Final Edits

“I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.” - Brene Brown

For a summer which I thought was going to be quiet, I’m amazed at how fast it is passing, and how time has filled it.  The last time I had a “quiet” summer was 10 years ago, and my life was very different. The summer has been rich and full in ways that I haven’t expected, including the fulfillment of something that had almost been forgotten … 

First of all, my husband passed his citizenship test two weeks ago, and we are simply awaiting on the date for the Oath Ceremony. He is also awaiting entrance into an online masters’ program at UNM. 

The “good news” which has cropped up in the past two weeks is … after *years* of editing and waiting, and then periods of nothing, a major CD project that started in 2014 (and really started in 2012 - with the start of this BLOG!) is finally wrapping up, and is in production as we speak. My “empty” July was suddenly filled with small sound tweaks, major and minor edits of the CD booklet and artwork, constant emails and phone calls to the sound engineer, producers, my duo partner Ellen, tears of frustration on my part, and pushing through every day to get to the finished product. 

If that’s not Providence, nothing is. 

The photo is from our second recording session for the disc, January 2017! As I was saying to a dear friend today, "Progress is sometimes not linear." 

More details on purchase and release to follow. Please stay tuned here, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and my website! 

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.  

{I'm at the midway-point through the program of OperaWorks. This is my first time on faculty here and it's a joy to be here for four weeks. 

 

The curriculum here is very much based on the joy of creation. Thus, it contains a lot of improvisation and play.}

It’s now mid-August, or about a month after I began this post. I returned home on July 25th and have been home for now a period of three weeks. I know that I’ve taken the “best” of what that program has to offer, and in doing so, am closer to answering some long-time questions that I have. 

The questions were,

”Why record a solo CD?” 

“Who will buy it or listen to it?"

“What value do these add to my market?"

“Are these my own voice?" 

 

 

My siblings have been after me for a long time about “solo material,” knowing that I mostly earn my living playing with, or for, others. 

The project:

Bach, Well-Tempered Clavier, Volume II (on harpsichord)

Shostakovich, Preludes and Fugues, Opus 87 (on piano) 

And:

Some improvisations - my own “voice” tying the pieces together. 

Here’s the first one, recorded casually in one take (on my iPhone) - 

 

Please return to read more about the process ...

 

PHOTO: a "Bach" in Colorado (March, 2015)

Blue Griffin Studio, part I

This week was a whirlwind week. Remember this post where I told you about some music, and posted a video? (here it is)

I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Blue Griffin Studios (here is the website) with my friend and colleague, Dr. Eric Lau. Eric has known the proprietor of Blue Griffin, Sergei Kvitko, from their time together as students at Michigan State University. 

We had a great time and I’m looking forward to hearing our first draft of edits. In the meantime, I will leave you with a photograph (also taken by Sergei).  

 

 

Transcription

A project which is on the docket for this summer is an album of vocal music - but not with a vocalist! 

With my faculty colleague, who also played on my recent faculty recital - Dr. Eric Lau. You can read more about him here. 

 

On the album are the complete set of five “Rückert Lieder” of Gustav Mahler, along with some well-known and beloved 17th and 18th century Italian vocal pieces. 

Here is a video of us playing something else we will record, “Journey” by Lori Laitman. You can view the video here. This piece was originally for high voice and piano, with a text about the Underground Railroad. The poet eventually removed the rights for Laitman to set his or her text, so she republished the work for alto saxophone and piano (without words). 

We must “do whatever [we] do intensely. The artist is the (wo)man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.” (Robert Henri, The Art Spirit).

As I reflect on this amazing year, my first after the doctorate, and my first at UNM and in the Southwest, it has very much felt like “pioneering.” I’ve left the crowd of the East Coast and come out to a place hungry for artists, hard workers, creative thinkers, and entrepreneurs.

I am grateful for the journey. 

 

PHOTO: From the move a year ago - traveling from OH into KY.

A Song of Travel

When Ellen Rose (Principal Violist Extraordinaire(*)) of the Dallas Symphony set forth on work together on our China tour, we chose a number of pieces which we thought would program well together. 

Rebecca Clarke, Sonata for Viola and Piano

Olivier Messiaen, "Praise to the Eternity of Jesus" from QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME (that was the first piece we had ever played together) 

Ralph Vaughan Williams, Romance

Boccherini, Sonata no. 5 in A Major

Isaac Albeniz, Puerta del Alma

(I may be forgetting one piece) ... 

At the renewal of Ellen's very generous grant from the Dallas Symphony's O'Donnell Foundation, we decided to record the disc. She had previously recorded the Albeniz with Katherine Collier, now professor of piano at University of Michigan. So we had to find one piece, about the same length, which would pair with the rest of the program. 

We settled on Britten's "Lachrymae," for viola and piano (one heck of a piece of music, if I do say so myself). That piece is sort of a variations and theme (the theme comes at the end!) on John Dowland's "In Darkness Let me Dwell." Naturally, an addition I suggested was to do our own arrangement (with an especially arranged accompaniment, à la Benjamin Britten himself) of the Dowland. We laid down a few tracks of those and each accompaniment is improvised and different. (I'm curious how the engineers will handle that one in the editing process). 

The piece of music which "tied things together" is the one that I finally was in the mood - out of dyinig and unbridled curiosity - to finally listen to. 

Within the magnificent song cycle, "Songs of Travel" (the namesake of this blog!), *the* centerpiece song is "Whither Must I Wander." It is a heartfelt, nostalgic ode to days past and a home that used to be welcoming and containing beloved family.

The sense of the piece - and the poem - to me has always been that - no matter what, there is a time to hit the road again. That has resonated so deeply with me - so deeply with what I believe about art and art-making and life. 

When I suggested it to Ellen, naturally, I suggested the original key - c minor. The key in which we recorded - e minor - is the transposition done when tenors sing the song or cycle. (E minor lies a *lot* better on a viola than c minor). 

Another part of this process of recording this particular song is dealing with the color of the words even though no one actually sings them. Ellen does this so beautiful. Even *more* stunning and *more* vocal is the way she handles the "passaggio." The string crossings on the viola have something to do (in some way) with the passaggio in the human voice. Her delicacy in negotiating this makes me believe that she was herself a singer in a former life. 

To listen, please visit the following link:

https://soundcloud.com/kditlow2013/whither-must-i-wander

PHOTO: This was taken by my uncle, Gary Ditlow. It reminds me so much of what a traveler in the English countryside in the 19th century would have seen ...