Performance & Composer's Diary

On 9/16/17 we had an afternoon of music I've composed and arranged. Jeff Poole of the Orange County Review, and a great photographer, was there in a private capacity and took these pics so unobtrusively I never noticed he was taking them. (Thanks, Jeff!)

Here's the music room with the 1923 Steinway where it all happened.

While people were gathering and getting their drinks, I played some of the piano pieces I wrote back in the late 80's and early 90's

Here's Karla, our hostess with the mostess, welcoming her guests.

The first number was Mosaic, dating from around '93 or '94, with Dr. Andy playing the lead on cello.

Then with Heather joining us on clarinet we did "Encumbrances of Angels", a poem by Dr. Andy's wife Janet I set to music sometime in the late 90's.

Here's Janet reading "My Tale", a poem of hers I set to music last year.

This pic shows Karla singing "My Tale" with Benjamin joining us on violin. 

I doubled Karla's vocal an octave down in the alto flute.

Lama Tashi was here from Arunachal Pradesh and we did the Mandala Offering and the Om Mani Peme Hung chant from Mantra Mountain, with Stephen joining us on cello.

From this pic it looks like I neglected to give Benjamin the music and he's having to look over on to Dr. Andy's music

Here's one section of the audience with top row from left to right my sister-in-law Carolyn, cousin John, his wife Kate, cousin Ada and cousin Wallace.

In this pic Heather, Andy and I are playing "explorations", a trio I wrote three or four years ago.

Here are Sage, Patrick and Benjamin playing Karlalied, which was written two years ago.

These three are all students at James Madison University and really fine players and here you can see them playing with a wonderful ensemble feel . . . 

. . .  and with marvelous expression

That feeling when you hear your music being played by others and you can just sit back and listen and hear them take it places you hadn't realized it could go.

Taking a well deserved bow

The last piece on the program was Mosaic again, but this time with Heather playing the lead and Dr. Andy playing an accompanying line I added just a few months ago

Eckhart Ensemble 2015

The Eckhart Ensemble returned to Orange this year and gave a wonderful performance, as they did last year. Many thanks to the Orange Music Society for making this gift to the community. Here is the capsule review I put on their Facebook page the morning after:

The concert in Orange tonight was splendid - there were all the technical things you could hope for - intonation, phrasing, dynamics, ensemble unity - but it's the enthusiasm and love of music making coming through at every moment that make this group really special. And the Italian Renaissance music bowled over both experienced listeners and people previously unfamiliar with it. Bravo!

Nicolas Duchamp on flute, the guest soloist, was terrific. In particular, I've never heard such strength of tone in the low and mid register. Everyone else was excellent as well, but I want to mention Fred Dole on bass. He was also a standout last year. His sound fills the room and gives a solid foundation to the music I can feel as well as hear.

Someone else to mention, who wasn't with them last year, is Giustino Riccio the percussionist for the Renaissance tunes. Besides wearing a feathered cap straight from a Renaissance painting, his percussion on various instruments was superb. I've never seen one performer watch other performers with such intensity so as to better support them with his playing.

With all the hubbub about the death of classical music and what can be done to get audiences more interested, these people have some answers:

1) Except for the cellos and harpsichordist - they all stood while playing and moved with their music making. As regular readers of the blog know, I think l lot of the power of music is that it is, in part, physical gesture made audible. Seeing players moving their entire body while making music emphasizes that aspect - and I think it helps communicate more of the music to the audience than sitting and moving as little as possible, giving the impression of robots.

2) They dressed individually and comfortably, which besides letting them look like people instead of penguins, gave a hint of the personalities behind the instruments, giving more context to the music making.

3) They were obviously having fun! As I've said about my group, when you're having fun making music, that transmits to the audience as well as the music. There's something contagious about people having fun that adds a whole dimension to music making.

3) They're mostly (from my perspective, anyway) young people and have the enthusiasm of the young and that also comes through in the music.

4) The programming of the Renaissance tunes was a master stroke. The immediacy of the music spoke both to experienced and novice listeners of classical music. One of the most experienced listeners was visibly swept away by "Belicha". And a family member I'd encouraged to go, who is not a regular listener to classical music, was one of the initiators of the standing ovation.

5) One minor point that may be more important than it seems at first - lots of alto range instruments in the Renaissance music - English horns (including a trio of them at one point!), violas and alto flute. I have a number of friends, all women as it happens, that simply do not like high treble sounds. My guess is that these same tunes played up a fifth or an octave would not have been as appealing to a number of folks.

To close, a phrase from perhaps the most experienced listener of classical music at the concert:

They played with heart from the heart.


ADDED LATER: After writing this post have thought of at least a dozen things I didn't mention. I could have gone around the entire group of players and talked about instances of their great individual and ensemble music making - every single one of them. 

And to amend my comment on some people not liking high treble sounds. During one of the Renaissance dances there was a piccolo duet. I've never heard one piccolo played so well in tune, much less two together. It was an astonishing moment. If all treble sounds were played that well, I don't think they'd be so associated with shrillness. Anecdotal proof of that being one of the people I know to dislike high treble sounds later commented on how amazing that duet was.

Performance Diary

This past Saturday saw the "soft launch" of two groups I'm hoping to establish. The occasion  was a walking tour of Gordonsville put on by the Dolley Madison Garden Club.

From 11:00 a.m. until noon the "Kenwood Players Brass Choir" played with Tom May on the pipe organ in Christ Episcopal Church. We had a trumpet, a flugelhorn, a French horn, a euphonium and two E flat tubas. We did a number of hymns, usually with the trumpet on soprano, flugelhorn on alto, horn and euphonium on tenor and tubas on the bass the first time through. Then second time through the trumpet went up to a descant, the flugelhorn went to soprano and the horn to alto. Third time through was organ only, then fourth time was brass and organ together again. On tunes without a descant, the second time the flugelhorn and the tubas together played the melody with the organ as accompaniment. 

The one long piece we did was the R. V. Williams setting of "Old One Hundreth" he did for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth back in the fifties. There are brass flourishes at the beginning, then a number of variations on the tune, a trumpet descant, then ending with more brass flourishes.

We'd been expecting people to come and go throughout the performance, but in the event a number of people came early for good seats and stayed the entire time, with a few people coming and going in the back of the church. We were very well received, with strong applause after each tune - and Ben Armistead, the choir director, who announced each tune, led the singing if people wanted to join in, and many did.

I find the sound of brass and pipe organ to be viscerally moving, and a lot of the audience seemed have that experience. A number of people in the front pews had expressions of reverie on their faces the entire time. I think part of that comes from the fact that hearing a live brass ensemble is a fairly rare event, especially out here in this rural area. 

My favorite comment came from a lady that came up afterwards with an expression of fatigued wonderment, who said she'd been ill with bad allergies all week and unable to even speak, but that she was able to sing with the brass and organ. Another comment that gets across the feeling was the trumpet player saying that with all that sound and support he felt his range and endurance was expanded for the duration of the performance.

I've put together brass groups before, but this instrumentation gave by far the best results and I hope to keep the group going, with secular as well as church performances. 

Then from 2:00 until 4:00 what I'm calling the "Kenwood Players Chamber Group" played on Main Street, which had been closed to traffic. For the Handel Water Music/Music for the Royal Fireworks we were recorder (soprano/sopranino), flute, alto flute, clarinet, cello, and percussion. For the pop and movie tunes from the 60's I switched from alto flute to guitar or banjo.

This group also went over very well. What most pleased me was seeing people being drawn in to the Handel. I'm convinced that music is very infectious and appealing - but that most people aren't at all familiar with it, or live chamber music of any sort. With the banjo/guitar music we had people dancing. 

I'm hoping to keep this group going as well, and maybe add a second clarinet. The limiting factor is that our cello is Dr. Andy, who has to come down from Harpers Ferry to play with us, which pretty much means weekends only.

I have the hope that when people are exposed to live music like this, that's not normally heard around here, they'll like it and want more of it. Maybe the novelty of loud DJ music will wane and people will enjoy returning to live music in more of the classical/acoustic tradition.

UPDATE - for photos and a little more info, go here.

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.

Horn Diary

I've been playing the horn for coming on to seven years now and it still pulls me in like no other instrument I've ever played. There are things I can do on other instruments (piano, guitar, banjo, alto flute/flute, and cello) that I can't do on the horn, but none of them as consistently have me exploring how to make music.

Part of it is probably the fact that when I started the horn in my mid 50's, I already knew a lot about the generality of music making, which allows me to bring all that to bear in learning the horn.

Increasingly, though, I think it's the very tactile nature of playing the horn that has taken me so much deeper into the experience of music making. My hands, arms, and torso all vibrate in resonance with the tones I primarily feel in my embouchure. I love the feel of the resonance of the guitar/banjo, cello and flutes, but with the horn there's just more of it.

There's also more of a one to one relationship between breathing and phrasing than on the flute that I think has to do with all of the air going into the horn as opposed to being split by the embouchure plate and only some going into the flute. 

For me the tone of the horn is simply larger and more malleable than that of other instruments, and somehow I feel more inside the tone experiencing it than being outside the tone and manipulating it.

Flute Diary

Did pretty well with the Presbyterian Ensemble yesterday. Somewhere between "a gentleman's C" and a B+. Got lots of phrases just right with full tone. Got the high F's and Eb's. Garbled enough notes here and there to keep things out of the "A" range, though.

Came to realize the fingering insecurity stemmed from the fact that on the alto flute, which I played a lot in the 90's between our Vermont readership on regular flute and Dr. Andy on cello, the mid-range Eb has better tone and intonation with the left index finger down, rather than up as on the soprano flute. Once I realized that bit of brain wiring was what was setting off cascades of fingering errors and bad intonation and poor tone, drilling all the little sections where that cropped up really helped.

The other thing was realizing I needed to stop playing horn for a couple of days to let my lips have the ability to finesse the aperture to fine tune the tone and intonation. 

One of the great things about the flute is that you can play as long as you want, as opposed to the horn where your practice time is limited by how long you can buzz your lips well enough for good tone. With the flute, the more you play the more flexible and enabling your embouchure becomes.

This was the most intense wood shedding I've done in a while, and it was very helpful drilling down into technique issues and figuring them out. One thing that revealed problems was to use the metronome on a variety of speeds right around the one indicated. Slightly expanding or contracting the length of the beat helped me learn the essential rhythms of the phrases. I may well have it wrong mathematically, but adjusting the rhythms to slightly varied beat lengths felt more logarithmical than arithmetic. Once I got the feel for the flow and patterns of the rhythm, could pull off the phrases at the various tempi.

One thing that really helped was that the Presbyterian Church is a wonderfully large open space with mostly exposed brick walls. Playing the flute into that space is a joy because the sound comes back at you so easily and clearly, it's almost like having another flute doubling the part. In a great acoustical space like that it's easier to refine your tone, because better tone gets a better acoustic response.

photo - early spring crocus