The connecting c(h)ord

An on-again, off-again project has been seeping, brewing, marinating.

And by on-again, off-again, I really mean: 

ON (offer! concert offered! Learn more of these!) … practice, practice, practice - oh wait, these are HARD - maybe wait until my technique is better / the planets align / my cat can clean its own litterbox - or until I can play them perfectly. Practice, oh wait, here’s my opera season for the year, so better get on THAT because that is sure money, and that is how the world {somehow} sees me these days ::: keep going, keep going, keep GOING (thank you, Berio and Samuel Beckett!).

Literally, this project, now calling my name very strongly, is starting to boil over. Like a pot, or sauce, on very slow boil.

Try … seven or eight YEARS. All of my cells are different from the time I started. 

Today I experimented with the recorded sound - visual of pairing my new Zoom h5 with my Nikon DSLR 5100. I have never paired an audio mic of this quality to the DSLR, but I was in the middle of blissfully practicing solo music, and then thought - 

“I’m going to check out what I look - and sound - like, in this moment!”

So I figured out how to pair the two, and set up the machine. Lo and behold, I came up with something fun! I also played around with filters and captions. The video is about a minute long.

https://youtu.be/wdM0fLnYydI

The connecting c(h)ord. The one I used today to connect the two machines. The one that Shostakovich uses to get from one harmony, to the next. He links back the opening a minor with the bell-tone “E” - the dominant, the overtone. Each chord struck is a riff on the one before, a connection to what is to come.  

The Force of J.S. Bach

We have a big concert (and two big concerti) tomorrow night! It’s the third annual “Bach by Candlelight.” Click here to purchase tickets. 

PHOTO: A Go-Pro photo of Bach practicing, Concerto in d minor, BWV 1052. Come on Saturday to hear it! 

 

Here is a video link to something I made. Click on this ...  See if you get the joke - you have to watch until the end of the video - 

And here is a quote by Glenn Gould that perfectly sums up why I / we do this concert every year, and my feelings on Bach’s music in particular …. 

 

"I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. 

"I really can’t think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that — its humanity."

Bird's-Eye Bach

I’ve been enjoying the downtime and practicing Bach a lot. And I’m taking a page from this artist and have been filming my practicing. I’ve been noticing two things, which are small technicall break-throughs for me ...

1. I have to have contact with key before I release it downward. For years, I’ve been probably using a lot of (mini) "blind-landings” from fingertip to key. Something in my harpsichord practice yesterday really “klicked.” 

2. The videos have also identified small micro-bursts of energy that don’t go with the music. These are the “I don’t believe yous” that I am trying to help my students identify in themselves. I’m a firm believer in “teachers should not ask something of others that they cannot do themselves.” 

PHOTO: A bird's-eye view of Bach practicing. 

I’m grateful for this breathing time, and this time to be my own teacher.

Go(ing) Pro

 

I was inspired recently by Opera Southwest's use of the GoPro camera during rehearsals ... 

 

And my father bought a GoPro in order to record his drone helicopter flights. It’s a fun idea, actually. Another favorite TV show of late ("The Curse of Oak Island") featured these little cameras as some professional divers dove hundreds of feet in order to find buried treasure. 

I have been playing with this camera since I purchased it a few weeks ago. My favorite features are the “remote activation” (meaning you can take a still shot or a start-stop a video from an iPhone) and the fact that it is VERY small. Very practical for traveling and self-archiving ...

Today, it was a fairly open Saturday. I am hard at work on a project - re-orchestrating Mozart’s MAGIC FLUTE (more about that later) and of course, my regular practicing and score study.

Today I blissfully toggled between both.

On the “practice docket” this week is a work for violin and piano of Olivier Messiaen. Some of it is devilishly fast. The final variation is life-affirming, slow, regal, and seems to stop time. Being a big fan of his “Quartet for the End of Time,” and especially having played the cello movement many times in rehearsal, I am awed by the similarities of this final variation to that movement of the Quartet. Messiaen also seems to evoke a pipe organ, as he asks for HUGE reaches from the pianist (in reality: you have to get the bass octaves before the beat and catch them in the pedal) in order to play the chords where they need to fall.

Here is a video of the Messiaen ... 

My studio is so wonderfully nurturing these days - the light coming through the windows is, in a word, time-stopping. This semester feels like is has gotten almost to the point of a runaway train (Not necessarily bad. Just very fast). When I can take moments - to savor Messiaen’s slow-moving transcendent music, to “exist” in the light coming through my window - it is the best thing which I can do. 

 

 

Here's to slowing down a little, savoring the fall. Harmonies can change in an instant.

Here's to savoring the movement of time - vertically and horizontally.