Performance Diary

Here are two pics of the Kenwood Players at the annual Fall Festival in Gordonsville, which supports the local volunteer firemen. It's always the first Saturday in October and we've been doing it for years.

After we did two sets, the Rapidan Pops came and used the same sound system, which is why there are so many mics.

Performance Diary

     Here are some pics of the Kenwood Players last month at the Art Center In Orange's 20th anniversary. We did one set of standard Dixieland and one set of big band tunes I've arranged for our small combo. The pics are especially good because 1) they were taken by Jeff Poole, who is a great photographer as well as putting out the local paper and 2) the lighting and the decorations had us feeling we were in a fishbowl, because at the first meeting to start the Art Center 20 years ago, all the donations were put into a fishbowl. 

Kenwood Players Video

As we have for a number of years now, the Kenwood Players provided music yesterday for the annual butterfly release fund raiser for the Hospice of the Rapidan. This year it was held at the Prince Michel Vineyard over in Madison county and a member of the audience took a video of one number, "The Charleston", and uploaded it to YouTube. 
Thank you Alex! 

Performance Diary

Here's a photo of the Kenwood Players in full Dixieland Jazz mode warming up the crowd earlier this month for the Bicentennial Celebration in the Town of Gordonsville, VA. This room, which is where I vote, is in the Gordonsville Fire House. 

One aspect of Gordonsville's history I've always remembered is that it was the little crossroads town Jefferson and Madison would pass through when they rode horseback back and forth between Monticello and Montpelier. 

Mayor Bob Coiner asked us to play for 45 minutes right as people were gathering and visiting and enjoying the food provided by local restaurants. We kept the volume down, so people could hear one another without shouting, and just played one tune after another without any talk between. The three players not in the photo are the tenor sax and the two Eb  tubas.

We had a great time and were very well received. The little boy in the photo was my favorite audience member. When he first walked up and saw up close how a trombone is played, he was absolutely mesmerized. 

One thing particularly nifty about this performance was that, since there was no audio equipment to bring and set up, all we needed was the stands and the mats for the brass players. We broke down and packed up and got out of the way in about five minutes. 

Thanks to Jeff Poole of the Orange County Review for taking this photo and letting me put it up on the blog. There's more info about the event at that link.

There was also a TV report on the event, in which you can hear about two seconds of our playing, here.

Play

This article from Psychology Today is a great discussion of what "play" is. Here's a brief quote from early in the article:

(1) Play is self-chosen and self-directed; (2) Play is activity in which means are more valued than ends; (3) Play has structure, or rules, which are not dictated by physical necessity but emanate from the minds of the players; (4) Play is imaginative, non-literal, mentally removed in some way from “real” or “serious” life; and (5) Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind. 

Those points, and others made in the article, read like a good definition of music therapy if you substitute "playing music" for "play". 

One reason I choose the name "Kenwood Players" as a performance name for the Friday group is that I wanted to make explicit that "play" aspect of our music making. As I've noted from time to time, it seems to me that our visibly having fun playing engages audiences at least as much as the music itself.

One of the antecedents of "play" is the Old Dutch word "pleien - leap for joy, dance" according to the Oxford American Dictionary.

For me, the most striking correlation between music therapy and play was the author's elaboration of that first point. 1) Play is self-chosen and self-directed - players are always free to quit. 

Back when I did music therapy in closed classrooms for emotionally disturbed children, the cardinal rule was it was not mandatory. I always said something like "I'm sure there's other stuff your teacher can find for you to do if you don't want to participate in music." Right off the bat that eliminated the "power struggle" of trying to "make" the children behave. And the corollary to that was that I told them it was my job to find a way for them to participate that they could easily handle. 

I never had child choose to not participate, and the teachers were always impressed by the fact I had no real discipline problems. 

Performance Diary

Last Thursday evening Dick and Maggie and I did a little benefit performance for the 15th anniversary of the Arts Center in Orange. We played in the cleaned up clay studio for about fifty people who have made generous donations in the past and were being asked to donate again towards the goal of making building improvements so as to have more useable space for classes and small studios.

For me it was one of the most enjoyable performances ever, in that the set list was a mix of genres spread over the two hours. I've often thought that musical performances could be more like a multiple course meal with varying types of music to keep things fresh and interesting for the audience as the evening progresses, and this event allowed me to fully test that idea and see that it can work.

For about twenty minutes before the official start time of the reception I played keyboard things I've written for friends and students over the years. They're relatively easy to play and allow for a lot of interpretive latitude to match and lead the feeling in the room. I started very softly because so many people have had negative experiences with musicians playing too loudly. With each piece I turned up the volume the tiniest of increments, yet was always able to hear and understand conversations on the other side of the room. Once the event officially started I just went back and played them all again just a bit louder.

Next we played a few things arranged for trumpet, clarinet and alto flute - the medieval springtime carol Angelus Ad Virginem, and then a few of the short dances from Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks. Dick is a professional level trumpet player in dance bands and a great lover of Dixieland jazz, but can play with a marvelously quiet and sweet tone in chamber music and blended wonderfully with the clarinet and alto flute. Having him play softly at first was another part of the plan to acclimatize the audience to the presence of a trumpet that could play louder as the evening went on.

I then switched to guitar and we played Mrs. Madison's Minuet and a few of the other pieces of the James and Dolley Madison era we'd worked up earlier this year. 

After that we played a number of things previously arranged for the full group that worked well for just the three of us. Here's a list of those titles:

Ain't She Sweet

All of Me

Charade

Deep River Blues (Doc Watson)

Georgia On My Mind

Hello Dolly!

Hey, Good Lookin'

King of the Road

Let's Twist Again

Rockin' Robin

Take Me Home, Country Roads 

The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)

Tuxedo Junction

Yes Sir, That's My Baby

After that I went back to solo keyboard, playing the accompaniment to Mosaic, a piece for flute and piano written years ago. By itself it's a great piece of what I think Erik Satie meant by furniture music. That was intended to help wind down the evening, and then for a final piece I played the harmonized Dedication of Merit from Lama Tashi's Mantra Mountain CD. 

Throughout the evening I had the feeling things were going very well, and that was validated by a very enthusiastic round of applause when we were thanked for our playing. The best thing, though, was the number of people who came up individually and told us how much they enjoyed the music in such an emphatic way. I don't think we've ever had so many people comment so enthusiastically and I think playing such a variety of music kept things fresh and interesting.

Because the program was designed for a specific event, it was similar to creating plans for music therapy sessions. Most music groups are one trick ponies entertaining with one genre for an entire event. Our goal was to generate and facilitate a convivial atmosphere to put people in the mood to donate - not to be the focus of the event. 

My takeaway from this performance is that creating a program that's more like a menu for a nicely thought out meal than a simple list of pieces in a single genre can lead an audience to feel they're hearing something fresh and especially created for them. 

Performance Diary

The Kenwood Players recently performed at the annual summer family barbecue and picnic over at James Madison's Montpelier. Thanks to my cousin Ada and her husband Ed for taking these photos and passing them along, and to the Montpelier Foundation for granting permission for me to put them up on the blog.

The threat of rain moved the event from the back yard of the mansion to the Grand Salon in the Visitor's Center. While people were gathering four of us played some music from the time of James and Dolley Madison. We started out with flute, alto flute, clarinet and drum playing selections from Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks. While people were getting their barbecue I switched to guitar and we played Mrs. Madison's Minuet and Mrs. Madison's Waltz, both of which were originally written for the piano. More info on the music of the Madison era is here.

I'd asked brothers Don and Bob (a docent at Montpelier) to help us out by singing some of the period songs and here's a nice shot of them doing that.

Here's a shot of the group during our second set. You can see the little monitor speakers, which were all the amplification we needed indoors. The most important thing they do is to let the players hear the guitar. I use them even in small churches, because when I'm out in front of the group the guitar is hard for them to hear.

In this photo you can see a little condenser mic which is meant to be clipped onto an instrument, but works very well clipped onto a music stand. It reinforces my voice just enough that I don't have to strain to project when in the lower register.

Here's a shot of Ed doing the sound for us. We used that larger condenser mic for the period vocals by Don and Bob, and for announcements. The Mackie mixer just has that mic, the guitar, my vocal mic and a mic for the harmonica (which one of the tuba players used on a few tunes) running into it and going out to the monitor speakers. Having Ed (who for years ran the TV studio for WETA up in Washington) adjusting those levels throughout the performance was a great help. We were loud enough people could hear us, but could chat with others without having to yell. 

Here's a shot taken between numbers that nicely captures our mood. We had a wonderful time.

Current Arrangements

Last Sunday, after the Kenwood Players performed some of the 18th and early 19th century music discussed in a previous post, we moved to some more contemporary fare in a second set. After starting out with the Playford dance tune "The Richmond Ball" as a transition piece, we played the following numbers that I've arranged for us.

Hello, Dolly
Pink Panther
Charade
Deep River Blues (the Doc Watson tune)
Hey, Good Lookin'
This Land Is Your Land
Georgia On My Mind
Tuxedo Junction
Ain't She Sweet

We had prepared, but didn't get to:
Lets Twist Again
The Saints Go Marchin' In

We closed the set with four Dixieland jazz tunes using standard arrangements.

In my arrangements there's always a bass line for the Eb tubas, which are more agile than big Bb tubas, but less so than a string bass. Whenever possible there are little syncopations and walking turnarounds to catch the audience's ear.

For basic harmony I'm playing either banjo or guitar. For the instruments not playing the melody there are harmony notes on a middle staff. Those pitches are usually just pitches in the chord or in simple thirds with the melody.

A primary characteristic of these arrangements is that we don't decide who plays what line until a performance is in view. A founding principle of the Kenwood Players is the recognition that not everyone will be able to make every performance and I'd rather make adjustments among the available players than call in someone at the last minute.

That really paid off for this performance because neither of our trombone players could make it, and while I really missed hearing that tenor middle of the sound, every tune came off well and got a good response.

The key to all this working, besides my having to write up a sheet of road maps for each tune for different performances, saying who plays what when, is that the players can elaborate and improvise on the bare bones I've given them for both the melody and harmony. Over and over at our performances I get the sense audiences are picking up on and enjoying just how much fun we're having making the music and that the improvisatory spark needed to make these simple arrangements come alive has a lot to do with that. 

Performance Diary

This past Thursday my great nieces and Crawford and Judy and I played down at the Orange nursing home to a mostly wheel chair bound audience. We did the same program we did at Oak Chapel, adding Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, Sweet Hour of Prayer and Down By the Riverside.

I have never received more effusive, heartfelt and sincere thanks from an audience after a performance - ever. While I was packing up and schlepping equipment back to the car they kept rolling up to have a private moment to say just how much the performance had meant to them.

A small part of it has to do with my being down there once a week for years, so there's a nodding acquaintance with most of the residents. What just melted me was that two residents who've suffered strokes and have speech problems, and who normally don't really try to say too much because it's so difficult and frustrating, rolled up and really worked to say thank you.

The main reason for this was that the girls totally peg the cuteness meter. Once the audience realized we were really going to pull this off and successfully play the old hymns that mean so much to them, they slipped into a relaxed state of pleasure. The room just got sweeter and sweeter the more the girls played and sang, and when I got the audience to sing along with us (and most of them knew ALL the verses without hymnals).

Having done music in institutions a lot over the years, I couldn't help notice we pulled a lot of staff into the doorway of the room. The staff at places like that have heard it all, and they're very busy people, but when something special is happening, they notice. When I was leaving, several came out from back offices to say just how much they appreciated our playing.

My main contribution to the event was figuring out what the girls are capable of doing at this point and arranging music to suit. Skylar on trumpet is just starting her second year in band, and just got braces, so her range is Bb below middle C to the Bb an octave above, so mostly everything was either in Bb or Eb to accommodate that, and when it wasn't, she played the drum.

We just worked our way through the books I'd done up for them and did as many iterations of the hymns as we could get away with, with me calling out who took the next time through each time. That gives everything an improvisatory feel as opposed to plodding through a preset program, and it keeps the audience on their toes, so to speak.

Towards the end we had Crawford sing "Good Night, Irene", as the hurricane had just recently passed, and that went down very well as well. 

Judy P is the proud owner of a new ukulele with an onboard pickup I can plug straight into an amp. The amplitude of a uke strum is about half that of a guitar, so she can go much faster and throw in delightfully quick syncopations. Makes me realize one reason I so love Judy's drumming is that her background as a strummer so informs it, so it's great to play guitar and banjo with.

Back in this post I talk about what one blogger calls "transmission". And in this post there's talk of transcendence. What keeps coming back to me is that it's the sort of thing that can happen in all sorts of places outside concert halls, but in the era of recorded music and with fewer people playing in small catch as catch can ensembles (which was the norm for human society until the past couple of generations), people seem to have lost touch with that. If I can create some materials that will help facilitate more of this kind of small scale playing, I'll count that as a success.

Performance Diary

Yesterday we performed at the large Presbyterian Church in the town of Orange and last week we performed at the small Macedonia Christian Church down in what my father used to refer to as  "the lower part of the county" (it's more coastal plain than piedmont). I don't think we've ever sounded better than the audio at the link for Macedonia from two years ago as it was one of those times when everything sort of magically gelled. These two recent performances were very good, though, and I want to note what went well.

At Macedonia the minister, one of our tuba players, made our music the central feature of the service. We led the singing of the hymns as well as performed some tunes on our own. Crawford specializes in short sermons and services, and in a service of less than 60 minutes, we played for 35 minutes.

Crawford says it's the best he's ever heard that congregation sing, and that was my feeling as well. I've pitched most of the hymns a step or three lower than the hymnals, so they were more in the range of regular people. I led the singing with my voice and the guitar and the players did a marvelous job of supporting the singing, with a different instrument taking the lead for the singing of each verse. On hymns of three verses we added two instrumental iterations between the sung verses and built the mood.

I'd done up a keyboard album of the transposed hymns for the organist and having her play mostly the bass and harmony lines was a real treat, filling out the sound. From past experience I knew that when I faced the congregation, she and the other players can't hear the guitar, so I took an amp and put it back next to them with just enough volume for them to hear it but that I couldn't detect. That worked very well. 

We've slowly been working up an improvisatory Dixieland version of The Church in the Wildwood, which is sort of a theme song for that particular church, and that went down very well.

At the Presbyterian Church yesterday we just did music before and after the service with a couple of mostly instrumental hymns during the service. Crawford was still preaching down at Macedonia, so we were down to one tuba, and Bill B our sax player didn't make it due to a freak car/power line pole accident near his house preventing him for getting out.

Before everyone else got there I set up our equipment and sang that long song of Dylan's, Boots of Spanish Leather, from up in the choir loft where we were going to perform. It takes me high and low in my range and is a great workout, both for my voice and for testing acoustics. I figured out the best ways to aim my voice into the wonderful acoustic space, and how much to project it to get just the right amount of reverb.

Once everyone else got there we played right up until the service as people gathered below. At one point we got a nice round of applause (after Just a Closer Walk with Thee) and during the "joys and sorrows" portion of the service one of the members said how wonderful it was to walk into the church with everyone smiling and the music coming down from upstairs.

One thing I've never had happen before is that while I was singing the one verse of Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior I did between instrumental iterations, my ears popped twice in that pressure adjusting way they can. The hurricane had passed during the night, so I don't think it was a big pressure change in the environment. I think it was just that I was opening my jaw in that "yawning" way voice teachers talk about and it allowed things to equalize, which in the normal course of things wouldn't have needed to.

Performance Pix

Here are some photos the activity director at Gordon House took of our performance there last Friday, which I posted on here.

In this one, from left to right, is my second cousin Steve, Dick & Maggie S, Crawford H, Bill C and Bill B. The Sony recorder is on the camera tripod in front of Bill C.

Here's a shot of me on banjo and Dave F on trap set on the right side of the flattened semi-circle. Dave is following the music closely because for a couple of numbers it was the first time he'd ever played them with us. Pro level reading skills really do come in handy.

Here's a nice close up of Crawford and the Bills:

That's all the current Kenwood Players except for Judy P who plays percussion for us in church and other settings where a full trap set would be too much. 

Cousin Steve (trombone), Dick (trumpet) and Dave (trap set) are pro level players and play in a number of different groups. Steve joined the Fredericksburg Big Band several decades ago and now runs it. They've raised millions of dollars for charity over the years. Dick is a retired army colonel and he and Maggie have lived all over, seemingly starting Dixieland groups wherever they've been. Dave was a drummer in the Army Band.

On a genetic note, Steve and I are second cousins because our grandfathers were brothers. He has several dozen Sanford cousins and I think at least half are very musical. I have just over two dozen Sanford cousins and am the only one doing music, other than one or two who took piano lessons as a child and dropped it.

Another thing to mention, which relates to tone quality is that from time to time in rehearsals and performances, Dick and/or Steve will play with such gorgeous tone it's all I can do not to stop playing and just listen. Hearing such great brass tone up close and personal has been a boon to my horn playing.

Performance Diary

This past Friday the Kenwood Players performed for an hour over at Gordon House. It was 20 minutes Dixieland (me on banjo), 20 minutes Hank Williams and hymns (me on guitar) and then 20 minutes of Dixieland. Everything went very well.

We were in a flattened semi-circle and left to right it was trombone, trumpet, clarinet, the two Eb tubas, sax (soprano and tenor) trap set and me. Very nice mix on the recorder, except on my vocals. Had it set-up right in front of the tubas with one mic facing the trombone and one the trap set. If I were to crank it higher and stand right in front of it on vocals I think the results would be about the best it can get. The closer it is to the sound, the better it is.

One small note on gesture. A handful of the Dixieland arrangements call for the banjo to go tacet in the last measure or so, and we did one of those pieces. Without thinking I did a sort of flourish on my last strum trying to get it perfectly in the rhythm of the trap set, and seeing that flourish and sensing the end of the piece coming up, a number of people applauded prematurely. I'd mentioned before that I conduct music therapy sessions in part with gesture, just hadn't made the obvious connection to influencing an audience as well.

Something else to note was how well we and the audience connected. Gordon House is an assisted living retirement home, so the residents are the right demographic for old time music. What happened that was so nice is that they picked up on how we josh amongst ourselves between numbers and started making jokes along with us. After we finished a lot of them felt comfortable coming up and speaking to players and there was quite a little confab there for a while.

We're also getting better at being more efficient performers. We performed for 60 minutes and the music only CD runs right at 45 minutes, so for all the talk, we went right from one number to the next and got a lot in. Any more might have stressed embouchures, especially on the Dixieland which is pretty demanding.

Should also mention that Dave F, former Army Band drummer, was able to join us. Having a professional level drummer makes all the difference, especially on the Dixieland. For me it's a treat not to be the sole time keeper on banjo, so I can get a little creative accompanying the other players.

Performance Diary

Back on Saturday 7/2 the Orange Community Band played in a band festival in the pavilion down at the end of the pedestrian mall (formerly Main Street) in Charlottesville, VA. The pavilion is the major outdoor big time venue in Charlottesville and it was a real treat to play in such a well designed, top of the line venue. Ample room on stage and very nice acoustics. The band played well and the audience very receptive.

Then on Sunday 7/3 there was the Picnic in the Park here in Orange out behind the airport. My group opened up with a Dixieland jazz set of about 40 minutes, then the community band played for about 45, then there was a short ceremony (which included my singing the national anthem with the banjo, a tenor sax and an Eb tuba), then a mother and daughters singing group, then my group started with some Americana until the storm came.

For the Dixieland I used a clip-on dynamic mic on the banjo because the sound is so directional. Putting it through the sound system meant everyone could hear it no matter where I was facing.

Also used mics on the tuba, harmonica and the clarinet, all run through the Mackie mixer and out to the two large Peavey keyboard amps, with the control room feed going to a small keyboard amp for our monitor. Then ran a line from the out of the most distant amp to a powered mixer and two speakers set up even further away. We had nice sound coverage throughout the area without it being too loud up front.

The community band apparently played very well. The director and the music educators in the group all talked about how "musically" we played. Here's an excerpt from the director's note to us afterwards:

. . . but once the music 'gets in your blood' it more-or-less begins to take on a life of its own. At that point the conductor becomes far less important as the engine drives itself from within the ensemble. We have to remember, though, that this occurs only when the notes and rhythms are learned and we are no longer bound to the printed page. That's when real music begins...and that's exactly what happened on Sunday night, in particular.

My problem was, as it has been in the past at these events, trying to change mental gears from banjo to horn. With the banjo I just play without thinking, but with the horn it is only with full concentration that I can manage to not embarrass myself. So for the first several numbers my memory is more what I was up to more than how the group sounded.

The Kenwood Players last set started, and then the storm came. Torrential rain and lots of close lightning. We were all safe under the large shelter, but I had to kill the sound system because of blowing rain. Until it was announced that the fireworks were canceled, it was me on banjo, a trumpet, sax, clarinet and tuba in acoustic mode. 

My singing was semi-hollerin', but people liked it and we kept everyone occupied during the storm. (Nearer My God to Thee was mentioned several times ;-) Orange being the small town it is, have had several people come up to say they really appreciated our persevering in the face of the storm.

One thing about my singing voice I keep meaning to mention is that I live on a dairy farm and most days spend most of an hour getting cows up out of the field and into the barn. Yelling is involved, but over the years I've worked on being loud and projecting without straining my voice. We're in the piedmont, so there are hills and vales offering great acoustics for testing uses of the voice.

Macedonia

This past Sunday the Kenwood Players joined the service down at Macedonia Christian Church once again. We were five, two Eb tubas, soprano sax, trombone and me on horn and guitar. Crawford preached as well as playing the tuba. The Friday before we rehearsed with the church organist so she could get a feel for playing with us and for seeing the hymns in different keys and arrangements from what's in the hymnal.

Besides preludes and a postlude, we accompanied the organ and congregation in all the hymn singing, which went very, very well. There was no line between audience and performer, just a group of people making music together. The singing was particularly good on the hymns I'd dropped down a step or three, but was good on all them. I have to think the pleasure of singing with the Players blending in encouraged more involvement by the congregation.

The one thing I wish I could do over would be taking the small amp for the guitar. I was furthest from the organist and facing away from her, so she didn't really hear the guitar. Between that and not having percussion, my strumming had no effect on the rhythms or tempos. Until I figured out what was going on, it was a very weird sensation. 

One great benefit of this has been the need for me to finally face trying to format keyboard music for what we're doing. As a music therapist, I've always used a guitar to lead groups because you can move around to connect closely with individual players. Playing a keyboard puts a physical barrier between you and the rest of the group. So I've never really worked out playing the keyboard as a chording instrument, much less figuring out how best to notate that way of playing.

The Kenwood Players

Down in the comments to this (terrific) post Jeffrey asks who "the group of eight" are I'd referred to and here's my response:

Hi, Jeffrey - My "group of eight" players meets once a week to help me proof arrangements printed out as part books for each individual instrument and player. Everybody has the melody and at least one (and usually two or three) other parts to choose from. The idea is to help people enjoy whatever technique they have - the target audience being folks denied entry into the necessarily elite world of school music, home schoolers, and folks who were/are in school music and want to use their skills in a more personally expressive way than playing in a large ensemble.

Two of the players are a retired minister and a retired public educator who played Eb tuba "back in the day", and they've both told me a number of times that this group is the most enjoyable and rewarding playing experience they've ever had in their 70 plus years. Our percussionist is a retired elementary music teacher. Our sax man played trumpet years ago and has taken up the tenor, alto and soprano in retirement. Trumpet and clarinet are a retired couple and the trombone is a cousin. The trumpet and trombone are pro level and can soar on improvisations. I play guitar and sing (with occasional horn and flute).

Part of all this also to inject more live music into the community (music therapy on a broad scale). We play at country churches, benefits for non-profits, a local assisted care facility, and community events. It's very frustrating to me that there are so many people with band instruments in their closets and a community concert band being the only real playing option, so they end up not playing at all.

I started out as a psychiatric attendant and group therapist and am a huge believer in the beneficial nature of small groups, and see combining that with music making as a near perfect pairing. We get compliments on our music, but also a lot on how obviously were all enjoying each other and making music together. I think the camaraderie we display has as much effect on the audience as the music we make.

Voice Diary

I record most of the performances of the Kenwood Players and then make a CD for each player. That means listening closely all the way through twice, always noticing things that weren't as evident to me in the real time of the performance. The recording of the last week's performance is the first time I didn't physically cringe at least once listening to my voice. One of the most amazing things to me about the Kenwood Players is that I've ended up being a vocalist they feel is good enough to perform with in public.

I never sang as a child through high school, and when taking up the guitar in college it was transferring my piano finger skills to finger picking that occupied me the most. Any singing was just humming the melody enough to hear where the chord changes were. 

A couple of years after college I spent some months backpacking, traveling with guitar, through southern South America with a friend fluent in Spanish, sticking to the back roads. Chile was where we started out, and the first time I ever sang in public was around a small bonfire outside a small village on the coast. I remember doing Dylan's "Hard Rain". Jim asked one of the villagers what he thought and the reply was "se pasa" (it passes). 

What has always made my singing cringe worthy to me (and family and friends who have known me mostly as a non-singer) has been the weirdly inauthentic moments when the emoting overpowers the technique and the psychodrama implodes the music.

In this latest recording there are lots of errors of intonation and rhythm, but none made me cringe. I hope that's because I'm finally able, after nearly 40 years of trying, to have the singing be inflected by the emotions rather than visa versa. But then again, it could just be my ear has become numb to my neuroses.

Then there's the whole issue of two very close friends I got to know after I began to sing, both of whom much prefer what they call my "old voice" of before my working on it so much here the past ten years or so. 

photo - bull frog with the old hay barn in the background

Picnic in the Park 2010

Here's a shot of the Kenwood Players at the Picnic in the Park this past Monday. The temperature was nearly 100 degrees and the heat index was higher. We played an early set from 5:30 until 6:15, then the A Touch of Dixie group (me on banjo and a vocal) played from 6:45 until 7:15, then the community band played the national anthem at 7:30, the community chorus sang, and then the band played from 8:15 until 9:00. The Kenwood Players then did a short set between 9:00 and the fireworks at 9:30.

We all played well, and the crowd was nicely appreciative of all the bands and the chorus. I want to do a few separate posts on various things, this one being to give context. This event was the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of people, and for me it was a testing ground for lots of things I've been trying to accomplish, and overall there's a solid sense of success. Here's a snip from an email Charles Torian, the conductor of the community band, sent out.

Please allow me to thank you for the fine season we have enjoyed together. Monday's performance 'took the cake' in terms of your playing especially well in severely adverse conditions. It's been a long time since I've had to work in those temperatures, but you met the challenge with grace, an uncomplaining demeanor, and a real excellence in your pitch, which could have been a major disaster if you hadn't maintained the control you exhibited. I was proud to be able to accept, on your behalf, the applause of the audience as it increased during your program.

Maestro Charles sat right behind the Kenwood Players during our first set, the first time he'd heard us. He was very complimentary of the little arrangement I'd done for the group that strings together "Yankee Doodle", "Shortenin' Bread", and "Oh! Susanna." He also really liked the way the tubas were amplified, and suggested that in the future we might try that for the community band. 

Besides being our first director who has committed to the long term leadership of the band, Charles is a fine arranger. He's working on translating some brass band music from the Civil War era into something the band can play. Also, Orange is the home of President Zachary Taylor as well as James Madison, and a Taylor family member has asked the community band to play over at Montpelier in November at an event celebrating President Taylor. Charles, with his knowledge of historical music troves down in Richmond, has found some piano music written in honor of Zachary Taylor and is working out some arrangements for the band to play. All the historical stuff is great, but having music created just for our little group is terrific.

Music for Doris

Through my regular visits to the nursing home as a hospice volunteer doing music, I've gotten to know Doris W, seen in the photo above. Each year she raises thousands of dollars for the U.Va Children's Hospital by organizing various events, one of which is a garage/bedding plants sale in the parking lot every Spring. For a year or two I went on my own with a guitar and sang for an hour, but last year and this year, the Kenwood Players performed.

In this photo you can just see the mics in the tubas and the cord from my guitar, each running to one of the three inputs in the amp. I sang without a mic.

Here's a nice shot of the two tubas, Crawford and Bill C, where you can better see the microphones.

Here's Bill B on soprano sax.

Judy on percussion.

Dick and Maggie.

My guess is I'm singing "Don't Think Twice" here. Or maybe "King of the Road".

Our Vermont readership may recognize my godmother, Miss Mildred, in this photo. She came to my senior piano recital at Woodberry Forest in 1967.

We all really enjoyed this event, and the amping of the tubas and guitar worked very well. Have since gotten a mic for Maggie's clarinet that seems to work well. We have a small indoor event on 6/17 and then the larger event on July 5th, where some of us will also be performing in the Dixieland group, "A Touch of Dixie", and we'll all be performing in the concert band.

Ensemble Mix/Audio

One of the guiding principles for the part books I'm building is that they take into account that not everyone can be there all the time, either at rehearsals or performances. The idea is to create parts that suit the various instruments, but are generic enough that players can successfully jump around from playing lead to being accompaniment.

This past Sunday was the first time we've had just two treble instruments, trumpet and soprano sax, along with the two Eb tubas and percussion - and neither of our alto or tenor voices, the clarinet and trombone. 

I played horn on two numbers, which are four voice suites I've been working on. One strings together a Renaissance dance, a troubadour part song, and Lillibulero (Purcell/Beggar's Opera). The other strings together that famous Jeremiah Clarke Trumpet tune with one by Purcell. With the horn on the tenor line they worked well (when I played the right notes).

On everything else I played the new acoustic steel string guitar with the on board mic run through a small keyboard amp. It had much the same effect of the C'ville horns coming to play with the Orange concert band. It gave a middle to the sound that the tubas could plug into from below and the sax and trumpet from above. 

At our next little performance I'm thinking of putting mics in the bell of the tubas, so that like me on the guitar, they can work not so hard and yet get a better sound. At the last C'ville Municipal Band concert I was struck by how their three Bb tubas laid down this wonderful bass throughout all the numbers. They sort of created a primal river of sound that everyone else could float and swim along in.

I have an aversion to using amplification in our performances, because over the years, walking into events where there's amplification I've come to view amps as lethal weapons and to think that professional musicians using them are deaf (or that they're way more self involved than is healthy). Judicious use, though, can create a better ensemble mix than not using amplification (or sound reinforcement, which is a probably a better term).

The way I set the level for the guitar was to turn it up just enough so that what was coming out of the amp was about as loud as the guitar itself. I hardly noticed the amp was there, but for the other players it kept my sound steady whether I was facing them or facing out to the audience. This lets me move around as I always did doing music therapy sessions back in San Antonio. I can sing strongly enough to not need a mic in small scale performances like this one, and I much prefer it, as having the mic control where I am feels very constraining.

The deep lesson of what's been learned here has to do with balance. On all sorts of musical issues there's the forest/trees dynamic. Because of my focus on creating part books, that's what I was hearing. The way the guitar brought everything together made me realize I hadn't been hearing the forest. The part books are going to work best if there's a guitar, or rhythm keyboard, or an omnichord or autoharp to give that middle to the sound. You can get by without, but having one of them will make things much easier.

Another thing I was more reminded of than learned, was that rhythm guitar is my strong suit when it comes to music making. The new guitar is a joy to play, and the amplification makes it a whole new experience for me, and I had listened to a Michael Hedges CD here recently which led me to try some new textures. But mainly, I don't have to think about how I'm going to strum. There's a direct connection between the feeling I want and the strum just happening. Except for a few keyboard pieces I've been playing for decades, along with some Dylan songs I've been singing for 40 years, everything else I do musically requires a lot more "left brain" or conscious mental involvement. With rhythm guitar it's all intuition, feeling and sensation with very little thinking. 

Butterfly Music 2010

Here are some photos of us playing at the Butterfly Release fund raiser for The Hospice of the Rapidan down at Germanna yesterday afternoon. There was stiff wind, so that's why the French horn case is being used to anchor the tripod with the Sony recorder. That's Dick on trumpet and Judy on percussion.

Here I am in full music therapy encouragement mode, urging on Bill B on soprano sax and Bill C on Eb tuba, with Crawford just barely in the frame

Here's Crawford on the other Eb tuba and me trying to keep my music stand from blowing over.

Here I'm facing where most people were seated over where, after we played, a harpist played while the names of people who've passed on were read out and then the butterflies released.

Except for Crawford, we can all be seen in this shot.

Wanted to put these shots over on Facebook, but it crashed every time I tried. Update - Finally got it to work. Here's the link.

My feeling is we did very well. There were some rough spots, but they were mostly due to my giving incomplete road map instructions or getting off the beam on guitar once and horn a couple of times. We've got another little outdoor performance in two weeks, then a small indoor one in June, then a bigger outdoor performance on the 5th of July. Learning a lot, and want to post on some of that here in the next week or so.