THE BIG FINISH

April and May are months of season finales. Yes, I many associate these months with rebirth and renewal, and there is much to associate with this symbolically, but I have often thought of these two months as "showcase" months or the months of The Finale. It is the time of year when all of the threads of the scientific and magical the artistic and the mathematical, irrational and rational are merged together to showcase what has been learned or absorbed over the course of a year, whether one liked it or not. The month of April one hopes as a teacher is a month of "Aha!" and the month of May merges these "Aha's" into a string of pearls that the wearer can take with him like a clover necklace made while sitting under a tree at recess.

I will be privileged to attend many opalescent performances beginning mid April and finishing with graduation at the end of May. Each student will have a chance to metaphorically step out and say "Ta-Da : Look at What I have Mastered in the last Ten Months." 

For the next nine weeks I hope to showcase and promote the different "finales" of such  moments on this blog, and I hope, if you have the time, you will take a moment to watch the video, flip through the pictures, or even attend one of them events. 

Happy viewing!

Master Classes to Help With Auditions 
Click above

Barrick Stees article available on his blog regarding auditions and information about how to prepare for auditions is perhaps one the best I have seen. It is AUDITION AUDITION AUDITION season and it is incredibly important to prepare to the best of your ability. 

Take the time to read through the article carefully. Even if you are not a musicians and just working toward a job interview - the information translates well. Thank you Mr. Stees for sharing your wisdom.

Preparing for College Auditions: Advice for students, teachers and parents

“How were your auditions this morning?”
“Great! We heard an oboist play the whole first movement of the Strauss Concerto from memory! She was terrific. How about you?”
“Not as good as the last audition day. You should have seen the clarinetist with the weird tattoo!”

Those of us who teach music at the college level may recognize this kind of conversation as that which often takes place during the lunch break on a college audition day. The professors get together to eat and discuss the talent they’ve just heard.
As a teacher at the Cleveland Institute and formerly a faculty member at Michigan State University and the Interlochen Arts Academy and as well as a private teacher of high school bassoonists, I’ve had a good opportunity to observe students when they undergo the process of auditioning for music schools. Along with providing topics for lunchtime conversations like the one above, the range in quality of the auditions I’ve heard has always astounded me.
My observations below are based on many years of experience, pride and frustration in preparing my high school students for auditions and listening to high school students audition for the colleges at which I have taught. I hope that my words will be helpful to those preparing for auditions this coming year.
Along with advice for students, I’ve included some words for teachers and parents, who, even with the best of intentions, sometimes get in the way of their young person’s effort to put the best foot forward in an audition.

Researching Prospective Music Schools

John Whitwell, the Director of Bands at Michigan State University, is fond of saying that students put more time into researching a car purchase than they do researching information about music schools. Researching information on schools begins with doing a little research on yourself.
Ask yourself questions like the following:

• What are my goals in pursuing a degree in music?
• What do I wish to do after graduating?
• Is a conservatory education or university education best for me?
• What other interests might I pursue instead of or in addition to music?

Answering these questions and others like them can help you narrow your focus. There is a wide spectrum of viable programs available for the young musician depending upon the answers to these questions. Many music schools are part of a university that offers a broad education with a focus on music. Conservatories usually specialize in a more narrow focus with little or no non-music academics. Some music schools fit somewhere in the middle. In addition, it should be noted that just because the school has the word “conservatory” attached to it does not insure a high-quality music education for your instrument. By the same token, some university music schools turn out graduates that compete favorably with conservatory-trained musicians in the job market.
It is very important not to stretch yourself too much by applying to and auditioning for too many schools. Four or five has always been a good number for my students. Through careful research and by asking good questions of school representatives it should be easy to narrow the choices.
Some intelligent ways of gathering information about schools are:

• Visit the school’s website. Much valuable information regarding curriculum, application procedures, scholarships and financial aid can be found. In addition, you can learn the names of important contact people in advance. Use links to the school’s college and/or university if it is part of a larger institution to find out information about other sources of financial and scholarship aid.
• Make a campus visit during the summer or fall of the senior year. Take a lesson with the professor, visit with advisors, go to ensemble rehearsals/concerts, attend a music class.
• Discuss the reputation of the school with your teacher, students in your youth orchestra, people you meet at summer camp. The names of the best ones will keep popping up. Speak to anyone you might know already enrolled at the school.

The 10 Questions

As you gather information, begin to make a list of questions you will ask the studio teacher at every school. For example you could ask questions regarding the:

• Studio size and load
• Number of openings for next fall
• Teacher’s/school’s job placement record
• Ensemble opportunities
• Teacher’s expectations in an ideal lesson
• Teacher’s teaching philosophy
• Scholarship opportunities

Application Procedure

This topic would not seem to need elaboration, but different schools have different application procedures so it makes sense to pay attention and spend extra time on this to do it right. Some schools require separate applications for the music school and the university. Make sure you obtain and fill out both.
Fill out the application by typing, not writing in the information. As computer usage is now standard, good handwriting has become less and less common. Many applications can be filled out on-line. If an essay or personal statement is required, have it checked over by your English teacher or guidance counselor. Yes, your future bassoon teacher is interested in how well you express yourself in writing!
Please give at least three weeks notice to people writing letters of recommendation for you. Provide them with a pre-addressed, stamped envelope for each letter, as the recommendation carries much more weight if you do not have access to it. Make sure the recommenders get any forms needed with the letters as well.

Musical Preparation

Start practicing now! When possible I like to begin work on the college audition during the student’s junior year by stressing fundamentals during that year. Along with talent, most college music professors look for someone with good fundamentals. In fact, I would dare to say that many would prefer a student with solid fundamentals who is maybe not quite polished as a performer to one who performs well, but needs some major rebuilding in the approach to the instrument. Given the choice, I would much rather work on music with a student than have to fix a bad hand position, for instance. Focusing on fundamentals can be difficult given the demands placed on seniors, so I advise students to get as much work in during the junior year and the summer before the senior year as possible because you won’t have as much time as a senior to fix a bad embouchure or poor breath support.

Have the college audition repertoire chosen by the end of the spring or in early summer prior to the audition year. Try to choose pieces and etudes that are listed on more than one of your colleges’ repertoire lists so you won’t be overwhelmed by learning too many pieces. Learn the tempos, notes, rhythms and interpretive markings for a few weeks and then put the pieces away. While you work on other things during the summer the pieces often mature on their own and feel more familiar when gotten out again in the fall months.
Here are some further suggestions:

• Practice your scales!
• Purchase authoritative editions of the music you are playing.
• Study recordings of these pieces that are available.
• Have your instrument serviced prior to the auditions.
• Stock up on reeds or other equipment you may need.
• Spend a few practice sessions recording your audition repertoire and critique the recordings.
• Play a mock audition for your teacher, ensemble director, friends or family.

The Audition Day

Arrive early for all of your appointments. There will be cancellations and the schedule may change. Dress appropriately. When in doubt dress as though you are interviewing for a job at a bank or law firm. Most schools structure audition days to function as an open house for their programs. Therefore, this is a good time to look around and take in what is happening during that day if you have time.
Treat the audition like a professional performance, using proper etiquette (Mr. or Ms. Or Professor, no first names, please!), and have a sense of stage presence even if the audition is in a small room. Play each piece from beginning to end without stopping. No grimaces after mistakes!
When finished, be ready to receive a critique of your performance and show flexibility when asked to play something in a different manner. Be appreciative of the time given and the comments offered you.
If you have some one-on-one time with the studio teacher you can ask him or her questions from your list (see above). This may not be possible during the audition. Most teachers can spend a little extra time with an interested student on the day before, during or after the audition.

Follow Up

After your auditions are completed, contact the instructors at schools that interest you, thanking them again for the comments made and time spent on your behalf.
Now you can fill in the answers to the questions on your list with a column for each school’s answer to the questions. Maybe some new questions will have come up. Look over your answers and see how each school fares on your list of answers.
Next consider the overall impression made upon you by each school. What does your instinct tell you?
By looking at your list of questions in both a quantitative and qualitative way you should be able to narrow your choices. When acceptance notices and scholarship offers come, sit down with your parents and teacher and discuss it all.
Above all, be honest and swift in your communications with these schools and professors. Be communicative with the professors at schools that are your top choices. Arm them with knowledge about your interest so they can help with admission and scholarships. Even if you are not interested in attending a particular school it is helpful for you to let the institution know. They may be holding a place for you that could go to someone else. The way in which you wrap up this process is very important. You have made some contacts that may be helpful to you in the future. Always remember that the music world is a very small place. How you act now will be noticed and remembered for a long time to come.

For Teachers

I include a section for teachers here because I have learned that some students come ill-prepared for auditions through no fault of their own. Teachers of high school students who are interested in a career in music have a heavy responsibility. Since these students are interested in entering a job market that is overloaded with supply and very short on demand (especially in the performing area) the teacher must be especially good at assessing talent and discipline.
Below are my suggestions for high school music teachers:

• Maintain awareness of the talent pool in the country by attending conferences and master classes with your students.
• Network with other high school teachers of your instrument and with the most prominent college teachers.
• When choosing repertoire, choose music that shows off the student’s strengths. Do not program your student too aggressively. Most college teachers would rather hear a less advanced piece performed with polish and attention to detail than a very difficult one performed in a sloppy fashion. It is my opinion that most high school bassoonists cannot do justice to the first movement of the Mozart Bassoon Concerto or almost all of the Milde Concert Studies. The bassoon repertoire is not so poor that something else can’t be chosen. If possible, these pieces should wait until college!
• Urge your students to focus on fundamentals. Long tones, scales, arpeggios, articulation studies all contribute to your student’s ability to control the instrument. The junior year is an especially good time for regaining this focus if it has been lost. There are often too many distractions and performing obligations during the senior year.
• Make sure your student has a good basic knowledge of reed making. Even if the style adopted in college might be very different from yours, it will be easier for the student to change styles than to learn from the beginning.
• Encourage participation in summer music festivals and events outside your area.

For Parents

Being the parent of a talented young musician can bring much joy and pride. Sometimes that pride and joy can blind parents to the realities of competition in the music world, however. Here are my suggestions for parents:

• Do not view the bassoon as a “meal ticket” to college. While this may still be the case at some schools, generally you get what you pay for in a musical education. You are making an investment in your child’s future by paying for music school.
• Some musicians graduating from music schools will find gainful employment in the music business, but many will not. For years the job market in music performance has been over-loaded with too many applicants for too few jobs. It takes talent, discipline, perseverance and luck to make a living as a performing musician.
• Many parents focus on the idea of a double major for their child in case music doesn’t work out. There are pitfalls to be aware of in this scenario. In my experience, most double majors (music and engineering, for instance) are so challenged by both degrees that they end up being mediocre in both. Usually the student drops out of music and pursues the other degree. When exploring a double major at a particular college, make sure there is good cooperation between the advisors and instructors for both majors. Plan on a five or six year undergraduate term.
• When researching a particular school, be sure to look for sources of financial aid in unlikely places. Sometimes another part of the university will award scholarship or financial aid to a music major.
• Expose your child to concerts, master classes and conferences offered outside your area. Don’t let him or her be a “big fish in a little pond”.
• Schedule informal school visits for lessons with the instructors in the summer or early fall. Seeing the school on a non-audition day may be more revealing.

Conclusion

Preparing for college auditions requires good organizational skills, discipline and perseverance. Students need the support of teachers, parents and friends to be successful. Skills learned in the process can be applied to many of life’s other challenges.

I hope that the advice and suggestions offered here will spur others to take up this subject with their students, add their advice and help bring a well-prepared, articulate class of prospective students to the doors of the nation’s music schools.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOZART!

January 27th  a day that gifted the world with genius. Below are a few videos that celebrate his music: Choreography Jiri Kylian of Dans Theater Netherlands.

Harmonielehre - Post Modern, Structure, Harmony,

Harmonielehre Sometimes a work comes along that ranks in the column of must hear because it is a rare opportunity. This symphony season has been a season of "rare hear" opportunities.  First, we had the opportunity to hear Schoenburg's Kammersymphonie expertly executed by the Hunstville Symphony, not once but twice! The first time with virgin ears that had never heard so many notes played in so many different ways at once - but then after Maestro Vadja deconstructed the work, allowed the work to settle in and our ears were opened to the conversation of melodic lines competing to be heard, such a sound the second time around! And now, another evening with Schoenburg and a composer John Adams, who has so much to say about Schoenburg. This evening promises to be intense and wonderful and we have groups of OrchDorks going both nights.  Schoenburg's "Survivor of Warsaw" and John Adam's "Harmonielehre" are must hear works. Scored for a large orchestra, is a strong, overt, if at times,  minimalist work that moves with an impatience. It is confident and reminiscent the SSMF OrchDorks who played Sibelieus, "it has the same tension and color struggling to break free" said one. And another said, "It struggles back and forth and seems like it is about to burst with joy". I could not agree more. This joy, while tempered by impatience,  is compelled to burst out of the confined walls of structure Adams has set in place in the first two movements. It is a work not to be missed. First performed March 21, 1985 by the San Francisco Symphony, Edo de Waart, conductor, Davies Hall, San Francisco and scored for: 4 flutes (2,3,&4=piccolos), 3 oboes (3=English horn), 3 clarinets (3=bass clarinet 2), bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, percussion (4 players) 2 harps, piano, celesta, strings Duration: 40 minutes Publisher: Associated Music Publishers (G. Schirmer, Inc.) From the blog of John Adams 1/14/12 John Adams on Harmonielehre: Harmonielehre is roughly translated as "the book of harmony" or "treatise on harmony." It is the title of a huge study of tonal harmony, part textbook, part philosophical rumination, that Arnold Schoenberg published in 1911 just as he was embarking on a voyage into unknown waters, one in which he would more or less permanently renounce the laws of tonality. My own relationship to Schoenberg needs some explanation. Leon Kirchner, with whom I studied at Harvard, had himself been a student of Schoenberg in Los Angeles during the 1940s. Kirchner had no interest in the serial system that Schoenberg had invented, but he shared a sense of high seriousness and an intensely critical view of the legacy of the past. Through Kirchner I became highly sensitized to what Schoenberg and his art represented. He was a "master" in the same sense that Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms were masters. That notion in itself appealed to me then and continues to do so.    But Schoenberg also represented to me something twisted and contorted. He was the first composer to assume the role of high-priest, a creative mind whose entire life ran unfailingly against the grain of society, almost as if he had chosen the role of irritant. Despite my respect for and even intimdation by the persona of Schoenberg, I felt it only honest to acknowledge that I profoundly disliked the sound of twelve-tone music. His aesthetic was to me an overripening of 19th century Individualism, one in which the composer was a god of sorts, to which the listener would come as if to a sacramental altar. It was with Schoenberg that the "agony of modern music" had been born, and it was no secret that the audience classical music during the twentieth century was rapidly shrinking, in no small part because of the aural ugliness of so much of the new work being written. It is difficult to understand why the Schoenbergian model became so profoundly influential for classical composers. Composers like Pierre Boulez and Gyorgy Ligeti have borne both the ethic and the aesthetic into our own time, and its immanence in present day university life and European musical festivals is still potent.    Rejecting Schoenberg was like siding with the Philistines, and freeing myself from the model he represented was an act of enormous will power. Not surprisingly, my rejection took the form of parody…not a single parody, but several extremely different ones. In my Chamber Symphony the busy, hyperactive style of Schoenberg’s own early work is placed in a salad spinner with Hollywood cartoon music. In The Death of Klinghoffer the priggish, disdainful Austrian Woman describes how she spent the entire hijacking hiding under her bed by singing in a Sprechstimme to the accompaniment of a Pierrot-like ensemble in the pit. My own Harmonielehre is parody of a different sort in that it bears a "subsidiary relation" to a model (in this case a number of signal works from the turn of the century like Gurrelieder and the Sibelius Fourth Symphony), but it does so without the intent to ridicule. It is a large, three-movement work for orchestra that marries the developmental techniques of Minimalism with the harmonic and expressive world of fin de siècle late Romanticism. It was a conceit that could only be attempted once. The shades of Mahler, Sibelius, Debussy, and the young Schoenberg are everywhere in this strange piece. This is a work that looks at the past in what I suspect is "postmodernist" spirit, but, unlike Grand Pianola Music or Nixon in China, it does so entirely without irony. The first part is a seventeen-minute inverted arch form: high energy at the beginning and end, with a long, roaming "Sehnsucht" section in between. The pounding e minor chords at the beginning and end of the movement are the musical counterparts of a dream image I’d shortly before starting the piece. In the dream I’d watched a gigantic supertanker take off from the surface of San Francisco Bay and thrust itself into the sky like a Saturn rocket. At the time (1984—85) I was still deeply involved in the study of C. G. Jung’s writings, particularly his examination of Medieval mythology. I was deeply affected by Jung’s discussion of the character of Anfortas, the king whose wounds could never be healed. As a critical archetype, Anfortas symbolized a condition of sickness of the soul that curses it with a feeling of impotence and depression. In this slow, moody movement entitled "The Anfortas Wound" a long, elegiac trumpet solo floats over a delicately shifting screen of minor triads that pass like spectral shapes from one family of instruments to the other. Two enormous climaxes rise up out of the otherwise melancholy landscape, the second one being an obvious homage to Mahler’s last, unfinished symphony. The final part, "Meister Eckhardt and Quackie" begins with a simple berceuse (cradlesong) that is as airy, serene and blissful as "The Anfortas Wound" is earthbound, shadowy and bleak. The Zappaesque title refers to a dream I’d had shortly after the birth of our daughter, Emily, who was briefly dubbed "Quackie" during her infancy. In the dream, she rides perched on the shoulder of the Medieval mystic, Meister Eckhardt, as they hover among the heavenly bodies like figures painted on the high ceilings of old cathedrals. The tender berceuse gradually picks up speed and mass (not unlike "The Negative Love" movement of Harmonium) and culminates in a tidal wave of brass and percussion over a pedal point on E-flat major. The recording by Edo de Waart and the San Francisco Symphony was made only three days after the world premiere in March of 1985. (I have since revised the ending.) Despite the daunting length and rhythmic complexity of the piece, both conductor and orchestra made a totally convincing representation of it, and the recording can testify to the rare instances when a composer, a conductor, and an orchestra create an inexplicable bond among each other. " ↑ Return to top of page

Copyright © 2010 by John Adams All rights reserved

FAITH OR LUCK

Music is often said to be the language of the universe. It speaks to our inner being and touches our souls with an immutable strength that is beyond simple letters, words and sentences. Phrases of music can change the very nature of an afternoon if the setting is perfect, if the universe has set forth a beautiful moment where the air, the music and moment all conspire to make that perfect moment so memorable that to even begin to tell another person about it seems somehow sacra-saint. 



As a person who creates, musicians, artists, performers, teachers must often worry about the ability of being able to constantly being to recreate this precious moment of epiphany. What a delicate precipice we as creators live on.


One one hand - the artist is attempting to create a unique experience with the audience. Be it a listener, a student, a watcher of dance or a reader of the word, the interplay between the audience and the artist has to be uniquely special for the art and the moment to have the special stamp that makes that moment soar above that pedantic. It is necessary to the artful experience for the viewer to feel this special moment to wanting more - creating a consumers need. The student who has the epiphany will yearn for more knowledge, the listener who is moved to tears, will want that emotion again; and not some chintzy fake recreation - they, the audience, want what only the artist can create, l'expérience vécue, or THE REAL EXPERIENCE. 

On the other hand, it is quite impossible to imagine the word "unique' being applied to anything created "en masse". The very idea of being re-created, even once takes away from the unique, speciality on the l'expérience vécue. 



And so, the artiste walks the fence between knowing if tomorrow he or she will being to tomorrow, in an hour or next year provide a voracious audience that moment for which they yearn, expérience vécue, and knowing that by definition, that moment can not be recreated just whenever one desires. 


Two well known artists, Paulo Coehlo and Joyce DiDonato both speak to this moment in different manners. Ms. DiDanato speaks to the ephemeral nature of performance and the faith one must have to create, the faith in oneself, and one's education. Though she is speaking directly to a fan's question regarding her voice and talent, it is an analogy even a teacher can take to heart. Paulo Coehlo speaks to the nature of coincidence  - or the lack thereof. His book our class will soon read, and ponder these very questions. I am curious too what others think and would love your thoughts.

 

While I write on this blog,  Music Mutations, is to primarily share my little revelations on music and its connections between other art forms, I find on the Eve of Thanksgiving, I feel a need to share a video I found that describes the process of living happily while pursuing a career in a chosen art form.

I have been blessed to have a mentor living right in my very own home. My husband,  has found this remarkable manner to connect the everyday process of doing what you love, and creating something wonderful. This process morphs into a process that one can not longer call what one does "work". The very definition of work ceases to be a applicable definition, and what he does as a freelancer becomes something else, something amorphous that truly those who appreciate beauty want more.

He risks much when he ceases to work, but create. he risks others thinking he is immature or not responsible, because he creates instead or works. I find these  people to be the losers and simply jealous of the process because they too want to create, and have chosen to work instead.
He risks failure, chasing an identity, and subsequent loss of focus to find the fine line between being responsible to his art and to himself. However, creating good art is a remarkable God -thing and must not be ignored by anyone who comes to understand he or she has the ability to make beautiful connections between creating good art and NOT doing work. I believe God wants us to create, not work.
No matter which art one chooses in life to create be it a novel, a well organized event, a strong economic plan, a beautiful symphonic work, we are all here to MAKE GOOD ART. My husband has learned to make great art in the most benign situations. He can take a simple party and turn it into a photo worthy of a art gallery.He can find a way to make art in his photography, his creation of food, his creation of a new plan. He has learned to make great art.

His life mimics the the freelancer writer and comic creator Neil Gaiman's advice conveyed in his commencement speech. Mike, my husband, has been truly an inspiration. He has kept working just as Neil Gaiman describes.

So, I include the commencement speech below because so many of the truism he speaks are true - but not because he says them, but because he illuminates what I observe in my own home. Thanksgiving is then given right in front of us, and I blessed to have him right in front of me. I love you Mike.

What To Do 

If  I Am Not The Mood......... 

To Create That Is

“A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.” Tchaikovsky

What do  Tchaikovsky, Jack White and Nick Cave all have in common? Each, at some moment in their creative history has spoken or written about the process of being creative, on inspiration, or the lack thereof, and the benefits of straight up hard work. What we  law people call "work ethic"

One of the beautiful opportunities studying and researching music, composers and artists provides is that it offers insight in the artist's mind, and allows one to learn from his or her creative process. Sometimes his creative process is so beyond what one conceive of the word "artist" is brought to life through the sheer demonstration of of what can not be attained by the simple or common man.

Other times, the artist offers a crosswalk between the genius of who she or he is and the common man that allow the audience to just barely touch or grasp the process of creation and it is that process that inspires the audience, it is his or her work ethic and what it has produced that is amazing.

All of this reminded me of a letter Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote to his the woman who made it possible for him to make music. He wrote Nadezhda von Meck, dated March 17th, 1878, and found in the 1905 volume The Life & Letters of Pete Ilich Tchaikovsky (public domain):

Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer’s soul when he is stirred by inspiration. There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.
A few days ago I told you I was working every day without any real inspiration. Had I given way to my disinclination, undoubtedly I should have drifted into a long period of idleness. But my patience and faith did not fail me, and to-day I felt that inexplicable glow of inspiration of which I told you; thanks to which I know beforehand that whatever I write to-day will have power to make an impression, and to touch the hearts of those who hear it. I hope you will not think I am indulging in self-laudation, if I tell you that I very seldom suffer from this disinclination to work. I believe the reason for this is that I am naturally patient. I have learnt to master myself, and I am glad I have not followed in the steps of some of my Russian colleagues, who have no self-confidence and are so impatient that at the least difficulty they are ready to throw up the sponge. This is why, in spite of great gifts, they accomplish so little, and that in an amateur way.

Here is Jack White, echoing — unwittingly, no doubt — Tchaikovsky:

Inspiration and work ethic — they ride right next to each other…. Not every day you’re gonna wake up and the clouds are gonna part and rays from heaven are gonna come down and you’re gonna write a song from it. Sometimes, you just get in there and just force yourself to work, and maybe something good will come out.