He probably gets less crap than violists.

Playing Softballs

We're doing La Traviata (it's about hookers!) over the next few weeks here in the Land of Port, and it's been completely enjoyable. I think the orchestra sounds like a different (different better!) group this year.

The music is mostly stupid-easy in the viola parts and that can sometimes mean it's also physically painful. When you are the Oom or the pah-pah for two pages straight, your body tends to get tired of it. It's not bad music, thankfully, but it could easily become tedious in rehearsal if you had a dumb conductor.

We don't!

This guy is great- I don't know how I've missed him, and I'm glad to be playing for him now. First and foremost, he doesn't talk at us when he could be conducting but he does tell enough charming anecdotes to be human. Secondly, he is musical and loves his job. Third, and sort of a rehashing of point one: he actually told us not to write in too much as he may do something different the next time through. And he does! Clearly!

I also finally feel as though I am getting to know some of the area locals. It's hard when you're freelancing to feel much of a connection to any community but I think maybe I'm on the brink of something there. Such a one-eighty from last fall.

Going green

There is a tiny little dot exactly between wanting all the area's classical enterprises to have an audition in the fall and wanting them all to just hold their horses a bit longer (a year longer, maybe). I am that dot.

Auditions would motivate me, even though there are only a couple of groups here I truly want to join. I still have to play all the auditions in case I feel like playing or in case I feel like buying shoes.

Last weekend I did a wedding gig here. I had sworn off weddings after I started daydreaming about a car wreck or an irreconcilable fight between the bride and groom preempting the nuptials so I wouldn't have to play Canon one more time. (Strychnine in the guacamole.)

Gig quartets are like a mold, spread subtly across the underpinnings of the western world. You're never more than a mile from one. The gig books alone are some kind of hermaphroditic organism. This wedding I played Saturday included the exact same five songs at the exact same moments in the exact same kind of ceremony I have played on the opposite side of the states. They all have these sad feed-lot cow pieces in their books; most even have the same horrible arrangements.

Molds reproduce using spores. I suppose those could be the few self-arranged tunes a group pulls out when the reception has gotten too loud for anybody to hear anyway. Led Zepplin maybe, or the Beatles. Lots of groups keep a second binder of actual real legitimate quartet works: late Mozarts, early Beethovens and the occasional Piazzola. These are usually the things the quartet really wants to play, the things that keep them from "accidentally" driving over nails on their way to the outdoor wedding on a hot day. These give us hope that we'll be able to use some of our artistry in addition to our coping skills and keep us from all spontaneously taking up something lucrative. Like becoming a Hummer salesperson.

It's hard to get connected to musicians when you haven't joined any group full time. Most are running around, drumming up work or working every chance they get or practicing for work or looking for friends from work on facebook. You know the drill. So that made it comforting, somehow, to tuck into my very own Violin III part on Canon, to emote shamelessly through Bach's Air (not on my G-String) and come out the other end with a nice check to put toward diapers.

I was happy to be part of something even if it has the musty smell of sameness.
World Wide Wedding Quartet (n):
multiple, genetically identical nuclei and is considered a single organism, referred to as a colony. Spreading soon to a ceremony near you.

Grumpy

Hummmm hum hum hummmmm.

So mostly around here we consider the "children's music" genre to be something like Siblings Day- (Did you miss it yesterday? Run out and buy some cards and stuff quick!) an artificial thing created to generate revenue for poorly crafted goods, that should be celebrated continually anyway.

I've rambled before about what we like to have on for the kids. But one guilty pleasure is to have Toby crawl into my lap when I'm on the laptop and ask for "the mujeek puhleez". I go to Noggin and we listen to a few annoying tunes.

Am I the only parent in America who doesn't care for Laurie Berkner? She seems sincere enough and all but her songs are cloying and she's out of tune. Moose and Zee, the Noggin mascots, are similarly lacking in musical quality but the music is not quite as over-perkified. I can deal with a couple of their tunes before closing the browser and telling Toby we're all done.

On a side note, I do like Lisa Loeb and wish she'd write and perform more stuff- Noggin should have put her stuff up all over. Apparently she's got a new cd, maybe they will now. I went to school with her talented blue-haired conductor brother, Ben. Nice guy.

Lately they have a new (to me) guy on there, David Weinstone from New York. I dig a couple of his songs and find him to have some redeeming musical value. He plays some nice guitar and sings with enough character & clarity to catch a child's ears (Toby comes running like I've opened a pint of strawberries). What I like most is that he still sounds like he's doing what he wants, and not what he thinks will garner him a larger share of the minivan contingent's credit card debt.

Here's Grumpy, easily one of his catchiest tunes. It's probably his most annoying to most people, I suppose, but I like it.

My love language is sleep.

The new guy insists on getting up every two hours at night. He sleeps better during the day, mostly. When he's not waking up, he's grunting or snoring or passing gas so loud you'd think a very large man with medical problems has come for a visit. I am not a heavy sleeper.

I thought I'd be posting more than mushy fauning over my husband type of stuff now, I even had a few thoughts flit through my brain yesterday while I was driving. By the time I got home all that was left of them was the impression that there was something I meant get done on the computer.

We have our fabulous family coming to town this weekend, and rehearsals for Aida start Saturday. Both are things I'm looking forward to. The thing about sleep deprivation is that it could just cause me to jot down things my inlaws tell me in my music and bring the conductor a beer and an extra pillow. Though maybe neither would mind the switch so much, who knows?

WFMW: Unstuffy Classical Music

This week for Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer's Works for Me Wednesday, I am going to give you an insider's guide to some of the coolest classical music and FREE internet resources for finding more you might like.

Broadening your child’s musical taste while expanding your own

As a professional classical musician (I’m a violist, in case you are bopping by for WFMW. Feel free to submit viola jokes in the comments if you like.), civilian friends sometimes ask me what music I like to play for my kid. There are a lot of pieces out there you are probably already familiar with (whether you know it or not) because they’re common in soundtracks, car commercials, produce departments and Muzak tracks worldwide. I’m looking at you, Pachelbel’s Canon and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

There are some really cool classical works out there that you may not have heard yet. I’m aiming for things that are accessible enough that you’ll enjoy them the first time but complex enough that you’ll still be enjoying in a few months (hopefully years!). Here are some of my (and my 2 year-old boy’s) favorites.
So let's dig in!






Bela Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra
I’ve blogged about this piece before, but it really does get the job done. It’s got it all: huge brass and strings parts, rhythmic drive, beautiful melodies. Bartok was a fascinating character and also happens to have written a lot of great stuff for viola. If you like this piece, you might also enjoy his 44 Duos for Two Violins. Here's a link to a free listen of one movement on Rhapsody.

Maurice Ravel: String Quartet
This is an incredibly cool piece and I bet with a little legwork you can find it online free from some enterprising ensemble, because it's one of those pieces you have to play if you want to be the new hotshot virtuoso string quartet.

Felix Mendelssohn: Octet
Can you believe he wrote this at 16? Sheesh. I totally want this played at our 50th anniversary or some other huge party. Help me think of reasons to throw a fete.

The Naked Violin: Tasmin Little
Don’t worry, she just means naked as in unaccompanied. This is a FREE release for download by well-known British violin virtuoso Tasmin Little. I am in love with her concept, and have in fact been trying to get a similar (though currently not so famous) project off the ground. I would recommend starting with the incredible Bach Partita, then moving on to the intense Ysaye (pronounced Eee-sigh), and working your way through the Patterson. Her website even includes ideas for classroom use (cough- heyhomeschoolers- cough).

Which brings us to an intro to a few of the many Rad Online FREE Broadcasts
New York Philharmonic
Here’s a great site to get you started with listening to lots of different repertoire if you don’t happen to have a good classical station where you are. You can listen to whatever they had on the air that week through your computer for FREE. And NYPhil, they aren’t going to let you down.

The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
If this orchestra were a person, for me it would be Johnny Depp. Maybe Will Smith. Anyway, it’s hot with a million t’s, and I have always loved them. Ask any classical string player about their dream orchestra job, and I’d lay money they’ll mention Orpheus sooner or later. They play without a conductor and every single musician is one of the best in the world. When I was a wee undergrad in New York, I had the pleasure of getting to know a few of them. Once I even got to listen to a dress rehearsal in which Gil Shaham (wonderful violinist) was playing and James Taylor was sharing our row in the seats at Carnegie Hall. It was neat, even though I didn’t know who James Taylor was at the time. So, that’s a tangent, but you should really look into any recordings/videos/podcasts/internet broadcasts you can find. I especially recommend their recordings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (I know, but it’s a great piece and actually deserves the fame), and the disc with Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony and Britten’s Simple Symphony is one of our household favorites.

Alexander Street has a blog offering a free classical download once a week, which I just discovered while surfing for this post. Might be worth checking out, and I know there are more like this out there.

Many classical radio stations have excellent podcasts available free, as do a ton of orchestras. The last three top-tier orchestras I played with all had a free kid's program at their local libraries. Check around- I bet there is a whole community of vibrant, unstuffy classical music near you.

So that's what works for me- another WFMW whacked out at the JWards.
Thanks for sticking with it to the final cadences!

Magnificotistant

Today was my last gig until after Christmas. A free week in the middle of December isn't part of a normal freelancer's lineup. Usually January and July tend to be the least active months, and December is packed with a whole raft of sell-out gigs (noisy faux-luxe office parties, blasphemous church gigs, frightening choir concerts) and a few good things like the Nutcracker or Messiah. In Japan they played a lot of Beethoven 9 around the end of the year, which always feels like an accomplishment.

The gig today was musically horrifying, but the other ringers were friendly and one violinist was also pregnant. We bonded after complaining that the long and cliched homily had us both wishing we could at least stand up and stretch a bit. I hate when the dungeon masters maestros make us stay up on stage for the message because invariably I have to yawn like thirty times or my eyes randomly decide to water or I accidentally get slain in the spirit. There's always the pesky question of who to hand the instrument to when you're about to be filled with the Holy Ghost and feel the need to flop around on the altar in ecstasy.

Lucky for me I didn't have to bother too much about the instrument today because I was playing violin. I have never studied anything but viola but I can play the wanna-be toy shrillness well enough to gig and to teach. For this gig (Christmas carols and a couple of those made-for-the-protties choral works by Rutter and Clydesdale) it was actually kind of fun. Viola parts in that genre are weepingly dull, so at least I got a few runs and a melody or two out of the deal. Plus I had to concentrate in order to play the right strings and avoid shifting out past my right ear, what with that darned imitation fingerboard being so short.

It's nice to have that vacation feeling early this year.

Claude's Holiday Cheer

The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams.
~Claude Debussy



In my viola-piano duo we do a Debussy Nocturne and it's been in my head all day. It's very impression-y and I feel there should be some tutued nymphs (are sylphs a thing or am I making that up?) flitting about to properly represent where my head's at. I've been trying to pay attention to the new guy kicking and such, so I don't miss it and kick myself later. My mind wandered around and finally slunk up on a realization: I haven't been thinking of him as an actual person yet at all. Excitement is tempered by parenting-career anxiety and by physical discomfort at this point. I'm getting there, little guy- good thing you people bake for such a long time. Gives me a chance to look beyond my own navel and remember you are on the way.

With my arm (I will slap thee.)

This week's conductor is annoying the crap out of me.

I'm at a gig out of townish, and you know how much I hate to complain (snort), but these are extraordinary circumstances.

He appears to have gone to the let-your-mouth-do-the-talking school of baton technique. He is constantly picking, giving advice while we are playing, after he's stopped us for the thirty second time in a comparatively polished sounding passage, before we play a note, as we're walking away, ALWAYS. And fyi, conductor-types: WE CANNOT ALL HEAR YOUR BRILLIANT COMMENTS WHILE WE ARE PLAYING. Also, and perhaps more importantly, NEVER choose speaking over showing if your beat suffers while you form the sentences. You are probably not as witty as you feel, though your condescention does indeed shine through.

In fact, he went to Juilliard. How do I know this? Because he stopped us in the middle of rehearsing to tell us, of course. We were apparently playing too loud for his taste- might have had something to do with his body being at the front edge of the podium so that his hand pattern came across as high and wide as an airbus, but what do I know? I guess reacting to what the conductor shows me is outdated.

It wouldn't be so bad if his advice was consistent. Or funny. Or made me not want to whip out my iPod and drown him out with something- Kenny G maybe? Celine Dion? A podcast of somebody taking a bandsaw to some marble while jackhammering steel i-beams??...

If you were this guy's wife, here's what you'd hear after dinner.

That pasta was fantastic, dear, reminds me of the time I ate at that famous place in New York with my famous friends. It was cooked just right. Except maybe it was a little gummy. Next time cook it longer but shorter. Make it shorter, but take up the same amount of time. As though it were set to a higher temperature, but without making that obvious to the diner. See? You just have to be with me on this.

In the face of this deluge of artistry, am I really to be judged unprofessional for getting the rolling-eyed giggles every time I look at my stand partner? I think not. But maybe so. It should be obvious. Just watch the conductor.

Dobro people are cool.

I got better. Might have something to do with Toby and I not waking up until J was home around 7pm.

And also, I got this awesome email from a guy who teaches dobro in the area. I found him online, emailed him once about lessons, and then failed to contact him a single time even though he sent lots of tantalizing email about local folk/country/americana play-ins.

Tell me this wouldn't cheer you up just a little:
I sent him this:
"Hi-
I've really enjoyed reading your updates and have often thought, "geeze, I should get over there and take a lesson or two", but I've made a sad decision...

I'm selling my poor neglected dobro. I simply don't have time to practice it along with my professional stuff (classical) and my toddler- plus, we have a 2 year-old and we're expecting again in March.

Here's my craigslist ad:
http://portland.craigslist.org/wsc/msg/492681322.html

It's a Regal Black Lightning, I bought it at Folk of the Wood and literally played it once. It has been in our music room by itself and lonely.
I'd like $600 for it.

If you have a student or friend who might be interested could you please forward this to them? Is there anywhere else I might post it?

Take care and thanks again!
-Miriam"
{and he replied}
"Miriam

Congratulations on the "expecting" news. The type of music we play is very social and it sounds like your dance card is full.
I was looking forward to working with you. We have another classically trained Dobro student and he learns very fast. He is progressing with the art at a fantastic rate. This gIves me a lot of satisfaction
and nurses the illusion that I can actually teach well. The reality is that he knows music theory and understands how important practice is to the learning process.

Allow me to suggest another option.

Guitar Option: E

Keep the guitar and play it later when the kids are in school!
I am fundamentally against selling good instruments (my wife claims its a mental illness).
So keeping learning options open is always tactic.

We will respect any decision that you make. And support you if you choice to make a tragic life altering mistake like selling your Dobro.


Best wishes,
Awesome Dobro Guy (IF you happen to be from the Portland area and are looking for a teacher, I'll happily give you his contact info.)

meme me

Meme: n.
A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

I've seen a couple of nicely written internet memes lately and I would like to combine them into my own personal Ubermeme. I suppose the use of the word "personal" or "private" doesn't really mesh with the idea of an internet meme, meant to be passed around and completed on various "tagged" blogs as it spreads like a virus through the content-needy keyboards of the world. If you like my meme, consider yourself tagged!

So here it is:
Favorite moments performing
+
Most embarrassing moments ever
=
Favorite embarrassing performance moments!

In the spirit of the season, today's moment happened at the end of the Nutcracker. We played it without any cuts, and in my memory it took nigh on three hours to complete. There is something special about the stuff you play in high school- I remember that repertoire much more vividly than the things we fly through in the various gigs I have now. We used to rehearse this stuff once a week for months, and there was the added frisson of nervous self-consciousness involved with anything done in my teens.

So there we were in Davis Concert Hall at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It's a pretty nice hall, truth be told. I loved the way the wood floor clip-clopped under high heels, and it was the most formal place I knew of in Fairbanks; still is. People predominantly wear jeans or Carharts to the symphony and in one memorable occassion a clarinetist forgot her skirt and wore only a slip, but I digress.


We had played the piece admirably- things just had a way of coming together for our pastoral symphony. I've been a ringer in a quintillion amateur groups since and know that "miracle concerts" are more related to attitude than skill. People enjoy playing, so they play. Sometimes they practice, more often not. Performances are so much better than rehearsals because the extra energy of nerves and fancy black duds helps the weekend players listen more carefully and look up at the conductor just a glance or two more often.

Three hours and a satisfied arctic audience later, we all stood to accept our standing ovation. And I felt that horrible running tickle of a dry winter nose-bleed. I turned to get off stage but there was a wall of stands behind which a line of trombones were planted, and not one of them moved but rather seemed to glare into my soul. Brass can look that way sometimes when you startle them. Finally I just shoved through where I could, my neck hot and my skirt feeling wrinkled and clingy at the back of my knees. The whole thing seems like no big deal now, but at the time as a teenager it was mortification incarnate. There were hundreds of people on stage, and hundreds more in the seats. In a town where you WILL see people you know and are expected to wave when you drive the three miles to Fred Meyer, it felt like the whole world was witnessing my unsanitary bodily malfunction at what was intended to be a rare moment of formality. I bet not one of them remembers it, but that feeling of being trapped on stage took a long time to dissipate for me.

There are lots of other stories which will no doubt appear more embarrassing to the reader, but the timing of this one made it the most personally intense. I still like to see an escape route gap in the stands behind me before we start playing. I don't have anything planned for March yet, but the possibility of blessed events coinciding with musical ones has crossed my mind. Would madame like some black towels to sit upon perhaps?

Satellite Radio is my friend.

I love road trips. The time for conversation, the views and sometimes interesting radio, the change.

It's not nearly as fun when you're pregnant, though. I'm really worn out. My legs feel all itchy and tight and I need a shower.

We heard one of the Bartok violin concertos while driving through the Columbia River Gorge, which I thought worked out rather neatly. Otherwise our soundtrack began with the Bluegrass Gospel Train through the Flathead Valley, progressed to Prairie Home (almost no Garrison vocals today!) and various talk shows. We even did a brief stint on the Classical Christmas station, but after a while the ridiculosity of melismatic opera treatment for "We Three Kings" type of junk got on my nerves. (A while= 3.5 minutes)

Speaking of listening, at the Montana Grandparents' pad I played a note on the piano (middle C) and asked Toby to sing it and he did. He also saw a toy violin and mimicked the motions with the correct hands while singing. Can you see my chest puffing up? Or, wait a tic, that could just be another second-pregnancy symptom.

Cool

A post over at OhForFun jogged a memory, and I thought I ought to post this instead of cluttering up her comment space.

I was hired once to do a commercial for air conditioners, and we were "playing" the 4 Seasons. It was in my Tokyo days and I was asked to bring as many multi-cultural girl friends as I could drum up for $350 each. I told them up front they were being hired for their race and hotttness, and nobody said no. None of them played for real, and some of the instruments were lacking a string or two: it was hilarious.

Non-string players do the funniest stuff when they give the instrument a shot. Mostly there are lots of locked and swinging shoulders (think Thriller!) which results in the Cinderella sweeper bow maneuver: picture the motion of a scythe across the strings and you're halfway there. They also tend to go kind of cross-eyed while trying to keep that wily bow on the strings. Usually the viola-side elbow gets propped somewhere twisty on the torso, which makes their spine instantly shoot out backwards at an angle like that dude Igor in Young Frankenstein. I know it's mean, but come on, it's funny. I've found that most people can tell right off the bat if somebody in Hollywood is faking it, so that's always nice to know.

Anyway, my friends totally dug their 1.5 seconds of fame and as I remember since we were all professionally made up and young, we went out on the town that night. The finished ad involved lots of slow-mo and wide angle shots of a whole bunch of instruments with a soupy-sounding desecration of the already trampled Vivaldi piped in. We each had our split second of stardom- I swear it was at least as artistically fulfilling as a Bond CD.

I swear I would have traded the whole paycheck for a tape of that thing, but sadly for the whole internets, one never did materialize.

Lucky #13

Well, this is it. My lamest Nablokaherk post yet. Or shortest.

They accepted our offer with the contingency that we can sell our place first.

In the immortal words of Clark Griswold, "this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy..."

Here's a ditty from the Carmina Burana I was complaining about. With the choirs and soloists, it's not nearly so boring to rehearse. I have highlighted my favorite lines: mooning the moon/fate, and everyone crying after the stringman is struck down. I wonder if there will be an audition for the string man's now vacant chair in the viola section...

O Fortune,
like the moon you are changeable,
ever waxing and waning;
hateful life first oppresses
and then soothes as fancy takes it;
poverty and power
it melts them like ice.

Fate - monstrous and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

Fate is against me in health
and virtue,
driven on and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate strikes down the string man,
everyone weep with me!