems like too many choices for me -- I'd rather just enjoy the music, without all the social dimensions. That would seem to be the one choice you're not given at these concerts, since other audience members are sure to char, mill around, or maybe even to "get rowdy" as one performer instructed the crowd.

Or are they? Sandow describes another concert at the same club: "Earlier this year I heard Messiaen's austere Quartet for the End of Time on a bill with two ambient electronic pop acts. The crowd -- many of whom wouldn't even have known who Messiaen was -- sat in rapt silence, and roared their approval at the end." That sounds a lot like the classical music audiences I'm used to at conventional, un-hip classical chamber music concerts: respectful, attentive, but quite enthusiastic. Maybe as performers, we get the audiences we deserve -- and as audiences, we get the musical performance we deserve, no matter how hip the setting and scene.

Read Greg Sandow's article here: "A Young, Hip, Classical Crowd"

tilting at bass mutes

2009-03-20T12:54:00.007-06:00

This weekend the CPO performs Don Quixote, the Strauss tone poem that is really more like a tone-novel. It's hard to think of another piece of symphonic music that ties together so many stories, characters, and conversations -- all while maintaining a fairly straightforward theme and variations structure, though with some odd twists.

Among the odd things in the bass part of Don Quixote is the indication on page 1 that the section should put on mutes. The mutes remain on through two pages of loud, melodic bass lines, covering a wide register. You would think he made a mistake, as we're asked to play fff (basically as loud as humanly possible), but he repeats the instruction, two more times: mit dampfer, meaning keep the mutes on!

Unlike brass mutes, bass mutes often won't cut the sound a great deal. What they do is to alter and impede the vibrations of the bridge, and so they have a greater effect on the color of the instrument. When played softly, as they most commonly are, mutes give the bass a somewhat subdued, veiled tone. When a bass is played loudly with a mute, however, there's an almost comical quality of struggle and tension, like a duck squawking madly. During loud playing, the vibration of the bridge may actually dislodge a wood mute and send it flying off the instrument. More often, we use rubber mutes which stay on the bridge a little better, but won't change the sound as much.

I think that Strauss was looking for that quality of hapless squawking, the orchestrational equivalent of tilting at windmills -- and so I'm a bit disappointed when we ignore the mute indication and just play it normally. Sure, it's a strange and senseless think to demand, and only the most perceptive and informed listeners will notice the difference -- and yet it's a brilliant way of depicting a strange, senseless person who makes a habit of struggling against inanimate objects. (Which would be a fairly accurate description of bass players in general...)

The concert tonight features a fantastic soloist, our own principal cellist Phil Hansen. Tickets may still be available, check out the CPO website for more information!

recital this Sunday

2009-03-04T21:28:00.004-07:00

I'm performing a recital this coming Sunday, which happens to also be International Women's Day and daylight savings time day. So if you decide to come, set your watches forward first, and try to bring some women with you!

Here's my poster:

and the program will be:

Duo no. 1 in G major, trans. for viola and double bass / Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

I. Allegro
II. Adagio
III. Rondo: Allegro

Megan Singer, viola; Matt Heller, double bass

Papageno Variations, for bass and piano after W.A. Mozart / Milton Barnes

Matt Heller, double bass; Cody Obst, piano

Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (Trout Quintet) / Franz Schubert

I. Allegro vivace
II. Andante
III. Scherzo: Presto
IV. Theme and variations: Andantino, Allegretto
V. Allegro giusto

Adriana Lebedovich, violin; Megan Singer, viola; Ingunn Benediktsson, cello; Matt Heller, double bass; Cody Obst, piano

armchair audition critic

2009-02-19T13:06:00.004-07:00

I seem to have abandoned my blog at just the moment when my main subject -- preparing and taking orchestral auditions -- may be on the verge of hipness. I'm referring, of course, to the YouTube Symphony Orchestra project, and the recent flurry of interest in the brave souls who decided to post their audition videos online.

One of them happens to be my friend, violinist Donovan Seidle. To watch Donovan's video, surf over to the YouTube Symphony audition site and then search for:

Navonod3542

I won't tell you how to vote, since the blogosphere is a democratic place, after all. However, if you do happen to vote for Donovan, and he gets chosen for the orchestra, there's a chance he might let me post an infamous recording of a contrabassoon audition -- I start to crack up just thinking about it, and so it would be a great thrill to have it here.

For me, watching YouTube auditions is fascinating and at the same time frustrating. There is such a variety of musicians, pieces, and recording conditions, at first I wasn't sure how I would begin to judge them. It quickly becomes easy to eliminate people, however, either for poor intonation, or for flawed rhythm. Even in these finalist videos, most I watched had noticeable rhythmic problems -- dotted rhythms were swung, long notes were shortened, etc.

It seems as though these problems would be easy to fix. If I wanted to be a prick, I could message those people right now, point out the problems, and improve their audition chances immeasurably. If someone doesn't notice it themselves though, I wonder if anything I can say will help them much. Oh well.

2008-12-09T17:31:00.003-07:00

Tonight's CPO concert features Natalie MacMaster, who is noticeably pregnant but still dancing and fiddling up a storm. The program features several arrangements of Cape Breton fiddling tunes, with a helping of fruitcake on the side in the form of Rudolph, a Christmas medley, and the Londonderry Air, 'Danny Boy'.

I wasn't aware of just how big a scene fiddling is in Canada -- there are Irish bars here in Calgary where you can go hear traditional fiddlers jam every week, and several CPO violinists are experienced fiddlers as well. The bass parts to these tunes can be spectacularly boring, with the same three-chord progression repeated dozens of times, but the better arrangements will usually have some clever variations and a nifty modulation or two. This morning's rehearsal was largely spent getting the balance and levels right, since fiddling over a live orchestra takes a certain degree of amplification.

schedule for Dec. 8 - 14

2008-12-08T13:54:00.002-07:00

This week, the CPO delivers crossover holiday cheer with celtic fiddler Natalie MacMaster, singer Steve Bell, and the Traditional Christmas program; while the Bach Society presents an Advent Concert of Bach (Wilhelm Friedemann, also Johann Sebastian), Telemann, and Schütz. See below for details, and follow the links for ticket info.

Christmas with Natalie MacMaster
Pierre Simard, conductor
Natalie MacMaster, fiddle

Tuesday, December 9th at 8 pm
Jack Singer Concert Hall

Steve Bell's Christmas
Rei Hotoda, conductor
Steve Bell, vocalist

Wednesday, December 10th at 8 pm
Jack Singer Concert Hall

A Traditional Christmas
Pierre Simard, conductor
Allan Monk, baritone
Calgary Girls Choir

Friday, December 12th at 7 pm
Saturday, December 13th at 2 pm and 7 pm
Grace Presbyterian Church

Advent Concert
Calgary Bach Festival Society Chorus and Orchestra
Terry Riley, conductor

Mystery Sonata No. 1 "Annunciation" - Heinrich von Biber
Sei gegrüsset, Maria (Ave Maria) - Heinrich Schütz
Magnificat in G - Georg Phillip Telemann
Adagio and Fugue in D Minor, Fk 65 - Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Cantata BWV 36 "Schwingt freudig euch empor" - Johann Sebastian Bach

Sunday, December 14th at 3 pm
Scarboro United Church

Monday, Dec. 8
7:30-10 pm rehearsal: Bach Society

Tuesday, Dec. 9
10-12:30 rehearsal: Natalie MacMaster
8 pm concert: Christmas with Natalie MacMaster

Wednesday, Dec. 10
10:30-1 rehearsal: Steve Bell
8 pm concert: Steve Bell's Christmas

Thursday, Dec. 11
7-9:30 pm rehearsal: Traditional Christmas

Friday, Dec. 12
10-12:30 rehearsal: Traditional Christmas
7 pm concert: Traditional Christmas

Saturday, Dec. 13
9-12 rehearsal: Bach Society Advent Concert
2 pm concert: Traditional Christmas
7 pm concert: Traditional Christmas

Sunday, Dec. 14
3 pm concert: Bach Society Advent Concert

schedule for Nov. 24-30

2008-11-24T14:11:00.002-07:00

The Ultimate Beethoven Festival
Roberto Minczuk, conductor

Symphony #4 and "The Fifth"

Symphony no. 4 in B-flat major, op. 60
Symphony no. 5 in C minor, op. 67

Thursday, Nov. 27 at 8 pm
Jack Singer Concert Hall

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Symphony #6 and "The Pastoral"

Symphony no. 6 in F major "Pastoral", op. 68
Symphony no. 7 in A major, op. 82

Friday, Nov. 28 at 8 pm
Jack Singer Concert Hall

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Ode to Joy: Symphony #8 and #9

Symphony no. 8 in F major, op. 93
Symphony no. 9 in D minor, op. 125

Saturday, Nov. 29 at 8 pm
Jack Singer Concert Hall

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Calgary Bach Festival Society
Advent Concert
Terry Edwards, conductor

Heinrich Biber: Mystery Sonata No. 1 "Annunciation"
Heinrich Schuetz: Sei gegruesset, Maria (Ave Maria)
Georg Phillip Telemann: Magnificat in G
W. F. Bach: Adagio and Fugue in d minor, Fk65
J. S. Bach: Cantata BWV 36 "Schwingt freudig euch empor"

Sunday, Dec. 14 at 3 pm
Scarboro United Church

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Monday, Nov. 24
7:30-10 pm rehearsal (CBFS Advent Concert)

Tuesday, Nov. 25
10-12:30 rehearsal (Beethoven 5 and 6)
7:30-10 pm rehearsal (CBFS Advent Concert)

Wednesday, Nov. 26
10-12:30 rehearsal (Beethoven 5 and 8)
7-9 pm rehearsal (Beethoven 9)

Thursday, Nov. 27
10-12:30 rehearsal (Beethoven 5 and 4)
8 pm concert: Beethoven 4 and "The Fifth"

Friday, Nov. 28
10:30-1 rehearsal (Beethoven 6 and 7)
8 pm concert: Beethoven 7 and "The Pastoral"

Saturday, Nov. 29
10:30-1 rehearsal (Beethoven 8 and 9)
8 pm concert: Ode to Joy

if it bleeds, it leads

2008-11-20T16:52:00.003-07:00

An article in the Calgary Herald today, "Bleeding for Beethoven", includes some quotes from a phone interview I did with the reporter, Bob Clark:

For 31-year-old bass player Matt Heller, meditation will be part of the prescription.

"Think of the beginning of the Fifth Symphony. It's like never has there been a more strongly accented rest than that "Ba-Ba-Ba--Bum!"--where you have to feel that music so deeply in your body, in order to play it with the conviction it really deserves."

When I was talking to Bob on the phone, I did make a very emphatic eighth rest before saying "Ba-Ba-Ba--Bum!", though he doesn't seem to have transcribed that pause into the published quote. Oh, well.

The rest of the article is very amusing as well, especially Michael Hope's theories about Beethoven and psychotherapy:

"In terms of the physical preparation, the hardest thing about it is the fact that, well, Beethoven was a tormented guy," says Hope. "It was a pre-Freudian era before there was any kind of therapy, and he had to get all his frustrations and emotions out on the page--which has resulted in music that is really highly strung."

And that, in turn, Hope says, "is taxing for musicians, because it's passionate, and it's intense--all the time."

I suppose that music was an essential therapeutic tool, back in the pre-prozac era, along with lobotomies, literature, nature, rest, alcohol, leeches, and tight clothing, not necessarily in that order.

The print version of the article has another section with pictures and more quotes by musicians, myself included.

schedule for Nov. 17 - 23

2008-11-20T16:21:00.004-07:00

"The Ultimate Beethoven Festival"
Roberto Minczuk, conductor

Symphony #1 and the "Emperor"
Angela Cheng, piano

Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3, op. 72b
Beethoven: Symphony No. 1, op. 21, in C major
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5, op. 73, in E-flat major, "Emperor"

Thursday, Nov. 20 at 8 pm
Jack Singer Concert Hall

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Symphony No. 2 and the "Eroica"

Beethoven: Symphony No. 2, op. 36, in D major
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3, op. 55, in E-flat major

Friday, Nov. 21 at 8 pm
Jack Singer Concert Hall

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Carnival of the Animals
Mountain View Connection

Camille Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals

Sunday, Nov. 23 at 7:30 pm
Eckhardt-Gramatté Recital Hall, Rozsa Centre, University of Calgary

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Tuesday, Nov. 18
10-12:30 rehearsal: Beethoven 3, Beethoven 1, Leonore

Wednesday, Nov. 19
10-12:30 rehearsal: Beethoven 3, Leonore
2-4 rehearsal: Beethoven 1, Beethoven 2
8-9:30 rehearsal: Carnival of the Animals

Thursday, Nov. 20
10-12:30 rehearsal: "Emperor" concerto, Leonore, Beethoven 1
8 pm concert: Symphony #1 and the "Emperor"

Friday, Nov. 21
10:30-1 rehearsal: Beethoven 3, Beethoven 2
8 pm concert: Symphony #2 and the "Eroica"

Saturday, Nov. 22
10:30-1 rehearsal: Beethoven 4, Beethoven 7

Sunday, Nov. 23
2-4 dress rehearsal: Carnival of the Animals
7:30 concert: Carnival of the Animals

I'll write a separate post or two about the Beethoven festival so far. It's worth noting, though, that Tuesday, Nov. 18th was also the day of two CPO auditions: for principal trumpet and section cello. That was a very long day for audition candidates as well as committees -- the cello audition finished just after 9 pm, while the trumpet audition concluded at 10:30. Both auditions had a winner and some very competitive finalists, and we look forward to welcoming two new musicians into the orchestra very soon.

Joel Quarrington master class

2008-11-14T15:24:00.004-07:00

Before the National Arts Centre Orchestra's tour date in Calgary last Friday, bassist Joel Quarrington gave a master class at the University of Calgary School of Music. Three young bassists played for Joel: two of Charles Garrett's students at the U of C, and a 13-year-old student of Sheila Garrett.

Joel's approach to teaching, like his playing, is irreverent, inventive, and joyful. After the first student played the first movement of Hindemith's Sonata, he suggested that maybe she could have more fun with the bow -- a clever way to talk about technique without being pedantic about it. He demonstrated an exercise for starting notes distinctly, playing a scale with 4 notes hooked on each bow, and encouraged the student to play it with a solid core sound without pressing. Joel had his own bass there, a 17th-century Maggini, and the student's sound production seemed to improve just from hearing him play a few notes.

Since Joel plays German bow on a bass tuned in 5ths, it wasn't always easy to imitate his playing. He was very accomodating to the players' individual preferences, though, and tried to adjust his own technique to better match what they were trying to do. "Excuse my French bow," he said after playing some fast off-string strokes. He showed the first student, who was sitting on a high stool, how she could better access the upper register of the instrument, by sliding back on her stool and getting more weight over the fingerboard -- Joel's physique is completely different from hers, but she still seemed to find some benefit from the adjustment.

The second student was the 13-year-old, playing the first movement of the Dragonetti Concerto. Joel got him working on fast, fluid shifts and demonstrated the infamous shifting drill - I learned it as "vomit" - to improve accuracy. This raised some set-up issues again, and Joel discussed why his own preference is to sit on a stool for solo performances, while still showing the student how he could manage the shift better while standing.

With all three students, Joel emphasized the need for consistent scale and bowing studies. At one point, he noticed a stack of papers in a bookcase nearby -- the master class was held in a crowded little violin teaching studio room -- and found a sheet with various bowings attached, "like a ransom note" he said. He encouraged everyone to get a set of bowing variations like that one -- whether from an abandoned violin studio, or an actual bowing method -- and work on producing a quality sound with all sorts of articulations.

The last student played the first movement of Bottesini's 2nd concerto very impressively. Joel asked her if she had any issues she wanted to bring up -- she talked about off-string strokes, which again brought up scales and bowing variations. Joel helped her clean up the end of the cadenza, a dizzying whir of 16th notes.

week of Nov. 9 - 15

2008-11-10T20:54:00.009-07:00

Carnival in Prague
Simon Streatfeild, conductor
Cenek Vrba, violin

Dvořák: Carnival Overture, op. 92
Smetana: Ma Vlast: Vltava (The Moldau)
Smetana: The Bartered Bride: Three Dances
Smetana: Z Domoviny
Dvořák: Gypsy Songs: No. 4, Songs My Mother Taught Me
Dvořák: Humoresque
Suk: Meditation on the Old Bohemian Chorale Saint Wenceslas, op. 36
Dvořák: Symphonic Variations, op. 78

Saturday, November 15 at 8 pm
Jack Singer Concert Hall

for opera and education program info, click here

Tuesday, Nov. 11 (Remembrance Day)
10-12:30 am rehearsal (Carnival in Prague)

Wednesday, Nov 12
12:15-12:45 Lunch, Learn and Live
(discussion of 'Carnival in Prague' program with Pierre Simard and Simon Streatfeild)
7:30 performance: Calgary Opera's Faust

Thursday, Nov. 13
10:15 am performance: The Orchestra Games
1:15-3:45 pm rehearsal (Carnival in Prague)

Friday, Nov. 14
10-12:30 pm rehearsal (Carnival in Prague)
8 pm performance: Calgary Opera's Faust

Saturday, Nov. 15
10-11 am SMATS (Saturday Morning at the Symphony): "The Art of Strings"
11:05-1:35 pm open rehearsal (Carnival in Prague)
8 pm concert: Carnival in Prague

For our last program before a marathon Beethoven cycle, the CPO has one of our crazy Czech grab-bag concerts. I'm hoping people won't overlook this one, though, since it has some of the interesting music we'll play all year, especially the Dvořák Symphonic Variations. It sounds like Dvořák's take on the Brahms Haydn Variations -- a deceptively simple theme transformed into weird and wondrous new forms, then reconstituted for a stirring finale.

Last Friday's Tchaik 5 with the NACO gave a lot of people new respect for the excellent acoustics in Jack Singer Concert Hall -- with proportionally immense string and wind sections and a sold-out audience, it felt like the room was resonating at its true full capacity. Here's a picture of our bass section, 12 members strong, including the inimitable Joel Quarrington (more on him later!)

l to r: Matt Heller, Theo Chan, Trish Bereti-Reid, Marjolaine Fournier, Vincent Gendron, Sheila Garrett, Murielle Bruneau, Jeff White, Joel Quarrington, Hilda Cowie, Charles Garrett, Graeme Mudd (hidden)

discussing "Getting Musicians Involved"

2008-11-08T12:06:00.005-07:00

Adaptistration blogger Drew McManus wrote a post this week under the title "Getting Musicians Involved" which addresses concerns I raised last week, in a post on orchestra websites which offer "contact a musician" features.

Drew very thoroughly outlines the steps that management and website administrators could take, to make this a meaningful and useful feature to patrons, and not an unwelcome burden to musicians. I actually think it might empower some musicians to communicate with audience members.

It's worth reading Drew's post as well as its comments, which raise some other interesting questions about this idea. In matters of audience communication, I think, it's not a question of whether we need to do more, but how to do it well -- Drew provides some excellent answers, and as always a forum to discuss them.

unprecedented victories

2008-11-06T17:40:00.005-07:00

The CPO and Calgary Opera are opening a new production of Gounod's Faust this Saturday; this past Tuesday, we were in the orchestra pit at Jubilee Auditorium, about half-way through the 3rd act when news came that Barack Obama had won the presidential election. It actually came from Rob the violinist's cell phone, which was picking up a news website, and Jeff the bassist passed the message on to me.

It's difficult to really celebrate in the midst of playing a long French opera, but it was still an amazing moment. As much as I'd wished and hoped this would happen, it was such a validation to hear it become reality. Last night I watched both McCain's concession speech and Obama's victory speech, and I was impressed by both of them. However serious the problems we face in the US -- and I know they're incredibly serious -- for at least one wonderful day, nothing seemed insurmountable any more.

I haven't written much this week, since I started November with a short-lived attempt to write a novel for NaNoWriMo -- National Novel Writing Month -- and then quickly became too busy to even contemplate such a massive undertaking. It felt a bit like trying to run a marathon without any training, long, tiring, and increasingly painful. I have new respect for writers of fiction or any long form, which seems to involve a miraculous combination of imagination and discipline. Perhaps I'll try again next year, if I've written some pieces longer than a blog post by then. Everything seems impossible, I suppose, until you actually see it happen.

week of Nov. 2 - 8

2008-11-03T16:24:00.005-07:00

"The Orchestra Games"
an education concert for kids

Pierre Simard, conductor
Jan Lisiecki, piano
Jonathon Love, narrator

John Williams / arr. Riggio: Olympic Fanfare and Theme
Chopin: Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise, Op. 22
Gregory Smith: Orchestra Games

performances on Nov. 6 and 13 at 10:15 am
at Jack Singer Concert Hall

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East Meets West
National Arts Centre Orchestra
Pinchas Zukerman, conductor
Jon Kimura Parker, piano

Alexina Louie: Infinite Sky with Birds (NACO only)
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 23, in B-flat minor (NACO)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony no. 5, op. 64, in E minor (CPO and NACO)

performance on Friday, Nov. 7 at 8 pm
Jack Singer Concert Hall

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Faust, by Charles Gounod
Calgary Opera
Jean-Marie Zeitouni, conductor

all performances at Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium:
Saturday, Nov. 8 at 8 pm
Wednesday, Nov. 12 at 7:30 pm
and Friday, Nov. 14 at 8 pm

Sunday, Nov. 2
7-10:30 pm rehearsal (Faust)

Tuesday, Nov. 4
10-12 pm rehearsal (The Orchestra Games)
7-10:30 pm rehearsal (Faust)

Thursday, Nov. 6
10:15 am performance: The Orchestra Games
7-10:30 dress rehearsal (Faust)

Friday, Nov. 7
1-3 pm rehearsal (East Meets West)
8 pm concert (East Meets West)

Saturday, Nov. 8
8 pm performance: Calgary Opera's Faust

emotional precision and Fauré's Requiem

2008-10-31T16:03:00.006-06:00

Rehearsing Fauré's Requiem for this weekend's CPO program, guest conductor Joseph Flummerfelt repeatedly asked for more emotional precision: "You're just giving me a generic forte sound, folks. That's not enough -- you need to breathe with intention, and sing out the meaning of those words. You need to be crying out to the heavens -- you're begging for rest, begging for peace. That's what this music is about, and it's never been more relevant." (I'm paraphrasing, of course -- I don't actually memorize a whole speech by a conductor!)

It got me thinking about the nature of our profession, and how a large part of our job description is to invest those seemingly generic markings -- forte, allegro, legato, decrescendo -- with a very specific, emotional meaning. We have to do more than just data entry -- reading off those instructions and plunking down our fingers at the right moments -- we have to form a purpose and an intention behind every mark on the page, and re-enact those gestures in space and sound.

Whereas a stock analyst's job is to separate emotion from information, to parse out longing, panic, hope and disappointment and determine the objective value of a holding, ours is perhaps the opposite. We need to imagine the fear, joy, or disillusionment that inspired someone to compose these precise sounds, and then play them as though we felt those same emotions just as strongly.

Then again, perhaps a stock analyst needs some emotional insight as well; and I'm sure that as musicians we often need to step away from our emotions. Especially when those emotions override our ability to listen receptively and adjust appropriately to those around us. It's an incredible challenge to play with passion and sensitivity at the same time. In a piece like Fauré's Requiem, and the songs by Mahler and Strauss which make up the rest of tonight's program, that emotional sophistication is what separates a great performance from an average one.

Joe the Cellist

2008-10-30T16:16:00.010-06:00

I've been planning to write a "Joe the Orchestral Musician" post for a while, but last night Yo-Yo Ma beat me to it -- announcing on The Colbert Report that he was "Joe the Cellist":

for Canadians, watch the clip here

Colbert: How does it feel to be the #1 at something in the world?

Ma: Well, for people who watch Arthur, you know Mikey the 8-year old cellist? I'm a superstar, because I'm in his show. And so he probably thinks of me as -- "Joe the Cellist."

Colbert: Are enough candidates addressing the concerns of Joe the Cellist?

Ma: Well, you know, I think it could take a while.

That sounds like a side-step to me. I thought maybe I would pick up the subject and ask, what are some of Joe the Cellist's concerns?

arts funding (so he'll keep getting paid to play)
music education (so kids will keep wanting to take lessons)
safe and lively urban centers (so people will keep coming downtown to see his concerts)
affordable health care (in case he gets tendinitis)
public transportation and infrastructure (so he can make it to his gigs on time)
floors made of penetrable materials (so his endpin doesn't slip)

Those are just off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are others. On all of these issues, though, I prefer the solutions offered by Barack Obama. (Note: Obama hasn't yet proposed to install slip-proof floors everywhere, but perhaps in his second term.) That's why he has my support in this election. If any actual cellist (or Joe) wants to give your take, please feel free to comment!

And please visit Drew McManus' blog Adaptistration to watch more Stephen Colbert interviews and vote for your favorite classical music interviewee -- Yo-Yo, Alex Ross, or Lorin Maazel.

Drew's comment

2008-10-29T17:22:00.003-06:00

Drew McManus replied with a very thoughtful comment on my post about orchestra websites offering musician contact info. He also asks for more opinions and discussion on this issue. Please feel free to comment here, or visit Adaptistration and write to Drew directly. Thanks!

rating and writing to orchestras

2008-10-28T19:22:00.008-06:00

Drew McManus published a ranking of US and Canadian orchestra websites last week at his Adaptistration blog -- here's his post summarizing the Canadian results, and below is a chart showing his scores for the Calgary Philharmonic website. The blue middle column shows this year's scores:

The one category of Drew's with which I take exception is "Orchestra Information". Here's Drew McManus' explanation of this category:

Category 4: Orchestra Information - 15 points maximum

Learning about an orchestra and having easy access to contact information and educational program information is crucial to an orchestra’s ability to establish meaningful connections with its community.
This category contains five sub-categories covering biographical and contact information for music directors and musicians. Staff and board listings with related individual contact info were also considered essential as well as providing copies of institutional transparency documents.

I personally don't think providing contact info for musicians is a meaningful or desirable feature for an orchestral website. I would like to see better-written, more standardized musician pages. Those who choose to provide links to a personal website or e-mail address could be given that option. However, many musicians simply prefer to keep their e-mail addresses private.

I don't think playing in a professional orchestra should obligate anyone to publish personal information on a website -- some of us may do this by choice, but it does come at a certain sacrifice of privacy, and sometimes sanity! The Calgary Philharmonic website does feature a series of video clips with members of the orchestra, which I think is an appropriate vehicle to showcase musicians. For visitors trying to know an orchestra better, I think this feature is far more useful than giving out e-mail addresses.

teach the blogger

2008-10-27T20:57:00.006-06:00

My idea was that I would post a short practice video -- in this case, I'm working on the intro to the Bach 5th Suite Prélude -- and then people could give me comments, suggestions, etc. Then the following week, I could record the piece again and maybe post it for a little before-and-after progress report.

This idea was inspired by an incredibly useful comment from Ira after a video post I wrote back in March. I seem to have never acknowledged all of Ira's great comments -- thank you so much!

week of Oct. 26 - Nov. 1

2008-10-26T20:52:00.007-06:00

Classics # 2: Fauré's Requiem
Gustav Mahler: Rückert Lieder
Richard Strauss: Five Songs; Ständchen, An Die Nacht, Wiegenlied, Cäcilie, Morgen
Gabriel Fauré: Requiem, op. 48

Joseph Flummerfelt, conductor
Erin Wall, soprano
Philip Torre, baritone
Calgary Philharmonic Chorus

Performances: Friday, Oct. 31st and Saturday, Nov. 1st, 8 pm at Jack Singer Concert Hall

Tuesday, 28 October
10-12:30 rehearsal
2-4:30 rehearsal

Wednesday, 29 October
10-12 rehearsal
7-9:30 rehearsal

Thursday, 30 October
10-12 rehearsal
7-9:30 rehearsal

Friday, 31 October
8 pm concert

Saturday, 1 November
8 pm concert

This is one of the programs for which I wrote a blurb in the season brochure. Here's my original copy:

Savour Faure's exquisite Requiem, a transcendent meditation on life, death, and the beyond. Faure envisioned death as "a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above." Grammy Award-winning conductor Joseph Flummerfelt leads the CPO, chorus, and distinguished soloists in this stirring autumnal masterpiece.

When you have a 40-word limit, every word has to be well-chosen. It was probably a mistake to use the word "death" twice, though I may have been going for a Halloween tie-in. Note also my use of the Canadian spelling for "savour", which also did not clear the editing process.

Here's the final, much improved version:

Fauré's exquisite Requiem expresses the feeling of human faith in eternal rest. Grammy Award-winning conductor Joseph Flummerfelt leads this stirring concert of vocal splendour with soprano Erin Wall and baritone Philip Torre.

the practice room cyborg

2008-10-25T15:10:00.005-06:00

Jason Heath wrote a post recently called "Nine Dynamite Practice Room Accessories." He starts with some basics everyone should have: metronome, tuner, a pad of paper -- and then moves on to some more high-tech stuff: iPods, notation and editing software, a laptop computer.

Personally, I don't want a laptop computer anywhere near me when I'm practicing. It's just too much of a distraction visually. I can see how certain functions might be useful, and I know some people who can incorporate computer technology into their practice very effectively; I just don't see the point.

My deeper philosophical argument with all this stuff is that it makes you practice like a robot. If you constantly have a metronome, tuner, or computerized MIDI-file playing along in the practice room, you're training yourself to sound like an electronic device. That might mean more precision and clarity, but I think it's inevitably going to compromise the things a computer can't simulate:

a warm, rich, resonant sound, with a varied palette of tonal colors
a sensitivity to inner lines, and harmonic voicing
a sense of bulding phrases, dynamic contours, and the larger architecture of the piece

You might make a case that these aren't so important, within the specific skill-set demanded to win an audition. I think they matter very much to anyone hoping to have an enjoyable, extended career, because these are some of the main qualities that make orchestra playing enjoyable and fulfilling.

So while I appreciate Jason's suggestions, my own contrarian advice to anyone looking to tech out their practice room is this: give it a try, but don't go crazy. Don't think you can't have a worthwhile practice session without plugging into ever power outlet in the room. And at least one day a week, turn all the gadgets off and just remember the simple joy of drawing sounds out of a big, resonant chunk of wood. No accessories required.

Anne-Sophie's Mozart

2008-10-24T10:16:00.003-06:00

Anne-Sophie Mutter's early recordings of the Mozart violin concertos are already legendary, and her recent concert films are just as good. In 2005, Ms. Mutter launched "The Mozart Project Story," in conjunction with the worldwide celebrations of Mozart's 250th birthday; the two-disc DVD set I recently watched, which contains the 5 Mozart concertos with the Camerata Salzburg led by Mutter, is only one element in the project. This music has clearly been a life-long passion for her, and the Camerata Salzburg plays with equal passion and grace. These recordings are a great curative if you've heard (or played) these pieces for too many auditions and grown bored with them -- they sound and feel like much-loved music, made with freshness and spontaneity among friends.

Mrs. Sweet's pedagogical method

2008-10-23T11:09:00.009-06:00

They had all been instructed by Mrs. Sweet, a soft-bodied woman with a petulant smirk who was very deft at smacking hands without actually interrupting the performance of a scale or an etude. She sat on the bench beside them, reeking of lily-of-the-valley, and turned an injured look at the keyboard. Alert as a toad, Hope said, and quick as a toad, too. Whack! when a note offended, and then the return to sullen watchfulness, then again Whack! ... But Grace actually liked piano. She practiced more than she needed to and learned more than was exacted of her. Once she told her parents, weeping, that the hand smacking distracted her, so their mother went to speak to Mrs. Sweet, who asked, indignant, "How else will she improve?" But from then on she restrained herself, barely, when Grace played and vented her pedagogical method on Glory.

-- from Home by Marilynne Robinson, p. 54-55

We've probably all had a Mrs. Sweet at some point: a teacher whose method of correction was to whack us, whether physically or verbally. Those spoken, emotional "whacks" might actually be the more hurtful, and the more lasting, since we tend to remember and re-enact them long afterwards.

In effect we internalize the punishment, and adopt our own inner "Mrs. Sweet" -- who delivers her whacks much more deftly than any external teacher! Watching a player with this condition, you can sometimes see a sudden grimace -- whether or not the offending note is apparent -- which makes it clear, Mrs. Sweet has just delivered another whack.

Obviously, this is distracting -- for the audience as well as the player. In most cases, it quickly ceases to be helpful, and can become a real impediment to progress. I think it's important for us as teachers, and in our own practice, to check the impulse to punish mistakes with violence and recriminations. It's almost always more productive just to note them, make sure they're understood, and then encourage ourselves to try again. We can progress much faster if we have an intrinsic need to get better -- if we're driven by a hope of improvement, rather than fear of punishment.

keeping score at the symphony

2008-10-22T11:40:00.008-06:00

I have a dream: it's the end of the 2nd period at a Calgary Flames home game in late November. Some people in the crowd start to get up to stretch or use the washroom, but they stop and turn as the scoreboard lights up with a huge logo:

People return to their seats as a voice announces: "We now take you live to the Jack Singer Concert Hall, where the Calgary Philharmonic under Roberto Minczuk are midway through the 3rd movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony..."

The sound of a somber A-flat chord rises on the PA system, as the screen goes to video of a violin section playing a hesitant figure, then the conductor sculpting a questioning phrase. There's a palpable air of suspense, as the screen moves to a close-up shot of the timpanist's hand, playing a repeated low G. Hockey players from both teams are skating onto the ice to get a better view, as the harmony shifts to a dominant chord and with an incredible swell, finally arrives at a big beautiful C Major chord -- the finale has begun! -- the crowd is on their feet, cheering wildly, as all the hockey players exchange high-fives.

Okay, so it's not very likely -- still, it's nice to fantasize. Orchestra concerts inevitable go head-to-head against major sporting events, and so we face a conundrum: should we announce the score from the stage, and risk alienating the people who came to the concert specifically to avoid hearing about sports? Or should we ignore the big game, and let the sports addicts pull out their BlackBerries and portable radios?

I personally don't mind if a conductor wants to give the score after intermission, though I'd rather not hear updates after every piece. Members of the orchestra are often just as interested -- I've heard anecdotes about musicians playing with ear-bud headphones in, or radios attached to tuning pegs, and whispering across the stage after a home run or goal. I hope I never get that obsessive about a sporting event, though I can't begrudge others their addictions.

What I would really like to see, though, is some equity -- why not give hockey or baseball fans a little taste of what they're missing, or a preview of what they could hear tomorrow night? I think Beethoven could hold his own against one of those silly mascot races any day.

Jeff Weisner on brand loyalty

2008-10-21T15:33:00.011-06:00

We each have a "brand" to our playing - a basic set of sound and style characteristics that hold true through everything we play. That brand is created from our core technique elements, the influence of our most important teachers and mentors, and our most basic musical preferences. I make the type of sound that I do on the bass because at some level I like it - it feels right to me, for reasons that I honestly can't even define exactly. It developed through my early years of study and my student days. Even as I have developed a more diverse palette of tone colors and styles in my playing, I still keep one foot (or at least a toe) in this core sound concept that I bring to my musical work.

-- excerpt from "Know Your Brand" by Jeff Weisner, Peabody Double Bass Blog

Drawing analogies to bass playing is a favorite pastime of mine, so I have to take up this recent post by Jeff Weisner. Jeff shares some very intriguing ideas about schools of playing, which he likens to political branding. He concludes that even the strongest players might benefit from an honest assessment of their own "brand", and might focus on projecting those qualities in auditions.

Jeff draws a careful distinction between monotonous, one-style-fits-all playing -- perhaps you could call the Steve Forbes school, taking one issue and hammering it mercilessly -- and playing with no real sense of integrity or authenticity, which he likens to John "Flip-Flop" Kerry. That's still a bit of a sore spot for me personally, having really believed in John Kerry in 2004. What we Kerry supporters called "nuance", many others labelled spinelessness -- though I guess we now have the satisfaction of saying, "I told you so."

The kind of playing that Jeff advocates is neither Forbes nor Kerry -- it can have sophistication, style, and nuance, but it never strays from an essential core sound. It's about playing to the audience, but not about saying, "I'll do anything to get your vote." It all comes back to integrity -- of sound, belief, and intention -- and integrity that comes from one's own highest standards, not the standards of some committee we know only from rumors and hearsay.

Jeff doesn't offer any political endorsements of his own -- maybe he's keeping his blog non-partisan, since it's the official mouthpiece of the Peabody Double Bass Department. I wonder how he judges the brand-salesmanship of these two presidential tickets, though. We have one candidate, Obama, who has worked to broaden the appeal of his party's brand, refining their historically polarizing positions on taxes, foreign policy, and social issues. The other styles himself as a "maverick" -- originally a term for un-branded cattle, it's become political-speak for someone willing to buck his party -- and yet he's run a rambling, divisive campaign that's alienated many independent voters as well.

In a year when the Democratic party brand has so many advantages -- largely because the Bush administration has tarnished the Republican brand, as well as the brand of the nation as a whole -- perhaps McCain's best strategy is to run with the brand of the maverick. As Jeff makes clear, though, there are certain advantages to a clear, recognizable brand -- you know what you're selling, and people know what they're getting. When it's a question of security, a clear and confident brand is sometimes enough to carry an audition or an election.

Thoughts?

pointing out the obvious

2008-10-20T09:41:00.008-06:00

Rehearsing the "Flying Music" from E.T. last Friday, conductor Richard Kaufman stopped the orchestra at one point and turned to the bass section. "This is a bass soli," he told us, which was rather surprising since we weren't playing much more than pizzicato downbeats. He went on, "For John Williams, the bass section is the engine of the orchestra!"

This is always nice to hear, though from the bass section's perspective we're pretty much always the engine of the orchestra. If a conductor makes a point of it, we'll play louder and more assertively, and maybe further to the front side of the beat. As in most things a conductor asks for, there's no major transformation -- just a shift in emphasis, a heightened sense of importance. Maybe that will project to the audience, maybe not; in any case, the other sections of the orchestra will probably be more attentive to what we're doing, and so we'll be better able to contribute.

An analogy in last week's New Yorker caught my attention on a similar subject:

In his acceptance speech at the Convention and in the first debate -- his two big-audience occasions on foreign policy -- Obama mentioned cooperation but emphasized aggressive action much more strongly. In that way, the Obama campaign is like a symphony orchestra, with the need for international cooperation as the string section and the necessity for aggressive action as the horns. Both sections are always playing, but usually one or the other is playing louder. During the fall campaign, the horns have dominated the strings.

- "Worlds Apart," by Nicholas Lemann, October 13, 2008 issue of The New Yorker

As an orchestra musician, a lot of things about this analogy bother me -- the strings and horns are always playing? why is it just "louder", what about differences of articulation, tone quality, expression, etc.? and how about the different voices within the strings, not to mention the brass and percussion and woodwinds, what do they represent?

All that is just nit-picking, though, since I think it's a very effective analogy for what the point Lemann is making. We do balance our messages, and we'll change our focus, wording, and content for different settings and audiences. It's one of the most basic elements of human communication, so essential that we might not give it much thought. And it's also a good explanation for what a conductor does in balancing the orchestra -- he or she draws our attention to certain things, or minimizes certain others. Within any musical score, be it John Williams or Beethoven, there are countless details and possibilities for what might happen -- the conductor gets to imagine those possibilities and, with the cooperation of the orchestra, bring out the details that make the imagined real.

week of Oct. 19-25

2008-10-19T21:46:00.005-06:00

Alberta Ballet
A Midsummer Night's Dream / music by Felix Mendelssohn
Peter Dala, conductor
Performances Oct. 23, 24, 25 at Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium

Tuesday, 21 Oct
10-12:30 rehearsal
2-4:30 rehearsal

Wednesday, 22 Oct
7:30-10 rehearsal

Thursday, 23 Oct
7:30 performance

Friday, 24 Oct
7:30 performance

Saturday, 25 Oct
7:30 performance

I decided to borrow/steal a feature from Michael Hovnanian's Bass Blog which I really like -- every week he'll post a schedule of what he's currently doing. Beyond the obvious value to stalkers, it's a neat way to show what day-to-day life as an orchestral musician is really like. I'm definitely not going to post any practice schedules here, though.

As it happens, I'm on stand-by for this week of ballet performances -- they'll use only 4 bass players for ballet as well as opera, since the Jubilee has a rather small pit. This means I almost certainly won't play any of these services, unless someone in the section is seriously sick or injured.

That means I probably won't be writing here about Mendelssohn or A Midsummer Night's Dream. Do stay tuned though, and please let me know if there's another subject you'd like me to write about!

the well-tempered political candidate

2008-10-18T09:16:00.007-06:00

We’ve been watching Barack Obama for two years now, and in all that time there hasn’t been a moment in which he has publicly lost his self-control. This has been a period of tumult, combat, exhaustion and crisis. And yet there hasn’t been a moment when he has displayed rage, resentment, fear, anxiety, bitterness, tears, ecstasy, self-pity or impulsiveness.

-- David Brooks, "Thinking about Obama", NY Times Oct. 16, 2008

For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

-- The New Yorker, Oct. 13, 2008, Comment by the editors

I've been reading a lot of political commentary lately, and the question of temperament seems to be on a lot of people's minds. Even in the testiest exchanges, Barack Obama projects an air of coolness and centeredness, an even temperament that contrasts with John McCain's manic shifts and gestures. Even before the substance of their arguments is assessed, many people find Obama's bearing and composure more "presidential".

It's not just about posture, tone of voice, and gestures -- I also had the impression that Obama focused more on the larger issues, worked towards compromise and understanding rather than petty bickering, and returned the conversation to issues of real importance. When you think back over those debate performances, though, the contrast in temperament serves as a useful shorthand for all the other differences between the candidates.

Variations in temperament can also determine an orchestral audition, I think, and not just in the sense of playing in tune. Audition committees want to hear someone who is collected, confident, and centered, who plays with a sense of inner calm -- without being boring. It's a tricky balance to maintain, especially under conditions of pressure and nervousness.

Among musicians I know who have used enderol (a beta-blocker), most have said that it helps restore this state of equanimity. They're able to sail through excerpts without any wild surprises or reactions -- things affect them less, and so they feel more like themselves. Personally I prefer not to use enderol, and have worked to accustom myself to that nervous hyper-sensitivity. Also, I find tools like focused breathing and meditation can help to restore a natural sense of calm.

Don Greene, the psychologist who has pioneered a technique to maintain performance under pressure, uses the analogy of a race-car driver. At the speeds they're moving, even the slightest twitch can throw their steering out of control; a normal correction back to neutral might instead throw them far in the opposite direction. Like a political or audition candidate, they need to tune their mental responses -- their internal temperament -- to the conditions under which they operate. They need to moderate their reactions and impulses, even while driving with extreme boldness and confidence.

There has never been a moment when, at least in public, he seems gripped by inner turmoil. It’s not willpower or self-discipline he shows as much as an organized unconscious. Through some deep, bottom-up process, he has developed strategies for equanimity, and now he’s become a homeostasis machine.

-- David Brooks, from the same article quoted above

As spectators, we might not be able to appreciate the internal forces they're having to manage -- we merely see a musician, politician, or race car driver performing well. It's a peaceful sport played with tremendous internal violence, as Don Greene likes to describe golf. Only when we watch a less successful performer -- or try to perform as well ourselves -- can we really appreciate the power on display.

words vs. music in film

2008-10-17T23:23:00.003-06:00

A couple of weekends ago, I got to hear a fantastic concert by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, presented by Calgary Pro Musica -- their concert began with the gorgeous string sextet from Richard Strauss' Capriccio, featuring two former members of the quartet on the second cello and viola parts. Violinist Geoff Nuttall introduced the Capriccio sextet with a brief synopsis of the opera, the story of a poet and composer hashing out the classic debate of words vs. music, and trying to court a rich countess in the process.

Geoff wasn't going to give away the ending of the opera -- which plays coy with the countess' decision, in any case -- but the rapturous music of that string sextet already seems to settle the issue, as far as I'm concerned. No one would remember Capriccio except for the music; the libretto tries to mock its own irrelevance, self-importance, and excessive length, but the joke seems to be mainly on the listener. For someone foolish enough to watch the whole thing (as I did last year, on DVD), the only consolation is that at the end there's a bit more of Strauss' gorgeous music, uncluttered by any silly text.

I suppose it's nice when music gets its just recognition, setting the distraction of words aside for a moment. The CPO has been playing a heap of film music these past few weeks: first the Lord of the Rings Symphony by Howard Shore, and this weekend a program of "classic" movie music called Symphony on the Silver Screen.

For most people of my generation, few of the films on this weekend's program make much of an impression. I can recall a line or two from Casablanca, I saw the first Godfather, and of course I remember watching E.T. as a little kid (and eating the breakfast cereal, which had lots of sugary peanut butter flavor.) Even without knowing the films though, each of these scores makes an immediate impression -- it's music engineered to trigger a strong emotional response, and fast.

For my taste, it's sometimes a little too much like that sugary breakfast cereal I ate as a kid: quick to reach one's pleasure centers, but not too much substance. Then again, there are some themes that won't leave your head for hours, maybe days afterwards. I thought Lord of the Rings might never leave my head, until it magically segue-ed into some music from Wagner's Parsifal.

When it comes to movies, it's no longer just words vs. music -- in an updated Capriccio, the poet and composer might be contending against cinematography, special effects, marketing tie-ins, celebrity actors, etc. With so many suitors, our senses tend to get overwhelmed, if not downright cynical -- and yet really great music still manages to cut through all the b.s. At the end of the 2.5 hour Lord of the Rings Symphony, I found myself genuinely moved, as I rarely have been lately when playing concerts -- and more so than I was when watching the films. Perhaps music still has the upper hand, even with all our advances in entertainment technology. Or maybe I'm just terminally biased.

Wagner and the financial crisis

2008-09-18T15:46:00.007-06:00

The other day I watched Das Rheingold, the first opera of Wagner's Ring Cycle, and I think it has some important lessons about our current financial crisis. After all, there aren't many operas more obsessed with housing, contracts, and mineral resources, not to mention lying, greed, and theft.

I won't go into a full synopsis here, though you can find one elsewhere easily enough. At the beginning of the second scene, Wotan and Fricka have just awoken to find that their new home is completed -- the fortress that Wotan will later name "Valhalla" glimmers in the distance, as Fricka frets about how they'll pay for it. Two giants, Fasolt and Fafner, have built Valhalla for a price that Wotan has no intention of paying -- his sister-in-law, Freia. It may not exactly be the mortgage crisis, but there's clearly been some speculation and malfeasance happening.

Wotan has a financial adviser named Loge, who has promised they'll have no problem changing the deal at the last moment. They're just big dumb giants, right? Unfortunately, Loge hasn't shown up yet, so that when the giants arrive an irked Wotan has to stall for time. First he pretends the deal was a joke, and then he wonders why they'd want poor Freia anyway, and then he offers them anything except his sobbing sister-in-law. For all his fantastic powers, Wotan has a problem -- he just can't break a contract. He's actually the god appointed to defend contracts, so he's responsible for regulating against his own interests. When Loge finally arrives, he hasn't got any good compromise either -- Wotan will have to steal the infamous Ring of the Nibelungen, since that's apparently the only acceptable substitute for the love of a good woman.

And so thievery, deception, and operatic mayhem inevitably ensue. It's easy to fault all of the characters: Wotan is trying to cheat the giants, while they're trying to kill Wotan and all the other gods (Freia's gardening skills, it turns out, are essential to the gods' survival). Alberich, the ruler of the Nibelungen, himself stole the gold to make the ring, then forced all his people into slave labor to amass some more gold. Clearly no good will come of any of this -- just a lot of yelling, weeping, killing, and bombastic opera music.

This might not be helpful if you're already trapped in a bad mortgage or lousy investments. It seems like so much of this could have been prevented, or at least minimized, if only Wotan and Fricka had lived within their means -- just enjoyed being gods and munching Freia's magical apples, without always wanting a bigger house, fancier weapons, complete domination over every corner of the world and underworld, etc.

A contract needn't be a bad thing, after all, as long as both parties are acting in good faith, and can afford to keep their promises. When they don't, and can't, that's when people start getting cursed, transforming themselves into dragons, and then the entire world goes up in flames.

putting El Salón in context

2008-09-16T17:02:00.004-06:00

Speaking of politics in music, this week the CPO will be performing El Salón México by Aaron Copland -- a piece written in the early 1930's, during a phase Copland's career when he was actively promoting leftist and socialist ideals through his music.

Nowadays, the piece is most often programmed as a splashy, dancing burst of Latin color. That's how it fits into our program, which is titled "Tango Nights" and features several pieces by Piazzola, the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and El Salón México. Until I read Alex Ross' new history of 20th-century music, The Rest is Noise, I wouldn't have noticed any deeper meaning to the work either. Ross puts El Salón into the context of the period, and explains the political intentions of its creator, in a way that sheds a fantastic light on this quirky, tuneful little piece.

I'd recommend The Rest is Noise to anyone who thinks they just don't get 20th century music -- who finds it confusing, intimidating, or exasperating -- or who just wants a deeper understanding of music like El Salón, and how it relates to the political and social upheavals of our time. I guess that means I'd recommend it to just about everyone.

music under a bell jar

2008-09-15T15:54:00.005-06:00

The Berlin Philharmonic, virtually alone among German cultural institutions, continued playing right to the end of the Second World War. Even after their hall, the old Philharmonie, was destroyed by bombers, they continued performing in the Admiralspalast downtown, and at makeshift hospitals around the city. It's understandably not a period people in the orchestra are proud of, but a remarkable new documentary by Enrique Sanchez Lansch, The Reichsorchester, chronicles and records the memories of the last two surviving orchestra members who played in the Berlin Phil during that time.

One of those members, violinist Hans Bastiaan, describes that time as "like being under a bell jar" -- the orchestra was protected and sheltered by the Nazi ministry of propaganda, performing a regular concert schedule and touring widely to boost morale and to symbolize of German cultural might. Bastiaan and double bassist Erich Hartmann, the other surviving member who speaks at length in the film, both understood that they were serving an evil regime -- yet they both claim the Berlin Philharmonic was never a Nazi orchestra, even if certain members were party loyalists.

The vast majority kept playing out of dedication to their craft; out of allegiance to their music director, Furtwangler, and to their colleagues; from pride for the stellar reputation and musicianship of their orchestra; and, in the final days, for sheer survival. Orchestra members were given an exemption from military service -- and their family members offered special protections and allowances as will -- and so from the beginning they were tied to the regime and its continued stability.

Only in the last few months, playing before audiences of severely wounded soldiers and civilians, did Bastiaan, Hartmann, and their like-minded colleagues recognize the shame of their role as state-supported artists. Other members, such as violinist Bernhard Alt (who earlier composed of a double bass quartet, written for his Berlin Phil colleagues) committed suicide. Still others died amid the chaos of bombings and occupation (this was the case with the interim conductor Leo Borchard, who died by American gunfire in a tragic accident). One violist, dismissed by Furtwangler for missing a concert early in the war, had his exemption revoked and died on the front -- just one terrible story among many that Bastiaan and Hartmann have to tell.

It's fascinating to hear them tell it, even though they still seem to struggle with the moral quandaries of that time. Among the musicians, Bastiaan notes, their understanding of politics was often "child-like", and they only wished to keep performing great music under the best conductors -- and yet the harsh realities around them wouldn't disappear, or be vanquished by sublime concerts. In the end, they were given a perfect opportunity to witness the crumbling of the Nazi regime, from within the protective 'bell jar' it provided, and to take part in the rebuilding efforts that followed.

The documentary includes extensive footage of the orchestra performing, mainly Beethoven and Wagner, including a complete performance of the Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger, recorded in a German factory in 1942.

hidden talents

2008-09-11T10:21:00.003-06:00

The Calgary Herald today features an article on CPO clarinetist Jocelyn Colquhoun, who will be dancing along with other guest artists at next week's tango-themed concert:

"Sensual struts will set hearts aflutter"

Besides the sort of bizarrely poetic title, it's a clever article with several funny quotes and stories from Jocelyn. One of the CPO marketing department's goals is to get individual musicians' talents, interests, and abilities into the spotlight, and out in the media, so hopefully more people will keep stopping Jocelyn at the shopping mall to tell her how great she is. Then maybe she'll keep her ballroom tango posture, with the head held back all the time, as though to signal that the rest of us all smell really bad.

on practicing practically

2008-08-09T08:23:00.007-06:00

When it comes to learning long audition repertoire lists, we bassists don't have it nearly as bad as percussionists. I used to manage mock auditions at the New World Symphony, and for most instruments the excerpt materials would be about the thickness of a Time magazine, 40 to 50 sheets at most. When one of our percussionists was playing a mock, though, he would hand me a book the size of the Miami telephone directory, which I would flip through in a daze before handing it to another percussionist to pick out a few excerpts.

Still, there have been some comparatively long lists at recent bass auditions, and even a shorter list can wear you down if you don't budget your practice time intelligently. How many pieces can you expect yourself to practice every day, and really benefit from that work? How much time should you set aside for technique and scale studies, solos and repertoire for your job or school -- not to mention listening to recordings, visualization exercises, and other useful work away from the instrument? And how much should you set aside for rest, recreation, and having a life outside the practice room?

Those are questions we all need to answer for ourselves at some point. It's interesting to hear the approaches other people have used with success, though. I published a series of posts a while back on the audition advice of Cleveland Orchestra percussionist Tom Freer:

audition habits of a highly effective percussionist

and it's worth revisiting some of that advice, even for the person who wrote it!

I've experimented and adapted that advice somewhat since then. I base some of my practice structure on ashtanga yoga, in which the challenges are similar: you learn a lot of poses, each of which demands consistent and detailed work to maintain and develop. Sri Pattabhi Jois solved this dilemma by dividing the practice into several series, practiced on different days of the week, following an opening sequence of postures which does not vary. And at least one day of the week (Saturday) is set aside for complete rest.

So if I were taking this audition (you can download the repertoire list here) I might divide my practice into several modules as follows:

1. Opening sequence: long tones, scale studies, etc.

2. Excerpts: practice one series a day; spend 10-20 minutes on each excerpt, taking breaks every 45-60 minutes (should take 2-3 hours each day)

A series
Mozart 40.I
Bach Badinerie
Brahms 1.II
Mahler 2.I
Ein Heldenleben #9, #77
Mozart 39.II
Brahms 2.I
Pulcinella
B series
Mozart 39.I
Mendelssohn 4.IV
Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet
Mussourgsky Pictures
Beethoven 5.III
Ein Heldenleben #15, #40
Brahms 1.IV
Haydn 31 solo
Lt. Kije solo
C series
Mendelssohn 4.I
Mozart 40.IV
Otello soli
Beethoven 9.IV
Brahms 1.I
Mahler 1 solo
Ein Heldenleben #61-70 (battle scene)
Brahms 2.IV
Variaciones Concertantes solo
Audition solos: alternate Bach and concerto mvt. (25-30 minutes each day)

Recording: at the beginning or end of practice session (or preferably both) record a mock audition on that day's repertoire

Other repertoire: for work, gigs, or school, or other solo Bach (45 minutes)

After practice: listen and review your own recordings, listen to commercial recordings of the repertoire, do visualization exercises (1-2 hours)

Choose one day of the week to rest completely -- get away from the bass, go outside, and remind yourself that you're a human being

This is just an outline, and would probably need a fair amount of tweaking. As to how you should practice each of the excerpts, where you should focus, what you need to accomplish, that's another complicated and somewhat subjective question. It will probably need to wait until another post!

Please feel free to comment with your suggestions or questions.

all that wax

2008-08-07T16:02:00.008-06:00

I've been living in Calgary for one year as of today, and just a couple weeks ago I moved into my third apartment during that time. I thought I was going to settle down and start living a normal life, but I seem to be just as nomadic as ever.

The bag of cotton swabs shown here was purchased, I believe, in a dollar store somewhere in Chicago in 2003. It has now resided at 11 different addresses, by my count -- that's including 5 different rooms at the New World Symphony's Plymouth Hotel, where people tend to swap frequently. Still, that's a lot of moving for a bag of cotton swabs. According to MapQuest, they've traveled at least 5,000 miles. And it still looks like about half the bag is left.

I'm determined to finish off those cotton swabs before I move again, though. Even if it means I have to clean my ears five times a day. Tina suggested I get some glue and build some cotton-swab architecture, bridges and buildings and stuff, and I think this is a good idea. Just as long as they don't leave this apartment, except covered with ear wax, glue or other gunk.

I think it's a worthy goal -- I'm not sure what the reward will be, other than a new (smaller) box of cotton swabs. Meanwhile, I'm also hoping to use up a bag of 100 "Glimma" tea lights from IKEA that's followed me for the past two moves - just 84 more to go!

Ben Levy and the Glass phase

2008-08-04T18:58:00.003-06:00

The thing I would just say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it felt short, and some of us can admit that to ourselves and some are a little less able to admit that to themselves. But we knew that it didn't have the special thing that we wanted it to have. And the thing that I would say to you is that everybody goes through that, and for you to go through it -- if you're going through it right now, if you're just getting through that phase, or if you're just starting off and you're entering into that phase -- you've got to know that it's totally normal, and the most important thing you could possibly do, is do a lot of work.

-- Ira Glass, from a discussion on YouTube. Watch the original here.

I wanted to transcribe a bit of Ira Glass' little sermon on creative work and the disappointments of the learning phase -- though I recommend you watch the clip on YouTube as well. One thing about Ira Glass: he's kind of hard to transcribe. He speaks in long, run-on sentences, and rather than pausing between them, he actually seems to speed up into the next thought. It's very natural to listen to, it just doesn't always look like it on the page. I wonder if that was part of the reason he seemed so stiff and dry in his early days on NPR -- he hadn't yet learned to sound like himself.

Listening to those early tapes is a great reminder that every artist, even the ones we most respect and admire, went through similarly maddening struggles. Every orchestral bassist at some point wondered if he or she would every play Mozart 35 as fast or as well as that other guy; we all had to humble ourselves the first time we went into a lesson with a Bach Suite.

Having good taste, as Ira describes, may actually make this phase more difficult to work through. We see how badly our results have failed our expectations, and we wonder if it's even worth the effort of trying. Someone like Ira Glass -- by showing how his idiosyncratic style needed a lot of time to develop -- can show that it is worth the effort, that patience will pay off.

At the beginning of my third year at NEC, I encountered an incoming freshman bassist named Ben Levy. He was already a strong player, but I don't know that anyone would have guessed that he would join the BSO at the age of 23. He still had a lot to work on when I first met him, and he was incredibly determined to work on it. He was almost always in the front practice room on the lower level, working on his scales and intonation when I got to school. He practiced compulsively, putting in a lot of hours, as many of us did.

What set him apart, I think, was that he had a very keen sense of how he wanted to sound, and was phenomenally determined to realize that sound. Even in his first jury, in which I think he played an easy baroque sonata transcription, Corelli or Vivaldi, he played it with such a sense of style and detail, it was really a convincing performance. He certainly still had a lot of work to do, and he would have been the first to admit that. But I think he was already laying the groundwork for the success that would come a few years later.

I found out that Ben had won the BSO in May 2003, when I overheard some gossip at another audition. At first, my stomach sunk -- as much as I liked Ben, I would have wanted to be the first to get a job, and this was a huge job. In retrospect though, I think that watching someone like that can only have a positive effect on you, if you realize that it wasn't magic. He did the work, as Ira Glass urged, even when the result may have been far short of what he'd hoped for. He didn't let the results diminish the hopes, and he kept his determination. That's the only sure-fire recipe for success that I know.

bass at the Folk Fest

2008-08-01T10:37:00.004-06:00

Seeing the Calgary Folk Music Festival last weekend got me curious about playing in a band again -- I briefly played with some friends in high school, but the decibel levels were a bit too much for me and I quit. Earlier this week I even checked out the used bass guitars for sale on Craigslist. I'd probably better not make any major purchases until I'm drawing some income again, though.

There was a whole lot of great bass playing at the festival -- I won't try and name all the bassists I heard, since I'm not really up on that scene, but they were definitely shaking the island. One of my favorite bass guitarists, Meshell Ndegeocello, made an appearance playing blues with James Blood Ulmer.

There were quite a few upright basses around, too -- I saw one sitting on the lawn when we got there Sunday morning, and it must have found its way to a stage somewhere. We really do play an incredibly versatile instrument, and you could hear upright basses in almost any sort of style and combination over the course of the weekend. Todd Sickafoose joined Ani DiFranco's folk rock band for the closing set on Sunday night, and laid down bass grooves as catchy as anything I heard all weekend, and even drew out a bow at one point. With the right pick-up and amplification, an upright bass can do just about anything a bass guitar can do.

made in Tacoma

2008-07-31T16:15:00.004-06:00

I was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington -- a city not known for too much, really, though you may have heard of the "aroma of Tacoma." That was the sulfur fumes from an old paper mill that's been shut down, and I can proudly say that Tacoma no longer stinks. Or at least I can't smell it anymore.

My point is not to rain on Tacoma, though (the city is also known for getting rained on a lot), but to share a discovery I recently made while researching acoustic bass guitars. Some of the best acoustic bass guitars are being made right in Tacoma, by a shop called Tacoma Guitars. It's a subsidiary of Fender, but the company's founders are Tacomans, and apparently proud of it.

I haven't tried out a Tacoma acoustic bass guitar yet -- which is officially known as the Tacoma (R) CB10C Thunderchief Bass Guitar -- but the photos look intriguing. They have done away with the traditional f-hole design, and instead use a large comet-shaped opening on the upper left bout.

You can also watch some guy playing one on YouTube, though the audio quality is not so great:
Still, that's pretty impressive compared to an average bass guitar. (I was always better at producing splunks and splats than actual pitches.) Maybe all that rain is good for basses.

bass blog links

2008-07-30T09:41:00.007-06:00

Hella Frisch has been hibernating, I guess, or perhaps outside enjoying Calgary's few months of warm weather. I've been taking a look at some other bass blogs I though, hoping they will get me inspired to write something original soon:

Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog has a fresh clean look for the summer -- probably this happened months ago, but I usually read it through Google Reader, and so didn't notice. Jason has always been the king of bass-related content, it's just been difficult to wade through it all.
PBDB, the Peabody Double Bass studio blog, links to a great video by Ira Glass which is relevant to anyone doing creative work. Playing the bass is creative work, right?

Michael Hovnanian reports on a week of contrasts at Ravinia -- and how video screens tend to draw the audience's attention away from the action on stage:
The Sunday concert was a weird amalgamation of the Schreker Chamber Symphony... and Lang Lang playing a couple of warhorses, the entire lurid spectacle projected onto huge screens. As my attention inevitably wandered, I caught sight of audience members in the center section craning their necks to look at the screens rather than focusing on the stage straight ahead.
There's definitely something to this. I observed the same thing at the Calgary Folk Festival last weekend. Of course, most of us spend a lot of our time watching screens -- you'd think we'd want to take a break at a concert. But there's something instinctual about watching a performer's face, seeing how the expressions change with the music, that you often can't get from 50 rows back. (Though Lang Lang does his best to emote all the way to the back row.)

BassGeeks

2008-06-30T22:34:00.002-06:00

drop.io: simple private sharing

Originally posted at The Seattle Times, this video shows some footage from the Hammond Ashley Double Bass Workshop, where I played on a faculty recital last Tuesday. Speaking on the audio is workshop organizer Todd Gowers, while my friend Miriam Chong makes a brief appearance around 20 seconds through.

flicks, 'toons and Mario

2008-06-15T22:27:00.006-06:00

This afternoon I played a movie-themed concert with the Players Chamber Ensemble -- frequent readers might remember I wasn't going to play this one, but then I ended up playing it after all. Instead of no, I said "Yes I'd love to, but..." which gradually morphed into "yes".

Anyway, it was a fun concert to be involved in. The afternoon began with some Loonie Tunes cartoons on a big screen, with soda and popcorn available in the lobby. Then we came out and played Rossini's Barber of Seville (after a slight delay for me to get my stool untangled from all the power cords.) The most challenging piece came next, music arranged from the 1931 cartoon "The Village Smitty". I've actually always wanted to play cartoon music, but never had before today.

There was the inevitable John Williams (Star Wars and Schindler's List) along with Mascagni's Intermezzo from Cavaleria Rusticana to accompany scenes from The Godfather. The Lily Quartet performed Astor Piazzola's Tango Por una Cabeza as used in Scent of a Woman, which is a really beautiful scene. I suppose playing live music to a pre-recorded film is a bit odd, and has its drawbacks, but it does encourage you to watch with renewed attention.

The concert finished with music to the Super Mario Bros. video game -- the "Overworld" theme described by wikipedia as:

The famous main theme; a Latin jazz score that matches the bright, cheery and fast-paced nature of the majority of the game's levels.

This was also a first-time performance for me, though I played that game enough as a kid that the music was already ingrained in my cortex. Probably much of this afternoon's audience now shares that condition, for better or worse.

tassel-tossing at Epcor

2008-06-14T10:57:00.004-06:00

Like a lot of Calgarians, the CPO can't afford to own a home. Instead, we rent space in the Epcor Centre and perform in the Jack Singer Concert Hall. This can lead to some occasional space crunches, when the hall is booked for other things -- last week, for example, we had a cello audition displaced to a nearby church, since the hall was rented for a Tom Jones concert. (Sort of like getting kicked out of your apartment because your roommate has a hot date.)

I tend to practice at the Epcor Centre too, usually downstairs in one of the dressing rooms. The Epcor crew is pretty nice about letting me do this, and only occasionally tell me I have to leave because Queen Noor or the Kids Fest needs the space. Lately, it's been high school graduation season, and my practice sessions have been accompanied by disembodied voices reading off names, following by whooping and applause. All the names seem to get some degree of acclamation, which is nice to hear, though you can easily distinguish the really popular ones.

Hearing these ceremonies makes me remember finishing high school -- how grown up I felt, and how confident I was that I'd soon be far away. When my jazz band director John DePalatis asked me where I'd be in ten years, I think that was my answer: "Somewhere far away." And the week after graduation, I found myself beginning a sentence, "Back when I was in high school..."

I guess in retrospect, I wish I'd enjoyed that time more, and been in less of a rush to get to the next thing. It's now more than ten years, and I'm somewhat far away, but lots of people I knew in high school still matter a great deal to me. Next week I'm going back to visit Tacoma, and playing in a recital at the Hammond Ashley Memorial Double Bass Workshop with my friend Miriam, who was my mentor and stand partner in the Tacoma Symphony. She's now in Victoria, playing bass, teaching, and coaching music and lots of other subjects.

I suppose my cliche commencement speech sermon, if I were asked to give one, is that we can move far away, but we don't really change that much from the people we were in high school. If we were shy and dorky, we'll probably stay that way, just hopefully get more comfortable with ourselves and find people who like us for those qualities.

rained out in the Badlands

2008-06-08T23:02:00.005-06:00

Yesterday's concert in Drumheller was cancelled due to the weather -- always a huge disappointment, especially since it was to be the last concert of the season, and the last concert of their CPO careers for retiring violinists Alana Gralen and Susan Light, and cellist Yuri Gindin. Also, Jim Scott was going to perform a trombone concerto by Launy Grondahl -- that will hopefully be rescheduled in the fall. I shot some video while waiting to see if the thunderstorms would clear. Finally, management decided it was unsafe to proceed with the concert, so I also have a shot of some audience members heading home. Hopefully we can make it up to them next season.

correcting Beethoven

2008-06-07T08:13:00.004-06:00

Certain composers seem to be more error-prone than others -- lots of missing accidentals, bars with extra beats, etc., whether it's their own fault or the copyist and editors'. Then there are the composers who tend to write notes that look like mistakes but aren't -- I'm thinking of Stravinsky, who made 'wrong notes' part of his style, especially in neo-classical scores like Pulcinella, which he revised from material by Pergolesi and others. If you tried to fix all the wrong notes, you'd be left with nothing nearly as interesting.

Then there's Beethoven, who was famously sloppy (and deaf), but he was such a genius that it seems almost sacrilegious to tamper with his scores. We're playing his 2nd Symphony today, using the new Barenreiter 'Urtext' by Jonathan Del Mar, which still has a lot of problems and questionable stuff. My stand partner Graeme Mudd pointed out a whole slew of inconsistencies in the second movement: repeating figures with different note lengths and articulations, dynamics apparently displaced by a measure, or just missing entirely. Two hundred years after he wrote this symphony, Beethoven may be our most famous and universally admired composer, but we still have to spend a lot of rehearsal time correcting him. Or did he mean to write it like that?

My teacher at NEC, Donald Palma, made a very memorable argument one day that he did mean exactly what he wrote, at least in terms of the cello-bass octave transpositions. Beethoven's cello and bass parts are traditionally printed together -- a tradition broken by that new Barenreiter edition -- and a lot of bass players will jump down an octave when they see the cellos are playing in our register, figuring that Beethoven wrote for instruments that either didn't have the low C or weren't able to use it with much facility. There's a long passage like this in the first movement of the 7th Symphony, and also in the 9th. Don's argument was that deaf or not, Beethoven was an extremely precise orchestrator, who never cared much about the technical limitations of the instruments of his day. When played in a true unison, with the basses and cellos at the same octave, those passages have an eerie, spectral quality that may have been exactly what he was going for.

Rossini in the rain?

2008-06-06T18:20:00.005-06:00

"Dress for tomorrow's concert will be white jacket, black bow tie, for men; white blouse for women; rain jackets, and umbrellas. And bring a sweater, and some extra warm clothing,"

orchestra manager Tim Rawlings said at the beginning of the rehearsal this morning. Tomorrow the CPO plays the annual "Beethoven in the Badlands" concert in Drumheller, and the forecast calls for rain, cold, and bluster.

The weather in Alberta rarely seems to cooperate with outdoor concerts -- already this season, we had a "Mozart on the Mountain" concert which was freezing and dismal, with a huddled mass of patrons likely yearning to go home. This past Wednesday the clouds stayed away miraculously, and we had a beautiful evening for Pops in the Park -- too bad I forgot my camera -- reminding me how glorious an outdoor concert can be. (Or semi-outdoor, since this one was under a tent in the middle of the park.)

Outdoor concerts might not be among orchestral musicians' favorite things, generally -- even when it's dry, there's often wind to contend with, or bugs, or seam-busting heat and sunshine. During my summer at the NRO in Breckenridge I learned to be very adept at securing the music to the stand with clothes-pins, since a gust of Colorado wind might easily blow the whole folder off the stand. At Spoleto Festival USA, there's an annual finale concert, loved by audiences and dreaded by musicians -- it's outside Charleston in a swampy plantation site, with enormous mosquitoes swarming and occasionally crawling onto music, clothing, and instruments. That one's coming up soon too -- it's this Sunday, June 8th.

For all their horrors and discomforts, outdoor concerts still can be sensational -- think of the Boston Pops on the Esplanade, the New York Phil playing Central Park, or the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl, all of which attract larger and more diverse audiences than any of their indoor concerts. Calgary has a great outdoor performance site too: Prince's Island Park, which is right in the center of the city. But the CPO hasn't played there in a while, mostly due to complications of weather and scheduling. In a town hall meeting this past week, violinist Steve Lubiarz suggested we should give that venue another try, now that "Mozart on the Mountain" has been shelved and "Beethoven" will likely get poured on as well. At least on Prince's Island, no one would have far to go to get away from the rain.

bread and butter Beethoven

2008-06-05T21:40:00.007-06:00

This Saturday's Beethoven in the Badlands concert in being conducted by CPO resident conductor Pierre Simard -- but the parts for the main piece on the program, Beethoven's 2nd Symphony, were heavily edited by our baroque series conductor, Ivars Taurins. I've written about Ivars' markings before -- some might criticize him as overly fussy, but they tend to get him what he wants, right away. The main ones are as follows:

/ -- Ivars calls this one a stress
u -- a 'de-stress', a saucer shape often confused for an up-bow
^^^^ -- a squiggly line meaning 'do something interesting'; I like to call it a schmearando

After reading through the first movement, Pierre quickly realized that he was working with a pre-installed interpretation, and a bit of rehearsal time was spent cleaning up some of the squiggles and dashes. Most of them make sense musically -- a lot of them would probably be done automatically, without being marked. But having them in the part leads to a bit of an exaggerated effect, as though I were to write my BLOG with all the IMPORTANT words marked for EMPHASIS!!

Pierre remarked that he was going for more of a 'bread and butter' Beethoven, which quickly got turned back at him with all sorts of variations -- after he suggested some ornamentation in the opening Adagio, a bassoonist said, "I thought you wanted meat and potatoes," then others suggested rice and beans, beer and pretzels, black and tan, etc. I would have preferred lox and schmear, though that might be the Ivars markings talking.

cowboys and obscure Indian music

2008-06-04T13:19:00.006-06:00

This week the CPO is wrapping up the season with a few run-out concerts -- Pops in the Park at the Heritage Park Historical Village yesterday evening and today, then Beethoven in the Badlands in Drumheller on Saturday. (We kind of have an alliteration addiction at the CPO.) You can find more details at the CPO's website.

One of the pieces on the Pops in the Park program is the third movement from the Edward MacDowell Indian Suite. Looking the piece up on Google, there's not a whole lot -- though there is this review of a New York Philharmonic performance in 1914:

MacDowell's suite was heard with interest and pleasure. It does not, in the course of time, seem quite to justify the unmeasured praises of his indiscriminate admirers; but it is perhaps his best piece of orchestral writing. In nothing else has he written with so sure a touch and with so ample a command of rich, delicate, and varied color. The suite is especially valuable as a demonstration of what can be done with "Indian music" as artistic material. Indian music is mostly not very musical -- hard, rude, and unyielding to treatment. It was not, in truth, very plastic in MacDowell's hands; but nobody else has treated it with so much skill or so much success. He has molded it into something really musical, and has given the several movements something of the character that he sought and expressed in their titles. But it is to be observed that after this suite he did not throw himself heart and soul into making "American music" out of Indian tunes, and seems to have thought this experiment in ethnology sufficiently successful to leave without a successor.
-- from the New York Times archives online: "Philharmonic Concert: MacDowell's Indian Suite Heard", December 7, 1914

I suppose a piece based on the music of an entire race -- or many races, since 'Indian' covers a huge variety of people and cultures -- is bound to be a bit racist. Or at least attract some racist music reviews. Worth noting here, though, is the use of the barbed compliment, that critic's trick of starting out positive then slipping in a nasty little aside. Usually it's some disparaging remark about the horn section, but here an entire civilization gets slammed.

For our Pops concert, the piece fit into a Western, cowboy-themed program. Conductor Pierre Simard tends to sneak in works that are bizarrely obscure, though thematically connected, on pops programs. (For example, there was his infamous sheep program.) Introducing MacDowell's "Indian Suite", Pierre didn't bring up the whole legacy of white oppression and cultural appropriation. Instead, he mentioned that he had never heard the piece before that morning, nor had anyone in the orchestra. It seemed like a slightly embarrassing thing to admit, though I'm not sure if it's more embarrassing for us or for Edward MacDowell, who seems to have fallen somewhat out of fashion since 1914. The audience may have been a little astonished that we'd thrown it together on so little rehearsal. Still, they seemed to enjoy hearing the piece, in a measured, discriminate sort of way.

when gigging is a crime

2008-06-03T14:35:00.005-06:00

The other day, Jason Heath posted a long confessional piece about his addiction to freelancing, and the often ridiculous lengths he goes to keep taking every gig he possibly can. It's fun reading for anyone who's burnt through some miles with the Freeway Philharmonic:

Instrumental Junkies, part I

I definitely can sympathize with Jason's irrational tendency to gig himself to death, and the emotional torpor of not having any gigs coming up. That's my situation right now, since the CPO season is wrapping up next Saturday -- and I'm legally required not to work for any other employers. That's what my Canadian work permit says, but it's still agonizingly hard to turn down a fun, interesting, or well-paying gig -- legal or not.

This last weekend I was offered a gig with the Player's Chamber Ensemble, a local chamber ensemble organized around the Lily String Quartet. They're a cool bunch of people, and it seemed like good times, the weekend after our season ends -- except for that nagging voice:

"Don't take that gig, you'll be depriving some worthy Canadian!"

That's the reason for that work permit restriction, and it makes a lot of sense. No one wants to see a foreigner swoop in and take good jobs, especially when he's just doing it because he's bored and needs to fill up his schedule. It's arguable how good a job this is ($100 for 4 services doesn't sound especially good) -- but the point is, some Canadian should get a fair chance at it, and I'm not a Canadian.

Luckily I found I had a convenient excuse -- a camping trip next week, which would have forced me to miss the first rehearsal -- and they seem to have found someone willing and legal to play instead. The whole episode made me realize how bad I am at turning down gigs, and how I almost need a really compelling reason to do so -- more than just not enough money, I have no way of getting there, or I dislike the repertoire. It usually has to be something pretty serious, if not life-threatening.

I decided to write a little Cosmo-style survey to help readers determine their own tolerance for turning down gigs. Give yourself one point if you would turn down a gig for each of the following reasons:

over 30 miles (50 km) away
over 60 miles (100 km) away
over 90 miles (150 km) away
less than $120 a service
less than $60 a service
less than $30 a service
don't like the repertoire
don't like the conductor
don't like your stand partner / section colleagues
would have to miss best friend's wedding
would have to miss a great party
would have to miss a new episode of "The Office"
your car is in the shop, you'd have to take transit
your instrument is in the shop, you'd have to borrow one
you've been hospitalized, you'd have to break doctor's orders
Scoring:
10-15 points: a picky gigger-- you'll turn an orchestra down if it so much as looks at you funny
6-10 points: somewhat selective -- but you'll still juggle some priorities to do a gig
1-5 points: an instrumental junkie -- time to get help

young people today

2008-06-02T19:12:00.004-06:00

Among young-ish orchestral musicians, "youth orchestra" can sometimes sound like an insult. We don't want to be confused with the students, eager but unseasoned, which that phrase suggests. At the New World Symphony especially, people would get quite angry over the idea that we were just another youth orchestra -- "America's Orchestral Training Academy" sounded, to some sensitive ears, like a fancy way of saying exactly that.

This is all despite the fact that youth orchestras can be quite wonderful things. For most orchestra players, our earliest inspiration to pursue this career came in a youth orchestra. There's an amazing chemistry in a room full of young people, interpreting a piece of music as though it's just been written, even though it's much older than they are. And some of the most exciting orchestras performing today -- like the Verbier Festival Orchestra, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, and New World Symphony itself (sorry, guys) -- are essentially youth orchestras.

This weekend the CPO played Mahler 1 with the Calgary Youth Orchestra, as a side-by-side deal -- the concert received a very positive review in the Herald, and also a human interest story on some parents and children taking the stage together. There was a warm feeling of generational camaraderie; the CYO kids performed with a lot of dignity and professionalism, while the CPO played with more energy and enthusiasm than we might muster on an average night.

After the Saturday concert, we had a season-ending party honoring several veteran members of the CPO, three retiring this year and another two receiving their 25-year pins. These kinds of milestones tend to make people feel philosophical, pondering all those passages of time, energy, wisdom, and tricky accidental-strewn Mahler we undergo in the course of a career. One after the other, they all said very kind, gracious things about the younger musicians who've joined the CPO in the last few years, and how they'd been motivated to give a little extra themselves, meeting all these new, enthusiastic players.

I suppose I'm one of those new members -- though already there are a lot of CPO musicians younger than me! -- and it's cool to hear that we've made a positive difference for the more senior membership. Just like there's a stereotype of young players -- raw, brash, rushing, overplaying -- there's one for older players too, and it's no less denigrating. The CPO has a lot of long-time members who are still very active musically, technically proficient and passionate about orchestral playing though. Maybe it's time to toss out the stereotypes.

the CPO gets Titanic

2008-05-28T16:48:00.005-06:00

This week at the CPO we're playing Mahler 1 with members of the Calgary Youth Symphony -- not the whole CYSO, but still enough to add extra heft to the orchestra. We have 9 basses, 11 horns, 7 oboes (!), and 2 timpanists. The low brass is one of the only non-augmented sections, but telling them that is only going to encourage them to play louder.

So far we haven't rehearsed in the hall, partly because the huge inflatable whale, shown above, was taking up that space. She was part of last week's Kids' Fest, and on Tuesday she got a sponge bath and some other maintenance done indoors. I rushed in to take a photo before they finished, but only had time to catch this dim but suggestive rear-end view.

A couple weeks ago Michael Hovnanian posted on Mahler 1 fatigue, prompting a whole slew of comments and then a follow-up response. I'm not a Mahler 1-hater personally, though that 5-minute C pedal is not one my favorite moments in music. It's certainly one of the most expansive symphonies, in terms of length, the variety of musical ideas, and of course all the Sturm und Drang of the finale.

What I find extraordinary about this symphony, though, are the moments of quirky intimacy -- like that bizarre bass solo, accompanied only by timpani, and answered by tuba, bassoon, and eventually the whole orchestra. It's a bit like crawling up inside a whale (either end) and finding a little old man with a sad story to tell. The other night Chuck played the solo in the final 3 minutes of rehearsal, with the timpani about 50 meters away, and to my ears he got the odd, plaintive expressiveness of the tune just about right. We were rehearsing in an immense Jewish temple in south Calgary, so extra schmaltz seemed appropriate.

Sounding weird is partially the point, I think -- amid all the pageantry and fanfares, it's the weird stuff that keeps me interested in Mahler. Michael praises Haitink's ability to "keep vulgarity from creeping into passages where it has no business," which is very useful for a piece which risks deafening the audience with every huge, ear-splitting climax. Just as important, though, is to get the spiky, contorted, and genuinely vulgar stuff right -- so that all those blistering, euphoric peaks have some gnarled, murky valleys to tower over.

podcastaway

2008-05-15T17:47:00.007-06:00

My iPod, Terpsichore, recently succumbed to a grave illness. It started with fainting, freezing spells, becoming gradually more frequent, and soon the sad iPod icon began to appear as well. Eventually, nothing would revive her.

I'm tempted to blame an Edifier iF200 iPod charger and speaker, shown below, which I bought for $36 at Wal-mart a few weeks before my iPod bit it. Whenever I placed Terpsichore on the stand, the Edifier emitted a violent beeping sound and there was an almost palpable sense of gadget revolt and struggle. Of course, it could also be that Terpsichore, nearing her 2nd birthday, was just getting too old to live. Her predecessor, Mrkgnao!, died just before his 1st birthday, luckily qualifying for the Apple warranty.

To the question of whether to replace Terpsichore, I'm sort of ambivalent. These newfangled 80 GB models with video are attractive -- it would be cool to watch some of those video bits that Jason Heath has been posting on Contrabass Conversations lately -- but then again, maybe I could wait a few months and get the next next generation thingamawhatzit. My Inner Luddite seems to be gaining strength, while my desire to walk around with 1,500 albums and a crappy set of earphones to listen to them slowly subsides.

Life without an iPod has been okay so far, though I do miss some of the recordings I only have in digital formats. It gives me time to listen to lots of other things, though -- lately I've been listening to Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, one of the first operas ever written that's still worth hearing.

I realize I'm in a bit of a technological recession lately -- first the car, and now the iPod. What's next to go, you might ask -- cell phone, refrigeration, flushing toilets? I'm not sure, but I'll let you know. Assuming that I'm still blogging, and haven't switched to publishing leaflets.

goslings in the park

2008-05-14T17:08:00.007-06:00

There's a new cohort of goslings on the Bow River waterfront, pecking and preening their way to becoming the big, annoying geese that Calgary's joggers, walkers, and bikers have learned to avoid. They're still pretty cute and lovably awkward-looking at the moment, though. The camera work is by Tina Brunnhofer, though I have only myself to blame for the amateurish editing.

musicological smackdowns

2008-05-12T20:57:00.008-06:00

Musicologists and gangster rappers have a lot more in common than you might think -- they both spend a fairly high proportion of their work ripping on the works of their rivals, for one thing. I just started reading Opera as Drama by Joseph Kerman, which is of course a very scholarly, serious musicological text. But he starts out his preface dissing mercilessly on another musicologist, Peter Conrad, who wrote an article defending Tosca as an effective dramatic work:

Conrad calls the static opening of Act III dramatically cogent because it summarizes "the operatic transvaluing of religious values that has preceded" -- something that can indeed be said to be articulated by music: by stage music, by the Shepherd Boy's song followed by the melange of church bells. What, then, does Puccini's score accomplish that would not be accomplished by literal folksongs and Sunday-morning tape recordings? What does its particular mawkish (and undaring) quality have to do with the opera's "daring profanation of the sacred"? It is on questions like that Conrad's interpretation stands or, as I think, falls.

- Preface to the New Edition, Opera as Drama by Joseph Kerman, p. xiii

Oh, no he didn't! I almost want to read the Peter Conrad article, just so I can fully enjoy Kerman's musicological smack-down. Not that I share his low opinion of Tosca -- maybe it is mawkish, but it can still make an auditorium full of people whimper and sob. I just get a huge pleasure from watching music critics go at it, mocking one another's clumsily phrased arguments and unfortunate choices of adjectives. It's sort of like watching a gang of pirhanas and a shark mix it up -- you're not sure which you're pulling for, you just want to see some carnage.

Opera as Drama is a fun book to read, even if you're not a big fan of musicological squabbling. I'm still only on Chapter 2 -- Orpheus: The Neoclassic Vision -- but already there's been an intriguing reference to a famous double bass excerpt, in the Prologue:

The scene begins on a celebrated note of menace, muted double-basses interrupting the ethereal close of Desdemona's Ave Maria. What defines it as much as the grotesque color and pitch is the key contrast, E thrust into A-flat. The double-bass line becomes more mellow, and limps, punctuated by an urgent motive, at first bleak, then flaring up as Otello makes to scimitar Desdemona at once.

- p. 7

Hey, watch who you're calling 'grotesque', mister. Though I do like the word 'menace', and the 'thrust' of our first low E entrance. Hearing that transition is always startling, and it seems like a shame to start that excerpt without the high, ethereal A-flat major chord that precedes it. Bass players can argue endlessly about whether there should be an accent on that note, and what kind of accent, or maybe just a swell, or a lean... I'm not really sure what the right answer is. When you experience it in context though, and feel that stomach-lurching change of tonality, the bass section really does play a dramatic role.

A friend once told me about a ghastly visualization exercise he was given for this excerpt. He had played through the Otello soli for a noted bassist and pedagogue, at the very beginning of their first lesson. The teacher asked, "Do you have a wife or girlfriend?" -- yes, he replied, he did have a girlfriend. "I want you to play it again, but imagine that you're so enraged, so furious, at such a psychotic breaking point, that you are prepared to kill the woman you love."

At that point, I think he may have asked, "And should I begin with an accent?"

take back the Capuzzi

2008-05-07T12:55:00.003-06:00

My colleague Mike Eastep, tuba player at the CPO, just invited me over to hear a lunch-time tuba recital by Keith Hartshorn-Walton, at the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer in Calgary. (The concert was presented by the Pro Arts Society as part of their Wednesday series.)

I was surprised to walk in and hear Keith perform, in its entirety, the Antonio Capuzzi Concerto for Double Bass. It came off quite well, with lots of beautiful, ringing high notes and a gracefully phrased, melodic 2nd movement. Tuba players transcribe it down a fifth to B-flat major, with an adapted cadenza -- suggesting a strange, poetic justice for all the cello music we bassists have come to love, transcribe, and re-write.

You might peg bass and tuba players as bottom-feeders, on some hypothetical musical food chain. In actuality though, we play some of the best solo repertoire ever written -- just not written for our instrument, usually. That puts us on the top of the musical food chain, at least by my biased reckoning. Bach may have never envisioned his 5th Cello Suite rattling the lighting fixtures in tuba range, but that's how I hear it, a lot of the time, and I'm pretty sure there's nothing egregiously wrong with that.

But if bass players are going to stay at the top of the food chain, we'd better watch out for these tuba players, stealing all our obscure, bizarre classical concerti. They've already got Capuzzi - watch out for Vanhal, Dittersdorf, Dragonetti, and Sperger!

silvery muffs

2008-05-06T22:34:00.007-06:00

I just discovered that I had been tagged by Michael Hovnanian on his Bass Blog last Friday. He lists the rules of the tag:

Rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

The nearest book was Opera as Drama by Joseph Kerman, but I'd sort of rather not be caught out as such a music nerd. Also, page 123 contains a long musical example from a duet between Otello and Desdemona, making the already bizarre and arbitrary rules sort of awkward to follow.

Another relatively nearby book was The Calgary Gardener, published by the Calgary Horticultural Society, which reads as follows:

The leaves are long and tongue shaped, densely covered with white silky hairs and downy to the touch. Quiet and unobtrusive in their silvery muffs, the small purplish flowers are borne in whorls atop long woolly spikes. 'Silver Carpet' is a nonflowering variety.

I hope that is satisfactory for your purposes, Mr. Hip Internet Tagger Guy. I in turn will tag:

Jeff White
Lauren Robinson
Mark Kevin Hall
Jason Heath
Denise Cheung and/or Brad Ottesen

I'll be pretty impressed if any of these people even reads this post, since my blog's been chronically sporadic of late. Still, a tag's a tag. And I already broke the first couple rules.

musical couches

2008-05-06T21:10:00.005-06:00

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Chris Wuerscher, the psychologist, choir member, and CPO board member who offered his services to orchestra members in January -- inspiring conductor Bill Eddins to write about "Calgary's Brilliant Move":

It's a widely known fact - musicians are a little "different." Actually most of us are bloody nuts, and that has consequences for both orchestras and musician's families. So what's going to happen when an orchestra actually does something about it?

I've said for years that the best move any orchestra could ever make is to hire a staff psychiatrist...

It was a cold, blustery Friday afternoon when I took the train to Dr. Wuerscher's office. His secretary poured me a cup of tea to warm up, but Chris seemed eager to start right away. His questions sort of poured out in mighty clumps -- I'd start to answer one of them, and realize I'd left all the rest hanging. Still, they were all intriguing questions -- about where music takes us, emotionally and intellectually, and how as professional musicians we experience and sometimes insulate ourselves from music's effects.

It turns out Dr. Chris isn't primarily interested in treating musicians' neuroses -- though he's not opposed to it -- but more in talking about music and how it functions in our lives. We talked about the ephemeral qualities that make for a great performance, the ways music can take us out of ourselves and bring a higher awareness, and the joys and frustrations of working with a large, diverse group of people. Some of those neurotic tendencies may have come up, but that really isn't Chris' focus in these conversations.

He's actually trying to figure out how musicians might be able to help people in other fields to work in more inspired, harmonious ways. His working theory is that the intuitive abilities and non-verbal communication we need to play well in an orchestra aren't unique to musicians, but could have great benefits in a business meeting or negotiation, for example. His approach reminds me a lot of conductor Ben Zander, who has written a very spirited and inspiring book with Rosamund Stone Zander, The Art of Possibility.

It's a rare enough thing to find a musician who can really convey what music-making is all about -- Ben Zander does this very well in his book, but so well as he can in person. It seems like the whole magic of what music does for us, and what we do for music, is that it can't really be described in words. "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture," someone wrote. That's never stopped people from writing and talking exhaustively about music, and I had a great time talking about it with Chris. Even if we didn't reach any major breakthroughs, he still made me want to come back soon and talk some more -- which I guess is what a good psychologist does.

moment of hockey pool glory

2008-05-05T17:14:00.002-06:00

It's a little hard to make it out on this photo, but that's my name on the top of the CPO hockey pool standings, unofficially, at the end of the first round. Unfortunately, all but one of my brilliant picks got eliminated in the first round, so now I'm in 8th or 9th.

me and the Alberta Winds

2008-05-05T14:24:00.004-06:00

This is a video from a concert last month with the Alberta Winds, conducted by Dr. Jeremy Brown at the University of Calgary's Rozsa Centre. Dr. Brown also introduces the piece, "Mozart New-Look" by Jean Francaix.

Incidentally, I had all kinds of difficulties getting the video and audio synchronized, so my apologies for any annoying audio lag.

the music critic as pollster

2008-04-09T07:43:00.006-06:00

This past weekend the Juno music awards came to Calgary, and I played in a concert featuring some of the classical music nominees -- cellist Matt Haimovitz, the Gryphon Trio, composer Brian Current, and violinist James Ehnes. The concert was on Calgary Herald arts critic Bob Clark's beat, and he wrote an interesting review titled "Classical stars deliver Juno joy," in which he solicited individual audience members' reactions to each of the pieces on the program:

After the Gryphon, composer Current conducted the Kensington Sinfonia -- most of whose musicians are Calgary Philharmonic players -- in a performance of his piece For the Time Being, a clear and very imaginatively textured work, structured as a series of vanishing accelerations of sound that constantly give rise to new material within them.

"I really liked it -- how it was really rhythmic and kept going all the time," said 16-year-old Danielle Wiebe.

"It was really exciting and really cool how he (Current) introduced all sorts of new concepts into it," said her friend and fellow string player, Maria van der Sloot, 15.

Both girls admitted, however, they had come to hear Ehnes perform.

I haven't seen this kind of review before, and so I can't say it's a trend. As a performer, it's gratifying to hear flattering comments from (ahem) teenage girls. They might not have all the fancy adjectives and backhanded compliments that an experienced critic would -- but what's wrong with just being really cool?

I worry, though, that journalists might take this too far -- swarming the bathroom stalls for heartfelt comments at intermission, sticking a microphone in your face for instant feedback between symphony movements, eavesdropping on people's private conversations and personal asides: 55-year-old Jerry Pickens likened the Stockhausen to the sound of his lawnmower, which reminded him of pressing duties. "Damn, I gotta cut that grass."

They might even -- I shudder at the thought -- try to sneak backstage for the musicians' reviews of their own performances. "I totally cacked that entrance," remarked horn player Fred Jones, "but the half-assed cue sure didn't help." Concerts might begin to resemble Iowa political caucuses, with every clap or groan getting prominent coverage. Do we really want to go there?

Take a Friend to the Orchestra

2008-04-08T09:46:00.006-06:00

Drew McManus, who writes the excellent site Adaptistration - the best place on the web for news, opinion, and inside stuff on orchestras - invited me to write an essay for his annual "Take A Friend To The Orchestra Month" series. My contribution is posted up today - I wrote about inviting my yoga teachers Jeff and Harmony to a CPO concert. They've actually come back for another concert since then, and I'm optimistic I may have hooked some new audience members!

Check out my essay on the Adaptistration website, and be sure to read Maestro Carlos Kalmar's essay as well.

in praise of well-placed squiggles

2008-03-31T10:29:00.003-06:00

This past weekend the CPO joined the Alberta Ballet for a series of performances of the Mozart Requiem. This is one of those pieces I've been waiting my whole life to play, and I hadn't envisioned my first time happening in a pit, with lots of dancers cavorting above me. Still, it was a blast to play and we got a mostly gracious review by Bob Clark in the Calgary Herald:

Requiem for the magic of Mozart's music

It might be interesting to note that, while the performance was conducted by Peter Dala, the parts were liberally marked and edited by CPO baroque series conductor Ivars Taurins. Ivars has his own language of squiggles and emphasis marks, which make his orchestral parts very distinctive. (I'll have to post a guide to Ivars' markings some time.) Since the CPO performs with Ivars all the time, we've learned to decipher all these markings, and it can streamline the rehearsal process and help everyone towards a unanimous, Ivars-approved interpretation -- even when Ivars doesn't happen to be conducting!

At one point I was rather squeamish about marking things in parts -- even changing a bowing or writing in a fingering seemed like a minor desecration, like changing the key signature or something. I've gotten way over that though, and at this point I think that well-marked parts are really the well-kept secret of great ensemble playing. Without them, we'll waste tremendous amounts of time in rehearsal, arguing over bowings and trying to correct notes. But when everything is clearly, thoughtfully marked, the orchestra can sound fantastic already at the first rehearsal. We're not hampered by all those dumb reading mistakes that poor parts can create.

Even more vitally, an orchestra's set of parts, and the markings they contain, will perpetuate a certain style and traditions of performing those pieces. Whether or not Mozart marked a rit. (or Sussmayer, or whichever other composer finished the Requiem...) we'll tend to react to a judiciously placed squiggle or backward arrow, and the conductor will have to make a point not to slow down.

In this respect the orchestra librarian is one of the most influential musicians in the orchestra, even more so than the conductor sometimes. You may be able to find his name hidden somewhere in the program, but the audience will never give a dedicated round of applause to the guy who does all that erasing, correcting, photocopying, and re-marking of parts. He'll probably never get praised in a critic's review of a performance either, even though his work can make or break that performance.

In the CPO our librarian's name is Rob Grewcock, and he definitely deserves some praise and applause.

Mozart's Requiem

2008-03-25T17:23:00.003-06:00

This week the CPO is performing as pit band for a new Alberta Ballet production of Mozart's Requiem. What an amazing piece, and a wickedly hard bass part. At the beginning of the show, individual orchestra members are to play little passages from famous Mozart instrumental works -- the clarinet concerto, violin sonatas, etc. Maybe someone in our section will feel like tossing off some "Per Questa Bella Mano" (and singing along would be bonus points). I'll probably have my hands full learning that devilish "Domine Jesu" movement. Yikes!

the Bow blows chunks

2008-03-23T16:15:00.008-06:00

Just after writing that last post I did get quite sick, ironically, and spent the last few days hacking away at my cough, whimpering at my fever, and (mostly) asleep in bed. I did also play a Good Friday gig, but it wasn't as entertaining as this one posted on Michael Hovnanian's Bass Blog.

While I was mostly sleeping, spring came to Calgary, at least for the time being. I have some photos of huge ice chunks breaking off and floating down the Bow River, along with the photo above, a view of downtown from Scarboro United Church where I played last weekend.

these pretzels are making me...

2008-03-17T18:56:00.006-06:00

One of the sweetest and most bizarre people I've met here in Calgary is our principal oboist, JL. Yesterday quite a few Calgary Phil musicians, including me and JL, were playing a marathon Bach Society concert -- 2 and 1/2 hours of choral music by Bach, Handel, Buxtehude, and Grutzmacher's 'Boccherini' cello concerto. By intermission I was already rather worn out; JL only played on the two first-half pieces, so on his way out he must have noticed me slumping in a chair next to my bass.

JL: Hey, you sounded good, I hadn't really heard you play before.

Me: Oh, thanks, you too.

JL: Yeah, um, let me give you these pretzels. They've been in my pocket for a few days, but they don't go bad. They're pretzels, what's to go bad in a pretzel!?

Me: Uh, thanks, that's alright though...

JL: No no, they're fine, really, here take them!

Me: Sure...okay. Um, thanks.

JL: Oh alright, here -- I'll eat one just to show you're they're not poisonous or anything. (he takes a pretzel out of the already half-finished bag and eats it.) Of course, I might pass out and die in an hour, and you'll never know. But still, they're good!

Me: (too dumbfounded to speak, accepting the bag of pulverized pretzel bits)

JL: They don't go bad, they're pretzels!

DS (another oboist): Did you hear about this guy who got salmonella and died just from handling some pork rind dog treats? He didn't eat them, just gave them to his dog -- isn't that awful?

Me: Hey, you haven't been keeping any pork rind dog treats in the pocket with the pretzels, have you?

JL: No, I've never even touched a pork rind dog treat, I'm pretty sure.

Me: Oh good, then I'm probably safe. Pretzel, anyone?

transit chase scene

2008-03-13T22:19:00.006-06:00

Transporting a bass around Calgary without a car has been a whole lot easier than I would have imagined. Partly that's because the weather has been unusually warm these last couple of weeks (today's high was 1 C). And also, Calgary has a quite nifty transit system, if you can figure out all the routes and schedules. (This site helps somewhat.)

This afternoon I had a rehearsal at Knox Presbyterian Church, which is in the southwest, certainly outside of bass-walking distance from my morning rehearsal downtown. I looked it up on calgarytransit.com, and found that there are a couple of routes (#112 and #108) that go directly from downtown to that neighborhood. I missed the 112, but the 108 showed up just a few minutes later, and I was on my way.

Maybe I'm still traumatized or shell-shocked or whatever, but the truth is I never much liked to drive -- and if I'd known how easy it is to get around by bus, I probably would have left my car home anyway. It's so much nicer to relax and get some reading done, rather than fretting away in traffic.

The only snafu was at the end of my trip back downtown: having just climbed off the bus, I realized my Klean Kanteen water bottle was missing. Normally I would have just snapped my fingers and let it go, but this happens to be a very nice metal water bottle, pictured here. A couple months ago a study came out saying that plastic water bottles leach bad chemical stuff into the water, and all my friends started demanding I replace my trusty Nalgene -- "Please Matt, stop killing yourself!" So I eventually caved, and bought the $16 leach-free metal canister.

I certainly wasn't happy about losing it, so I began frantically waving to stop the bus. No effect. It was heading down 9th Avenue, with only the perpetually red stoplights and rush-hour gridlock to slow it down. Now I was still carrying my bass, and I briefly considered popping on the wheel and chasing it down. You may recall my plan to write an action movie screenplay about an intelligence agent / musician, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to test out a chase sequence. I was just a few steps from the stage door though, so I first set my bass down inside, then went galumphing down the street to desperately try and recover my water bottle.

I first ran down 9th, where I could see the bus making a left in the distance. I remembered that I'd caught the bus on 6th and McLeod -- not realizing it went right past the stage door -- so it was probably looping back there now. So just like an action movie hero, I turned left to cut it off at the pass -- only to see it pass me again, stopped at a crosswalk. Now I was right behind the bus, and two other buses. I was actually running down a bus only lane, in flagrant violation of pedestrian traffic laws, but by now the adrenaline had started to kick in, and I was ready to overturn some fruit carts or whatever they do in action movies.

Luckily there were no fruit carts, or police officers watching, and the traffic was still creeping along. I ran up alongside the bus, stopped at another light which had just turned green, and tried to indicate with hand gestures, "Please, I need to get on board, there's a highly expensive drinking device somewhere in the back row!" The bus driver, a friendly Polish man, made the gesture for, "Forget about it, there's a stop around the corner." So I went running again, and finally caught up, where he let me on and I found the missing canteen. Whew!

For the actual movie script, I'll probably have to think up something better than a water bottle to be chasing down a bus for. But still, I'm thinking my musician / intelligence agent / action hero should also be car-less. I'm sick of all those screeching-tire, wrong way on the highway scenes -- it's so much more exciting to watch someone run down the bus, fish out a bus ticket, and find a decent seat, all in one swift gesture. Especially while carrying a double bass.

processing speed

2008-03-12T14:55:00.005-06:00

What happened when you clicked the little browser icon to open up the internet this morning? If your computer is anything like mine, a little hourglass probably appeared. And then nothing much happened for a while. Bored, you got up to make some tea, then came back and found that Gmail had finally made its appearance.

This isn't a post about how my computer sucks -- rather, I think it's kind of interesting how even these insanely slick, efficient machines still take a little while to get anything operating correctly. And I want to suggest that maybe we should allow our own, far older thinking technology some extra time in between tasks as well.

The particular task I've been thinking about lately -- playing audition excerpts -- demands a lot from that old technology. Within 20 or 30 seconds, they call for extremes of dynamics, articulation, speed, expression -- and then you'll have to play something with completely different demands. A lot of the work of really great excerpt playing, therefore, happens between the excerpts -- in those 30 or 40 or 60 seconds you give yourself to load up the next program.

Often we don't give ourselves that processing time, though. Or if we do, we're not quite sure how to organize our thoughts. We might start out imagining the first few measures, then remember the note we cacked last time, and spend another 30 seconds in panic, anger, or self-flagellation. (Well, maybe no actual self-flagellation, unless you brought a whip on stage.) It's like your computer started to load up Firefox, then crashed instead -- I hate it when that happens!

The point is to get into the right mental space to play well, not to spin around on a carousel with all your excerpt baggage. A horn player who I played for the other day suggested hearing the involved passage coming up later, not just the first few measures -- to hear the tempo where things will actually get a bit tricky, and hear it working well. After I did this for a Bach movement, taking the time to imagine the whole 16-bar phrase that usually fouls me up, it went fantastically better -- even the easier stuff at the beginning sounded more confident and secure.

So I'm just throwing this out, and wondering if anyone else has pre-excerpt mental strategies to share. If the committee gets bored waiting, they can always go start some tea.

Bottesini video

2008-03-11T21:36:00.003-06:00

I haven't posted any video for a while, so here is the Bottesini concerto exposition. Any comments are appreciated -- hopefully I'll post a better in tune, complete version soon!

marker-board Proust

2008-03-11T19:49:00.004-06:00

Proust wrote famously long sentences -- I think one of them sprawls over a full page and a half. He also wrote some great and somewhat short sentences, which I've been writing on my refrigerator marker board and illustrating lately. Here are a couple of them, both from the Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way:

"For one cannot change, that is to say become another person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one no longer is."

"There are arduous mountainous days which one spends an infinite time climbing, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt singing."

name that person's tune

2008-03-10T15:28:00.007-06:00

I'll sometimes play this game when I meet someone for the first time, of trying to associate them with a piece of music. Usually I won't tell them which piece I've picked for them (unless they ask), but it gives me something to remember and connect with them -- i.e. "Lydia just came on the radio this morning, I should write to her!" I may have gotten this from the character Charles Swann from In Search of Lost Time, who tends to associate people with Renaissance paintings.

It's usually best not to go by the nationality ("she's Finnish, therefore Sibelius") or the eccentricities of the composers ("he's an adulterous megalomaniac vegetarian, therefore Wagner"). Sometimes physical features will throw you in a certain direction (big=Mahler, small=Webern), but that won't give the truest result either. You really have to try to get a sense of the character of the person, their facial expressions, their ways of shifting between moods, the quiet spaces in between their words, etc.

I don't claim to be an expert on this, but I can definitely tell when I've chosen well -- that piece keeps coming back whenever I see or hear from them, and getting to know them better I find even more associations between person and piece -- "She's a bit like the third movement trio after she's had a couple drinks!"

People might get upset if I did reveal my game to them -- though I figure it's better than associating them with a movie star, since a piece of music is much less likely to go into drug rehab or stand up on Oprah's couch and make a fool of itself. Often a piece of music seems like the closest thing to a real, complex, living human being, with its own habits and charms and peculiarities -- but which you can listen, imagine, and reinterpret all you want, and it will never get self-conscious, confused, or offended.

lessons learned

2008-03-02T21:27:00.003-07:00

Thanks to everyone for the kind thoughts and sympathy after my car crash! I'll usually keep my calamities to myself, but this was the rare occasion when I felt physically compelled to tell people all about what happened -- it was like this sick feeling in my stomach, and it wouldn't go away until I could share those harrowing emotions with other people.

A few people expressed concern about whiplash and other late-onset injuries. I haven't seen a doctor yet, but I definitely think that's good advice. My immediate impression was that I was perfectly fine, but there was soreness and bruising that I didn't notice until hours later. The next day my neck was stiff, and that didn't go away for another day or so. Since I was actually in two separate car crashes, in two different cars, apparently both insurance companies would cover any physiotherapy or health care, but I would need to report and make a claim within 10 days of the accident(s).

It's hard to piece together exactly what happened, though I can still hear and feel the crunch of that first collision. It all happened so quickly, I can't quite pinpoint the moment in which I lost control, turned the wrong way, or pressed the wrong pedal. I think my larger mistake was being on that road, in that weather, on not too much sleep. Tracing it back in my mind, the only things I know I could have done differently were to be better rested, take smaller streets, or wait out the snow storm before getting in the car.

So I'm trying to change my habits, to be less hurried, impulsive, and demanding on myself -- to get a full night's sleep whenever possible, and not just whenever I can't haul myself out of bed. To give more thought to the situations I create for myself, not just to rush headlong towards the next thing coming.

I'm not sure if those lessons are at all relevant to anyone else, or to bass playing -- I sometimes have to remind myself that this is supposed to be a bass blog! But I think any experience, no matter how scary or uncontrollable, can help teach you important things about yourself and your habits, and change your ways of being. Hopefully this one will help me to be a safer driver, and a less scattered person.

collisions

2008-02-28T09:25:00.003-07:00

On the way home from the airport this morning, my car spun out of control and collided with another car on the freeway. I was lucky that I had already turned almost completely around, so that he hit my passenger side, crushing in the door and a lot of the frame on that side. I was momentarily stunned, then realized I was still parked in the middle of the freeway at an awkward angle, so I slowly drove onto the shoulder.

After I had gotten the car to a somewhat safe position, I ran back to see the other guy. He had also pulled off the road, right in front of an exit sign, and was talking on his cell phone. It was around 5:30 am, so traffic on Dearfoot Trail was just starting to get heavy -- the snow had dumped in around 4, accompanied with some blustery freezing winds, which had created the nasty road conditions.

We sat down in his car while he made another phone call, trying to get a replacement at work. Just then, another car hit us -- this time, on the rear driver's side, and spun his car into the exit lane. Luckily, by this time a fire truck had pulled up and they quickly set up some cones to block off the area. We spent another hour waiting for police and tow trucks, and in the meantime two other minor collisions happened right behind us, thankfully also without injuries.

I just got home on a slow but uneventful bus ride, still reeling from all of this. My car, I'm pretty sure, is totaled -- and maybe my bank account too, after the insurance gets sorted out! The side of my car was so deeply impacted that I couldn't pry the glove compartment open, so I've only just been able to call my insurance company now to report it.

Luckily though, no one was hurt. I just have a couple bruises, and the driver who hit me bumped his head in the second collision, but not seriously. It was not a good morning to be on the freeway going south, apparently.

2008-02-23T00:07:00.001-07:00

Knowing a thing does not always allow us to prevent it, but at least the things we know, we hold, if not in our hands, at any rate in our minds, where we can arrange them as we like, which gives us the illusion of a sort of power over them.

- Marcel Proust, from Swann's Way, trans. Lydia Davis, p. 327

getting split

2008-02-19T21:07:00.005-07:00

In ashtanga yoga, "getting split" is when you stop doing the full primary series and instead go right into the intermediate series. There might be another, cooler-sounding Sanskrit term for it. I've only heard it referred to this way though, making it sound like I've just been cracked in half. Actually, there are quite a few poses (in both primary and intermediate series) which do feel quite a bit like getting split in half.

By the time you get split, you've already been doing the full primary and half of the intermediate series, which means a very long practice. I would take nearly 2 hours, sometimes longer when I was feeling sluggish. So getting split should be a nice relief, cutting at least 30 minutes off your practice. It wasn't a nice relief though, at least at first -- I felt tight, weird, and out of sorts. It felt like going through physical withdrawal, as though my body was craving primary series.

And maybe some ego withdrawal, too. Primary series is all stuff I've worked on a long time, and gotten somewhat capable at doing. Intermediate series is all the poses where I flop around like a fish out of water. So getting split meant getting tossed right out of my comfort zone, and into my asphyxiating fish zone.

Well, maybe not quite that bad. It is nice to get finished a bit earlier, and we still do full primary on Fridays. Mostly, I think it's the shock of doing something new, after being in the same routine for so long.

The same principle applies to practicing a musical instrument, I think. We have to follow a routine, work on the same exercises consistently for months or sometimes years. But just as important is knowing when to move on, to replace it with something new -- and not get too attached to that heady feeling of competence. Because once you've mastered an exercise, it's only going to plateau, and then become self-indulgent. It's no longer training the mind, just stoking the ego.

And an overly-stoked ego means it's time to get split.

crazy Dane goes mainstream

2008-02-18T09:07:00.005-07:00

Music critic and blogger Alex Ross has a new article about Carl Nielsen in next week's New Yorker, titled "Inextinguishable." Ross points out that a lot of the hot young phenoms of the orchestral world -- Gustavo Dudamel, Paavo Jarvi, Alan Gilbert -- have been recording and advocating the Danish composer. Which means a lot of orchestra players are going to have to shed some nasty pages:

Orchestral players, percussionists excepted, tend to groan a little when Nielsen shows up on their music stands; his habit of writing furiously fast figures, and then passing them from one section to another, relay style, can make even an ensemble of virtuosos sound like a mess. Audiences, for their part, often go away from Nielsen performances pleased but a little dazed, not sure what hit them.

I've always had a great time playing Nielsen symphonies, and his "Oriental Festive March" from Aladdin is one of my favorite unknown pieces ever. I know what Ross means about those groan-inducing passages, though. Each Nielsen symphony seems to have a page or two of just random, blindingly fast 16th-notes. And they're often unison with all the strings, so any mistakes will sound extra-gnarly.

Ross makes the point that a frenzied, feisty quality -- maybe a bit gnarly, even -- is needed in this music. He reviews a "startlingly polished" performance of the 3rd Symphony by the Curtis Institute's orchestra, conducted by Alan Gilbert, which sounded "oddly, too professional". Well, perhaps that's not so odd -- Curtis has some amazing players, and the last way they want to sound, especially for the music-director-elect of the New York Philharmonic, is unprofessional.

Still, I think there's a certain quality of reckless (but still precise and unified) abandon that's needed in this music, as in the music of Mahler or Sibelius. Abandon with precision -- it's a tricky sort of alchemy. Maybe as orchestras get more familiar with Nielsen, we'll all become a little more precisely unhinged, and master that controlled-frenzy quality.

Read Alex Ross' article "Inextinguishable" here.

Persepolis and Proust

2008-02-16T17:59:00.012-07:00

I just saw the movie Persepolis, which is based on a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. It's a coming-of-age story narrated by a character also named Marjane Satrapi, about her childhood in Iran under the Shah, and the subsequent Islamic revolution.

The story itself possibly couldn't be less like Marcel Proust's novel -- though politics do find their way into In search of lost time, amid all the love stories and dinner parties. Still, that was the work that kept coming to mind as I was watching Persepolis. There's the eponymous narrator, of course, and also the movie is in French -- beyond that, both are about young artists trying to live creative lives in an uncooperative world. And both are ultimately success stories, the proof of which is their very existence.

The form of a graphic novel turned into a movie -- which I'd never seen done quite like this -- really propelled the story. The subjective reality of Marji comes out more directly and immediately than it could in live action. In one scene, she has just broken up with her boyfriend after catching him cheating on her. As she re-imagines the history of their relationship, we see the same scenes we just watched, redrawn -- meeting at a party, him driving her home, etc. -- but where before they were idyllic and joyful, they've now been transformed to show all his ugly qualities. It's a brilliant way of dramatizing the reversals of perception and memory, and one of which Proust would have completely approved.

fishing for complements

2008-02-15T17:05:00.005-07:00

The other week On the Media had a fascinating interview with Clive Thomson, talking about connectors and trend-setters. One of the most catchy ideas in the marketing world has been that a tiny group of highly influential people exists -- Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point calls them 'connectors' -- and that these connectors can basically determine what jeans you'll be wearing or music you'll be listening to next year. Thomson argues that this whole influence business is a lot more dispersed, and a lot more random, than that model would suggest:

[T]here were no all-important Connector hubs. Only five percent of the messages went through highly connected people. The rest of them just went, oh, sort of democratically through people that were weakly connected together. The data seem to show that those Connectors really are not out there in the way that they're supposed to be.
What [Columbia network researcher Duncan] Watts seems to have found and what he argues is that it’s not how influential each person is. It’s how influenceable everyone else is. So to put it another way, if society is sort of ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start it.

It's kind of a powerful idea, and way more empowering than this whole connector business. Anyone can start the next big thing, and lift a fashion, book, or band into the spotlight -- you just need to have the right ideas at the right time. And beyond that, you don't have to look to some flashy elitist media type to know what's cool -- the answer might be anywhere, on your friend's iPod, or your mom's bookshelf, or maybe the idea you just came up with in the shower. We're all connectors, or rather we're conduits for ideas that are bigger than us, and those ideas don't play favorites.

I've been thinking a lot about marketing lately, since I was asked to help out writing program blurbs for the CPO's brochures next year. We were given the full season schedule, or as much of it as has been finalized, and asked to title each of the programs and write a 40-word description to be used on posters and ads. If you go to the CPO website you'll see the one for this week:

Romeo & Juliet

Tchaikovsky, Romeo and Juliet: Overture-Fantasy
Schumann, Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Elgar, Enigma Variations, Op. 36
A Valentine bouquet of symphonic delights! Tchaikovsky’s soaring Romeo and Juliet is complimented by Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a fascinating masterpiece that was an expression of affection towards his wife and friends. Pianist Jean Louis Steuermann joins the CPO in Schumann’s passionate and romantic Piano Concerto in A Minor.

It's quite a trick writing one of these things -- so little space to work with, and you need something that will catch people's attention, with some style and sparkle, but still accessible and aimed towards a general audience. And oh yeah, it might be nice to actually convey some factual information about the music!

This one works pretty well I think -- it certainly gets the 'romantic' message across. My only criticism is that I think 'complimented' should have been 'complemented'. That's not a huge thing, but I know people who get very annoyed by misuse of the word 'complimented.' And many of them are very passionate, romantic people who I hope would still want to attend this concert!

I won't put any of my blurbs here yet, but maybe if they're approved and published I'll take responsibility for my work. That way everyone can complement me, or just make fun of me.

"willing to do almost anything"

2008-02-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

In one of Miranda July's short stories, "Mon Plaisir," she writes about trying to become a movie extra:

On the third day of the rest of Carl's life, and the eleventh of mine, I began calling the number. Instantcast.com explained that your willingness to hit redial for hours at a time is the screening process. This is the actual, professional way that one applies for this job, in the manner of a person trying to win tickets off the radio. The directors are looking for people who are willing to do almost anything, but will happily do almost nothing, for hours....

-- Miranda July, for the short story collection No one belongs here more than you, p. 161

If only auditioning for orchestras were just a matter of hitting redial. It might still be a nameless, faceless, de-humanizing experience, but it least you'd have a quick, impersonal decision:

Busy signal. Click.

I spent a lot of time discussing the problems and injustices of the audition process, back before I has hired at an audition, and now I seem to spend a lot of time talking about the same thing. No one is really satisfied with the process, on either side of the screen. But as much as we rail against auditions for being awkward, wasteful, tedious, unfair, evil rituals of despair, it's hard to argue the one point: they produce people who are willing to do almost anything.

Well, except maybe tap-dancing. A bassist colleague of mine had an illuminating dream recently, in which he discovered the limits of his personal tolerance for humiliation. My new favorite tag-line is now: "Motherfucking tapdancing!?"

Rejection and humiliation do seem to be part of our actual, professional career path though -- just like busy signals and cattle calls for movie extras. Some orchestras seem to go out of their way to make things as logistically difficult as possible: strange application questions; relentlessly long, unspecific lists; rounds scheduled weeks or months apart; or the dreaded tape round. I suppose we could tell ourselves they just do it to weed out the less committed, organized, or desperate candidates. And isn't there a certain pride in being that committed, organized, and/or desperate?

Until they hand you the tap-dancing shoes. Then all your dignity is lost.

nu!

2008-01-17T19:32:00.000-07:00

Our program this week is conducted by Bill Eddins, music director of the Edmonton Symphony:

Mozart, Overture from The Abduction from the Seraglio
Kelly Marie Murphy, Colour of My Dreams
Saint-Saëns, Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33
Rachmaninoff, Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

Bill Eddins has been co-writing a blog, Sticks and Drones, with lots of cute topics like "Butts in the Seats" and "Does this 4/4 pattern make me look fat?" It's been fun reading his contributions to the blog, especially in the last couple days. He's written about getting to Calgary, the first rehearsals, and the CPO's new staff psychologist -- which he describes as "the best move any orchestra could ever make." Read his posts here:

On the Calgary Trail
Calgary's Brilliant Move...

Surprisingly, this is Bill Eddins' first time conducting the Calgary Philharmonic. A few of us got to work with him in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and already have an appreciation for his charismatic and hyper-energetic style, and his bizarre pop-cultural references. He rotates through 4 or 5 different languages to count off, and he'll point out rehearsal letters using characters from Lord of the Rings - "Let's start at B for Bilbo!"

He had a special request for the bass section today - in the second movement of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, where we have a pianissimo downbeat, he asked for a very particular kind of gesture. "Is anyone in the section Yiddish? It's like the way they say, 'nu!'" - and he made this odd little sound, something between a grunt and a groan, and gave our principal a little nudge in the arm to demonstrate

on the skin

2007-12-30T20:13:00.001-07:00

Which is the most important body part in playing the double bass?

Is it the shoulder, the elbow, maybe the hand? Or we could think more in the abstract - Daniel Barenboim talks about the head, the heart, and the gut, three principal and equal contributors.

I'm going to suggest something a little more superficial, though: the skin. It's our largest organ, also our most prominent, most often injured, and quickest to heal. We constantly stretch it, squeeze it, splay it, poke it, pluck it - we ask it to be firm, soft, callused, flexible, tough, fleshy, sensitive. Amazingly, it will usually do all these things, without us taking much notice until it cracks, chafes, burns or blisters.

Within the skin are nerve fibers, which create our sense of touch. These nerves provide our most important sensory input while playing; even more than our ears, they allow us to micro-adjust and play in tune. By the time our ears have heard a note played out of tune, everyone else's ears have heard it too - so we depend on our skin to correct it quicker.

A cellist friend recently cut her left middle finger at the knuckle, rather severely - she had to get eight stitches. She's recovering well, but it's still been frustrating for her to play with injured skin. For a while she couldn't flex the finger enough, and then that finger's vibrato didn't seem to work. For something superficial, the skin can have a deep impact.

One bass maker once told me that the reason strings take a while to break in - and sound so much better after a few weeks of playing - is that skin cells and oils fill in the string's gaps, softening and warming the edges of its vibration. So skin becomes an essential part of the instrument, as well as our own bodies. We leave little pieces of our skin all over the place - as gross as that might seem.

I haven't read too much about the skin, and I can't remember any teacher coaching me on proper skin care. But I've definitely been paying more attention to it since I moved to Calgary. The climate is very dry, which can cause our skin (as well as our basses) to tighten and crack. The best solution to the problem seems to be a good humidifier, and some well-insulated gloves.

working with video

2007-12-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

A couple of people have asked me about video equipment and using video in practice.

The camera I use is a Sony DVD camcorder (DCR DVD-108 is the model number). I bought this camera partly because it has external audio inputs, but so far I have just used the camera's own built-in microphone. It records onto this small DVDs - they only hold 30 minutes or so, but you can play them on most normal DVD players as well as computers. So I can leave my camera equipment down at the hall where I'm practicing, and just bring back a couple small discs if I want to review what I've worked on.

I mostly use video for my own benefit, to diagnose problems I can't see while I'm causing them! That being said, it's hard to resist the temptation to want to record something perfectly. So when I turn on the camera it often stops being a practice session and becomes a performance, (though usually a lonely, mediocre one!) There's nothing wrong with that - we all need to practice performing, and the video camera can serve as a more patient (and less forgiving) audience, when we'd rather not ask a real person. I just find I need to set aside some time to work on things before setting up the camera and pressing record, or else my anal perfectionist side takes over!

Most of the recordings I do get quickly erased and recorded over - that's another nice thing about these mini-DVDs, they are rewritable. I don't want to turn this into a primarily video blog, so I try to only use video here to illustrate some idea or piece I'm working on.

The video below was an excerpt from a Bach cantata I performed last weekend on a Baroque concert. It's practically unplayable on a bass with an extension, but I wanted to find a way to play as many of the notes as possible - so I devised a little extension cheat, leaving out a few notes to close the levers. I also lost a little bit of time, you might notice. It's helpful to watch for any excess or jerky movements in passages like this one, in which I'm trying to be as efficient and fluid as possible.

bass blogroll and Schumann video

2007-12-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

I've been delinquent in blogging lately, preoccupied with moving to a new place and trying to find a tenant to take over my lease. In the meantime though, Stan Haskins has started a series of copycat video posts, messing around with weird camera angles and obscure Mendelssohn excerpts! It's an honor to help spread bass geekery around the blogosphere.

And Michael Hovnanian wrote a very entertaining post about orchestral seating arrangements, titled "Bass-Ackward". Just like at a wedding reception, you can never please everyone -- no matter how hard you try, someone's going to get stuck with a trumpet bell aimed at their head, a violin turned the wrong way, or a bass pizzicato going off like a bomb behind their ear.

Since I'm too distracted to write much, I'll post another video of my own. This is a movement from Schumann's Five Pieces in Folk Style, originally for cello and piano, which I worked on with Donald Palma as an undergrad at NEC. Each week, Don would try subtly to dissuade me from playing the piece, pointing out all the awkward compromises in the transcription, but I wouldn't listen. I finally performed it on my junior recital, to the muffled applause of a very charitable audience.

This movement is marked 'Mit Humor', and what could be more humorous than cello music played on the bass? I'll leave it up to my readers to decide whether it's worth bringing it back before the public, or I had better keep it confined to poorly-lit locker rooms.

bouncing bow advice

2007-12-05T22:15:00.000-07:00

The very first masterclass I attended at last summer's ISB convention was entitled "Bow Strokes with Jeremy McCoy." That might not sound irresistibly attractive to some people, but those people apparently were not in attendance at the 2007 ISB Bass Convention. The room was packed, there were people standing along the wall, and even craning their necks to see from outside the door.

We were about to hear Jeremy McCoy demonstrate spiccatto, and we were all pretty damn excited about it.

Jeremy McCoy plays in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and if you don't know his playing, check out his recently released cd "Dialogues with Double Bass". It's an incredible variety of duets for bass and other instruments, showing off Jeremy's musicality as collaborator as well as soloist.

Getting back to the masterclass though - I unfortunately can't offer any sound or video, but I was taking notes. Here are some of Jeremy's guidelines for working on spiccatto, as well as I can remember them:

1. Prepare with long tones - The contact in a bounced stroke is relatively short, so it's especially important to develop immediate, quality core sound. Focus on full contact with flat bow hair, developing the maximum friction in order to start the string vibrating as quickly as possible.

2. Neutral lines - We don't want anything rigidly straight in the bow arm, since that will disrupt the natural springiness of the bow. The wrist and elbow need to have a combination of firmness and suppleness, so they can direct the bounce without overly controlling it - think of the fluid motion of a basketball player dribbling. This will work best with some degree of flexion.

3. The tip must track - Any wobble or wavering in a long or detache stroke will only become more pronounced in an off the string stroke. Watch that the tip follows a consistent, straight path in long tones, so that it can track horizontally in spiccatto strokes. Notice if the motion of up-bows and down-bows is symmetrical, or if one is more pronounced. Again, using full bow hair for maximum friction will help.

4. Find a natural bounce point - This can start with finding the balance point on your bow, and experimenting with bounced strokes in relation to that point. There's no single ideal spot on the bow, but moving away or towards the balance point can help make spiccatto strokes longer or crisper.

5. Initiate with the elbow - Longer strokes might work better with the whole arm, while shorter may mostly involve the wrist and fingers. Any bounced stroke will start with the elbow though - watch that the elbow is preparing and leading the arm and bow.

He went on to demonstrate a whole range of spiccatto strokes, from martele and sautille to ricochet, battute and balzato. I don't actually remember what a balzato stroke sounded like (my notes say "lit. 'prancing' - flicked at top") but it's a fun word to say in rehearsal or at an audition. "Can we hear that a little more balzato, please?"

Public School attitude

2007-12-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

"Their ignorance of the arts was notable, and they lost no opportunity of proclaiming it to one another; it was the Public School attitude, flourishing more vigorously than it can yet hope to do in England. If Indians were shop, the Arts were bad form, and Ronny had repressed his mother when she inquired after his viola; a viola was almost a demerit, and certainly not the sort of instrument one mentioned in public."

- E.M. Forster, "A Passage to India", p. 31

There may be some differences between Victorian England and modern America, but "the Public School attitude", as E.M. Forster calls it, seems to be pretty much the same. Expressing an interest in subjects taught in class is bad form, and taking an interest in art, literature, or music outside of the classroom is absolute social suicide. It signals that you're different, weird, maybe pretentious and full of yourself - all signs of weakness and invitations to bullying. For a great example of the mercilessness of teenage boys, this one in a 1980s British public school, check out the novel Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.

That attitude might not be particular to public school, or even teenagers, as Forster points out. It might arise in any community that values conformity above all else, where displays of strength and cruelty are necessary to cover up insecurity. Public school is just the place where most of us first encountered it, and where its effects can be greatest. I seemed to fit in pretty well all through elementary school, but then in junior high school I was branded as different - it may have been the 'magnet' classes, or walking around with musical instrument cases. Probably lots of kids cast off these signs of weirdness before they can compromise their reputation - I was either too slow or stubborn to do that, though, and so I got stuck with the label of band geek.

Things are pretty rough as an outcast, and your only friends are other geeks (one of my closest friends, Aaron Olson, just wrote a nice blog post remembering high school geekiness, 'Band Geek'.) Still, you do your best to keep it from getting even worse - I remember being ultra-careful to not let anyone at school know that I still played the violin as well as the bass. If I had to go to a lesson, I would scan the sidewalks for anyone I knew, crouching down in the bushes with my violin case if necessary. I had resigned myself to being a bass-playing nerd, but somehow being a bass and violin-playing nerd was more than I could handle - I quit the violin when I was 15, though now I wish I had kept it up. I still have my old violin, and once in a while I'll pull it out and play through the Suzuki pieces I haven't yet managed to forget.

Things do get better, and as people become more comfortable with themselves, they start to realize that having friends with different talents and interests is actually quite a cool thing. This week at the CPO we've been playing a series of education concerts for school kids, a show called "A Paintbrush for Piccolo" that celebrates a little Italian kid who wanted to be an artist. The music is by Calgary composer Arthur Bachmann, who is also (I hesitate to mention it in public) a CPO violist. It's been going over very well with our elementary school-age audiences. It has some lovely, infectious melodies, as well as a sweet and clever story, engagingly acted - including a little cameo by my stand partner Graeme, who warns the 10-year old protagonist, "Go beg somewhere else!" (He says he practiced his delivery on his own kids.)

Maybe some of the kids in our audiences will decide that being an artist or musician is pretty cool after all, and stick with it despite the Public School attitude. We have one more show, this afternoon at 2 pm, preceded by an instrument petting zoo at 1.

Bach OS2 video

2007-11-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

While at New World, I talked with performance coach Don Greene about using more video in my practice. He said that it's not for everybody, that watching your own playing can be rather tough on the ego, but it's definitely a useful exercise - and he suggested I try some different camera angles, not just the straight frontal shot I normally use.

So here's my first experiment with an over-the-shoulder camera angle, which Don Greene also suggested. It's about as close as I could get to a bassist's-eye view, without removing my head. I'm playing two movements from the Bach Orchestral Suite No. 2, the Double and Badinerie, with a baroque German bow loaned to my by the Calgary Bach Society. I'm still getting used to the light, whippy feel of the thing.

Recording this video so close to my head, it really makes me realize I need to work on calming my breathing. It's lovely though to not have to watch any strange facial expressions - or worry about combing my hair.

composing silence

2007-11-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

There's an odd thing about the last measure of Dvorak's 8th Symphony: no one plays. It's a bar of rest with a fermata over it, for the entire orchestra -- as if to tell the audience, "We'll wait, just clap whenever you feel like!" Of course, the audience won't get that message, unless they happen to be following along in the score. The conductor is not going to beat time for that measure, and the musicians don't have anything to do either, but damp their strings and wait for applause.

It seemed like a strange, sort of John Cage-ish thing for Dvorak to do, composing the silence after the music. Then I noticed today that Schubert's 9th Symphony also ends with a bar of rest, as do Schubert's 4th and 5th. So there must be some explanation - it can't have just been a slip of the pen. I wonder if something about the phrase structure dictated that bar be included - or if the orchestra would cut off that last note differently if it didn't have the empty space following it.

I really have no idea, and it's bugging me.

I like to think that perhaps Dvorak and Schubert just wanted to say, "Well, for the last hour or so, I've organized all the sonorities in this room - I've been controlling your aural experience. It doesn't take some famous dead guy to make sounds into music, though; ultimately what enters your ears, and reaches your mind and heart, is all up to you. Fill this empty measure with whatever sounds move you, or fill it with nothing at all - I leave the choice to you."

It's like when you leave an art museum, and walk out onto a city street. You've just been absorbing dozens of artists' visions of what is beautiful, but suddenly the only one that counts is your own. Which way do you look, what do you notice, how can you tilt your gaze to catch a passing glimmer - how do you frame your own experiences? That's what art asks each of us to decide, and it's a big question. You might need a long, grand pause to figure out a good answer.

Chaplin's "Modern Times"

2007-11-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

I just watched the 1936 film Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin - the first Chaplin film I've watched. All I really knew of Chaplin was the silly mustache and the waddling walk, but he was an incredible performer - expressive facial expressions, brilliant comedic timing, and a physical grace that is really startling. His character is painfully awkward, yet once in a while he'll do a beautiful roller-skating routine, or spin around in a cocaine-induced frenzy, and you realize that he couldn't do all these things so elegantly if he weren't a brilliant actor and dancer.

Here is the climactic scene, in which Chaplin throws away the words and has to sing nonsense. It's worth checking out the recently re-mastered version on DVD, which is much higher quality.

orchestral puppy love

2007-11-24T17:13:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago a video began circulating on the internet of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra at the London Proms, turning the "Mambo" from West Side Story into a ridiculous free-for-all fiesta - shouting, choreographed and spontaneous dancing, trumpets and basses spinning -

Watching that clip, people who had never seen an orchestra must have been saying, "Wow, that looks like so much fun - maybe I should try it!" And when it was e-mailed around the CPO, and I heard some of my veteran colleagues comment about it, their reaction was also: "Wow, that looks like so much fun - maybe I should try it!"

It's not that playing in an orchestra stops being fun once you have done it for a while, or done it professionally. But it does become a workplace, rather than just a huge floating party - which means we're unlikely to break into spontaneous dancing during rehearsals, unless specifically instructed to do so by the composer. Orchestra members have families and outside obligations, and it's not easy to act like a goofy teenager among people who have teenage kids of their own.

Which is not to say my CPO colleagues are all a bunch of jaded, grumpy grown-ups - far from it. Most rehearsals are filled with jokes, gags, and teasing, and not all of it at the expense of the conductor. There's a level of intensity and commitment, in our more serious moments, in which everyone is completely focused on the musical product. And I've even caught one of my fellow bass players, in an unguarded moment (we were playing Firebird), saying, "I love my job."

On the whole, it's a little like people who have been married for 20 years - it's not that they value the marriage less, but you're more likely to hear her complaining about where he leaves his socks, or find him wondering if she'll ever be done in the bathroom, than you are to catch them making out in public.

Which is why a week like this one, with music director emeritus Hans Graf returning to conduct Don Juan, Mozart Violin Concerto No. 4 (with Corey Cerovsek), and Dvorak 8, is such a treat. The orchestra adores Hans, and you hear musicians at break or in the locker room marveling at his clarity, his precision, or his sensitivity and graciousness. Midway through the first rehearsal, four or five experienced colleagues asked me what I thought of him, sort of like giddy school-kids admiring a crush, and I told them that I had actually worked with him before (he conducted Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra in Miami), but I still found him wonderful.

Having Hans on the podium has been like catching a glimmer of the exuberant, wonder-struck adolescent still hiding in every member of the orchestra, beneath the hardened exterior. Everyone on stage was at least as goofy and fun-loving as those Venezuelan kids, at one time or another. And though we might not get up and start dancing through Don Juan tonight, it feels like an orchestra remembering how to fall in love.

Measha

2007-11-21T22:40:00.000-07:00

This evening I heard Measha Brueggergosman give a song recital at the Jack Singer, with Roger Vignoles on piano. Her program was full of sexy, flirtatious songs by composers I hadn't considered all that sexy - Britten, Schoenberg, Bolcom - along with some Poulenc and Satie.

It wasn't until I was riding home that I realized, that was an all 20th century program, made up entirely of stuff I'd never heard before. Somehow all the songs were immediately accessible, and even the stranger ones had some charm and style. It might have been the force of Measha's personality, which seems to radiate joy and playfulness. Even in "George", a William Bolcom song about a murdered drag queen, the audience started laughing - I couldn't really figure out why, since I found the song heartbreaking, though in a somewhat ironic way.

Measha's stage presence is so powerful, you find you can't take your eyes off of her. I wanted to follow the translations of the texts, in the Schoenberg, Poulenc, and Satie songs, but I found after a while that it was much more interesting just watching her face and gestures. (Most of the texts seemed pretty silly anyway.)

The rest of the audience seemed equally enthralled - she gave two encores, a spiritual, and a silly song about someone sending unwanted flowers. Before the second, she joked about not quite having the lyrics memorized, and she actually repeated the last verse so she could get it right. I think she could have sung nonsense syllables and the audience would have still adored her.

"marvellously deceived"

2007-11-20T21:43:00.001-07:00

When I think of my parents in the time before they became my parents, after they had made their decision but before their marriage had made it -- in those days -- irrevocable, they seem not only touching and helpless, marvellously deceived, but more attractive than at any later time. It is as if nothing was thwarted then and life still bloomed with possibilities, as if they enjoyed all sorts of power before they bent themselves towards each other. That can't be true, of course -- they must have been anxious already -- my mother must certainly have been anxious about being in her late twenties and unmarried. They must have known failure already, they may have turned to each other with reservations rather than the luxuriant optimism that I imagine. But I do imagine it, as we must all like to do, so we won't think that we were born out of affection that was always stingy, or an undertaking that was always half-hearted. I think that when they came and picked out the place where they would live for the rest of their lives, on the Maitland River just west of Wingham in Turnberry Township in the County of Huron, they were travelling in a car that ran well on dry roads on a bright spring day, and that they themselves were kind and handsome and healthy and trusting their luck.

-- Alice Munro, "Working for a Living", from The View From Castle Rock, p. 139-140

Alice Munro is one of my favorite authors, and I'm willing to try and go anywhere she takes me. It's strange to think about my parents before me, though -- actually, I can barely picture them together at all. They were separated when I was 4, and my earliest memories of them together were all arguments. Still, I like to imagine them both as attractive, clever, optimistic people -- which I think they still are -- and I guess I like to think of my existence as justifying their marriage, however flawed it must have been. That sounds like wishful thinking, I know -- of course they wouldn't have married, if they'd known about the break-up that was going to happen. No one gets married just for the kids who potentially might be born, right?

Still, I think there's part of my mind that can't quite believe in a world in which I didn't exist -- as self-centered as that sounds! -- and that has a hard time even contemplating all the various accidents and coincidences that led to where I am now, and that might have produced a completely different person given different circumstances. Maybe it's the same part of my mind that can't imagine that some day I'll be dead, or that there are people who don't care the slightest bit about double bass playing. Is that the ego, or maybe the superego? I'm not sure, but it's awfully good at blocking out all those uncomfortable realities.

I wonder if I could wrap my head around all this transience and coincidence, would that already make me a different person? Would it lead me take more chances, take myself less seriously, maybe even be somewhat less self-centered? I'm going to pretend that I never asked that question.

"Bourne Identity" meets "Three's Company"

2007-11-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was complaining about the lack of CIA thrillers involving orchestral musicians - apparently someone in Hollywood agreed with me, way back in 1985:

In The Man With One Red Shoe, Tom Hanks portrays a typical orchestral violinist named Richard: he lives in a luxurious old house in Washington, D.C., never learned to drive a car, teaches 12-year-olds while lying on the couch in his bathrobe, and is having an affair with flutist Paula (Carrie Fisher), wife of timpanist Morris (Jim Belushi).

The movie is more sitcom than thriller, though there are some grisly scenes of CIA dupes getting all their teeth extracted and nearly drowning in a sewer. Back in 1985, you could still make a light, screwball comedy about CIA torture. Strangely, this movie was a remake of another spy comedy involving a violinist: The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe.

winterizing hella frisch

2007-11-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

I've been hoping to give hella frisch a bit more of a Calgary feel - and trying to figure out a good location to photograph the bobble-head.

This was taken at Olympic Plaza, right in front of the Epcor Centre where the Jack Singer Concert Hall is located. That's the best I've come up with so far. It's a bit tricky to capture a mountain range and a 10-inch high ceramic statue in the same shot, but if anyone has suggestions for other locations, please let me know!

If anyone is curious, the bobble-head was made by the people at BobbleMe.com. At their wedding, my sister Zoe and her husband Elliot had the whole wedding party Bobble-ized. The scarf was custom knitted by Calgary Phil violinist Laura Reid (thanks, Laura!)

wild and woolly

2007-11-17T09:16:00.000-07:00

The title "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" doesn't quite do today's CPO program justice: it's one of the oddest I've ever played, a hodge-podge grab-bag of music related to sheep.

Grainger		Shepherd's Hey
Smetana		From Bohemia's Meadows and Forests
de Falla		Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Bach		Sheep May Safely Graze
Stokes		Mind Over Mountain
Janáček		Lachian Dances

All week in rehearsal the sheep jokes have been flying fast and furious. My stand partner Graeme is from a Scottish family, so he's got a whole flock of good ones. I won't repeat them, but here's an online site for Scottish sheep jokes.

As odd as this program is, it's always refreshing to play some new and unfamiliar music; I hope that audience members will enjoy it, too. I think that musicians sometimes get overly worried that our audience won't understand a program, or that they'll go running away in tears if they don't recognize anything; my former teacher Michael Hovnanian wrote about the "s.s.", noting that orchestra members can be as narrow-minded as our more conservative audience members.

I don't know what kind of sandwich you'd call this - it reminds me of the salads we'd get at Pizza Rustica in Miami, where they give you a check-list and let you pick the ingredients, often leading to bizarre combinations. Here you've got some dance music and nationalistic Czech music, with the Smetana and Janáček; an impressionistic piece with piano soloist by de Falla; contemporary Canadian music by Tobin Stokes, a suite of rhythmic music depicting endurance sports; a romanticized Bach transcription by Leopold Stokowski; topped off with a weird little jig by Percy Grainger. You can't have a Rustica salad without some cheese.

My favorite piece on today's program is a movement from Smetana's Ma vlast. My friends Brad and Denise went to Prague earlier this fall, and got to see a production of The Bartered Bride, including an extended choral homage to beer. Smetana's father was "a master brewer and amateur violinist", according to liner notes to this recording of Ma vlast. I haven't been to the Czech countryside yet myself, but based on this piece there seem to be rolling hills, a lot of shepherds singing fugues, and maybe some drunken partying.

This movement we're playing begins with the strings playing these legato arpeggiations, which are pretty awkward on a bass tuned in fourths. (warning: extreme bass-geekdom ahead)

My colleague Jeff was saying that this could have easily come from a Simandl etude - all those tricky string crossings and left hand bars. I haven't joined the Canadian Tune-Your-Bass-in-Fifths mafia yet (I'll entertain offers, if they want to buy my loyalty!) But sometimes you play a passage and think, there has to be an easier way -

Here's the same passage with the A string tuned down a step - so the strings are G-D-G-D, with the extension closed on a D. It's a nice resonance, having those two sets of octave open strings - Paul Ellison retuned my bass this way in a master class, to demonstrate how fluidly you can play the beginning of the Bach 1st Suite Prelude. You get to use the string crossing patterns a cellist would, instead of our hodge-podge of tricks and compromises.

For this evening though, I'll be sticking with the hodge-podge method.

confessions of a practice rat

2007-11-15T21:25:00.001-07:00

All this talk of practicing is making me realize - I need to go practice! Well, that and:

My name is Matt, and I am a practice addict.

The first realization that I might have a problem was New Year's, 2000. I was visiting my family in California for the holidays, in the middle of my senior year at New England Conservatory. I'd been practicing more that year than I ever had, trying to shape up for grad school auditions and prepare for professional auditions - like Jason and Joe, I basically lived in a practice room that year.

So I was with family over winter break, and I was away from my bass for two weeks - and suddenly I was a complete basket case. I had never been anywhere near that depressed. The rest of the world was drinking and partying like it was 1999, because it was. Everyone else seemed to have a noisemaker in one hand and a glass of bubbly liquid in the other; the only noises I was making were muffled sobs, crying into a plastic cup of champagne. My mom, a psychologist, knew it was depression, and we both knew it was serious - but neither of us could explain what was causing it.

A Skinner box is a cage equipped to condition an animal's behaviour through reward or punishment. In a typical drug test, a surgically implanted catheter is hooked up to a drug supply that the animal self-administers by pressing a lever. Hundreds of trials showed that lab animals readily became slaves to such drugs as heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines. "They were said to prove that these kinds of dope are irresistible, and that's it, that's the end of the addiction story right there," [psychologist Bruce] Alexander says.

- from "The Rat Trap" by Robert Hercz, p. 37 in The Walrus, December 2007

Without realizing, I had been running a sort of Skinner box experiment: depriving myself of any sort of stimulation or activities - those things I called "distractions" - not having to do with the double bass. I would even mentally play through excerpts while walking back and forth from my apartment to the practice room. I had conditioned myself into a bass-playing machine, doing, thinking, even dreaming about nothing but bass. No wonder I'd turned myself into an addict.

The problem with the Skinner box experiments, Alexander and his co-researchers suspected, was the box itself. To test that hypothesis, Alexander built an Eden for rats. Rat Park was...the size of 200 standard cages. There were cedar shavings, boxes, tin cans for hiding and nesting, poles for climbing, and plenty of food. Most important, because rats live in colonies, Rat Park housed sixteen to twenty animals of both sexes. [...] The denizens of Rat Park overwhelmingly preferred plain water to morphine (the test produced statistical confidence levels of over 99.9 percent). Even when Alexander tried to seduce his rats by sweetening the morphine, the ones in Rat Park drank far less than the ones in cages.

- same article, p. 38

Doing one activity 8 to 10 hours a day (besides sleeping) is not normal behavior, for a rat or a human. Why then do we do this to ourselves? Like drug addiction, it seems to start with a severely restricted, oppressive environment. Not that NEC was a cage - though at busy times people would circulating through the halls, looking into practice rooms like rats in a maze - but I built my own cage out of low confidence and self doubt. I decided that I would have to work harder than other people - I wasn't as naturally gifted, but I still wanted to be successful, so I would have to squeeze out any other interests. To be the first one practicing in the morning, and the last one to go home at night, was really a sort of high - and the fact that I still wasn't making as much progress as other students only seemed to confirm that my attitudes were correct.

Rat Park showed that a rat's environment, not the availability of drugs, leads to dependence. In a normal setting, a narcotic is an impediment to what rats typically do: fight, play, forage, mate. But a caged rat can't do these things. It's no surprise that a distressed animal with access to narcotics would use them to seek relief.

- p. 38

Luckily I wasn't a complete practice rat: I still had some friends who would pull me out of my cage, and later that year I started training to run a marathon. I really think having a supportive social network and some form of physical exercise are vital for all music students; I doubt I could have survived those years without them, and I've seen other young musicians lacking them fall apart. My mom was very concerned, seeing my depression that winter, and from that point on she would often tell me not to practice so much. I didn't really take her advice - how could I ease up the compulsive practicing, when I was still bombing at auditions? But at least she provided a voice of caution, and helped me to pull back from really hurting myself.

Practicing would go through cycles for me: for a while I would be completely gung-ho, pounding away, burning up the hours, feeling great about the work I was accomplishing. And then I would find myself crashing, becoming either depressed, sore, or nauseated by the just the sight of a practice room. In retrospect, those times were my mind and body's way of telling me: "Lighten up, take a break, do something different for a while." When we're too stubborn to listen to what our bodies tell us nicely, they'll sometimes resort to injury or burn-out to get the message across.

His message - that the core values of Western life have created an environment of rootlessness and spiritual poverty that leads more and more of us to addiction - is Rat Park writ large. And by addiction, Alexander means a great deal more than illegal drugs. There are legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, of course. Then there's gambling, work, shopping, the Internet, and anorexia ("addiction to starvation," as Alexander puts it). Research is showing that as far as the brain is concerned, these activities are drugs, too, raising levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, just like alcohol, heroin, and almost every other addictive substance we know. In this broad - but not loose - sense of the word, addiction is not the preserve of a coterie of social outcasts, but rather the general condition of Western society.

- p. 39

The stereotypical drug addict - dependent, desperate, dangerous - is not a figure I like to associate myself with. Though if I've never been much of a drinker, smoker, or gambler, it's probably because those weren't my drugs of choice. I went for the hard stuff - Findeisen, Simandl, Bottesini. A week without Sevcik still leaves me jonesing. And the underlying problems, of doubt and low self-confidence, never really disappear. I just have to manage those feelings, and take pride in the efficiency of my practice sessions, rather than the length.

Recovering from this addiction isn't about going cold turkey - I'm always going to practice. But hopefully I can learn to do it sensibly, safely, and in moderation. And maybe save some time for fighting, playing, foraging and mating.

on practicing a la parilla

2007-11-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

Catching up on some more bass blog correspondence - here's a query from Joe Lewis, who blogs at San Bei Ji:

My dear bass bloggers... I find myself once again falling back into my old obsession of relentless practice. I posted a little thing on what to practice when you don't have time to practice everything you want.

Do you guys have any opinions on the subject that you would care to post? Know anyone else that might have good advice or experience to share?

There's a great phrase they use in Argentinian music, a la parilla. It means "lightly grilled," sometimes vuelta y vuelta ("on each side"). The music needs to be prepared just well enough - medium rare, let's say - so that it still has the juice of spontaneity in it, without being too gamy or viral!

I'm no expert chef, but when it comes to practicing I think we tend to burn the crap out of things, especially when we're young and still figuring things out. Joe mentions practicing up to 12 hours a day - in a response post, Jason Heath confesses to 9 hour practice days. Both from a physiological and a musical standpoint, that kind of practice routine doesn't make any sense. Playing the bass is a taxing activity, both mentally and physically - we need time to recover and process what we've learned, before slamming it through our neurons 50 more times.

Overly repetitive, uninterrupted practice is what leads to overuse, tendinitis, as well as neurological problems like focal dystonia. It also may reduce your ability to have any sort of life outside of the practice room. Which means limiting yourself as a musician, as well as a human being.

Don't do it, and if you feel a need to practice that much, follow Joe's advice and take plenty of breaks! Preferably including some sort of social interaction...

Now that I got that rant out of the way, I haven't really answered Joe's question, which is how to practice less, and still get things done. A few guidelines I would suggest:

Have a plan. Before you get into the practice room, take a moment to think over what needs the most work - and if that is one particular piece or excerpt, what specifically is causing problems? Try and isolate one concept you can work on. That way, even as you do your warm-up exercises, you can tailor them to that particular problem.
Have a quick warm-up. Find some exercises that get your hands working quickly - Joe and I both studied with Don Palma, who has several terrific examples. These can be modified with different bowings, tempos, articulations - again, to complement the work you're focusing on.
Don't get sidetracked or nitpicky. If your focus is the intonation at rhl. C, don't start obsessing about the legato 12 before! Keep your focus on the issue at hand, and make a note to work on that legato next time you have the opportunity.
No need to run the whole piece. Once we've taken things apart, we all want to put things back together again. If you have enough time to do this, it might give you a certain degree of personal satisfaction. But it's also likely to bring up more problems or ingrain bad habits.
Write things down. Make it part of your practice to note what you focused on, how it worked, and your goals for next time. This will help you get back into the practice mindset quicker in the next session.

I can't say I follow all these guidelines as much as I'd like - when I have plenty of practice time, it's easy to get self-indulgent and not really accomplish that much. At the end, I realize I could have done more in two hours of focused work than I did in four. That being said, I'm going to start a new practice journal - maybe sharing some of it here, if people are interested - and see if I can't make my practice a bit more a la parilla.

hanging elbows

2007-11-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

My fellow bassist and blogger Stan Haskins wrote a post titled "Tipping the bucket" in response to my post about carrying angle, "buckets of physiological fun." Stan covers all sorts of technique and pedagogical issues on his blog glued to the string, and he's a careful observer of what bassists do, as well as what they say they're doing. They're not always the same.

For example, I wrote that "there's a continuous need to get the elbow onto or above the plane of the string - our elbows tend to dangle down below," as though that were a rule: dangly elbow = bad bass playing. There's also a case to be made for keeping the elbow lower, though:

The lower the upper arm, that is, the lower the elbow, the less energy is necessary to hold it. At the same time there is an increase in the energy that the biceps must provide to maintain the angle at the elbow. Since the forearm weighs less than the entire arm, less energy is necessary at a low-elbow position than at a high one.

- Gerhard Mantel, Cello Technique: Principles and Forms of Movement, p. 170-1

Less energy means more efficient, which means better playing, right? Well, not necessarily. Mantel suggests an experiment using a letter scale:

Take up the bow and put the tip on the scale. Now press on the scale as hard as possible, once with a low elbow, once with a high elbow. With the elbow low the scale will register about half what it will with the elbow high. Thus we can deduce:

An increase in dynamics requires an appropriately higher elbow position.

- p. 171

Mantel's experiment doesn't account for many of the factors in bow position, but it does lead to a basic understanding of the physics involved. For louder dynamics, and particularly for playing loudly at the tip, a higher elbow will tend to be more powerful; at softer dynamics, and when playing towards the frog, a lower elbow will tend to be more efficient. I recorded a video of myself playing an excerpt from Mendelssohn 3 to try and gauge where the right elbow goes:

And there are certainly moments when it goes "submarine", and others when it lifts. Not that my playing is the authoritative example of right elbow usage! What I especially wanted to stress in my original post was to not settle for one answer; observe lots of bass players, and other string players as well. The basic principles of shoulder, elbow and hand movement are surprisingly similar across all the string instruments, and even for German bow players.

Mantel adds another point that I wanted to stress in my post:

One final warning: So far we have assumed that the shoulder is a pivot point that is steady, whereas in fact it can make rather big circular movements. It can be pushed forward, up, and back. If the shoulder is habitually raised, unnecessary muscle activity will result, which may hinder the control of small motor impulses in the entire right arm. A raised shoulder is also a visual expression of insecurity and should be avoided.

- p. 172

So while there may be no rule on lifting the elbow, there's an essential one on lifting the shoulder: don't do it! I have to continuously watch out for that in my own playing, and it sounds as though Stan does as well - he emphasizes keeping the shoulder in a relaxed position.

The Big Bass Viol, by M.T. Bohannon

2007-11-10T09:54:00.001-07:00

My tuba colleague Mike Eastep found this old tune, in his mother's attic I think. He seems to want everyone in the CPO bass section to learn it and perform it. It's called "Bass Song" by M.T. Bohannon, and the lyrics are as follows:

There once lived a man in the town of Missoula,
His name was Augustus Miles.
He was known miles around as a Lalapalousa,
At playing the Big Bass Viol;

And ev'ry night when his work was done,
You'd hear him playing Zum, zum, zum,
And o'er his face there comes a smile,
as he plays this tune on his Big Bass Viol.

(chorus)
Zum, zum, zum, zum, zum, zum,
sounds forth his Big Bass Viol,
Zum, zum, zum, zum, zum, zum,
He plays it all the while,

Theres ne'er a lute nor a harp or flute
with tones so soft or mild,
As the Zum, zum, zum, zum, zum, zum
that he plays on his Big Bass Viol.

(2nd verse)

Augustus Miles played himself into trouble,
For a maid with a roguish eye,
Just gave him a smile and his heart like a bubble,
Went bounding to unknown skies;

And now he goes to serenade,
Beneath the window of this fair maid,
Says he, "Her heart I must beguile
by playing this tune on my Big Bass Viol."

(chorus)