Definitely Not the Blogging High Season

Many of you will have noticed by now that after a late-January and early February blogging spurt, things have slowed down somewhat around here.

To put it bluntly, this is the busiest time of the year. And I'm loving it. Last week I played in the orchestra for Fern Hill School's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with an awesome and talented group of kids and professional musicians. Tomorrow I'm back with Tapestry New Opera for their workshop production of The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G, an opera in Ukranian, Russian, and English about human trafficking in Europe.

At the same time, Wendy has just finished a double run of Nixon in China and Magic Flute with the Canadian Opera Company (I had a great time playing for a few of the Nixon rehearsals), and now is on her way to New York City for the COC's remount of the Robert LePage's The Nightingale and Other Short Fables at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. After that, she travels to Ottawa for Opera Lyra's production of Lucia di Lammermoor (Alisa) and then on to Hamilton for Opera Hamilton's Cav/Pal (Mamma Lucia).

Somewhere in the next few weeks I intend to do some blogging, and keep on the lookout for a special guest post in the coming days...

Dudley Moore and Peter Cook's Music Lesson Skit

Beware the Urtext police...



(Via @anneldot)

See What I'm Up To On Twitter

For those of you who are slightly interested in Twitter but don't want to throw yourself into the river of instant status updates just yet, here's a daily newspaper-like digest of Twitter links from both me and my network via Paper.li:

If you're already on Twitter, you can check out my updates here.

Memorization as an Emotional Place

Image by faith goble

Joshua Foer's Secrets of a Mind-Gamer in the February 15th New York Times looks at the secrets of memory champions and how someone with an only average memory is able to achieve transhuman mnemonic feats at the World Memory Championships. Foer's secret lay in the memory palace technique:

The answer lies in a discovery supposedly made by the poet Simonides of Ceos in the fifth century B.C. After a tragic banquet-hall collapse, of which he was the sole survivor, Simonides was asked to give an account of who was buried in the debris. When the poet closed his eyes and reconstructed the crumbled building in his imagination, he had an extraordinary realization: he remembered where each of the guests at the ill-fated dinner had been sitting. Even though he made no conscious effort to memorize the layout of the room, it nonetheless left a durable impression. From that simple observation, Simonides reportedly invented a technique that would form the basis of what came to be known as the art of memory. He realized that if there hadn’t been guests sitting at a banquet table but, say, every great Greek dramatist seated in order of birth — or each of the words of one of his poems or every item he needed to accomplish that day — he would have remembered that instead. He reasoned that just about anything could be imprinted upon our memories, and kept in good order, simply by constructing a building in the imagination and filling it with imagery of what needed to be recalled. This imagined edifice could then be walked through at any time in the future. Such a building would later come to be called a memory palace.

Since reading the article, I've been fascinated by how this type of memory process might be applied to music. Much of the pedagogical thinking on musical memory these days relies on an individual confluence of different sense modalities, ie. visual, aural, tactile/kinesthetic, and intellectual. I once heard one teacher explain the method of finding one's correct pathway to musical memorization by comparing it to setting your PIN at the bank - find your own individual combination of these four modalities that you need to be able to retrieve at will. I agree with this metaphor and use it in my own teaching.

Yet the way mnemonic athletes like Joshua Foer are able to remember massive amounts of information in a short period of time relies on more of a three-dimensional model of memory than a linear one. The experience of walking through an imaginary edifice with encoded images is what triggers the memories. Can this be applied to musical memorization? Should we think of a musical work as a building?

Maybe.

What I find missing in the traditional modality method of musical memory is any sort of emotional component. Perhaps thinking through more actor-related concepts of memory can help us construct a more emotionally engaged pathway through a work:

• Where does the work start emotionally?
• Does it have a physical place?
• Is there a protagonist?
• What do they do through the work?
• How do they change through the work?
• What is the work's emotional journey?
• Where does it end?
• What are your favorite parts?
• What is the emotional high point of the work?

These questions might be familiar to those who have taken acting courses or have worked with a theater director (take a look at Rena Sharon's basic song-interpretation questions featured in Some Ideas on How to Learn a Song or Aria - many singers and pianists use lists such as these when learning vocal music). If we have an emotional pathway through a work of music, this route can be one of the modalities that we memorize. Emotions, be they pleasant or painful, tend to reside in the body. If these emotions are mapped out through the learning process, they can be recalled just like any other sense-related modality, much like retracing steps through a familiar building. Furthermore, this type of memorization can be valid for any instrument and at any level

Are there any particular techniques you use when memorizing music? How do you teach memorization in your studio?

Yet Another Piano Lesson Scam Email

Earlier today, a teacher from British Columbia forwarded me the latest version of the classic piano lesson scam email they had recently received:

Hello Teacher,
I am Paul Wayne, I am 59 years of age , I will like you to know that i got your e-mail as a private teacher and i will like to know if my daughter can join your private class. My daughter name is Lucia, she is coming over to your country for long vacation starting from 7th of March, 2011 and at the same time i like her to get lesson in with you, she is 16 years old, she is a beginner, first language (English), best hobby(reading). I hope you will accept her as your student?. So I'll really appreciate it if you could be a part time teacher for her during her stay...You will be teaching her for 45 minute lesson a day for 2 days in a week which will be for just 8 weeks. So, kindly let me know your charges cost per week in order for me to arrange for the payment before she travels down to the States. I would also like to know if there is any Text Book you will recommend for her as a beginner so that she will be reading privately at home after the lesson during her stay.
Please Advise back on;
(1) Your charges per 45 minute lesson a day, twice a week for 4 weeks?
(2) The Day and time you will be available to teach her During the week?
(3) Tuition address?
I will be looking forward to read from you soonest.
Best Regards

If you get an email such as this, do not respond to it. You will get a cheque in the mail for a large sum, followed by a series of aggressive calls and emails asking for the difference between what they sent and what your rate would be. If you send the perpetrator a cheque for the difference, the original cheque will bounce.

Fortunately, the teacher who forwarded this letter wisely did not respond. However, I have heard that music teachers do sometimes respond to these emails, and I know of at least one person who has lost a sizable amount of money from an email such as this.

To get an idea of the stakes, lets's assume that one does respond, and offers a quote for 8 lessons at $45 per lesson plus $50 for sheet music, which would add up to $410. When they receive a check in the mail for $5000 and the perpetrator apologizes for the mixup and kindly, then aggressively asks for the difference, one would wire them $4590, then get an unfortunate call from the bank a few days later, informing them that the $5000 check previously deposited has bounced. By then, the perpetrator will have received the amount and disappeared.

Music teachers who are members of registered music teachers' associations and directories are particularly at risk for receiving these pesky emails. Don't respond to them.

Are Your Child's Music Lessons Eligible for the Ontario Children's Activity Tax Credit?

Image by Angela Anderson-Cobb

Ontario residents will be glad to know that for the 2010 tax year, music lessons are now one of the eligible activities that can be covered by the Ontario Children's Activity Tax Credit. This Ontario-only tax credit is similar to the Line 365 Children's Fitness Amount, a federal tax credit for sports activities, but has recently been opened up to a plethora of after-school activities for those paying tax in Ontario.

Here's how it works: you can deduct up to $500 worth of receipts per child for eligible activities. The amount of the tax credit will be 10% of the deducted amount. Thus, if you deduct $400 in piano lessons, you get a $40 tax credit and $500 spent on lessons will get you a $50 credit. The tax credit goes up to a maximum of $100 if a child is disabled.

It's not a lot, but a $50 tax credit per child for parents who have spent $500 and over for music lessons is nothing to scoff at.

You can go through the steps to see if your child's sports or after-school activities are eligible, and how much your deduction will net you in tax savings on the Ontario Ministry of Finance Children's Activity Tax Credit page. Remember to keep all your receipts if you claim this amount.

(Thanks, Melodie!)

John Miller on Freelancing

Although John Miller's round-table discussion was meant for bass players, what he says is relevant for any instrument, and the stakes involved in collaborative piano freelancing situations are remarkably similar to what he describes for the NYC musical theater bass scene. I watched every single video in the series and recommend it to anyone who either plays in a freelance scene or is interested in playing in one.

John Miller at the Bass Player Live Symposium, NYC, October 2004

(Via Tales from the Pit)

No More Dance Accompanists at Cornell

Some sad news out of Cornell University: the Dance faculty at the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance will be reduced to three and all staff accompanists will be let go at the end of the semester, coming on the heels of a recent budget reduction of $1 million in the department. Max Buckholtz writes in the Cornell Sun of the loss that will be felt primarily by the students:

The dance accompanists are the software for the courses. They are flexible to change and respond instantly to whatever will provide the best supportive material and tempo for the dancers. They can also adapt to change if something is not working. We save the instructor time and attention from fooling around with an iPod, instead allowing them to continue to focus on the students.

When playing with other musicians at the yearly American College Dance Festival Association (ACDFA) conferences, I realized that Allen Fogelsanger is clearly the best accompanist I have ever played with. Cornell is losing a good man, both in skill, professionalism and heart. He was the face of the department and also served as the Director of Undergraduate Dance Studies. I will always remember him showing prospective new students and their families around the facilities, with a gleaming smile on his face and a strong sense of sincerity. We will all surely miss Allen’s compositions, electro-acoustical innovations and tireless work given for the yearly March Dance Concerts, as well as his contributions as a lecturer.

One supposes that the basic content of a dance class can still be taught without an accompanist in the room. However, the classes might run slower than usual (since the instructor is also the DJ) and the dancers' experience of rhythm will be a bit more canned, less collaborative. Dance pianists: is this assessment of a musician-less dance class correct? What is the impact of having no live musicians in the Cornell dance curriculum?

Call for Papers: Weekend Symposium for Collaborative Partnership Studies at the Vancouver International Song Institute from June 10-12

This June, the Vancouver International Song Institute at the University of British Columbia School of Music will once again be hosting numerous programs for collaborative pianists, singers, musicologists, and creative artists of all levels, including the SONGFIRE Theatre Apprenticeship Program, Interdisciplinary Song Scholarship and Performance, French Mélodie Immersion, and the Arts of Conscience contemplative retreat.

Professionals and graduate students in the field of collaborative piano field should definitely consider attending the Weekend Symposium for Collaborative Partnership Studies to be held from June 10-12.  I'll be one of the artists giving a workshop, which will be a follow-up to my 2009 presentation looking at the Collaborative Piano Blog and its effort to bring more awareness of the collaborative arts. For those who weren't able to make it out to previous VISI symposium weekends, these are extremely intensive days of looking at the horizons of the collaborative piano world, its practitioners, its promises, what's at stake, and the incredible amount of work that still needs to be done. This is a weekend where you will get to discuss important issues with many of the top professionals in the field with a candor rarely found elsewhere.

VISI is also looking for papers to be presented at the symposium. From the VISI website:

From Friday through Sunday afternoon, join the VISI community in discussion of the dynamics of creative collaboration - the interaction of scholars with performers, teachers with students, composers and poets with performers, and above all, the magic realm of singer and pianist duos. Following our pilot symposium in 2009 for Collaborative Pianists, a strong lobby from the VISI voice participants has led to this expanded gathering, of interest to all contributors in the Art Song realm. Creative collaboration requires exquisitely balanced skills upon which great performances reply. Hear anecdotes and ideas from experts in diverse fields, share your own experiences, concerns, and insights, and enjoy the surprising directions of a great weekend of conversation and music. Presenters will include Margo Garrett, Christopher Foley (creator of the Collaborative Piano Blog), and many others. Doctoral candidates and Professors are invited to submit proposal abstracts for consideration on the VISI infosite at info@songinstitute.ca. Papers may occupy a wide range of topics but should have relevance to the central questions of interactive dynamics and protocols, interpretation of Schubert Lieder, current and historical performance practice, business protocols. Presentations should be accessible to professional, students, and the general VISI public and should be no more than 20 minutes in duration. A maximum of 18 papers will be selected for inclusion due to the time constraints of the schedule.

Whether you're a known leader in the field or a relative newcomer, this is a prime platform to share your research, knowledge, and expertise. I'm not sure what the deadline is on the call for applications, so I'll update once I get further information. I had a great time at VISI two years ago, and I look forward to seeing so many of you again this June.

Update: Rena Sharon informs me that the application deadline will be Sunday, March 20, with notifications being sent out by April 10.

Life Through Piano Lessons

Many of you might already know the blog of Australian pianist, composer, and writer Elissa Milne, who writes about some very worthwhile and penetrating articles on the experience of music education and culture. Elissa's Piano Lessons for Life is one of her most insightful articles yet, and looks at the richness of life experience that can be taught through music. I love this quote:

Much of the time a lesson might be concerned with minutiae of piano performance, finding a way to tuck a thumb comfortably beneath the hand, exploring how finger shape alters tone, mastering a chord progression or understanding a new notation. But each and every piano lesson was also about life. Voicing is not just about creating a beautiful sound, it’s about appreciating how conversations work by paying attention to one voice at a time; form is not just about how a composer has structured the work, it’s about how we can make sense of our experiences; scales are not just tedious exercises to be prepared for examinations, they are palettes of possibility, demonstrating the power that limitations can unleash as well as the tedium that repression can enforce.

On Omitted Pianists (Cont'd)

This morning I received the following anonymous comment on yesterday's omitted pianists posting:

I started accompanying choirs when I was a high school student. I was always acknowledged in the middle school concert program and the director even paid me a small amount. My own high school choral director rarely included me in the program and as I was a student at the school, there was certainly no payment. I sang in a church choir around the same time and was often called upon to help plat parts- for free- while they searched for someone they could pay $100/week to accompany the choir. I felt used.

On the other hand, the youth choir I've been accompanying off and on for over 10 years has always included my name, and I am usually recognized before the audience when we perform outside of church services. Then again, I recently played for a school district choir festival in which my own [choral] students were involved. In the program, my name was misspelled and I received no compensation for HOURS of my time spent on hosting the event and accompanying one of the two choirs, even though I had been paid the year before. (Note: I will not be volunteering to play or host again next time unless I have a written contract outlining my payment- especially since I lost time/pay from my regular gig in order to play for my school district!)

I can't emphasize this enough: we're not volunteers (except if you're a student and you take on something with the understanding that it is for experience). Make sure that the terms of compensation are properly outlined. If you're a professional and someone doesn't pay you or properly value the work you do, move on. If you're spending an inordinate amount of time working with a choir for no compensation or acknowledgement, you're being used. Take on more students, start your own series. We're under no obligation to keep on doing work that doesn't give back to us what it gives to others.

And who knows: maybe when you tell the organization that the reason for your leaving is because you're not getting enough out of the working relationship and don't feel valued, they just might get it the next time around.

The Ritz Chamber Players Perform the Brahms G minor Quartet, 3rd Movement

Some first-rate playing from a Ritz Chamber Players recital in 2010 - here are pianist Terrence Wilson, violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violist Amadi Azikiwe, and cellist Kenneth Law playing the Andante con moto from the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet Op. 25. The Ritz Chamber Players focus on bringing both African American performers and composers to the concert stage with a mandate that consists of equal parts performance and outreach. I hope they introduce a lot of people to the joys of classical music with performances like this.



The next Ritz Chamber Players recital will be at 4pm on February 20 at the Friday Musicale in Jacksonville, Florida, featuring violist Amadi Azikiwe with Mary Prescott on piano (more info at AfriClassical).

On Omitted Pianists

Following the Unsung Heroes? posting, Gretchen Saathoff wrote the following comment:

There is a printed program exhibited in a display case at Westminster Choir College. The soloist is Jascha Heifetz, the location Princeton University. Although the rep is clearly written for violin/piano, there is no pianist listed.

Just a little while ago, a famous singer did a recital at Carnegie Hall. Also a program with piano. She was VERY famous, and performed VERY well. But no pianist was listed. I wrote to the reviewer in protest.

In January, I was hired to play for a choral festival. Every high school music teacher in the area was included in the program, but I was not. The reason? They called me at the last minute, and the program was already at the printers.

The old prevailing attitude toward collaborative pianists may be less prevalent than it was years ago, but I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon.

I can't count the number of times that my name has been omitted from a program over the years. I generally show slightly less patience each time that it happens, which thankfully is happening less and less these days. Maybe one of these days I should start omitting the names of singers and instrumentalists who play on the many videos posted here. For budgetary reasons, in these challenging economic times.

Pianists: have you ever had your name omitted from a program? Tell us about it in the comments.

The Top 20 Classical Music Blogs for February 2011

Image by pebbles and stones

Here are the top 20 classical music blogs for February 2011 as rated by blog-ranking service Wikio. This time around I've included each blog's byline, to give you a better idea of the flavor and niche of each one.

1. Clef Notes Classical music and theater in Baltimore
2. Nico Muhly The official website of the New York-based composer Nico Muhly
3. Intermezzo Opera and concerts in London and beyond
4. Sequenza21/ The Contemporary Classical Music Community
5. Opera Chic I'm a young American woman in Milan...and you're not. I go to La Scala a lot...and you don't.
6. The Opera Tattler Reviews of Performances and their Audiences.
7. Adaptistration Drew McManus on the orchestra business
8. Sandow Greg Sandow on the future of classical music
9. PostClassic Kyle Gann on Music After the Fact...
10. The Collaborative Piano Blog The piano in ensemble. The piano in real life.
11. ionarts Something other than politics in Washington, D.C.
12. oboeinsight reed on!
13. Opera Today
14. Michael Huebner's Blog & Column
15. Andrew Patner: The View from Here Reflections, reviews, and reports from the Chicago-based author, broadcaster, journalist, and arts critic
16. Musical Assumptions Music is a mystery for people who play it, write it, listen to it, and write about it. The only thing I can really do when I try to say something about music is assume.
17. Proper Discord Trouble With Classical Music
18. Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog Double bass news, stories, downloads, podcasts, and more!
19. The Stark Raving Cello Blog The mostly cello, sometimes raving blog of Emily Wright
20. A Beast in a Jungle Greetings from the Barbary Coast!

Mathieu Dufour and Eric Le Sage Play the Poulenc Flute and Piano Sonata

Here's some fine playing from Tokyo's Hamarikyu Asahi Hall in 2006: flutist Mathieu Dufour and pianist Eric Le Sage performing the Poulenc Flute and Piano Sonata. I just love the energy and colors they create in the final movement. But how on earth does Dufour manage to play the final high F of the second movement so quietly and effortlessly?

Trio sTREga Plays the Khachaturian Trio

More classical musicians should be promoting themselves via YouTube in this simple and cost-effective way: overlay your ensemble's audio recording with a photo montage and presto, you have a viable YouTube video that is available to anyone.

Here is Toronto-based Trio sTREga (Katarzyna Marczak, clarinet, Erika Crino, piano, and Ewa Sas, violin) playing the Khachaturian Trio, featuring photos from Tanya Workman. 

You can find more Trio sTREga audio and video here.

Unsung Heroes?

Numerous are the concerts I've played when an audience member would come up to me after the concert and say something like "Oh yes, you played well too" or "You know, not every pianist has what it takes to be a good accompanist". Following these inevitable drab comments* I'm always left thinking...is this it? Is this what we spend all these hours for? Fortunately, the experience of many of us has shown that the field of collaborative piano is a rapidly branching profession, with activities now encompassing curriculum creation (Jean Barr, Jennifer Snow), artistic direction (John Hess, Kim Pensinger Witman), and textbook writing (Martin Katz, Robert Spillman) to name only a few.

Therefore, it was not without some reservations that I read Jing Li's Unsung Heroes in the WQXR blog. Have major collaborative piano programs been around only since the 1980's? I think not - the world's first accompanying program was started by Gwendolyn Koldofsky at the University of Southern California in 1949, with many others following suit in the ensuing decades (ASU, Cincinnati, and Illinois come to mind). Are there only a handful in the United States? Hardly. My own research into the field yielded well over 80 schools granting collaborative piano degrees and diplomas available in the United States alone.

What I also disagree with in Li's article was the assertion that "behind every brilliant soloist there is his or her accompanist". There are very, very few of us these days who are able (or willing) to work with only one soloist. For the most part, collaborative pianists are doing a lot of different activities, and the sheer diversity of all that they do is one of the main drawing points of the profession.

Which brings me back to one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place: I feel that there is a media bias against people in the collaborative piano profession, and that they are often portrayed as obedient flunkies. I've spent over 5 years on this blog proving that bias wrong, and it is often disheartening to see that our field is still perceived as only having "sprung up" in the last few decades.

So while I applaude Ms. Li for writing an article about the valuable work done by those in the profession formerly known as piano accompanying, I nevertheless urge her to look a bit deeper at the incredible depth of what this field now entails, and of the imagination, perseverance and ingenuity of those who work in it.

*Or worse! My two favorites are "Do you intend to continue with your music?" and "You Canadians always were very musical."

Cat vs. Metronome

ME WANTS 2 STOP TEH TICKY TICKY

Maria Bellanca Sings Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915

I discovered this gem while looking around on YouTube earlier this evening - Maria Bellanca performing Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for her 2009 senior recital in the Eastman School of Music's Kilbourn Hall Hochstein Performance Hall, with a chamber orchestra conducted by Malcolm Merriweather.

Pianists who coach a lot of sopranos often end up playing the reduction of this work quite frequently over the years, so it's worth spending the time learning it well. Knowing the sound of the orchestra is critical when learning the reduction, as it gives you an idea not only of the instrumentation but the entire emotional scope of the work. Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a work that can move an audience to tears when performed with honesty and simplicity.

Now I know the camera is a bit shaky and out of focus, the orchestra is perhaps a bit under-rehearsed, and the microphone is too far away to give complete clarity of audio, but I don't think you're going to find many performances of this work as committed and moving as this one. The text of this work is quite complex, so you might want to follow along with the text in order to understand this excerpt of James Agee's epic prose poem (which forms part of the introduction to Agee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family).

Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Roe Play Carmen Fantasy for Two Pianos

New from duo pianists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Roe: Carmen Fantasy for two pianos, combining some great playing with cinematic awesomeness. This is their own Carmen Fantasy arrangement, and you can find the sheet music on Amazon.

Speedlinking - 1 February 2011

Image by Carlos Andres Rivera

Here are links to some awesome articles from around the collaborative piano blogosphere:

• If you're a music director, great rehearsals don't just happen, they are planned. Geraldine Boyer-Cussac discusses 5 steps to plan music rehearsals, which is required reading for anyone wishing to make the rehearsal process flow more efficiently. 
• Playing a recital with someone out of town? Kennith Freeman looks at Long Distance Recitals and how to plan them when eventual rehearsal time will be at a premium.
• Laura Lowe has authored a very useful primer on how to be a choral accompanist. Part I looks at learning the voice parts, Part II discusses the process of preparing the accompaniment, and Part III tackles the art of playing a choral rehearsal. 
• Do you really need someone else to tell you if you're playing too loud or not? Gretchen Saathoff's list of tools on how to balance the piano with other performers should help you discover that sweet spot for volume all by yourself, thank you very much. 
• So just what type of collaborative pianist are you? Billie Whittaker has created a hilarious infographic on the many roles of collaborative pianists.