2019 Christmas Singalong

Here are some pics from the singalong we had at the Music Room this past December. It was quite a milestone for me. We combined some members the Fun Band with some members of the Rapidan Pops, creating for the event the largest and most expert group of musicians I've ever led. As for the singers, I've led larger groups, but never so many experienced singers - even though the singers only had lyrics with no music - and all the hymn tunes were transposed down a couple or three steps - there was often four part harmony in the voices.

Here's a pic that shows all the strings. Clockwise from the right: Brian, Pam, Betsy, and Jenny on violin; Michael and Darlene on viola; Mary, Joe, Barbara, and Caroline on cello; and Hank on guitar. Back against the wall you can see our vocalists Maryvonne, Alegra, and Karla, and then Judy on ukulele, and Dale on guitar. 

Also in this pic you can see how we seated some of the singalongers right behind the strings. The gentleman right there in the bottom left hand corner is Al, without whom the Music Room wouldn't exist. Besides starting the Orange community chorus and band, he somehow got me to join the band, which is where I learned to play the horn from a standing start, which later led to playing in the Rapidan Orchestra, and the orchestra needing a rehearsal performance space had a lot to do with the Music Room coming into existence.

Here is a pic of the winds - Rebekah on flute, Jane on recorder, Heather on clarinet and Madelyn on bassoon.

Here's Don on drums.

In this pic you can see our friend Sara sitting to the right of Judy and Dale. Besides having been a member of the Orange Music Society and then starting the Culpeper Music Society, she was the one who first started the Shakespeare in the Ruins outdoor productions over in Barboursville. She had a great time and with both her and Al participating there was a wonderful feeling of solidarity with previous community performing arts projects.

This pic shows the overall shape of the room, which is much like a shoe box - and when people talk about the great music spaces in Europe, a lot of them apparently have a shoebox shape, so that must have something to do with good acoustics.

We did a Christmas singalong two years ago and here's a pic of that.

You can see the lights have been changed, that risers have been added in front of the stage - and that curtains have been added, which did a great job of damping the too bright sound. With the curtains, and a lot of people in the audience soaking up sound, most people think the sound is exceptionally good. Back when Rapidan first started rehearsing in the Music Room, conductor Benjamin said after just a couple of rehearsals we were playing better because we could hear each other better.

How We Receive Music

     As we’ve gotten the Music Room up and running this year, what has struck me most has been the audience reactions. Because it’s a very comfortable space with sparkling acoustics, the audience experience is about as good as it gets aurally and socially. At intermission and after the music, people are physically and verbally animated; there are lots of wide eyes, hand gesturings and animated conversations. I always ask as many people as I can what it is they like, and the answers are all over the board. 

     Back in the 60’s I came across Karl Jung’s idea that there are four ways of experiencing the world around us - via thinking, via sensation, via feeling, and via intuition. A recent FaceBook conversation with Kyle Gann catalyzed my realizing those four modes are a great way to talk about how different people receive music, and that since we all have different combinations of these four modes of experiencing music, it goes a long way towards explaining why so may different kinds of music can have such ardent fans.

THINKING - “Theory mind” is the term I use for people who can distinguish instantly between major, minor, diminished and augmented chords and whether they have added pitches like 2nds, 4ths, 6ths, 9ths, 11ths and so on. Theory mind can also hear and name the chord functions in real time, such as the I chord leading to the IV chord, to the vi chord. When modulations occur, they can say what the new key is and how the chords in the previous key were manipulated to prepare the ear for that modulation. 

On many occasions I’ve had band directors and fellow brass players tell me that when you have the third of the chord it should be played slightly flatter than it would be in equal temperament, and I marvel that they can automatically know where in the chord the pitch they’re playing fits. 

Part of Kyle Gann’s FB comment that triggered this post illustrates theory mind:

The other day a cultured woman with a little musical knowledge asked me what I thought made Schumann's music so wonderful. I went into my spiel about his diagonal harmonies, how he'll hit a dissonant note and not resolve it until the chord meant to harmonize the resolution has already passed, and also about how unusual the spacings of his piano sonorities are.

SENSATION - I think one of the reasons the live performances at the Music Room so affect people is that they’re simply hearing the various timbres of the instruments much more fully than what recordings can ever capture, especially if those recordings are compressed down to mp3 levels. Even audience members sitting in the back are quite close to the performers, and the very good acoustics make the aural sensations immediate and fully textured. This means the fast/slow; high/low; and soft/loud parameters of the music are easily perceived. 

When playing the horn, I have to trust that my sensation is helping me play in tune, even though my weakness in “theory mind” means I don’t know where in the chord the pitch I’m playing fits.

FEELING - One way music “touches” us is that it often encodes physical gestures that trigger our emotions. Most straightforwardly, when we see a violinist caressing notes out of their instrument or a timpanist pounding out a martial rhythm, we feel the emotions we associate with those gestures. The neural pathway for this phenomenon employs mirror neurons. When we see someone making a physical gesture, our brain fires the neurons we’d use to make that same gesture (more here). I also think, with zero proof, that just hearing some gestures in music can trigger mirror neurons, even if we can't see the performer making the physical gesture. Less straightforwardly, while phrasings and articulations in music may not have direct physical cognates, they can evoke less specific feelings and moods.

Also, a piece of music can call up emotions we’ve come to associate with that particular piece because of when and where we’ve heard it before. 

INTUITION - Intuition is non-verbal and non-rational by nature, so it’s hard to talk about. I’ve been told professionally I’m more intuitive than most, and while it’s a great help to me as a group therapist, the problem is that I can’t know right away if my intuition about something is correct. With that caveat in mind, I’ll suggest that one way intuition may come into play is those of us without “theory mind” can still intuit the general structure of a piece. I think our intuitive side can also inform us as to how the performers are approaching the music and their connection to the audience.  

Our intuitive sides are probably also part of whatever it is that happens during “flow” experiences  when our normal ego fades, time flows differently, and we feel part of a larger whole (more here).

Concert Thoughts

The Rapidan Orchestra just completed its 5th season with two concerts (at St. Stephen’s in Culpeper and at the Music Room in Orange) and I want to jot down some thoughts before they get lost in the Christmas rush.

The program - Egmont overture, Carmen Suite 1 plus the Habañera from Suite 2, and Mozart #40 - was the most substantial we’ve ever done, and we played well. A number of musicians told me how much they’d enjoyed playing and the audiences were very responsive and appreciative.

The St. Stephen’s parish hall space is small and  T shaped, which makes the sound very bright and clear. We set up a little differently than in the past, and part of that was moving me from the far left of the stage to just to the right of the center of the stage. The difference for me was enormous - I’ve never heard the woodwinds so well and so well balanced. 

Several of the audience members there used the word “loud”, so I think in the future we need to dial back the volume. That space would be great for chamber music.

At the Music Room in Orange we had the largest audience ever - 140 people plus or minus. I heard later that one audience member was a young girl who conducted enthusiastically the entire time, and apparently everyone around her enjoyed it. There were other children scattered through the audience as well - some from the string program and others the siblings of one of our players. There was gentleman who snored off and on. There were three elderly people in the back no one knew, but who seemed to be very well versed in the particular music on the program, and to all appearances had a wonderful time. 

When I asked a family member who has very little experience with classical music what she liked most she said, without missing a beat, “the last one”, i.e. the Mozart. When I asked why, she said because it was so “animated”. That we played the Mozart well enough for his essential spirit to come through feels like real success.

In short, a wonderfully diverse audience enjoying this great music together in a relaxed way - exactly the kind of unstuffy experience I’d hoped the Music Room could offer.

At intermission, there was an eruption of conversation throughout the room, which made me realize how valuable the Music Room is as a community space over and above being just a music space. The music drew us together and provided the opportunity for everyone to enjoy each others company. That Karla has put so much effort into making the space such a pleasant one amplifies that experience. Benjamin had thought about not having an intermission and asked us what we thought. Since the oboe section, with the tacit support of the horn section, became vaguely mutinous at the thought of that much playing without rest, he went ahead with having it and I’m glad he did.

I was born in Orange County seventy years ago, so know it fairly well. I still have trouble believing we have a successful orchestra. One woman, Heather our lead clarinet, has done more than anyone else to make it happen. And because the orchestra needed a better venue, Karla had the idea of the Music Room and here we are. There’s no telling exactly where all this leads, but it feels like we’re on the right track.

Music Room Pics

Here are some pics of two recent events at the Music Room. The first was the annual Handel Party, which began many years ago with my friend Susan on flute, me on alto flute and Dr. Andy on cello playing through the ten pieces in the Water Music and the Music for the Royal Fireworks that need only three or four voices to play. Over time more players were involved and more pieces were typed into Finale, and this year we had it at the Music Room and invited the Rapidan Orchestra, and Dr. Andy who's been a part of it all since the beginning. 

Here are two shots from either side with Benjamin conducting. 

Here is a pic of our timpanist Don. We did the entire Music for the Royal Fireworks (transposed from D down to G to keep the brass out of the screaming high range). This was the first time we've had timpani joining in and the effect was terrific.

Here are a few more pics.

 

And here are some pics of the supper following the music in the reception area of the Music Room.

The second event was a reception and chamber recital for supporters of the Rapidan Orchestra, again with Benjamin conducting (and playing the harpsichord). We set the musicians up against the long wall, which allowed for the audience to be seated in a semi-circle around us. 

The audience response was, if anything, even more enthusiastic than the full orchestra concert last April. Three reasons I think why are:

1) - The acoustics are very live and you can hear all the instruments well. 

2) - The full lighting helps the audience feel more a part of what the musicians are doing. 

3) - A number of people in the audience I've known all my life, and I think we as a group are pleasantly, but very, surprised something like this is happening in Orange.

Opening Night at the Music Room

Back on 4/13/18 the Rapidan Orchestra played to a full house at the Music Room. It was the first time the Music Room was open to the public, and there were a lot of "old Orange" people (that I've known since being a child) who came to hear the music, but also to see what's happening with the old Gill Hardware building there on Main Street. Even before the music started there was a pleasant buzz of energy in the room as people greeted old and new friends and looked around to see how the inside of the building has been transformed.

That night and in the days following, the most heard comments from the audience were the wonderment of hearing live music like this in Orange and how well played it was. The most frequent comment from the musicians was the incredible sense of connection between us and the audience - I used the word "electric" and our conductor used the word "palpable".

For me the empirical indicator of that connection was when and how the applause began after each piece. Between the conductor and the players there's a sense of the exact moment a piece ends, and sometimes audiences will applaud a bit before or after that moment. That night it felt to me the applause began in the nanosecond the music ended. 

And the applause felt as though it was erupting from the audience, that they'd been so connected to the music, when it ended they were responding in a way that was in part non-conscious and very enthusiastic. Sometimes applause can sound duty driven, but there was none of that I could hear. I have to say the only times before this I've performed and felt audiences that revved up and connected to the music was when I was playing banjo.

Some of the variables that contributed to all this:

1 - Set and setting - a lot of people there were very happy to see the old building put to new use for the community and were in a good frame of mind to begin with.

2 - The Rapidan Orchestra has come a long way, and our current conductor Benjamin Bergey has done a splendid job of helping us mature.

3 - Robert Carlson the piano soloist, though only a sophomore(!) in college, absolutely wowed the crowd and orchestra with his playing of the Beethoven.

4 - The acoustics of the space are really good. There's a real clarity to the sound, and you can hear everything going on very well (which is one reason Rapidan is playing better - we can hear each other so well in the Music Room). 

5 - Though it's a fairly large space, the audience sits very close to the musicians, and I think that enhances the connection - the audience essentially shares the same space as the musicians, as opposed to being off in the distance, with the musicians up on a stage.

6 - We haven't done anything to the lighting, so the whole room was fully lit, rather that the orchestra under bright lights and the audience sitting in the dark. My sense is that amplified the feeling of us all being together enjoying each other's company, and not the us/them feeling large halls and theatric lighting fosters.

Why Acoustic Music

We're thinking of keeping the music at the Music Room mostly acoustic for a number of reasons.

* Any time music goes through any kind of microphone / amplifier / speaker, something is lost. Sound waves produced by musical instruments have much more depth and complexity than electronics can ever capture. It's also the case that the electronics change what they do pick up, making some things louder and others softer. Live acoustic performances will always have richer and more natural sound colors than recorded or amplified music can ever achieve. With so many people now listening to music with earbuds and very low-fi mp3 computer files, we're thinking a niche might be opening up for experiencing music as it has been through all of human existence until the 20th century.

* Amplification can be very helpful for quieter instruments and for allowing people to sing without yelling and still be heard over the accompaniment. But it's also the case that a lot of musicians who use amplification develop tolerances to how loud they are, and what to them sounds like a good level of volume, can seem assaultive to people not used to being around that much sound. A number of times over the years I've noticed people entering a room and having a very visible and very visceral negative reaction upon seeing sound equipment set up.

* The acoustics of the Music Room are amazing. I have never been able to sing so softly with a guitar and be so clearly heard throughout a space. Our sound consultant remarked that the slap echo time is around two seconds, which is comparable to a large church. If anything, we'll have to do acoustic treatments to make the room less alive, and even then any sort of amplification would probably create unpleasant effects, along with way too much sound.

* We want to be good neighbors. Over the past several years a number of wedding venues have popped up around Orange County, and some of them feel entitled to degrading the quality of life of their neighbors with amplified bands and DJs creating a low frequency throbbing for anywhere from a half mile to a mile radius, depending on the humidity. Community building is a major part of what we want to do with the Music Room, so creating ill will with neighbors isn't a good fit.

The Eckhart Ensemble

Yesterday I had the great good fortune of attending a concert by the Eckhart Ensemble in St. Thomas Episcopal Church here in Orange, VA., a gift to the community from the Orange Music Society. In trying to remember a classical concert of comparable power, I have to go back nearly 40 years to hearing Sviatoslav Richter in Constitution Hall as a schoolboy. The fact that the conductor last night, Victor Yampolsky, is also a Russian may or may not be coincidental. 

In any event, the effect of the music making was as transcendent (for me) as it can be as a listener, in that it felt like the few "flow" experiences I've had making music. I'm going to list a number of things that caught my attention - but it was the gestalt - the whole being greater than the sum of the parts - that made for such a memorable evening. 

One way of explaining the power of the music making is to say what it wasn't. There was nothing rote about it - these people were not reading through something the umpteenth time to get through a mandated "service". There was a feeling of spontaneity in every single measure they played, and they were obviously having a splendid time - they moved - they smiled - they showed all kinds of expressions on their faces and in their postures as they imbued the music with a rainbow of emotions. They were playing the music and were letting the music play them. 

The word "players" also gets across the idea they made the music sound like a play, or a story being told. This was especially the case on one number when the two soloists, an oboe and violin stood next to each other and let each other's gestures inform their playing, while the rest of the ensemble was something of a Greek chorus providing context and comment on their dialog. (J.S. Bach Concerto for Oboe and Violin, BWV 1060)

Maestro Yampolsky was amazing, both as a conductor and animateur . Just like a Tibetan lama giving a dharma talk, he began by giving his lineage, in which David Oistrakh loomed large and Vladimir Horowitz was mentioned. Then for each piece he gave a brief but incisive bit of its history and context - and how strongly he felt about its power.

His conducting was a marvel. I was in the front pew, just a couple of feet from the closest violinist, and could look up and see what a wonderful conductor he is and why the players were having such a good time. When called for, his gestures included an ictus, that slight bounce and change from going down to up indicating where the beat is. When I was in conservatory conducting class that was drilled into me, but it's amazing how many conductors get so caught up in swoops they leave it out. 

Instead of giving players "the hand" when he wanted them softer, he covered his mouth with his hand as if muting his voice. Overall, the use of dynamics was part of what gave the music such freshness in that he was always shaping phrases with great dynamic and gestural color. Not only did he get the group to play louder and softer, but the gestures they used in playing the different dynamics gave the music an expressive intensity and color beyond being simply louder and softer.

For me, one of the most striking things about his conducting were the starts and finishes of each piece. Before beginning a piece he would almost imperceptibly gesture the beat, then slowly amplify and intensify it - and only then begin to conduct the opening notes. Every time it sounded like a mountain stream bursting forth - or almost like a firework. And then at the end of each piece, the cutoff was subtly different - and the silence that followed was that deep silence that can only come after great music.

Maestro Yampolsky's resume in the program includes a lot of teaching and master classes, and watching him conduct it was clear how much he cares for the players and so enjoys bringing them to a higher level of musicianship. Part of the excitement of the evening was feeling the joy of the players in working with him. 

And the players! Only later did it occur to me what technique they must have to play with such musicality that I never noticed their technique. Beautiful tone, astonishing intonation, gorgeous phrasing and wonderful balance. All I heard was the music - though I did keep noticing what a terrific job the double bass player did in always giving just the right amount of bottom to the sound - and that the 1st oboist on his solo was either doing circular breathing or had an oxygen tank hidden under his coat or has astonishing lung capacity.

In closing, a couple of caveats. First, St. Thomas was my childhood church. Thomas Jefferson had a hand in its design and Robert E. Lee often tied Traveler to a tree that was still there when I was a child. The stained glass windows have a Proustian effect on me. And this past Lent I did the music for a Lenten lunch there (alto flute and guitar/singing) and between the wonderful acoustics and childhood memories it's a very special place for me - and to hear this concert in that venue was an over-the-top experience.

Also, just last weekend, one of the members of the ensemble, Kelly Peral, who's just moving back to Orange after growing up here, came to play soprano and sopranino recorder with me (on alto flute for Handel and then banjo/guitar for jazz standards and movie tunes) and Dr. Andy on cello. Hearing and playing with her tone, intonation and phrasing was a revelation - and I think prepared me to better appreciate what I heard last evening.

Anechoic Chamber

Back in the 60's I had the opportunity to go into an anechoic chamber, a room especially constructed to absorb nearly all sound waves. There's a picture of one here. I found it an uncanny and unsettling experience. Something about getting zero auditory feedback from the environment made me weirdly anxious and I made a hasty exit.

I went looking for that picture not long after I went down to Durham last month to hear a performance of Timepiece, a wind quintet I wrote some time ago. The performance was at a very nice senior living community. The auditorium where the performance took place was especially engineered for amplified sound, and part of that included very sound absorbent walls, floor and ceiling. 

I've never needed a microphone to speak in a room that size, but I did in this one. Because there was zero reverberation, without the microphone my voice just sort of disappeared. With the microphone my voice was much louder than usual, but with all the sound absorption there was no boominess or feedback - and ideal setup for a population with more than average hearing loss.

The wind quintet was not amplified. The horn and oboe were OK with that, but the bassoon, flute and clarinet had to work to be heard. And since there was absolutely no reverberation there was no blending of the timbres of the instruments - I could hear each one individually at all times, but never heard all the blending of the timbres, which to me is the soul of the piece. What really got to me was that when the quintet was warming up in another room with much better acoustics, they got the blends wonderfully well.

The Oxford Companion to Music

I've had a copy of the tenth edition of The Oxford Companion to Music close at hand for thirty some years. It's the best single resource for information and insight into "classical" music I've ever come across, and is delightfully entertaining as well, due to the wonderful writing of Percy A. Scholes.

This opening paragraph of the entry on tempo is a great example of what is, to me, some of the best writing on music there is.

Tempo usually means 'speed'. Upon the choice of the best speed the effect of music greatly depends. Every composition may be said to have its correct tempo, but this is not capable of being minutely fixed without scope or variation, as to some extent circumstantial factors enter, such as the character of the instrument used (e.g. organs may greatly differ in their effect), and the size and reverberation of the room (a very reverberant room requiring a slower tempo if the music is to 'tell'). Moreover, the general character of the interpretation decided upon may affect the tempo: one performer may consider that a particular piece will be most effective if every detail be made clear (calling for a slower tempo) and another that it will be most effective if treated in a 'broad' style calling for a quicker tempo; and both these interpretations may be good ones. Further, a highly rhythmic performance at a slower tempo may give the impression of being quicker than a really quicker one with less rhythmic life. In fact, what matters is not the tempo the performer actually adopts but the tempo that the listener is led to imagine he is hearing, for whilst in science things are what they are, in art things are what they seem.

Archeo-acoustics Round-up

This article in Discovery Magazine covers a lot of what archeologists have been discovering about the acoustical properties of ancient sites, and then talks about one I hadn't heard of before in central Peru.

The most detailed evidence of ancient acoustical design comes from the Stanford team studying Chavín de Huántar, which was constructed between 1300 and 500 B.C. Peruvian archaeologists first suspected the complex had an auditory function in the 1970s, when they found that water rushing through one of its canals mimicked the sound of roaring applause. Then, in 2001, Stanford anthropologist John Rick discovered conch-shell trumpets, called pututus, in one of the galleries. The team set out to determine what role the horns played in ancient rituals and how the temple may have heightened their effects. Archaeoacoustics researcher Miriam Kolar and her collaborators played computer-generated sounds to identify which frequencies the temple most readily transmits. Over years of experiments, they found that certain ducts enhanced the frequencies of the pututus while filtering out others, and that corridors amplified the trumpets’ sound. “It suggests the architectural forms had a special relationship to how sound is transmitted,” Kolar says. The researchers also had volunteers stand in one part of the temple while pututu recordings played in another. In some configurations, the sound seemed to come from all directions.

Performance Diary

Last Saturday the Kenwood Players had a little Dixieland performance on the downtown mall in Charlottesville, Va and this snapshot was taken right before we started, with the trombone player just out of the shot to the left. Our regular trombone players were both unable to join us, so Dick, the trumpeter in the white cap, asked a friend in a big band he plays in to fill in. 

This was all part of a big band festival put on by the Orange and Charlottesville bands, with a dozen community bands from around the state scheduled to play from 9:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. Unfortunately that weather system, el derecho, came through the night before and Virginia got whacked, some people still without power even today. One group's bus was damaged by a tree overnight and the army band was dispatched to clean-up duties.

We had a nice little crowd for the Dixieland, with nearly a dozen pre-school age children sitting on the bricks in front of us fascinated by it all. 

That was at 10:30 a.m. and it was only in the low 90's. When the Orange Community Band played at 5:30 in the pavilion at the end of the mall it was close to 100, so that audience was sparse. (Also, half the traffic lights weren't working and over half the city was without power.) We played well, but I kept noticing I'd never felt my horn so warm to the touch, and the heat and humidity did something to the sound - it seemed more tactile and vaguely felt and sounded like we were under water.

More Archaeo-Acoustics

Here's another story that's popped up on the sound properties of ancient monuments. The focus of the article is a 6,000 year old megalithic temple on Malta.

Low voices within its walls create eerie, reverberating echoes, and a sound made or words spoken in certain places can be clearly heard throughout all of its three levels. Now, scientists are suggesting that certain sound vibration frequencies created when sound is emitted within its walls are actually altering human brain functions of those within earshot.

"Regional brain activity in a number of healthy volunteers was monitored by EEG through exposure to different sound vibration frequencies," reports Malta temple expert Linda Eneix of the Old Temples Study Foundation, "The findings indicated that at 110 Hz the patterns of activity over the prefrontal cortex abruptly shifted, resulting in a relative deactivation of the language center and a temporary shifting from left to right-sided dominance related to emotional processing and creativity. This shifting did not occur at 90 Hz or 130 Hz......

In addition to stimulating their more creative sides, it appears that an atmosphere of resonant sound in the frequency of 110 or 111 Hz would have been “switching on” an area of the brain that bio-behavioral scientists believe relates to mood, empathy and social behavior. Deliberately or not, the people who spent time in such an environment under conditions that may have included a low male voice -- in ritual chanting or even simple communication -- were exposing themselves to vibrations that may have actually impacted their thinking." [1]

But the Hypogeum is not alone in its peculiar sound effects. A study conducted in 1994 by a consortium from Princeton University found that acoustic behavior in ancient chambers at megalithic sites such as Newgrange in Ireland and Wayland's Smithy in England was characterized by a strong sustained resonance, or "standing wave" in a frequency range between 90 Hz and 120 Hz. "When this happens," says Eneix, "what we hear becomes distorted, eerie.

As I said in a previous post, I'm always a bit suspicious when people try to say exactly what and why people were doing things 6,000 years ago, but the evidence does seem to indicate the ancients were not unaware of how sound can be an effective part of rituals.

Performance Diary

Thanksgiving is a great day to post on some recent performances by the Kenwood Players. We had four performances in eleven days, a frequency of public performance I'd never previously experienced. One performance was in yet another local country church with glorious acoustics, Waddell Presbyterian over in Rapidan (for those familiar with the area it's the wooden Gothic church right as you go down to the river from the Orange side). Here's a snapshot of the interior:

During the service we did "Sweet Hour of Prayer", "The Old Rugged Cross", and "In the Garden" as instrumentals three times through, me on guitar, Judy on drum, Steve beginning each on trombone and Dick taking the third time through on trumpet, with Bill B and Crawford switching out on the second iteration on sax or Eb tuba. Each and every solo was terrific. Crawford, a retired preacher who'll be 80 next Aprils Fool's Day did a tuba solo on "In the Garden", that to me at least, spoke of a well and fully lived spiritual life. 

We got a lot of very nice compliments, but my favorite was from the organist who said afterwards in an almost dazed way, "You all are really good!" It's not unusual for us to get nice comments from other musicians, but the music therapist in me who's never done a lot of straight up performing is always delighted to hear them.

We also did three performances with basically the same set list, for an open house at an assisted living facility, for a fund raising gala for the local art center, and for the entertainment following a harvest dinner at the Presbyterian church in town. Maggie and I did less than ten minutes of flute clarinet, then Dick and Steve did trombone trumpet duets, then Crawford and Bill C on tuba and me on horn joined them for some brass, then I switched to banjo and we did some good time Americana, and then some straight up Dixieland.

I am obviously biased, but my sense is that the good feelings we create as a group making music together are getting transmitted to the audience. People are enjoying the music, but they're also enjoying and sharing our having a good time making the music. 

Here's how I put it in a thank you note to the Players: Thanks to each and every one of you for these recent performances and all the past work that laid the groundwork. Both how we make music as a group and how the group makes music in the community is something I've never experienced so fully before. I saw a quote here lately that for a true musician the love of self doesn't get in the way of the love of the music, which is a great way to describe the cooperative spirit needed for our getting the feeling we're expressing in the music.

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.

Horn Diary

Last Sunday I played horn in a performance of Fauré's Requiem and it went well. While a couple of attacks weren't as clean as they might have been, some notes weren't held as long as they should have been, and some slurs had a bit more color than the score asked for - there were no wrong notes. There's not really that much horn music in the piece, so I'd memorized all the bits and pieces and was able to blend with and help shape the sound of the chorus. 

The only other instruments were strings, including harp and piano. I ended up standing behind the chorus with all the other instruments down front. The bell of my horn was pointing right at a corner of the sanctuary, the walls of which are brick and only a couple of feet from the horn. That had the effect of broadcasting the sound throughout the space in a wonderful way. Sort of let the welkin ring.

The other thing about standing behind the chorus was that I felt much freer putting some body english on some of those lovely sighing pianissimos. From years of playing guitar and singing in front of groups, I tend to dance and move with the rhythms, which just looks wrong with something like the Fauré. Being hidden from the audience let me not worry about that.

After the performance I got a number of enthusiastic comments on my playing from some of the best musicians present. I feel I can now lay claim to being an adequate small town amateur horn player.

Part of the reason things went so well was due to my emotional involvement with the piece. Over the past year a number of us have been all up close and personal with death and dying. In particular, the chorus director lost his wife, who was also the best choral accompanist I've ever heard, and though unspoken, this requiem was for her. I was basically in an altered state for the whole performance and for hours afterwards. There was all the busy technical stuff flying though my head, but there were also deep feelings coming up from my heart and finding expression in the sound of the horn. I've never before participated in such high level music with that sort of deep emotional expression. And the thing about the horn is, no other instrument, including my voice, allows me to tap so deeply into that well of what being human is all about.

Flute Diary

This past Sunday I played flute in three pieces at the Presbyterian Church in Orange. Two were at the beginning of the service with the ensemble and one was an obbligato part with the choir and organ (the music of which I got just two weeks previously).

I did fairly well, and got some nice compliments from some musical folks. About half the time I played as well as I can right now (with a tone quality I'm very excited about), and the rest of the time the slight cracks and the unintended vibrato here and there didn't seem to be disruptive enough to break the spell. 

For the piece with the choir I was up in the gallery with them, and the acoustics of the church are even more reverberant up there. It almost feels like playing a duet with another flute due to the sound reinforcement. The downside, which I discovered going up there and practicing by myself once, is that if you don't end a phrase beautifully and cleanly, that wounded sound will hang out there on its own for a while.

In practicing for this performance I again came up against something I've mentioned before. Having spent my childhood and adolescence plugging away at the piano, my brain is wired to think moving just one finger is all that's needed to move a step up or down. Notes like A flats and F sharps on the flute really hang me up if they're part of a run of sixteenth notes. Trying to concentrate enough to get them (because they're nowhere near automatic for me) can make me tense up, and that makes them even harder, whereas keeping my shoulders relaxed and letting that relaxed alertness spread all the way down to the fingertips makes everything easier.

It all reminds me of that Marvin Minsky(?) book Society of Mind and of the idea gaining currency with the neuroscientists that our brain works as a distributed network. One part of my mind knows I should keep the shoulders relaxed, but something I'm doing elsewhere in the network is having the side effect of making me tense them up if my attention to that issue lapses in the least.

Another factor in all this was my playing the horn off and on for three hours the previous day at a rehearsal for a cantata there at the same church for next Sunday. It may be that if I can build up my flute embouchure enough I can play it concurrently with the horn. Right now, though, playing the horn 24 to 48 hours before a flute performance leaves me feeling I have less motor control over the fine adjustments of the aperture needed to get good tone on each of the pitches played.

Where to Practice

This NYT story looks at what research is saying about study habits in general, not music specifically.

. . . For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. . . 

 . . .The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding. . . .

This tallies well with my experience. I think with music it's especially important because the acoustics of the various places will be different, and besides that helping you encode the info, it will make it easier to adapt your sound to a particular performance space when the need arises.

I also think everyone (except maybe piano players) should play outside from time to time. It's just different from playing indoors, as good tone is an absolute requirement for good sound without that reverb effect any room will have. Plus, playing in a natural surrounding can be great fun. Some years back my yearly routine involved two short stays in the Ozarks and I loved taking my cello out into the woods and sawing away, mostly simple improvs responding to nature.

Music does get a mention in the story here:

 . . .Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.

This story also has some of the contemporary push back against the notions Martin Gardner put forth years ago in his Frames of Mind, which I find very helpful. I think the pendulum will find its way to somewhere in the middle once all the data comes in and we've made some sense of it.