November 2007

V.com weekend vote: What is your favorite holiday gig?

November 22, 2007 22:36

The holiday season is just beginning, and with it comes the proliferation of holiday music. Does familiarity breed contempt, or does it give one a happy sense of tradition?

As a musician, I have often played Christmas music at someone else's midnight mass, or played Handel's Messiah for a choir group, or played in the pit for the Nutcracker Ballet, or played in an orchestra's pops concert: chart after chart of holiday tunes (Leroy Anderson...). I think one year I even played in an ice rink. I've led a lot of children in playing holiday tunes, and I've played tunes at parties in my home. While in Omaha, I used to go with my Weird-Herald reporter buddies to sing Christmas Carols, driving around town through the snow to various higher-ups homes.

My favorite gig was probably the Boar's Head and Yule Log Festival in Cincinnati, a gig I did for a number of my college years while visiting my parents for Christmas. The festival included everything from, yes, a huge pageant in which a big, dead boar's head was marched down the aisle, to a very quiet and humble ending, in which we softly, slowly played the the last bit of Joy to the World: "O come Let us Adore Him," as all the lights dimmed, leaving only a picture of the Holy Family illuminated at the front. Not my church, nor the most clever or challenging music I've ever played, but it grabbed my heart every time: the fuss, the joyful celebration, followed by that very humble picture.

WELL, I don't know where that fits on my little chart, but let's have at it! What's your favorite holiday gig, and why?

more at twiigs.com...

10 replies | Archive link

V.com weekend: Dvorak's New World Symphony, what is your favorite movement?

November 16, 2007 18:02

Next week, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, and in honor of that holiday I'd like to dedicate this week's vote to Dvorak's New World Symphony.

As an American, I really feel Dvorak got it right, that this work laid the groundwork for expressing an American sound through a European medium, the symphony orchestra, which by now is an American medium as well.

I first played this piece in high school, or maybe junior high. It is often one of those early pieces that a violinist plays in youth orchestra. As such, one perhaps starts dismissing it. Not this overplayed symphony, that I've been playing since I was 12!

Yet every time I hear the sorrowful strains at the very beginning of this symphony's first movement, it sucks me right in.

The second movement is the movement that reaches my core, as an American. Though Dvorak only made it as far west as Iowa, this music takes me not only to the great plains, but also to the high plains, to the pristine parts of Colorado I saw as a child, to the Navajo territory of the southwest. (Here is the second part of that recording of the Largo).

The third movement is a great romp, with triangle. Unless it's played all on the guitar, OMG!

And as far as music to just plow into as a violin section, who can beat the fourth movement?

What is your favorite movement? Or have you just heard or played this piece so many times that you can't go there?

more at twiigs.com...

14 replies | Archive link

V.com weekend vote: did you grow up with musical parents?

November 10, 2007 20:10

I'm here in Cincinnati, Ohio, visiting my parents and sister. It's got me thinking about, well...parents! My parents love music, but they are neither professional or amateur musicians.

When I was 23, I found out that my grandmother's maiden name, "Geiger," meant fiddle player in German, so the violin gene must have been in me all along!

How about you? Did you grow up with musical parents, or were you the musical pioneer in your home?

more at twiigs.com...

24 replies | Archive link

V.com weekend vote: Finger tapes, or not?

November 2, 2007 21:59

Having been a violinist first in life, I was puzzled the first time I picked up a guitar. What on Earth were those bumps all over the fingerboard? What are they for? I was told that they are "frets," and they help the fingers get the note right.

Come again? HELP the fingers? Isn't that illegal? What's up with those guitarists, can't they use their ears!? ;)

But then, in my early days, my fiddle had finger tapes to help me learn where my fingers went. I didn't need them beyond the first ten minutes or so; but some beginners have a very hard time with no visual guide.

How did you start out, did you have finger tapes, or did you have a totally blank fingerboard? And if you are the teacher, do you use tapes or not? Let's see!

more at twiigs.com...

29 replies | Archive link

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