February 2009
February 27, 2009 16:23
Don't get me wrong, I love practicing. But sometimes I have difficulty....getting started!
There are just too many distractions in this hyped-up, hopped-up, information-packed world, and I have always inclined toward procrastination. In fact, for some of us, it's an art. Do you ever procrastinate? When you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing, what are you doing?
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February 20, 2009 15:41
I was thinking about this recently, because I had the opportunity to try out for a T.V. commercial.
I didn't get it, but at any rate, had I gotten it, I'd probably have made more $ than I've ever made with my fiddle.
So what were the skills needed for this audition? The call was for "a Vivaldi string quartet." When we got there, it became rather apparent that our skills in playing Vivaldi would be of minimal importance in negotiating this audition. They put us in a small studio, where we were given five minutes to assemble our own version of "Respect", then play it into the camera. Then, they wanted to hear us play "Vivaldi" (ie. anything sounding remotely classical) and please, play to the camera.
I thought it was a really fun experience, I love to get untethered from the charts and play by ear.
Every year we have a Christmas party, where I get out my fiddle and play whatever anyone feels like playing or singing with me. I find this to be a really honest, fun way of making music, and I always have. When I was a kid, I also would get out my fiddle and play requests -- though I wasn't quite as good at it when I was a little beginner!
This is not the case with everyone, though, and many people feel far more comfortable using music. A improvisatory audition would be a type of special torture. What are your feelings about this? Do you improvise? Tell us about it below: In what kinds of situations you like to improvise or play by ear? Or, what makes you a reluctant improviser? Or, what turned you into a better improviser?
18 replies | Archive link
February 13, 2009 21:04
It was hard not to notice the bicentennial of the birth of three major historical figures, all in the last two weeks: Felix Mendelssohn on Feb. 3, and Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln on Feb. 12.
This coincidence of the constellations got me thinking, who of these three men changed history most? Who influenced our daily thinking most? Our culture? Who has had the most direct effect on my own life?
Without Mendelssohn, do we see a revival of the music of J.S. Bach, or does that beloved composer fall into obscurity? Without Darwin, do we forfeit all the scientific progress that his theories helped generate? Without Lincoln, is the United States two countries, and does slavery continue in one of them? Or does someone else come along and do the same thing?
The answer, of course, is that all of three of these men have had a profound effect on the world.
So in your opinion: Which of these men's singular contributions would be most missed by the world, had he not lived? Please vote, and then explain below.
52 replies | Archive link
February 6, 2009 14:50
This week we heard some really interesting thoughts from both Hilary Hahn and Anne-Sophie Mutter about new music. Mutter is championing a new work that was written for her, and tonight Hahn premieres a new violin concerto by Jennifer Higdon, which was written for Hahn. Both were sincerely passionate about these new works, and also about the importance of allowing composers to push the genre, try new things, find new ways to use our old instrument for human expression.
Do you ever listen to new music? You probably know that I'm not talking about the latest song on the radio, though that's certainly new music, too. But I'm talking about works by modern classical composers, often works that challenge us. I must confess to having wildly polar feelings about this kind of music, and also to being passionate about it in both directions. Love/hate, I suppose. Or maybe it's just resistance/acceptance. I have in my mind the stereotype of a modern work: a beeping, clomping, atonal amalgamation of sound, the musical equivalent of someone poking me with a stick.
It reminds me of an experience I had as a nine-year-old in the fourth grade, when one of those wonderful parent volunteers came to my elementary school to talk to my class about art. "This is called Guernica, by Picasso..." I can remember feeling puzzled, but amused and curious by this work, full of oddly rendered people and creatures, reaching and dragging and grieving. Why did he place eyes all over faces? Why did his heads look like balloons? Did he just not know how to draw? I truly suspected he was impaired in the drawing department. He probably did some of that weird stuff on purpose, but on the whole, the man just probably couldn't even draw as well as I could, poor guy.
Then she showed us some early Picasso, for example, like this work he painted when he was 15. I was completely befuddled. Why paint a woman like this, when you can paint a woman like this? He wasn't drawing or painting like that because he couldn't do better; it was a choice. He'd conquered technique and could do anything he wanted, and this is what he wanted.
I had to respect that, and search for why. There is much to be learned in that search; this is why artists are artists.
Similarly, I don't think we should disregard the voices of our artists in the musical world, even when they push us into places where we don't recognize the faces and we don't like the untethered feeling of being in unfamiliar territory. Hilary Hahn described what she wanted from a composer, "total liberation." Total liberation means not clinging to the familiar, and that can be as uncomfortable as it can be thrilling.
So I ask you this week, how do you like your new music? What makes it easiest for you to make that leap? Do you have an easier time with new music if you are playing it? Or if you can hear it live? Do you like to get to know it with a recording? Or do you prefer to stay away from new music?
Let's use the comments section to share new music that has made an impression, and why.
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More entries: January 2009
