Festival Reflections 2009

Lasker Summer Music Festival 2009 came to a fine conclusion last night.

Every year, participating in the Festival gives me new direction and perspective for the year ahead. Meeting with encouraging and challenging musicians for these few days, performing and discussing how our faith and art relate, and gathering with the intention of sharing and discovering - these things always refresh and redirect me.

This year, I leave the Festival knowing I did some good and elegant playing, and also being reminded that one needs to think seriously about the results one wants in performance and structure practice according to that goal. One ought to ask "What is a reasonable amount of practice given my goal?" For musicians to mature, we need to know how much time needs to be put in to get the desired results.

Dr. Falby presented a probing talk on the experience and meaning of the goosebumps often brought about by listening to music. This refreshed our sense of purpose as deliverers of goosebumps since the musical moment connects the listener with some sense of the transcendent. This talk also provided a framework for the Festival audience members to process and discuss their experiences of the performances.

There were many musical highlights. In fact, the performers provided such a variety of interesting works that items which would have normally stood out as unique became part of the extraordinary fabric.

The work/performance that seemed to create the greatest impression was Paula Pressnell and Ariel Dechosa's performance of Beethoven's Choral Fantasy on two pianos. Before the performance, we may have had questions about the effectiveness of the piece without orchestra or chorus. But the immediate strong response of the audience, as well as their continued discussion of the performance show that:

1. the work can work as a two-piano piece - it becomes a different type of piece, but very effective

2. the work has some innate goodness that is not dependent upon the timbre or size of the performance forces, and

3. of course, the performance was brilliant!

Other personal highlights include Ariel's masterful handling of Prokofief 6th Sonata,
the fun of playing Erik Satie's Sports et Divertissements with Ken Wolfskill's witty narration,
also having fun playing my own Maritime Suite with Kathy,
Josiah Antill presenting and playing his own music so well,
Jim Guthrie's fiddle playing,
Jeremy McEntire's supreme musicianship playing Gluck and Guthrie,
Kathy and Ariel's exquisite performance of Strauss's Allerseelen,
improvisatory work with Tracee, Jeff, Kathy, and Jeremy (Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy" was a major goosebump experience for me),
our own little revival of Billings's Chester with offstage horn,
Jeff's very refined version of the second of the Liszt Petrarch Sonnets and of course, the superb quality of the high D flat he sang in it . . .
so I liked everything!

It was also a very eventful few days in Lasker beyond these musical
experiences. The air conditioner stopped working in the fellowship hall, so we migrated to Agnes's house for one evening. Beautiful new landscaping was dedicated at the church, and the Methodist church on the outskirts of town had its closing services and ceremony on Sunday.

CMS, CBF, AGO

It has been a busy few weeks.

Jeff Prillaman and I presented a lecture-performance on Liszt's Petrarch Sonnets at the College Music Society meeting in Gettysburg. Here are some of the ideas we shared:

Liszt resonated personally with Petrarch's struggle between the spirit and the flesh.

Liszt puts the performers in the appropriate dramatic moods through the technical demands of the music.

The sonnets are constructed of a series of styles ranging from art song to Bel Canto to Verismo. Such a demanding progression of vocal requirements is similar to the sequences of technical demands he puts on pianists in works like the Dante Sonata or Mephisto Waltz.


We heard many excellent presentations at the conference including presentations on piano music from China, Haiti, and works by the Russian jazz-influenced composer, Kapustin. A personal favorite of mine was on the strategic use of bands on the battlefields of the American Civil War.

On the way home, I played at Woodland Heights Baptist Church where Kathy and I worked in Richmond, and in the aternoon I played on a concert with friends from the Talent Developing Studio at Slash Christian Church. Slash is the oldest wooden church in Virginia.

Last night, Kathy and I drove to Raleigh for part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina meeting. There I learned about the Winston Salem-based Institute for Dismantling Racism. I took part in a fascinating discussion of the use of arts in missions work led by Jonathan and Tina Bailey who are artistic missionaries in Indonesia. They discussed the complexities of creating new Christian expressions within traditional styles such as gamelan and shadow puppetry. I also attended a presentation on the history of Chowan University given by our president, Dr. White. I learned many interesting things there including some facts about the recent restoration of the MacDowell Columns building. The massive columns on the portico are made of cypress and had around 35 layers of paint on them before they were scraped and repainted.

Today I played a concert for the Northeastern North Carolina Chapter of the American Guild of Organists at Roanoke Bible College in Elizabeth City. I had not been on that campus before and was impressed by the facility in which I played. It housed a nice chapel with a good older Baldwin, a gym, and a library. The building is situated right next to the water where there are swings, geese, and ducks.

I've felt a little frustrated practicing lately, but I've pushed through it each time and kept practicing. I felt like it paid off today as the memorized works held together better than in the previous performances. Also, my frustration pushed me to connect on a deeper level with the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet pieces I've been playing. I played them more personally today and with more focus on the various characters from the play as they are expressed in the music. I had been trying to do less with time and more with color, which is what my best Russian-trained friend tells me is most stylistically appropriate. I appreciated that and agree with that, but I allowed myself a little more rhythmic freedom today, and I believe the pieces really came to life in a way they hadn't before for me.

Maybe frustration in practice is sometimes a sign that the opportunity for better playing and a deeper personal connection is at hand if only we don't give up.

As an encore I played my recently composed Ragtime Etude. The piece is a little bitonal and I think the bitonality of the last page keeps any one pitch from sounding like a strong tonic. I think that may be a compositional problem I need to solve. As Dr. Benjamin often told us, most composing is editing!

Da Capo Concert and Masterclass

Over the weekend, I played a concert and taught a masterclass in Richmond, sponsored by the Da Capo Institute.

As I turned 36 a week earlier and I was also on spring break, the occasion proved to be a good time for reflection on my musical life.

Right before the concert, I had a feeling I'd never had before, and that was that having to play from memory is somehow undignified - as if art music required some sort of parlor trick.

After performing, I realized that I am more comfortable performing James M. Guthrie's Intermezzo and Fugue than Schumann's Papillons. From a techical standpoint, the Guthrie is a lot harder to play. But it fits me better tempermentally, or at least my current way of playing it does.

That evening, I had a good long talk with my good friend and musical collaborator, Jeff Prillaman. We shared our autobiographies as performers. Out of that came at least two solid bits of pianistic wisdom for me to remember:

Different works as well as different eras in one's life require different performance approaches. When I was a lot younger, I used a method acting approach to most of what I played. Then I came to trust the music more. Now I am trusting the music and my talent. Ultimately, I would do well to keep my music-making focused on my theme of integration - particularly the integration of my art and faith. I believe there are many ways in which one might make music so as to honor God - and I ought to pursue them more intentionally .

The other point also deals with difference and that is that different pianos can be radically different and one can't do everything one wants to with a piece on every piano. This ought to be taken into consideration when one evaluates one's performance goals and efforts.

From Baltimore to Murfreesboro

Night before last, I drove back from Baltimore to Murfreesboro after spending three days in the William Garrison Collaborative Piano Competition. One of many wonderful aspects of the experience was the renewed sense of purpose and belonging here in Murfreesboro. This is home to me now, and as always, I was happy when I drove up the hill and around the curve to see the Murfreesboro skyline (a few street lights across a field.) A startled deer leapt from the roadside, across the ditch, and ran to dark woods.


I learned or re-learned lots of important lessons this weekend.

1. It is very good to view music-making in a broader context than the music itself. Jeff had chosen a set of sacred songs to include in our repertoire for the competition, and the judges chose several of those songs for us to perform. That allowed us to witness to our beliefs and to worship on Sunday morning at the same time we were performing for the judges.

2. Competitions that pit voices against instruments put judges in a tricky bind. Vocal and instrumental music are clearly different genres, are hard to compare and contrast, and many musicians tend to specialize in one or the other.

3. Playing in the competition confirmed, yet again, the importance of balance. From a technical standpoint, I ideally approach the instrument in such a way as to be active, but not to waste energy. That wasted energy can create tension and playing problems. I felt our performances had balance in another way. We maintained technical control while also engaging all of the passion within us to perform. Often, one of these can interfere with the other.

4. Unknowns create tension. Not trying out the instrument in the hall before playing, not knowing who the judges are, not knowing which works they will request to hear: all of these things made the semi-final round very tense.

5. Regarding our repertoire, we learned that the second of Liszt's Petrarch Sonnets probably stands alone the best of the three.

6. The esoteric experience of playing for judges gave new life to my belief in the importance of performancing and the appropriateness of joy and freedom being part of performing in a normal public setting.

7. When you work hard applying all you've been taught, and when you know you've executed your plans well while managing yourself in relation to your environment, then you can have a sense of achievement and pride in your accomplishment that doesn't require affirmation from others.


Things I really liked about the weekend:

Spending three days with my good friend Jeff

Showing him around Baltimore

Seeing the renovations at Peabody

Being warmly welcomed by Mr. Shirley-Quirk and Dr. Falby at Peabody

Hearing Alan Walker's speech and Petri's Ricordanza recording

Visiting with other competitors and Peabody graduates, ushers, Liszt Society officers

Attending Mass

Staying at Ariel and Vivien's home

Thinking of my parents while on a breezy morning walk in the Dechosa's beautiful neighborhood

Ariel's prayers for us that encouraged us to boldly witness

Realizing the quality of colleagues I have at Chowan

Returning home to where I belong

Vision

Night before last was my first performance at Chowan. My friend Jeff Prillaman (tenor) joined me for this recital. It went well, and we had a great audience. Also, we continued to experiment on stage with out interpretations and came up with a few new ideas through that spontaneity.

My main post-recital reflection relates to planning.

One of my father's favorite Bible verses was Proverbs 29:18, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." It actually continues, "but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." But most often, we hear the first half quoted alone. When you read the entire proverb, it seems that the vision needed comes from God's law.

The name of the newsletter of my father's home church in Durham was "The Vision." When he had the opportunity later in life to name his own church's paper, he named it "The Vision," too.

So I've always had those words in my mind.

For a while, I paraphrased the verse as my own musical slogan "Where there is no plan, the music perishes." That was during the period after I realized that a totally spontaneous and emotional approach to interpretation is extremely problematic. I saw that I needed a vision - a plan - for performing.

I now believe the music doesn't need the interpretative plan to survive, except in extreme cases. The plan is more for me.

Having a specific plan for each passage of each work in a performance provides the performer many valuable things. First of all, you are provided with a narrow and clear path through the performance, and that protects you from many of the distractions - internal and external - that might compromise the focus and meaning of the performance. Second, you are provided a clear way to gauge your success when evaluating the performance afterwards.

Thinking on this issue of planning has brought me to a new thought about the nature of spontaneity. I wonder what the difference is between a spontaneous interpretive decision and a planned decision in terms of the listener's experience. When a critic praises spontaneity, on what grounds does he or she make the judgement that what the experience was a spontaneous happening? Sometimes my spontaneous playing has sounded planned to other musicians.

All of this leads me to yet another question, and it is a question about that seemingly illusive characteristic of performers - charisma. I think our culture tends to think of charisma as something the individual performer possesses. As I write, that strikes me as an odd stance in a mostly relativistic culture. Certain performers demonstrate tremendous charisma, but it is completely lost on some listeners. What are we to make of that?

As I understand them, sounds have absolute qualities related to physics. However, those qualities are perceived differently depending upon the makeup and functioning of one's ears. While I think I hear sounds the way they really are, a whale or a dog may hear very different aspects of those same sounds. The differences in perception exist not only between species, but also within the human race. Ears of different ages hear different aspects of sounds, too. These facts pinpoint the reality that the experience of music at the basic level of experiencing sound may vary widely from person to person, in spite of the absolute nature of the qualities of the work experienced. And these differences have nothing to do with personal preference or culture. They are rooted in absolute physical qualities of the hearing mechanism.

The preceding paragraph relates to my question about charisma in that it touches on the fact that perceptions of the same musical event vary widely from person to person, and that fact is built into the nature of things.

I sometimes pray that my music might be coordinated within God's will to touch specific listeners in the contexts of their lives - that musical experiences might work together with other life events to bring about good in lives of listeners. A listener may need to be musically inspired in a particular way at one point in his or her life but not at another. This need for inspiration has nothing to do with me, and the fulfillment of that need also transcends the score or my efforts.

Thus, I wonder if charisma is not a quality possessed by a performer, but a gift of experience that comes to listeners when they need it. Perhaps that was the way the people who invented the word understood the gift they were experiencing, and therefore created a word that means a grace, favor, a divine gift.

Return to Blogging and Schumann's Waldszenen

My mother passed away in July of 2006 after a difficult three months in the hospital. Since that time I haven't really had time or desire to blog. At one point I was pretty sure I'd stop altogether, but I'm back in the mood now.

Two things put me back in the mood. First, my friend Jeff Prillaman designed a new website for the summer music festival with which I work and included the blog address in a prominent location. That got me started thinking that I should not give up on the blog. Second, yesterday I came across the blog of Ben Witherington who is providing what I think is an excellent reponse to the Jesus Tomb book and upcoming film. Dr. Witherington's blog affirmed for me the value of this medium and the quality of work that can take place through it.

Now, on to music.

My pianist friend Samir Vugdalic is working on Schumann's Waldszenen. The set includes movements with titles such as "Friendly Landscape" and "Hunter in Ambush." Thinking of these pieces got me thinking about the changing contexts of classical music. I assume that the people who originally heard and enjoyed these pieces knew a good bit about rural life and hunting from first hand experience. Maybe they were wealthy and hunted for sport, or they were poor and hunted for food. I don't know any of this for sure, but it seems likely that Schumann's first listeners would have at least been more in touch with these aspects of life than the majority of the modern classical audience members who are mostly urbanites.

I'm interested in playing some of these pieces for contemporary rural audiences to see what insights they have into the music and what enjoyment they might have of it.

Another friend, Robert Johns, helped me develop another example of meanings or perceptions of music changing depending upon context. Light shows, electronic sounds, and jarring percussive effects are experienced by many listeners as being completely normal at a rock concert. The same listeners perceive those elements as being unmusical and weird in the context of an avant-garde art music concert. Somehow the avant-garde-ness outweighs the familarity and coolness/neatness of the technological media.

(By the way, these seemingly hypothetical listeners are actually numerous classes of music appreciation students I have taught over the past few years.)