Diary of a Pianist

Musicians of Note

2012-01-31T10:42:00.000-08:00

A fantastic article about Ann and Isidor Saslav (my in-laws) from the TylerPaper.com newspaper in East Texas. I will be attending the concert on March 31, 2012 at Stephen F. Austin College to honor, Isidor, and raise money for his chair at the college.

Ann and Isidor Saslav

Overton Couple Share An Art Form That Transcends Language
By KELLY GOOCHStaff Writer

OVERTON -- For Dr. Isidor and Ann Saslav, playing music is not just a hobby -- it's a way of life and a source of joy. Saslav, a professional violinist, serves as concertmaster for the Longview Symphony while Mrs. Saslav, a professional pianist, practices about two or three hours a day, preparing for performances. They have lived all over the world and studied with many outstanding musicians. Although the couple shares a passion for music, their career paths began under different circumstances.

Born in Jerusalem and raised in Detroit, Saslav, 73, started studying violin when he was 7.
Mrs. Saslav, 75, said her husband grew up in public schools and is "very beholden" to public schools. It was those public schools and scholarships he received in Detroit that afforded him opportunities, such as studying with violinist and concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff, she said.
"Mischakoff took him on and as a teen, he put him to (such a) high standard that by age 17 he was a member of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra making a living at 17 playing the violin," she said, adding that her husband rode the bus to rehearsals and was able to help his family out financially.

"We're so impassioned to help other poor kids get that start."

Mrs. Saslav was born in Tyler and raised in Overton, where her mother always sang to her and her father played violin. "In my home all kinds of music were played," she said. "My father adored Dixieland and regular jazz, but he also listened to (Ludwig van) Beethoven and (Wolfgang Amadeus) Mozart, and I remember (composer Dmitri) Shostakovich when I was very young."When she was about 3 years old or earlier, her father discovered she had absolute pitch, Mrs. Saslav said. From then on, she played piano and took lessons from a teacher in Overton, who had studied in Italy.

She had her first piano recital at age 5 in Overton High School, along with other students.
As a young girl, she said she knew Van Cliburn and learned she had Synesthesia, a neurogically based condition that causes her to hear in colors when she plays. "My father started me with a toy piano with eight notes on it when I was 2, (and) he had the idea to color the notes. He would write tunes for me in red, yellow, green on the right places on the staff. I think that's what started my Synesthesia off," she said.

By age 15, Mrs. Saslav had studied in Dallas with a famous teacher from the University of North Texas as well as a noted concert pianist in New York, where she went to study, she said. She had also played with the Houston Symphony by age 15, and that helped launch her career.After winning a contest at age 15, she said she played clarinet and "was a normal kid except I practiced piano on a high level every day.

"In my senior year (at Overton High School), they gave me half a year off because I had my credits and let me go home and practice," Mrs. Saslav said. "It was a flexible school system."The Saslavs eventually crossed paths while working on advanced degrees at Indiana University. They discovered they knew a lot of the same people and were later married in the university's chapel. This March, they will celebrate 50 years of marriage. They have two children who live in California.

Like their marriage, their careers have also blossomed throughout the years.
Saslav became the concertmaster of and soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Minnesota, Baltimore, and New Zealand symphony orchestras as well as the Round Top Festival of Texas after studying with master teachers Mischakoff, Josef Gingold, and Ivan Galamian, according to his biography. He's also served as concertmaster of the Indiana University, Dallas, Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Terrace Theater, and Baltimore opera orchestras as well as a member of the Detroit and Chautauqua symphonies, and the Orchestra of the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico. He has played several times at Carnegie Hall in New York and taught at Stephen F. Austin State University for 10 years.

Mrs. Saslav has toured the United States as pianist of the Nova Arte Trio with violinist Arnold Steinhardt and cellist Robert Newkirk. She also received a Fulbright Scholarship to Vienna, Austria, where she attended the Akademie fuer Musik und darstellende Kunst, according to her biography. Among her former teachers are Menahem Pressler, Isabella Vengerova, Miecyslaw Horszowski, Grete Hinterhofer, and Silvio Scionti.

The Saslavs have performed thousands of youth concerts and taught others. Saslav even had a famous student -- Boyd Tinsley, violinist for the Dave Matthews Band. "They're such intelligent people," said Jeannie Barber, executive vice president for the Overton-New London Chamber of Commerce. "You get lost in their conversations."

Next up for Saslav is a concert at 7:30 p.m. March 31 at Stephen F. Austin State University, where a scholarship is being given in his name. Twenty-five performers are slated to participate.
For Mrs. Saslav, it's a concert on Feb. 11, where she is playing a Mozart concerto with the Longview Symphony, with Tonu Kalam conducting. "When he (Kalam) was a boy, his father was a conductor, and he played the same concerto with his father conducting, so he knows this piece well as a pianist, but he said can't wait to do the other side," Mrs. Saslav said.
Both musicians have advice for residents starting out.

Mrs. Saslav encouraged pianists to practice at least 30 or 40 minutes each day and to warm up with scales and arpeggios. She also advised parents to give their child music because "it organizes the mind in a way only reading can do." Saslav's advice? "If public schools offer music -- take it." His wife agreed, saying "Grab any opportunity to study because it will enrich every day of your life. I can turn to any score and it lifts me up so high above the fray of the politics and the junk, and there it is. I have the most beautiful expression of mankind's creation."

While the Saslav's music has taken them to various locations around the country, they are pleased to call Overton home. Overton's "great," Mrs. Saslav said. "The train goes by and I can hear it when I practice. A lot of people (here also) knew my father and knew my family ...
"Overton for me is just a wonderful place to live. It's quiet, there's not much traffic, and I can go anywhere I want to from here." Aside from music, she remains active in the local garden club and in school activities. She has also coached some children in band and tries to remain active in the Overton-New London Area Chamber of Commerce.

When the Saslavs are not playing music, they enjoy reading and writing. Saslav also loved to drive to Canada each year for a George Bernard Shaw festival, and the couple even has a personal Shaw library in downtown Overton. Inside the library, an old medical building that Mrs. Saslav's father built in 1936, are pictures of friends, colleagues, great teachers, and conductors on the wall. There is also plenty of other memorabilia, including an old eye chart with pictures, which Mrs. Saslav's father used with children. Additionally, there is a kitchen and bedrooms where visiting scholars can stay and a keyboard.

The Shaw Library in Overton, TX

As Saslav holds his violin in the library on Thursday, he is asked what he enjoys most about playing.

He responds by saying, "What do you enjoy most about breathing?"

Ann and Isidor in their living room in Overton, TX

Keyboard Idol and my Grand-teacher

2012-01-20T10:29:00.000-08:00

Baroque Master / Harpsichord Idol Gustav Leonhardt

"We *use* articulation; we don't want to *show* articulation. [...] You think of *what* you have to say, and not *how*." - Gustav Leonhardt

Gustav Leonhardt was my Grand-teacher since he taught Tamara Loring, with whom I've been studying Baroque keyboard for the past several years.

With Tamara, I've been trying to incorporate his HIP (historically inspired performance) styles into my Bach and early music repertoire. It is quite difficult, and I'm far from a master of HIP techniques.

This Leonhardt recording of Bach's E Major Invention is perhaps the best example of his HIP principles that I've been trying to accomplish in my lessons with Tamara. Listen for the way he stretches the downbeat to show you what to listen for in the piece. Here is my rendition of the Invention, before my studies with Tamara.

I hope with much more practice to emulate his masterful sense of rhythmic timing. Tamara told me that Leonhardt's sense of time was so accurate, that at exactly 54 minutes into each of her lessons, he would rise and fold his arms. A signal, without looking at a clock, that the lesson was over. Ah, to have such timing.

Stage Presence

2012-01-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

While performing, I keep my movements simple. I've never been one to swoon and look to the heavens while playing. I work very hard to convey meaning in my sound, but find most pianists' theatrics distracting and annoying. Perhaps, Alexis Weissenberg says it best

“You cannot lose your control physically and be precise as to what your hands do. Can you imagine a surgeon operating on somebody, and swooning and looking up at the ceiling and being very excited about it? The patient would die. That is what happens in music too. The patient dies, because there’s too much going on besides the actual performance.” -Alexis Weissenberg, pianist

This amazing Bulgarian pianist died on Sunday at the age of 82. Click here for the New York Times article.

And to judge his playing and stage presence for yourself:

Alexis Weissenberg plays Chopin

Alexis Weissenberg plays Schumann

Alexis Weissenberg plays Bach

More on Practicing

2012-01-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

The "Less is More Strategy":

(From the Study Hacks Blog)
The Piano Player Confessions
I recently received a message from an accomplished piano player. Let’s call him Jeremy. This is someone who majored in piano performance at music school, where he was one of the top two students in the major. He won state-level competitions throughout his college career. Jeremy wrote in response to my recent article on the surprisingly relaxed lives of elite musicians.

Jeremy’s Strategies for Becoming Excellent…
Strategy #1: Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy.“The mistake most weak pianists make is playing, not practicing. If you walk into a music hall at a local university, you’ll hear people ‘playing’ by running through their pieces. This is a huge mistake. Strong pianists drill the most difficult parts of their music, rarely, if ever playing through their pieces in entirety.”

I only play through my pieces when I'm working on stamina, as I get close to performance day; at that time, I play through my entire repertoire or set three times in a row. Interestingly, when I'm collaborating with singers - "practice" often means running songs or arias once and only once.

Strategy #2: To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder.“Strong pianists find clever ways to ‘complicate’ the difficult parts of their music. If we have problem playing something with clarity, we complicate by playing the passage with alternating accent patterns. If we have problems with speed, we confound the rhythms.”

For decades, I've been told by my teachers to create "exercises" from difficult passages. As an example, in approaching difficulties surrounding trills, I've created "Trill Drills" in every key and every finger combination for both hands -- possibly with the exception of thumb-pinky! -- in every register of the piano.

Strategy #3: Systematically Eliminate Weakness.“Strong pianists know our weaknesses and use them to create strength. I have sharp ears, but I am not as in touch with the physical component of piano playing. So, I practice on a mute keyboard.”

This doesn't really work for me, but I do practice "mentally" away from the keyboard. I'm very interested in Frederic Chiu's "Deeper Piano Studies" method.

Strategy #4: Create Beauty, Don’t Avoid Ugliness.“Weak pianists make music a reactive task, not a creative task. They start, and react to their performance, fixing problems as they go along. Strong pianists, on the other hand, have an image of what a perfect performance should be like that includes all of the relevant senses. Before we sit down, we know what the piece needs to feel, sound, and even look like in excruciating detail. In performance, weak pianists try to reactively move away from mistakes, while strong pianists move towards a perfect mental image.”

This principle is not stressed enough. According to Charles Rosen, piano players are the only musicians who do not have to listen to their sound to produce their sound. Or as one of of my own teachers said, "some students play the typewriter, not the piano". One of the major reasons I rarely encourage my students to play Hanon exercises is that they play them mindlessly, never really hearing the ugly, or at least non-musical, sounds they are producing. I work at each and every lesson with my students (as well as in my own practice) on producing beautiful sounds, thinking about what emotions the composer wants to express, and remaining fully engaged in the process.

Thanks to my great friend and fellow pianist, John Poole, for sending the Study Hacks blog post, which I've shared partly here.

Overtones

2011-12-21T10:54:00.000-08:00

Beautiful writing about music and aging.

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-overtone-years/

George Shearing - Piano Icon

2011-02-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

When I was eight years old, George Shearing and his trio played on the Community Concert Series in Havre, Montana. Friends of my parents, Verlyn and Jackie Stahlecker, took me to the concert. This event was my very first concert experience and from that moment on, I wanted to be on stage.

The fact that Shearing was blind and could play the piano did not make a big impression on me; his playing, however, did.

After the first piece, I was transfixed; I wanted more than anything to be in a jazz trio. I found the music the trio played thrilling, and their improvising on the melodies - fascinating. I thought the string bass was so cool and loved the bass solo moments with the hushed piano chords -- and, of course, being out at night without my parents...Intoxicating!

My favorite piece from that concert was "Lullaby of Birdland", which happens to be Shearing's most famous composition. I learned to play the piece in high school, and even today I can still play and improvise over the chords in spite of my faulty memory.

Once under Shearing influence, I began to improvise on my "classical" tunes. I became very proficient at improvising in various classical styles, so much so that my Mother could not tell if I was playing what was in a score or improvising on it. She called my ramblings "Melissa-isms" and would yell up from the basement at me as I practiced: "Now, is that Mozart or a Melissa-ism?"

I would never tell.

I had a good ear, but the teaching methods of my day considered the ability to read music so critical that no one was ever allowed to play a melody for me, for fear of my not learning to read. This was quite traumatic for me, and almost ended my music career before it began.

But I did learn to read music, and then rarely played by ear. Later, sightreading became very important for me, as my first music job (at age 10) was to play for the children's choir at church. Choir pianists are forever sightreading, so I was forced to focus on that, while my ear training suffered. I think as a consequence, my ability to memorize music was compromised. Of course, playing by ear has been pretty much out of the question.

Luckily, though, all of that "improvising" in the style of various composers helped me whenever I would have a memory slip (and I always did, and still do slip whenever playing from memory). I've gotten myself out of many a trouble spot my improvising a measure or two until I could find my way back into the score. At first this impressed my teachers, but later they would be very angry with me when I would "get away with improvising" through memory slips.

Nowadays, I always play with music -- even when I have a piece memorized. I no longer want to improvise my way through memory slips, and the presence of a score calms my nerves so I can play with greater musicality and accuracy.

Regardless, thank you, George Shearing - sensational piano icon - for making a lasting impression on me and for being such a great artist. I'll never forget you.

Here's a link to a wonderful interview with Shearing. Also a link to the NPR tribute and Terry Gross' Fresh Air remembrance.

Go to Dailymotion.com for a great video of Shearing playing "Lullaby of Birdland". There will be a few short advertisements, but persevere. Other Shearing videos are on this site as well.

Keyboard Idol - Emanuel Ax

2010-09-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

In the Fall of 1980, I was 18 years old and a Freshman at the University of Montana. I was just beginning my studies as a piano major, when I saw a poster that the Music Department was sponsoring a concert of all Beethoven Piano Sonatas, performed by Emanuel Ax. As music majors, we were required to attend concerts. I was a diligent student and I thought this concert was as good as any, to begin to fulfill my recital attendance requirement.

I grew up in Havre, Montana --- God's country truly, but the small, isolated town had virtually no access to any classical music. Live music shows in any genre were infrequent at best, so my chances to hear any kind of music were extremely limited. I was a Philistine as far as my musical tastes were concerned. I did have the good judgement to love most of the composers I was exposed to through my piano lessons. I adored and revered Bach. As a teenager, I couldn't get enough of Chopin and Brahms. I also loved any music that was contemporary, new, avant garde...the strange harmonies and driving rhythms of Prokofiev, Bartok, Stravinsky...really spoke to me. Regardless, I certainly had not ever heard a pianist play a program of Beethoven Sonatas, nor heard any recordings. The Beethoven I had played as a child - bored me. "Fur Elise", ugh - I couldn't stand practicing that piece. I had played a few Bagatelles very poorly I should add, as well as a few of the early Sonatinas, but I thought at my young age, Beethoven, WHO CARES!

Then came the day that I chanced upon Emanuel Ax giving a concert of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas. That event changed my life. I had never heard such music from the piano. And by the end of the first sonata, I was determined to play as many Beethoven works as possible. I began to listen to the string quartets (so quaintly as I remember now - in the listening library with the largest headphones imaginable over my ears, but transported to old Europe none the less, through the amazing playing of the Budapest String Quartet...). Next, I listened to all of Beethoven's chamber music as long as it included a part for the piano!

Now I love Beethoven's music and consider it one of the great privileges of my life that I can play a Beethoven Sonata any time I desire. I owe this romance to Emanuel Ax's transporting, passoniate playing of Beethoven Sonatas in the 1980s.

Thank you Manny!

In this clip, Mr. Ax talks about playing with the New York Philharmonic. My favorite quote is "pianists are actors". I completely agree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU6ZMOMHqdo&p=1AF972F08806CE49&playnext=1&index=24

A lovely interview from the Barbican Centre in London

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCfcAbGoxxE&feature=related

Ax playing with Yo Yo Ma.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfhWXTlRn0M&feature=related

One of my favorite stories about Ax in this New Yorker profile of the Marlboro Music Festival (pages 60 and 61) in Vermont.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/29/090629fa_fact_ross

Keyboard Idol

2010-09-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

I'm starting a new series on the Renditions Music Fan Page on Facebook. If you are a member of Facebook and not a fan of Renditions - sign up now!

My first "official" post (I've been posting "idol" messages for awhile now) is the film "Richter, The Enigma". This movie changed my life when I saw it more than a decade ago. I have been encouraging my students to borrow the film from my library as Richter's life's story is so moving and his playing - so beautiful, passionate, insane, daring, transporting, sublime --- and I could gush on and still not adequately describe the impact of his playing on the senses.

The film is now available on-line for free, so there is no reason not to watch the film. The film is in Russian with subtitles. Perhaps watch just a segment a day, like a daily dose of Vitamin C - your spirit will be refreshed, revived and invigorated - not to mention the possibility of banishment of "rickety" thoughts.

If the above link to the free video doesn't work - here is the link again.
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=richter+the+enigma

Music Matters!

2010-01-05T10:49:00.000-08:00

This speech was sent to me by my former piano teacher, Eliane Lust. I think it is an appropriate way to begin my blog for the new year!

Welcome Speech, New Students, Boston Conservatory, by Dr. Karl Paulnack, Director of the Music Division

September 1, 2004

"One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-- she said, "you're wasting your SAT scores!" On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for the prisoners and guards of the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-even from the concentration camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."...

...From this and other experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the Nazi camps and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

Happy Halloween Flaustenbach

2009-10-31T08:37:00.000-07:00

A hungry crow feats on eyeballs on the way to the studio...

Igor warms up the piano...

Students await Flaustenbach's appearance...

FLAUSTENBACH ARRIVES!

Hiistoric Flaustenbach Recording Found!

2009-10-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

A primitive recording has been found of Mildred Irene Tomsheck's playing of the theme of Heinrich Wilhelm Flaustenbach's "MIT Variations" which he wrote for her in the 19th century. Click on "MIT Variations" or on Mildred Irene Tomsheck to hear the recording.

Clearly Flaustenbach was a genius with electricity! See also: electrified piano mistake corrector.

What remains of Mildred...

Insanity and Music

2009-10-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

There is no doubt in my mind that Flaustenbach's brain worked differently from other musicians. Of course almost any pianist is a little crazy, but there are degrees!

Instruments of instruction on the piano - including the octopus light treatment - the different-colored arms of the lamp envelope the student, creating a warm, yet uncomfortable embrace. Correct posture is absolutely essential!

Igor, Flaustenbach's lab assistant, demonstrates the electric finger rats. Perfect for practicing Hanon and other composers of torturous, tedious hand exercises...!

The Flaustenbach Story Continues

2009-10-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

While Flaustenbach haunts my studio...strange things occur. One day sheet music began appearing on the walls.

Perhaps this is an explanation... from the "Wikipedia article" at http://tr.im/flaust ...

His father, Heinrich Johann Ludwig Flaustenbach (author of Harpsichords of Middle Europe – A Complete Taxonomy) was also a music educator and scholar, as well as an experimenter in the non-traditional use of musical scores. The elder Flaustenbach is perhaps best known for his unsuccessful early 19^th-century attempts to use pages from oversized oratorio scores of German High Baroque composers as cheap wallpaper for the homes of lower-middle class German families.

It is believed that the imposition of reams and reams of musical wallpaper in Flaustenbach’s earliest environs may have had a significant formative impact on young Heinrich Wilhelm, and had a causal effect on some of the more remarkably unfortunate episodes that would mark his adult life.

And like all good dead musicians --- he's no longer decomposing! In the PianoSmith MadLab, Flaustenbach has started to write "The Bell Cantata". Does the bell toll for you?

Flaustenbach's Mottoes

2009-10-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

It is important to set the correct atmosphere for learning. Posters and signs in music studio have achieved this purpose for generations. Flaustenbach had adapted MadLab posters for his own unique purposes...

The fine print reads..."Children Should be Seen Practicing, Not Heard... Therefore, in this studio, only the works of SCHubert, SCHumann, SCHopin, and SCHaminade shall be played"

We all know that "acid" rock melts a pianists fingers!

The "electrified" piano was one of Flaustenbach's great "flashes" of inspiration. It also explains why his lab assistant is so twitchy.

One of Flaustenbach's more outlandish ideas was to force groups of students to practice all of their instruments in the same place, at the same time. According to the Wikipedia article on Flaustenbach, this had incendiary results:

One of his very few published papers, “On the Efficacy of Simultaneous Practicing of Various and Several Musical Instruments by Multiple Students” (1831) led to a vociferous debate (which nearly devolved into fisticuffs among the brawnier musicians in attendance) at the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria, and is thought to be responsible for the strict isolation of students from one another while practicing on their instruments today...

And my personal favorite...

this simultaneous homage to Bach and Oppenheimer reflects one of Flaustenbach's experiments - which accidentally provided a century's worth of power for his future mad laboratory creations...!

Dr. Flaustenbach Has Taken Over My Piano Studio

2009-10-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard of Heinrich Wilhelm Flaustenbach, the 19th Century German Music Pedagogue, I suggest you click on his name and read David Saslav's story about Flaustenbach now. Fascinating practice tips, such as "Practice Makes Permanent Scars" and other gems from a life experimenting with how to get the worst out of students.

For some reason, Flaustenbach has risen from his place of eternal (not so much) rest to HAUNT my studio....

At the entrance to the PianoSmith Mad Lab where Flaustenbach has taken up residence, is "Mildred Irene Tomsheck" Flaustenbach's beloved student for whom he wrote the "MIT Variations". She died while trying to perfect this most difficult work. Flaustenbach had her remains glittered to honor her dedication to his piano methods.

Flaustenbach developed potions to increase memory function, speed of fingers, and mental and physical stamina at the keyboard. Careful...drinking and piano playing may be fatal!

If you did not practice in Flaustenbach's studio...you would be labeled a "RECALCITRANT" student and put into a jar!

Flaustenbach will demonstrate many of teaching methods with his Lab Assistant on Saturday, October 31, 2009, 1-4 PM in San Francisco. Come if you dare...

Practice Tip Number Seven

2009-10-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

Slow vs Fast Practice
Notes from Dr. Helen Marlais' Lecture at the MTAC Convention / July 2009

This is the piano version of what your trainer at the gym suggests you do while working out on the treadmill.

Play a passage three times slowly -- and really do play slowly, then once more, immediately, at full tempo.

If the piece is long, use this method for individual sections -- playing an entire movement of a Beethoven Sonata in this way could drive a person to really hate practicing, which would be counter-productive.

Since the ultimate goal is to play well and enjoy your repertoire, all of these tips will make your practice time very efficient and manageable. Tip number seven is also great for solving a tricky measure or any difficult passage in a longer piece.

Practice Tip Number 6

2009-10-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

Practice Tip Number 6: EIGHT (8) Times to Perfection!

This one is a killer.

One measure - 8 times perfectly;
One passage - 8 times perfectly;
One phrase - 8 times perfectly;
One section- 8 times perfectly;
One page- 8 times perfectly;
One movement- 8 times perfectly; then
An entire piece - - 8 times perfectly!

Thanks to Dr. Helen Marlais for this practice gem.

Dr. Marlais' Practice Tip Number Five

2009-10-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

Impulse Practice

This is my "go to" practice method for almost every piece. I first learned this technique from Eliane Lust. This method moves you through difficult passages beat by beat.

Basically it works this way:

Start with a difficult passage (leaps, scale runs, tricky turns, etc.)
With the first note and/or chord of the first beat of the passage held down, think about what comes next in the beat, but don't move your hand or play it yet. Check carefully to make sure that the hand, arm, and fingers are in the exact right position to begin the passage.
As soon as you have thought out where to move next, play up to the next beat as quickly as possible, but not beyond.
If you miss notes - do the same transition again.
Sometimes you may only be able to play up to the half beat in one move, depending on the difficulty of the passage.
You may also need to do this work hands alone, then repeat the above impulse practice steps "hands together".

Repeat the above transition until one beat is perfect, then move to the next and repeat the above.

The next step is to put multiple beats together (from beat to beat to beat) until you have the entire passage up to tempo and mastered.

As you might have guessed, impulse practice is related to muscle memory practice; after practicing a passage with the impulse method, you most definitely have developed muscle memory for that passage.

Practice Tip Number 4

2009-10-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

Practice Tip Number 4 from Dr. Helen Marlais' 2009 MTAC Conference Lecture

Develop Muscle Memory!

Practice slowly. The only way for the "muscles" to remember is to imprint the actions slowly.

Don't let you mind drift.

Think about how the keys feel as you depress them.
Look at where your arm is in relation to your wrist and fingers: are you moving across you body, are you moving in parallel or contrary motion: is every part in alignment - are you moving without pain, without twisting, is the hand and the arm moving as a unit, etc.?
In scale passages - activate each finger in the passage by trying to get exactly the same sound on each note.
Memorize the patterns (sequences, motives, themes, etc.)
Listen, listen, listen to the sounds you are making.
Think vertically and horizontally (melodically and harmonically)

Unit practice.

I wouldn't try to play the whole piece (unless it is under two minutes) this way.
Take one measure, one line, one phrase, one page and really concentrate.
This is difficult practice, but very efficient practice.
About five (5) minutes a day will garner results.

I worked this way on Chopin's Butterfly Etude and learned the piece in 28 days with only 10 minutes of practice a day. It works!

And don't forget this practice gem while developing muscle memory: PRACTICE MAKES PERMANENT!

Oh and by the way, one of my teachers told me that "muscle memory" is the first to go with nerves when performing, so never rely on muscle memory as a memory trick. Grrrrrrrreat!

Practice Tip Number 3

2009-09-28T09:48:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Dr. Helen Marlais for these tips!

Number 3: Phrasing

This seems like an obvious tip, but how often I forgot to think of the long line while immersed in the minutiae of each measure.

1. Find the phrases: if marked easy - if not, play through and number the measures until you find the beginning of each phrase. Always use pencil as sometimes mistakes are made or you change your mind about which measures make up the phrase. Then count of the number of measures in each phrase - some pieces will have phrases with an even number of measures (4 bars in each phrase for example) and others will have quite irregular numbers of measures (like Bach). Play the piece - thinking about how to shape each phrase so that the composer's intent is clear.

2. Once you hear the long line of the melody - then practice over the bar line to phrase correctly.

3. Look at phrases versus articulation - articulation happens at the end of the phrase, but also with the phrase.

4. This process is helpful to begin to see the structure of the piece. And,

5. For flow ---- seeing/hearing the big picture.

It might seem like this is something to do later in the practice regimen. I thought so, and I often practice impulse and other ways first, but I'm beginning to see the value of looking at phrasing early in the practice process. I always tell my students not to wait to put in the dynamics and articulation. I think it is so difficult to add later and expression is a vital part of any piece. I once had a teacher who said that if I played a note with the incorrect articulation or dynamic --- I played a wrong note. My finger had pressed down the right key, but in the wrong way. I think that when there is too much focus on the details and not any notice of the long line, then extra work is needed later to develop the long line. Not to mention the crucial smooth crossing of the bar lines so that the piece flows beautifully and expressively.

Practice Tip Number 2

2009-09-24T09:49:00.001-07:00

The next tip is: Procrastination....KIDDING! (Just a little slow getting to the piano this morning)

Dr. Helen Marlias' Tip Number 2.

Blocking - creating vertical harmony

This is one of my favorite tips. Finding chord patterns in music and then playing them as a block chord. Not only does it help to establish what the harmony is for a given passage, but puts the notes quickly into your fingers. It is also helpful for leaps. I practice this way all of the time and I also show my students how to block passages in their pieces. A most useful way to practice.

Daily Practice Tip

2009-09-23T14:00:00.001-07:00

I attended one of Dr. Helen Marlais' workshops at the MTAC conference this past summer. I thought instead of posting all of her tips in one email, I post them daily.

Tip Number 1:

Play - Prepare

For me this means to be aware of where you are in a piece and where you need to go...for the next note, phrase, theme, section, movement, next piece, etc. Dr. Marlais specifically mentioned this technique for practicing leaps. When I practice leaps, I

1. look at the keyboard for the shortest distance between the leaps (which interval is the smallest part of the leap);

2. stay on the first note of the leap for a long time until I've mentally prepared where on the keyboard I need to leap to - then I leap as fast as possible and try to land in the correct place. If I've mentally prepared and correctly visualized the key/chord/octave pattern in my head of the jump - I rarely miss; and

3. have fun by leaping to just get the gesture and to measure the distance of the leap.

For example, if I need to leap from a "C chord" in the middle of the piano to the lowest "C chord" on the piano...I'd play a five finger cluster in the middle of the keyboard and then leap as fast as possible to the bottom of the keyboard and play a finger cluster where eventually I have to play a chord. As soon as that is easy...I'd play the chord in the middle of the piano and then a cluster at the bottom of the keyboard. Then once that was easy...I'd play the chord in the middle of the piano and the chord at the bottom of the keyboard. Success!

All of the pieces I'm playing this Sunday - have really challenging leaps. Believe me, I've been using all of these techniques over the past several weeks.

Also for my concert preparation this Sunday - I'm using the play-prepare tip for pacing myself to play for 45 minutes in one stretch. Flexing my mental muscles--- as I have the technical, expressive and imaginative aspects of the works in place --- in order to pace myself to have enough energy for the demands of each piece. I'm "leaping" from one piece/one mood to another piece/mood. Just as challenging as leaping from note to note.

Moon Music

2009-09-11T08:16:00.001-07:00

The Moon is now making music! : Moon Music

You may have to be a little patient for this to load in:

http://wms.selene.jaxa.jp/selene_sok/moonbell/moonbell_en.html

But notice how the satellite carves out an orbit, and the music is composed based on the surface height being passed over at that moment! Also try "Free Scratch" which allows you to play a single note (click the mouse) or an elongated sweeping melody (click-drag over the moon's surface). How cool is that? The music is eerie and yet kind of self-consistent in a mid-20th century kind of way!

R.I.P. Piano

2009-08-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

The Piano has had some distressing press of late...

In June the Los Angeles Times reported that the piano has lost its status in US homes replaced by the guitar (this news was also reported with great sadness at the recent Music Teacher's of California conference in Santa Clara) - read the entire article below:

The piano's status in U.S. living rooms is declining - Los Angeles Times

The July 2009 BBC Music Magazine published a story "Hammer Horrors! It shouldn't happen to a piano...Fifteen tear-inducing examples of utterly beastly keyboard maltreatment" with some of my favorite examples such as:

14: the MIT students dropping a piano off Baker House to prove the gravity works (great video of the first piano drop on You Tube)
10: being eaten by your piano (in the Japanese horror film "Hausu" Melody is munched by her grand piano fingers first) --- I don't really blame the piano - what piano wouldn't want to eat a "melody"?
9 and 13: La Monte Young (I've the pleasure of working with La Monte) says to feed and water the piano in performance or try to push it through a wall.

and many, many more very funny or horrifying examples. To see the examples from the magazine go to:

www.bbcmusicmagazine.com

So, I guess it is rather serendipitous that I'd see the piano here on a recent trip to Texas...

Photos from a Tyler, Texas cemetery.

I Love Trail-Mix

2009-07-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

I've been asked to be an alpha tester for a new file organizing and sharing software program created by Brennan Gaunce called Trail-Mix. It has changed my life on-line! For example: my blog posts are now so much easier to create. Every time I have a topic or idea I want to blog about, I file it in a Trail-Mix Activity Folder under notes, web links, files or pictures. Then when I want to blog about that topic, I simply open the Activity Folder and drag the content to Blogger's New Post window. So simple! I love this product. All bloggers - check it out. It runs as a Firefox plug-in.

The 10 Reasons Why I Love Trail-Mix!

1. I love saying the name: "Trail-Mix!"
2. Trail-Mix and Firefox make for speedy web searches
3. Sharing trip information with my family: all the details are in one place, in a Trail-Mix Activity Folder
4. The Trail-Mix features: notes, files, pictures, web links all filed under a specific Activity Folder
5. I love "squirreling away" little nuggets of information in Activity Folders
6. Three words: click and drag
7. No more searching around the Internet for pages to hyperlink (In what AOL folder did I put that "favorite" link?)
8. Blogging is greatly simplified - ideas for posts are stored in one place
9. I can drag from Trail-Mix directly to Blogger, skipping the tiresome old way of copying and pasting links, files, text, pictures
10. I think that Trail-Mix makes my PC think it's a Mac!

PS: I also use this application when I'm creating itineraries for travel --- especially my "ArtTrek" itineraries which are extremely detailed. For example: the "ArtTrek" to Chicago last May was created using Trail Mix. The Trail-Mix application saved me so much time that I didn't need to rush my packing.

Steinway Art Cases

2009-07-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

1908 Steinway Piano / Model A

One of the things I love about my 1908 Steinway is its beautiful art case. (More photos of my piano in my 9/30/08 post.)

While searching for digital piano recommendations yesterday, I happened upon Steinway's site with some of their art case options. All were beautiful, but here are a few of my favorites.

By Dale Chihuly
Model D
8'11.75"

In keeping with Mr. Chihuly's reputation for avant-garde glass artistry, Olympia - Steinway by Chihuly breaks dramatic new ground in the long history of Steinway art case pianos. Olympia - Steinway by Chihuly, unveiled at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, reflects the abstract expression of wintery mountain forests juxtaposed with the bright Promethean colors idealized by the fire of the Olympic spirit. The piano's many extraordinary features include a clear glass piano desk, and a translucent glass top, the first ever designed for a Steinway piano.

Now, wouldn't Chihuly's piano fit in beautifully at Ashley Lake? (Future site of the piano studio at Ashley Lake, 13 miles West of Kalispell, Montana. Architect Jeff Sheldon)

By Steinway Master Craftsmen
Model B

This remarkable instrument is an identical re-creation of the piano Cole Porter played in his Waldorf Astoria residence, and on which he wrote many of his best loved songs. Skillfully re-created by Steinway master craftsmen in figured mahogany, the design features double Empire-style legs, intricate hand-carvings and decorative paintings to beautifully embody the passion and creative spirit of this great American composer. Mr. Porter's original Steinway was created in 1907, and today distinguishes the lobby of the famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan.

I've sat at Cole Porter's Piano at the Waldorf. They won't let you play it --- there is only one woman in all of NYC who is allowed to play it. She managed to get her name in Porter's will as the caretaker of the instrument. At least that is what the bellman told us.

By Joseph Sidorowicz

The design of the newest Steinway art-case piano Grove Park pays tribute to the Arts & Crafts Movement.

There is a delicate and deliberate balance of both architectural and furniture design elements that are incorporated into the overall theme of Grove Park. The striking figure of American Quarter sawn White Oak veneers is used throughout this unique design. The lid of the piano has a fine ebonized stringing inlaid around its perimeter as well as a geometric quadrant of inlaid Malachite, a natural stone material with a greenish hue, at the front corners of the lid. This same Malachite motif is repeated at the upper portion of each leg and once again on the bench. All of the hardware is finished in an antique bronze, which contrasts with the mellow golden oak.
The handcraftsmanship of the various components such as the legs, lyre, music desk, and bench all utilize classic mortise and tenon joinery. The centerpiece of Grove Park is the music desk which features a leaded glass panel depicting a majestic oak tree with outstretched limbs reaching across the horizon with the sunset in the background peaking through between its branches. The bench is designed in a duet configuration. It has a low back design and a repetition of vertical spindles and is capped by a horizontal top rail in the spirit of the classic Morris chair design. There are two leather upholstered bench cushions that are inset into the bench top.

This piano would look great in a Maybeck house in California or in a Frank Lloyd Wright! The Robie House (below / view of the front of the house from the street) in Chicago will do.

Frank Lloyd Wright was an accomplished pianist and always had a piano in his home. His designs were influenced by the Arts and Craft movement - especially the Roycroft Community in New York. I think he would approve of Joseph Sidorowicz's art case.

Piano Envy

2009-06-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

Innocently enough, some of my students contacted me today about upgrading their digital piano and wanted some advice. How were they to know it would unleash the beast within known as PIANO ENVY! I've found the most amazing pianos (not all are digital.) My lottery ticket numbers are: 16, 18, 30, 36, 37 and the MEGA Number is: 3. Keep your fingers crossed!

I'm so in love with this little gem. When my 1908 Steinway goes to Montana to reside at Ashley Lake...I think this would be the perfect replacement. It's a Yamaha Modus digital piano.

and in yellow - so adorable! I'm reconsidering my master plan...maybe the Steinway stays in California and this goes to the lake...

This is Yamaha's AdvantGrand Piano - such an awesome name. The speakers are in the top of the piano, so the sound reverberates on the lid like an acoustic piano wood. Sub woofers are used for the bast notes.

I love the red interior.

And for more red...there is Elton John's Red piano also by Yamaha.

A few years ago I saw a 9' clear Lucite art case for a Yamaha digital grand...I can't find it now, but I'm looking. I think it was around $35K.

And this is the most amazing of all....(not digital, but WHO CARES!)

Schimmel's K 208 Pegasus Oval piano. OMG! It is only $200K. Lenny Kravitz has one. (Hmmmm so I just need one hit single to get one...KIDDING! I know that I would have to co-write, co-produce, play multiple instruments, etc. to be like Lenny!)

More later...I have the Steinway Art Case series to explore.

8 Hands

2009-06-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

Anne, Jeremy, John and I gathered at John and Juli's place in Napa to play music arranged for Eight Hands (many editions by John Poole). We read through works by Haydn, Schubert, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven...

some of the scores...

John gets a note, Jeremy gets a rest...

I get the notes, Anne gets to rest...

John and Jeremy

Anne and me at the piano

Jasmine takes a nap. Must be a "slow and quiet" movement...

Thanks Juli for taking the photos!

Playing Bach to Lose Weight

2009-06-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

I often complain that I spend hours practicing and it is such hard physical work, yet I never lose an ounce of weight. Now I see, courtesy, of You Tube that if I had this piano, I'd be oh so trim and still be able to play Bach!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG8Et5Ee3o4&NR=1

I'm on You Tube...

2009-06-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

...just an excerpt of our piece - 12 Downloadable Ringtones - for piano and cell phone.... We performed at the Walden Alum Composer's Forum on Saturday, May 30 at the San Francisco Girl's Chorus rehearsal room. Our clip on the YouTube video excerpt is about halfway through this compendium: http://tr.im/alumforum09

Photos from the rehearsal...

David giving me the cue to start with the cell phone...

you can barely see the cell phone in David's hand, but it is there!

If you'd like to have our compositions on your cell phone...visit Renditions Music to download a ringtone for your phone.

New Century Chamber Orchestra

2009-05-16T10:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks to our generous friend, violinist - Dawn Harms, last night we went to the Shadows and Light concert of the New Century Chamber Orchestra in Palo Alto. The concert was wonderful and we met Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (David's childhood crush) backstage after the show. David's father (Isidor Saslav) when he was the concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony first performed with Nadia when she was 13! Her passion and drive add even more sparkle to a Bay Area organization brimming with youthful energy and enthusiasm no matter how old the players.

Links to the evening pictures...
http://renditionsmusic.com/pix/afterncco1.jpg
http://renditionsmusic.com/pix/afterncco2.jpg

Mother's Day Concerts

2009-05-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

Besides sending our Mother's greetings on Sunday, May 10, David and I performed seperately in the evening.

My concert was a lovely tribute to women composers. I played NGC 2997 by Ann Callaway. My favorite comment about my playing was from Violinist Carol Braves. She said I "owned that piece". I'm pleased that I played NGC 2997 pretty well, as Ann was in the audience! Carol and Dr. Allen George Biester (the organizer, organist and pianist) played "Sonatine for Violin and Piano" by Germaine Tailleferre (the only female composer of the famous French group Les Six). Their performance was delightful and brought out all of the charm of Tailleferre's lovely work.

David sang at the tribute concert for the poet Bernie Weiner. Works were written by several Bay Area composers (including the poet's sons); David sang works by our dear friend Ed Dierauf as well as two works of another local composer, Randy Craig.

Brief Bio for Bernie: Bernard Weiner, a poet and playwright, has written numerous fantasias about the Bush Administration ( http://www.crisispapers.org/weinerpubs.htm#fantasies ). A Ph.D. in government & international relations, he has taught at various universities, worked as a writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers.

Khetri's Sweet 16

2009-05-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

For my niece's birthday, sweet sixteen on May 12, I made her a recording of Bella's Lullaby from her favorite movie - Twilight. The movie is based on the books by Stephenie Meyer.

Listen to Bella's Lullaby...

I also made a banner. Sweet 16 on one side...

and Khetri on the other side.

Bach's Blessings

2009-05-03T12:42:00.002-07:00

As the great cellist Pablo Casals said, "Playing Bach everyday is a blessing on your house".

I was greatly blessed on May 2nd to play two works by Bach from the French Suite, No. 6 in E Major at Tamara Loring's master class. I played the Allemande and the Sarabande and it was some of my best playing. For once, I was relaxed and focused.

In preparation for the class, here is my "rendition" of the Allemande (click on Allemande to hear the music) recorded April 29, 2009.

And for fun a "rendition" of the Allemande from April 2008.

Nelson Freire

2009-04-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday night I had the privilege of hearing Nelson Freire live at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. WOW - what a pianist! What technique! There is a lot of information about him on his official site. And I also found the Decca site to be very interesting. As to the performance on Saturday night...

First there was a change to the program. Freire was scheduled to play Mozart's Sonata in A Major K 331 (the piece he incidentally made his debut with at age 5!). However, he played Schumann's Opus 2, Papillons instead, and paired it with Brahms' Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor (Opus 2 No. 2). I've studied Papillons (as recently as January 2009) and I found Freire's Schumann playing to be brilliant and charming. I felt that he perfectly captured the mood of each little miniature. I so wish I had his octave speed (see my former posts in February on my struggles with octaves), not to mention his dexterity and clarity.

The Brahms was a revelation - strong, passionate playing. I could imagine the young Brahms playing this work for Clara and Robert Schumann, and how they must have swooned upon first hearing it. I could also imagine that if Brahms had matured differently, he would have been a serious rival to Liszt and his school of pyrotechnic piano pieces. All that aside, there was something missing for me in Freire's performance. At certain places where an interpreter could pause for reflection (without changing the rhythm) to create more suspense and drama, it just didn't happen. It was all bravura playing and when required, quiet sensitive lyric playing, but it seemed almost soulless to me. Freire is certainly too good of a musician to "phone in" a performance -- and yet it almost seemed that way to me, as the playing seemed to lack emotional depth.

And this feeling was magnified in his Chopin selections. Freire is famous for his interpretation of the Barcarolle in F#-sharp minor, Opus 60. Really? Not for me. I love this piece, so I'm pretty picky about what I want to hear in an interpretation. The piece didn't breathe. It was as though someone were showing me pictures from their vacation, but instead of lingering over a few choice postcards accompanied by charming anecdotes, they just rushed through the pictures in a perfunctory way. Again, Freire is too good of a musician to not phrase perfectly, hit all of the notes, show a range of dynamics, and so on; however, I kept getting the sense that he's played these works by Chopin so many times that he's almost on autopilot. It's as if he has played these melodies so many times, there is no longer any novelty in the playing.

The Debussy was a delight. Every mood was captured in the selections from the Preludes, Book 1 (he played #4, #5 and #12) and since they were fleeting, charming pieces...they were perfect. I think he is brilliant at miniatures and being able to change moods quickly...but to my ear, there is not a lot of depth to his playing.

Andrew Clements of London's The Guardian, (Friday 23 January 2009) said the following about Freire's Debussy playing:

..."This is Debussy's tonal palette reimagined in much bolder, primary colours; even a study in greys such as the prelude Des Pas sur la Neige seems sharper focused and brighter toned than usual. At his best, though, Freire is totally convincing and his accounts of Le Vent dans la Plaine, La Sérénade Interrompue and especially La Cathédrale Engloutie are unqualifed successes..."

Not surprisingly, Freire's interpretations of fellow Brazillian Villa-Lobos were spectacular. He played Alma Brasileira and Danca do Indio Branco. I especially loved Alma because of the moody and disharmonious opening and closing statements. After the Debussy and the Villa Lobos, I found myself thinking that I'd want to hear Freire play twentieth-century works exclusively (even though I really loved his Papillons).

The audience loved him and brought him back for three encores. I didn't know any of the encores (thanks to my spotty musical education), and he didn't announce what they were, either. Freire is a brilliant pianist and one of the giants of our time. I'm so lucky to have heard him live, but I don't think I'll need to hear him again. In many ways I agree with Andrew Clements (paraphrased) "Freire is more a pianist to be admired than to be loved..."

50 Ways to Spend Your Birthday

2009-04-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

A dear friend turned 50 on April 18 and we gathered in Las Vegas to celebrate. Although Vegas is far from my favorite place, I just couldn't miss this celebration. David and I wrote a parody song to commemorate the occasion.

50 Ways to Do Your Birthday
Lyrics: Melissa Smith and David Saslav
(with apologies to the great Paul Simon)

We know the angst you feel ‘bout reachin’ 50 years
You know it’s really not all bad… just think of all the beers!
We're gonna help you to reduce those tears and fears, with
50 ways to do your birthday

There really is no need for you to envy us, just ‘cuz you’ve –
Reached this milestone age, so far ahead of us,
So, Kim, we'll help you celebrate without much fuss,
There must be 50 ways to do your birthday
50 ways right here in Vegas!

Just take in a show, Bo
Drink some more gin, Wynn
Go Swim in da pool, fool
Forget your age!

Go lay down a flush, Rush
and drink like a big lush
Drop a couple o’ grand, Stan
Forget 5-0!

Get ripped on the Strip, Chip
Watch CIRQUE DU SOLEIL, Ray
Sleep at the Mirage, Rog
Forget your age!

Go soak in a tub, Bub
Get loose with a MASSeuse
Find someone to marry, Harry
Forget 5-0!

It really grieves us all to see you in such pain
We wish there was something we could do to make you young again….
We so appreciated you, oh way back when,
so we'll explain again about the 50 ways...

It seems like none of us will get much sleep tonight…
…but in the morning you'll begin to see the light
We'll wish for you so many blessings on this night
There must be 50 ways to do your Birthday
50 ways right here in Vegas!

Go find a pole and shimmy, Kimmie
Find all of your bliss, Liss
Start ridin’ the wave, Dave
Forget your age

Just head to a spa, Ma
Dress up all fancy, Nancy
Drink one more shot, Scott
Forget 5-0!

Get lost in the mob, Bob
That sure would be swell, Michelle
Get caught with a john, Bon
Forget your age

Shake it and shimmy, Kimmie
Wearin’ somethin’ flimsy
Disturb the peace, Denise
Forget 5-0!

And to hear this masterpiece...arranged and sung by David Saslav
http://renditionsmusic.com/mp3/50Ways.mp3

Piano Blogs

2009-04-02T09:01:00.001-07:00

Today (procrastinating...) I fell prey to the 21st century phenomenon of GOOGLING myself. Good news, my blog appeared first on the list when I googled: Diary of a Pianist! Hooray...now for some other blogs I discovered today...ENJOY!

A blog by a pianist in Oregon. I love the pansies on the piano keys! I've been so impressed with the piano community in Oregon. It is thriving with blogs, performances, the International Piano Festival in Portland, workshops and classes for teachers and pianists throughout the year...I could go on...so unlike the rather moribund piano culture in San Francisco.
http://www.mainlypiano.com/Mainly_Piano/Home.html

An interesting post regarding why music is no longer taught in US public schools (except in RARE cases). As he (Piano Man - not Billy Joel) mentions, he does not flesh out his idea in his blog post, but his thesis is similar to mine about the importance of music and art in society.
http://blogs.anythingpianoco.com/

This is a lovely journal about playing the piano and music examples are written out! (I have to take the time to learn how to do this for my blog posts!)
http://www.pianojournal.com/

This link is not for a piano blog, but I include it because my husband is related to William Kapell. I love Kapell's playing --- his bravura playing never lacks lyricism nor soulfulness.
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/21/arts/music-notes-diary-of-a-gifted-pianist.html

I think I've posted blog entries like this! (I love the "bad pianist practice diary" title. I thought about naming my blog: Diary of a Mad Pianist, but thought that was to derivative and maybe could become a self fulfilling prophesy!)
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/06/kitan-on-the-keys-a-bad-pianists-practice-diary-1/

Happy Spring!

2009-03-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

Spring has arrived by date, but not by weather. It may look sunny and lovely in San Francisco, however, the view is deceiving. The wind is COLD! Time to stay indoors and practice. I'm working on Ann Callaway's NGC 2997 to play for my Piano Salon group on March 22 and then to play for the composer on March 27. About NGC 2997:

NGC 2997, in the constellation Antlia, is a spiral galaxy 1,500 light years distant from Earth. Ann Callaway’s 1994 depiction of this amazing galactic apparition lasts over seven minutes, and uses pianistic effects such as rolling arpeggios and crossing of hands to evoke NGC 2997’s luster. - David Saslav, 2005 Program Note

I've performed this piece many times over the past decade. I'll be playing the 2009 revised edition on May 10 at a concert in Oakland, California on a program of works by women, performed by women. I'll post a sound clip soon.

Life Lessons at the Piano

2009-03-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

I heard today that the Baltimore Opera is filing for bankruptcy (Oh Obama, where is their bailout money?) and the hue and cry commenced regarding that the arts are just not important...we must have jobs, etc! Of course I agree that jobs and the economy are important, but an opera company employs many people...highly skilled people who have dedicated many years to their craft and are at the top of their profession. Their livelihoods are just as important as a CEO, stockbroker, or bank manger. No one ever seems to cry over lost jobs in the arts. That's sad especially when to my knowledge I don't know of any opera singer who ever defrauded the public of millions of dollars...unlike a CEO, stockbroker or bank manager...This brings me to what I really wanted to say about my life working in the arts as pianist, teacher and arts administrator.

Music has always been a part of my life, even when for a decade after college I wasn't earning a living as a pianist and teacher. Through my studies at the piano, I've learned to:

pay attention to details no matter how small;
move forward no matter what happens;
recover from mistakes;
exhibit grace under pressure;
be fully in the present while looking towards the future;
value hard work and tenacity;
respect the past;
recognize genius; and to
see beauty in all forms.

I may have learned these lessons in life some other way, but I'm sure that the study of music ingrained these lessons into the fabric of my being. Once an interviewer asked me what were the rewards of a life dedicated to the piano. I answered that anytime I want to, I can go to the piano and play a Beethoven Sonata. What I was trying to say is that to be able to bring to life a great masterwork of the piano literature is to reach the top level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs ("Self-Actualization needs - realising personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.") I continue every day to seek out self-fulfillment in every aspect of my life --- music has taught me the value of this endeavor.

After my student recital on March 1st, one of my students wanted to quit taking lessons. I was surprised as this student played very well on the recital and performed a piece that was challenging and above her piano "grade" level. When talking with her about why she was unhappy with lessons, she said that younger students were in the same grade books as she was and some younger students were even ahead of her. She found this to be upsetting. I so understand where she was coming from, it is so hard not to compare ourselves to others, especially when they appear more successful.

I reassured her that no one knows what level of lesson books she is currently studying as her piece was not in any "lesson" books, but from a book of piano solos by contemporary composers writing pieces to be performed in concerts. I also said that the "level" she is currently working on isn't important to anyone except herself and the goals that she and I have set for her piano study. I also told her that isn't it interesting that we acknowledge our peers who are ahead of us and appear to be better. All throughout our lives so many people will be more accomplished, smarter, better and faster no matter what field we are in. When I'm striving ahead I only see how far I have to go and I forget to look at where I've been and how much I've accomplished. I told my student that this is a hard, but valuable lesson to learn. I said that no one else walks in her shoes and only she knows how much she has accomplished and now much more she will want to accomplish. Learning to value her own journey, acknowledging and respecting her own unique gifts and talents, and being at peace with her choices (in my student's case, she practices only the minimum required and I pointed out that the students who are ahead of her practice a great deal more than she does!) will go a long way towards creating a healthy, happy life. Not to say that she shouldn't strive to be a better pianist as that is why we work together. My student has decided to continue taking lessons.

In my former life as an arts administrator, I worked hard to bring art to the public. It was always an uphill battle. Raising money was the main part of my job no matter what position I held (board member, executive or development director, secretary, or assistant.) To say that raising money was gruelling and often demoralizing is beside the point (it was!) The difficulty of the task only strengthened my desire to show that arts make a difference.

Sometimes they make the biggest difference by their absence. During the 80s to the mid 90s, we fund raisers were always trying to show that the arts have economic value by enhancing other businesses such as tourism, restaurants, or neighborhood revitalization; or that students would demonstrate greater learning ability though higher test scores if art was part of the curriculum; or that somehow art was going to change your life if only you'd just come to the performance or museum and just experience it. I don't ever remember trying to sell the public or private sector on what an absence of art in our communities would be like. Now scientists are discovering that there may be an evolutionary reason for music, social theorists are suggesting that "ugly" environments lead to nihilistic and violent behaviors, and that the stories we tell ourselves as a culture (theatre, art in museums) determine our successful survival (Jared Diamond makes an excellent case for this theory in his book Collapse). In other words, art is vital! So to borrow a phrase from my fund raising days...now more than ever, a strong case should be made for what happens if we don't have art, music, theatre, and beautiful public spaces in our communities.

Why Music from the Economist.com
Is music the most important thing we ever did ? Music, development and evolution
Northern Ill. University: Was the Killer Crazy, or the Campus Hopeless?

Derailed by a Page Turner

2009-03-09T09:51:00.000-07:00

Last night I performed with the Fortnightly Club of Palo Alto a work by Nancy Bloomer Deussen. The piece, The Message, written for choir and small ensemble, was arranged for piano and choir for this performance. I was very excited to perform this piece and worked very hard to play it to the best of my ability. The page turns in the piece were difficult. I had cut and pasted my part to minimize the page turns, but there was great concern that I would turn too many pages or have some problem with the page turns. A turner was found for me at the last minute. I was uncomfortable with using a turner, but decided that it would be best to have one so I could look at the conductor (my music was interfering a little with my sight lines).

ONCE AGAIN I LEARNED ---- TRUST YOUR GUT! The page turner was a disaster. He made three incorrect page turns and the first wrong turn during my solo introduction. I, personally, am never more nervous than when I have to turn pages for a performance (including my own). Publishers and typesetters of music should really take the turns into account and then rarely do...also I can't wait for the day that pages are turned electronically so there will be no more human errors (just like computers have eliminated humor errors!)

I must put aside my anger and disappointment as the "message" in Nancy's piece was about love. So I forgive my page turner, I forgive myself for not trusting that I could turn the pages myself and I forgive the typesetter for creating the page turning issues in the first place.

It just wasn't the night for page turning. The duo pianists who played before us were turning their own pages and had a horrible page turning problem which caused them to have to stop the piece. It just goes to show that anything can happen in a performance and you have to just roll with it.

Student Recital

2009-03-04T21:11:00.000-08:00

A photo of the invitation to the recital on Crane stationary (note the bees on the background)

I made this collage for the front cover of the program. The notes for the Butterfly Etude are in the "vegetable beds" and soon will be "harvested".

And this was the back page...we are promoting turning front yards, back yards, vacant lots, etc. into gardens, but the best garden of all would be one on the White House Lawn. Check out: eattheview.org to find out more about this campaign. My students received actual vegetable seeds as party favors to help with this effort.

The Main Reception Table with fresh strawberries, carrot cakes in the shape of cabbages, carrots and radishes with chocolate bees, butterflies, and ladybugs.

This recital was a production of PianoSmith/MadLabs 2009

We Planted Notes in September

2009-03-04T10:16:00.001-08:00

We planted notes in September
So that in March, songs would bloom.

My student recital was held on March 1 at Calvary Presbyterian Church Chapel in San Francisco at 2:00 PM. Many students chose to play pieces with a "garden" theme (any song with a bug, vegetable, rain, flower, spring, garden, etc. in its title). Here are some pictures of the reception before the "locusts" (the reception food seems to always to demolished in record time) hit it...

The Garden Reception

Vegetable seeds for students to plant...chocolate caramel notes on tray to the right.

Beverages and more (Butterfly lollies, chocolate bugs, chocolate notes)

The "vegetable" cakes!

I Did It!

2009-03-02T10:30:00.001-08:00

I did it! I performed Chopin's Butterfly Etude for my students, but I'm not going to post the recording. I had too many note mistakes in the middle section - where I lost focus. That aside several of my goals for this project were met.

1. I played the piece everyday for 10 minutes for a month (well really just 28 days, since the month I started the project was February)
2. I had a disciplined approach to learning the piece which I followed.
3. While performing the piece I did not rush, played musically and nailed the ending.

I really love this piece and will continue to work on it...I think for 10 minutes a day as part of my technical practice.

Peformance Today

2009-03-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

Today is the Day! I'm going to play Chopin's Butterfly Etude after practicing for 10 minutes a day for the past month. I must confess that over the last few days...I've played the work for more than 10 minutes....nerves...

(STAR Branch...Handmade by Bee)...Today I will be a Star!

Some thoughts regarding the last few weeks of practicing. I haven't written about my process so much because I've been PRACTICING!

1. I noticed again that sleep does help with learning. (See my post on October 10, 2007 on Tempo. I note the science behind learning in your sleep).) In the Butterfly Etude there is a passage where the left hand chords only changed a little and when pared with the right hand melodic line created a great deal of dissonance. This passage gave me a great deal of difficulty. I paused every time I made it to that phrase. Tamara Loring told me to physically feel the the chords and the dissonances. That helped, but didn't solve the problem. So one morning before I was completely awake and was lucid dreaming, I saw that the pattern of the white and black keys in the chords were mirror images of each other. I saw clearly in my mind the chords:

First chord:
(white, white, black)
Second chord
(black, white, black),
Third chord
(black, white, black) and the
Final chord in the series
(black, white, white)

At my practice that day I played that section with great ease. Problem solved!

2. Also, the maxim that several teachers have tired to teach me EVERYTHING YOU NEED IS THE SCORE (paraphrased, but I hope you get the meaning) is true. The same passage above had one more element that I needed to never miss it (at least in practice) and that was to observe the accent marks in the right hand...by emphasising the dissonance as Chopin indicates, the ear and hand agree and mistakes are not possible.

3. I did enjoy listening to so many interpretations of the work. I had lots of artistic material to draw my own conclusions. My version at this date is lyrical, not too fast, with an emphasis on the horizontal melody line and dynamics.

So now I must play.

DIVA Moments

2009-02-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

My friend Barbara Brandt is leaving the Bay Area for a job in Washington DC...She is not a musician, but she has been President of a National Labor organization and certainly has had her "diva" moments. I made this card for her goodbye party...

(the caption reads: Diva - You Don't Need A Stage To Be One!)

Actually almost every woman I know (and a few men) have had their DIVA moments. For example, check out the You Tube postings of my husband singing art songs by the French composer Henri Duparc

http://www.youtube.com/dsaslav

I've played these piece by Duparc with David in the past. Now we rarely appear together on stage (because of off stage DIVA battles). Luckily for him, he has found an excellent pianist, Seth Stafford, to collaborate with...watch for some of Seth's DIVA gestures at the piano - they never detract from the singer, but they are pianistic DIVA moves none the less!

I'm sure that someday soon my DIVA moment will come...I'd better go practice for it!

A Week's Progress

2009-02-10T08:48:00.001-08:00

After one week of 10 minutes a day on the Chopin Etude (Opus 25, No. 9) I've

1. learned all of the notes,
2. can play the left hand at quarter note equals 90,
3. have memorized 12 bars of the music, and
4. can play hands together at half tempo / quarter note equals 55.

Areas of concern...

1. the middle section is not as good as the beginning and end sections,
2. I keep missing notes in the left hand at the end of the piece / I'm having trouble playing the 5ths and 6ths when my arm has to cross in front of my body and the octave jumps from "G Flat" to "D Flat" that descend at the end...I keep missing the notes (I want to put the third of the chord "B Flat" into the octave progression), and
3. I'm already in a panic about the tempo!

This week I plan to

1. start in the the middle of the work,
2. continue working on the left hand alone,
3. continue memorizing one measure at a time,
4. review, review, review what I've learned so far, and
5. only play at half tempo or slower, but move into position quickly

I'm going to also try some of the techniques I was exposed to at the Portland International Festival from my participation in the workshops lead by pianist Frederic Chiu . He suggests spending a great deal of time with the score and thinking about the piece away from the piano. I'm very interested in his program "Deeper Piano Studies" and I'd like to attend one of his workshops. I'm going to increase my study to 20 minutes this week (10 at the piano / 10 away from the piano) to see if that makes a difference. I'm also listening to as many performers of the piece as possible.

Speed of Octaves

2009-02-06T19:32:00.001-08:00

I'm now in a panic about my right hand octaves...

I found this website regarding playing octaves in Chopin Etudes...It's called "The Truth about Piano Technique and How to Acquire It". If only! I must admit, my eyes glazed over when reading it...

http://www.thefundamentalaction.com/thefundamentalaction.html

and for $100 I could do this...
http://www.pianomap.com/octaves.html

then I found this You Tube video by Edna Golandsky...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwY-pDnmSiE

An excellent reminder on basic techniques showing how to play octaves. (Disclaimer: I've been a student at the Golandsky Institute for two summers, so I've experienced Edna's phenomenal teaching techniques firsthand.)

2009-02-06T19:27:00.000-08:00

Oh No!

2009-02-05T09:56:00.001-08:00

Continuing on the ten minutes of practice a day Chopin Experiment I've hit upon a snag...

Getting the left hand up to tempo wasn't as big of a chore as I thought it was going to be (years of playing stride bass parts finally pays off!), but the right hand octaves up to tempo will present some challenges. What was I thinking? I hope my Butterflies won't be arthritic (ie: slow) on March 1!

Here are some links to YouTube performances that inspire me...

Alicia de Larrocha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ4P8OpVL3E

Maurizio Pollini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i27_BGnB1M0

Dr. Walden Hughes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHHHv83cwXQ

10 minutes a day

2009-02-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

I'm always telling my students that just 10 minutes a day of practice will make all of the difference in their playing. My students do not really believe me, so I decided to prove my theory by learning a Chopin Etude in just 10 minutes a day (so I'm not just saying "do as I say, not as I do", but "do as I say and as I do too"). I will perform the piece for my students on their recital on March 1, 2009.

I began this experiment on February 2, and I've chosen to study Chopin's Etude "The Butterfly" Opus 25, No. 9.

First I slowly read through the piece hands together. Then I began to formulate a practice plan.

For me the left hand part will be more difficult that the right, because of the leaps and there are more notes (!)
1. practice the left hand alone every day
2. bring the left hand up to tempo right away / practice 4 - 8 bars up to tempo

Try not to start at the beginning every day
1. start at the "end" one day, then the "beginning" the next day
2. only work on sections / 4-8 bars a day

Slowly put the hands together
1. I found uncomfortable stretches for my right hand - then because I was slow, I realized that I was not bringing my arm over with my hand
2. Play lightly - sometimes when I'm slow I tend to use too much arm weight / think light butterflies fluttering from note to note

Memorize as I learn
1. I heard about this technique at the Portland Piano Festival last summer (July 2008). It was a tip from pianist Hans Boepple. Learn the first measure and play from memory. When the memory is secure memorize the second measure and then play the first two measures from memory, repeat until the piece is memorized
2. Analyze the harmony / this helps with memory and quick note learning

This is my strategy for this week. By next Monday, all the notes will be learned, the left hand part will be up to tempo, the whole piece will be played hands together at a medium speed, and some parts will be memorized.

More SINfonia

2009-01-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

A pianist must never sin against Bach, please forgive me. Two different takes of Bach's Sinfonia in E Major after my lesson on January 8. On these recordings I was able to better prepare the big leap which was a problem before (I'm going to learn how to show musical examples in my blog, so what I'm talking about will be clearer!), however, the trills are slower and there are note mistakes. It seems to be that to fix one problem...other problems will arise. My piano teacher, Eliane Lust, always says that "for every solution, there is another problem". My quest to fix the problems in my Bach playing (to refrain from sinning) goes on and on and on...

Friday's take one..
http://renditionsmusic.com/Sinfonia-in-E_08-Jan-2009.mp3

Today's take two...
http://renditionsmusic.com/Sinfonia-in-E_09-Jan-2009.mp3

Best Wishes in E Major

2009-01-01T19:25:00.000-08:00

What a better start to the new year then with a tune of Bach's in E Major...the key of joy and good tidings.

http://renditionsmusic.com/sinfonia_in_E.mp3

(The mnemonic to memorize the tune for Bach's Sinfonia in E Major is: "Bach is the greatest composer of all".)

I'm still working with Tamara Loring. I'm trying to understand Baroque keyboard style in order to play Bach with more authority. In this rendition of Bach's E Major Sinfonia I've tried to highlight an articulation on the third beat and to diminuendo the resolutions on suspensions and appoggiaturas . I've been somewhat successful - it appears to me that I am whacking the notes (to much arm weight) rather than just holding the note longer and playing the second note of the resolution softer for the suspension and appoggiaturas and the articulation isn't consistent. There is a large interval in the piece for the right hand where Tamara asked me to show both sides of the interval. I don't think I was successful with her instructions --- there is a large "hole" (no sound) around the interval now, which isn't quite right. I also muffed a few notes...I'll record again soon after my lesson.

NOTE: the last chord is not being played with the damper pedal, but instead I'm using the harpsichord technique of over legato to create the multiple tones.

Snowmen Cards and the New Year

2008-12-31T12:11:00.000-08:00

Snowmen cards gather round to say Happy New Year!

This snowman suggests a delicious punch to ring in the new year.

Take time to make a hot date...

or snuggle up with a delicious hot chocolate.

Best wishes for a toasty and joyous 2009!

FoundArtCards by 2008

My Holiday Tables

2008-12-30T18:03:00.000-08:00

In December we held a party to celebrate the San Francisco premiere of David Saslav's "Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains" for a cappella chorus. The church choir from St. Francis Lutheran Church sang it as part of their Christmas Concert on December 21, 2008.

You may listen to a midi rendition of the piece on our web site at RenditionsMusic.Com . Click on compositions which will take you to the link on the Sibelius Storefront.

We invited friends to join us for our version of a Smorgasbord. We asked guests to bring a favorite holiday food from their culture or childhood to share. The table was loaded with holiday favorites such as (cheese balls from the Betty Crocker Cookbook, salmon mousse, sausage rolls, and orange candy cake were my contributions) Quiche Lorraine, pork and chive dumplings, hot wings, pigs in a blanket, hand beaten biscuits, sweet potato muffins, a red and green salad, gingerbread, and many other sweet treats.

The table awaits the goodies...

I spray painted a cabbage and instead of putting fresh flowers in the center as I originally planned, I put ornament balls...

The table at Christmas (photographed without using the flash - a mistake?)...the napkin rings and butter knives were made from jingle bells. For Christmas Dinner this year - shared with family - I served Cassoulet. I ordered the ingredients from D'Artagnan . This was a great holiday dish as I just assembled the dish early in the morning and then forgot about it until we were ready to eat at 3:00 PM

One place setting. I don't know what the Nutcracker is doing there...I just love the Nutcracker and isn't anything from that classic tale appropriate for this time of year? I should have used the zoom to show the cute reindeer glasses from Pottery Barn.

Holiday Crafts

2008-12-24T21:10:00.000-08:00

This year I made all of the gifts I gave and sent...here are just a few of my products for 2008 including the launch of my LissaLynn's Just Bee line of products. That line joins my other product lines FoundArtCards and Handmade by Bee.

Pickled Carrots for Thanksgiving

Cucumber Melon Soy Travel Candles

Hazelnut Coffee Soy Candles

The bath salts...I had other packaging for the bath salts, but it looks like I didn't get a photo before shipping...oh well...

"Sex on the Beach" Soy Candles in stemless martini glasses. Sent with the drink recipe...

1 1/2 oz vodka

1/2 oz peach schnapps

2 oz cranberry juice

2 oz orange juice

Add vodka and peach schnapps to a highball glass over ice. Fill with equal measures of cranberry juice and orange juice, and stir. Pour into martini glass when candle is gone...

I'm thinking about making a complete line of "cocktail" candles...we'll see...

Glittered candle holders with peppermint candles...deer, trees and snow in white glitter (from Martha Stewart)

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T20:20:00.000-08:00

...while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads...

And now, listen to my solo piano version of "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" by Tchaikovsky.

This Christmas I made sugarplums with my husband David. They are delicious.

Here is the recipe.

Christmas Sugarplums
from Bon Appetite
For about 20 Sugarplums

3 Tablespoons sugar

1 6-ounce package (about 1 1/2 cups) mixed chopped dried fruits with raisins

1/2 cup slivered almonds

2 Tablespoons brandy

1/2 teaspoon (scant) ground mace or nutmeg

Line a small baking pan with waxed paper or use paper candy cups. Place 3 tablespoons sugar in small bowl. Finely chop fruits, almonds, brandy and mace or nutmeg in processor until mixture sticks together. Working with 1 rounded teaspoonful at a time, roll mixture into 1/4 to 1-in-diameter balls. Roll fruit balls in sugar in bowl to coat. Arrange in prepared pan or cups, spacing evenly. Let stand at least 15 minutes. (Can be prepared 2 days ahead. Cover tightly; chill.)

MTAC Christmas Party

2008-12-24T11:31:00.000-08:00

The San Francisco Branch of the Music Teacher's of California held a lovely Holiday Party on Sunday, December 14, 2008. I'm a new member of the Board, so now I'm very involved with the Branch's activities. For the party (instead of practicing!) I made party favors.

Little drums with chocolates inside

The "drums" hanging from a "tree"...

Duets were played (Phyllis and Rhonda)..I played "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by JS Bach for two pianos arranged by Dame Myra Hess with the Branch President, Scott Pratt.

David Saslav and Scott Pratt at Jane's beautiful Steinway B

A delicious Chinese buffet

Some of the guests.

Thank you Jane (MTAC-SF Branch Board member) for hosting the lovely party!

Ann Saslav's Thoughts about Learning Music

2008-12-07T09:25:00.001-08:00

From my mother-in-law, Ann Saslav --- thoughts about playing the piano...

Musicians and actors share one quality, the ability to "recreate" the thoughts of others (the master composer, the master playwright that created the work studied)...and it has been my experience that "learning" and "re-creating" and "remembering" are three different processes. Each depends on separate brain-functions that are somewhat cognizant to the student.

1. Learning and discovering:
Part a. is sketching a new piece of music at first-reading, reacting to it as one travels over its patterns and noting the reactions that one feels.

Part b. is carefully and meticulously learning every note physically and coordinating the patterns into larger sentences...paragraphs...and finally, a total overview of the work. This is the process called "practicing". Practicing can be tedious or exhilarating depending on many factors of health and restedness and anxiousness to prepare for a deadline..and discipline. (This is another subject entirely!)

2. Re-creating: It is of utmost importance for the public Performance to be a FRESH and SPONTANEOUS recreation...for performer and audience...as though hearing it for the first time as a delighted participant. The act of "communication to the audience enters here too"...with projection of energy as though exclaiming an exciting discovery to a friend...and a professional artist take into account the acoustics of the hall (how many "friends" and how close to the acoustic piano will they be?..activating different projections for chamber music blending, or solo projections with and over an orchestra collaboration..changing weight productions and fingerings and use of pedals accordingly and instinctively).

3. Finally, remembering (memorization)....depends entirely on the conscious ability of the performer to understand the above (1., and 2.) and to "will" the execution and emotions of the music to take place even in the private practice studio or home many times before performing before the public. The daily public IS the performer him-or-herself in the practice room growing increasingly familiar with the material, the emotions, the projections. This work is never finished but continues even the day after the public performance. It is the performer's repertoire for life!

For more about Ann:

http://www.arts.state.tx.us/rosters/touring07/disc.asp?id=114
scroll down to find information about Ann and Isidor Saslav's touring program in Texas

http://www.anthonyritchie.co.nz/opus/opus45b.html
a piece written for Ann when she was a touring artist in New Zealand

http://www.nsula.edu/news/grieg03.html

a 2007 project that inspired my "Journeys" program featuring the Lyric Suite, Opus 54 of Grieg

Prize Patrol

2008-11-25T11:57:00.000-08:00

My students have been working diligently on counting and understanding rhythmic concepts, so it was now time to unveil the prizes. Just a few of the many items my students may purchase with their "Renditions Dollars"...

Knowledge cards!

Treble clef pencils - very popular.

Mozart Mouse from the Music for Little Mozarts Series

I love Pachelbel Penguin

Count Chocula

2008-11-02T17:10:00.001-08:00

This year the theme for my teaching studio is to focus on rhythm - specifically counting. To this end, a character --- "Count Le Musique" was created to motivate my students. My students receive "Count Le Musique" points as they master specific rhythm goals that I've set for each student. Goals include counting out loud while playing, writing in counting in various meters, rhythmic dictation, memorization of note values and meter definitions, etc. Points are redeemed for "Music Dollars" and then my students use the money to buy prizes. So far, the program has been very successful, especially in October, because in honor of Halloween - "Count Le Musique" morphed into "Count Chocula" and double points were implemented for the entire month.

Boxes of "Count Chocula" cereal were given out as prizes for students who earned 50 points or more in October. Bags of candy were for other students with less points, but who still earned points in the program.

more gift boxes...and pumpkin lollies for good students...

If my students earned 100 points or more - "Count Chocula" made personal visits to the student's home ("Count Chocula" made personal visits to six students)

However, no students received a visit from Frankenberry...and what is Count Chocula doing in bed with Frankenberry?!?!....What would General Mills say?!?!

Visit YouTube for some great "Count Chocula" commercials
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMjgDjEZfa0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2ViAELRM3I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xG4_7qSCSk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m_jtEXDNG0

8 Plus Hands

2008-10-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday, I was fortunate to be part of an eight hand piano gathering at the home Juli Innman in Napa to read through arrangements of Symphonies by John Poole. Seven pianists gathered to play symphonies by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Beethoven and Dvorak as well a transcription of Gounod's Faust. John has promised to provide a link to the session with a list of the works we played. Coming soon.....

The Guests

2008-10-05T08:34:00.001-07:00

Of course the 100th anniversary party for our 1908 Steinway would not have been a success without the guests...

enjoying the libations...

...guests in shadow...

...relaxing before the music begins again...

...waiting for a turn at the piano

...Patti after her splendid performance of the Berg Sonata

...And some comments from the guests...

Thanks for the well tempered party. Everything is in key! - Liang & John
We're happy to help you celebrate your piano's 100th birthday - Verity & Ed
What a perfect 100th Birthday celebration for your "baby" (grand) - Toni D.
This is what music should be - enjoyed! - Tamara L.
Loved your food - Gary D.
What a great idea to celebrate the 100th B-day of the Piano! - Nancy D.
To Steinway, Melissa and David - Happy Birthday! Looking forward to the
150th Birthday party! - Miwa & Ron
All the best to you, 1908 Steinway A! To the next 100 years! - Janet C.

...and many, many more lovely salutations and felicitations.

Thanks to everyone who made our party for our Steinway so special and memorable.

Beautiful Day

2008-10-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

We had a beautiful day for our party celebrating the 100th anniversary of our Steinway Piano...no fog!

balloons and just a hint of Halloween provide a festive atmosphere

on our deck and...

in the house...the bar...

David in the kitchen with camera...

Eat / Drink

2008-10-03T08:36:00.001-07:00

There was quite a bit of eating and drinking at our party to celebrate the 100th year of our Steinway Model A Piano....

The Menu
Black and White Libations

Truffle Oil Infused Popcorn
Tapenade-Stuffed Eggs with Caviar
Tea Sandwiches
Chicken with Dill Butter
Roast Beef with Horseradish Cream Cheese
Cream Cheese with Cucumber and Watercress
Sausage Rolls
Assorted salami
Vegetarian Sushi
Black Olives with Feta Cheese
Black Grapes with Brie Cheese
Figs Stuffed with Gorgonzola
Mini Gougeres (little cheese puffs)
Plums

White and Dark Chocolate Squares
Oreos
Black and White Shortbread Cookies
Black and White M&Ms

French Opera Cake with Raspberry Cream and Chocolate Ganache

White and Red Wine
White and Dark Beer
Sparkling Water

the sushi platter, feta cheese and olives peeking out from the side - truffle oil infused popcorn missing from the bowl...

our sausage shrine to Spanish composer Albeniz. The sign reads:
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz i Pascual a Spanish pianist and composer best known for his piano works based on folk music. In 1908 he composed his most famous work, Iberia, a suite of twelve piano "impressions".
Albéniz died on 18th May 1909 at age 48 in Cambo-les-Bains and is buried in the Cementiri del Sudoest, Barcelona.
Albeniz loved sausages and was reputed to wash them down with copious amounts of gin, which may have hastened his demise.

...the tea sandwiches on black and white bread along with the figs...

Oreos (very popular at the party) and the shortbread cookies

lovely grapes from the farmer's market with brie

Steinway Birthday Cake

2008-10-02T07:45:00.000-07:00

Ian Farrell --- pastry chef god at Oracle bakes again!

The cake arrives (Friday, September 26)...

snug it its bakery box ...

now out of the box for the party.

The cake was made for us by Ian the pastry chef at Oracle's 300 Cafe. It is a chocolate raspberry opera cake with milk chocolate, white chocolate and gold leaf.

Ian makes the most amazing pastries...one year he made me a pink and white purse cake for my birthday

Email Ian if you'd like him to make you a cake. Read about him here (2005 article).

Happy Birthday to our Steinway

2008-10-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, September 27, David Saslav and I held a birthday party for our 100 year old Steinway. 50 guests attended and 13 pianists played piano works from 1908. Composers represented were: Bartok, Berg, Botsford, Debussy, Joplin, Ravel and Satie in addition to a variety of popular tunes from 1908 improvised by one of our guests. We all sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" the 1908 version --- the year it was written. I started the musical festivities with Debussy's "Golliwogg's Cakewalk" from the "Children's Corner" written in 1908.

Listen to my recording of "Golliwogg's Cakewalk":
http://renditionsmusic.com/golliwog.mp3

100 Year Old Steinway

2008-09-30T08:45:00.000-07:00

My piano is 100 years old this year...

it is a 1908 Model A Steinway Piano, six feet/one inch...

it still has all of its original parts...

and ivory keys...a few chipped and cracked, but I love the feel of the ivory under my fingers (I know that is completely politically incorrect to love ivory keys and I DO NOT in any way endorse the killing of elephants for their ivory tusks!)...

the "Steinway" harp logo above the pedals...all in all my piano is a marvelous instrument. I hope to play it for many more years.

Birthday Party for our 1908 Steinway

2008-09-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

We are having a party for our Steinway Model A piano as it is now 100 years old. I truly believe that they do not make them like they used to. Our piano left the Steinway factory in Queens, New York in 1908 and was sent to a family in Portland, Oregon where the piano resided until the 1930s. The piano was then sold to a family in San Francisco where it lived in a beautiful Victorian mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. We bought the piano in the 1990s and moved it across town to the foggy outer regions of Mount Davidson. Our Model A has most of its original parts and a magnificent art case. Some of the ivory keys, however, are chipped and stained, and the instrument could use some restorative work, but in general it is still beautiful in both sound and body. Happy 100th Birthday Steinway Model A!

In 1908...
E.M. Forster's A Room with a View & Gertrude Stein's Three Lives are published
Matisse coins the phrase "Cubism"
Sergei Diaghilev presents his Ballet Russe for first time in Paris
London hosts the Olympic Games
Chicago beats Detroit to win the World Series!
Wilber Wright flies 30 miles in 40 minutes
The Ford Motor company produces the first Model "T"
(15 million eventually sold)
Grover Cleveland is the President of the United States
And the Steinway Factory in Queens, New York produces our Model A Piano!

Come and Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Our
1908 Model A Steinway Piano

Saturday, September 27

2:00 PM – 6:00 PM

At 409 Bella Vista Way / San Francisco, California

Performances of popular, ragtime and classical pieces from 1908 will be performed on our 1908 Steinway by:

Nancy Bloomer Deussen, Patti Deuter, Ed Dierauf, Evelyn Dilworth, Frank French, Dan Glover, Brian Howell, Susan Kaplan, Chisato Karasaki, Linda Lyons, Seth Montfort, Edie Plodinsky, Trudy Roughgarden, Charles Ridley, David Saslav, Bill Serbin, Melissa Smith Susan Smernoff and Kelly Walker

Black and White Treats and Libations will be served
Performances begin at 2:30 PM

Hosts: David Saslav and Melissa Smith

The French Suite at Six Months

2008-04-28T16:35:00.000-07:00

I began working on Bach's French Suite, No. 6 in E Major last September. With two months off to work on my December 2007 concert program, I've now been working on the pieces for six months. Below are links to sound files for the works recorded at the end of April. My mentors for the project have been Tamara Loring and Bruce Potterton.

http://renditionsmusic.com/allemande_22-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/courante_22-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/sarabande_25-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/gavotte_22-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/polonaise_25-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/bourree_22-Apr-2008.mp3

http://renditionsmusic.com/gigue_22-Apr-2008.mp3

Of course, I'm not done with this project. I hope now to begin to perform the French Suite and to continue to refine and perfect my playing of these remarkable pieces.

Ah Ha!

2008-04-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

While recording the Sarabande today...I had one of those "duh" moments. In my lessons with Tamara she kept asking me for more sound when I played the Sarabande. We tried adding pedal, rolling the chords slower, just playing louder --- nothing was working. She told me that my left hand kept disappearing while I was playing. Today I realized what was missing. I've been forgetting that my left hand is a voice as well! I was thinking of my left hand as accompaniment partly because of playing the chords without ornamentation to fix my rhythm problems and to clearly hear the harmony. As one of my other teachers, Eliane Lust, always says ---- "for every solution there is another problem" and in this case, I my left hand was not an equal voice with my right. Now I hope my left hand begins to sing as boldly as my right hand.

http://renditionsmusic.com/sarabande_25-Apr-2008.mp3

Recording the Gigue

2008-04-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

At long last a sample of the Gigue!

http://renditionsmusic.com/gigue_22-Apr-2008.mp3

In trying to articulate the left hand, there is some unintentional slowing of the tempo. In general my left hand does not seem to be to comfortable when the right hand has trills or sixteenth notes. It is time to:

1. work the left hand alone;
2. practice the left hand louder than the right;
3. lighten up my right hand; and
4. slowly put the tricky passages back together.

Then will all be right with the Gigue?

Glenn Gould

2008-04-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

And now clips of a master playing the French Suite in E Major No. 6!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwV_Tul1Ywc (everything but the Gigue)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O16VtyoxKM (just the Gigue for some reason)

Live Performance of the Sarabande

2008-04-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

http://renditionsmusic.com/sarabande_04-06-08

On Sunday, April 6, I played the Sarabande at a private piano salon. I recorded the work on a small voice recorder to close to the piano (on my friend Bill Serbin's fantastic 9 foot Steinway that is a joy to play) so again I apologize for the sound quality. I managed to put in some of the feeling that I want with this piece, however, my rhythmic integrity suffered.

Angela Hewitt

2008-03-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

I just found pianist, Angela Hewitt's blog. If you have not heard her Bach playing, I highly recommend it. Like her fellow Canadian, Glenn Gould, she has a high affinity for Bach. It is a matter of personal and perhaps generational preference which pianist one prefers. I love them both. My teacher, harpsichordist Tamara Loring, often disagrees with Gould's choices of tempo, articulation and ornamentation, but loves his tone production. I love how deeply personal his Bach playing is. For me, Hewitt's playing seems more straightforward, somehow more orthodox, which doesn't mean that I find her playing without passion. Her recording of the E Major French Suite is full of joy - the playing sunny and light - which is exactly the way I hear the Suite in my head and feel it in my heart.

I ordered Angela Hewitt's DVD regarding her philosophy on playing Bach on the piano. It will be very interesting to compare what she suggests for interpretation with what Tamara has been teaching. Not to mention to contrast Hewitt's thoughts with Gould's viewpoints.

Angela Hewitt's website: http://www.angelahewitt.com/
Angela Hewitt's blog: http://www.bachworldtour.com/

In case you haven't heard...Sony has released their entire catalog of Glen Gould's oeuvre.
http://www.sonyclassical.com/music/gould.html
Check it out!

Thrills and Trills

2008-03-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

Trills --- once the bane of my existence --- and I are negotiating a fragile peace treaty. In the past I've never liked trills. In my early piano lesson days, I struggled to play a right hand trill with an Alberti bass line or with any sense of rhythmic integrity. Flash forward to adulthood, determined to banish my handicap, I learned Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata to conquer my fear of trills. I mastered the ornamentation in that sonata (it turned out that the trills were the least of my worries with that piece!) which did help me to play those trills with confidence, however, I never really lost my self consciousness about playing ornaments in works by Bach. So many variables (especially in Baroque playing) --- speed of the trill, start the trill above the note (but of course there are exceptions), how and when to terminate the trill, coordinate the trill with the other hand (almost always difficult), and there are more than just trills --- mordents, appoggiatura, suspensions, turns, etc.

So at my lessons with Tamara Loring my trepidation with ornaments has come up. Tamara told me to forget about the ornaments....easier said then done. Then she told me that the ornament is a way for a keyboardist to extend the harmony and melody --- like a string player would do with a bow or a vocalist would do with breath. It was my ah ha! moment. I'm now playing the E Major Sarabande (a minefield of ornamentation) without the trills and am playing appoggiaturas with the supporting harmony to really hear how the notes line up as chords and to hear the dissonant notes that will be part of the ornament. Tamara feels that this will provide me with the harmonic content to improve my tone production on the Sarabande which up to this point has been pretty timid.

Since I'm not practicing the trills in the piece, I am working on trill exercises. I play a trill figure starting on each scale tone for one octave with my right hand. I then repeat the pattern using different fingers until all of the fingers have practiced playing the trill. I repeat again until all twelve major keys have been played. Then I repeat the same process for the the left hand. Sometimes the trills are measured (even groups of notes - 4, 6, 8) or uneven trills with a pattern of three notes followed by five or five notes followed by seven with the termination part of the trill.

Wouldn't it just be easier to play the trills in the piece?

Happy Easter

2008-03-23T08:24:00.001-07:00

At my house the Easter Bunny visited...

Pumpkin eggs? What was the Easter Bunny thinking?

I made this display to post on a crafts page on Martha Stewart's web site. However, since I did not make any of the Martha Stewart recommended crafts, I didn't post on her site. I found the projects suggested for Easter rather uninspired or very labor intensive. Mine were made in a jiffy and "lent" a festive atmosphere for my modest Easter celebration.

Truth be told, I didn't even celebrate Easter at home this year. Instead I celebrated Easter in Berkeley. My friend Laura and I had brunch before church (breaking with tradition) at Saul's - a nice Jewish deli and oh so delicious --- and marking a further departure from tradition we didn't have any ham nor any lamb! Then off to St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church where we participated in a lovely Mass with some of the service sung in Latin. The music chosen for the Easter service included the Allegro from the Clarinet Quintet and Ave Verum Corpus by Mozart; Andrea Gabrieli's Maria Magdalene (so appropriate for this location) and selections from Franz Schubert's Mass in G (listen to clips at Amazon)...one of my favorite pieces. During one of my former stints as a church musician, I helped prepare the First Presbyterian Church of San Mateo's choir to sing this mass. I have many fond memories of practicing this glorious and most beautiful work of Franz Schubert. I enjoyed hearing it again immensely.

Happy Easter!

Bach On Line

2008-03-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

This web site about JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/wtc.html

was recently sent to me. It is amusing, but not as amusing as playing the pieces in the Well-Tempered Clavier yourself.

While playing the WTC you may have some trouble with the ornaments - this web site will take you to a table of Bach's trills...

http://members.aol.com/kjvisbest/jsb_ornm.htm#Definitions

In my research regarding the Polonaise from the E Major French Suite, I found this analysis

http://depauwform.blogspot.com/2005/02/js-bach-french-suite-in-e-major.html

by a clever music student.

If you want to know almost everything about Bach - check out Robert Greenberg's series at

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=720&pc=Fine%20Arts%20and%20Music

New Audio Files

2008-03-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

We have sound files on our computer again! So the Sarabande and Gavotte sound better from an audio standpoint. I'm changing almost all of the ornamentation on the Sarabande, so I'm not as thrilled with my recording as I was on the day that I made the recording. Are pianists ever happy with the way they sound or the way they have interpreted a work? Rarely, I think...

http://melisma.tripod.com/sarabande.mp3
http://melisma.tripod.com/gavotte.mp3

Sarabande Recording

2008-03-07T11:13:00.000-08:00

http://melisma.tripod.com/sarabande.mp3

While there were some technical issues (the sound is not working on our computer), so with the Sarabande and the Gavotte the recording clips are not at their audio best, but I did manage to recording my playing yesterday. I'm posting this clip, even though after my lesson yesterday, I'm changing almost everything.

Recording the Sarabande

2008-03-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Today I recorded the Sarabande...I hope to post-it unless there are technical problems. It's sad to admit, but I refuse to learn how to operate the recording machinery. I feel that learning the notes is hard enough! However, I did set-up the equipment today and hopefully I did get a take I can post. I usually press a wrong button, or the mic is to close to the piano or not turned on or something silly like that. I really felt inspired today. I'm sure there are technical aspects to address in my playing of the Sarabande, but I hope the feeling of the music comes through. Bach's E Major Sarabande is so sexy and sensual and I feel slightly salacious playing the work. Dance at a Glance says that the Sarabande is expressive, highly ornamental and that there are equal stresses on the first and second beats. Not to mention that there is freedom to stretch time within the beat. Did I achieve that? Please listen.

First Recording of the Gavotte

2008-03-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

To play the Gavotte click on the link. For the past week, after recording glitches (deleted clips from the master tape!) and tax preparations, recording and practicing Bach has been sadly neglected. After a lesson with Tamara Loring, I have new ideas to show in the Gavotte. This recording is my old way of playing. I have been working on trill exercises in order to effortlessly insert them into the dances of the French Suite. Perhaps in the next recording of the Gavotte I'll add more ornamentation. We'll see...

How to Get Out of a Practice Slump

2008-02-16T10:18:00.000-08:00

Parents and students often ask me how to motivate their child or themselves to practice --- especially when the they feel stuck in a musical rut. If only I had the magic formula! Alas, I do not, however, here are a few suggestions that have worked for me or for my students.

1. Be patient! Being in a practice slump often means that the student is about to break through to a new technical level.

2. Think quality not quantity. Practice as little as 10 minutes a day. Set specific goals for each 10 minutes. Work on only one measure, phrase, or piece per day. Learn a scale a day. Or don't practice any new repertoire -- just play your favorite pieces for 10 minutes a day.

3. Repertoire. Sometimes the pieces students are working on are just not inspiring, even though they may be important to study to continue to develop piano skills. Find a piece on the piano that you just can't wait to play (old or new repertoire). This is a strategy that works for me. I always have a least one piece that I have to play every day, because I love it so. Once students are at the piano playing something they love, it is easier to work on the repertoire that is hard or giving them trouble.

4. Think Teamwork. For parents: offer to be your child's piano coach. Then offer your child the opportunity to coach you through something you are having difficulty with --- getting enough exercise, stopping smoking, cutting calories etc. It's always easier to get through a down period when you are part of a team.

What the parent can do as part of the team: Sit with your child while they practice. Playing an instrument by yourself is lonely - especially when the rest of the family is watching TV or playing games. Don't offer suggestions or corrections. Just be there and offer gentle encouragement if it is needed.

5. Rewards. When students are in a slump, punishment is not going to help. Offer rewards for practice. Pay yourself to practice. It is work, after all. Go to a concert --- find performances that will inspire in any genre. Arrange a lesson with a different coach or master teacher as a special motivation. Your regular teacher may be the best in the world, but outside perspective often provides a needed spark.

6. Make a "PLAY" date! Arrange to have a friend or family member who also plays the piano or another musical instrument to get together with the student -- perform for others informally including your family -- adult students have arranged piano potlucks with other pianists to practice performing a complete work, or simply to share the repertoire they are learning.

Most important of all - don't give up! As with any difficult time in life...a musical slump too shall pass.

Lessons with Tamara Loring

2008-02-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

I had my first lesson with harpsichordist, Tamara Loring on Thursday, February 7. We will be studying the French Suite of Bach in E Major together. I will have to learn to think in Baroque --- which on the piano is not easy. From an earlier posting you may remember that I have had some trouble with the Polonaise from the E Major French Suite. Not the notes, but the affect I hope to effect with my playing. Tamara told me to go Bach's Notebook for Anna Magdalena and play through all of the Polonaises. Perhaps then I'd be more familiar with the form and that would help me realize the E Major Polonaise more fully. Right now, I'm just not hearing it as a dance piece with military roots and overtones.

No. 8A (all of the numbering is from the Henle edition of the Notebook) I found the first two F Major Polonaises rather ornate - so many trills, mordents and the like. How military is that? The second Polonaise, No. 8B, was more fun to play - especially the sequence for the right hand in the B section.

No. 10 in g minor is lovely. I remember studying this one when I was a child. I began to feel the rhythmic drive of the traditional Polonaise in this one. The eighth note followed by two sixteenths is not obscured with ornamentation. I could make this a pompous military tribute easily.

No. 17 - another one in g minor. Does the key of g minor suggest a Polonaise? The traditional rhythm is prevalent in this one, making it easy for me to feel the dance rhythm. This one is in ABA form - a new twist. Usually the Polonaise is in binary (AB) form.

No. 19 again in g minor is beautiful and soulful. It's mood, perhaps, reflects an unsuccessful outing for the troops. I have played this Polonaise before. I even arranged it for the organ and played it as an offertory when I was a church organist. This Polonaise has the same rhythmic figure as the E Major - two sixteenths followed by a eighth.

No. 24 in d minor has a lot of ornamentation, but it didn't bother me. Since this is the sixth Polonaise that I've played today, I think I might be beginning to understand the Polonaise form. Now the embellished beats seem to add color and nuance and not obscure the rhythm as I thought before.

No. 28 - in G Major sounds very regal. I could image this played in the court of a Polish King to celebrate a triumph. The eighth note followed by two sixteenths is back. That traditional Polonaise rhythm suggests to me a grand procession.

Back again to the E Major Polonaise in the French Suite. The other rhythm of the two sixteenths followed by the eighth does make me wonder if it means something...as it is different from the more traditional rhythm of an eighth followed by two sixteenths. Or since that difference is so slight, it might not mean a thing. I would think that the dance steps would be different depending on where in the beat the eighth note falls. I'll be musing on that for awhile.

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T09:32:00.001-08:00

From last Friday's New York Times (full article linked.) It's St. Valentine's Day...happy hearts and flowers to all. If you would like some "ear candy" as the New York Times suggested last Friday --- visit my web site: renditionsmusic.com and you'll be able to sample a Mompou bonbon. Delightful and 100% calorie free!

The Times article does not mention how difficult it is to make music sound effortless --- from both the creative and performance angles. Just like in cooking, you need the best raw ingredients (for musicians (and cooks) --- great technic) to make a simple dish standout and it often is better than a dish made with butter, cream, fois gras, truffles, champagne, etc. I propose, then, that a serving of Mompou for example is not always a sweet treat for the ear, but perhaps more of a palate cleanser. A needed dish of sorbet, so that the ear is refreshed and ready for another serving of great music.

Valentines

2008-02-13T10:42:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Here are some of my Valentine creations....must rush to the post!

inside message: ...when you are near me

other message on this theme: Love Blooms...in my heart for you

Inside message: your love goes straight to my heart

Doily Cards

Fancy Hanging Doily Card

...many more variations on the doily theme...

All made by Bee for FoundArtCards 2008.

Art Speaks

2008-02-10T10:56:00.000-08:00

You may know of the pianist Leon Fleisher. I admire him greatly as a musician and human being. He has faced adversity with great courage and has overcome challenges that would have destroyed a lesser man. He was recently honored by the Kennedy Center for his contributions to the arts. Even though he was deeply touched by the recognition --- he was not able to completely honor his own morals and ethics by accepting this award. I received this email this morning with his letter to the Washington Post regarding his feelings about the honor. I post it here.

From: FJGAJEWSKI@aol.com
To: FJGAJEWSKI@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2008 1:48 PM
Subject: Leon Fleisher's utterance in the Washington Post

My White House Dilemma
By Leon Fleisher
Saturday, February 9, 2008

I am a musician, one of five artists -- the others being Brian Wilson, Steve Martin, Diana Ross and Martin Scorsese -- honored recently by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The event, a deeply moving and gratifying tribute to the performing arts and artists in America, was broadcast to our nation. But what you couldn't see in that broadcast was how conflicted I felt about being there. Let me be frank: I was flattered to be included in so distinguished a group and to be recognized for whatever contributions I may have made to American life. I was pleased to be part of an event that raises money for an institution as vital as the Kennedy Center and to be with my family and to see their joy at the ceremony. What made me unhappy and continues to trouble me was that I was required to attend a White House reception on the afternoon of the gala. I cannot speak for the other honorees, but while I profoundly respect the presidency, I am horrified by many of President Bush's policies. In the past seven years, Bush administration policies have amounted to a systematic shredding of our nation's Constitution -- the illegal war itinitiated and perpetuates; the torturing of prisoners; the espousing of "values" that include a careful defense of the "rights" of embryos but show aprofligate disregard for the lives of flesh-and-blood human beings; and the flagrant dismantling of environmental protections. These, among many other depressing policies, have left us weak and shamed at home and in the world.

For several weeks before the honors, I wrestled with this dilemma, deciding in the end that I would not attend the reception at the White House. That decision was met with deep, if understandable, disapproval by the powers that be. I was informed that I was hardly the first honoree to express such reserve; cited to me, among others, were Arthur Miller and Isaac Stern duringthe Reagan years and several during the present administration. I was asked to attend all of the scheduled events and to follow the well-established protocol of silence. While this might have made for a glamorous experience, it also presented a profound irony. Turning a blind eye to the political undercurrents of the event dismantles the very force of art in this country that the honors celebrate: the freedom, nay, the obligation to express oneself honestly and without fear. Ultimately, there is no greater honor than that freedom. In the end, I decided to attend wearing a peace symbol around my neck and a purple ribbon on my lapel, at once showing support for our young men and women in the armed services and calling for their earliest return home. My family did the same, as did a number of fellow attendees who, over the weekend's various events, asked me for ribbons of their own. I had no wish to pressure or embarrass the other honorees. I did not want to disappoint my family, and I certainly did not want to embarrass or injure the Kennedy Center, where I have performed for decades and which is named for an American whom I greatly admired. As President John F. Kennedy said, "The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation is close to the center of a nation's purpose -- and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization."

I can't say yet whether these small gestures were or will be sufficient to neutralize the sense of regret that came with having agreed to follow protocol. Time, one hopes, will tell. And there is, of course, much more to do. I am nearly 80 years old and have been making music for almost all of that time, sustained by the belief that, in the words that Beethoven inscribed in his copy of the "Missa Solemnis," the purpose of music is to communicate from the heart to the heart. Beethoven's vision of music as a force capable of reconciling us to each other and to the world may today seem remote, but that renders it an ever more crucial ideal for which to strive. Therefore I am making known the dilemma I faced during my most celebrated hours. Perhaps speaking about my internal struggle will loosen the ties that bind future honorees -- not to mention the generations of artists they mentor and for which they serve as models -- from the code of silence that has pervaded this pinnacle of artistic recognition. Some seven decades separate the time when older people would tell me that I played very well for my age from the occasions nowadays when younger people say the same thing. That time seems to have flown by, and I have come, perhaps inevitably, to understand the aphorism "Ars longa, vita brevis." Yes, art is long. And life is short. And I am waiting most impatiently for Jan. 20, 2009.

The writer, a pianist and conductor, was awarded one of the 2007 KennedyCenter Honors.

www.freewebs.com/fjgajewski/
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Minuet and Bouree

2008-02-09T07:51:00.000-08:00

Sound clips of the Minuet

http://melisma.tripod.com/minuet.mp3

and the Bouree

http://melisma.tripod.com/bouree.mp3

Pompous Polonaise

2008-02-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

Ah, the Polonaise. From an earlier post I mentioned how much trouble I've been having while trying to play the Polonaise pompously --- or rather more in a manner befitting a dance piece with roots in military processions --- and as this clip will attest, I'm still struggling.

http://melisma.tripod.com/polonaise.mp3

While recording, I thought about an encounter I had at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City while I was visiting this past December. I went to the Met to see the exhibition of the Baroque Tapestries Threads of Splendor and the Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche to facilitate my study of Bach's music by immersion in some of the artworks from his time. I spent a delightful morning at the Met and even had time to take in the beautiful new Ancient Near Eastern Art galleries. Perhaps I dawdled too long admiring the classical proportion of the statues and drinking in the glorious light that illuminates these galleries, because when I went to retrieve my coat --- the line for the coat check was discouragingly long. However, as luck would have it, my wait seemed short as I had the good fortune to strike up a conversation with an intelligent man from Vancouver. We had visited the same galleries and a lively discussion regarding our views ensued. I mentioned that I went to the Baroque Tapestries exhibition because I was currently studying Bach. He said that the Tapestries seemed old fashioned to him, but Bach's music sounds fresh to his ears and sometimes very modern. He asked me why was that. I replied that as we learned from the Tapestries catalog, the tapestries were made for the glory of Kings and Dukes highlighting their prowess in battle, showcasing their magnificent wealth and sometimes were created and displayed to humble viewers of less exalted status. My line companion murmured - ah yes, shock and awe....I agreed, but then countered that Bach wrote his music for the glory of God, not the glory of man --- so which art stands a better chance of withstanding the test of time - works for God or works for man?

So back to my attempts to record Bach's Polonaise. In my mind I saw the Tapestries --- not their beauty, nor the almost unimaginable skill and artistry to took to create the images, but the pomposity of the subject manner. Horrid battle scenes, Kings slaying their enemies with no blood on their hands, the materialistic splendor of their estates --- and tried to express these ideas in my playing. Perhaps I went to far and this rendition of the piece does not do justice to its charm. All in all an interesting experiment. More experiments forthcoming...

Sound of the Courante

2008-02-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

Here is a recording of the Courante after studying in New York with Bruce Potterton and before studying with Tamara Loring. Bruce basically asked me to lighten up my playing --- Courante means running and I think my "running" sounded more like fast stomping. I'm still stumble on the trills and tend to accent them rather than letting them flow into the musical line, so the polishing will continue.

http://melisma.tripod.com/courante.mp3

This would have been posted yesterday, but I had technical difficulties with the sound clip.

If You Live in the Bay Area, Don't Miss This!

2008-02-06T07:54:00.000-08:00

A little departure from Bach's French Suite in E Major...David Schofield - a wonderful organist - will be performing an all Bach concert in San Francisco. David's blurb about his concert is below:

My all Bach concert is coming up on Thursday, Feb. 21st at 7pm at St. Francis Lutheran Church (Our Lady of Safeway). It's free. It'll last about one hour with no interval and there will be a reception following. I hope you can make it. Each year I give one of these programs of the organ works of Bach. Bach was arguably one of the greatest musical minds of any age in any culture. His instrument was the pipe organ and he wrote a prodigious repertory for it. These works are some of his most personal and expressive, but also austere and uncompromising both for performer and listener. They are played often enough but not heard by many, as the organ is not in the mainstream of classical concert life. However, the organ works of Bach are full of stunning musical gems which have fascinated me to the point where I have spent most of my adult life learning and relearning this music. This concert is my little musical party where I share them with you and anyone who cares to listen. I promise there will be something you will like, even if you're not a classical music initiate. I invite you to join me. Thursday, Feb. 21st. 7pm. I list the program below. If this means nothing to you, don't worry. The music is great stuff.

Fantasie in G major
O Lamm Gottes unschuldig (from the Leipzig Chorales)
Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor
Manuliter Chorales from the Clavierubung
Kyrie Gott Vater in ewigkeit
Christe, alle Welt troste
Kyrie, Gott Heiliger Geist
Allein, Gott in der Hoh sei er
Wir Glauben all in einen Gott schopfer
Vater unser in Himmelreich
from Individually Transmitted Chorales
Erbarm dich, mein, O Herr Gott
Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier
Ach Gott vom Himmel sei darein
Toccata and Fugue in d minor

Fingers Dance a Gigue

2008-02-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

Bach ends the Sixth French Suite in E Major with a joyful gigue. Imagining feet taking flight while my fingers do the same as I play this most delightful piece. A description of the gigue follows at:

http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3jig.htm

or of the musical form at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigue

I'm beginning lessons with Tamara Loring* on Thursday. I'm sure that all of the ornamentation I've been so painstakingly putting into my fingers will change. I know that I've said this many, many times - but, I will have a recorded version of the suite before my lessons with Tamara. Will I post them? It was interesting for me to hear how my versions of the pieces - especially tempos - changed after my lessons with Bruce Potterton at Turtle Bay Music School in New York. I will try to be less self conscious about my non polished playing and post my pre-Loring versions on this blog.

*Tamara Loring is a teacher of chamber music and harpsichord in the Bay Area, and a founding member of WEKA. Her chamber music program, Baroque Ensemble Seminars, is a longstanding fixture of the local (San Francisco Bay Area) early music scene.

Hooray for the Bouree

2008-01-31T08:35:00.000-08:00

A Bouree is a...

French dance form in fast double two time, accented on the second beat, and starting on the upbeat, the music for which is found in the classical suite. From the Hutchinson Free Dictionary.

Like the Courante, this section of Bach's French Suite VI in E Major is fun to play and it requires a solid left hand. The hands are equal players here. As for many right handed melody centric pianists, my left hand has been sorely neglected. I've been practicing this work with my right hand triple piano and my left hand at forte. I find this more useful than just left hand alone because I need to practice the counterpoint as well. The choreography of the hands is part of what makes this piece so exciting to play.

At this website, there are dance patterns for the Bouree from the time of Louis XIV.
http://www.hallvord.com/dance/bouree/index.en.htm
Beautiful to behold.

The rock group, Jethro Tull, made this Bach Bouree famous for youth in the 1970s --- alas it is not the E Major Bouree. It is a slow stately bouree in e minor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W37x7lNP4DY

For the 21st century Tenacious D used Bach's e minor bouree in this scatological parody of classical music: Warning explicit lyrics, sacrilegious use of Bach and Mozart, do not open if lacking a sense of humor or deplore the state of the American vernacular...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ol_75jFEpck

Mozart's Birthday

2008-01-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, January 27, Renditions Music Services presented a student Piano and Voice recital in San Francisco. I performed Mozart's Sonata in F Major, K 332, Movement 1. My piano coach Eliane Lust once told me at all of Mozart is opera ---- so it does not matter if you are playing a symphony, string quartet, or piano sonata --- all of the musical motifs should suggest characters. I love this idea, and of course I have an opera scenario going when I play this piece.

For me the first movement suggests a glorious fox hunt with the hunt participants splendidly dressed, the horses magnificent, the hounds sleek. I hear the call of the hunting horns, galloping horses charging through the forest, hounds chasing the fox in dense woods, interludes where the hunting party pauses for refreshment and perhaps to frolic in the woods...In my version of this hunt, the fox gets away...but, the thrill of the hunt is enough for the hounds and humans.

In England - where my opera takes place - they are now trying to ban fox hunting. (See http://www.arkonline.com/foxhunt.html and http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2006/12/blairs-britain-bans-foxhunting/)
I understand why so many people are upset with the hunt. Lucky for me a hunt with help from Mozart lives on in my imagination.

Pictures from the Recital Reception

We had a chocolate fountain for the guests - alas this is before the chocolate has been added, nor is the punch in the bowl...marshmallows and strawberries ready for dipping

petits fours, Linda's Lollies and custom M&Ms round out the treats

David and guests

David sang two works "Mondnacht" (“Night of the Moon”) by Robert Schumann and "Phidylé" by Henri Duparc with pianist Seth Stafford. Their performance was lovely and I'm hoping David will upload a clip from this performance soon.

Minuet

2008-01-15T10:46:00.000-08:00

What is a minuet? You would think that any pianist would be so familiar with the form having played so very many of these dances in their early careers, but this is about all any of us know.

Grove's Dictionary says....Minuet: A dance, of French origin, in a moderate triple metre. It was known at Louis XIV's court as an elegant social dance performed by one couple at a time, and remained the most popular dance among the European aristocracy until the late 18th century. Lully introduced numerous minuets into his operas and ballets and the dance was frequently included in Baroque keyboard and ensemble suites.

I don’t have much (yet) to say about the Minuet from the E Major French Suite. Mr. Potterton suggested a more relaxed tempo and to save all of the ornaments for the repeats. The only controversy I can find is that some editions --- such as the Henle Urtext --- have grouped the three short works (Gavotte, Polonaise and Minuet) together. Traditionally it seems that the Bourree was placed after the Polonaise with the Minuet following. In that scheme the two fast sections (Bourree and Gigue) are broken up with the ending of the suite being fast – slow – fast. I’m leaning towards playing the three short works together a la the Henle edition because I like them as a group. However, having a slow piece in between the fast dances provides a respite for the fingers, but then once the digits are warmed up, might as well race to the finish!

A melody with any other name would sound so sweet

2008-01-11T09:27:00.001-08:00

Contrary to conventional wisdom, first impressions can be so misleading. Take Bach’s Polonaise from the Sixth French Suite in E Major. At first read through, following my instincts, I played the left hand legato and sweetly voiced the right hand melody above it. Ah, a lovely lullaby, a delightful little piece, but alas, I was wrong. When I played the Polonaise for Bruce Potterton in New York this December with what I thought was beautiful, lyrical feeling, he was not impressed. He did not like my interpretation…although he did say that he had heard many pianist play the Polonaise in a likewise manner. I wasn’t really mollified. I knew that the polonaise was a Polish folk dance, but not much more than that. Potterton said that for him the piece should be more march like or even militaristic. That interpretation sounded correct, but very difficult for me to get my head around. So I went to Google for some research…

From: http://www.answers.com/topic/polonaise

A stately, marchlike Polish dance, primarily a promenade by couples.
Music for or based on the traditional rhythm of this dance, having triple meter.

From: Oxford University Press

A stately Polish processional dance or an instrumental piece. The dance, accompanied by singing, has long been used at weddings and public ceremonies. The melodies are in triple metre and have a simple structure, consisting of short phrases usually without upbeat. As a court dance, accompanied by instruments rather than by singing, it became the most highbred expression of the Polish national spirit and the most representative of Polish dances throughout Europe.

The 18th century saw the stylization of the polonaise. Those of Bach (French Suite no.1, Orchestral Suite no.2) show the characteristic features of triple metre, phrases without upbeat and a closing rhythm which throws the accent on to the second beat. German composers propagated the dance as a musical form and many polonaises were written by Telemann, J. G. Goldberg, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Weber and others. Chopin's famous examples established ex.1as the typical polonaise rhythm. Among other notable piano polonaises are those of Schumann and Liszt, and the form was used by several Russian composers, including Musorgsky (Boris Godunov), Tchaikovsky (Sleeping Beauty, Eugene Onegin) and Glinka.

From: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

Dignified ceremonial dance in 3/4 time, frequently employing dotted rhythms, that often opened court balls in the 17th – 19th century. It likely began as a warrior's triumphal dance and had been adopted by the Polish court as a formal march as early as 1573. The dancers promenaded with gliding steps accented by bending the knee slightly on every third step. It often appeared in ballets, and it was used as a musical form by composers such as George Frideric Handel, Ludwig van Beethoven, and especially Frédéric Chopin, whose piano polonaises were martial and heroic.

OK, so some scholarship supports Mr. Potterton’s interpretation. So far, none supports mine!

From Columbia Encyclopedia

polonaise (pŏl'ənāz', ō'–) , Polish national dance, in moderate 3–4 time and of slow, stately movements. It evolved from peasant and court processions and ceremonies of the late 16th cent. and was later used by J. S. and W. F. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt. Chopin, exiled from Poland, expressed his patriotic fervor in 13 polonaises.

Typical rhythm of a Polonaise: Eighth note with two sixteenth notes followed by four eighth notes

Now this is interesting. Bach’s rhythm for the E Major Polonaise is: two sixteenths followed by an eighth note then two quarter notes. Why so different from the typical rhythm? Does that support my theory of a lyrical, dreamy piece? Also interesting…

The polonaise (Polish: polonez, chodzony; Italian: polacca) is a rather slow dance of Polish origin, in 3/4 time.

Hmmm, could I play the work my way? Stay tuned!

A Kissing Dance

2008-01-09T08:35:00.001-08:00

When I first starting playing the Gavotte, I thought it must be some kind of bowing dance. I could see so clearly a formal dance with partners coming together and then moving apart to another partner and staring the pattern again. It sounded pompous and somewhat military to me. Image my surprise when I found out that the Gavotte is a peasant dance. I do so love the upbeats in the work. I’m paying special attention to beat one to highlight the off beats. It is also a hopping type dance. I keep wanting to play two note slurs where there are harmonic sixths ---- does that suggest hopping? (I found out while studying the Gavotte in New York, that even though there are no slurs in the urtext score, it is customary to play the 6ths as two note slurs.) And then I found out that the Gavotte is a kissing dance…I guess the Saraband isn’t the only sexy dance from the Baroque!

From Britannica.com…the Gavotte is: a lively peasants' kissing dance that became fashionable at the 17th- and 18th-century courts of France and England. Supposedly originated by the natives of Gap (Gavots) in the southeastern French province of Dauphiné, the gavotte was danced in royal ballrooms as a round with skipping steps adapted from the branle. Couples concluded improvised duet performances by kissing their partners. Later the dance developed more formal figures, and flowers were exchanged instead of kisses. At the French court in the 18th century, the gavotte was at first stately and later more ornate; its slow walking steps were in 4/4 time, with upbeats on beats 3 and 4.

Sarabande

2008-01-08T09:54:00.001-08:00

I’ve been told that the the Saraband is the dance of seduction. Is it named for the person who danced it first - Sara or Zara - as some claim? Was it danced in a harem in Moorish Spain? Regardless, by the Baroque era in Spain it was considered a dance of ill-repute. Certainly in Bach’s E Major suite it appears to live up to its reputation. Bach teases a melody of rising and falling notes out of the most elaborate ornamentation; the turns - a soft caress; the slides and rolled chords evoke stroking; the appoggiaturas- tension, anticipation; and trills over several beats suggest the sensuality of a master at the height of his powers. Underneath it all is the driving pulse of the triple meter - accentuating the second beat. Despite all this masterful music making, the piece feels sad...haunted...maybe by the remembrance of a past love...not forgotten, but relived in every note.

I've been busy...

2007-12-22T13:24:00.000-08:00

Since it has been awhile since my last post (!) my true nature as a pianist as been exposed. I procrastinate. Its not that I haven’t been practicing, because I have been chained to the piano --- just not playing a lot of Bach. My Bach project was put on hold while I prepared for a concert (performed on December 4, for Noontime Concerts at Old St. Mary’s) and then I had holiday gigs (Christmas on the Keys) and then I had to make these banners for friends and family….

Peace Banner / FoundArt Cards by BEE 2007

...hanging in my window, before given away...

Diva Branch / FoundArt Cards by BEE 2007

...on the bar - wish I had a better picture. I'll have to get one from the DIVA for whom I made this banner.

New Year's Branch / FoundArt Cards by BEE 2007

...sent to my parents...

Merry Christmas Banner / FoundArt Cards by BEE 2006

...made last year, but hanging in my living room window Christmas 2007...

Now back to Bach. I will be posting several times over the next few days as I get ready for my trip to New York City. I’ll be working with Bruce Potterton at the Turtle Bay School of Music for five days between Christmas and New Years. My plan is to work on the Sixth French Suite in E Major. On my return to San Francisco the pieces will be firmly “in my fingers” which will provide a solid foundation to start working with Harpsichordist, Tamara Loring, on Barouqe ornamention.

The dances in the Suite right now are far from perfect, but I’m going to record all of them anyway. It will be interesting to see how much they improve after intensive study.

Streaming Courante

2007-11-13T12:50:00.000-08:00

Today while playing the Courante I thought of a water running in a stream. No reason, except maybe channeling Schubert --- anyway, it was wonderful to play the Courante while thinking of water dancing over rocks, swirling in eddies, falling over cliffs…in the second section when the piece modulates to a minor key, it's like the stream is running through a dark, deeply wooded area – cool and mysterious - then after a long trill (bird songs?) emerges out of the forest and continues it’s journey to the sea in sunlight and warmth.

Au Courante

2007-10-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

The courante, corrente, coranto and corant are just some of the names given to a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era. Modern usage will sometimes use the different spellings to distinguish types of courante (Italian spelling for the Italian dance, etc.), but in the original sources spellings were inconsistent. Courante literally means running. From Wikipedia

My fingers fly down the scale passages in the Courante from Bach's French Suite VI. It’s like running down a hill --- fast a little out of control… like flying. A friend of my mine recently celebrated a milestone birthday with a Contra dance party. We ended the night of wonderful dancing with a simple version of the Flying Scotsman. It was exhilarating to sash-say down the line of dancers and back again. I was out of breath from running and laughing...just like playing the scales in the Courante.