The thrill and terror of being Opera Roanoke's rehearsal pianist

I'm sitting here in my home, doing the only thing I can do at the moment - eating a piece of cake accompanied by a glass of white wine at 4pm in the afternoon. 

I think it's called for. 

Every so often I'm called upon by our local opera company, Opera Roanoke, to serve as their rehearsal pianist. I think this is one of those invisible music roles that most people, even many pianists, don't realize even exist. Perhaps that's because it's a role that can literally just last a couple of hours. Or perhaps it's because there simply aren't a lot of us out there willing to do this kind of work. 

In my opinion it's an example of extreme musicking and it's one that I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with. The work is daunting much of the time, requiring a lot of time to prepare, the experience involves combination of humility and bravery, and often the job doesn't include a performance in front of an audience. On the flip side, I get to work with a brilliant conductor, Steven White, and amazing soloists (who are sitting only feet away from me I might add!) I also inevitably end up having my mind changed about more challenging monumental works (shout-out here to Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle and this most recent venture, Britten's War Requiem.) I love being proven wrong about music. It helps me understand that just like with some people, art sometimes needs to be probed, lived with, and given numerous chances, to win me over. 

So what does being a rehearsal pianist for productions like this entail? 

I'm usually given the score, which is a reduction of the orchestra part, reduced down (sort of) to a piano part, a few months in advance so that I can prepare. The reduction is much easier than reading a full orchestra score with all of its many lines of music, one for each instrument; I don't know how many pianists could actually play for a rehearsal off the orchestral score. Much of the reduction is somewhat playable but there are always pages that are quite frankly nightmares. There can be extra lines of music in addition to the left hand and right hand lines, the texture can be really dense, lines can cross and be on top of one another...it's enough to sometimes make my eyes cross or my stomach churn at first (or second, third, etc...) glance. There are often parts in which there's no possible way a pianist could play everything. I would say that much of the time this is the case. Which leads to one of the greatest challenges - deciding what to play and what to leave out. 

Making this decision means knowing exactly what's going on in the orchestra - knowing which line represents which instrument, knowing whether or not that instrument is heard in that particular spot, and deciding if it's a line that should be played in order to help the soloists pick up their entrance notes or to know when to come in. I do a lot of listening to recordings while following along in the piano reduction. I then make a lot of decisions regarding what I think I should/can play or not play and mark up the score to reduce the temptation to try and do any more than that at rehearsal time.

As a rehearsal pianist I am also very careful to understand the meter and to guess as well as I can how the conductor is going to conduct it. When I'm practicing I make it a point to count out loud while playing to ensure that I know exactly what's going on rhythmically. Of course there's no way to accurately predict exactly how the conductor is going to conduct any given spot, but if I understand what's going on and have pictured what the possibilities are it gives me a much better chance to save some time since rehearsal time is very limited. Doing a lot of this rhythmic prep and visualization also makes it more likely that I'll keep one part of my vision glued to the conductor during the rehearsal. Often times, when sections are really challenging note-wise, I ditch worrying about the pitches I'm playing in order to convey rhythm, pulse, and mood. 

Another goal of mine in this type of work is knowing the piece so well that I can try to mimic as many aspects of the orchestra as I can so that in the rehearsal the conductor and soloists can feel like they're getting a glimpse of what they're going to get with the orchestra. This goes back to listening to recordings over and over again and playing around with different articulation, pedaling, approaches to touch on the keyboard, and dynamics. My goal is to not just sound like I'm playing a Reader's Digest version on the piano.

After all the preparation I do, and here I should add that no matter what I do I never feel fully prepared, it's time for a rehearsal with just me and the conductor. Maestro White and I have worked together enough that we both have said we like to have this initial meeting, which is usually a week or so before the soloists' rehearsal. For me it helps me to find out if there are any lines I should be playing rather than leaving out and to be aware of tempos that might be faster than I had anticipated so that I know what final prep I need to do. It's also a really incredible opportunity for me to glean from him what he feels about the piece. I learn so much from seeing what he finds challenging himself and sensing his enthusiasm and love for the music is always infectious. It's often in these one-on-ones that I find myself inescapably falling in love with the music myself. Last but not least, these rehearsals usually have me falling flat on my face at some point. There's nothing quite like doing that in front of a brilliant conductor to help get over nerve and perfection issues. If I can see that he's fine with some of my more colorful note snafus and imperfections, sometimes even laughing about them together, it makes me a little less nervous for what comes next.

After final touch-ups on my own we come to the rehearsal with the conductor and soloists. After all that work leading up to this moment, it is often shocking how short these rehearsals can be. Today's rehearsal lasted just about 2 hours. With the most difficult sections, which I've often spent hours and hours of work on, we may only go over it once. Today for instance the most demanding (I think it's pretty insane, really) sections took about 5 minutes of rehearsal time. All of that work...for 5 terrifying/exhilarating minutes!! Sometimes I also get frustrated at not getting second chances to get something tricky right. I frequently find myself wanting another go but it's not about me and my ego or desire to show that I can play a particular passage. We often just move on and that's that. It's good practice for one's psyche. 

Another aspect I find amusing about these rehearsals is how much focus it takes to get through it with grace. I'm always somewhat torn because here I am in the midst of such amazing musicians, with singers whose voices are phenomenal, yet I'm so focused on the task at hand I'm not really able to take it all in. 

To be honest, I often walk out of these rehearsals wondering if it's really worth it for me. It's a lot of time, a lot of stress, a lot of pressure...and in the end I never get to perform the work as I've prepared it for these rehearsals. 

But my goodness, I have to say I do love it too. It makes my heart race, it dumps me into the middle of remarkable music, and it surrounds me with inspiring talent. I also really enjoy watching the soloists and conductor cheer each other on in rehearsal. So often they end up really moving one another with what they can do technically and artistically. To see them react to one another's art and to hear them talk of how much they love the music heightens my love for this type of collaboration and motivates me to keep doing this type of work. And in the end, when I've survived it all, it makes me realize how unbelievable the whole process really is and what we, as pianists, are capable of pulling off.

It's also a really good excuse for a piece of cake and glass of wine.

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Rediscovering inspiration with a musical mentor

Music is one of those pursuits that we undertake without necessarily expecting for the journey to end -  that's part of what I love about being a musician. But in spite of all of my noble desires to keep improving it can be so difficult to keep the inspiration alive in our own little bubble. To step back and to objectively hear ourselves, to dream and get into our heads what we're capable of, and to push ourselves farther than we imagined possible takes a certain amount of humility and bravery. I've been fortunate over the years to have had several pianist friends for whom I feel comfortable playing and it's a practice I highly recommend. Sometimes it can be good as creatives to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and to get good and truly nervous playing for others before performing in front of more people. It can  also be a way of proving to ourselves that we are capable of performing under pressure and that we can learn and grow, just as we did as students. 

Over the past few years I was given a chance to do just that. One day, out of the blue, I received a private message on Twitter from a pianist who I had long considered my Bach hero. He had written to ask if I'd like to start chatting about Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier since he was working through them himself in preparation for an upcoming recording. Needless to say I was a bit surprised because of who I am - a professional pianist, yes, but one without any recordings and without a huge name or career. In spite of my initial surprise about it all, I accepted his invitation, we met for an initial chat, and we haven't stopped talking since. 

I will never forget the first time he asked to hear me play something during one of our conversations. Oh my. I can't adequately describe how nervous I was! But I knew this was a really unique opportunity and that it would be foolish to chicken out. Through our short exchanges of musical ideas, I quickly learned, not to my surprise, what an incredible musician, coach, teacher, and mentor he is. Over the months, those mini-exchanges with him through our video chats evolved into me sending videos of my playing to him in return for feedback. He in turn asked thought-provoking questions, challenged me to truly own my performances and interpretation of any given piece, and helped me to hear subtleties in my playing that may or not reflect what I have going on in my head. 

My musical mentor has also been watching my weekly piano sightreading since I began streaming them at the beginning of the pandemic. At the start of it all I found myself a regular bundle of nerves because he regularly passed on comments to me about very specific things I could do better even in that context. I admit that at first I responded with a bit of a short temper. I felt that because I was sightreading I shouldn’t be expected to play in such a finessed way. I believe I even suggested that perhaps he could sit in the hot seat for one episode if he thought what he was asking for was possible. This mini tantrum on my part led to an interesting discussion and me realizing, after cooling down and a bit more processing, that perhaps it was possible after all. And guess what? It is. My show is now even more of a joy to do because I’m loving the constant challenge to up my game musically every time, whether it’s on my show or out in the real world. 

After two years of being gifted this experience, I now feel like a brand new musician: my practicing is different; my performing is different; every aspect of how I hear music is different and more fine-tuned. My confidence has also increased more than I could have ever imagined. As a teacher, I’ve added even more things to my toolbox to listen for when working with students. More importantly, perhaps, I'm inspired again to keep pushing myself to get even better and I feel like I have the ears and heart to do so. 

For various reasons I’m keeping the identity of my musical mentor mysterious. As evidenced by the current show, “The Masked Singer,” it seems folks like a little intrigue and suspense now and then. Consider this my personal (and much more entertaining) version of the show. And if you're interested or curious to learn more about who he is, let me know. I just may let you in on my little secret.

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Celebrating one year of my sightreading show!

A year ago, in the spring of 2020, as we were all adjusting to being confined to our homes more, I kept trying to figure out how I was going to personally deal with this new scenario, especially since the majority of my income from musical jobs was cut off and I had a lot more free time on my hands. I was also struggling with not getting the regular bursts of adrenalin that come with being a performer and having the interactions with my audience that I so love and feed off of. 

One of the crazy ideas I came up with was to live-stream myself sightreading piano music for one hour. Why do that, one might ask? My answer?  I love sightreading, I'm pretty good at it and I figured I could use this time to explore solo piano repertoire. The only down-side I could think of was that I would be also be setting myself up for falling on my face publicly on a regular basis. But since I have a bit of a reputation for being stubborn and for wanting to be transparent as a musician, I decided the down-side could possibly be turned into an up-side. I wanted other musicians, pianists especially, to discover the joys that can come from being a good sight-reader:

• moments of struggle can actually be pretty amusing
• we can sightread musically if we approach it with skill and the right mindset
• there's a lot we can learn about ourselves as musicians from doing it on a regular basis
• that there are things we can do as musicians to help ourselves be set up for more success prior to jumping in
  
• oftentimes what we think was a disaster in the moment really wasn't so bad
  
  

A year after live-streaming the first episode it's safe to say that Sightreading Maverick is now one of the things I look forward to most in my week. I don't have a lot of regular viewers, at least not that I know of, but I have a faithful crew that regularly watches live and chats via messaging during the show. There's also one viewer who routinely watches at night, after the show is done, messaging me his reactions the whole time. That is always hilarious. I also have several who regularly send in requests. I'm very grateful for their suggestions. 

Every now and then I'll get feedback from people who have watched that they've added pieces to their repertoire that they discovered through the show - that brings me such joy to hear that. At times I  sightread works by composers who are friends or acquaintances of mine on Twitter - that's also been wonderfully rewarding. For me that gives me a completely different glimpse into who they are as people, artists, and friends. I should add here that I'm grateful that they've all been willing to let me subject their music to the risks that a part of sight-reading. They too are brave! 

So almost a year later, with 47 episodes in the books, 2 guest appearances (thanks to Tracy Cowden and the Ivory Duo Piano Ensemble), almost 300 different piano pieces sightread, I'm going to keep at it until I run out of music. If you've never watched before, please do check it out and pass on the word about the show. The easiest way to be reminded about it is to subscribe to my YouTube channel. 

You can also watch episodes whenever you wish. Here's the playlist of everything that's on YouTube.

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Standing on my soapbox on another blog

A few weeks ago on Twitter I shared a story about an interesting conversation I had with a colleague where I teach. The conversation that ensued after I posted that story was a brief but important one that led to the wonderful composer, piano pedagogue, and writer Melanie Spanswick asking if I'd write up a post based on the topic. How could I say no?

The thoughts I wrote about in this blog post, "Flipping Musical Misperceptions on their Heads," are near and dear to my heart in many ways so please do take a read and contribute your own experiences and thoughts if you wish.

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Accepting and Embracing the Musician That is You

I'm always looking to find the silver lining in every situation and these past few months have been no exception. Spending months at home, sharing a room with my piano, has been mostly a joy and a consolation but it's also played a bit of a number on my psyche. Facing an unknown future, especially in regards to my musical pursuits and career, combined with having a lot of time on my hands to pay attention to what other musicians are doing, has been a mind and ego bending experience. At times I've found it inspiring and motivating but at other times it's made me want to throw my hands up in despair and to shout, "What's the point?!" 

I have a feeling I'm not alone, nor do I think it's something musicians are facing just right now. It's a mind game that we all face at different times, sometimes more frequently than we'd like to admit. It's a human tendency to look around us at others and to compare ourselves and our situations. How do we compare? How do we stack up? Why can't we be more like so-and-so? Will we ever be as good? 

It can be an exhausting, draining, and self-defeating game that we play. 

What can we do to get our attention back to the silver lining in all of this? 

For me the answer begins with realizing that what I am typically doing when evaluating myself is akin to trying to compare apples to oranges. Even restricting my options to considering only apples and oranges is too limiting, in my opinion. All of us put together create the fanciest, most exotic fruit salad you could ever imagine because we all have different natural abilities, skills, talents, preferences, and experiences. 

• perfect pitch
• photographic memory
• ability to play by ear
• ability to sightread/read music notation
• ability to memorize
• ease of understanding music theory and harmony
• size of our hands/other physical qualities that can aid in playing our instrument
• how old we were when we started taking lessons
• growing up in a household with other musicians in the family
• having the resources to have good instruments to play
• growing up in a city, surrounded by musical opportunities or growing up in a more isolate area
• having connections with the right people at the right time
  
  

Some of the items on this list are things that we simply can't control or change and some are things that we can continue to work on and nurture throughout our lives. But the point is there are so many factors that make us who we are as musicians and it's these differences that make it futile really to judge ourselves against any other musician. If you're an apple, don't look to make yourself into an orange. If you're an orange, don't expect yourself to be an apple. No matter how hard you try, you are what you are. 

Does that mean you can't work on yourself to make you an even better musician? No! I'm all for regularly challenging and pushing oneself - it can be thrilling, rewarding, and will keep those neurons in your brain healthy and strong. But what I'd say is, please do it within your own skin. You are what you are and that is a gift. 

Embrace it. 

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From the kitchen to the stage: the importance of trusting oneself

Today I realized that great cooks and musicians have something in a common - they have learned to let go and to trust their senses.  They have learned that interpreting great dishes or musical compositions goes beyond technique and mere re-creation into a realm that incorporates their own experiences, whims, and moods,  blending them seamlessly with where their audiences are, even if their audiences don't even know themselves where they are or where they want to be taken.

These ideas have been floating around in my head for a while now but they seem to have all collided while I was watching a movie from a few years back called "Today's Special."  It's a fun, romantic, heart-warming foodie movie about a young sous-chef that has worked for years in a restaurant in New York City.  When a promotion doesn't come his way and he confronts the executive chef for an explanation, he receives an honest but painful evaluation - he doesn't have the passion, vision, daring, and creativity that it takes to be the soul behind a restaurant.

This news comes as a blow of course, and launches Samir, the main character, into a fairly predictable journey of introspection.  He ends up reluctantly helping out his father in the family's Indian restaurant that has been struggling to survive.  Having abandoned Indian cooking since he was a boy, Samir does everything to keep the restaurant alive except plan and prepare the dishes himself - he hires a taxi driver he had serendipitously met instead.  This taxi driver, Akbar, is a big of a magical character.  During the resurrection of the restaurant, he teaches Samir some very important lessons about cooking which I also want to translate for musicians for the remainder of this blog post.  In one scene Akbar turns the kitchen over to Samir, encouraging him to try his own hand at combining traditional Indian spices in order to create a "perfect" masala.  Samir looked bewildered and disturbed since there were no measuring implements or recipes anywhere in sight.  With Akbar's encouragement and repeated philosophy that one just needs to use one's head, heart, and stomach, Samir gives it a try - a dash of this, a gentle pouring of that, and so on.  In the end, is it "right?"  Akbar doesn't seem to savor the results but he approaches the moment as any good teacher should.  He admits that it doesn't seem quite right while at the same time affirming that what Samir has done was good anyway.  The lesson was not about "right" or "perfect," it was about letting go, listening, smelling, feeling, and creating.

I am convinced that even beginning students should be given plenty of opportunities to let go and to experience music making and learning in a way that involves more of their senses.  I believe that we teach musicians to rely too much on reading every note on the page, note-by-note-by-note.  We don't teach how to read music as a language.  Similarly we teach students to read every indication on the page and to follow them without necessarily knowing why they are there.  As a result, students don't feel that they have the tools they need to make music on their own.  If someone handed them a piece of music without any fingering, pedal marks, bowings, etc...my guess it they would feel just as bewildered and disturbed as Samir was in the movie without recipes or measuring implements.

As I have mentioned on my blog and on my Facebook page, I don't consider myself a teacher even though I spend most of my waking moments thinking about the process or learning.  At the moment I have one adult student who I consider my guinea pig for all of my philosophies and strange notions and oddly enough, at her lesson this morning, long before I watched this movie, we had a series of very similar moments to the movie scene I described above.  In the past few weeks at our lessons I have increased the amount of times I intentionally pull the music away from my student and ask her to narrate to me what's going on the music and what her understanding of the music means to her.  Today we did even more of that.  I had her re-create several passages to the best of her ability based on her narrative, without the music anywhere in sight.  She kept asking to see the music but for the most part I kept saying, "Say what you know and we'll go from there."  I certainly didn't expect "perfection" but what I did want to encourage was thoughtfulness and complete engagement and she accomplished what I was after brilliantly.   This type of work terrified, and probably really annoyed her, but as the music has gotten more and more complicated and she has still managed to work out how to accomplish what I'm asking for, she has gotten more and more confident.  She has also started making more decision of her own regarding musicality, pedaling, and the like because she understands the tools and the techniques.  For me it is thrilling to see how much she can process with just a little help and guidance from me and it leaves me speechless when I see how surprised she is by her own ability to comprehend music as a language after only one year of lessons.  She does not need to keep looking at all those notes and scribbles on the page.  She can see it as a language and use her head, heart, and not necessarily her stomach, but her ears to guide her music-making.  At today's lesson she had several moments where she seemed genuinely shocked by how easy it was to play the music by letting go and thinking of the music as a language.   But this takes trust and I believe we need to practice trusting ourselves at our instruments.

Which leads me to the title of the movie and one of my favorite things about it.  As many restaurants do, the Indian restaurant in the movie has a sign that hangs in the window to list the daily special.  One day when Samir comes to work he sees that Akbar has listed this instead of an actual dish...

Trust me

Exactly.  Trust me - trust you.  It takes courage but trust me, there is incredible growth and creativity that comes from letting go and trusting all your senses - not just your eyeballs.  Speak the language of music, not just notes.  It's worth it.

Trust me.

You will hear more, feel more, love more...and so will your audience.

Trust me.

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Finding my roots in new soil

The last few years have been interesting.  I have gone from both my husband and I teaching in universities and performing to both of us moving out of academia, relocating to a new town, and taking up a job in a completely different field.  For the past two years I have been working in retail in toy stores, most recently as a manager of a new one.  I decided to put aside my music for an indeterminate time to give my ailing elbows a much needed break and to give myself the space I needed to revisit how I approach the piano, hopefully opting for a more healthy one.  I had also put aside this blog and my practice coaching business because I wasn't convinced that I was being effective in what I was trying to do: I didn't necessarily know if people wanted to hear what I had to say; my website for my business wasn't getting enough traffic in spite of trying to do what I thought was necessary - SEO optimization, use of ideal tags, and other factors I really don't understand; I wasn't getting any new practice coaching clients; I wasn't getting very much feedback after delivering my talks on practicing and learning music.  In short, I felt like I had reached the end of a road.

I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason so in spite of the challenges and insecurities I've faced these past few years, I have always had a sense that music and my research on and passion for the process of reading and learning music was simply in hibernation mode.  In spite of my silence, I can assure you that my mind still manages to stay in high gear most of the time.  One of Rainer Maria Rilke's lines from his Letters to a Young Poet come to my mind at this point...

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.  Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language.  Do not now look for the answers... At present you need to live the question.  Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

That's where I am right now, friends.  I am living the question.  I am living in the moment.  I am living.  And in this new place where I find myself, a place without any clear future, I am realizing that I don't necessarily care whether or not I am a "professional" musician.  I am a musician and I am me.  That is, at least for right now, enough for me.

I am back to practicing and learning new music.
I am back to performing again and have set up 6 recitals over the 2016-2017 year that will enable me to perform all 24 preludes and fugues in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, a project I started many, many years ago.
I am back to playing music with others and with such great joy and excitement!
I am still working in a toy store but also hoping to write again and to teach anyone who would be interested in finding out the way I perceive of music.

I am, in other words, being me once again, only in a different type of soil, with new roots, a new environment, and lots of fresh air.

Not a bad place in which to find myself.

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A brave but beautiful new world

Life has been so good to me lately.  A bit baffling, but good.  I've been adding "workshop presenter" to my list of things that I do and even though this had never been part of my picture and I'm still getting used to being on stage in this different sort of way, I'm enjoying the benefits so much that it's far outweighing the newness of it all.

So far I've presented two different workshops:

• "Behind Closed Doors - a discussion about what really goes on in the practice room" 
• "Musical Investigations - making music learning more engaging and musical"

It's been interesting to realize that presenting workshops is a bit like performing music.  I feel each one is still a work in progress and I have a sneaking suspicion that how I present them is going to be different each time but I can safely say that I have fallen in love with the topics and am finding myself energized by having the opportunity to share what I've learned over the past few years with others.  I also love the fact that I walk away knowing a lot more myself from listening to the teachers, parents, and students that attend.  There is such a wealth of information out there and I love being in the middle of it all.

This past weekend I was down in Pensacola, Florida, presenting for the folks in the MTNA chapter there.  I was especially looking forward to this one because it meant I was finally going to meet two twitter friends and fellow bloggers in person, Victor Andzulis and Monika Durbin.  (For folks who don't know much about twitter, this is known as a "tweet-up.")  We had a wonderful time at the workshop and I got to hear about some of the struggles and successes the teachers there have been experiencing in regards to getting their students (and the students' parents) thinking more creatively in the practice room.  I was also really excited this visit to be able to present not only a mini-recital with my dear colleague, soprano Youngmi Kim, but to also give a masterclass for young piano collaborators.  This was a first for me in a formal sense even though I've coached plenty of people in one-on-one settings and I just loved it!  It was a fun challenge for me to tie together everything I had discussed in the workshop in the morning with what how I approached the recital repertoire we were performing and then to help the students get a sense of those same concepts themselves.  Being able to share my love of the art of collaboration and the music itself was exhilarating and getting to hear and see young people playing music with one another while having fun put me on cloud 9 for hours...no wait, make that days...oh heck, I'm still there!!  

Needless to say, I'm hoping that this masterclass thing will become an option for whenever I conduct a workshop.  

So onward!  At this point I have another workshop scheduled in November over in Chesapeake, Virginia and then possibly a workshop weekend in Tennessee in February.  Meanwhile I have ideas for other topics I want to start discussing so I have lots of work ahead of me!  

I'll try to keep my upcoming events listed in the sidebar of this blog so keep checking there.  If you find out that I'm going to be in your area, please do let me know if you want more information.  

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One musician's painful dilemma

© misu - Fotolia.com

I am writing this post because I want to be honest and because the subject I'm about to bring up is one that is often shoved under the carpet. Thankfully, I think more and more musicians are starting to open up about this topic which is leading to more information being made accessible. But even with this new sense of openness, I have to admit that I am still hesitant to write about what I've been dealing with the past few months.

All right, enough procrastinating.

Who knows when it all started. What I do know is that I have had two years of playing and performing piano with virtually no break at all.   I have also been accompanying too many people. I now know that I have, without a doubt, a limit. This is where it starts to get a little embarrassing. I should've known. I did know that I had a limit. But in all honesty I didn't know what to do.   I love playing, I love experiencing new music, I love working especially with young musicians, and I absolutely adore performing - it's all downright addictive to me. I also suffer from what I think a lot of other accompanists suffer from - the overachieving accompanist syndrome.  I live in a small town with two colleges music departments in my backyard.   It's like living in the musical equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet.   Yet there aren't many pianists in the area that can or will take on the work.   We collaborators also typically love to swoop in and save the day - it's in our genes.   And I don't want to leave out the economic side of all of this. I am a freelance pianist and an adjunct professor; my husband is in the beginning of starting up a private voice studio after his struggles in academia.   We have no full-time job between the two of us so each musician I say yes to accompany becomes part of the patchwork that is our income.  It is not easy to say no to work and it doesn't help when I happen to love what I do.

Back to my story...

This past December, as most people were headed to vacations and celebrations with family I was crazily putting together a solo piano recital since I had applied for a full time teaching position at the university where I've been working the past three years. I (wrongfully) assumed  that I would make it into the final round of interviews (that's good fodder for another post) and would need to give a recital so I had one month in which to throw something together.  At the same time I was preparing for that, I was also having to learn music for the upcoming onslaught of student recitals, which totaled around 25.  (I am now letting out a groan in complete awareness of how I dug my own grave.) Since it was also my daughter's vacation I was doing my typical thing with her which more often than not consisted of wrestling and tickling each other.  It was during one of those times that I felt something happen in my upper back and shoulder. I didn't think much of it at the time and I don't know that it would have become an issue had I not also been practicing so much, but it quickly became a problem and I started getting this horrible pit in the bottom of my stomach as I recognized that I would soon have a dilemma on my hands, pun completely intended.

Perhaps I should've stopped then.   But it's so hard. I had agreed to play for over 20 recitals and countless other juries and smaller performances.  It's not so easy to just call everyone up and say, "Sorry folks, can't play!"  (I actually did call up a colleague to ask for help but she couldn't come up with any alternatives either.)  This was not a simple matter - that's one of the things I want to get across in this blog post.   I think it can be easy for people looking into a situation like this to simply shake their heads and dismiss a musician such as myself saying something like, "She did it to herself.  She should have known to stop."   One side of me agrees with this but when it's your life, what you love, your sole means of providing income for your family and when there aren't many, if any, that can do what you do?  And then there's the fear that if you tell people what's going on you'll never be asked to play again.  I'm telling you right now it is downright terrifying.

I chose to plow on as carefully as I could. I immediately found a chiropractor in town that I trusted, I told her my situation and she understood.   We set up a plan to meet on a regular basis so that we could hopefully slow down and avoid any further damage. I also stopped practicing once I was done giving my solo recital.   For the entire semester any playing I did was for rehearsals and performing.  I did not see a doctor and I did not go to physical therapy -  I relied instead on my chiropractor, advil, and arnica while religiously doing exercises that I learned from the chiropractor, the Internet, and from physical therapists I have had in the past.

Why did I not go to the doctor or to see a physical therapist?   I have dealt with similar issues twice before,  once when I was still in school and another time as an adult. The first time I had to stop playing I returned home to consult with a world-renowned hand doctor and surgeon in San Francisco.   He referred me to physical therapy but after months of doing that and being miserable I still didn't feel any better. I returned to college, was approved to take non-musical classes while recovering and started seeing a chiropractor who also happened to be the organist at our church. In a month of seeing him my problems started to go away. By the next semester I was playing again pain-free.  Later when I developed issues I again saw a chiropractor who was able to help me within weeks.  That is why I didn't go to the doctors or to physical therapy this time.  I hadn't had success the first time so I didn't want to potentially waste the time or the money.  Keep in mind neither my husband or I have full-time jobs.  Difficult choices have to be made.

© lily - Fotolia.com

So here I am not feeling better yet, not playing very much, not sure what's going to happen next year, and afraid to even type.  (This is the maiden voyage of me using Dragon Dictation to write a blog post!)   Obviously this is not a great situation.   But to make lemonade out of lemons, I'm learning a lot about my body, I'm working on understanding how I can use my body better at the piano, and I am having to start thinking outside the box again, which in my mind is always a healthy activity.   I don't know exactly what's going to happen in the next year although I have already reduced my playing commitments significantly.   I'm trusting that in the end I will have a delicious, refreshing pitcher of lemonade by my side as I once again take to the piano to play my little heart out.

With all this said, I would ask that folks reading this be understanding and to not make comments that beat me up for how I've dealt with this most recent situation.  Trust me - I've had plenty of that already from myself!  Thank you.

For any musicians reading this who are experiencing pain while playing, know that you are not alone.  There are a lot of resources and wonderful helpful people out there right now - find them, ask me, or look at the comments below!  I am happy to help if I can and I'm hoping that people in the know will make some suggestions right here.

Here's to healthy playing!

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Words of encouragement and a reality check for young musicians

© Gordan Jankulov - Fotolia.com

A few days ago I posted the following on my Facebook page.  It seems to have hit quite a chord so I thought I should share it here as well in hopes that it can reach more musicians of any age and at any stage.  Feel free to comment below if you have any words of encouragement yourself and please do pass the post along to anyone you think might benefit from hearing it!  

Dear music students -
A little reality check to hopefully encourage you.

I have been playing piano for over 30 years,
I have put in a gazillion hours of practicing,
I have performed a lot,
I think I'm pretty good at what I do,
and I've performed the piano part of Desenclos' "Prelude, Cadence & Finale" for saxophone and piano at least 8 times now.

YET...and here's the important part...

Today, as I was preparing for yet another rehearsal for yet another performance I still felt like I had to give myself a pep talk in order to face another practice session. I still have a LONG way to go to feel like I'm even close to doing it justice.

YET...and here's another really important part...

THAT'S OK!!!!

So next time you are kicking yourself because you haven't gotten your piece note-perfect, stop and remember you have a lifetime ahead of you to keep working on it. It's never over. Not even when the fat lady sings. 

Keep practicing, keep looking for what else you can do to improve, keep looking for the music behind the notes...and take pride in what you do!

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Turning the light on in the darkness

Last November I joined in with many other people on Facebook in a month of gratitude, posting a different status everyday giving thanks for something or someone in my life.  Although it was an exercise I enjoyed and benefitted from immensely, there was one thing for which I'm exceedingly thankful that failed to find its way on my list.  My excuse?  The gift in question touches me in so many ways I didn't feel I could have adequately expressed the depth of my gratitude in a simple, sterile status update.  This gift I've been given deserves much more.  I'm not sure a blog post will even do but at this point I feel I have to put it down into words.

So here it is, with its many facets.  

© peshkova - Fotolia.com

It starts with a reminder about where my family found itself about a year ago.  My husband, last spring, received word that the university where he had been employed for 6 years had denied him tenure - one lightbulb turned off with a quick flip of a switch.  Next we had to decide quickly whether or not my husband would keep teaching at the university for a seventh year before officially having to leave his position.  We knew we'd have to move on at some point, the question was  when.  Would we turn off the next lightbulb or would we wait until the university turned it off for us.  We chose to flip it off ourselves, making what darkness we did feel, at least seem self-inflicted.  My husband resigned and within a few months, was done at the university.

We were faced at this point with another dilemma.  It seemed to us that most people in our situation would choose to pick up and leave since we live in such a small community.  We knew that there would be no way to avoid facing our past when going to the grocery store, the farmer's market, or the movie theater and we knew that I would need to continue working freelance at the university with the same faculty members that worked with my husband in order to help pay the bills.  In spite of the awkwardness and some of the humility we knew we'd encounter we decided that we would stay and make a go at making our lives work in this community.  In my opinion that was when our lights started turning back on.  

Our lovely, entryway light fixture

A few months after making our decision to stay in Blacksburg my husband presented me with a gift that seems to have directed this stage of our life.  He purchased an entryway light that I had been eyeing for months and had fallen in love with.  It was decadent to say the least, especially in light of our current situation, but when I asked him why he decided to buy it he said, "I wanted a way to tell you that I am committed to staying here in this house and in this community, that I want to make it work."  He also explained that the light is what people will first see when they enter our home.  He wanted to continue our tradition of entertaining since we had decided that what matters most in our lives isn't our jobs or money but people and with that, our own happiness.

This past year has surprised me every time I have turned around.  We have received so many incredible blessings - friends and strangers that have offered their support, encouragement, and friendship; the fact that both my husband and I can walk down the hallways at the university without shame because we are happier than we have ever been; the closeness our tiny little family has found throughout all of the decision making and adjustments to a new life; the pride and respect I feel for my husband who has bravely faced this past year with incredible peace and grace.  And those make up just a tip of what I believe is a very massive iceberg that is yet to be discovered.

Does this mean everything has been a piece of cake?  Certainly not.  We've faced plenty of challenges and dark moments, but it seems that there has always been some sort of light keeping us on track and accepting where we currently find ourselves.

And for that constant light, no matter how small or large, I am exceedingly grateful.

There.  I finally said it!

Here are the posts that I have written during our entire journey.  My hope is that they might shine some light into other people's lives should they find themselves in a similar place.

Turning one's back on the tenure dragon

Replacing "success" with joy in the lives of two musicians

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"You expect me to say something?!?"

© Ogerepus - Fotolia.com

When I ask someone I'm performing with if they're going to say a few words to the audience before launching into the music the response tends to be one of bewilderment, panic, or both.

"Talk?  In front of the audience?  It's bad enough I have to perform!  I can't talk too!!" 

I get it, I really do.  I've had my share of stage fright through the years.  But here's the thing - I actually believe that talking to our audiences can be a key to quieting our nerves.  It is also, in my opinion, a key to making more people in the audience more comfortable and ready to receive whatever it is we're about to give to them.

At the university where I teach and accompany the students perform frequently in departmental recitals.  I struggle a bit internally, especially when a singer gets up to perform, even more so when what he or she is singing is in a foreign language.  Perhaps because of time and budgetary constraints the translations to the songs being sung are often not included in the program.  The titles aren't even translated into English so for the most part the people in the audience don't have any clue as to what a given song is about.  In my mind this is a great way to shoot ourselves in the foot!  We're not at a music conservatory where every piece performed is something that everyone in the audience grew up listening to - most of the students have come from small, rural communities.  This is an opportunity for the students to hear some great music for the first time but how can they even begin to enjoy it when they haven't a clue what the words being sung mean?  And how does this effect the performer? Here we have a young singer braving the stage, staring out at an audience full of their colleagues looking back with blank faces.  How rewarding an experience can that be for the singer?  How rewarding can it be for the audience?  Even I don't care to listen to singing when I don't know what I'm listening to and I've been listening to classical music all of my life!

Oh my.  Sorry.  Deep breaths.  Obviously it really gets to me.

So what can we do?  Every time I play for a singer in a situation where no translation is being provided I suggest that the singer come up with a one sentence explanation for what their song is about that can be presented before beginning the song.  When done well it can not only help the singer focus, it also helps the audience to have something to grasp onto.  It can be like a piece of scenery to help place everyone in the same place at the same time and it breaks down a bit of the wall that can so often occur between singer and audience, especially when a foreign language is involved.  Although it's rare that a student will get up the nerve to take my suggestion, when they do I find it always makes a difference in a positive way.  The faces in the audience soften and take on a more receptive look, they respond more to subtleties in the singer's expression...sometimes it can be downright magical and all because of a handful of words.  

These days I almost always say something before I perform.  The more I do it, the more addicted I become to addressing the audience because so many incredible experiences have come from me  reaching out to the audience in some way.   One of the most interesting and unexpected results that has happened is that there have been several times when I've had audience members stand up to ask questions or to share something personal about how the music has affected them at the end of a performance before everyone has dispersed.  This has happened to me here in the states but it also happened to my husband and I in Germany. It has meant that the audience, at the end of a performance, has felt like they can stay and chat rather than to flee the minute the last note is played.  It has meant that I get immediate feedback and connection rather than having to face the lonely, quiet Green Room by myself.  It has meant that music-making has become a social activity, which is in my mind, the way music is supposed to be.  And the beauty of it all is that with each wonderful experience like this I have grown to love performing more and more - nerves no longer have a hold of me because my eagerness to communicate musically and personally is greater.  Like I said earlier in the post, it's gotten downright addictive.

In case you were wondering, no, I am not fearless when it comes to public speaking.  I get butterflies every time I go out to talk to my audience so it's something I am working on developing. But I figure I'd have butterflies anyway.  I may as well let the butterflies escape while I'm talking so that by the time I sit down to perform they've had a chance to fly off somewhere else.  And the rewards are just so great - I can't not do it anymore.  

So the next time you perform, I challenge you to give talking a try.  Keep it short, keep it simple, keep it sincere and watch what can happen with that little act of bravery.  

I'd love to hear other people's stories about talking to the audience!  I know there must be good ones out there and it would be a great way of encouraging others to give it a try.  

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Finding courage in the movie theater, the practice room, and on the stage

Combat de la rue de Rohan le 29 juillet 1830,
painted by Hippolyte Lecomte
Image from Wikimedia Commons

It's amazing to me how truths that I need to be reminded of step right into my path just when I need them.  This past weekend is a case in point.  The truth I had no chance of escaping this time?  

Courage in the past, courage in the present, and courage in the future - no matter when it takes place, it is something that directs us, changes us, inspires us.  

It all started innocently enough.  My husband and I had decided that we wanted to see the movie, Les Misérables before we found ourselves suddenly swimming in the craziness of the spring semester - we were seeking some calm before the storm, I suppose.  Having seen the musical several times years ago I was going along just fine with the storyline, not needing any kleenex until we got to the scene where all the characters sing the group number, "One Day More."  It's a powerful scene - so much determination, the gathering and uniting of the peoples' will from so many different walks of life, the incredible music...it's enough to sweep anyone into the emotion of it all.  I was there too with memories I hadn't thought of for quite some time - memories of an episode in my life that has since reminded me of all that I have accomplished and of all that I'm capable of doing.  

In 1994, when I was an undergraduate pursuing a piano performance degree, I was offered a several month stint to be a pianist in two restaurants, one in San Francisco and one in Interlaken, Switzerland, whose waiters were also wonderful Broadway, jazz, and operatic singers.  First courageous moment in this act of my life was when I decided, at the age of 21 to take a hiatus from my undergraduate studies to do this - I think many of my classmates and professors thought I was more than a little foolish.  My time in San Francisco was no problem, it was when I got to Switzerland that I found myself thinking I had made a big mistake.  The singers, who had come from the San Francisco restaurant beforehand and had already been working in Interlaken for over a month before I came, were older than me, the managers of the restaurant claimed that they didn't realize my boss, who had been the pianist before my arrival, was leaving only to be replaced by "a woman - a young woman."  (I'm guessing you can imagine the tone of voice that was used.)  Ugh.  It was not a good start and I didn't really know that I was going to be able to pull myself up what seemed like a really steep hill.   During a rehearsal one afternoon it became pretty apparent that the singers really wished that they had the music for the song, "One Day More" from Les Misérables.  After failing to find the sheet music (remember, this was back in the 90's) I decided that this was my chance.  After living in my apartment as a hermit for the first part of my time there, too afraid and shy to venture out on my own, I suddenly had the courage to find a store that sold manuscript paper, bought a tape player and a recording of the musical, and spent days transcribing the music.  This was no easy task for me - I had never been wiz at music theory or at dictation, but I did it.  And the day I presented it to the singers during a rehearsal?  Oh my.  From then on "One Day More" became one of our signature numbers with it always ending with one of the singers standing on a table waving a tablecloth in place of a French flag.  And after I had stretched myself in multiple ways to get the job done I had no problems hopping on a train to have an adventure on my own, I didn't hesitate to walk into a store and try out my minimal knowledge of German, and I finally found my voice when dealing with the managers at the restaurant. 

But isn't life odd?  I had all but forgotten all of this until we were sitting in that dark movie theater and the song started.  

Why do we forget these important moments?  Why don't we take them with us wherever we go?  

The same night we had seen the movie, I found an e-mail in my inbox with Dr. Noa Kageyama's latest post - "How Can We Develop a More Courageous Mindset?" *  I couldn't help but chuckle.  "Here we go!" I thought.  I walked away from the post thinking back on all of the other courageous things I have done in my life and like Dr. Kageyama, I too found it pretty "mind-blowing."  What we are capable of is astounding and inspiring.  And yes, what we are all capable of doing is amazing too but I think I so often miss being amazed by what I've done, am doing, and can do by myself.  Why not regularly review where we've come from, how much we've learned, and where we might go next?

Maybe this all sounds a bit egotistical and self-centered.  But it seems to me that as musicians, as artists, most of us spend an awful lot of time staring at ourselves under a magnifying glass in an effort to detect the imperfections, to improve whatever we can improve.  It's hard to see courage through such microscopic investigation so I'm thinking that it can't hurt to get a different view now and then.  You never know where it might lead.

As for this last weekend, I've learned my lesson for now.  I am facing an insane few months with 20 recitals scheduled, each with different programs.  Truthfully I've been fretting about whether or not I've bitten off more than I'm capable of.  But after watching young, passionate men and women face overwhelming odds at the barricades in France, and after reflecting on all the projects I never thought I'd conquer but did, I will walk into the fray with the anticipation of being able to look back on it all sometime in the future with a nod of acknowledgement that I met my courage yet again and had a heck of a good time doing it!

I'll see you on the other side.   

* If you haven't read Dr. Kageyama's blog, "The Bulletproof Musician" yet, you really should - it's fabulous! 

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