http://tenthousandstars.net/ Amy Greer is a pianist, writer, and teacher living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. en-us Copyright 2013 Sun, 19 May 2013 09:21:43 -0600 http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Last Saturday night was my studio recital, the touchstone every spring that heralds the end of the semester. "Are we going to have a theme this time?" several kids asked me. Last May we celebrated the works of our friend and fellow Albuquerque resident, Dennis Alexander. Last November we had an all-duet recital. This time there was no theme. "How about the theme could be 'Let's all play really really well.'" I suggested. The kids thought this idea was boring. Clearly, I've lost my creativity and any fun I ever possessed.But, of course, what I know, and the kids do too if you question them hard enough, is that the recital is never the point anyway. The recital is merely the punctuation on weeks and months of hard work and preparation. That's where the real growth takes place: the moment we realize we don't really know the B section of our piece; the stumbles that humble us when we play for our peers in performance class; the corner we turn when we go from merely playing at the music to owning it. "I know why we have performance class," one kid announced in the recent pre-recital class. "Because in performance class we all mess up sometimes and we know that no one is going to laugh at us or make fun of us." Another kid followed up this comment with: "I know why performance classes are required." (They are, and rightly so, very impressed with the idea of required classes.) "Because we play better at the recital when we have to play in performance classes. Like, the recital isn't the first time we have ever played our piece for someone." Yet another one had this advice for his classmates: "When you have a memory problem--I know because I have lots of them!--you should just think like Nemo. Instead of 'Keep swimming' you should think 'Keep playing.'" Ah, these kids are so smart. Really, it's all I can do to keep up with them. Recently, one precocious 7 year-old walked into his lesson and before I could open my mouth said, "Miss Amy, I need to tell you about sharps and flats," as if this was a world he had just discovered and he thought he better let me in on it. OK, kid, I thought to myself. Bring it on. Not only have we been preparing for recitals around here, but also for festivals and talent shows and other events where someone will judge our work. One little girl sheepishly admitted, "I just don't like being judged" when I encouraged her to participate in a local festival. Later I wondered if that wasn't the smartest, most intuitive thing I had heard all week. I don't like being judged either and breathe a big sigh of relief when talent show auditions and festivals and contests are behind us for another year. It's not that I worry too much about how the kids will do---they will do fine, perhaps even show moments of greatness. Even the tiny kid who played his entire audition last Friday with his tongue stuck out in concentration, completely unaware of the chocolate on his pants, walked away with a proud 'I' rating from a tough judge. We can be judged and hold up well under the scrutiny. We just don't necessarily like it. Now that the required recital, festivals, and performance classes are behind us for the semester the road ahead is empty of pressure or deadlines. We can spend as much time as we want on sharps and flats, scales and key signatures, new repertoire and new techniques. I, for one, welcome the lack of judges in the months ahead. Spring may have just arrived, but summer'with all its liberating freedom'is just around the corner. Bring it on. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=316 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=316 Sun, 19 May 2013 09:21:43 -0600 My mother's old leather handbag,Crowded with letters she carriedall through the war. The smellof my mother's handbag: mintsand lipstick and Coty powder.The look of those letters, softenedand worn at the edges, opened, read, and refolded so often.Letters from my father. Odourof leather and powder, which eversince then has meant womanliness,and love, and anguish, and war. -Ruth Fainlight http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=315 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=315 Sun, 12 May 2013 08:20:50 -0600 The winds are back. Today they blew so violently my birdfeeders were knocked to the ground. The tulips were stripped of their petals and now the stalks stand naked. The huge bell hanging in the courtyard rang wildly all afternoon. Inside, the house is covered in a layer of dust. The bottoms of my feet are black from walking barefoot on the wooden floors. My beautiful new black and white tile floors (with white grout'what was I thinking?) are gritty and dirty; no amount of sweeping helps. The winds mean spring is officially here, a marker more reliable in New Mexico than a calendar. This year, spring has been flirting with us for weeks---the daffodils and hyacinths bloomed a month ago; last week my first yellow rose appeared. I have a field of purple irises in the back garden. When I look out my bathroom window, all I can see is green: the Elm trees are in full leaf. But just two weeks ago we also saw snow: 6-12 inches in the upper elevations. Even in this, the most urban of neighborhoods some 5000 feet below, we got flurries. This bi-polar weather reflects the pace of the semester thus far. We have seen weeks and weeks of non-stop work, reeling from one performance to another. Then suddenly, dramatically, comes an empty afternoon and we spin dizzily in the open space, only to be thrust back in long, long days with every minute obsessively scheduled. It's enough to make us question our sanity, or at the very least wonder how long we can keep this up.My favorite musical marking of all time might very well be tornando al tempo: Return to the tempo. The Midwesterner in me likes to read this as tornado al tempo, which sounds very dramatic as if we should all scurry to the basement in search of shelter. In the tornado seasons of my childhood, getting to spend the night in the basement was a great thrill, particularly if it involved sleeping bags and candles. There was something strangely comforting about the whole family camping out together in the dark sans electricity. Return to the tempo. Somehow these Midwestern storms seemed to force us to return to the tempo of an earlier, more simple time, something that even as a child I must have longed for. Nothing has really changed. I still want the occasional good ghost story and the lulling sound of the rain on the roof. Candlelight is my favorite way to light the darkness. And there is nothing like a raging storm with lots of thunder that makes my teeth rattle. But I live in the desert. Instead of rain, I wait out the winds. I shut windows and lock doors, keeping out the gusts of air and dirt, protecting my corner of the universe from nature's elements. Slowly, hesitantly, we are returning to the familiar and comforting tempo of our lives, the terror and sadness of recent weeks beginning to abate slightly. Outside, the bell tolls and tolls as it is tossed about in the wild air, singing the arrival of spring. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=314 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=314 Sun, 05 May 2013 08:30:29 -0600 Monday morning we got word that a dear friend of ours had a baby boy. He was healthy and beautiful; the mother, father and older sister were all overjoyed to finally welcome him into the world. Several hours later I received two text messages. The first was a photo of the newborn. The second was news of the Boston bombing.I had already been thinking about Boston all morning. Hoping to make a trip back east this summer, I had been planning to call a friend in Boston whom I want to visit and to look at some possible dates. After hearing the news, I didn't call Julia. It didn't seem right just then to plan the future. When tragedy strikes, we need to honor the moment, sit with the terror, be present with the grief, if only for a short time.There isn't a day that goes by where I don't miss living in Boston. Sometimes in my mind I wander down Commonwealth Avenue from our old apartment in Kenmore Square all the way to the Public Gardens. To counter insomnia, I count swan boats paddling slowly across the pond. I wander down the long tree-lined sidewalk alongside Beacon Street through the Common on the way to Park Street T stop. I putter down Charles Street to our other apartment on the backside of Beacon Hill. To entertain myself, I invent stories of the people who might live in the brownstones. I imagine them to be interesting, cultured people; blue-blooded Bostonians of the first order: they are art curators at the Gardner Museum or professors at Harvard. They throw great dinner parties and read every one of those books I can see in their libraries through the windows. They go to Symphony. They spend summers on the Cape.Other times I remember walking along the path next to the Charles River, passing the Memorial Shell where the Boston Pops play every 4th of July. On late summer nights, we used to take a bottle of wine to a nearby boat dock and watch the sun set. I walked across the Mass Ave and Longfellow bridges on the way to a T stop in Cambridge more times than I could count. I can still see the crew teams, out for an early morning practice, cutting across the water. There are always dozens of sailboats in my mind. My piano technician here in Albuquerque learned to sail on the Charles River when he was in graduate school. Why, I think now, did I not learn to sail when we lived in Boston?I know every inch of those blocks of Boylston Street that have been the subject of the news and our scrutiny since Monday afternoon. I whiled away countless hours in the Starbucks near where one of the bombs exploded. It was there that I often skipped church with the New York Times or daydreamed in one of the big chairs next to the picture windows that overlooked the sidewalk. I marked time by watching the duck boats full of tourists go by. I wrote the first draft of an article for American Music Teacher in that Starbucks and drank countless cappuccinos. Many Sunday nights -- when not at St. Starbucks -- I attended services at Trinity Church in Copley Square with a motley group of congregants all seeking sanctuary and meaning: students, tourists, professors, the homeless. I have checked out dozens of books from the Boston Public Library across the street. Copley Hotel was worth ducking into at Christmas time, if only to gawk at the opulence. In Back Bay Station, I caught hundreds of trains out to the suburbs to my church and teaching jobs. I met Matt at his favorite Starbucks at Boylston and Berkeley too many times to remember. Waiting for Matt, I would putter up and down Newbury Street, window-shopping in the designer boutiques. I once spontaneously bought the greatest pair of red boots ever made in a shoe shop near Arlington. My favorite haunt on the way home from work was Trident Booksellers, which is still my idea of the perfect bookshop/cafe. Once I sat out a late spring nor'easter at a table there in a bay window, drinking tea and writing. Living in Boston during and after 9/11 meant that a kind of suspended anxiety became familiar, almost the new normal. Because Boston was closely linked to the 9/11 tragedy, rumors and threats to that city circulated for months. We flew out of Logan the day after the shoe bomber flew in, part of the first wave of people that will forever be asked to remove their shoes at security. Watching the news Monday night sent us back to those horrible days after September 11th, 2001, only this time instead of sitting in the middle of the terror, we watched from afar, the distance both comforting and frustrating at the same time. Without even knowing it, all these years we have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. And now it has.We didn't know anyone who was likely to be at the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon. My sister-in-law Mary is the only person I know who might run a marathon on the spur of the moment, and she was Morocco, not Boston. This event shouldn't be personal for us; except, of course, it is.In Wishful Thinking Frederick Buechner writes, "Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." Monday evening Matt sent this quote to our friends, the new parents. Since Monday, I have thought more about this little child that entered the world on such a complicated day than I have about the victims in Boston. A day that is split open, raw and wounded, seems a particularly vulnerable place to begin one's life. But precious, too, and rich with the possibility of healing.Some days I would trade every precious part of my current life'the cute house and garden, the lazy cats and feisty betta fish, the beautiful grand piano in the living room, every last familiar and dear student'to go back to Boston. To go back to living on the edge: the tiny 350 square-foot apartment, the crowded commutes on the T, the hurried walks down Marlborough dashing to another rehearsal or lesson. I'd take even the fear again. But as tempting as it may be to chuck my whole life and run racing back to Boston, the real answer, the difficult but honest response to Monday's events isn't to give up on my world, but to embrace it. To accept that it includes new babies and great sadnesses all at once. People are born and people die, and the poignancy of just that is what makes it holy. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.-dedicated to Liz, Seth, Anna & baby Jacob. xoxo http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=313 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=313 Sun, 21 Apr 2013 07:09:56 -0600 Sometimes there is no avoiding the metronome. I am reluctant to admit this, because of the widespread stereotypes that involve metronomes, bad piano lessons, and stern music teachers, but sometimes there is nothing more comforting than the tick-tick-tick of the metronome pulling us along. Even the kids seem to sense this, earnestly telling me that they "should just use the metronome" when I ask them how they could fix a piece that is running away or coming apart at the seams. Metronomes keep us honest, when too often it is easy to look the other way at an unsteady tempo or a frenzied performance. Leased to a metronome, we can happily trot by its side. But while metronomes are brilliant devices for managing tempo, they should never be used to organize rhythm or to understand the underlying pulse. "Should I use a metronome?" beginning older students who have never used a metronome before sometimes ask me. "I know the 'timing' is off," they will explain as if music was a cake that hadn't been baked long enough. In these cases of bad timing (or rhythm as I gently correct them), metronomes are never the answer. In fact, the tick-tock of the metronome in these instances would inevitably become just one more thing that a student with a poor sense of pulse could learn to ignore. Indeed, there is nothing worse than a student who obliviously manages to learn to play away in his own rhythmic la-la land, while the metronome is ticking away, the two actions completely unrelated to one another. (Try it yourself sometime. Not playing with the metronome is actually really hard to do. The whole point of its strong unrelenting beat is that it is supposed to shove our unsteadiness into its reliable groove.) I have come to believe that the longer I can keep beginning students away from the metronome, the better. Exercises like passing a ball to the pulse of a song while singing or chanting rhythms and melodies helps internalize a strong sense of the beat. Learning to switch between passing the "beat" or the "rhythm" at the drop of a hat is a game we play in performances classes. The last kid standing wins, which makes the students both giggle and focus. Ask any of my early elementary-age kids the difference between "beat" and "rhythm" and not one of them will use the word "timing." If I have done nothing else right, at least they understand this. In my own practicing lately, I have been using the metronome a lot. Needing to push a whole recital of pieces up to tempo, the metronome is just the kick in the pants I am looking for. I practice way under tempo. I throw caution to the wind and rip along at performance tempo. I swing manically between super slow and insanely fast, giving the music a sort of bi-polar character. I move the metronome up one notch at a time, baby steps so small I don't even notice the tiny changes in speed. I practice each hand separately with the metronome. I organize music with a great deal of rubato against the steady beat, reminding myself how far I might have strayed. It's satisfying work all of it, much like a good spring clean rids the corners of cobwebs and dust bunnies that might have been collecting unnoticed for months. Which I need to do as well; but, as always, I'd rather practice. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=312 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=312 Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:49:50 -0600 About once a semester, I hear from my former students, now in colleges around the country. Most often they send me communication about their lives in the form of 5 Fun Facts and One Lie, a nod to the time when they were required to do presentations on their composers for performance classes. Sometimes, in return, I offer them 5 Fun Facts and One Lie about my doings. Knowing that two of the girls would be together for Easter I sent them the following, challenging them that maybe together they could puzzle out the lie: 1. Last Saturday I played with the New Mexico Philharmonic. 2. Last Friday was performance class and George's 16th birthday. We had cupcakes. 3. I just had an article published in American Music Teacher. 4. I am now a vegan. 5. This morning I am taking off on a solo road trip for a couple of days, headed south. Not sure of my plans, but I promised Matt I would not end up in Mexico. 6. Next Friday I am playing for my first same-sex wedding.After a couple of days, they responded that they guessed the lie was #5 ("Why, Amy, would anyone go south of Albuquerque?") or #4 ("There is no way you'd give up Matt's chocolate chip cookies."). The girls were right about the cookies, but #5 was all true.We city folks are snobs. If forced to leave Albuquerque, we go to Santa Fe, or, if we are ambitious, Taos. We think there is nothing south worth seeing. I have held this opinion for years now. I could not have been more wrong.Sometime between gigs with the Philharmonic and a week-long recording session, I decided it was time to leave town. Everyone I knew had gone somewhere for spring break. I had worked. I was tired. I have also lived in this state for nearly 10 years, and the list of significant places I have never seen is embarrassing. I could not, I decided, go another year without visiting Chaco Canyon, or White Sands, or Carlsbad Caverns, or the cliff dwellings in Gila National Forest, or sit in the hot springs in Truth or Consequences. And so last Thursday with Matt up to his ears in Holy Week services, I rented a car and headed south.I hiked in the Bosque del Apache and made plans to return in December to see the cranes.I climbed slippery, shifting dunes at White Sands, and wished I could bottle the silence.I drove to Silver City and, by sheer accident, found the most beautiful spot in all of New Mexico between Hillsboro and San Lorenzo. Who knew the prettiest place was south?I wandered through the cliff dwellings (circa a mind-boggling 1280) and soaked up the piney green smell in Gila National Forest. I will go back and hike the trails and drink in the dark emerald-colored water in Lake Roberts. Each night I sat in hot springs in Truth or Consequences and plotted my next adventure before retiring to my room in a sort of Route 66/art deco kind of hotel, complete with burnt-orange lamps and cockroaches in the shower. Not ever wanting to stop for real meals, I ate four apples, six granola bars, a container of veggie chips, numerous almonds, and a chocolate bar over the course of two days. Not stopping to eat has its advantages: I managed to drive 862 miles in 48 hours. Not once did I turn on the radio. "Wow, when you unplug you are seriously hard core," Matt remarked when I told him.But don't let the veggie chip/granola bar/almond diet fool you. I am so not a vegan. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=311 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=311 Sun, 07 Apr 2013 08:20:40 -0600 Easter morning...the sermon is taking the shapeof her neighbor's hat -Nicholas Virgilio http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=310 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=310 Sun, 31 Mar 2013 07:37:12 -0600 Composer Alice Parker tells this story about the years when she was working under the late Robert Shaw. When she was a young composition student at Juilliard, she was singled out to help Shaw create arrangements of hymns and folksongs – pieces that are now considered to be standards of the choral repertoire. One of her jobs was to find texts for Shaw to set to music, and so Alice spent hours poring over poetry and hymns at the New York Public Library. She would then come back to Shaw with a pile of texts that she had found, eager to show him these treasures. Shaw would frequently interrupt her while she eagerly read to him various texts, "No," he'd say, dismissing her find. "But the second verse is beautiful," she'd argue. "The second verse is too late," Shaw would respond. I have heard this story a dozen times and every time it strikes a chord. Shaw was asserting that if the text didn't grab you immediately, it wasn't worth holding out till the second or third verse for something better. This reminds me of a fun dinner party game to play with musicians that goes like this: you are in a sinking boat with all your loved ones. In order to save your lives, you have to throw over the side of the boat the complete works of some composer that will forever be lost to humankind. There's a lot to consider here, for in losing one composer you dislike, you might also then affect later composers. And certain composers (Berg comes to mind) don't have enough volume of output to really help your sinking boat much. The first time Matt played this game, he was with a group of choral conductors who were throwing over Chopin right and left. Personally, I'd toss Handel, thinking that if I didn't lose another Christmas to a Messiah performance I'd be a much happier woman. But honestly, that is as cheap a choice as the choral conductors pick of Chopin. To really play fair, you have to pick from a composer that has some bearing on your world. In that case, Liszt goes. I don't even have to think twice. But it seems no one is throwing anything over the boat. I can't keep up. I am drowning in repertoire, technique, and expectations. Ten lifetimes would not be enough to read through all the music on my shelves. Every time I turn around I hear about another opportunity for my students. They are all good ones, I am sure, but between soccer games and homework and piano lessons I am not sure where another music festival fits in. I wonder seriously about the shallowness of our work and the frenetic tempo of our practices, and whether or not somewhere, between cramming down dinner and another sonatina, we have lost sight of land completely. I am thinking of all this a great deal at the moment. Spring break is behind us, and staring us in the face are the annual spring festivals and recitals needing attention. It is time to stop teaching in "cruise control" and actually begin steering this boat. I play through dozens of pieces, picking out recital music for my younger students ("Too late," I think to myself, when after 16 measures the piece hasn't worked its magic.). Older students are memorizing and polishing, learning final sections of big works, reviewing old repertoire. For the next six weeks, we will have no choice but to throw some things over the boat: ear tunes, original compositions, new techniques and skills. These things will drift alongside for a while, until the load lightens up again and we can fish them out of the water. Thank goodness for life rafts. Turns out, my students have plenty of opinions about what is important and what could be tossed. "Any ideas about what you might want to play on the recital?" I ask them. "Have you heard a piece you might be interested in learning? Or is there a composer or style you want to try?" These questions are dangerous, I realize, but they are really code for: I am buying myself some time here because I haven't figure it out. Maybe you can give me a place to start or at least rule out some things for me. I should have been asking the kids this question all along. One serious sixth grader replied, "You know, Amy, I am really into classical music these days. I think I'd like to play one of those two-page operas by Beethoven." I tried not to laugh, after all, I understood what he was really saying to me: Come on, Amy, time for me to play one of the big boys. While original two-page operas for the piano by Beethoven are a bit in short supply, finding a great two-page piece by one of the major figures in our world I can handle. Several other kids also quickly requested a recital piece by a "famous dead composer." I am both surprised and somewhat pleased by this. Clearly, our work studying composers and major works in performance classes is sinking in, but the message to me is also coming through loud and clear: Let's stop fooling around here. Which doesn't mean we have thrown our favorite pedagogical composers over the boat. In fact, one of the same children who requested a "famous dead composer" in the next breath told me that she loved ALL the pieces in her Dennis Alexander collection so much that each one deserved its own recital. So we are keeping Dennis, and all those two-page operas by Beethoven. Liszt, however, is still out of here. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=309 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=309 Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:29:35 -0600 The highway is full of big carsgoing nowhere fastAnd folks is smoking anything that'll burnSome people wrap their lives around a cocktail glassAnd you sit wondering where you're going to turn.I got it.Come. And be my baby. Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrowBut others say we've got a week or twoThe paper is full of every kind of blooming horrorAnd you sit wondering what you're gonna do.I got it. Come. And be my baby. -Maya Angelou http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=308 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=308 Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:34:49 -0600 "What are you reading these days?" Matt frequently asks me. Last week I answered: "Nothing." I've stopped reading. Saying it out loud like that makes me cringe, but there it is. Somewhere between the ear infection and the migraines, the Franck sonata and Barber's Hermit Songs, I stopped reading. It seemed like one small thing I could take off my overflowing plate without any significant repercussions. Perhaps it was a symbolic gesture more than anything: a way to say no to something when life was reeling out of control. Who knows? If truth were told, I still start my morning with a cup of coffee and a volume of poetry. I read education psychology and music journals. I flip through The New Yorker. I dip into gardening books, just as my own backyard is waking up to spring. But I haven't read a book---a real live book, beginning to end---in weeks. It feels strange. But over Christmas I acquired a number of beautiful picture books for children. If ever there was a time to celebrate the silent, wordless book, this is it. Bear Despair by Gaetan Doremus is a story about bear whose favorite teddy bear is taken from him by a wily fox (Aren't all foxes "wily?"). The illustrations follow the antics required to get the teddy bear back (Hint: If you know the song "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly" you'll have some idea how this narrative plays out.). Waterloo and Trafalgar by Oliver Tallec tells the tale of two opposing generals and how they come to make peace. This is a sharp commentary on the futility of war without becoming preachy or righteous. Probably the lack of words saves the day on that front: it's hard to be too judgmental with charming pictures of stout generals dressed in blue and orange uniforms. The Umbrella by Ingrid and Dieter Schubert traces the adventure taken by a little black dog who is swept away by a big red umbrella and a mighty wind. He travels the world (Lions and tigers and bears'Oh My!), only, in the end, to arrive back where he started. A nice metaphor for all of us. And a couple quiet children books with words.... Henri's Walk to Paris by Leonore Klein. This is a newly reissued book with illustrations done by the artist Saul Bass. This lovely story celebrates the possibility of finding the whole world in your own backyard. Little Bird by Germano Zullo is reminds us to honor the present, and how the smallest gifts before us have the power to change our perspectives. This is a beautiful book. Finally.... The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood describes the many forms of quiet in the world ("There are many kinds of quiet: First one awake quiet....Sleeping sister quiet...Best friends don't need to talk quiet...."). This exploration of silence is not merely a children's book, it is a poem, or a tiny sonata. Shhh....... http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=307 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=307 Sun, 10 Mar 2013 08:00:56 -0600 Much of the time what my students really need from me is not great pedagogy or complicated techniques, but simply a reminder of what honest work habits look like, and the faith to keep practicing. Research indicates that focusing on practice techniques and strategies in the early stages of learning a musical instrument, rather than only mastering repertoire, is a more successful and holistic approach to music education. Students who acquire meta-cognitive skills and strong practice habits go on to achieve a higher level of skill on their instruments and even stay active in music lessons and ensembles longer. Win-win, says music teachers everywhere. And yet, too often, time pressed by the next recital, we teachers forget this. We cram towards the next performance, and lose sight of the sacred routines behind the musical phrases. We teach notes and gestures at the expense of teaching the practice, and as a result, students learn repertoire, but don't discover the joy in the work. I was reminded of this just yesterday when faced with a young child who, once again, had fallen off the practice wagon. "Do you know what accountability means?" I asked him, after discovering that he had done (and rather proudly too, I'm afraid) a very abridged form of his assignments. If I wrote, "Play 3x" he played once. Or maybe, if he liked the piece, twice. He did half his sight-reading assignment, and a third of his workbook page. "Peter," I scolded him, "If you don't do all the steps of every assignment, it doesn't count as a full practice session. You can't tell me you did 'all' your practicing if you didn't. You have to be accountable for everything, not just what you feel like doing." I was on a roll. "Tell me, what does being accountable mean?" "Accountable means...." he stopped uncertain. "It means that I have to count all of my assignments, right?" Right, kid, I thought, and wondered why it was after nearly three years of lessons, we still had to have this conversation. Once again, I was reminded that for all the weeks we get to focus on learning music, most days the most important lesson I teach is simply how to practice, and how to keep trudging forward patiently. Truth be told, I've needed plenty of nudging forward lately myself. I have been struggling with a variety of illnesses the past few months that have left my body and soul weary and depleted. Some days it seems like the winter will never end. But it is from our practices that we learn how to return over and over again to the bench--or the yoga mat or the blank computer screen or the meditation cushion--and how, on a daily basis, to make ourselves accountable: to literally "count" our repetitions until we find the rhythm behind our work again. When the rubber meets the road, I am reminded that this is why I practice'because I believe there is meaning in the doing, even when I have lost all sight of reasons and logic. While I can recite different practice strategies forever, sometimes the most sacred technique in a long dark winter is simply repetition: to show up and do it again, and again, and yet again. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=306 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=306 Sun, 03 Mar 2013 07:39:33 -0700 the library bookoverdue--slow falling snow -Gary Hotham The Haiku Anthology http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=305 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=305 Sun, 24 Feb 2013 09:22:35 -0700 Thursday Charlie came dragging into his lesson. "I'm so tired," he sighed. "I had to stay up until ten o'clock last night doing homework." I raised my eyebrows in alarm. The child is seven. Later I mentioned it to his mother. She rolled her eyes. "Charlie is channeling a more stressful life than he actually has. He was in bed by eight last night." The kids might be channeling more stressful lives, but we don't need to. Ours is stressful enough already. Matt has hired an assistant at work and still he is drowning. He has taken on additional responsibilities at church. He is working with a choir at the University of New Mexico for a colleague on sabbatical this semester. He is conducting the New Mexico Philharmonic next weekend. One job, two jobs, three jobs, four. My head spins as he comes and goes. At home, I only dream of an assistant. The once-every-three-weeks housekeeper is not enough. I've let the garden go un-watered all winter. It may be dead. In the last month, two fish have died. I try not to read this as a bad omen. My head aches constantly. I haven't called my mother in weeks. The cats, neglected and ignored, whine and fuss for attention. We were with my sister and brother-in-law on New Year's Eve. They celebrate a tradition where at midnight everyone draws a slip of paper from a bowl. On the slip of paper is a word that is supposed to be your word for the year. My word was "Support." In between rehearsals and lessons, I try to keep food in the refrigerator and the laundry done. I try not to complain about when Matt schedules another late night rehearsal. I try not to mention the fact we haven't had dinner together in what feels like weeks. I make the coffee in the morning, and hand my tired husband a steaming cup. My word is "Support." One job, two jobs, three jobs, four...But this week the British came to lift our spirits and make us sing. VOCES8, the brilliant a cappella group from England, kicked off Matt's Music at St John's concert series and then spent the week in residency in twelve schools around Albuquerque before giving a final concert Friday night. "Is there a cost for these concerts?" someone asked Matt. "No, because St. John's is awesome." He responded. "St John's is awesome' could be the byline to this week," I muttered under my breath. Actually, now that I think about it, the more correct byline to the week should be: Matt is awesome. (One job, two jobs, three jobs, four...) Or maybe, when I'm not cranky and grouchy I will remember that's the byline to my life. In the previous months, as Matt has been in touch with our friends in VOCES8 about these arrangements, Paul, one of the leaders of the group, expressed their enthusiasm for the idea about spending a week in New Mexico. "Oh good! More gin and Sondheim at the Greers'," he said, referring to the evening during their last visit that ended with a three-hour sing-along over martinis around our piano. Let's just say those Brits do not only sing like angels, but party hard. After hours at the piano this week, I feel like I could be VOCES8's pianist. VOCES8: The only a cappella group that travels with a pianist. Only I don't want to travel. There is someone at home who needs my support. So maybe it could be: VOCES8: The only a cappella group that could travel with a pianist, if she wanted to travel. That's the kind of catchy title marketers love. If we had to pick one favorite thing that VOCES8 sings, it might be "Only You," an arrangement of the early 1980's pop hit. I loved the original; the kids in VOCES8 are too young to remember it (sigh), but their version is better anyway. On Valentine's night, they stood in our living room and sang it. Looking from a window above, it's like a story of loveCan you hear meCame back only yesterdayMoving farther awayWant you near me...At night, exhausted and beyond conversation, Matt and I lie in bed wrapped in each other's arms. "Coming back here every night is the only thing getting me through my days," he says to me. One job, two jobs, three jobs, four....Ours is not a young love any more. "Our love is drinking age," I told him recently. He laughed. "I don't know if that is a poem or a bad country and western song." This is gonna take a long time And I wonder what's mine Can't take no more Wonder if you'll understand It's just the touch of your hand Behind a closed door... Yesterday morning, we said goodbye to our friends in VOCES8. No more gin and Sondheim for a while, although our living room has certainly seen some good evenings over the years. But late at night, we channel the Brits, singing softly in bed, lyrics floating in and out of our subconscious.... All I needed was the love you gaveAll I needed was another dayAnd I'll I ever knewOnly you http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=304 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=304 Sun, 17 Feb 2013 10:18:11 -0700 Sundays toomy father got up earlyand put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,then with cracked hands that achedfrom labor in the weekday weather madebanked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.When the rooms were warm, he'd call,and slowly I would rise and dress,fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferentlyto him,who had driven out the coldand polished my good shoes as well.What did I know, what did I knowof love's austere and lonely offices? -Robert Hayden http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=303 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=303 Sun, 10 Feb 2013 08:33:12 -0700 "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans," said John Lennon. Life, in this case, was shingles. We had plans, the JimGreer Duo. Big plans. Our annual house concert scheduled for the end of January. The following weekend Jerome was invited to play one of the Mozart flute quartets with a chamber group on a music series in Gallup, and the Duo was asked to fill out the rest of the program. We had a new, ambitious program of American music'the Copland Duo, Griffes' Poem, etc.--to learn over the holidays. Invitations for the house concert were designed; a case of champagne was purchased. And then Jerome got shingles. Life is what happens. The house concert was cancelled; the Gallup concert became tentative. Shingles is a nasty disease. Painful and ugly. Particularly nasty if you are a flute player and it affects the nerve to your lip. After several questionable weeks, Jerome decided the Gallup concert was a go, if we changed the program. We scrapped the new works and pulled out of our repertoire old familiar pieces we could play in our sleep. The kind of comforting music one needs in difficult times. But we kept the Copland. The Copland, we decided, was written for us. It was certainly written for a place like Gallup, New Mexico. It begins with solo flute and those wide expansive intervals that only Copland could write. It sings of the open spaces of the American west. It gives cry to the emptiness and loneliness of the desert. For three short movements, fourteen concise minutes, it encompasses Copland at his most essential: the tuneful, rhythmic, idiomatic, organic. Written in 1971, the work looks backwards: it echoes Appalachian Spring, it harkens to Rodeo, it even has murmurs of the Piano Variations hidden in moments of the pointillistic third movement. And so, shingles be damned, yesterday we opened our program in Gallup, New Mexico with Copland's Duo for Flute and Piano. It is a new piece in the JimGreer Duo repertoire, but one that, I think, will be around for a long time. Unlike the shingles, we hope. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=302 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=302 Sun, 03 Feb 2013 10:20:54 -0700 Last week I received this phone message on my voice mail: "Hello. I am looking for information about piano lessons for young children. Please call me." I get a lot of inquiring phone calls about lessons, and while I often have a waiting list, I think it good business to return every phone call. I refer students to my colleagues. I counsel parents about starting ages for piano lessons. I discuss the advantages of the piano versus the violin. Part of being a music educator is a certain amount of PR work. But phone messages like the one above make me roll my eyes. There was no phone number, no name, no helpful information. Good grief. There was one time I had someone to handle things like this. When we lived in Boston, instead of managing my own studio, I worked for several community music schools where I was simply a contracted teacher, not responsible for any administrative duties. This, I found, had its own price. Just because someone else was managing the business and administrative tasks of my schedule doesn't mean this was being done well. One day I arrived at school on a Friday afternoon and the secretary Rita said brightly, "Did you get that phone message?" "What phone message?" "Well...a mother called and there is a sick child." A sick child. I waited patiently to see if this sick child had anything to do with me. "This child had a high fever. The mother did not sound concerned about it, but I am." I continued to wait to see if this sick child would affect my life, or at the very least, my afternoon. "This is one of my students?" I prompted her. "Yes. The mother was cancelling the lesson. I don't think it was for today." This was becoming more and more dubious. Parents do not call and cancel lessons for days or weeks ahead if their child is sick. "What is this child's name?" "Hmmm . . . seems like it could have been a name for either a girl or a boy." Rita was surprisingly unflustered by all of this. I wanted her apologetic and groveling at my feet for not taking this phone message correctly. I wracked my brain for potential students with androgynous names. I came up blank. I could see my time with Rita was rather pointless, so I left and waited for a student to miss his or her lesson. The sick child's name? Annabel. Later, replaying this incident for Matt, he reminded me a Dilbert cartoon. Dilbert's secretary has been given a poor job evaluation. She asks Dilbert for an explanation and Dilbert says, "Because I got 345 phone messages last year with the note, 'Might have been Bob.'"Of course, taking the middleman out of the equation doesn't solve the problem either. Teaching pre-college lessons means dealing with parents. Many of these parents I adore; some become lifelong friends. Some do not. A student named Mandy came from a particularly clue-free family. It didn't seem to matter if I talked to the mother, the father, or the kid (or all three), they didn't seem to remember anything--not what time her lesson was, or what day, or what she was supposed to practice. Mandy missed multiple lessons (always without a phone call to explain why) because no one could remember to bring her. After a few months of this nonsense, I called her mother to tell her that I was dropping Mandy from my studio. She wasn't home, so I left a message asking her call me. A few days later (on the day of Mandy's next lesson, as it happens), she returned my call. Now, I am no parent, but if my child had missed a lesson the previous week (which she had) then the first words out of my mouth would be an apology. But no, not in this case, in fact, it was debatable if she even remembered that her daughter had missed another lesson. After waiting several seconds for the apology that didn't follow, I began my explanation about how I was no longer going to keep Mandy in my studio. "Oh," the mother finally said, "how about we just start up again in the fall?" What did you not understand here? I thought to myself, and began once again. This time she interrupted me, "That's OK. How about we just start up again in the fall?" It took three tries to get her to understand what I had been saying for the last five minutes. Just when I thought she might have finally comprehended the situation, she said, "Well, we leave for Denver today so I guess Mandy won't be at her lesson tonight." Hearing this, I began to suspect that she not so much telling me this, as she was simply thinking out loud and I happened to overhear. Suddenly, in the middle of her next sentence her phone cut off and the line went dead. Did she call me back? No.Other parents call altogether too often. The messages pile up while I teach and rehearse. "What are all these messages about?" I whine redundantly at my husband for the thousandth time in our years together as I stare at the blinking light of my voice mail. "I bet, now I could be wrong, but I bet they have something to do with the piano: either someone wants you to teach the piano or play the piano." At the end of the day, these messages often seem to go on forever. Sometimes they go on so long I need to pour myself a glass of wine just to get through them. Sometimes I can finish the entire bottle before I reach the end. "We have got to set a time limit for these people," Matt often says. Last night a mother called and left a lengthy message. Afterwards she did not hang up the phone, but rather simply set it on the counter where we were then privy to five minutes of their kitchen life. "This has got to stop," said Matt. "Might have been Bob," I answered. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=301 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=301 Sun, 27 Jan 2013 08:34:23 -0700 The man who has many answersis often foundin the theaters of informationwhere he offers, graciously,his deep findings. While the man who has only questions,to comfort himself, makes music. -Mary Oliver http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=300 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=300 Sun, 20 Jan 2013 08:47:36 -0700 Many trucks are different. This was the truism uttered by my two year-old nephew, Asher, last week. Asher likes trucks. We were visiting Asher and my sister and brother-in-law in Boise for New Years. Boise is cold and dark in the winter. There are a lot of trucks. Asher was playing with two trucks, running the toys up and down the couch. "Many trucks are different," he said. This kid is smart.This kid has also been playing a lot of Memory. Remember Memory? Memory is that card game you played as a kid made up of square cards with pictures of flowers and ice cream cones and mountains. To play the game you turn all the cards face down and then try to make matches by remembering where the pairs of ice creams cards or daisy cards or mountain cards might be hiding. It's fun. Asher has an evil truck version of Memory. It consists of pictures of excavators and dump trucks and front loaders and mini-excavators and pavers and God only knows what else. They all look exactly the same to me. Who knew so many trucks were different.Luckily, while Asher is brilliant, he is only two. He plays an abbreviated version of this truck Memory game, which means he turns all the cards right side up and makes matches. It still makes my head spin. He can play this by the hour. And, last week, we did. "Amy, where's the grapple?" This is not a question anyone has ever asked me before. It was a different sort of holiday all the way around. After suffering through the worst two month migraine cluster in years, finally right before the holidays I cried uncle and resorted the sort of drug that is the stuff of nightmares, leaving me loopy and out of my head. Matt conducted Christmas services, celebrated another birthday, caught up on reading and sleep. I practiced for an upcoming Romeo and Juliet gig with the New Mexico Philharmonic, in which the score was in wonky manuscript, reflecting the craziness in my brain and making me feel like I was really going out of my mind. We had an overnight in Santa Fe, which is decked out light a gingerbread village at Christmastime, lumanaries lining the rooftops like lighted gumdrops. We had dinners with friends. We watched movies and ate chocolate and sat in front of the cranberry twinkly lights. And then we went to Boise.Neither of us had ever been to Idaho. "Why?" Friends asked us when we told them we were spending the holiday in Boise. "Do you have to go that far to get away from it all?" Boise, it turned out, was just perfect for my muddled head. It was quiet and sleepy. In fact, it was still dark at 8am every day. My sister Beth, her husband Matt and baby Asher had moved to Idaho in August from Brooklyn. They had wanted out of the insanity of New York. Matt got a job teaching guitar at a private school in Boise. Idaho wasn't exactly what they had in mind, but there they were. Most days, they like it. Asher likes not only trucks, but also choo-choo trains. And songs about choo-choo trains. Reaching back into my own childhood, one day while we were all in car driving out to the canyon outside of the city I sang him a song about a choo-choo. "Again?" he said when I finished. The choo-choo song, I will have you know, is complicated. It has 3 verses and a chorus. The last lines of the verses are kind of hard to remember. Asher was duly impressed. The choo-choo song has "lots of words and lots of notes" he told his mother earnestly. "Only Amy sings choo-choo." Much to the chagrin of my husband, sister and brother-in-law who are all professional musicians and know lots of songs, the choo-choo tune became the theme song of the week. "Let's sing something else," Matt would suggest brightly. "How about the theme to the Brady Bunch? Anyone up for Gilligan's Island?" Asher was not interested in television theme songs. "Amy, sing choo-choo?" Asher asked me at least 500 times a day. We sang choo-choo in the car. ("Again?" said Asher.) We sang choo-choo while hiking. ("Again?" said Asher. "NO!" screamed the adults.) We sang choo-choo while playing with the train track that Grandma gave him, which was rather appropriate, as it was "Grandma" who once taught me the choo-choo song. "One book and then choo-choo," I promised him before his nap every afternoon. "OK," Asher would say, "and then play Legos." Holiday behind us, we have resumed our normal lives. For Asher, this means lots of trucks. In between truck sightings, he tells his mother he is having "coffee with Amy and Matt" when they go to the library to check out Waldo books or that they are "going to Amy's house" when they are stopping by the grocery store to buy milk. "Love Amy and Matt so so much," Asher told Beth last weekend. For us, real life means practicing and teaching, working and playing and singing, sans Legos or choo-choos or trucks. We miss Asher and his parents. We love them so so much. Amy, sing choo-choo? Again? http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=299 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=299 Sun, 13 Jan 2013 08:49:40 -0700 Writer Anne Lamott tells a tale about a time her younger brother procrastinated on a big school project about birds. The night before the assignment was due, with all the reports of each feathered creature still needing to be researched and written, her brother had a meltdown, paralyzed by the sheer amount that must be done. "Bird by bird," their father tells her brother talking him down off the ledge, reminding him that any overwhelming job ultimately gets done one bird, one tiny step at a time. I find myself thinking about this story all the time. It has become almost gospel in writing circles, but it is so applicable to practicing as well. A musician's life is bookended by performances and musical programs. When one ends, the next project begins. There is nothing'nothing'both more inspiring AND intimidating than a pile of new music to learn. While the new is certainly motivational, so often it can be overwhelming. On the days when the sheer volume of what I have to learn threatens to paralyze my efforts completely, I remember Anne Lamott's birds. A baby step of something, a small bird of practicing, a single phrase well learned is better than nothing. We cannot master entire programs in one sitting, but one baby step, one note, one phrase, one minute, one rehearsal at a time we can get there. Bird by bird. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=298 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=298 Sun, 06 Jan 2013 09:05:50 -0700 the hinge of the year:holding up candles in churchlighting up our breaths. -Nicholas VirgilioThe hinge of the year: Students finish lessons for the semester, trailing wrapping paper and Christmas carols as they run out the door chasing the holidays. Students, back from college, call and visit. The studio calendar for next spring is set, newsletters written. Services are sung and spoken, sending out the old, bringing in the new. We attend parties and host dinners, candles dripping as the hours pass. We read Christmas cards from friends and buy stamps to mail our own. It is the hinge of the year. My favorite Christmas card this year was made by a student, Nicole, who is six. It is an intricately pencil-drawn card, designed with scenes of the two of us: Nicole and I smelling flowers, playing the piano, looking out the window. "I like when you teach me piano," she writes inside. "I like your home. Your home is so so beautiful!!!"But wait. There's more. On the back, Nicole writes, "Do you ever decorate your house? Do you ever decorate a Christmas tree?" Clearly, while my home is "so so beautiful," I am not living up to my potential. There is more I could be doing. Sounds familiar.Some weeks ago, spinning from the sheer too-muchness of our lives, I decided to take a step backwards. In the face of the overwhelming abundance that pushes in from all sides this time of year, I decided to push back. I didn't want to spend a weekend hanging bows on cabinets and doors, only to have to spend another weekend removing them in January. I didn't want to find space for Christmas knick-knacks on my already crowded mantle, forcing the fish and the orchids and the candles and the hourglasses already living there to find another home. I didn't want to go near a mall or negotiate a parking lot that wasn't absolutely necessary. On the other hand, I wanted my Christmas recordings to fill the stereo. I wanted dig out the Christmas pop-up books for the sunroom. I wanted more candles to light the darkness. I wanted to send out Christmas cards to the people I love that live too far away. I wanted quiet afternoons napping and reading on the couch under the afghan my grandmother crocheted. I wanted long walks at twilight admiring my neighbors' lights and festive decor. I wanted to force paper whites with their intoxicating fragrance. I wanted to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" and drink Frangelico. I wanted my annual Christmas Eve walk at dusk to see the luminaria. "Will you miss it if I don't decorate this year?" I asked Matt, who has always loved for our house, especially at Christmastime. "I want the cranberry twinkly lights on the mantle," he responded. "I don't care about anything else." So the cranberry twinkly lights it has been. Snuggled up with the fish and the orchids and the candles and hourglasses, they symbolize both the natural seasonal world around us and of the traditions we create and make our own. Maybe Nicole would disagree, but this year it has been exactly enough. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=297 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=297 Sun, 23 Dec 2012 08:57:17 -0700 A student of mine recently wrote her letter to Santa. In it she detailed the things she wanted from "the most wanted to the least wanted." In addition, she put "a star next to the things that are optional, but wanted." I love that: "optional, but wanted." What a nice use of a comma for one thing. I could make a whole list of things in my life that are "optional, but wanted." Like new countertops in my kitchen. Someone to rake my leaves. A new kitten. How Children Succeed by Paul Tough. This book has gotten lots of press this fall, and deservedly so. I am pushing this book on all the parents in my studio and in my life. It provides a convincing argument that the road to success may not be intelligence or talent, but rather character traits such as perseverance (or "grit"), conscientiousness, and the knowledge of how to work. Or as I call it, practice. There is music education research that indicates that teaching students how to practice leads to a higher level of success (and possibly longer retention in music activities) than teaching that focuses on mastering repertoire. If you want students to do well and stay in music longer, first teach them how to work and how to practice. I think Paul Tough would agree. Quiet by Susan Cain. This book takes a celebratory look at the contributions introverts make in an extraverted world. As an incurable introvert myself (although I like to hope one with good social skills) this book makes for a fascinating read not only into understanding my own stubborn resistance and preferences, but also providing a deeper insight into the people, students and loved ones in my life. Help. Thanks. Wow. by Anne Lamott. If you know and love Anne Lamott already, this book does not need a sales pitch. If you don't know Lamott's work, then it's time. This book fits into a stocking.And a couple reads for the young at heart.... I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not My Hat. Both books by Jon Klassen. These books are, in one of my student's words, adorable. And funny too. And teach a lesson about not stealing. Win-win-win. Don't tell, but my nephew Asher is getting these for Christmas. The Island by Marije and Ronald Tolman. Listed in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review, this is a beautiful, intriguing picture book. I don't completely understand it, but I think a child would. My nephew Felix is getting this one. You can decide if these are "optional, but wanted." Happy reading. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=296 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=296 Sun, 16 Dec 2012 07:40:24 -0700 It was nice being a geniusworth nearly half-a-million dollarsfor the two or three minutes it took meto walk back to my house from the mailboxwith the letter from the Foundationtrembling in my hand. Frankly,for the first minuteI was somewhat surprised at being a genius.I'd only published a few small things at that point.I didn't even have a book.I was just a part-time lecturerat a small mid-western college.But early into the second minuteI had fully embraced the fact of my genius.I mean, these people know what they're doing, right?Who am I to tell the Foundation its business?And I was already practicing the kind of modest,Hey, it's no big deal tone of voice I'd be usingon the phone for the rest of the dayas I called all my friends, and especiallymy enemies, to treat them to the good news.But when I opened the letterand saw it was merely a requestfor me to recommend someone else to be a genius,I lost interest and made myself a ham sandwich. - George Bilgere http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=295 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=295 Sun, 09 Dec 2012 09:47:07 -0700 Ms. Allen was my college piano teacher. She was formidable and tough. "Well," she would say, gazing at me through the cloud of cigarette smoke that always surrounded her, "that was worse than last week." Truth be told, I was a bit scared of Ms. Allen. Yet Ms. Allen was one of the many teachers in my life who taught me the sacredness of practicing. She was fond of reminding us that no matter who might win a particular competition today, we'd all have to return to the piano bench tomorrow. "Practicing," she'd tell us, "is just what we do." The last concert behind us, the music turned in and put away, programs stuffed into a drawer and forgotten, practicing is just what we do. We return to the work, knowing that there is always more music to learn, always more notes to grapple with, always more phrases and rhythms to sort out. Lately, I have been sitting with this idea of practice, both literally and figuratively, employing what is perhaps my favorite practice technique ever: fermata practice. In some respects, this is the opposite of practicing in rhythms, although the root of the concept is really the same. Fermata practice is the technique of stopping and sitting, holding notes and chords wherever something feels cranky and in need of attention. I do this to solidify leaps, to check in on unsettled places in technical passageworks (the "hinges" I sometimes say, where the patterns turn or shift), to gain comfort in big awkward chords. I can, and sometimes do, spend hours doing fermata practice. This strategy would come in third place right after "Rhythms" and "Ghosting" when students respond to the question: How should you practice this? I always can tell when students have been spending time wallowing in their notes and phrases in this way because their playing sounds grounded, solid, so very centered and secure. It's a lovely way to calm a wandering spirit and to come home on the piano bench. We practice. Because practicing is just what we do. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=294 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=294 Sun, 02 Dec 2012 06:54:02 -0700 (Note to the reader: The event that is told below made me so tired that I could not muster up the energy to even write the story. Instead, I asked (OK demanded) that my best friend Lora write this tale of woe. In return, I promised that she could become my first "guest blogger". She seemed pleased by this new title, and so mustered up the will to compose the following. I did, however, edit it freely, which mostly means that I tried to soften Lora's tendency towards swearing like a sailor.) For the 3rd time in the last few years, Amy and I found ourselves on an Epic Hike. As was the case with the previous Epic Hikes (The Ladies Hike and The Damn Bears Hike for those keeping track) we had not intentionally set out on an Epic Hike but, rather, we had intended to complete a Fairly Difficult Hike. And in case you are wondering how we define a Fairly Difficult Hike I will say that during the four years that Amy and I have been hiking together we have developed a sophisticated hike difficulty rating system based entirely upon the timing of the breakfast that will follow the hike. Ratings are as follows: Easy Hike: a nature walk featuring wild flowers and chirping birds. Anticipated breakfast time: 9:30 a.m. Fairly Difficult Hike: a tough workout requiring actual hiking gear, say, a backpack, snacks, fluids, and proper footwear. Anticipated breakfast time: 11:30 a.m. Epic Hike: a near-death experience involving errors in judgment, swearing, physical pain and mental torment. Breakfast is not likely as the hikers will be too traumatized to do anything other than go home and collapse. Alas, the Fairly Difficult Hike and, in fact, the entire day did not unfold as we had hoped on account of what I, at the time, referred to as "The Fatal Flaw" in our plan. I now realize that our plan involved more than a single flaw and, in truth, none of them actually proved fatal so moving forward I will refer to them collectively as "The Non-Fatal Flaws" and I will keep track of them throughout this account, in part because I am sure that the total will be astounding and also because I hope that by emphasizing them I will reinforce my firm conviction to never hike again. That last statement may seem like an overstatement but, really, it isn't. I am making this statement more than a week after the Epic Hike, which, from this point forward, I will refer to as The Hike From Hell because that's what it was. More than one week after the fact I still think that I need not ever hike again because, really, The Hike from Hell monumentally sucked. Having said that, Amy and I did not realize the extent to which this hike sucked until after we were rescued from the top of the mountain and were regaling our rescuer with a dramatic retelling of The Hike From Hell. At one point our rescuer interrupted the dramatic retelling to say, "At least you didn't see a bear," to which we both exclaimed, "Oh yeah! The bear!" Amy's prompt follow-up to this was, "You know you've been on a really bad hike when you're 20 minutes into the story and haven't gotten around to mentioning the bear. It's quite telling if the bear is not the headline, but only a footnote." But as is often the case, I am getting ahead of myself. Perhaps the beginning might be a better place to begin. Amy and I had not been on a serious hike in over a year, which, not coincidentally, is exactly how long it had taken us to forget the horrors of the last hike. In fact, our initial plan had been to make a second stab at that same route, this time without the unintentional five-mile detour that rendered us hopelessly lost, sucked the life out of both of us and eradicated every ounce of confidence we may have once possessed in the NM Forest Service. A few days prior to our most recent hiking misadventure, however, we learned that that trailhead had been closed on account of hungry, cranky bears and so we set about planning an entirely different hike. After some deliberation, we settled upon the following Fairly Difficult Hike: We would park at the base of the tram and hike approximately 3 miles through the foothills to the base of the Pino Trail. We would then hike up the Pino Trail to the Crest. After reaching the Crest we would pause to enjoy magnificent vistas before hiking a few miles, strolling on mostly even ground and reveling in the splendor of nature's majesty until we reached the tram. We would then take the tram down to the car awaiting us below and would move on to a well-earned breakfast of pancakes and papas (a heavenly combination of scrambled eggs, green chiles and potatoes), basking in the glory of having accomplished such a challenging hike. That was the plan, which, as is so often the case, bore absolutely no resemblance to the reality that followed. The day began nicely enough with my picking Amy up, on time, at 5:30 am. (Yes, that would be 5:30 a.m.) Neither Amy or I particularly enjoy hiking in the foothills, in large part because they are so boring they make road trips across Kansas seem stimulating, and so we drove somewhat illegally into the closed tram parking lot (Non-Fatal Flaw #1) through the exit lane (this would not have been our first choice but the entrance was barricaded), parked at the base of the tram at 6:00 a.m. and began our hike in the pitch black darkness of the predawn morning. Rather miraculously and without any helpful signage whatsoever, we landed on the correct foothills trail and several miles later found ourselves at the base of the Pino Trail. The day was brightening as we started up the Pino Trail and yes, I do mean up. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular trail it is 4.7 miles long and involves about 2800 feet of elevation gain which is to say that it pretty much goes straight up the freakin' mountain. That's right. Unlike some other trails that involve more gradual inclines and switchbacks, the Pino Trail just goes up. For 4.7 miles. Straight up. Very early into this part of the hike I began experiencing pain in my right foot. Nothing about this should have surprised me. I do, after all, spend much of my life in 4-inch heels, walking on mostly flat surfaces in relative comfort. In stark contrast, this hike found me wearing flat-soled hiking boots with feet angled sharply up because, as I have already mentioned, that is the only direction in which the Pino Trail goes. Up. The pain soon spread to the other parts of my body that were participating in the goddawful process of propelling my body up the mountain. In a moment of delirium I flashed back to high school Biology II and began to imagine lactic acid coursing through my body and poisoning my muscles. I then began to wish for death until I remembered that my boyfriend is a licensed massage therapist. And so I continued on, hoping to catch up with Amy who was bounding ahead (like the half mountain goat she must have been in a previous life), although, to her credit, she did pause from time to time to make sure that I had not died. Despite my valiant efforts not to bitch about the pain, I bitched about the pain. At some point, Amy and I agreed that we had crossed the not-so-obvious line where it made more sense to continue hiking up rather than to turn back (Non-fatal Flaw #2). I actually felt encouraged when Amy pointed out one of the tram towers way off in the distance. Prior to this I had felt overwhelmed and, in truth, lost because I couldn't see where the trail ended and couldn't figure out where we were going (other than up, that is.) Seeing the tram tower provided a great sense of relief because even though it was far away I knew that we were eventually going to end up somewhere near there. For the first time since embarking upon this godforsaken trail I felt anchored, rooted, and, indeed, even somewhat hopeful. At the same time I didn't happen to notice any tram cars travelling over the tower and so I said to Amy, "We probably should have checked on-line to make sure that the tram is running." (Non-fatal Flaw #3. I should note that this was perhaps the biggest flaw of the entire day.) At the time, however, these were fleeting thoughts for my attention was mostly focused on continuing up the Pino Trail. Soon thereafter we were passed by a lunatic who was, get this, RUNNING up the mountain. We stopped him to ask if he was familiar with the trail and if so, how much further until we reached the Crest. During the brief conversation that followed Amy and I shared a few realizations: We were about 1 mile from the end of the Pino Trail; this was good news and, in fact, the last good news we received for quite a while. What we had been referring to as the Crest is really the Crest Trail (Non-fatal Flaw #4). When people refer to "the Crest" they are generally referring to one of the highest points of the mountain. The place where the Pino Trail intersects with the Crest Trail is most definitely not one of those points. The section of the Crest Trail that we would be required to hike in order to reach the tram would not involve strolling on flat ground and reveling in the splendor of nature's majesty because that section would involve another 1500 feet of elevation gain (Non-fatal Flaw #5). That section to the actual crest is more than 3 miles long, which is more than twice as long as we had estimated. (Non-fatal Flaw #6) Aside from #1. this was all very bad news but, troopers that we are, we continued onward and upwards reaching the top of the Pino Trail a very respectable 2 hours from when we had began. We stopped for snacks and did, in fact, appreciate magnificent vistas until Amy pointed out a strange scratching sound not far from where we sat. During an earlier break Amy had pointed out a strange rustling sound and I had assured her that the creature making the sound wasn't one of the two most likely to kill us. After all, bears don't rustle or scratch, they crash through brush and whatever else might be in their way. Stealthy, they are not. And pumas don't make any sound at all. Rather, they lie in silent wait until just the right moment when they pounce, severing your spinal cord with a single chomp. Still, in spite of this well thought-out logic, we found the strange scratching sound unsettling and decided to get off our butts and continue onward. Admittedly, the next three miles were not as physically strenuous as the goddawful trail that preceded them. But by this time, however, we had already hiked eight miles (give or take one or two) and were now tramping forward at an elevation 3000 feet higher than where we had begun. As a result, we were tired and so we didn't do much more than stop and stare when we first heard, then saw a large creature crashing through the brush about 75 feet below the trail we were hiking on. Yup. A bear. And although the bear appeared to be quite eager to get away from us, we didn't stop and linger for long because it seemed possible that he might have friends nearby who hadn't yet gotten the memo that they too should flee down the mountain away from us. And so we continued on, Amy wondering aloud about the protocol one should follow when encountering a bear in the wilderness. In particular, she wondered if one was supposed to climb a tree or run away. I was unable to answer this question because by this point in The Hike from Hell both running and climbing were far beyond my capabilities (hell, simply moving was presenting challenges) so it all seemed moot. If faced with a bear I would have had to throw up my hands and say, "Well screw it. This isn't how I would have chosen to go but at least this hike is finally coming to an end." Thankfully, however, I didn't have say this nor did Amy need to struggle with the decision of whether to climb the tree or run away because we didn't encounter any additional bears. Instead, we simply struggled on.After three miles and 1500 hundred more feet of "up" we saw signs of civilization in the distance and realized that we were finally nearing our destination. Hope, nay, joy had begun to seep into my soul until I rounded a corner and saw something that you don't ever want to see surrounding the tram that is to transport you down the mountain to the car and pancakes awaiting you below: men in hard hats. My heart sank as I realized that the tram was not running. It sank further as I realized that we should, and could, have had this information prior to setting out on our hike. In Amy's defense, she didn't know that there was any possibility that the tram might be closed. She didn't know that regularly scheduled maintenance occurs and that these service interruptions are noted on the tram website. I, on the other hand, have no such defense. I have hiked up the mountain only to reach the halfway point and to learn from fellow hikers that the tram is closed and that I will be hiking back down. I also know that the tram can be closed during bad weather, a lesson I learned during a most unfortunate hike that began with a lovely day and ended with a blizzard. In short, my life had been affected more than once because the tram should have been running but wasn't, and so I must confess that I should have known better. I approached one of the men in hard hats and inquired about the tram, adding desperately that we had just climbed the mountain with plans of taking the tram down. The apparent supervisor overheard this and said, "The tram isn't operating until 5:00 p.m. It has been closed all week for maintenance. Didn't you see the signs posted in the parking lot?" (That, admittedly, would have been the parking lot that we had entered, in the dark, illegally.) Two things kept me from responding, "No, you jackass. We didn't." First, it was pretty clear that rudeness would not advance our cause or help us get down the mountain any faster. Second, I could see that Amy was now losing the will to live and so I felt the need to rally, assume a position of leadership and devise a plan for getting us off the fucking mountain. Hiking the 11-or-so miles back down was simply not an option, so I placed a call to the aforementioned boyfriend who agreed to drive the 50-or-so miles from his house to pick us up at the nearest possible place: the Crest House parking lot which is located about 2 miles from where we were. I then assured Amy that our rescuer was on his way and that all we needed to do was hike another two miles in order for the ordeal to come to an end. At which point, she looked at me as if she might burst into tears at any moment. (She is a mountain goat with limited stamina. And a deep love of papas and pancakes.)We hiked on: Amy in emotional distress, me still in physical distress and while the 2 miles initially seemed an insurmountable obstacle, they passed surprisingly quickly. Soon we were bundled into a comfy SUV and were being driven down the mountain, regaling my boyfriend with a dramatic retelling of The Hike From Hell. As we wound our way down the mountain, enjoying the views from the comfort of the car I looked over at him, love shining in my eyes and said, "Thank you so much for rescuing us. I want to do something really nice to thank you. Perhaps I'll bake you a pie." He responded, "Banana cream?" which was a bit of a bummer because I wasn't entirely serious about baking a pie and, even if I had been, I had only ever baked fruit pies. Still, after he safely delivered Amy and I to the car we had left at the base of the tram some 8 hours before and after Amy and I had gone to our respective homes to take very long showers, I found myself in the grocery store buying bananas, whole milk, heavy cream and other ingredients required to make a banana cream pie. That night the boyfriend and I sat across from one another at my dining room table eating my first banana cream pie which, by the way, was really, really good. Then again, I was really, really hungry because I had burned about 5000 calories earlier in the day and, as you may have guessed, the breakfast of pancakes and papas that Amy and I had anticipated had not happened. As I bring this account to a close, I realize that I'm not sure whether these next words refer only to this story or to my hiking days in general but, either way, I'm experiencing a strange sense of relief as I write . . . The End. (PS: The photos included above have absolutely nothing to do with the hike. The last one, in fact, is of Lora and I hiking through Greenwich Village last August. This kind of hike we will stick to from now on.) http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=293 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=293 Sun, 25 Nov 2012 08:02:43 -0700 The fireworks told me. It's been an intense past few months. In addition to my regular teaching and performing work, I have done a fair amount of traveling this fall, giving workshops to teachers and students. I did a lecture/recital on the Art of Collaboration with a colleague and friend for the recent New Mexico MTNA state convention. I have been organizing an upcoming all-duet recital for my students. (If you have never considered an all-duet recital, don't!) I have been up to my eyeballs in a big writing project. As I said to a friend recently, it's all good; it's just a lot. When life gets crowded and my work begins to weigh heavily on my shoulders and to invade my dreams, I know that it's time to retreat until I can hear myself think again. In times like this, I need to not just rake leaves, but to watch them fall. I need to turn off the television and turn on my imagination. I need not more time on the piano bench, but more time on my meditation cushion. I silence the phone, and limit email. I swim more laps and read more books. When the creative well is depleted, sometimes I don't need more stimulation or inspiration to replenish, but less. Matt was out of town last week, which offered me the perfect opportunity to be a hermit. Although I was as interested as the next person in Tuesday's election, I wasn't interested in getting sucked into the drama of the endless news reports. I didn't want to succumb to the addiction of needing to know what was happening every minute throughout the evening. I suspected that regardless of who was elected president that the truth of my world wasn't going to change that much on Wednesday morning. I would still need to swim laps. I would still need to practice. I would still need to teach the fragile and rambunctious kids that came through my door that afternoon. Tuesday morning I arrived at the polls at 6:50am. I cast my vote, and I went about my day. I took myself to breakfast and wrote. I went to yoga. I practiced. I taught. That evening Matt and I talked on the phone. Obama had just won Pennsylvania. It was looking good for McCaskill in Missouri. Hanging up the phone, I put on some music, lit some candles, took a bath. I got into bed with a book and my cats. After a couple of chapters, I turned off the lights. I was just dozing when the fireworks began and celebratory shouts could be heard from neighborhood restaurants and bars telling me the news. Retreating farther under the covers, I smiled and went to sleep. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=292 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=292 Sun, 18 Nov 2012 08:13:55 -0700 Last year I fired my dentist. Actually, the problem wasn't the dentist. The issue was the receptionist, who had an annoying "Thank you for not smoking" tone of voice. She was also overly enthusiastic with the reminder phone calls. She called a month before, two weeks before and the day before, always with the requirement "to call back and confirm." I resented this task that was suddenly on MY to-do list. From the beginning, this relationship was in trouble. And then Dolores (I don't know if her name was actually Dolores) began calling me with random possible appointment times. "Amy," she would say as she left a message on my voicemail, "You need to get your teeth cleaned and I have an opening in one hour." I started getting this message at least once a week. Just hearing Dolores' voice (again!) on my machine would irritate me. I became determined NOT to get my teeth cleaned. After about 6 months of this dysfunctional passive-aggressive behavior, I fired my dentist. Or rather I fired Dolores, and, as a result, the dentist (who, by the way, was perfectly agreeable) had to go too. I found another dentist who didn't seem prone to aggressive reminder phone calls. I went and had my teeth cleaned. All was right in the world. Then a week later, I received a letter. My new friendly laid-back dentist was retiring. The practice was being taken over by someone named Tiffany. I rolled my eyes in reading this. But as long as Tiffany didn't get dial-happy, I didn't much care. After all, I have good teeth. I have bad feet, terrible eyes and chronic migraines, but I have great teeth. I have never needed braces; I have never even had a cavity. Given my dental history, I wasn't too worried about Tiffany. Tiffany, it turned out, is about 22. She is tall and blond and sports a ponytail. She is perky. I suspected that my new dentist was a Tri Delt. Whatever. Then last month, I heard the words I never thought I'd hear: "Amy, you ought to get this tooth filled." "What?" I said, not understanding. "You need to get this tooth filled." "What?" I repeated, still not understanding. "You need to get this tooth filled." "Are you talking to me?" I asked, thinking that I had suddenly become a character in someone else's book. I could not need a filling. I had good teeth. This "need to get this tooth filled" was someone else's story. Apparently not. It would, however, a "small" filling, my Tri Delt dentist assured me as she stood there with a six-inch needle in hand. It would "only take a minute." A minute later, I heard, "Uh-oh." If there is anything you don't want to hear from your dentist, particularly if her name is Tiffany and she is just months removed from her last Rush Week, is "Uh-oh." The problem, it seemed, was no longer small. In fact, most of my tooth was rotted out. It would require drilling off half my head. I would need a crown and maybe a root canal. This is evidence, I fear, that I may be slowly rotting out from the inside out. Or perhaps this is tangible proof that aging is not for the faint of heart. Either way, it wasn't fun. It's a good thing I like Tiffany OK, although every time she calls to "check up" on me, I think for a split second it might be my younger sister calling and not my dentist. Tiffany doesn't say anything overtly non-professional, she just sounds young and casual. As if we might be making plans to meet for drinks or something. "Hey Amy!" she begins. "Just seeing how you are doing . . ." I'm doing fine, by the way. My bank account has taken a huge hit, of course, thanks to the pricey crown, and my jaw feels like someone took a punch at me. But I am fine. I viewed this whole episode as an excuse to eat ice cream and a chance to indulge not in warm saltwater rinses, but in sea-salted dark chocolate bars. The salt, I reasoned, ought to be beneficial in either form. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=291 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=291 Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:58:36 -0700 The JimGreer Duo is currently on hiatus. Jerome is in Europe, visiting friends. Sadly, I am not in Europe.I am juggling other performances, other music, and other miscellaneous work. Like cleaning closets and raking leaves. Last week before Jerome left on holiday, we got together to read through a stack of music. Jerome brought his alto and bass flute. We stumbled through unfamiliar music, delighting in the new. Performances of late have consisted primarily of repertoire that we have played for years. Music that, in Jerome's words, we "inhabit." Inhabiting music is comfortable and secure, and leads to solid performances. Inhabiting our music is an easy, good place to hang out. We like inhabiting. But the novel is inspiring. "I feel scrubbed clean," Jerome exclaimed happily, after we tripped (and rather badly at that!) through a set of Beethoven Variations neither one of us had ever seen before. Rests, as any musician knows, are there to emphasize the musical notes around them. A rest from the intensity of the last few months of performances and rehearsals is a welcomed thing. It's fun to have the luxury of playing together with no particular goal or deadline in sight, to bounce around inside new musical phrases, to view the world through an unfamiliar set of notes, to laugh carelessly when things go awry instead of furiously fixing things. We are resting. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=290 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=290 Sun, 04 Nov 2012 08:34:44 -0700 Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must,the bees in the garden rumbling a little,the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.And so forth. But I'm taking the day off.Quiet as a feather.I hardly move though really I'm travelinga terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doorsinto the temple. -Mary Oliver from A Thousand Mornings http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=289 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=289 Sun, 28 Oct 2012 07:04:10 -0600 If I love teaching, it is with the same desperate, unsentimental, and at times involuntary love that I have for living itself. Like the life of which it forms so large a part, my job absorbs me, nourishes me, and wounds me; it says "I am all there is to existence" at the same time that it urges me to believe in a better one. A single moment of the ecstasy it can provide outweighs a whole year's drudgery; a single accident, a single indiscretion can spoil its sweetness forever. I know I am blessed to partake of it, and I know just as well that I shall have neither rest nor peace until it is done. -from No Place But Here: A Teacher's Vocation in a Rural Community by Garret Keizer (p. 109) http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=288 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=288 Sun, 21 Oct 2012 08:30:18 -0600 Last week my friend Jerome gave me the gift of time. This came in the form of 5 beautiful hourglasses, each one measuring a different length of time'60 minutes, 50 minutes, 20 minutes, 10 minutes and 5 minutes. Perhaps Jerome gave me not time exactly, but rather the visible knowledge of the passing of time. At any rate, they are lovely. It seems like no one has enough time these days. I recognize the sense of urgency in the voices of my friends as we try to find time for coffee or lunch, in the complaints of my students who are buried under homework and soccer, in the murmurs of my husband as we each are preoccupied with our work and separate worlds. I resent the distractions of my responsibilities that push me breathlessly from one thing to the next, leaving no gentle margins of space or time.I feel this sense of urgency even more sharply in the fall, because the beauty of the season seems to demand a certain mindfulness. For weeks now, our neighborhood YMCA has posted signs advertising a class for the elderly that read "Fall Prevention." Every time I pass such a sign, sleepy and blurry-eyed at 5:30 in the morning, I find myself thinking, "Why do we want to prevent fall?" I have thought this at least a dozen times before catching myself and realizing that in this case "fall" isn't a seasonal reference at all. If I blink, I fear I will miss out on fall completely, that I will awake one morning to winter, bleak and cold, the color and glory of autumn behind us for another year. The state fair has come and gone, the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival is in full swing, there are hundreds of yellow leaves in the trees outside my window. Last week I made my first pot of green chile stew and my first cranberry apple pie, but I have yet to get to the farmer's market for pumpkins. I have planted pansies and bulbs, but dozens of end-of-seasons garden chores still need attending. I have to dig out blankets and sweaters and boots from the basement, and pack away sandals and sundresses until next year. I have no seasonal hourglass to nudge me into action, but autumn is here. Maybe the hourglasses arrived in my life just at the perfect moment, interrupting my thoughts not with more beeps and alarms, but with a silent, mesmerizing shift of sand. Time passes, they chide me, whether or not I am paying attention. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=287 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=287 Sun, 14 Oct 2012 07:40:33 -0600 This weekend the JimGreer Duo was booked to play a house concert and a recital on a popular concert series in Plactias, a small village outside of Albuquerque. This kind of weekend might represent the yin and yang of performing: the public and the private. We gave our first house concert nearly four years ago. It happened almost by accident, really. Jerome had been pestering me to decide upon a recital space and I kept rejecting various halls because I didn't like the piano. Finally in exasperation, Jerome asked, "What piano do you want to play on?" and without thinking I responded, "Mine." And so, just like that, the house concert was born.Since then, every January has involved us putting on a house concert. These evenings include not just music, but also amazingly rich desserts and festive drinks. ("Give people enough champagne and sugar and they'll listen to anything," Jerome reasons.) We are hardly the first musicians to enjoy the intimate setting of the house concert. "Salon" concerts were quite popular in the 19th century, featuring not only music, but also poetry and other readings. (And, I imagine, plenty of food and drink as well. Probably served by footmen in formal dress. Think Downton Abbey---wrong century, but same idea.) In fact, Chopin, who suffered from paralyzing performance anxiety, only played in people's "salons," and refused to play in more public settings. House concerts have seen a revival in recent years, probably part of the general interest in all things domestic and homespun (God bless Martha Stewart & Co). The charm of getting to hear live music close-up and personal (and sometimes this is indeed "close-up"!!) is a refreshing change from the formal and removed atmosphere of more traditional concert settings. The JimGreer Duo hasn't yet refused to play in public (in fact, quite the contrary), but the comfort of the house concert does have its appeal. We just need to find a few good footmen to join our entourage. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=286 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=286 Sun, 07 Oct 2012 09:07:11 -0600 Matt sometimes tells people that he lives with the person who thinks more about practicing than anyone he knows. I fear this might make me the biggest nerd on the planet. But lately I have been thinking about practicing more than usual. Preparing for some workshops for teachers have forced me to rethink how I view practicing, and how I teach the discipline to my students. I have been writing blogs posts about practicing for one of Matt's choirs, which has made me think about how to translate my well-worn practicing techniques into strategies for singers. I have my own pile of music to prepare for next month's concerts, which demands that I practice what I preach. My students and I talk about practicing all the time. There is no set system of practice accountability that I require and impose; instead over time we create a method together, tweaking and fussing with it as we go. Some kids fill out practice charts with days and minutes. Other kids record sight-reading pages as evidence of their 5 days of practice. Still others do none of this, having proven to me long ago that they could be trusted to work faithfully without keeping a strict daily record. Some students, needing a lot of guidance, have developed elaborate systems of record keeping, involving stars and stickers and rewards. Even I have trouble remembering how some of these plans work. Micah's accountability system involves a daily assessment of up and down arrows to show me how things are going. Generally, I suspect that these little charts are filled out mostly on autopilot and don't represent a real thoughtful evaluation of his work, but that's OK for now. The little charts help him to remember to do everything, and he likes the act of recording his repetitions and assessment arrows. For now, it works. But last week, Micah came into his lesson, set down his practice notebook on my desk and announced, "You will see that the first three days of scales were a terror." True enough, in each of the first three practice boxes for scales was an emphatically drawn down arrow. I loved this. This might have been one of my favorite teaching moments ever. I loved this, not for what it represented about his struggle, but for what it revealed about his attention and evaluation of his practicing. This was, my Ed Psych colleagues would say, proof of meta-cognition. It was also evidence of something else I was even more proud of: It was proof that this young boy understood that practicing was hard and that sometimes things didn't go particularly well, but that with trust in the work and the will to try again tomorrow, things would get better. This has been pretty much what the last 35 years of practicing has taught me too. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=285 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=285 Sun, 30 Sep 2012 08:12:23 -0600 Courage doesn't always soar. Sometimes courage is the small voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow." -Anonymous http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=284 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=284 Sun, 23 Sep 2012 10:03:07 -0600 My diploma arrived in the mail yesterday. This makes it official: I am finished with my masters degree in educational psychology. Or, as I have been calling it lately, my second useless graduate degree. I mean that in jest, of course, believing strongly that nothing is totally useless. Certainly, it is this education that is providing the background for the work I do giving workshops to teachers, like I am doing this month in Texas and Missouri. It will be my understanding of learning theories and cognition, motivation and human development that supports the writing and teaching I do. Nothing is ever useless. But, as I joked to Matt, this degree is hardly the proverbial ship coming in. It is not a ship at all. More like a small plastic boat you get from a pinball machine. And yet, I did feel a sense of accomplishment and pride when I opened the envelope and found my diploma. No one was home to help me celebrate the moment, so I took it to show off when I met my friend Lora for breakfast the next day. It may be significant that I almost left it at the restaurant by accident. Of course, I have never been one for making too much of diplomas or awards of any kind. My other diplomas are in a box in the basement. I think. I once received an award for an article I wrote and after the ceremony I tossed the gold plaque in the trashcan on the way to the airport. It wasn't that I was ungrateful for the recognition. Quite the contrary. It was just that I didn't want to carry the heavy awkward thing home on the plane. And besides, it was headed straight for a box anyway. The "box" just happened to be a trashcan. The one award I have proudly displayed over the years was the certificate I earned by reading 221 books in first grade. That would be 221. I am pretty damn proud of that one. Sometimes when I am feeling low, I get it out and hang it on the refrigerator, just for good measure. It reminds me that I have accomplished something in my life. The refrigerator might just be the right place for this latest diploma, at least for a day or two before it too finds its place in a box in the basement. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=283 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=283 Sun, 16 Sep 2012 09:00:03 -0600 Last week, as I sat under the glaring lights at the dentist with my mouth full of five random pieces of hardware, the assistant asked me what I did. "Piano teacher," I mumbled around the metal in my mouth. "What?" she said. "Piano. Piano." I said, and mimed playing the piano. "Oh! Piano!" her eyes lit up in response. "That's what I want for Christmas. I started to learn piano, but now I need to finish." ...But now I need to finish....In all my years of confessing to strangers that I was a piano teacher, I have never heard someone say this, as if "finishing" was a possibility, right there within reach. I live in a world where nothing is ever "finished." The garden is never done, weeded or watered, pruned or planted. There is always more music to be learned for the next performance, a stack of recordings I should listen to, a pile of teaching repertoire that needs to be read through. I always have a backlist of topics I could write about. The house is never totally cleaned, just moderately sorted out from time to time. A pile of books is always waiting to be read; the next meal always needs to be cooked; there are always new skills to teach. Nothing is ever "finished." But that is the practice, after all. There is something sacred about the repetition itself, the meaning coming in the doing. "It is when we most feel like we don't need to practice that we have the chance to really deepen our work," my friend and yoga teacher, Patti often says. In other words, just when we feel like we are "finished" do we have the chance of really beginning.I have been thinking about this all week. I have just finished my third week of teaching in a new semester that feels like the last one, except the kids are older and smarter and taller and funnier. We have had our first round of performance classes, in which we welcomed our friend and piano technician, Jean-Luc, who came and took the piano apart right before our very eyes. ("Amy, do you think this is a good idea?" asked one concerned kid.) We are already thinking ahead to fall recitals and performances. I am juggling rehearsals and preparation for some workshops I am giving for teachers and pedagogy students in Texas and Missouri in the next few weeks. We are, clearly, not at all "finished" around here.There is something to be said for the ordinary routines of our lives, the practices that we stay loyal to, day in and day out, far from any finish line or end goal. I will never finish learning to play the piano to my satisfaction, or finish learning to be a wiser and more compassionate teacher and human being. I will never write the perfect paragraph or give a flawless recital. I will never be so brilliant at a workshop that I never need to give another one. I am so not finished. But I hope that my dental assistant gets her wish, her Christmas present, her chance to "finish" her piano lessons, her chance to discover that, in the end, the real joy in the work comes when there is no finish in sight. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=282 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=282 Sun, 09 Sep 2012 12:54:12 -0600 My friend and musical collaborator, Jerome Jim and I have just celebrated an anniversary of sorts. As of this month, we have been playing recitals and making recordings together for six years. Six. Years. Wow. Last summer we tied the knot, musically speaking, making it official: Together we are the JimGreer Duo. For the past three years, every August the JimGreer Duo has given what is now fondly referred to as a "Friends" concert. This is Jerome and my excuse to rehearse and perform with musicians other than one another, which is always stimulating and fun. It also provides us with an expanded audience base and a wider range of repertoire options. For the last two years, coloratura soprano Checky Okun has joined our duo. Turns out, Checky is quite skilled at treating her voice like an instrument (albeit one that can sing very high and very fast. Much, as I think about it, like Jerome and his flute). This year we were joined not only by Checky, but also by cellist Christian Garcia. The program included Sir Henry Bishop's virtuosic "Lo! Hear the Gentle Lark" for soprano, flute, and piano (Yes, the one Miss Piggy immortalized) and the fantastic trio we discovered last winter for flute, cello and piano by Carl Maria von Weber. In addition, Jerome and I (sans friends) performed Friedrich Kuhlau's "Grand Sonata for Piano and Flute" (note that piano comes first in the title. I love this.) and Samuel Barber's "Canzone." We closed the evening with the "Twinkle Variations on a theme by Mozart" arranged by Adam-Schmidt, which gave all four of us an opportunity to outdo one another in a grand showing of technique and fast and furious notes. (I won, I'm sure.) But the Friends concerts have had another purpose beyond showcasing our technique and colleagues. The first year, the concert raised money for Blackhat Animal Humane Society. Last year, donations were given to Albuquerque Healthcare for the Homeless. This year, our designated organization was Casa Angelica, a home for disabled children run by a group of very cool nuns. In all three years, the audiences have been enormously generous. This year we raised over $1000 for the good folks at Casa Angelica, money that will be allocated to purchase slings to help move the children in wheelchairs onto other equipment. These Friends concerts are satisfying evenings all the way around: Jerome and I get to make music with people we love for a good cause. And after six years together, it is good to shake up assumptions and forge new musical paths. "So did you bring me flowers?" I asked Jerome during our onstage banter a few weeks ago. "It is our anniversary after all." "Nope," he replied cheerfully, not the least bit sheepish. Thanks goodness for friends. The honeymoon period may be over. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=281 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=281 Sun, 02 Sep 2012 06:04:46 -0600 There is something about the beginning of school that makes me want to sharpen all my pencils, buy clean notebooks and journals, and set lofty and noble intentions for the new year. Last winter a student told me about an exercise he did for school called "18 by 18". Students were asked to set 18 intentions to be accomplished by the age of 18. Timmy told me that one of his intentions was to learn to play 5 instruments. At the age of 13 after having picked up two band instruments last year, he now knows 3, so he is off to a good start. Always a sucker for a list-making exercise, I loved everything about this "18 by 18" activity. In fact, in honor of a recent significant birthday, I thought I might make a similar list: "40 at 40." The problem is that it is so hot around here that I can barely turn over on the couch, let alone be inspired to turn over a new leaf. In fact, it has been quite a scramble to get my ducks in a row this semester. My fall newsletter was sent out and delivered at the last possible minute because I could not convince myself that it was really time to set lesson schedules and performance classes. I bought new sight-reading music on the last day of my summer break and spent the hour before my first student arrived hurriedly cataloguing the new books. I had thought I might do a grand clean of the house before the semester began, but had to settle for a quick vacuum. I didn't even shake out the rugs. So much for good intentions. But students will be pleased to know that I did manage to purchase new books for the sunroom library as I do every August. Just this week Jamie arrived to his lesson early. I was gobbling down the last of my lunch so I told him I'd be with him in a couple of minutes. "Oh good," he said, "That way I have time to read the books." Here are the new additions to the sunroom library: The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton is a book I remember loving as a child. It lived at my grandmother's house, and will forever be a part of my association with her memory. Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel was not part of my childhood, but it is another classic by Burton. One little boy has already squealed with delight in finding this book on my shelf. In a house inhabited by two cats, there are always the feline books: Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes and Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton have been favorites for a while now. But my new cat book, If Not for the Cat by Jack Prelutsky, combines clever haikus with beautiful illustrations by Ted Rand. This might be my new favorite. Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett is about a girl who covers her world with her magical knitting creations. There was a time when I was obsessively knitting that my family probably thought, "Oh no! Not another scarf!" This book makes me smile. Stuck by Oliver Jeffers tells the story about a boy whose kite gets stuck in a tree. In his attempt to free the kite, the boy throws first one thing after another into the tree (If you know the song "I know an old woman who swallowed a fly" you get the idea). Underneath this simple story is a larger metaphor for the unfortunate habit we all have at throwing unhelpful things at situations until the problem is bigger than it ever needed to be. At the end of the book, the boy solves the problem by throwing a saw into the tree and untangling his kite, leaving the rest of the mess behind. I suspect we have all done that too. Finally, no August would be complete without a new Eric Carle book. This year it is: The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse. (And a red crocodile, and a yellow cow....) After a summer of tediously painting the new doors deep blue and wine red and beet purple, I am very happy to simply read about painting. New leaves or not, here's to a new school year of blue horses, yarn for everyone and plenty of creative solutions to thorny problems. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=279 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=279 Sun, 26 Aug 2012 08:59:31 -0600 I haven't traveled anywhere. But is that bad?I can busy myself with my small world.Dust the window sills and study rain.Use water, air, fire frugally.And so each evening I visit the plantations of the balconywhere God reveals slowly the mysteries of plants:Frugaria vesca reddens densely,Lycopersicon begins to ripen.Here I can experience tempestuous adventures,flip on the TV and watch the lielike a strange fish behind the aquarium wall,catch a spider and spare its life,argue learnedly before the mirrorthat this is mine, my own reflection.And when the multitude of daily chores exhausts meand the night hides summer souvenirs,I call the dog, let him out in a deserted square, and all alone look around that other world. -Krzysztof Lisowski (translated by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough) http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=278 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=278 Sun, 19 Aug 2012 09:51:55 -0600 Remember ear tunes? Those fun folk tunes students listen to, pick out the melodies by ear and then harmonize with their basic I, IV and V chords? You know, like "Sweet Betsy from Pike," or "Old Joe Clarke," or the infamous "Hokey Pokey"? No? This is exactly the attitude some of my students cop with me any time I mention ear tunes. Like: What is an ear tune? Or: What ear tune? Or my all time favorite: I would have done it, but my mom sold our CD player at the garage sale. Garage sale season or not, it is like pulling teeth around here. Must be the heat. That isn't to say all the kids are resistant to ear tunes. Some would happily pick out their entire assignments by ear if it would save them from having to sight-read. Or play scales. Or practice their Bach prelude with the metronome. Everyone has something they don't like to do. But we were talking about ear tunes. (This distracted digression is exactly what the kids hope for when I discover what they haven't done that week.) The fun doesn't stop after the ear tune melody can be played and harmonized in the friendly key of C. No, sirree. In fact, the fun (or the torture, depending on your attitude) has just begun. Of course, it helps if the students have done their "chart." The "chart" is simple. It takes, even the most reluctant student admits, about 30 seconds. This is the chart: Time signature: (EX: 3/4. OR: 4/4) Melody range: (For instance: Sol to Sol. OR: Do to La. OR: Sol to Do. Whatever.) First note: (Choices: Do. Mi. OR: Sol. "C" is not an answer.) Once the chart is done, the world and its possibilities open. The next step in the ear tune progression is to determine whether or not the key of C is the best key for the average person singing along to "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain" or "Yankee Doodle." Often, we discover, the good old key of C is not our best bet. We start with the assumption that the most comfortable singer range is the octave between C and C. If the range of our ear tune is Sol to Sol, we quickly discover that we have a problem. Turns out there's a reason we need to learn to play the key of F well. Once we find our way to the key of F, or whatever key best suits our ditty of the day, the assignment possibilities explode: *We can transpose to not only a singer-friendly key, but other ones as well. *We can write out the solfege syllables of the tune and the melodic rhythm (if you listen hard, you can hear the kids whine about that one!) *We can reharmonize with more interesting chords (I introduce non-diatonic chords options here, substituting the predictable C major triad with colorful harmonies like A-flat major or F minor. Kids who might have been bored senseless up until this point, suddenly wake up and take notice.) *We can construct a two-hand accompaniment sans melody (Ah! A purpose for that chord assignment of roots in LH, chords in RH. Funky rhythms like tango or bossa nova are encouraged if I can sing against them.) *We can write variations on the old standard, employing not only non-traditional harmonies, but also turning a major tune into a minor one, changing the rhythm, embellishing the tune. Options are limitless. Kids who might have no interest whatsoever in the old composition bowl, often get very into writing variations. I suspect the form of theme and variations provides just enough structure to be comforting, whereas more traditional open-ended composition assignments can seem overwhelming and intimidating to some. After all this, we are ready, as I often tell students, for any group of preschoolers that come our way. I say this with great enthusiasm. I swear the kids just look at me like I am nuts. One day, I will present them with a group of 4 year-olds and see what happens. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=277 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=277 Sun, 12 Aug 2012 10:37:43 -0600 I turn my back for one minute, and the next thing I know Jerome is rescuing fish. That would be fish. As in betta fish.I fear I might have started this madness. For Jerome's birthday in June, I gave him a spunky red betta fish that my husband named Scarpia. Turns out both Jerome and I have significant birthdays this summer. Although Jerome is much, much older than me.The next thing I know, Jerome has five fish, and then ten, and then a dozen. He admits to buying nearly dead betta fish at the pet store, just so he can give them a nice quality of life in their final few hours. By all definitions of the word, he is running a fish hospice. I suppose I deserve this, I should not have turned my back on Jerome for so long. But I have had other things on my mind. Aside from the rather daunting upcoming birthday, this summer I have finished a graduate degree in educational psychology (Jerome may be older, but now have the "plus one" distinction regarding useless masters degrees). I have been working on a couple of big writing projects. I have been teaching dozens of children to play the piano. I have been keeping the house going and the garden watered. Really, it has been all I could do to keep my own trio of betta fish alive.And then there are the upcoming Duo performances, with all their subsequent publicity and musical details to worry about. Our next concert is on August 18, and we will be joined by two of our favorite collaborators: cellist Christian Garcia and soprano Checky Okun. This is a benefit recital for Casa Angelica, a home for disabled children run by very cool nuns. Rehearsals have begun, which should keep Jerome out of trouble and away from the pet store for a while. At least we can hope. But I'm afraid the betta fish are here to stay. Just last week, Jerome and I were playing a concert, and my husband, reading our bio, asked, "Where's the mention of the fish? Aren't you two all about the betta fish now?" It's a good point. The next JimGreer concert may need to be a benefit for the betta fish of America. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=276 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=276 Sun, 05 Aug 2012 08:11:58 -0600 Chords. It's been a while. I started to write another blog post about ear tunes and wacky harmonization options before realizing that, once again, I was jumping over myself. It's all about the sequencing, I have to remind myself a thousand times again. Successful teaching is all about good sequencing. And so: back to chords for a moment. When last we looked at chords, we were following the 3 basic steps of set-up, blocked chords, and accompaniment patterns, presumably in the left hand, and merrily transposing the fun to every major and minor key. All good. But don't stop there. Once the same sequence has been established for the right hand, then the world is your oyster. Time to add LH roots and multiply the possibilities. New chord assignments can look like this: Roots in LH, chords in RH. Or to clarify: RH: I IV I V V7 I LH: Do Fa Do Sol Sol Do (8va) (I like that octave drop: Sol-Sol-Do. Mimics so many Baroque and Classical cadences.) And since sequence is god around here the steps look like this: Set-up RH LH roots: Do-Fa-Do-Sol-Sol(8va lower)-Do RH/LH blocked together with pedal Patterns: Broken, Waltz, Tango, Bossa Nova, whatever Of course, this can (and should!) be done in any key. Of course, this can be done in with major and minor harmonies. Of course, the rhythmic accompaniment possibilities are endless. As are the teaching and creative implementations. The world, indeed, is your oyster. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=275 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=275 Sun, 29 Jul 2012 06:52:01 -0600 Recently I witnessed two people greeting one another in the grocery store. "How are you?" the woman asked. "Oh, you know," the man replied as he grabbed a box of Cheerios off the top shelf, "livin' the dream." We are trying to find the dream around here. The cats are living the dream this spring, as this has been a record year for moths. They love moths, or rather, they love to torture moths, batting them senseless and then running around the house carrying the little guys in their mouths. "I don't think the moth did anything to deserve that," one student remarked watching the girls play, tormenting some poor winged creature. She was right. Matt, on the other hand, seems bent on saving moths, in a charming sort of way. One night he announced at dinner that he had rescued two moths from the choir room at church and released them outside. "Well, that's great," I replied, flashing immediately on the bad Chicken Soup story about saving starfish. The point of the starfish story is that in spite of the futility of saving starfish on the beach (after all, there are thousands! Ten thousand, probably!), throwing them back in the water is a small act of hope and kindness. Besides, as the punch line of the tale goes, for each starfish you save, it "matters to that one." "What are you trying for here?" I asked Matt. "Chicken Soup for the Choir Directors Soul?" Without missing a beat, Matt said, "Matters to that moth." Ah, the dream is alive and well. Of course, the care and the rescue of the individual is the point in most of the microcosms of our lives. We teach not the faceless sample or target populations that make up the research, but the individual, vulnerable human beings that walk through our doors: Camy, with her freckles and quirky learning curves; Tony, with his boundless enthusiasm and energy; Sophie, with her fast fingers and quicker mind. Matters to that one, we tell ourselves, and that one, and that one. Some starfish students have been flung far, living and playing in colleges across the country. "What's new?" I email them, nudging my way into their worlds. "Oh, livin' the dream," responds Kara. "You know," I write back eagerly, "you are the second person this week I have heard use that phrase. The other guy was about 60 with a long grey ponytail and Birkenstocks. So 1970's of both of you." Several days passed. Then I got this reply: "Amy, I'm pretty sure it isn't the same dream. Love, Kara." http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=273 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=273 Sun, 22 Jul 2012 06:52:00 -0600 perfect summer sky--one blue crayonmissing from the box -Evelyn Lang, The Haiku Anthology http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=272 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=272 Sun, 15 Jul 2012 07:44:20 -0600 I am, at long last, done.("Hooray!" says Matt, who has endured three long years with a distracted wife. "Hooray!" says the cats, who think there have not been enough laps to nap on. "Hooray!" says my students and families, who have patiently put up with wacky scheduling and no flexibility on my part. "Hooray!" says my friends, who have are tired of always hearing that I can't hike. Or go to lunch. Or have coffee.)It's been a long, long three years. And, truth be told, an even longer last month. June was a blur of human development class and studying for comps. After hours of reading and research, I'd emerge red-eyed and teach for a few hours. I practiced just enough to assure myself that I would be a musician again someday. I watered the scorched garden while formulating essays in my head on adult development theorists like Daniel Levinson or Jean Baker Miller. I swam laps and walked while mentally sorting out the differences and similarities between Piaget and Vygotsky and tried to apply their theories to teaching music. I painted doors and muttered ways to improve self-efficacy or maximize cognition. The irony was not lost on me that the very things that improve cognition---rehearsal and context and organization---were horribly abbreviated in my own work last month. Last Monday I sat through oral comp exams, and once again, recited what I knew, applying, whenever possible, the application of learning theories to teaching piano. I walked out that morning with another useless masters degree in hand, the evidence of three years of work and effort completed. (And done well, my committee assured me. They seem both proud and amused about having a little musician interloper in their department.) I spent the afternoon and evening kicking myself for all the smart things I should have said and didn't. "It's like when you get a standing ovation at the end of a performance," Matt commented later, "but you can't stop thinking about that place in the second movement where things went awry." Exactly.Am I glad I did it? Absolutely. Was it worth three years of my life and all the stress and headaches? No question. Have I found the knowledge learned to be helpful to my teaching? Every day and twice on Sundays. However. Am I glad to be done? Oh, yeah. You have no idea. "So, what's next?" my comp committee asked me Monday. "So, what now?" friends celebrating the end with me have asked this week. There's plenty on the immediate horizon: I have concerts to play in the next few months. I have many many lessons to teach and a fall schedule to begin planning and preparing for (How can it be that time already?). I will be in mid-Missouri in September giving a workshop to teachers. I am presenting at the New Mexico MTNA conference in November. Dennis Alexander and I are finishing up a book of pieces intended to be taught completely by rote. There's a big writing project underway, and about a dozen possible articles in the works. Somehow, in the midst of all of this, the degree will find a way of earning its keep I am sure.But mostly, the answer to "What's next?" is I don't know. And for the time being, that's welcomed. I am trying to be intentional about this transition, to close this door mindfully, to celebrate crossing the finish line at last. After a blurry, whirlwind month, it's good to see clearly once more. I'm eager to embrace the idea of possibility in my life again, to stop thinking every moment that there is something I should be doing that I'm not, to go hiking and have lunch. More than all of that, I'm ready to reclaim the life I had before with all its messy peculiarities. Funny, but in the end, after three years of dipping my toes into another field and world, the greatest lesson learned was that I was perfectly happy already in mine. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=271 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=271 Sun, 08 Jul 2012 09:48:45 -0600 -Source unknown, but brilliant http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=270 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=270 Sun, 01 Jul 2012 08:07:10 -0600 Matt and I recently spent 10 days eating and drinking, swimming and hiking, and generally meandering our way down the California coast. It was heaven. This was one of those planned unplanned trips, where we pick dates and a destination and, upon arrival, simply let the days unfold at will.This, we have discovered, makes a lot of people nervous. In fact, one can learn a lot about how other people view the world and what their relationship is with control and structure by studying their reactions to our unplanned vacation."You do have places to stay, right? As in hotels, yes?" (No.)"But you know where you will be, right? You know what you'll be doing?" (Uh, no.)And perhaps, my favorite response of all:"That sounds like my idea of hell." This was the plan in a nutshell: We were flying into Oakland and picking up a car at 10AM that morning. We had lunch reservations at Chez Panisse, and a hotel booked in Sonoma that night. Ten days later we were flying out of Burbank. That was the plan.In lives that are as structured and over-scheduled as ours, to not have to be anywhere or answer to anyone for 10 days is truly a vacation, a real escape from reality. There is nothing more liberating than wondering where you might be the next night for dinner. Particularly when you couldn't care less. There is nothing that blows open your mental ruts more than an open road and an empty day. There is nothing like the Pacific Coast Highway to encourage both introspective and expansive new thoughts. The first day we had lunch at Chez Panisse and dinner that night at The Girl and The Fig in Sonoma.The next day we hiked all over Pt. Reyes National Seashore, the windiest place on the Pacific Coast, much to my dismay--("Wind disturbs Amy's spirit," Matt likes to joke)'and ate oysters for dinner.We braved the crowds and the tour buses and went to Muir Woods.We spent four days on Monterrey Peninsula: a morning in Carmel, a day hiking in Big Sur, another morning at the Monterrey Aquarium (Penguins and Otters and CHILDREN: Oh My!), an afternoon at the movies, and many hours weaving through the back roads of Carmel Valley.We were in San Luis Obispo for 36 hours visiting a friend and eating good food.We secured a hotel on the Santa Barbara beach, where we rented bicycles and cycled along the coast. Finally, we made our way down the crowded last part of Highway 1 to LA. It took us two and a half hours to go the last 20 miles. Over the course of the trip, we saw elephant seals.... And banana slugs.....Ferns as big as me..... Charming lighthouses.....And little seaside towns..... And mile after mile....After mile after mile.....Of breathtaking ocean views. We returned to a fire-ridden state, two annoyed cats, and three fish who couldn't care less. We hit the ground running with work and school, lessons and comp exam studying. There was a garden to attend to and doors to paint. It's all good, these habitual patterns of our lives, but the grooves are worn deep and the leisure options are few these days. "How do you feel to be home?" I ask Matt. He answers, half-smiling, "Wistful." http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=268 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=268 Sun, 24 Jun 2012 09:25:45 -0600 Speaking of recitals..... One of the many challenges to recital preparation is the memory work. Thanks to the precedent set by our over-achieving piano forefathers, pianists are routinely expected to memorize for performances. My studio is no exception. While there are many compelling arguments on both sides of the issue of memorization, the fact remains: memorizing music demands us to learn more thoroughly. We are forced to reconcile the discrepancies in what we may or may not really know. We have to understand patterns in the music on a deeper level, which makes for a richer encoding process within the brain. Cognitively speaking, these are good things. But it requires us to practice differently. And it is to that subject that we turn. There are a million strategies for memorizing, and many pedagogues have written extensively on the subject. But there has not been enough discussion, in my opinion, about how to test one's memory work, aside from merely playing through the piece in question. This often is not the most definitive test of memorization, for as cognitive theorists will tell you, "state dependent learning" (hooking our memory to a specific place, situation, emotion, even a particular scent) is a powerful thing. We often can play our music just fine on our own pianos, in our own houses, during our regular practice hour. The question is whether we can do it anywhere else, at any other time. And that's where good assessment of our memory work is crucial. Today we are going to look at one test for memory, which as the case may be, provides us with yet another practice strategy for that growing list: ghosting. When my kids are not answering every question I ask with "rhythms," they respond to my question: "how should you practice this?" with "ghosting." This proves only to be helpful about as often as the rhythm answer is; clearly, I still have work to do in teaching students to determine more accurately the best practice strategy needed in any particular case. At least, however, they know two methods of practicing. I must at least be doing some things right. But back to ghosting. Ghosting is first introduced in piano lessons when teaching the skill of balance'learning to play one hand louder than the other (which, admittedly is not balance at all, as students like to point out). Ghosting means playing silently on the surface of the keys'"ghosting" the physical gestures but not making a sound. It is great for teaching balance, (or "imbalance" as it should more rightly be called) because it demonstrates very quickly the difference in weight needed to produce two contrasting sounds: One hand is an elephant; the other is a feather, as I often tell students. Or, after the concept is understood, I resort to shorthand: "elephant/feather" I write in their notebooks as a reminder to listen for balance. But ghosting is also a brilliant device for checking memory. Ghosting subtracts the aural component of the music, but keeps the physical gesture, which messes with our brain. By divorcing the habitual muscle memory from the sound, we circumvent the automatic process, which is good for making us think more concretely about what we are doing. We have to use more conscious cognitive thinking instead of relying on automatized physical gestures. We are forced to internally "hear" what we are ghosting, which also tests our memory. Ghosting can be painfully humbling. There are three ways to ghost: Both hands can ghost at the same time, or one hand or another can ghost while the other plays normally. The kids will tell you that the one they want to avoid is the RH ghost/LH play version. Because we often are accustomed to listening more closely to the melody, which is most often in the RH or top voice, it is disconcerting to suddenly have that half of the equation gone. Just because that's how I roll, I can tell you that RH ghost/LH play is the one I most often "test" in lessons, much to the students' chagrin. Ghosting may not the answer to every question I ask, but in the weeks before a recital, it's a pretty safe bet. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=267 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=267 Sun, 17 Jun 2012 09:38:28 -0600 The sunroom is the best place in the world to be these days.Last summer we had an old-fashioned wooden screen built for the side door leading into the sunroom. We (I should say, I) painted it a deep eggplant purple. We (I should say our handyman) installed a ceiling fan in the sunroom. Suddenly there was air circulation in our old cottage, letting in the cool morning and evening desert air. The cats would sit for hours with their noses pressed to the screen staring out, watching the birds and feeling the breeze on their little faces. It was almost like they were outside. Almost. To quote Bruce Springsteen, The screen door slams, a most lovely sound. In an old house, there is always a long list of things needing attention. Mostly, with lives that are already too full, our attention is elsewhere; it is amazing what we are willing to live with simply because we are too lazy and distracted to do anything about it. Somewhere on that list has been the item: Get new front doors. That item has sat on the list for 7 years. But when you're done, you're done. One day, I decided that I couldn't stand those awful useless front doors any longer. They were literally falling apart'an insult to my aesthetic senses and an invitation to anyone who wanted to break in and steal the piano. At the same time, ironically, it took a degree in engineering to open them. Lose-lose, I say.One of the problems with the whole Getting Things Done idea around here is that it takes us a long time to decide to do anything. The potential new doors took some imagination, for sure: the old doorway had been built to accommodate the former strange-sized doors, which meant we were going to have to have new ones built. The doorframe had to be redesigned and restructured. Then there would have to be some painting of the lovely eggplant purple color. Inevitably, that would be my job. (I suggested to Matt that, in lots of households, the man would be the one doing all the priming, painting, scraping and so on, and the woman would pick out the color and nag. Matt paused and then responded, "Yeah, I think this is better. The job actually gets done. You don't have to nag. And I don't have to do it." Ah, there in a nutshell is the world according to Matt Greer.) But in spite of the fact that this was not going to be an easy project, I had decided that this was the top priority in a long list of top priorities. And deciding something needs to be done is the first critical step in getting anywhere. I found a wonderful local door company who came out and measured our wacky doorway. I determined that I wanted a tiny set of French doors each with five big windows. I also wanted---and here's the kicker, which subjected me to many strange stares and looks of "What are you thinking lady?" from the construction guys---I wanted French screen doors as well. Basically, high from the success of the previous summer's screen door installation and subsequent increase in air circulation, I was greedy: I wanted more air. For someone who is, by all definitions, an "indoorsy" person, I like to blur the margins between the inside and outside as much as possible. This was a good idea, I kept telling my new friends at Pat's Doors. We can do this. We should do this. They were, to put it mildly, skeptical. These were door guys. They wanted a big oak front door, or as an allowance for my 1930's style house, maybe a nice set of French doors, but with frosted glass. No one, they told me sternly, puts screen doors on the front of the house. I do. What I lack in formality I make up for in creativity. We have, I told the door guys with equal conviction, a cottage. A cottage. A cottage needs screen doors.Six weeks later, my good friends at Pat's Doors call. My doors were done. Would I like to come see them? I would, in fact. I arrived early one Thursday morning. "I'm here to see my doors," I said. "Oh!" the woman behind the counter responded, "Are you the one with the cutest doors ever?" That would be me. For 10 minutes I was passed from one person to another. The handoff in every case was, "This is the woman for those really cute doors in the back." I left smiling, validated. I stopped smiling when, a few days later, I caught sight of the sledgehammers my buddies were using to break down the old doorway. I had no idea this was going to be a construction project. Plaster dust flew everywhere. My cats went into hiding. In retrospect, that was a good idea. Our sunroom houses not only lovely breezes caught by the ceiling fan, but is home to about 300 books, my desk, chairs for waiting students, rugs, and a dozen orchids and cacti. Within minutes the entire room was covered in grit. Just about then, my housekeeper shows up. We were throwing an end-of-the-year party for Quintessence, and I had arranged for Ellen to come clean. I had not anticipated the construction project. "Uh," I said to her as she unloaded her cleaning products and brooms, "I guess maybe concentrate on the back of the house?" And then the plumber arrived. This is the time of year when the swamp cooler must be cleaned out and set up for the season. Last weekend Matt climbed on the roof, took one look (OK, maybe two) and announced that this year he was calling the plumber. Mr. Plumber got on the roof and started banging on something. The Door Guys are joyfully swinging sledgehammers in the sunroom. Ellen is scrubbing the bathroom. This is the worst day of the cats' lives. (Two days later, a 60-foot branch off our ancient elm tree breaks off and falls into the garden. "Matt!" I called. "We need some tree guys out here. NOW!" This involved three hours of working to the roar of a chainsaw. It was a week.) With all the chaos, I almost forgot I had a rehearsal. My good friend and musical partner, Jacque and I were performing Barber's Hermit Songs at a local venue that week, Sunday Chatter. We had set a rehearsal. As it turned out, we rehearsed in the midst of a circus. ("Do you think it will bother them?" Jacque asked, concerned. "Jacque, we don't care if it bothers them. Although it may be hard to tell at the moment, this is MY house.") Ellen finished the bathroom and kitchen. The sledgehammers were replaced by nail guns (construction versus deconstruction). The plumber continued to bang on the swamp cooler on the roof. Ellen was literally driving down the street when Jacque and I hear a loud Whoosh! and six months of dust, leaves, sticks, seedpods, and grit falls through the vent into the hall. That would be hall in the back of the house. The one area of the house that Ellen just cleaned. I began to renounce my former greediness and wish I had settled for a nice traditional oak door. Or better yet, had not broken my general inertia around house projects. We could have lived with those old doors a while longer. Forever, in fact. The plumber, having successfully trashed the back of the house, left. Students began arriving for their lessons. They were thrilled with the excitement and chaos. I taught to the rhythm of a nail gun. Some 8 hours'8 hours!!'later, the doors are done. They are, in a word, breathtaking. They are everything I dreamed and imagined. They are beautiful. The next morning, I clean. And clean. And clean some more. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=266 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=266 Sun, 10 Jun 2012 08:53:54 -0600 A conversation heard outside our window: A couple of guys were rewiring the air-conditioner next door. One says to the other, "Man, that woman sure does play the piano a long time." The other responds, "She's a professional pianist. Like, she went to school for that." "You can do that?" *** These days that time at school seems a million years ago. I am weeks away from acquiring another useless master's degree. I spent last semester in a mind-numbing measurement and assessment course, taught by someone who had the unfortunate habit of reversing numbers in his calculations. ("You know that's how bridges collapse," one friend said drily. Yes, but we are in the social sciences.) I spent the first month of class wondering why I never came up with same numbers as he did, and the next three months wondering which of the numbers might be reversed in the statistical equations I was struggling to understand. It was a long semester. I turned in a final paper and the next day began studying for comps. Comprehensive exams in that last graduate degree 20 years ago ("Like, she went to school for that.") consisted of memorizing long lists of opus numbers and keys. There was one time I knew the opus number of everything Beethoven wrote for the piano. And Chopin. I knew all the K numbers used to catalogue Mozart sonatas and concertos. I could tell you that Beethoven Opus 10 No 3 was in D major. That was a long time ago. These days I am studying cognition theories and internal and external validity principles. I can tell you in great detail about the modal model of memory and talk to you for hours about Bandura's social cognitive theory. I have nine hours of written comps and a morning of orals. During June, I have my last class in human development (due to unfortunate timing, I will have to write my human development comp questions the same week I am finishing the course. Not ideal.). The end is in sight. Recently, a student of mine announced that she was "super excited" about her term paper because she was doing it on Bach and "you, Miss Amy, can be my primary source!" Research methods are not my strong suit, as anyone in the educational psychology program at the University of New Mexico will tell you, however, I am pretty sure I cannot be Corrine's primary source on Bach. Nonetheless, I was charmed, if not by her assertion of my primary connection to Bach, but because she was so psyched about doing an English term paper on a composer. For weeks she gave me updates, offered fun facts about what she was learning, asked to borrow books. Finally, one week Corrine declared that the paper was done. "Do you know what was the toughest part?" she asked me. "Tell me," I responded, sensing somehow that piano practice might have taken a back seat the week the term paper was due. "The toughest part was trying to explain musical things that I have been doing my whole life. Like 'shaping' or crescendo. My English teacher had no idea what I was talking about. He kept making me explain. It's really hard to figure out how to talk about what we do." In all my years with Corrine I have never seen her so serious. These days she is a teenager, flakey and distracted as often as she is earnest and intense. And yet, there she was, talking about being a musician ("...things I have been doing my whole life...") as if it were a central part of how she viewed herself in the world, as if there was nothing more important than trying to make another person understand this very essence of her. In the end, perhaps that is why I went back to school. I wanted to learn to talk more credibly about what it is that I do. I wanted to understand the theories behind how teaching and learning works. I wanted to be able to say with some conviction and authority what the educational psychology equivalent of crescendo might be. Maybe more than anything, I wanted to be able to explain to another person, "Hey! This is how I see the world." You can do that? I certainly hope so. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=265 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=265 Sun, 03 Jun 2012 07:32:42 -0600 Measure me, sky!Tell me I reach by a songNearer the stars:I have been little so long. Weigh me, high wind!What will your wild scales record?Profit of pain,Joy by the weight of a word. Horizon, reach out!Catch at my hands, stretch me taut,Rim of the world:Widen my eyes by a thought. Sky, be my depth;Wind, be my width and my height;World, my heart's span:Loneliness, wings for my flight! -Leonora Speyer (1872-1956) http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=264 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=264 Sun, 20 May 2012 06:48:43 -0600 Last Saturday evening (5/5 @ 5PM!) was our spring recital. I swear these recitals come around faster every year.("Is the recital going to be at that 'Ten Thousand Stars Church?'" one kid asked me. "Well, yes, it is," I answered with a straight face, liking the inflated notion that now my studio had its own church. I must confess that sometimes, I lie. Especially when it is funny.)Some time ago, a student asked me if we couldn't someday have a recital that featured the music of a single composer. I thought this a brilliant idea, and immediately tried to book Beethoven for the event. Turns out, it is hard to get old Ludwig to commit to a date.Truth is, Beethoven would have been a highly inappropriate choice. Beethoven, in spite of his genius, did not write music for the young beginning pianist. Nor was he much concerned with making his music particularly "pianistic". He couldn't have cared less to write a piece that was heavily patterned in such a way to make it sound more difficult and impressive than it was. No, when it comes to those little things that give ease and confidence to young musicians, Beethoven was a tough cookie. Which is why I am once again eternally grateful for Dennis Alexander.Several years ago (six to be exact), my friend Anne stood in my kitchen and announced, "You will never guess who just moved to Albuquerque. Dennis Alexander!" To which I responded, "It can't be that Dennis Alexander." To our great fortune, it was.Since that time, Dennis has become not only a colleague and mentor, but also a friend. Indeed in my world, Dennis is right up there with Beethoven. Hardly a day in the last 20 years has gone by when I haven't taught one of his great pedagogical gems. Over the years, my students have had the great privilege of trying out music he has written before it has been published. He has guided me through thorny pedagogical dilemmas, offered feedback to my own performances, coached my students before important events. And as every kid knows when we play Musical Trivia Pursuit in performance class, "Dennis Alexander" is the answer to the question: "Who is the composer who recently moved to Albuquerque?" (Lately, however, the kids have been arguing this point, telling me that Dennis Alexander did NOT "recently" move to Albuquerque, but has lived here "a LONG time." Just goes to show you "a LONG time" is different when you are 7 then when you are almost 40!)But even more importantly than all those things, Dennis graciously agreed to come to our recital last Saturday night.And so, the 5/5 @ 5PM recital featuring the music of Dennis Alexander was born.Last Saturday there were performances of the old favorites from the Finger Paintings collections, which were among the first pieces of Dennis' I ever taught. There were several duets performed that night that came from a new, just published, collection of duets: Just for Two, which are duet arrangements of his popular Just for You books. A left hand injury inspired me to teach the fiendishly difficult, but lovely "Arioso for the Right Hand" to one high school student. Working on this piece together led this otherwise cool teenager to exclaim, "Oh! It is so beautiful!" That alone was worth all the struggles we have gone through together for it was the first truly unguarded and touchingly vulnerable response I had witnessed from her in years. My favorite moment involved a brother/sister team who played "Giggle Bugs" from one of the aforementioned Finger Paintings books. The older sister played the teacher part, exactly like I did for HER seven years ago on her first recital. It seems we have come full circle, and beyond that, it appears I might be teaching myself out of a job.Afterwards there was the predictable punch and cookies, photos were taken, children ran around in recital clothes letting off steam, parents breathed a sigh of relief that yet another recital performance was behind us. Dennis posed for pictures and signed dozens of autographs. (One tiny child seemed confused by this concept, and kept bringing her program to me to sign. "Kid," I finally said, "my autograph is worth nothing. Nothing, I tell you.")Even on evenings when I am not particularly anxious about the students' performances, even when I can sit back and relax confidently knowing that the kids have got things under control, even when I can honestly say we are as ready as we could be at this particular time, even when all that, these studio recitals still take an enormous amount of energy. The good will generated at these events is worth every ounce of time and effort, but nevertheless it is somewhat a distraction from the work we otherwise do week in and week out.It's time to get back to the business of learning to be a musician again.... http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=263 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=263 Sun, 13 May 2012 07:43:56 -0600 Outside the window, the roses wave in the sunlight....The table and chairs beckon, waiting for the first al fresco lunch of the season...The courtyard, which just weeks ago was covered in snow........now is bursting with green....Pink tulips stand at attention....The orange poppies are rioting for space and attention....The hollyhocks are staking their claim everywhere.....Purple alliums look like giant lollipops....The roses climb up the walls....The back garden sits quietly under the shade of the elm treess.....Yellow Lady Bank roses fall over the trellis....Brightly colored chairs lure us out in the evenings, to sit and linger in the fading New Mexico light, cocktails in hand.... http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=262 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=262 Sun, 06 May 2012 09:34:30 -0600 This week I was teaching a pre-Impressionist piece to Sophie. It is a little early intermediate piece that makes use of the five-note pentatonic scale. I began my spiel by talking a bit about Impressionist art. We looked at a couple of paintings by Monet in an art book. I explained the link to Impressionist music, how these composers were enthralled with Asian culture, and how they began imitating this sound by using modalities like the pentatonic scale. We improvised a bit on the black keys, familiarizing ourselves with this distinct sound color. I reminded Sophie that at this time in history it was difficult to travel from Europe to the Far East and so composers had a fairly limited knowledge of this culture. I was ready to direct our attention to the actual piece that I was assigning Sophie, confident that I had done my background work thoroughly. Suddenly, Sophie blurted out, "Couldn't they just go through the Panama Canal?" Of course not, I thought impatiently, my eyes on the clock. Don't they teach you anything at school? This was already taking far longer than I had anticipated. Next week is our spring recital, there is a lot to do. This juggling act of time management is a constant negotiation. We need to work deeply on a few things, such as the upcoming recital piece, and yet, at the same time, I can't ignore the regular practices of technique work, sight-reading, new repertoire, and so on. If I do, the students will be certain to ignore these things as well. There is no right answer as to how to divvy up our allotted time together. Sometime I divide and conquer well, balancing tasks with poise. More often I'm afraid that I push through hurriedly, and probably squash some natural curiosity that might have arisen if I had only allowed a bit more space and breath in our work. Last week, in a rare moment of grace, I decided not to brush off Sophie's innocent question. Instead, we got out the atlas and examined the map to understand why the Panama Canal was totally unhelpful to the French trying to get to the Far East. Total time: 43.5 minutes. Perhaps not the most linear or direct use of our time. In fact, this might be the pedagogical parallel to going through the Panama Canal on the way to the Far East. But I wonder, how much do we miss in our quest for efficiency? I suspect that if we sometimes slowed down long enough for the journey, we might discover that the Panama Canal is actually quite beautiful. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=261 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=261 Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:06:15 -0600 Recently, one of Matt's choirs performed a piece called "Immortal Bach" arranged by the Norwegian composer Knut Nystedt. This work is based on a Bach chorale, which is sung twice. The second time is the particularly interesting one. The second time, the singers are instructed ignore the notated rhythm of the chorale, and instead to randomly hold each note for various lengths of time (2 seconds, 4 seconds, 10 seconds, etc.) before moving to the next pitch. This creates, of course, a series of dissonant sounds as each phrase progresses to its cadence. The tension between the thick dark dissonance and the resolution is striking; each phrase becomes a kaleidoscope of sound, the colors shifting almost imperceptivity. This whole concept got me thinking. While singing this piece, I realized that such magnification of harmony changes allowed the performer to get inside the sound in a profound way. My friend and musical partner Jerome often talks about "inhabiting the music". This performance of "Immortal Bach" was habitation like I had never experienced before. This concept of stretching a piece beyond measure is not new. In 1987, John Cage wrote a piece for organ called Organ/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible). A performance of this piece in Halberstadt, Germany began on September 5, 2001 with a rest lasting 17 months. The whole performance is scheduled to last 639 years, ending in 2640. That's slow. A recent trend in electronic music digitally stretches recordings until they are lengthened beyond recognition. Other slow movements---slow living, slow food'have been around for a while now; perhaps it is time for practicing to join the bandwagon. Which leads me to another practice technique: Slow Practice. Slow practicing is nothing new; goodness knows that every music teacher on the planet screams, "slow down!" at least ten times a day. But what about extremely slow practicing? How might that work to shift our perception, not only of the sound, but also the gestures and physical movements required? We are in too much of a hurry, all of us. Certainly my students reflect our general hastiness, getting them to slow down takes an act of congress. That old musician's standby, the metronome, slows us down to be sure, but sometimes I resist its forced rigidity. After all, I don't necessarily simply want slow, I want slow and thoughtful, which doesn't necessarily mean metronomic. In my studio, we call slow practice "Slow-mo." Slow-mo, I write in the students' notebooks, knowing full well that this means different things to different kids. Usually slow-mo is not really very slow at all, but occasionally a kid will be very taken with the idea, at least for five seconds before they get bored. Slow Practice is a hard practice, not for the faint of heart, I have discovered. It's difficult to slow down, our impatience and our busyness rule the day, forcing us into faster and faster modes of thinking and doing. Slow---really slow---is as uncomfortable as it is enlightening, which is probably all the more reason to do it. Taking time, loads of time, many seconds per sound or movement, forces us to really examine what we are doing, builds brain and muscle connections in new ways, blows apart our preconceived expectations. How did I really get from this chord to that one? What happens in between this motive and that one? What is that left hand actually doing during that strange transitional passage? When we slow down and really notice our work, we start to learn the answers to these kinds of questions, changing not just our music or our performances, but our very selves, in subtle and profound ways. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=260 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=260 Sun, 22 Apr 2012 07:06:52 -0600 I have just returned from a week in NYC where spring was everywhere. Daffodils were trumpeting from every corner...Hyacinths were blooming...Trees in the parks were bursting with color... Tulips were rioting for attention... I spent a few days in a conference, where, I must confess, I went to only one session (perhaps a personal all-time low). Instead, I met up with a number of dear friends (also supposedly attending the convention) and had long deep, thought-provoking conversations over lunches and many cappuccinos. On Wednesday morning, I gave a presentation on motivation and the music lesson at the conference to a wonderfully enthusiastic crowd who had honored me by getting up at 8AM on the last day of the conference and didn't even yawn. (For those still interested, you can download my handout here....)I hung out with parents, sisters and baby nephews in parks...gardens.... zoos...and restaurants....My sisters and I had girl's night out in the city. The first since their babies and husbands appeared on the scene. I saw no shows on Broadway, but did see "Fame" at St Ignatius Loyola on the Upper East Side where my sister Beth teaches. That is almost like Broadway. I heard a reading in a private room with Aasif Mandvi, the correspondent from The Daily Show. He was funny. "Did you meet him?" Matt asked me eagerly when I reported my close celebrity encounter. Well, no. I could have, but that evening I was moving from my cool trendy hotel to my sister Sarah's apartment in New Jersey. I was carrying a backpack and looked like I had spent the last three months hitchhiking across Europe. I actually tried to avoid meeting him.I survived night duty with my baby nephew Felix, who giggled every time he threw his pacifier across the room and hit my sleeping head.I endured two 10-12 hour travel days (there is NO easy way to NYC from Albuquerque, but this time I might have managed the worst possible schedule imaginable.). Flying over the mountains, we circled around Albuquerque three times because of bad winds. Finally, the caption came over the loudspeaker and said: "OK folks, we are going to try this one more time, and then we are going to divert to Amarillo." At that point, I almost burst into tears. Thankfully, that last try was successful. ("Where is Amarillo anyway?" one woman asked as we were getting off the plane. "Not close," someone answered curtly.) I arrived home to my own colorful garden....Only to wake up the next day to an unexpected spring snow! It's good to be home. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=259 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=259 Sun, 15 Apr 2012 07:44:38 -0600 He told us, with the years, you will cometo love the world.And we sat there with our souls in our laps,and comforted them. Dorothea Tanning (2004) http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=258 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=258 Sun, 08 Apr 2012 08:38:59 -0600 I am in New York City. Home of bagels, museums, and my two darling baby nephews. Besides enjoying night duty with Felix (Who knew a baby could throw his pacifier so far?), I have been attending the MTNA conference. Wednesday morning I gave a session on motivation and the music lesson ("Let's Play Ball!" or in the case of Felix, "Let's Throw Pacifiers at Our Sleeping Aunts!") that included the following quote from the brilliant writer Adam Gopnik. This came originally from a New Yorker article entitled, "The Last of the Metrozoids," and this article was included in his book, Through the Children's Gate. "It is sometimes said that the great teachers and mentors, the wise men and gurus, achieve their ends by inducting the disciple into a kind of secret circle of knowledge and belief, make of their charisma a kind of gift. The more I think about it, though, the more I suspect that the best teachers....do something else. They don't mystify the work and offer themselves as a model of oracular authority, a practice that nearly always lapses into a history of acolytes and excommunications. The real teachers and coaches may offer a charismatic model---they probably have to--but then they insist that all the magic they have to offer is a commitment to repetition and perseverance. The great oracles may enthrall, but the really great teachers demystify. They make particle physics into a series of diagrams that anyone can follow, football into a series of steps that anyone can master, and art into a series of slides that anyone can see. A guru gives us himself and then his system; a teacher gives us his subject, and then ourselves." ....a teacher gives us his subject, and then ourselves.... http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=257 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=257 Sun, 01 Apr 2012 06:24:42 -0600 Recently someone asked me what I had been reading. I almost bit her head off, citing immediately a long list of trials and tribulations that stand in the way between me and the next good book. And, while it is true that the days of pleasure reading are rare, that isn't the whole story. I do read. Every single day. Sometimes I read the dreaded measurement texts or the dry research papers that are the bread and butter of a graduate degree in Ed Psych (When in doubt, assign another research paper to be read. I am convinced that this is the pedagogical theory that my professors live and breathe by.) But in the last few years, I have sharpened my skills at skimming, and let go forever my guilt at simply not reading huge sections of these papers and texts. After all, I reason, I don't understand 90% of the numbers anyway. Thank goodness for the summary located at the end of these published papers. I should consider incorporating the summary feature into this blog. Some of you out there might appreciate it. Every morning I start the day with my cup of coffee and my stack of books on Zen practices and gardening. A Year at North Hill by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd is lovely, in every way. The Writer in the Garden (edited by Jane Garmey) has proven to be another inspiration. Writers as various as Vita Sackville-West and Michael Pollan have contributed to this collection of short essays on all things gardening. Just this morning, I finished The Buddha in the Classroom by Donna Quesada, an interesting take on both Zen Buddhism and teaching. There is nothing like a little Zen thought and a few helpful hints about what I should do with my unruly patch of mint to make me ready to face the day. This, I must admit, does count as reading.In fact, while we were in Portland in January, roaming the aisles at Powell's bookstore, I jotted down lists of books I was interested in. Back at home, I reserved a whole bounty of these titles, forgetting that the public library did not work like Netflix. This was not a queue of books I was requesting, that would appear to me one at a time, the next book arriving when the previous one had been read and returned. Nope. That isn't how the public library runs the reserved list, although they should. (Admittedly, I should have known better, but I had never reserved so many books in one sitting.) Instead, what happened, of course, is that I got an e-mail announcing that I had a dozen books waiting for me all at the same time. The ride back from the library that day was harrowing, with me trying to balance all these books in my three bicycle baskets. Matt thought this was hysterical, my miscalculation of the library queue, and exactly what I deserved since I still suspiciously eye his lightweight Kindle and, to this day, refuse to admit that I was wrong to carry a coffee table book through France that one trip many years ago. Anyway. I read all those books, I'll have you know. Here are the highlights: My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira. This is a Civil War novel about a woman who wants to be a surgeon. Engaging and interesting. My Own Country by Abraham Verghese. Another book by the same author, Cutting for Stone, was the best book I read last year. Verghese is a doctor, and this is a memoir about his work with AIDS patients in Tennessee during the 1980's. Very sad and thought-provoking. It will stay with you, long after you have finished reading. The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. I am the last person on the planet to read this book. Even if you hate orchids or flowers of any kind, it is worth reading for the other-worldly descriptions of the swamplands of Florida. Better by Atul Gawande. Another writer/physician, Gawande writes articles about the art of being a doctor for The New Yorker. This book appears to be about becoming a better doctor, but it is really about becoming a better human being. I especially loved the afterward: "Suggestions for Becoming a Positive Deviant." Every teacher, every musician, every human being, should read it. And for those of us with limited time and attention spans, two short story collections to recommend: Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy. I was first attracted to the contrariness of the title, but these are great stories with interesting characters. The theme reflected in the title is woven through each story, that idea that there is tension and conflict in every decision or choice we make. The Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble. This collection of stories spans her writing career of 50 years. Each story provides a glimpse into the inner workings of a character, often with a surprising insights and understanding. Wishing you stolen moments on the couch or in your favorite overstuffed chair, drink in hand, reading. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=256 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=256 Sun, 25 Mar 2012 07:16:12 -0600 You are the bottom line, my love, the netthat catches me each time I take a leaptoward an absolute that isn't therebut appears dispersed in the relative:warm supper waiting when I get in late,my folded long johns on the laundry stack,the covers on my side turned sweetly downwhen I finally head upstairs from workthat couldn't wait till morning, the love notetucked in my suitcase for my night away. It says the obvious the old clichesI wouldn't want my friends to know we usefor love. And god forbid my enemiesshould get hold of these endearments,so banal, I would lose my readers' trustif someone published them under my name.But still as I write mine (with smiley face)and slip it under the pillow on your side,or when I read yours in a hotel roomI feel more moved than by a Rilke poem. or a Tolstoy novel or a Shakespeare play.My love grows stronger with the tried and trueif it comes from you. More and more as we age and the golden boys peer out of the magazineswith their sultry looks and their arched brows,I am so relieved I'm not an ingenuesearching for you at parties, singles bars.I have you, waving when my plane gets in,curling your body in the shape of mine,my love, my number one, my bottom line. -Julia Alvarez from The Woman I Kept to Myself http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=255 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=255 Sun, 18 Mar 2012 06:22:38 -0600 I have too many open loops these days.In "Getting Things Done," a book aimed at improving productivity and efficiency in the workplace, David Allen refers to "open loops" as any task that takes up mental space and is in some way unfinished and needs attention. These things, he says, distract us and rob us of our creativity and focus. That would be about a hundred things around here, all demanding space in my ever-decreasing mental capacity. First, there are the predictable things: the teaching, the performing, the rehearsals. I played a house concert with Jerome, the other half of the JimGreer Duo, in January, which included the Weber Trio, a gem of a piece. We'Jerome, Christian (cellist) and I--are repeating that delightful work on a concert in a few weeks. But before that gig rolls around, I must learn Fred Hersch's 24 Variations on a Bach Chorale (the Lenten hymn "O Sacred Head Now Wounded"). This is a demanding piece, some variations rivaling Chopin Etudes technically. Mr Hersch clearly has large hands. I don't. However, working on this piece in preparation for several upcoming concerts is a rewarding way to practice Lent, to observe this religious season of reflection and austerity. While I rarely attend church anymore, my worldview is still shaped by the Christian calendar. Or at least the notion that Fat Tuesday involves pancakes.Other loops: Thanks to an inconvenient and unavoidable graduate school schedule, I was forced to schedule six days of teaching every week this semester. That would be SIX days. Let me tell you, friends, it is the sixth day that will kick your butt. Especially when the seventh day includes performances or performance classes, thereby giving you not a single day off before another week begins. I'm dying here. Speaking of performance classes, the older kids (the Chopin Class) recently held their long anticipated iPod party, which they earned from points acquired by their one-week pieces. IPod parties are evenings where, after an abbreviated performance class, they each bring one song of their choice to share, complete with the infamous 5 Fun Facts about the artists or genre. Their song, I assured them, could be anything. "But no, 'Parental Restrictions', right?" one kid asked. (They know and use this term?) At our recent iPod party, we heard an elephant orchestra from Thailand, some screeching Scottish pop song, a 1970's electronic piece, a Celtic ballad. Such a surprising eclectic mix. I am always fascinated to learn what the kids are listening to these days. As we chatted over the backdrop of bad popular music and cupcakes (the cupcakes, at least, rocked), we discussed the terms required to earn the next iPod party. I threw out some number of total points needed, a number that I can't even recall now. I did this, I must confess, completely without forethought or consideration. Apparently, when the calculations were computed, it was an outrageously large number. Or so the kids complained, whining that it would be "like a year" before they could accumulate that many points. Yeah, that's the idea, kids. I need at least a year before I am ready to subject myself to more Russian rap songs. On the other hand, yesterday Ryan (of the "that cat is adorable" fame) came into his lesson announcing that he had just started a book and already he loved it so much. "It is my favorite book in the whole world!" (This kid speaks entirely in italics. Matt and I have decided he is the seven year-old version of Chris, the Rob Lowe character from "Parks and Recreation".) "What is the book?" I asked him. "Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH," he said, his freckled face glowing. Glowing, I tell you. It was enough, almost, to forgive his older sisters and their bad choices in screechy pop music. Open loops, all these things. And then there is graduate school, the demonic cause of my killer schedule this semester. Last November, I enrolled in my final six hours of my master's degree in Educational Psychology (the final six! The end so near....) only to learn, come the first day of class in January, that one of the courses was cancelled. I was annoyed for about five minutes until I realized that this would mean I wouldn't have to take comps this semester after all. This, I decided, was a gift from the gods. Turns out, it was more than a gift. It was actually a lifesaving tourniquet. The class I have been left with this semester is a required course on assessment and measurement. I wish I cared about assessment and all of its intricacies. But I don't. What is worse is that I basically understand nothing. The class might as well be taught in Chinese for all that I'm comprehending. The course has a prerequisite requirement of introductory statistics, which I took (God help me) two years ago. I retained nothing. Nothing. This has caused me great anxiety (see above for my track record in calculating anything beyond 4/4 time). At night, I am being haunted by stressful dreams in which I am in an ever-changing situation that is in some way threatening and I cannot do the task required fast enough to get out before it is too late. (What "too late" is, I don't know.) Or I am late for something, and I just cannot get there (before the plane takes off, or the concert begins, or the train departs). Or I can't learn something in time (like introductory statistics). Or I have forgotten something important, (like learning an entire recital worth of music). I wake from these repeated nightmares sweating. Clearly, every last one of them is a classic Type-A stress-induced dream. I'm blaming that damn class. Another loop. Actually, that class might count as about ten loops. And then there are the miscellaneous open loops: the presentation I am giving in NYC at a conference next month, the travel and registration details I need to attend to in order to be present at this conference, the ten books I am reading, the seasonal garden tasks that are beckoning, the random household chores necessary to keep food on the table and clothes on our back (Recently, Matt mentioned, very kindly, that he had no clean underwear and was down to his "I love Jesus" socks, which he generally avoids wearing. I snapped back that I had "just done laundry," like two days before, which I swore was true, but then I had to acknowledge the mountain of clothes spilling out of the hamper, which was clear evidence that I was wrong. I have lost all sense of time, reeling as I am from loop to loop.) This week I had another bad dream. I was teaching the Chopin performance class, and it was another iPod party. I went to the refrigerator to get the cupcakes, only to discover that I had forgotten to buy them. But instead of causing me stress, this oversight made me laugh. I laughed so hard I woke up. I see this dream as an improvement. Maybe something, in spite of the hundreds of open loops, is started to shift and relax internally. Meanwhile, the golden finches have found the feeders I have hung in the courtyard. While I teach, I keep watch out the window at the birds. The 200 bulbs my mother and I planted last fall are beginning to emerge from the ground, and the viburnum beyond the courtyard wall is threatening to burst into rosy bloom. I wait, stressed and anxious as I might be, while the season loops from one into another. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=254 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=254 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 08:55:23 -0600 And then there are the one-week pieces. Lucy would rather to do 10 one-week pieces than a single ear tune. This isn't a reflection of her ability to pick out a fun folk song, but rather of her dislike of the task. It has gotten to the point where I now have to require her to e-mail me individual steps of the process throughout the week in order to guarantee that it will be done when she arrives at her lesson. The things we do to motivate our students. Or, if not motivate, at least threaten them into submission. But I was talking about one-week pieces, not ear tunes. "One-week Pieces" (Or simply, "One-Week", as in "Play me your 'One-Week'.") is the clever name for pieces the students must learn in one-week, sans help from me. The object is to get the music as close to performance-ready as they can. Then in the following lesson we score the performance from one to ten, much like an Olympic judging committee. I choose pieces that are generally close to sight-reading level, which ideally gives them an opportunity to spend the week not cramming notes and rhythms, but rather working at a higher artistic level. I expect students to think as musically as possible--dynamics, phrasing, balance, etc. --all of which gives me an opportunity to assess how well they can do these things without my guidance. Students begin the assignment of one-week pieces when they hit mid-high school, one of those tangible milestones of joining the Chopin Performance Class, which is made up of mid-and-senior high students. Points are recorded for each student and then collected together to earn some kind of party or reward during a monthly performance class. I'd like to take full credit for the idea of the one-week pieces, but truth is I stole the gist of the concept years ago from a source I can't even remember anymore, which is how it rolls in the teaching world. Like the points for one-week pieces earned by the Chopin class, our pedagogical brilliance is somewhat collective is this field. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=253 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=253 Sun, 04 Mar 2012 06:39:59 -0700 Ford is composing a multiple movement piece about dinosaurs ("A suite," I explain to him. "Is this like a really big hotel room?" he asks me.). For a seven year-old boy there is nothing more exciting than dinosaurs. He checks out a book from the library and writes down the names of five possible dinosaurs from which we are going to choose three ideas for the different movements. Fine so far. His first composition involves a narrative that goes something like this: A T-Rex is walking through the forest and stumbles across a baby brontosaurus who has gotten away from his mother. So the T-Rex eats the baby. Then the mother brontosaurus comes looking for the baby and the still hungry T-Rex eats the mother as well. Lovely. This movement is made up of a lot of banging on the lower half of the piano (the T-Rex) and some banging on the upper part of the piano (the baby) and some banging on the middle of the piano (the mother). The next week Ford decides to write a composition about a dinosaur fight. More banging. Tonight I suggest we try a contrasting mood like dinosaurs sleeping or playing. "OK," he says, "I have an idea." "Great." I am encouraging and hopeful. "How about a dinosaur that sneaks up on a sleeping dinosaur and eats it?" At this point I am beginning to see a consistent theme in the Dinosaur Suite. Envisioning yet another composition that is mainly banging, I ask him if he thought if this idea would be different from the other movements. "Oh yeah," he assures me. In the studio there is a lot of composing happening these days. Some kids love it; some don't. I never push the issue, offering the option if I sense a kid's interest, but not requiring this assignment. The kids who live or die by their composition assignments never let me forget their weekly composition. Indeed, there are a few who would be forever happy if their entire practice assignment was made up of their own compositions. In performance classes we often work with improvisation cards, which are postcards on which I have drawn random shapes or squiggles, an idea I adapted from Jean Stackhouse's pedagogy class I took years ago. The task is to try to "play" the card on the piano. Sometimes I play a card and invite students to guess which card it might be from the selection displayed on the floor in front of them. Other times a student will play a "secret" card that they show no one and the others have to try to draw what they've heard. Still other times when I am feeling less ambitious and creative, the kids will simply take turns, drawing a card off the stack and one after another improving gestures and sounds to match the scribbling. It doesn't much matter which approach we choose, across the board kids LOVE the improv cards and beg to do them in class every month. For weekly composition assignments, I have a composition bowl, filled to the brim with little pieces of paper on which are written various composition titles. Kids draw from the bowl and, Poof! like magic, there is their composition assignment for the week. I love this, because I don't have to search my brain and be creative on command; students love it because they never get tired of the suspense involved in taking down the bowl from the shelf, ruffling through the scraps of paper (and inevitably spilling half on the floor, which they also find amusing) and drawing a composition subject every week. Lately however, students have been complaining that they have done "all" the compositions in the bowl. I think they are lying, because it looks like there are hundreds and no one has done that many, but the kids insist. "Miss Amy," they whine, "I have already done this one." I'd like to point out that like the sight-reading books, it wouldn't kill them to do one twice, but the lure of the novel is irresistible. One day recently, tired of the whining, I came up with a brilliant solution to the problem: I would empty out the entire bowl (That'll show them! I thought to myself.) and they would be charged with the task of refilling it with their own composition titles, each student responsible for five new ideas. Of course, like all pedagogical ideas that involve less teacher and more student, this was the perfect solution. I didn't have to do a damn thing, and the kids are thrilled to have this responsibility, loving the notion that other students will soon be playing their ideas. Win-win. Now if they could just write their own sight-reading books..... http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=252 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=252 Sun, 26 Feb 2012 06:53:10 -0700 We should get back to practicing. I'm not sure where the time has gone, but it has been months---months!!'since I have mentioned practicing. Of course, that is a gross misstatement, as most of every day is spent wrestling with the practicing question, and my students would be quick to tell you that I talk about practicing ALL THE TIME. But still, if one would look at my life merely through this blog, one might be lulled into thinking no one around here is practicing. No worries, we are practicing. Lately I have been thinking more and more about what it means to be a holistic musician and what work is needed to achieve that goal. A couple weeks ago I talked about chords and ear tunes, which is one piece of my teaching puzzle. As it turns out, it is also a part of my own work at the piano. So much of traditional piano teaching has been focused primarily on mastering repertoire, at the exclusion of much else. My own musical education certainly mirrored this pattern, and I see evidence in the music students around me that not much has changed in the last several decades. Working with college students majoring in music reveals that they aren't learning many pragmatic skills: they can't play by ear; they can't transpose even simple melodies; they can't create simple accompaniments on command. If truth be told, I couldn't do these things either as a piano performance major, nor were my teachers interested in these skills much at all. What they were interested in was my Beethoven sonata or my Mozart concerto. Sadly, there hasn't been a lot of demand for my ability to play full-length sonatas or concertos. However, over and over again I have needed to create my own accompaniments. I have been asked to transpose something down a step dozens of times. I have been called upon to knock out a tune by ear more times than I care to recall. And so, thinking holistically, I have come to accept that if I am to be honest about my own musicianship, these things have to become a regular part of my own practicing, and not left only in my teaching studio. These days, my practice hours find me transposing music, picking out songs by ears and harmonizing them, improvising both original tunes and arrangements. Admittedly, there are many days this feels like one more thing to add to an already daunting to-do list. But the truth is my students are quite frequently much more comfortable with these skills, having done these things their entire piano life, than I am. I owe it to them to try to keep up. So, how do we practice? Let me count the ways.... Here are three more ideas to add to that growing list: Transpose: transpose your repertoire, your teaching pieces, hymns, Bach chorales Pick out tunes by ear: pluck out folk tunes, teaching pieces, popular songs Improvise: improvise accompaniments to simple melodies, improvise on the Bach or Haydn you might be practicing, improvise on your students' literature You might just be surprised how much these skills end up helping your Beethoven as well. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=251 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=251 Sun, 19 Feb 2012 06:47:54 -0700 becoming a photograph winter afternoon-George Swede from The Haiku Anthology http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=250 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=250 Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:04:46 -0700 Enough about cookies and chocolate, world travels and parties, holidays and feasts. It's time to talk once again about chords. It takes time to establish good chord fundamentals. First, there are the months and months of playing 5 Finger Positions. Then we add bridges and set-ups that extend to "La" and "Ti". Finally, we build the basic I-IV-I-V-V7-I progression, first in blocked chords then later in accompaniment patterns such as Alberti Bass, broken chord, waltz, tango, and so on. This takes not just weeks, but sometimes years. I have found there is more motivation for this work if there is evidence of direct application as soon as possible. We all need proof that the practicing we are doing is useful and based in reality, not in some la-la land made up by the more esoteric among us. At least, this seemed to be true for me. In the beginning, my students make practical use of these chords when working with their Suzuki songs. They play these tunes with both blocked chords and other patterns as applicable, transposing merrily into fun keys like G-flat and B major. It works, as my friend Marge would say, "like a charm." But then the day arrives when the kids have completed all the tunes in the first Suzuki book. Which brings me to the idea of ear tunes. In my studio, "ear tunes" are simple folk tunes that can be harmonized with primary (I,IV or V) chords. Kids pick out the melody by ear in the key of C and then we add harmony: first with blocked chords and then later with more interesting accompaniment patterns. To simplify the process (and to avoid me having to rack my rather empty brain during a student's lesson for an accessible ear tune), I have recorded several CDs of folk tunes that we frequently refer to. Students can listen to these ditties at home, thereby silencing the argument that they have "no idea" what Old Joe Clark might sound like. This process familiarizes the kids not only these basic American folk tunes, which is a good thing, but also prevents the discussion about what version of On Top of Old Smokey we might be using that day. We are using my version. Period. (I don't care if they have another equally legitimate version. That's not the point. The point is that they learn to copy something exactly. Once they prove that they can do that, they are welcome to play any version they want. I can be strangely rigid about these things.) If you need a romping rendition of Sweet Betsy from Pike, you now know who to call. Speaking of Sweet Betsy and that ornery Old Joe Clark... Tunes that can be harmonized with just I and V chords: ClementineDid You Ever See a Lassie?Down in the ValleyMulberry BushRow, Row, Row Your BoatA Tistket, A TasketAllouetteHush Little BabyLondon BridgeMary Had a Little LambOde to JoyShoo FlySkip to My LouSweetly Sings the DonkeyWheels on the BusThe Farmer in the DellOld Joe Clark Tunes that can be harmonized with I, IV and V chords: AmericaBrahms LullabyHome on the RangeOn Top of Old SmokeyBingoCamptown RacesHokey PokeyIt's a Small WorldPop! Goes the WeaselYankee DoodleShe'll Be Coming 'Round the MountainMuffin ManO SusannaOld McDonald http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=249 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=249 Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:56:52 -0700 The story could have ended there and I would only have 10 lifetimes of Hail Marys to recite for my holiday overindulgences of 2011. But then Matt and I got on a plane to Portland. Portland was a trip we had planned after drinking a bottle of wine sometime this fall and thinking that a small vacation was just what the doctor had ordered to counteract months of work. And it was, all the way around, a great idea. We had enough frequent flyer miles to fly free; the itinerary was ideal: direct afternoon flights; we found a fantastic deal on a downtown hotel. Neither of us had ever been to Portland, but had always wanted to. Seemed perfect. And, mostly it was. Our hotel (Hotel Monaco) was a dream. Situated in a great location, it boasted a big living room with a fireplace and a grand piano, where cocktails were served in the evenings and coffee in the mornings. The hotel was dog friendly, which meant there was always a happy dog or two lounging by the fire. There was a goldfish swimming happily in a bowl outside the elevators on our floor. The staff was extraordinary, our room comfortable and luxurious. Perfect. Then there was Portland itself: rainy, green, bursting with parks and seafood restaurants. The biggest bookstore in the country: Powell's Books. Our days quickly found a rhythm: we woke up early (those pre-dawn wake-up times are a hard habit to shake) and had coffee by the fire downstairs. I left the hotel while it was still dark and headed to Forest Park where I hiked the trails in the Arboretum until lunchtime. I saw the sun rise behind Mt Hood two mornings in a row. I did yoga in a spot under giant sequoias and redwoods, feeling like I was inside of a sanctuary as holy and sacred as any cathedral in Europe. After several hours of tramping through the woods I would emerge onto the streets of Portland feeling like I had spent the morning in church, baptized and scrubbed clean. After ducking into Peets for hot tea and heading back to the hotel for a long shower, I'd meet up with Matt who had spent the morning reading and wandering the neighborhood in search of the perfect breakfast pastry. At this point we would head out to find lunch at the food carts. Ah! The food carts! The entire week in Portland we stumbled upon only one church and one synagogue. Portlandians, we decided, don't worship in churches. They worship at their food carts. I now understand completely, as I could wax poetic for hours about the wonders of the food cart culture. For those outside Portland, these are not the pretzel carts of NYC, these are self-contained micro-restaurants located in tiny trailers that are parked tooth-to-jowl in blocks around the city. One such spot a few blocks from the hotel must have contained 50 of such carts with every culinary offering you could imagine: Thai, Indian, B-B-Q, Soup and Sandwiches, Burritos, Noodles, Burgers, and on and on. For a mere $6 one could get anything one's little heart dreamed of. If I lived there, I would attend The Church of the Holy Food Cart every single day. Stuffed and content, afternoons found us at the movies, or back in the hotel living room reading and napping. We spent an entire afternoon at Powell's Books, emerging with a respectable stack of great finds. We enjoyed wine and beer at cocktail hour, ate oysters every night for dinner, wandered the streets in the drizzle and the deep darkness that comes with a northern winter. One afternoon I was sitting in the hotel living room when a man wandered in off the street. Dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, he made straight for the piano and began noodling. He played a Beatles medley, improvised a rather New Age sounding piece, worked out a jazz tune. All the while he never looked around, never made eye contact with anyone, never spoke a word. Sitting only a few feet away with a direct view of his hands, I felt that I was invading his space, that I was witnessing something so private and personal that I did not belong there. I knew, at the very least, I was watching a ritual of some kind, as holy and sacred as my time that morning under the Redwoods in the Arboretum. The hotel staff glanced at him from time to time, but seemed to recognize the man and this practice of music-making, and left him undisturbed. After a while he got up and walked out of the hotel, his own worship at the piano finished for the time being. Later I couldn't stop thinking about this scene, and wondered about the place of ritual and worship in our lives and routines. Even for the most religious among us, these things do not only take place within the walls of a church or established sanctuary or building. Rather, each of us knit together our lives and our sense of the world with these personalized patterns, these rituals, these small acts of worship and reverence. We need them to stay balanced and whole. We seek after them to find meaning and comfort in an otherwise empty existence. Heading back home to the world I have created for myself, I started feeling poorly at the airport in Portland. On the plane, I got sick and suffered three days of the stomach flu, my body literally and metaphysically expelling the excesses of the holidays and the disruption of my work and routines. Now set firmly back in my life of teaching and rehearsals, classes and practicing, I am finding a new solace in my own rituals of behaviors, the habits and behaviors I use to understand and organize the world and my place in it. I am also eating a lot of penance soup. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=247 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=247 Sun, 29 Jan 2012 06:43:51 -0700 I am eating a lot of penance soup these days.Thanks to the gods who set the calendar for Albuquerque Public Schools, I have just enjoyed the longest winter break ever. "Too much time off gets me in trouble," my friend Patti often remarks, "I need the balance of work and play." Wiser words have never been spoken. In the Ten Thousand Stars Studio, the holiday officially began when my last student walked out the door on Wednesday, December 14th and my friend Lora and I got on a plane to Dallas for a long weekend. This trip had been long anticipated, and even had acquired a name: Amy and Lora's Texas Tour of Christmas Crap. Or, as we had begun referring to it: TTCC.In a previous lifetime many years ago, Matt and I lived in Fort Worth. We still have dear friends there who we try to see at least once a year. I have a college roommate who lives in Frisco, outside of Dallas, who I always love hanging out with. Last December, while Matt was still drowning in Christmas work, I went to Dallas to see these friends. It had been years since I had been in Texas at Christmas, and I had forgotten how seriously Texans take the holiday. I spent the weekend with my mouth hanging open: there was not a surface left in the state that did not have a flashing light or a big red bow. Wow! I kept thinking to myself, this is really something. Then one night I was out walking, taking in the merry Christmas lights in the neighborhood where I was staying, when I stumbled upon this sight: a house (a nice ranch house on a very upper middle-class street, let me say) covered---and I mean COVERED-in lights. On the roof was not one, but two full-sized displays of Santa and his reindeer, which I thought might be a bit confusing for the children. In the yard was every possible Christmas character imaginable, life-sized and strung with flashing colored lights: carolers, Frosty, Rudolph, a manger scene with wise men coming from all directions, even a Ferris wheel filled with stuffed teddy bears (who knows?). But the piece de resistance was a carousel of horses, circling a Statue of Liberty. That would be a Statue of Liberty. I stood there for minutes, but could not begin to take it all in. Staring at this circus cluttering this otherwise unremarkable house my first thought was, "No one is going to believe me when I tell them about this insanity." My second thought: "Lora has got to see this." And, at that moment, Amy and Lora's Texas Tour of Christmas Crap was born. Prior to our visit, Lora had barely set foot in Texas. A good reserved New Englander, she had driven through Amarillo on her way to Albuquerque. She had changed planes in Dallas and Houston a few times. She had spent 24 hours with me in Lubbock. But oh! There was still so many outrageous surprises awaiting her in this bigger than life state. Especially in mid-December. Especially in Dallas. The TTCC was everything we had hoped for, living up and surpassing our wildest dreams. We spent a day in Frisco with my college friend, Julianne, catching up and shopping. (Oh! The shopping! Living as we do in a rather department-store-challenged state, the options-right there at your fingertips-seemed without limits. Turned out, that was some precious insight for the whole holiday break, this healthy respect for reasonable limits, or rather, the lack thereof.) We spent time with friends outside of Fort Worth, went on long morning walks, drank wine and coffee while watching the sun set and rise by the river, toured Christmas lights in the evenings-some set to synchronized music (Lions and Tigers and Bears: Oh MY!) -- puttered around the square in Granbury, attended a holiday tea given in our honor, ate and drank too much, and generally were treated like royalty. Everywhere we went someone was handing us more delicious food or offering us something wonderful to drink. There was one day where I had eaten more by three o'clock in the afternoon than I had the entire previous week. There was no stopping it: it would have been like trying to halt a tsunami.And as promised, Texas was decked in all her glory. Even the house that sported the Lady Liberty did not disappoint. It was, in every way, an extravagantly indulgent weekend. I left feeling a bit overstuffed with it all: the endless eating and drinking; the time, energy, and money needed to maintain this level of merriment and decor; the sheer overabundance of the holiday cheer and, well, Christmas crap. I came home and began eating a lot of penance soup. Penance soup is what Matt calls cabbage or leek soup, which I make and eat when I am feeling especially repentant about overindulgences of any kind. Matt does not eat penance soup, as he is just generally a more well-balanced and moderate human being than I am. Penance soup is best consumed with a general feeling of mindfulness (a bit of remorse mixed in never hurt) and thankfulness. It is a good antidote, I have found, to the too-muchness that overtakes all of us during the holidays. It levels the playing field a bit, and it certainly helps to counteract the tidal wave of good eating that is otherwise not just surrounding us, but rather drowning us all. And then, just when I was feeling a bit better about my world, the next gigantic wave of madness rolled in. The next few days unfolded calmly enough, no sign of what to come. Matt worked; I practiced, raked leaves, went to yoga class. I swam laps and went on walks at dusk. I mailed Christmas cards and finished my studio newsletter. We had dinner with friends. I read through a towering pile of books and drank pots of tea. Our extremely simple Christmas display of lights, fish and angels twinkled merrily at us from the mantle. There was peace and harmony throughout the land. And then the next round of meals began. My parents drove in from St Louis. Lora's mother arrived from Massachusetts. We concocted big dinners involving cranberry roasts, smoked turkeys, two kinds of mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, cheeses, homemade cookies, cheesecakes, chocolates. Moderation went out the window. I was mindful, all right: mindful of how much I was eating and drinking. The house was bursting: with people, wrapping paper, boxes of homemade fudge. It was all lovely, but I began to feel like I was drowning again. To add insult to injury, my head wouldn't stop pounding. Just when I was about to shoot off emergency flares (or at least move to a hotel for a couple of days, or a monastery), everyone left. Matt and I had a few days of quiet. I cleaned out closets, made cabbage soup, took books back to the library, practiced Bach, and generally felt repentant with every bite of penance soup. But, of course, the holidays were not yet over. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=246 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=246 Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:04:36 -0700 Even if it keeps you up all night, wash down the walls and scrub the floor of your study before composing a syllable.Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way. Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration. The more you clean, the more brilliant your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take to the open fields to scour the undersides of rocks or swab in the dark forest upper branches, nests full of eggs. When you find your way back home and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink, you will behold in the light of dawn the immaculate altar of your desk, a clean surface in the middle of a clean world. From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet, and cover pages with tiny sentences like long rows of devoted ants that followed you in from the woods. -Billy Collins http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=242 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=242 Sun, 15 Jan 2012 07:14:11 -0700 In my mind, 2011 will always be the year of the betta fish. I love that this year, the white crocheted angels and bells, dried cranberries and candles on the mantle had to make room for a couple of fish. It seems a lesson in remembering to expand our worldview, to grow a bigger heart, to make space for the simple joys in a too full life.In the spirit of honestly, I must confess that Ping, Pang and Pong have all mysteriously died. So have 2Ping, 2Pang and 3Pong. This is not the fault of the two felines that live here. They could not care less about the fish swimming merrily inches away from their little paws. So much for entertainment.It was bittersweet getting the angels and bells out this December. My grandmother who made them died last April after several years of deteriorating health. She made the bells for our wedding reception 18 years ago, the same year her husband-my grandfather-died on Christmas Day. When I look at the mantle decorated with her handiwork, I think that she would be pleased at the sight: angels, bells, and fish all crammed together happily. During the last few years of Grandma's life she didn't know any of us. Sometimes she talked, chattering of nonsense, putting together people and events in strange combinations. The last time I saw Grandma, she was lost in the recesses of her confused mind. She seemed excited to see me, seemed to know that I was someone important to her, but who I might represent on the family tree was long gone. After lunch, Momma and I wheeled Grandma through the garden and coming back through the lobby of the nursing home where she was living, we passed the lovely grand piano. In the years since Grandma had been living in there, I had made it a habit to always play the piano when I came to visit. Grandma couldn't care less about the music, but she used to stop every single person walking through the lobby and announce loudly, "That is my granddaughter." Passing the grand piano that last day, I suggested that I play. "Someone might enjoy it," I told Momma, "even if Grandma won't know the difference." We pushed Grandma's wheelchair right up to the piano and I sat down. Suddenly Grandma grew agitated. Leaning toward me, she whispered, "Amy used to play this piano."Not only are the cats not interested in the fish, furthermore they have taken no notice of the wooden manger scene I set up at the beginning of Advent. When they were kittens, this display with its little cows and sheep were like cat toys. We lost Mary, the Queen of Heaven, that year, thanks to Godiva, which forced us to display the manger with two daddies - Joseph and a random wise man. While I liked the inclusive spirit, I was thrilled to find Mary many months later while moving furniture for a painting project. Today every character sits on its shelf, untouched by the cats. We are all growing mellow in our old age. Perhaps, now that I think about it, that, and not the fish after all, is the defining characteristic of this year: we are growing more mellow, our rough places being made smooth with time and age, our lives feeling more precious and dear with every passing year. Wishing you a peaceful, joyful, sweet 2012. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=238 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=238 Sun, 01 Jan 2012 07:06:12 -0700 I was not the only one struggling with discerning the truth about life last month. Apparently, in one of the kindergarten classes at a nearby elementary school there has been much concerned discussion about the existence of Santa Claus. I know this because I have a student in this class, Annette. For weeks, as she played her Christmas tunes for me, Annette would puzzle out loud about how Santa Claus was going to get into my house. "Is your fireplace real?" she asked one day. When I responded that it was a fake fireplace, she assured me that "Santa could use the front door." Meanwhile her classmates have been trying out the theory that perhaps Santa is actually mom and dad. I hope not. I may need to find some space in my life, but I am not ready to give up the idea of Santa Claus.Elizabeth is 7-years old and completely unpredictable. She has been working on Rudolph, which is rhythmically challenging for a little one. In fact, it has been rather touch and go, pedagogically, which is the often the case when we tackle Christmas tunes. Often, I view the playing of Christmas music as an opportunity to introduce certain rhythms, knowing that for the beginners these might be more advanced than they are ready to take on. Oh well, I usually think, come January we can put these behind us for awhile, no harm done one way or another. As far as Elizabeth goes, I suspect she has been picking out more notes by ear than actually reading the rhythms, but in the last lesson she had appeared to turn a corner. I complimented her on her hard work. She interrupted, her little face screwed up in disgust, "I know, but I don't like those 'mess-ups'." This reminds me of another young kid with an already healthy respect for accurate performance practices. Last week Kyle stopped in the middle of his eight measure ditty and announced to me, "I am going to start over because that was just full of mistakes." We are doing winter/Christmas compositions in the studio these days. Last Wednesday I assigned Luke to do a composition about bells. To start his creative thinking process I asked him, "What happens when a bell rings?" "An angel gets his wings," he answered confidently.Tuesday Julie came into her lesson just as Anthony was finishing playing his final piece for December, a rowdy version of "Jingle Bells." As he is leaving, slamming the door behind him, Julie turns to me, "Miss Amy, how come he got to play 'Jingle Bells' and I got stuck with 'Away in the Manger'?" On Annette's last lesson before Christmas she lost her first tooth. "How will the tooth fairy get in your house?" I asked her, wondering if while working out Santa's escape routes she had considered the tooth fairy. It was clear by her expression that she had not. "Maybe flies in the window?" She suggested, thereby closing the door of that mystery for another day. Maybe flies in the window. May Santa and the tooth fairy bless you, however they get in the house. May your holidays be mistake-free. May there be thousands of bells ringing, and angels singing. Merry Christmas to all..... http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=237 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=237 Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:17:23 -0700 Oh the weather outside is frightful.... Winter is upon us, just in time for the holidays. This week we experienced both single digit temperatures and frigid wind chills. And that's just inside the house. Last Thursday we had a windstorm that brought our city gusts up to 75 mph. The annual holiday street fair scheduled that night was a bust; we all stayed home and shivered instead. In our old drafty home, we struggle to stay warm. Last night we used the electric bed warmer all night long; the two cats are no longer enough to take the edge off the cold. Matt holes up in the study with a space heater and a pile of blankets while he drinks his coffee and reads. Today he announced, "The study is a toasty 67 degrees if you want to join me." It is not anywhere near a toasty 67 degrees out by the piano where I live and work. Clearly, the universe is sending a message: time to hibernate. In this spirit, I offer the following book recommendations for those cozy nights by the fire. *A Winter's Tale by Robert Sabuda The Night Before Christmas by Robert Sabuda The Christmas Alphabet by Robert Sabuda The 12 Days of Christmas by Robert SabudaEvery year at this time I get out my Christmas pop-up books, and put my everyday supply of pop-up books in the basement. ("Keeping your wife in pop-up books must get expensive," one of Matt's youth choir kids once commented.) These books are devoured by my students. When I hear Ooohing and Ahhing in the sunroom while they wait for their lessons, I know they must have a pop-up book. But these books are timeless and ageless. I make it a point every December to sit down and enjoy the magical creativity of these books myself. *Trail by David PelhamThis is another pop-up book, although not specifically a Christmas one. It is, however, beautiful and entirely done in white, which makes it rather winter-ish, don't you think?*A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, illustrated by Lisbeth ZwergerI re-read this every year. The illustrations in this edition are lovely. *The Morville Hours by Katherine SwiftIt wouldn't be winter if I wasn't reading a gardening book and plotting the spring. This book is the story of making a garden in England, organized around the Book of Hours. In a world where our days and nights, seasons and traditions are blurred, this is a lovely reminder of another time and place. Especially as we head towards the winter's solstice, I love the nudge to honor the seasons and to respect the natural boundaries of day and night. I love the idea of keeping feast days and watching the moon, of living by candlelight from time to time and turning off the overhead lights. (Around here, the moon has been large and luminous coming up over the mountain in the evenings. One morning as I left the pool after my pre-dawn swim, the full moon was hanging over the western horizon, blood-red orange. It was magical beginning to the day.) *Cutting for Stone by Abraham VergheseHands down the best novel I read this year. *State of Wonder by Ann PatchettThe second best novel I read this year. At least once on every page there was a sentence that made me sigh and think, "I wish I had written that." *The Glass Castle by Jeannette WallsThis is a memoir about a woman who grew up in a poverty-stricken family that always verged on being homeless. That she survived this rough childhood is one thing, that she lived to write this remarkable book is quite another altogether. *A Strong West Wind by Gail CaldwellI recommended Caldwell's Let's Take the Long Way Home last summer. This is her first book, a memoir about growing up in Texas. Her prose is breathtaking.*Journal of Solitude by May SartonSomething about winter makes me think about Sarton, and so nearly every year I reread something by this New England writer. The world she writes about seems a bit dated today (or perhaps a bit retro?), but so many of the themes are classic. In spite of the fact I have read her books dozens of times, something new always jumps out at me and makes me think. Journal of Solitude is my favorite of all her books. Happy Winter Reading. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=236 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=236 Sun, 18 Dec 2011 12:43:13 -0700 It's been awhile since we thought about chords.Last time I mentioned chords, I suggested that once the traditional I-IV-I-V-V7-I progression was learned, then students could begin to play it with all kinds of accompaniment patterns. But as the year winds down and the last lessons of the semester are before us, I am reminded once again that chord progressions are a great place to learn syncopated pedaling. I have been thinking about this lately, because so many of my little ones are playing simple Christmas arrangements with basic chords. While they have had limited pedaling experience in their normal piano life, a little pedal goes a long way with Silent Night. Just ask them. Even ask the beginning adult student last week who squealed---squealed, I tell you---"You mean I get to use the pedal?!" All this delight over the possibilities of the pedal has led me to introduce pedaling to our chord progressions. "Hands. Foot. Hands. Foot," we chant as we play chord progressions. My kids are happy to tackle this technique, loving anything that involves the pedal. They love it even more when I then tell them that they can add the pedal to their Christmas carols. Even when it isn't written in the score. We are breaking the rules right and left around here, rebels that we are. Suddenly, in spite of this season of busyness, the motivation to keep faithful to our piano practicing is stronger than ever. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=235 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=235 Sun, 11 Dec 2011 06:54:51 -0700 My studio recital took place a few weeks ago. After the concert, while the kids were eating cookies and chasing each other as a way of releasing all the pent-up energy accumulated from having to sit quietly for an hour, one mother came up to me. "Amy," she began, "I have to tell you what Jonah said this morning." Apparently, Jonah had woken up that morning and announced that he had to have "Amy's email address." "Why?" his mother had asked him. "What do you need to tell her?""I have to tell her that there is just NO WAY that I'm going to be able to play the dynamics tonight at the recital," he quite earnestly told his mother. "I have to write her right now."Telling me this his mother laughed at her child's seriousness about his anticipated performance. I laughed too, thinking that in spite of our careful work and preparation, there were plenty of kids that evening who must have decided that there was NO WAY they were going to be able to do the dynamics. Or for that matter, various other musical elements. Under stress, we all make compromises. I understand completely. I have a long list these days of things that there is just NO WAY I can do. When Matt and I recognized several weeks ago that we couldn't pull off another event, no matter how fabulous, I found myself taking stock internally. Faced with putting on evening clothes and heading out to play another concert of great music, I think longingly of a night curled up on the couch with my cats and a book. I relish a morning spent in the garden planting bulbs. I am happy puttering in my sun-filled house watering plants and doing laundry. Yesterday I baked a pie. It was heaven. None of these are new revelations, or new insights, just a reminder of how precious the little inconsequential acts of daily life can be. Even when--or maybe especially when---compared with what appears to be a more glamorous fare: performances, receptions, sparkling shoes and dresses, loud parties, big audiences, thunderous applause.Don't get me wrong, I love that too, but for the next month or so, I'm content to lie low. I want long slow conversations with my husband over a bottle of wine. I want candlelit dinners with close friends and evenings spent cuddling in bed under pile of blankets watching an old movie. I want to listen to every one of my holiday recordings and to linger over hot chocolate on a cold afternoon. There is just NO WAY I'm going to live life outside of the comfortable mezzo dynamic range. Those exciting fortes and intense pianos will have to wait. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=234 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=234 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 08:03:29 -0700 It's been a bit of a whirlwind lately. When I made this comment to a friend, she replied, "Amy, it always is. Your life is always crazy busy." She's right, of course, but I hardly think I am alone. I do not presume to suggest that I have the corner on busyness, or that my overflowing schedule is in any way more important. But sitting squarely inside the days, hours and minutes of my life , this is the perspective from which I view the world. And lately, that view has been rushing by at an insane pace.The problem, as I am fully prepared to admit, is that in the last few years I have taken on several rather big things without subtracting anything from the equation. This is bad math to be sure, but as someone who burst into tears in 5th grade the first time I encountered remainders while doing long division, this failure to calculate the lack of remainder time in my own life comes as no real surprise.Two year ago, my husband added a semi-professional community chorus to his work life. This group, Quintessence, was the kind of choir he had been interested in conducting for some time. It was made up of singers who auditioned to get into the group, many of whom were professional musicians in their real lives. This, he told me when he accepted the job, would be the chance for him to do all that music he loved that had nothing to do with Jesus.I supported Matt's decision to take on this additional group, although from the beginning I made it clear that this was his gig, not mine. For one season, I watched mainly from the sidelines, accompanying only sporadically, before deciding to throw myself whole-heartedly into playing for and singing with the group on a full-time basis. I have never regretted this decision. Matt and I have had great fun working together, and I have loved singing regularly for the first time since college. (And I must confess, I was hardly the model chorister back then, sitting as I did in the back row with a Vogue magazine hidden behind my choir folder. With this kind of history, it is amazing a choir director ever married me.) But with the addition of Quintessence in our lives, our quiet Sunday evenings of dinner and an early night to bed are gone. About the same time as Quintessence entered the equation, I went back to school, beginning a graduate degree in Educational Psychology. This has translated to basically another job, one with deadlines and papers and projects and complicated class schedules. For five semesters now I have juggled classes with teaching, homework with performances. "You are the only one I know who can fold in graduate school into your life and no one even knows," one friend said to me recently. While it is true I don't talk very much about being in school, I am hardly superwoman. In fact, as of late it is becoming more and more apparent to me that I am definitely not in the running for any superpowers whatsoever. Several weeks ago, after a run of demanding performances and the realization that we have been subjecting ourselves to this for months now, Matt and I looked at each other and admitted that something had to go. That something, this time, was the St Cecelia party, our annual occasion to toast the patron saint of music. This affair usually takes place the day after Thanksgiving. It is a night of impromptu musical performances, lots of wine and food, and a crowd--and I mean a crowd--of people. Friends often begin asking us about St Cecelia months in advance. In one form or another, "St Cecelia" has been happening in our collective lives for the last dozen years. But sometimes I think I like the idea of St Cecelia better than the actual party itself. Or perhaps that is the exhaustion of the last few months talking. At any rate, this year we are taking a rest from St Cecelia, a small gesture in trying to claim some quiet and sanity if not in our lives at large, at least into this Thanksgiving weekend.Which, as I think about it, is not a bad way to celebrate the fest day of St Cecelia after all. Because here is what I know: that in spite of the busyness, the stresses, the insanity, there is nothing we'd rather be doing with our lives than what we already are. So here's to St Cecelia, who blesses not only our music, but the silences in between. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=233 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=233 Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:48:28 -0700 It's tricky business, programming good music.Recently Jerome and I put another program to rest after performing recitals in Taos and Placitas. This recital sequence included works by Hue and Piazzolla, Weber and Barber. Some of this music we have played a thousand times and even recorded. Other pieces were new to us or last played far enough in our distant past to seem new again. Just between you and me, it was the Weber Sonata for Flute and Piano that really kicked by butt this time around.This piece has an interesting history. It started its life as the second piano sonata (Weber wrote four), and from what we have learned, shortly after its premier the composer was approached about adding a flute part to the solo piano work. In retrospect this seems a bit of an odd request, but Weber apparently was willing and began working with another arranger to sketch out a flute and piano version. Then, according to our research, Weber got busy, left town and took a job in a neighboring city with an opera company.Sounds just like some musicians I know to skip town in the middle of a project. Some time later, another composer/arranger (the translations actually say a "cranky, dying organist" or something like that, but that seems mean-spirited, doesn't it?) took up the task and finished the work with Weber's permission and consultation. Thus, this new piece was born.It is devilishly difficult.I could spend a lifetime trying to make friends with it, and, in the end, even after all that work, we might be barely speaking. It's that kind of piece. Which is why I am not shedding any tears to see this recent round of concerts behind me.But as programming goes, there was a thread between these recitals and the next. Last weekend, Jerome and I performed Samuel Barber's "Canzone" on a local lecture/concert celebrating the works of Barber. This is a piece we recently added to our repertoire and played in Taos and Placitas. Unlike the Weber, this piece and I were immediately best friends. This one also has an interesting history. Barber originally wrote it under the title "Elegy" for a flutist friend, and later published it for violin and piano as "Canzone". Then sometime later, stymied for ideas for the second movement of his piano concerto, he reworked the piece for piano and orchestra, probably the version best known today.All of this colorful history about the origins of so much of our great music reminds me that to be overly pure and refuse to play pieces that might have had a life in another form is to miss the point completely. Composers, time and time again, have demonstrated a pragmatic and creative approach to their own works, rewriting them for the instruments available, or the limitations of a particular performance. It's a good lesson to revisit when I am tempted to get too snobbish about what might constitute "real" authentic works. Ironically, it is performers that generally sport these hangups, not composers. Which does beg the question: do they teach us to be narrow-minded about performance practice in our music schools along with the required technique and theory? Yesterday I was teaching a lesson to an adult student. She had carefully learned a little Dello Joio piece, and had worked out the complicated rhythms quite accurately. However, in her performance, the piece lacked soul, because it was too accurate and clinical. "Ultimately," I told her, "after studying everything on the page you have to step back and ask yourself, 'does this work?'"It's a question I am considering a lot these days. I'm tired of worshiping the gods of performance practice. I'm weary and skeptical of too much composer idolatry. I'm suspicious of assumptions like: "if Beethoven wrote it, it must work" without allowing for the very real possibility that some music just doesn't, regardless of who penned it. And so, as I reflect on recent past performances and look ahead to the next ones, I'm asking myself the question "does this work?" as I consider new repertoire and learn new music. In doing so, I'm trying to shed years of assumptions and prejudices. It's tough, this act of thinking and listening without preconceived notions. No one said programming was easy. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=232 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=232 Sun, 20 Nov 2011 08:46:07 -0700 In spite of what you might be thinking, I haven't turn my back on the building blocks of good piano technique: the chords, scales and 5 Finger Positions that make up -- if not our lives -- at least our music. In fact, quite the contrary. Just yesterday Ryan and I were working on note flashcards. We were sitting on the floor, part of my firm conviction that a good piano lesson does not mean sitting on the bench the entire time. Ryan is seven, and smart as a whip. In reply to anything I suggest, he gives me an enthusiastic two-thumbs up. Ryan has had no more than three months of piano lessons and already he's in the running for the top 10 favorite students of all time. It's hard to resist this: At some point during almost every lesson, one of the cats will wander through the room. Ryan will stop whatever he is doing, look at the cat and say with conviction, "That cat is adorable," and the go back to whatever he was doing. I say that kid is adorable.But there we were working on flashcards. He has a handful of cards that he is learning, and every week the pile grows larger. Generally, we do flashcards at the piano: I put a card on the music rack, the student plays the note on the piano (with the correct hand in the correct octave, of course). We time this activity, aiming to get through the stack in under a minute. When the student can do 30 cards in a minute, they graduate from flashcards. Forever. Forever? they often ask me, not believing that this somewhat tiresome chore will be removed from their practicing for good. Forever, I assure them. Forever.Ryan is not at forever yet. He is still new at this, and, as I said before, has enthusiasm in spades. Yesterday we were practicing flashcards away from the piano, with him naming notes instead of playing them. Sometimes this is difficult for young students. It can be even more difficult than playing the notes on the piano unless I remember to rehearse this frequently. "Here's what we will do," I told Ryan. "If you get the card right, you get the card. If it is wrong, I get the card. Whoever has the most cards can choose the next thing to do in the lesson." Saying this, I am absolutely sure he will win, but now he thinks we are playing a game, which is highly enticing. Trust me, I never stop thinking about motivation and how to manipulate it. Sure enough, Ryan falls for it."I know what I'm going to pick if I win," he said. "I am going to pick 5 Finger-Positions because I love 5 Finger Positions." (There are not strong enough italics to emphasize how excited he was about this idea.)Although most of my students are advanced enough that the world of scales, chord progressions and arpeggios is our technical work, I still teach 5 Finger-Positions. I have 101 pedagogical reasons for doing so, and I won't rehearse the list again. However, add this reason:Kids love them. 79. Do re mi re mi fa mi fa sol sol fa mi fa mi re mi re do http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=231 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=231 Sun, 06 Nov 2011 07:01:08 -0700 These days, haiku are about the level of word processing I can take in. When too many days are overflowing with hours stuffed with too many obligations, haiku are like raindrops, tiny still moments of quiet, breathing space into our busy lives. Opening its eyes closing its eyes a cat in the sun. -Arizona Zipper from The Haiku Anthology http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=230 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=230 Sun, 30 Oct 2011 06:36:38 -0600 The notorious 5 Fun Facts have a new twist.As I have mentioned here before, "5 Fun Facts" are what my mid and senior high students call the short composer backgrounds they are required to present during performance classes. They were so named because one dry-humored student would always begin her presentation by announcing, "Now these facts are really fun," and then proceeding to tell us about some obscure biographical trivia involving horrible skin diseases (Bartok) or childhood accidents (Kuhlau). These presentations did not focus a lot on musical facts, regrettably, but we were offered an often slanted and always human take on the more gritty details of the lives of various composers.My group this year decided it would be more fun if they could add a lie to the mix of fun facts, thereby turning the activity into something like a crazy game of Two Truths and a Lie. Recently, this group attended a recital given by my friend and mentor, William Westney, who was appearing on a concert series headed by my husband. (As I write that sentence it does seem rather wrought with inside connections, doesn't it? Something almost like musical nepotism, but not quite.)Afterwards, the performance class had use of the sanctuary and the nine-foot concert grand ("Are we going to get to play that piano?!!"). Since this is still early in the semester, performances are a long way from recital-ready. Practices like making constructive comments after performances are a bit rusty and awkward. Later in the year, the kids will volunteer all sorts of insightful thoughts about one another's playing, but this early in the semester they are still shy and quiet. Honestly, I have mixed feelings about such a practice in the first place. I think it makes them listen more attentively and to think more about what makes a good performance, but I squirm uncomfortably at the idea nonetheless. I don't love the prospect that I am training anyone to be overly judgmental or critical. What we need are more people looking for the joy of every musical offering, not what might be wrong. I don't want to cultivate a negative atmosphere among them, but rather a supportive one. And so, I require that for every "What could Molly work on in her performance?" sort of comment, there must be TWO positive, "this is what you did really well" kinds of responses. It isn't a perfect solution, and forces me to control the conversation more than I wish, but there is nothing--and I mean nothing---more effective than when another student makes a constructive comment. It usually fixes things that weeks of harping on my part never would. If all this wasn't enough to make performance classes tricky, this early in the school year the expectations such as the infamous 5 Fun Facts (and One Lie) are still being established, especially among the new 6th graders. (All this does remind me why I feel like performance classes are a minefield of potential dangers and difficulties in a way the private lessons never are. And yet, I remain convinced there is nothing more important in the solitary world of learning to play the piano than the interaction with your musical peers.)That particular week several kids were playing music by composers they have researched in the past, so instead of repeating the task I did what I often do in such cases: I give them something related to look up (i.e. "Mazurkas" instead of Chopin or "Musette" instead of Bach).This time the alternative meant doing some research on our guest artist, Bill Westney, complete with the required blatant lie. When I explained the activity to Bill over dinner the night before, he thought this was hysterical. "How will they know it's really a lie?" He asked. "They could be telling a truth without realizing it." It was a very good point.He shouldn't have worried. My kids can lie just fine and proved to have creative imaginations in doing so. As we learned, Bill doesn't like to ski, nor does he hold five endowed professorships from Texas Tech (but imagine how busy he would be if he did.) I learned that I want Bill on the opposite team anytime these kinds of games are playing because he has no ability to hear lies about himself and keep a straight face.That afternoon the most clever set of facts, true and untrue, were about Chopin. See how you do:1. Chopin's heart is buried in Poland.2. Chopin died of a broken heart (not sure what this means exactly, but I went with it.)3. Chopin had a daughter named Kate.4. Chopin had a girlfriend named George Sand.5. Chopin suffered from horrible performance anxiety.6. Chopin's gravestone is in Paris. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=229 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=229 Sun, 23 Oct 2011 07:48:47 -0600 There is no way around it: summer is officially over. As we all have just endured the hottest summer on record, I should be leaping with joy. Instead, I feel a bit torn about the idea. I am over six weeks into this semester of lessons. We have had our first performance classes. I am deep into my pile of reading for graduate school. I can even check off the first few performances of the season. Clearly, summer is over. The weather has finally gotten the memo and shifted towards those lovely perfect days of cool nights and mornings, and plenty of blue skies in between. Last weekend, we even had an unseasonably early first snow fall, waking up Saturday morning to see the mountain covered in white. Our swamp cooler, which labored day and night for three months now, is finally bedded down for the winter. The monsoon season, that we thought might never come, arrived late, bringing rain and humidity. One is welcomed, the other not. Last week I had two cancelled lessons because kids were sick. This has never happened this early in the semester. It seems that after this relentlessly hot summer everybody is dragging a little, a bit out of sorts. On the upside, we are still grilling. After years of talking about it, we finally acquired a grill this summer, and have become those annoying people who only want to talk about grilling. We will forever think of this summer as the Summer of the Grill. Or the Summer of the Betta Fish. Or the Summer I finally climbed La Luz. Or the Summer of the Birthday Dinner. Now that I think about it, it will be hard to decide upon a name for the summer. But it was thanks to the grill that I may have inadvertently stumbled upon a new career. While Lora and I were in NYC, we ate an appetizer in a Chelsea restaurant that made us swoon. It was dates stuffed with goat cheese wrapped in bacon. It was a little piece of heaven on Earth. Immediately, we began plotting how we could recreate this divine creation at home. But what exactly happened to the dates and goat cheese and bacon after it was assembled was a bit unclear to us. In retrospect, it was especially unclear as the evening had involved cocktails at the St. Regis hotel and then several glasses of wine at dinner.Back home what we decided to do was put them on spears and grill them. This was brilliant on every level. It was like eating candy. "I think," Lora announced solemnly after tasting the first bite, "that you and I should quit our jobs and open a restaurant and serve these. And nothing else." "We could call the place Dates and Bacon," I suggested. "Dates and Bacon: And Not a Damn Thing Else," Lora added. Just last week, someone asked me, "Did you have a good summer?" I did, in fact. I read a lot of books. I swam a lot of laps. (In fact, recently I have gotten my pre-dawn swim up to a mile in distance. This is A LOT of laps, I can tell you.) I taught a lot of lessons (metaphorically, many miles of lessons). I played some good concerts, went on a couple of fun trips, spent hours in my garden puttering. It was, indeed, a good summer. Around town the smell of roasted green chile wafts through the air reminding us that indeed fall is here. Matt and I are eagerly anticipating our annual getaway weekend in Taos. I'm dreaming of blankets on the bed and making soup. Eventually, the pansies and mums will get planted; the bulbs a student brought me from Amsterdam will get put in the ground. I'll buy pumpkins for the courtyard and get out my boots and sweaters. But until then, the grill stands ready for another round of Dates and Bacon. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=228 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=228 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 06:29:40 -0600 I am drowning in music to practice.With performances scheduled six out of the next seven weekends, involving three different programs, I have no choice but to be thinking about practicing. A lot.It is times like this that I come face to face with all my bad habits and shortcomings. Feeling overwhelmed tends to bring out the worst in me. I end up walking around with myopic vision, unable to see the forest for the trees. I get super uptight and tense, and stop thinking big expansive thoughts. Instead, my thoughts start circling frantically in my mind, each repetition getting smaller and smaller and faster and faster. So hyper-focused do I become that I often trip over myself, missing completely the point to all of this.I've been here before, and undoubtedly will find myself here again. These life lessons keep rising up to greet us, whether we want to be taught or not. In the next few weeks, I will predictably fall into many of my old habits and patterns, having apparently learned nothing from previous experience. But having said that, I am consciously trying to shift a few things this time around. I may go down the same old road, but maybe I don't have to fall into the exact same holes.For me, everything always begins and ends with my time on the piano, these habits the most deeply carved of any I possess. When there are thousands---literally!!--of notes to learn, my default can be to stop doing anything creative with my practice and simply cram. I'm trying to do better.Instead, I'm forcing myself off the bench, visiting all those important non-practicing kinds of practices. I am working the music physically, stepping and tapping and singing my parts. I am listening to recordings, researching backgrounds and composers. I am recording myself, which forces me to come face to face with my performance that day, good or bad. I am thinking through the music away from the piano; I am studying the harmonies and patterns. I am trying not to simply practice ad nauseam. It is hard. It is ridiculously hard.Because when the stress gets high then my defense is to do what is familiar and comfortable---in my case, this means putting in killer hours of work, starting my practice time at dawn, putting in extra time in the evening when my last student walks out the door and my husband is attending a rehearsal of his own. But when I take a step back and consider that old practice list of ideas and strategies, what I know is that these things--the listening, the moving, the recording, the studying and thinking---are as valuable to my preparation as the hours banging away at the keyboard. Sometimes our best practice time doesn't look much like practicing in the traditional sense at all. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=227 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=227 Sun, 09 Oct 2011 08:54:42 -0600 I am falling love with my imperfectionsThe way I never get the sink really clean,forget to check my oil,lose my car in parking lots,miss appointments I have written down,am just a little late.I am learning to love the small bumps on my face the big bump of my nose, my hairless scalp,chipped nail polish,toes that overlap.Learning to love the open-ended mystery of not knowing whyI am learning to fail to make lists, use my time wisely, read the books I should.Instead I practice inconsistency, irrationality, forgetfulness.Probably I shouldhang my clothes neatly in the closetall the shirts together, then the pants,send Christmas cards, or better yeta letter telling of my perfect familyBut I'd rather waste timelistening to the rain,or lying underneath my cat learning to purr.I used to fill every moment with something I could cross off later.Perfect was the laundry done and folded all my papers graded the whole truth and nothing butNow the empty mind is what I seek the formless shape the strange off center sometimes fictional me.-Elizabeth Carlson http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=226 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=226 Sun, 02 Oct 2011 07:10:18 -0600 Damn bears.I think it is perfectly fair to blame the bears, although they weren't the only roadblock--literally or otherwise---that day. One morning about a month ago, my best friend Lora and I had set out early, before it was fully light, and drove to the East Mountains with the intention of doing a particular hike we had done several years before. This hike, comprising of a loop, is a difficult one for sure. It involves several miles straight up the mountain, then a half mile across the top and then several miles back down to the starting point, totalling something like 6 miles. The first piece of the triangle is particularly brutal in fact, but we knew what were getting into, and besides, thanks to a summer of swimming countless laps on my part and working with a personal trainer on Lora's, we were feeling strong and fit. To get to the trail head, one must park about three quarters of a mile away at the entrance of private property and then walk along the driveway to the beginning of the national forest. This has never been a problem in the past, but on that day we got to the parking area only to discover that the road had been blocked off and unnecessarily mean notices were posted warning against trespassers. The notices were directed specifically at hikers, and they threatened prosecution, dismemberment, and death. We contemplated ignoring them, but they did seem serious, so instead we left and drove on down the highway to another trail head.This spot was new to both of us. Instead of a triangular loop, this potential hike was a square, or rather more like a trapezoid. Like our intended hike, it involved several miles straight up the mountain, a mile and a half across the top, three miles down and 2.5 miles back to the start for a total of 9 miles. At the parking lot, we were greeted by a nice old woman who was about 110, who apparently lived in the camper and handed out maps. "Have you seen any bears?" we asked Marge. "Yes," she replied. "They are certainly around, but they aren't aggressive. If you see one just go the other way."This sounded a bit worrisome, but we were determined to hike anyway. We set off, passing a fellow hiker who was also well versed in bear stories. "They are moving sticks and rocks around on the trails," he warned us. "Looking for food." In hindsight, this was a statement of foreshadowing, but we couldn't have known this at the time. Instead, being the strong half-mountain goats that we are, we trotted on up the mountain. At the top, we ate some nuts and discussed strategies. Having just done 2.2 steep miles straight up the mountain (an increase of several thousand feet in altitude) in right at an hour, we thought we could whip through the rest of the hike and still be eating pancakes by 11:00am. "Let's do it," we decided. "The worst is behind us."The worst is behind us. Those are regrettable words in retrospect. We did indeed whip through the cross section at the top of the mountain, scampered (OK, maybe not "scampered" but I like the idea) down the mountain and arrived at the last leg in no time at all. Pancakes were in our near future.Remember the bears? Remember the hungry bears moving things on and off the trails? Well.....One of the challenges to hiking in the Sandias is the lack of good signage. There is very little. At times, depending on the water run-off and various bear activity the trail can actually be rather confusing. Sometimes it seems to split and you have to make a judgment about which path constitutes the actual trail. Hikers are, by their very nature, good people, and often times in these confusing spots, there will be a log to warn you away from the decoy trail, or a pile of stones next to the good trail to help guide you along. We arrived at just such an intersection and I said to Lora, "Huh, what do we do here?" One trail led down next to a trickle of a stream, the other headed up the mountain. "I don't think we would go back up the mountain at this point," Lora said quite convincingly. I agreed and so we headed down. Soon we passed a marker (A marker! this is always cause for celebration) that said something about a trail we had never heard of. However, scratched into the surface of the wooden post someone had written, "The trails merge here." "We must be on the right track," I said confidently and away we went. Away we went for another hour until we hit private property and an electric fence. At this point, we are starting to think that perhaps we didn't make such a good choice some time back ("We made bad choices," we began wailing at each other.). But we think that nevertheless we must be fairly near the car. Maybe there is a way to cut through. "I'm calling the forest service," Lora announced.We found a patch of land the size of a walnut where I had half a bar of cell phone service. Lora stood on one foot as to not disturb the signal and made the call. A friendly person answered the phone. "OK," Lora said, "I need some help figuring out where I am." She began describing our hike up to that point. The person on the other line sounded impressed. "You've come that far! Wow!" he exclaimed. We don't want praise, we want help. "I have never heard of that trail," he said finally when Lora told him the name of the trail we had stumbled upon. "Let me transfer you to someone else."At this point, I must stop and list all the reasons this represents bad behavior on the part of the forest service. First of all, anyone answering the phone ought to know every single trail out there. There should no transferring the call. They should be well aware that cell phone service is spotty at best and that keeping a lost person on the line ("Don't hang up! Don't hang up!") was of paramount importance. Finally, they should ask a serious of questions, none of which did they ask. Instead, this guy was wasting our time being impressed with the scope and ambition of our hike. Here are a list of questions he should have asked instead:Are you alone? (Well not exactly, but we haven't seen another soul in about three hours.)Do you have water? (We live in a desert!)Do you have food? (The answer at that point was "no". We ate all the nuts at the top of what is now being referred to as "the blankity-blank mountain". We had assumed by this point in time we would be eating pancakes.) Are you scared? (Not really, just annoyed as all get-out.)Is anyone hurt? (Our legs hurt. Does that count?)How long have you been out? (Although the answer was not that long, given our mountain goat-like speed, he didn't know that. We could have been there for days.) What is your physical and mental condition? (Deteriorating quickly.)But none of these things were asked. Instead, we got transferred to someone else who also acted way too impressed with our hiking ability and didn't know where we were. Even worse, she said, "Let me call you back." (Given our lack of cell phone coverage, let's just say we got that voice message about three days later.) I knew one solution, albeit a painful and sad one. We could turn around to the point where we had made the bad choice and then make a different, hopefully better, one. After some debate, this was what we did, thereby increasing our total hiking time to 5.5 hours and our total distance by perhaps as much as 4 or 5 miles. "I'm going to be so done with hiking," Lora pronounced as we trudged along (Yes, trudge would be the word). Arriving back at the crucial point, we discovered a big log that had clearly been dragged off the trail. Had it been in place we would not have been tempted down the wrong path. Damn bears."Yep, me too," I responded wearily and promptly stubbed my toe for at least the umpteenth time that day. ***Given this history it is puzzling to imagine how it was that merely two weeks later we were hiking La Luz. Short-term memory problems, clearly.Now, La Luz is the hike to bring up at dinner parties if you want to impress someone besides the folks at the forest service. Everyone has heard of (and feared) La Luz, reputed to be the toughest hike in the state. It is 7.75 miles straight up the western side of the mountain, dumping you out at the top of the tram which you can take back down and spare your knees. The problem is the base of the tram isn't the beginning of the trail, so one either has to have someone waiting to drive you to the trail head where your car is parked, or you must be willing to hike over from the base of the tram adding 1.6 miles to the total distance.This is what we did the Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend. Lora picked me up at 5:45am, we parked our car at the base of the tram and by 6:15am began hiking just as it started to get light. This time we had a plan, of sorts.We would hike hard for an hour and then take a break and eat snacks. This plan is code for the fact that I sometimes get ahead and this guaranteed that we would meet up at least once every hour. It was also psychological, as we rationalized that we could do any amount of torture for 60 minutes. Turns out, it wasn't tortuous at all. It was a dream hike. The weather was cool. We were in the early morning shade of the mountain the entire time. A fog drifted in towards the top, which was magical. While La Luz is relentlessly uphill, it simply is not as tough as some of our shorter but steeper hikes on the east side of the mountains. We had good snacks. We had the promise of pancakes by 11:30 if we kept moving. We didn't get lost. There were no bears making mischief on the trail. It might have been the best hike of our lives. "How was La Luz?" Friends later asked me. I suspect they were mocking us, fully expecting after our last misadventure another long tale of wandering in the woods. "Great," I answered. "9.3 miles in 4.5 hours. Uphill. We pretty much rocked." They looked at me like I might be lying. They have so little faith in the two of us. "We kicked that mountain in the ass," Lora had declared, as we pulled into the parking lot of the breakfast place at exactly 11:30am, already smelling the pancakes. At the time I agreed, but both my short and long term memory are working just fine these days. I am so done with hiking for awhile. The damn bears can have the mountain all to themselves. (This post lacks photos. That is because my computer is on its last legs, and no longer can handle much of anything. It's rather amazing we are managing to post this blog. Come back later when my new laptop has arrived to see visuals....) http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=225 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=225 Sun, 25 Sep 2011 07:10:43 -0600 Yesterday little Noah came into his lesson. He is young, tow-headed and freckled, a generally happy kid. Yesterday, however, he was despondent. "What's up?" I asked him. At this question, Noah burst into tears. "I made bad choices," he told me sobbing.This kid clearly lives in a political correct world defined by choices, good or bad. While I was sorry the poor kid was crying, it was hard not to smile over what was so obviously a direct imitation of adult-language behavior modification. "OK," I responded calmly, "what were the bad choices?"Quickly it became clear that over the recent semester break between lessons he didn't complete all his assigned practice days, "choosing" to play some days rather than practice and had lost track of how much time he had before his next lesson. When we examined his practice chart together, he only had eight out of ten required practices completed. I immediately thought, "Hey! I can live with this," but of course I didn't want Noah to think I don't take my own assignments seriously. "So, how can we make better choices in the future?" I asked him, parodying his choice of vocabulary.He suggested, and I agreed, that it would now be easier because school had started and we would be back to regular weekly lessons with the expected 5 practice days in between. "I get confused when it is too long between lessons," he wailed at me, "I want to come to piano every week."I want to come to piano every week. This statement was music to my jaded ears. Not only because it demonstrated Noah's commitment to piano and our relationship and practice routine, but because it reminded me how much the rituals and routines of our lives bring us comfort and assurance. Watching kids come in my door these last few weeks, excited about new teachers and new schools, new backpacks and new tennis shoes, I can almost hear their sigh of relief: Oh yeah, everything at Miss Amy's house is the same. I know what to do here. I echo their relief. I am equally anxious about new classes and new routines every semester, and breathe easier in the places in my life where I can keep on keeping on. As I take up the rituals of fall--the practice of planting pansies and collecting pumpkins by the front door, the cooler nights and shorter days requiring me to water in the dark every evening, the upcoming performance classes and recitals to organize and plan, the annual October get-away to Taos to anticipate, the books and music needing to be bought---I am thankful for the familiar: the Noahs of my world that I understand and know and love: breakdowns and bad choices and all. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=224 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=224 Sun, 18 Sep 2011 06:58:18 -0600 First of all, Pang is dead.Which is only one of many strange and somewhat disconcerting things going on around here. In fact, I am beginning to wonder if the lines between the natural world and our man-made artificial one are now officially blurred.This summer I was visiting a friend in her home. Sitting on a windowsill in her kitchen was a glass jar with a little blue fish swimming in it. "That's charming," I said. "How long have you had that fish?" (thinking that the answer would be 5 minutes.) "Five years," my friend replied. Immediately I went home and announced to Matt and everyone I knew that I was going to get a betta fish to swim in my own pretty vase. "I think the cats would be amused," I said to anyone who would listen. "And it's so lovely, a fish swimming in a beautiful glass jar. So very Matisse-like." My husband and all my friends declared that they were going to turn me into the Animal Humane Society. "You can't get a fish to entertain your cats. That's not very nice to the fish." Harrumph, I thought to myself, buying time. At our house we have what we call "house meetings," a time set aside every few weeks to discuss household kinds of things, like who should be taking out the trash (Matt), who should keep the study clean (Matt), who should be better about picking up his socks (Matt). We talk about money issues and compare calendars. We discuss major purchases and future plans. Friends have started sending us agenda items for the Greer house meeting. "Find a date when we can have dinner together," friends will say. "You can talk about it at the next house meeting." I did not think the purchase of three betta fish needed to be brought up at the house meeting.Instead, one day I simply rode my bicycle over to the nearby pet store and bought three betta fish---a gold one, a blue one, and a red one. I put them in three lovely glass vases (turns out they are aggressive and won't tolerate co-habitation) and set two of them on the mantle and one on the wall between the sun-room and the dining room. They seemed very happy, and relieved not to be living at the pet store anymore. My cats could not care less about the presence of fish in the house. "You can name the fish," I generously said to Matt, who, unlike the cats, wasn't at all sure fish were a good idea. "Ping, Pang and Pong," he decided, after a few days of careful consideration. For several weeks, all was well. My students LOVED the fish. It was truly delightful to be sitting on the couch reading and to look up at the mantle and see a fish swimming by. They hardly ate a thing and didn't need their litter boxes scooped out, making them even more low-maintainence than the girls. It seemed we had struck a nice balance with the universe.Then one morning when I looked in on the fish I discovered that Pang was missing. Gone. Not in the bowl at all. There he was lying on the floor, clearly a victim of his own suicidial act of leaping out of the pretty vase. "See," my husband reprimanded me. "That was not a happy fish after all."I disagreed. Clearly, Pang has misjudged his space. That was unfortunate, but not reason to give up this plan of owning fish. Besides the kids had grown very attached to the fish. I was going to have to replace Pang and hope no one noticed. No one did. We named the second generation blue fish "2Pang". 2Pang seemed a bit more lethargic than his predecessor, but perhaps that would be a good thing, as he would be less likely to try jumping to his death. I was content, liking the symmetry of living with ONE man, TWO cats, and THREE betta fish.And then about a month later, I woke up late one Sunday morning, and 2Pang was dead, floating listlessly in the water. I had played a concert the night before that had left me particularly exhausted. Sleeping in until 9 o'clock was unusual behavior for me. I felt groggy and confused. And then 2Pang was dead. It was a disconcerting start to the day.Later that morning, I was sitting at the computer when I heard a "meow" outside my window. I went out, and there was a tiny kitten stuck in a tree. This seemed a sign from God. Clearly the message is that when God takes away a betta fish, She gives you a kitten instead. Perhaps I was meant to live with ONE man, TWO betta fish, and THREE cats. Having no other recourse but to rescue the kitten, I did so and brought the adorable white and orange creature indoors. My cats were not amused.In fact, Godiva went into hiding and didn't come out for three days. I determined that the kitten was one of two offsprings of a stray calico that my neighbors had been feeding. It needed a home. It was growing increasingly obvious as time went on that it would need a home that wasn't ours.Not that the little guy was unhappy in anyway. Nonplussed by the reaction of my older cranky cats, he was the most cheerful little kitten on the planet. He LOVED piano lessons. ("Hey! Did you hear that? The door is opening again. Maybe there's someone I should go meet.") He followed me from room to room. He slept on Matt's feet while he shaved. I started calling him "Gimlet." We were in serious danger of falling in love with the little guy. Coming to our good senses, we had an emergency house meeting. "We can't keep him," Matt told me firmly. "Look how it is affecting the girls." "I know, I know," I said, as Gimlet sat on my lap and purred contentedly.We sent out a plea to everyone we knew. "Free adorable kitten!" we emailed. "Come and see." Within no time at all, we had a response, and soon Gimlet was gone, scampering out of our lives as carelessly as he had scampered into them. Meanwhile, TrePang is swimming merrily on my mantle, restoring balance in the universe. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=223 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=223 Sun, 11 Sep 2011 08:17:12 -0600 Eight-six degrees, high tide. We were arguing about suicide. Me, safe from the sun under the umbrella; you, propped on your elbows in the sand, your arms, recently iron-pumped, bronzing smoothly, your short gold curls and strong nose almost Roman coinworthy as you scanned the water with restless air and announced you'd kill yourself, you really would, if you weren't a coward. While I maintained the wish to die itself was cowardly. And I didn't believe you: you didn't really want to die. What about speed and wind-- your long bike rides, tracing the harbor on unknown roads? What about your pencil setting a line on a clean sheet of drafting paper? Women with small breasts and certain customs you were said to love in bed? At the very least, the kind of happiness that's purely physical. The person who wants to die, you snapped, doesn't care about any of that. He'd give it all up for a moment's peace. Peace from striving, from endless dissatisfaction with a self that's less than idea. I'd do it, you insisted, if I weren't shit-scared of pain. If it's pain you don't like you'd take pills, I said. But I hadn't won, and added lamely; Aren't you curious how your life is going to Turn Out? That's not a question of being brave-- just mildly vain, which you are, or so you claim. You didn't answer for a while, and half-enraged (or was it half in love) I watched your critic's eye alight on a black haired figure clad in white bikini as she ran lightly down the hard-packed sand and dove into a creamy wave. -Deborah Garrison A Working Girl Can't Win http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=222 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=222 Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:05:34 -0600 It's the details that kill me. And man alive, there are a lot of details to attend to. And I don't mean in the music. This weekend Jerome and I are playing a benefit concert with a soprano, Checky Okun. Donations accepted at the performance will go to Albuquerque Healthcare for the Homeless, a wonderful organization that provides medical and other assistance with the goal of getting people off the street for good. is the easiest part of this whole thing. It's the other stuff. The publicity: the press releases, radio interviews, flyers and postcards. It is remembering not only the deadlines, but who is supposed to meet them. "I'll post all over UNM, who's got Nob Hill?" we ask each other. "What are we wearing?" Jerome wants to know. "Send the program to me to proof," I remind him. "Did anyone remember to contact Albuquerque Magazine?" This is the stuff they don't teach you in school, but it is every bit a part of being a musician as the notes and phrases of our music. To paraphrase, its the details, stupid. But while its been easy to get distracted, I've been thinking a great deal about the music itself this week. As we were preparing repertoire, a theme emerged. It seems that in a number of the pieces we chose, there is this idea of music calling to us and offering solace and comfort and inspiration. In these pieces, this inspired awakening comes in the form of a bird singing or a flute playing ("Pretty much this concert is about me sounding fabulous," Jerome announced when we were talking about this theme.), and it serves to remind the listener of the power music has to uplift us. It's something worth every damn detail. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=221 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=221 Sun, 28 Aug 2011 10:10:20 -0600 My older students and I have a motto: All Piano, All the Time. We say this to one another as they leave their performance classes, and is now a familiar benediction to our time together. "What's new?" I often ask them, as we get settled in for a lesson. "Not much," they sometimes shrug in response. "You know, All Piano, All the Time." From her dorm room at college, a former student e-mailed me this spring, Amy! she wrote, APATT (All Piano All the Time) is going so well. I'm really appreciating my hours in the practice room these days. Kathryn is freshman, not planning on majoring in music, but taking piano lessons and playing juries anyway. It's gratifying to witness her commitment to her practicing habit, her desire to not give up this practice of daily practicing. I couldn't care less if any of my students become professional musicians, although some of them have over the years. I just want them to love music enough to want to keep it in their lives. I have been thinking about all this lately, as we begin another semester. Because I require summer lessons, starting up is, in many ways, just another day in the office. As I see students this week, I can generally expect that they will actually be better practiced than usual, because over this most recent August break in lessons I assigned more practice days than usual. Instead of their normal 5 required practice days, I asked for 10 or more, meaning we will have good lessons to kick off the semester. I am thankful for this, knowing that it takes more energy to get something started again than it does to just maintain momentum. To this end, it's time to take up that practicing list again. Several times this summer I taught rhythm and movement classes based on Dalcroze Eurhythmics concepts. First I taught three classes to a group of music teachers enrolled in Kodaly certification at UNM. Then, last week, I taught a class to a group of singers enrolled in an summer vocal camp. I am careful never to say that I am teaching Dalcroze, because although I have had a fair amount of Dalcroze training, I haven't jumped through the hoops for certification. Honestly, I have no intention of ever doing so, for while Dalcroze strategies for organizing rhythm physically changed my ideas about rhythm forever, early on I realized that I was never going to be anything but a piano teacher. While the concepts and activities I use might have originated from my earlier Dalcroze training, I am basically a piano teacher who uses a lot of movement to teach rhythm. In fact, there is hardly a lesson that goes by (especially with a beginning piano students) when at some point when we don't tap, pass a ball between us to mark the pulse or rhythm, or step the beat while singing our music. In fact, just yesterday I was teaching an adult who is returning to piano after many many years away from the instrument. She is convinced that she can't "count." I am always shocked how many adult students describe themselves this way, having any rhythmic confidence beaten out of them in their early music lessons. Thankfully, there are lots of ways to conquer this skill. Yesterday she and I were working on a little waltz. In order to feel the strong pull of beat one of every measure, we were stepping and swaying with every beat one and tapping our hands on all three quarter notes of each measure, all the while singing the melody (OK, I was pretty much doing the singing alone) in accompaniment to our physical work. It never takes much physical movement to immediately produce an "Ah-ha!" moment rhythmically. Yesterday was no exception. After singing through the piece a couple of times, first just tapping quarter notes, then adding the steps on the downbeats of each measure, my adult student sat down and played the piece perfectly. And so: practicing strategy of the day: Get off the damn piano bench and start moving. Sing (or count out loud if this is more comfortable) the melody and tap a steady beat in your hands. For the very advanced, (or for the music that most begs for this) find a bigger pulse to step in your feet. For example: tap quarter notes, but step half-notes. OR as my adult student and I did, tap quarter notes, but step dotted half-notes in ¾ time. Organizing different layers of pulse is a great way to truly understand what is happening rhythmically. Even after all this time and years of rhythmic work, I STILL do this almost daily in my own practicing, keeping me honest and in good shape physically, if nothing else. APATT, as the kids would say. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=220 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=220 Sun, 21 Aug 2011 08:09:10 -0600 It is not every day that a gay actor in the Jewish theater, who holds a masters degree in Yiddish and is an Episcopalian from Kansas City, takes you out to dinner in New York City for your birthday.But this has been the summer of memorable moments.First there was our get-away to Lamy, New Mexico. Then there was a trip in June to San Francisco, where Matt was attending a convention and I tagged along, making it the second trip this year where I played the role of the spouse with nothing better to do than to accompany her husband on his business travels. This could not be further from the truth, but this year his conventions were in particularly appealing places---Chicago in March, San Francisco in June--and so I was persuaded to give the role of tag-along spouse a try. Turns out, I like nothing better than to travel with Matt while he is busy all day. While we travel well together and, over the years, have worked out a healthy and happy rhythm to our holidays, it is, I discovered, equally fun to have the freedom to do what I might want all day and then to have a dinner and evening companion to share stories with at the end of the day's adventures. This is also another way of saying that I have a high tolerance for walking across cities, regardless of hills and distance, and Matt does not. As it turns out, my musical partner-in-crime, Jerome and his partner, Neal, were in San Francisco at the same time, as was Mary-Ellin, Matt's executive director for Quintessence, his semi-professional community choir, which meant there were lots of opportunities for great meals with friends. Jerome and I spent one spectacularly beautiful day in Napa eating and drinking. I spent many many hours roaming the city, utterly and blissfully content and somewhat lost. Although it wasn't exactly a traditional vacation for Matt and I, it was a lovely escape for a few days. We had hardly unpacked our bags, when we headed out on another adventure. This one was closer to home, yet more exotic in its own way. A couple hours southwest of Albuquerque is a gigantic art instillation called The Lightning Field. Created by the artist Walter De Maria in 1977, it is a field measuring one mile by one kilometer filled with steel poles of various heights intended to attract and magnify lightning. On the property is a spartan cabin, which sleeps six people and lots of mice. For years we had read about the Lightning Field and had tried to find a time to go. It is only open from May to October, and is generally booked solid. To experience the Lightning Field, you drive to the only two-story building in Quemado (a town straight out of a western), and meet the host, Robert, who will then drive you to the Lightning Field 40 minutes in the middle of nowhere and drop you off for 24 hours. Knowing this last part, we weren't taking any chances. We decided that we only wanted to visit the Lightning Field when we could book the entire cabin with friends that we felt sure we could tolerate for 24 uninterrupted hours in the middle of the desert. And so, it's taken years of planning to arrange this. But this spring, we and two other couples arrived at an agreed upon date and booked the Lightning Field. Armed with plenty of food and wine and games, we borrowed a suburban and headed south. The experience is nearly impossible to describe. Away from any sign of civilization, you immediately feel the isolation and utter nothingness of the landscape. The wind was raging at 45 miles per hour, making it almost impossible to stand upright, let alone enjoy wandering through the field. There was no lightning, although we could smell the smoke from the nearby fires. The poles themselves were bleached nearly invisible by the relentless sun. We huddled together on the rickety porch creaking in the wind and felt like we had been transported back 200 years in time. I found it to be the most depressing, desolate place on Earth. Not that we didn't have a good time. Fortified with enough good food and wine and ridiculous games, we soldiered through the hours, never forgetting how completely unplugged we were. Late that night, after an intense game of Apples for Apples, we wandered outside to look at the stars. Never having been that far from the man-made lights of civilization, I was unprepared for the sight of layer upon layer of stars, seemingly so close you could lick them off the bowl of the sky. Even the familiar constellations were unrecognizable, disguised by the light of thousands of stars we usually never see. We had prayed for lightning, but got instead, stars.July passed with its normal onslaught of performances and lessons. We celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary with an overnight at Tamaya, a resort just outside of Albuquerque. I finished up designing my fall teaching schedule, put studio newsletters in the mail, planned rehearsals for upcoming concerts. We had two wooden screen doors built, painted a lovely Roasted Eggplant color and installed. Matt organized and led a community sing and four musicale concerts to benefit a local charity. I swam laps and watered obsessively, trying to bribe my garden into not withering and dying in the heat. I adopted three betta fish which Matt named Ping, Pang and Pong. On the heels of this quiet predictable domesticity, on the last Saturday morning in July, my best friend Lora and I boarded a plane to New York City.This had been long planned and anticipated. Lora used to live in the city and was eager for a visit. My sister Sarah, who lives just on the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey, had a baby the last week of June and I had promised to come and meet little Felix. It was my annual two-week summer break before resuming lessons mid-August. It was also my birthday. For the second year in a row, my birthday had fallen the same week Matt was helping with a retreat for mid-career church musicians in Michigan. This made me not happy at all. "Fine," I said, "I'm going to New York," determined to make not merely lemonade out of lemons, but rather something more along the lines of lemoncello. This was a brilliant plan all the way around. In the weeks prior to the trip, as Lora and I plotted and planned our time in the city, Matt began referring to the trip as The Girls Gone Wild Tour. Lora and I didn't go wild, but we did eat a lot of good food, consume many cocktails, visit several museums and many many shops where shoes could be purchased. Lora visited friends while I spent time with my sister and the cutest baby ever. And then, of course, there was what will forever be known as THE Birthday Dinner. To my husband's everlasting credit, he did feel badly about missing my birthday yet again. So to this end, he texted Shane, his best friend from high school and college -- the above-mentioned Episcopalian from Kansas City. Would Shane be available to take his wife and her best friend out for the 18th annual celebration of her 21st birthday? "It would be my pleasure," Shane immediately texted back. And so, there we were drinking cocktails, Lora and I, in the Campbell Apartment, an old Mad Men kind of lounge located in Grand Central Station. Shane arrived wearing a tuxedo, and holding a long stemmed rose and a Little Brown Bag. "I thought that I should bring you a flower," he said to me and then handed the rose to Lora. "But then I thought I should get you something to wear," he continued, pulling out of the bag a florist box containing a wrist corsage (A wrist corsage! So 1990s prom night!). "Or perhaps," he said smoothly, "you'd rather wear this," pulling out a small jewelry box containing a beautiful bracelet. "I'll wear both," I answered promptly.From Grand Central, we walked a few blocks past the Chrysler Building ("You will want a picture here," Shane said, forgetting for a moment that he was a cool New Yorker and not a tourist.) and on to the Palm Too restaurant on the Upper East Side. "I can't remember the last time someone brought me a flower," Lora said as we walked along florally adorned. "Raise your standards, madam, raise your standards," Shane replied. At the restaurant where it was clear that Shane was a regular, we were offered a booth next to a group of Swiss yodelers. "Ask the birthday girl if it is all right," Shane told the host when warned that this group of performers might be a rather rambunctious group. "When have I gotten to sit next to yodelers on my birthday?" I said, and so we were ushered into a booth. First came wine and appetizers: crab cocktail and calamari. Then came a steak for Lora and lobsters for Shane and I with sides of creamed spinach ("This is life-affirming," Lora announced when she took a bite) and three-cheese potatoes. Then there was the birthday cake the size of my head. So much for the diet.Somewhere along the time of the birthday cake came the singing and yodeling. "Do you mind if we sing?" asked a jolly Swiss with the word Edelweiss stitched on his belt. (Really, Edelweiss? Could you get any more obvious?) "We'd love it," we told him. And so, they yodeled. And then, perhaps spying the birthday cake the size of my head on the table, they shifted into "Happy Birthday," sung first in English, then German, then Italian. It was, in a word, something. "I missed you tonight," I later told my husband, "but really, this was quite a birthday dinner all the way around. After all, you wouldn't have thought to wear a tux, and you don't yodel." Back home after our adventures, we have resumed our quiet domesticity. I have a week off and a list of chores as long as my arm. My fall teaching schedule begins next week, classes at UNM begin the following one, reminding me that I will have to take up the role of being a student once again for another few semesters. The betta fish are alive and well, as are the cats, and the garden limps along, all of us wishing for cooler weather. Yesterday, I found a bull frog hidden in the irises, probably seeking out a shady spot with a regular supply of water. Just this morning I noticed ristras dangling from the overhang at the grocery store. They'll start roasting chiles any day now, signaling a shift of seasons. I'm ready. But in the meantime, I miss Baby Felix and the yodelers. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=218 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=218 Sun, 14 Aug 2011 07:30:05 -0600 Katie was playing a piece for me from her sight-reading book. Checking out a book every week from my SR library, as we call it, is something she had been doing for some time now. I have several hundred method and repertoire books in my library, catalogued by levels. To look at my shelves of SR books one might think that I am an organized person. The kids would tell you this is deceptive at best, and that, in spite of what appears to be an unlimited supply of SR books, I am ALWAYS in need of fresh material. After all, many kids have read through every book in my library. I remind them that they could probably check out a book twice and it wouldn't kill them, but they don't believe me. I am tired enough of their whining for new SR books that I promised them that over this break between the summer and fall semesters I will take myself to the music store, armed with my inventory list, and buy new books to start the year. They are thrilled. (Really, when I think about it, what am I complaining about? The kids are begging for sight-reading books. Clearly, I have won some pedagogical battle.) But I digress. I was talking about Katie. She had come to me several years before from another teacher, but in spite of her previous lessons, Katie was basically a beginning piano student. Since coming to study with me, we had been working to systematically fill in the gaps in her skill set and to establish a strong basic foundation of rhythmic and note-reading skills. It's a frustratingly slow process, particularly so when the student should have already learned these skills because it means circling back to the beginning, and trying to be less than obvious about the fact that we are essentially starting over. But in the last 6 months or so, I had seen Katie turn a corner. She was finally learning assignments consistently well and making progress at a nice clip. The sight-reading assignment she was playing in her last lesson was a nice example of her progress. When she arrived in my studio, she had basically no reading skills in spite of the fact that she was working from second level method books. Now she could sight-read elementary level pieces nearly perfectly. It seemed a good time to take mark of how far she'd come. "Katie," I said to her, "do you notice how well you are sight-reading?" "Yes," she responded. At this point, my educational psychology training kicked in. I couldn't help myself. I had to get her thinking about why this skill of sight-reading was important, and why this assignment of sight-reading a piece every day would remain on her assignments until Kingdom come. "Do you know why we sight-read?" I asked her. "Yes," she answered confidently. This startled me. I was not expecting her to have thought this through. "Why?" I asked. "Because if you were ever in a performance and then you turned the page and realized, 'Oh no! I never practiced this page!' you could just sight-read it." This sounds suspiciously like a repeated nightmare I have in which I have gotten to a concert only to realize I never learned (or memorized, depending on the dream) the second half of the program. This, I have to admit, is an excellent reason indeed to be good at sight-reading, and one that I will consider carefully in the future. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=217 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=217 Sun, 07 Aug 2011 08:22:58 -0600 From The Pastor as Minor Poet: "After wasting far too many years trying to do the spectacular, it has finally occurred to me that God loves routine. All of creation holds together by the same things happening again and again, whether those are great things, like planets revolving around stars, or very small things, like electrons going around and around their nucleus. And with each rotation, year after year, through winter, spring, summer, and fall, if you are paying attention, you can almost hear the doxology: 'Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.' Similarly, we are not asked to be other than a part of this created order who get up, go to work, care for children, make meals, do laundry, pay bills, and go to bed, only to rise the next morning to do it all again. 'Keep on doing . . .,' the apostle commends. But along the way, those whose pastors have taught them to pay attention do it all as doxology." -M. Craig Barnes http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=215 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=215 Sun, 24 Jul 2011 07:26:48 -0600 This is a shameless commercial advertisement. After five years of performing and recording together, my musical partner, Jerome Jim, and I are making it official. We are becoming a musical duo. We are, in fact, The JimGreer Duo. But as Jerome told a recent audience, "I have to get something off my chest. Some people may be wondering, but Amy and I are NOT a couple." "No one," I shot back from the piano, "is thinking I'm leaving Matt Greer for you." We are nothing if not a bit feisty on stage. I am writing this shameless commercial advertisement to let you know about a few things..... First of all, you can learn all about The JimGreer Duo on our beautiful website: thejimgreerduo.com (clever, huh?). Secondly, our latest CD has just hit the streets. This is a double CD that we recorded in March, during week that was both wonderfully intense and just intense. I have been told (albeit mostly by people who already love me, so perhaps it doesn't count) that it is a lovely recording. The title track, an arrangement of the folk song "The Water is Wide" by composer Mark Hayes, is the last track on both disks. When Jerome was up to his eyeballs in the editing room he couldn't decide which take to choose. So he put a different one---and they are shockingly different--on each CD. I love that. You can buy this recording on the website, which feels just remarkably sophisticated. I might just go buy one right now for the pure novelty of the idea. (Something of MINE can be purchased on the Internet. Wow.) You can also listen to a few seconds of each track of both this CD and our previous one. This is all so very fancy. Thirdly, for those of you who do FaceBook, you can follow us there (although I can promise the FaceBook updates won't be done by me. I am not that cool yet.) OR if you'd like to be kept updated on future performances and events, you can join our Constant Contact email list. We promise never to share your contact info with anyone. (Actually, I don't really understand how all this works anyway, so I am about as dangerous as Jerome's Chihuahuas.) We have several performances in the next few months, and in our now official capacity will be looking to add more. Preferably in far-way exotic locations. Like Paris. Or on a beach somewhere. Or in a location full of good food and interesting people. If you have leads for us, or even better, run a concert series of your own, PLEASE send word. While I don't do FaceBook, I can be reached via email. I am also a big fan of pony express. Or homing pigeons carrying messages. Finally, from time to time we will be posting on our Duo website reflections about working together, about rehearsals, about performances, about our time on the road, so check in. While we are so NOT a couple, we do promise to be entertaining. As Jerome once wrote on a recital poster, "Disrupt your day. This is SO not your sister's flute recital." http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=214 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=214 Sun, 17 Jul 2011 06:25:42 -0600 Everybody needs a little time away. In May, after our final concerts were put to rest, term papers turned in, spring recitals a distant memory, we left town for a few days. "Where do you want to go?" Matt had been asking me for weeks. Nearly buried alive by all the things I still had to do, I couldn't even consider the question, let alone come up with an answer. "I don't know," I kept repeating, my mind wandering even as I was formulating that vague reply. And so, my love of almost two decades took me to Lamy. "Lamy? Really?" This was the reaction of countless friends, expecting a more romantic, or at least a more distant location. Lamy, New Mexico (Yes, it rhymes with "Amy," which has a certain poetic justice) is located about 20 minutes southeast of downtown Santa Fe. It is where the Amtrak station is located, and where scientists from all over the world were deposited on their journey to the labs in Los Alamos back during the Manhattan Project. No one we knew had ever been there. It isn't likely to make the New York Times travel section anytime soon. It is, truly, the definition of nowhere. Except for this. Across the street from the train station is a compound with a guest house. Owned and run by a fantastic woman who has traveled internationally, the "compound" consists of her home, her daughter's family's home, and a guesthouse. The whole property was originally built for the mistress of a rich Texan some 50 years ago. Matt, sensing between my non-answers my need for solitude and quiet, and yet wanting very much the option of a good place for dinner close by, stumbled upon this little rental option on the Internet. It was -- and I do not say this casually -- perfect. The guest house was beautifully laid out with a long great room, big kitchen, high ceilings, one sweet bedroom tucked off to one side, and floor to ceiling bookshelves. The best part was a long covered portal (porch) that ran the length of the house and where we could sit with our coffee or our wine and watch hummingbirds at the feeders and listen to the wind rustling through the aspens below. For two days, we did little but just that. I read three books (including, I must confess, the first of the "Dragon Tattoo" series. Suspicious of their overwhelming popularity, I had snobbishly decided I was above those books, until I dipped into one that was sitting on the bookshelves of the guesthouse. I read it in under 15 hours. I am here to tell you that I am not above those books. Indeed, I was like an addict in my quest to get my hands on the other two in the series.). I went on a walk down a dirt road and saw a llama who wanted to become friends. We went to Santa Fe for dinner. We cooked an outrageous amount of food we had bought at Trader Joe's en route to Lamy. We drank three bottles of wine. I went on a seven mile hike to a ghost town, during which time I never saw another soul. Or a ghost for that matter. "If we ever had a second home, I'd want it be exactly like this," I announced to my husband, and to anyone who would listen in the days after we returned. "You could just use that one as your second home," one friend suggested. "Much less trouble than owning one yourself." We could, at that. Matt calculated that we could get on the city bus a few blocks from our house, ride it downtown to catch the train to Lamy and then walk across the street to "our" guesthouse. It is so outrageously easy to contemplate that we just might do just that, one of these days. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=213 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=213 Sun, 10 Jul 2011 08:09:12 -0600 On a recent trip to San Francisco, I visited the Stein exhibit at the MOMA and afterwards wandered into the art museum's store. There I stumbled upon a children's book by Herve Tullet entitled Press Here. On the cover was a yellow dot, and on each page contained various instructions: "Press the yellow dot," "Shake them up a little," "Try blowing on them....." I was immediately enchanted, and bought the book for my studio back home. I wondered if I would be able to catch a student obediently obeying these instructions, perhaps convinced that these actions were actually doing something profound, or, at the very least, helping to create the image that would then appear on the next page. The next week a young student was waiting in the sunroom after his lesson. "There's a new book on the shelf," I called out to him from the next room. A few minutes later, I peeked in. Charlie was sitting there, diligently shaking the book on cue. I grinned, but said nothing. After painstakingly working through each page, he reported back to me , "Miss Amy, this is a cool book." One of the joys of not having children, yet having children in my life, is that I can indulge my passion for great children's books. My students know every book on my studio shelves intimately. From time to time I even catch parents browsing the stacks. Here are a few of the favorites: I have mentioned these books before, but they remain at the top of the list, so they deserve another shout-out. The five book pop-up series by David Carter--One Red Dot, Yellow Square, Two Blue, 600 Black Spots, White Noise--are brilliantly imaginative. Kids of all ages devour them (I have witnessed groups of college age kids fighting over the books.). Mine are so loved they are falling apart and need to be replaced. Monsters Eat Whiny Children by Bruce Eric Kaplan. This could be my new motto of my studio. The Pigeon Wants a Puppy! by Mo Willems. This is for that person we all know who desperately wants something until they actually acquire it. Simon's Cat by Simon Tofield. This is the book version of the hugely popular YouTube cartoons about Simon and his curious, relentlessly insufferable cat. Once I caught a little boy reading this book while waiting for his lesson. He was giggling uncontrollably, which was music to my ears. (I have a soft place in my heart for people who laugh out loud when they read to themselves). When he came into his lesson I asked him if he knew about the Simon's Cat videos. He didn't, which only goes to prove that things don't have to be digital to win over the younger generation. Olivia has gone to Venice since last we spoke. She ate at least as much gelato as I did in Italy two summers ago. (Olivia Goes to Venice by Ian Falconer.) And finally, Awkward Family Photos by Mike Bender and Doug Chernack. Our friends tell me that my husband's most notable characteristic on Facebook are the unfortunate photos he finds on the Internet and then posts as his profile picture every Monday morning. In honor of this habit, one of his youth choir kids gave him this book of bad family photos. It quickly found a home on the studio shelf and is the favorite among any student or parent with a healthy sense of humor, and the ability to laugh heartily at the embarrassing portraits of others. It's summertime, the livin' is easy, and the reading is good. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=212 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=212 Sun, 03 Jul 2011 08:43:41 -0600 By now you may be thinking that I will go to any lengths to avoid teaching scales. You might be forgiven for thinking this, as you have endured at least two years of blog posts describing pre-scale exercises. Heaven help us all. I actually like teaching scales, I'm just against the notion of doing so before students are good and ready. I often have beginning transfer students who are stumbling through level one or two in a method book, but by golly, they have been taught to play white key scales. Hands together. Good grief. I always wonder what the hurry towards playing scales is. After all, I----still!!---practice scales, which means that if students begin scales too soon, they are stuck with them forever. It is hard to backtrack and pick up basics that might need attention after students have begun scales. Trust me, I've tried, but no one likes the feeling that they are moving backward, and even a small child senses that something is wrong if they are introduced to 5-Finger Positions AFTER playing (however badly) scales. Taking a year or two in the beginning to ensure that students are comfortable with all major and minor 5-Finger Positions and simple chord progressions and the combination of the two seems to me a smart idea. There is plenty of time later for scales of all shapes and colors. If you postpone scales a bit, they become a celebration of sorts. Indeed the day will come when I have exhausted my pre-scale exercises and it is time to face the music. After working through thumb crossings, spider fingers and mastering our sharp and flat codes ("That 'Monkey Slobber' thing") we begin scales. Slowly. Much to my students' chagrin, I have as many strategies for practicing scales as I do 5-Finger Positions. No one can complain of boredom around here. We begin with the white key set that shares the same fingering: C Major, G Major, D Major, A Major and E Major. I teach one octave hands alone, students go home thinking that this advancement to scales is tangible proof that they have joined the big leagues. Which, I assure them, they have. We start with no specific instructions other than to play hands alone up and down: Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do Ti La Sol Fa Mi Re Do. Students are generally so excited about this whole thing that I don't have to tell them how many times to practice each scale, because I'm pretty convinced they play them ad nauseam at home. This enthusiasm will not last, but I enjoy it while I've got it. "Can I do both hands?" the kids inevitably beg me. "Nope," I tell them, knowing that this is the oldest reverse psychology trick in the book. I actually would like them to refrain from both hands for some weeks, but the kids never do. Those damn hands together one octave scales are way too tempting. They are like candy, only good for you. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=211 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=211 Sun, 26 Jun 2011 08:02:26 -0600 I have recently gotten in the habit of carrying a small book of poetry with me when I travel. Poems are perfect for those long lines at the airport, for bus rides or while waiting for your morning latte. It's wonderful then to look back and associate a certain volume of poetry or a particular poet with that holiday. This week we were in San Francisco, arriving home late last night. Accompanying me throughout my days of wandering the streets, climbing the hills, watching the people, and sitting on park benches was Mary Oliver's Dream Work. From it comes this poem. The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations-- though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do-- determined to save the only life you could save. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=210 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=210 Sun, 12 Jun 2011 08:25:34 -0600 There is a secret steakhouse in Albuquerque. Known only by word of mouth, you enter Vernon's through an unmarked door in the back of a shopping center. Knocking, you are greeted by a voice asking for your password and reservation. You are then interrogated as to your intentions before you are allowed to enter. It is all very gangster, and very mysterious. During the last week of the semester, in an attempt to bribe myself into finishing up a paper I was not inspired to write, I took myself up to the local bakery/diner, Flying Star, a few blocks from my house. My intention was that there I could write without being distracted by the cats, or the dishes in the sink, or the closet that suddenly---after months and months of being ignored---couldn't go another minute without being organized. Next to the doors at Flying Star are bulletin boards cluttered with notices about upcoming events. Eager to delay getting down to business, I stopped and perused the signs. The first one that caught my eyes was a notice for a Secret Garden Tour. There was nothing about this not to like. After all, two of my favorite words are "secret" and "garden" (Matt would tell you that if they had managed to also slip in the words "cottage" and "cats" I would be completely happy.). I noted the date (the weekend after my semester ended) and immediately called my garden partner in crime, Anne, to let her know of this event. Then having completely exhausted my attempts at procrastination, I reluctantly took myself into the bakery to do my work. A week went by. I finished up four papers and turned them in, taught a week of make-up lessons, attended a student's senior recital and graduation party, and sorted through a stack of files, cleaned off my desk, and scrubbed out the litter box. Remembering the upcoming garden tour and realizing I had no information besides the date, I walked up to Flying Star to read the sign again. It was gone. So back home I went to search online. (Matt laughed when I told him of this chain of events. "Why, Amy, why would you not look on-line first? Why would you walk six blocks to look at a sign?" Sadly, I never--ever--think to use technology first. It is still a last resort, which explains why I flail around helplessly so much of the time.) After a quick Google search, I find the tour, and locate a nearby nursery where I can secure tickets for Anne and me. At the nursery, I ask about tickets and was told I could only use cash. I didn't have cash on me so I ask if tickets would be available at the door. The cashier didn't know. Nor did he know who I could call to find out. Back to square one. I return to the Internet and while there is still no additional information given on the website, I do locate the organization sponsoring the tour and call. "I'm interested in the secret garden tour," I say to the woman who answers the phone. "Oh yes," she responds brightly. "Can I buy tickets at the door?" I ask her. "Of course you can," she replies. "Great! Now, where would that be?" "I can't tell you where the tour is located until you buy a ticket," she says. "But you just said I could buy a ticket at the door." "That's right," she says, cheerfully. "But . . . where's the door?" I am nothing if not persistent. "I can't tell you until you buy a ticket." Unfortunately, she is consistent in her answers. We are getting nowhere. I try starting over. "So, if you were me, and wanted to go on this lovely secret garden tour, what would you do?" "If I were you, I would drive down Los Arboles east of 12th street at nine o'clock Saturday morning and follow the crowds." Seriously? This is unbelievable. This is truly a secret garden tour. Or, more likely, this is representative of how things work in Albuquerque. Reporting this to Matt later, he suggests that we try knocking on the door of Vernon's Steakhouse to see if they know anything. Anne's husband Dan tells me that he would like to go too, but he has a tennis tournament, only he doesn't yet know where, because it is a secret. He is just going to drive around until someone tells him he is in the right place. Anne and I do, indeed, find the tour. After all that, it is rather underwhelming. All photos are of my garden, which is not a secret garden at all. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=209 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=209 Sun, 05 Jun 2011 08:12:12 -0600 There is an addendum to last week's post regarding rhythms that I failed to mention. It is so important, in fact, that it deserves a post of its own. Rhythms are basically a multi-step process: get yourself to the first long note, lallygag (as my mother would say--now there's a word you don't hear often enough!) there letting go of all tension and anticipation, then---and here's the important part---as you are preparing to flip through the next set of short notes to the next long note, you must---YOU MUST!!---mentally think through this process first so that you know very concretely where you are about to land. This sounds obvious, but in my experience, both in my own practicing and in monitoring that of my students, it isn't obvious at all. In fact, this is the more common scenario: We are sitting comfortably on our long note, happy as a clam to be there, and then without any forethought whatsoever, (except for perhaps a vague, "the next long note is out there somewhere, I'll know it when I see it") we go flailing through in hopes that the next place we are supposed to land will mysteriously rise up to greet us. My friends, it usually doesn't. Or at least it doesn't in any kind of way we want to rely upon. So instead of landing intentionally on our next long note, we overshoot it, or fall painfully short, which is, if nothing else, certainly indicative of how compromised our knowledge is of the passage at hand. When I ask students to name the next long note before they fling themselves at it, they often stutter and stumble, which does give us a good idea about what is about to happen with their negotiation of the next set of notes. When they can confidently name the next long note, they can usually always get there safely. Really it comes down to finding that delicate balance between staying firmly in the present and thinking ahead, which has plenty of implications outside of piano practice as well. But then most things---good and bad--that we do sitting on the piano bench teach us something about how to live once we walk away from the piano. It's just the small matter of learning to pay attention to the lessons our practice teaches us, which, of course, is the real challenge. In the end, the rhythms and all the steps involved, well, that is the easy part. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=208 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=208 Sun, 29 May 2011 08:28:46 -0600 My students are convinced that the answer to every practice question I ask is "rhythms." This is not actually the case, but the "rhythms" that they are referring to do solve a whole host of technical and musical problems. We owe a lot to their magic. I first encountered rhythms in college when I was studying with the formidable Jane Allen, who was widely recognized for her ability to turn an otherwise sloppy technique into something to be reckoned with. Her favorite way to teach scales was using rhythmic patterns of various kinds. "The 'Longs' should be very long, and the 'Shorts' very short," she would lecture, gazing at us with her stern, unforgiving gaze. She was, once again, right. However, after years of work with various teachers, I would add another corollary to the Jane Allen Law of Rhythms: The very long 'Longs' should be so long that you are able to completely let go of any physical tension AND any sense of inner anticipation to the next note. In other words, sitting there wallowing in the long note, you should simply be present to that place, not racing ahead mentally to the next tricky passage. After finding your complete unattachment to whether or not you will ever finish the passage, (or even leave the piano bench) there is a moment of preparation and then you flip through the next short note (or notes, depending) before settling on another long note. There you begin again, repeating the process of letting go. It's all very organic and deceptively simple. But, like any form of meditation, it isn't really easy at all. My teacher and good friend William Westney makes this concept the basis of his "scale exercise," which is simply Jane Allen's rhythms with a new and more holistic twist. It is just like Bill to take the old and make it suddenly not only fresh, but Zen to boot. My students have plenty of trouble controlling their impatience while sitting on a long note. I must confess, so do I. It feels so much more productive to race onto the next grand thing at top speed, polishing off our practice tasks in record time. When my students demonstrate rhythms for me in their lessons, I have to constantly nag at them, "Longer long notes." "Longer long notes." "LONGER LONG NOTES!" and still their idea of long is not the same as mine. I sympathize, but nevertheless together we struggle on, trying to reign in our fast-paced lives. Or at the very least, our fast-paced practicing. So what, exactly are these mysterious "rhythms"? Rhythms are an imposed pattern of long and short notes that can be used in any technical passage or exercise to help erase tension, to assist in physically learning the patterns of notes, and to stabilize one's security of a given passage. All that, and they have a built-in savings account, too. Every time I practice rhythms, I feel like I am making a deposit into a musical bank account; every performance is like a withdrawal. Enough rhythmic work and I stay safely in the black. Too many run-throughs without recovery time quickly puts me in the red. No wonder I swear by this practice technique so strongly. Rhythms can be in patterns of two, three, four (or more), but don't be in too big a hurry to jump into bigger rhythmic groupings. The smaller the grouping the more challenging it is on my patience and stamina, but the better the passage in question gets learned. Depending on the situation, these can be done with either hands alone or hands together (I suggest having great familiarity with the former before rushing into both hands). I have used these with scales and arpeggios in traditional Jane Allen fashion, with LH stride bass passages, and with complicated RH licks. The possible situations in which these might be applicable are endless. Here's our studio short hand for rhythms: Long-Short or Short-Long (LS or SL) Long-Short-Short or Short-Short-Long (LSS or SSL) Long-Short-Short-Short or Short-Short-Long (LSSS or SSSL) The trick is knowing which pattern to use. Groups of sixes are especially tricky--you have to decide if the notes are really in groups of three or two. I can always tell an intermediate student hasn't yet grasped the concept of rhythms if they suggest a three pattern for what is obviously a two grouping. I know there is a school of thought out there that claims that grouping notes in unnatural rhythmic patterns is helpful to the learning process, but I disagree. I match rhythms with their most natural musical grouping according to situation at hand, and save the bigger challenge for finding my inner breath when practicing them. Just because you might not be a pianist, doesn't mean that rhythms won't work for you. I have used them coaching all kinds of instrumentalists and singers to boot. There is nothing like them for cleaning up those long melismas in Handel's Messiah. The answer to every practicing question may not be "rhythms," but as my kids know, its not a bad place to start. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=207 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=207 Sun, 22 May 2011 08:04:42 -0600 As I write this, the wind outside is threatening to blow the house down. This is not the first time in the last month that this has occurred.  It is raining sticks and limbs, broken off from our old elm trees in the back.  I can't see the mountains because the air is so hazy and filled with dust.  Before I lived in New Mexico, I thought tumbleweeds existed only in Roadrunner cartoons.  I've learned otherwise.  Driving down the highway, tumbleweeds as big as my car roll across the road and into my windshield.  A month ago, I played a recital in Taos during what might have been the worst windstorm ever.  I thought perhaps the church where we were performing might very well come crashing down.  I understand that these winds are small potatoes in comparison to the weather damage that has occurred in other parts of the country.  I know that spring in New Mexico is a windy time of year.  I know all of this.  And yet, as I sit huddled inside at my computer, I am beginning to think that this might be the year where the winds will never die down. In other ways, the spring is wrapping up altogether too quickly. I recently heard a theory that I have since adopted as gospel. Apparently, in our collective sub-conscious is this notion that there will always be at least a month between Easter and the end of the semester. Such was not the case this year. There were, instead, a mere two weeks after the Easter bunny hopped away and the last push to finals began. Two. Weeks. When I realized this, I nearly choked. I am not a procrastinator, but there was no way around the ugly truth: I was going to have to start moving at top speed if there was any hope of finishing not only my schoolwork -- papers, projects, etc. -- but also if I was going to be ready for all the myriad of end-of-year activities in the studio: festivals, spring recital, concerts, etc. I am not the only one who was under some mistaken notion about the calendar this spring. In one class, the professor handed out the final project (basically an 8-12 page paper disguised as something else) telling us not to panic because we still had 3 weeks. When someone pointed out that we only had 2 weeks until the end of the semester, he grew noticeably white. I suspect it was not out of compassion for our time that this visible panic happened, but rather that it was entirely selfish on his part. At that moment, he probably realized how much he might still have to do before the semester could be put to bed. Then in the midst of the end of year craziness, on the day before Easter, my grandmother died. She was the perfect, quintessential grandmother, down to her white hair and the crocheting that never left her side. She was 94, and in the last few years had suffered multiple strokes, leaving her nearly bed-ridden and knowing no one. None of us who loved her wanted to see her linger like that (Indeed she would have been quite put out to imagine that she had!), and so in spite of our great sadness, it was a blessing to see her go. But this meant that in the middle of the race to the end of the semester, Matt and I flew home to KC. He was planning a trip anyway to be a part of his older sister's 50th birthday celebration. Grandma would have been pleased to imagine even in death she managed not to inconvenience too many people. Originally, I had begged out of this birthday trip, because it fell on the same weekend of performance classes, a local music music festival and a children's choir concert that three of my students were accompanying. However, life--or in this case death-- has a way of changing our plans. Instead, I found helpful parents and colleagues to cover my work, sent the students off to do their jobs with my fingers crossed, and got on a plane, with my pile of papers to edit and my laptop. It turned into a weekend of respective life celebrations: a milestone birthday and a gathering to remember and honor a grandmother we loved. While this trip home gave us a brief respite from our frantic pace, it also unfortunately ate four days out of my precious few. Coming back, I had to work at double speed to make up for lost time. My students, freed of my hovering, performed beautifully, reminding me once again, that if I have truly done my job, then as they grow up and away from me, they should need me less and less. As it turns out, my spring studio recital last Saturday night may have been the best one of my teaching career. I am graduating a senior this month, the last of a group of students that have been one by one graduating over the last few years. It's the end of an era, for that group of kids all came to me as transfer students from other teachers. The slightly younger mid-high/underclassman group that is stepping in to take their places are all mine---good or bad. I have had some of them for as long as I have been living in New Mexico. They are, in many respects, a stronger group of pianists, even as they are going through a particularly squirrelly age. Saturday night I watched my senior play his last studio recital (his solo senior recital is still ahead of us in a few weeks) thinking fondly of all the kids that walk out of our lives in search of their own. But this next group is feisty enough to keep me on my toes, I have no doubt. Studios change; chapters in our lives open and close. There's been a lot of both lately. The semester is now officially behind us. I am not taking summer school this year, relishing the months ahead devoid of reading textbooks and writing research papers. It's easy to be overly optimistic about how much time---how many days, and literally hours---will be all mine in the next few months of summer. Life does have a way of filling a void. But for now, I'm pretending that the summer is an open canvas waiting to be filled. I want to swim more laps and do more yoga. Crack open that pile of books that have been waiting patiently for me. Dive into some music of my choosing. Learn how to throw pots. Hike every weekend. And maybe, if this wind ever stops, there will be long lazy evenings in the garden nursing a glass of wine while the stars come out. I can't wait. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=206 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=206 Sun, 15 May 2011 08:24:03 -0600 My students are busy getting ready for festivals. One of the most rigorous events around here requires technique work as well as three contrasting pieces. Exactly what that technique work might consist of is up to the teacher, but students must be prepared to play some sort of technical exercise in the key of each of their three pieces. I think this is great, because it allows me to use a third party to enforce careful technique practice. ("I know this is hard, but the judge is going to ask for it and it is part of your score, so you need to be ready....") Anything sentence that begins with "The judge" gets their attention, and I milk it for all its worth. For my students, their prepared technique consists of 5 Finger Positions or Scales, chord progressions with set-ups, and Arpeggios---either traditional arpeggios or what I call "Cartwheels" or "Cross-over Arpeggios." Piano "Cartwheels" work like this: Playing either broken chords or blocked chords, students play Do-Mi-Sol patterns alternating the LH and then the RH, topping off the whole sequence with a cross-over LH "Do" and then coming back down to the original position. I teach these in simple two-octave patterns with the added cherry of the top Do---LH, RH, top Do---or in four octave patterns--LH, RH, LH, RH and then top Do and reverse. We do blocked chords and broken, major and minor. For the most part, students like these exercises---they love any drill that allows them dramatically lurch up and down the keyboard. Cross-over Arpeggios or Cartwheels have been around forever in my studio. But one day, Sam came in with a composition entitled "Monkeys" that used a variation on these exercises. Always looking for new patterns to use for technique work, I asked him I could steal his idea. He, of course, was thrilled (They always are, loving the concept that their inventions might be worthy to be used with other students.). We have named these patterns "Sam's Monkeys." Sam's Monkeys: 77. LH: broken Do Mi Sol then RH: blocked Do Mi Sol Reverse Monkeys: 78. RH broken: Sol Mi Do then LH blocked: Do Mi Sol These, of course, can be done in either major or minor keys, and are a great preparation step for the trickier traditional Cartwheels or Cross-over Arpeggios. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=205 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=205 Sun, 08 May 2011 08:47:22 -0600 Show me again the time When in the Junetide's prime We flew by meads and mountains northerly!-- Yes, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness, Love lures life on. Show me again the day When from the sandy bay We looked together upon the pestered sea!-- Yes, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking, Love lures life on. Show me again the hour When by the pinnacled tower We eyed each other and feared futurity!-- Yea, to such bodings, broodings, beatings, blanchings, blessings, Love lures life on. Show me again the just this: The moment of that kiss Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree!-- Yea, to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness, Love lures life on. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=204 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=204 Sun, 24 Apr 2011 08:07:19 -0600 One of the unfortunate by-products of being in graduate school is that I don't read as much. Actually, I should clarify that sentence: I don't read as much for pleasure. I read, I can assure you. Oh yes, I read. In fact, in the next few months I will have read more research articles than most people do in a lifetime. This, I can tell you, is nothing to look forward to. But recently I have come to the conclusion that unless I just begin reading books I want to read, even if I think I have no time to do so, I will never find the time. This, I know, is not profound, but nevertheless it feels like a small piece of wisdom to hang onto these days. And so, even though I have no real business doing so, even though my garden is screaming for attention, even though I have music to learn and papers to write, even though my house needs serious cleaning, I am reading. In celebration of this little act, here are a few books and authors that I have recently found. That these writers would now make my top 10 list and I hadn't read ANY of them a year ago, reminds me that there's a lifetime of good reading still to be discovered. A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan. I know I am slow to jump on the Michael Pollan bandwagon. In fact, I still haven't read that Omnivores's Dilemma. But I will, one of these days, because I am so taken with Pollan's style. I think he could write about anything and make it interesting. This book is about him building, with his own two hands and some helpful friends, a writing studio. It's a wonderful, inspiring read and makes me want to do the same, almost. The Fiddler in the Subway by Gene Weingarten. I once used this Pultizer Prize winning essay as the inspiration for an American Music Teacher column. This is a collection of essays written by Weingarten for the Washington Post. They are, every last one of them, brilliantly written. Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell. OK. I lied just a bit. I had read Gail Caldwell before this year, as she was the book critic for the Boston Globe while we lived there. I used to read every review she wrote even if I could care less about the book, because her writing was so stunning. I had been hearing about this book, subtitled A Memoir of Friendship, since it was published last year, and in mid-November reserved it from the library. Only last week--last week!--did I get an email telling me that this book was waiting for me. This long waiting list should have been my first clue that this book was something special. I read it in 24 hours and immediately went out and bought a copy for myself and my two best friends. This is not just a book about friendship, although it is that, it is also an ode to building a life for yourself that you can be proud of. The sub-themes are too numerous to list here, but as I emailed several friends in the days after finishing this beautiful book, "Run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore/library and get this book." You will thank me. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=203 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=203 Sun, 17 Apr 2011 08:03:10 -0600 Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive strikes me from sleep, and I rise from the comfortable bed and go to another room, where my books are lined up in their neat and colorful rows. How magical they are! I choose one and open it. Soon I have wandered in over the waves of the words to the temple of thought. And then I hear outside, over the actual waves, the small, perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake, and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out to the fading moon, to the pink flush swelling in the east that, soon, will become the long, reasonable day. Inside the house it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight in which I am sitting. I do not close the book. Neither, for a long while, do I read on. -Mary Oliver What Do We Know http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=202 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=202 Sun, 10 Apr 2011 08:49:05 -0600 It is time to return to that damn list. The List, as we shall call it, has generated a lot of reader response. Nothing I have said in years has piqued this kind of interest. Clearly, a lot of people out there care about practicing. But life has a way of getting in the way of lists of any kind. There was that trip to Chicago with Matt a few weeks ago. There have been concerts to play and a 25-hour recording project to put to bed. I had to write a couple papers, and take a mid-term on cognitive development. The garden has been screaming for attention, and this week my cats, for no apparent reason, have been trying to kill one another. As you can tell, I've had a lot on my mind. That doesn't mean, however, that I have not been thinking about practicing, because I am always thinking about practicing. It is not hard to present a list of practicing techniques, what's difficult is to figure out where to begin. Thinking this over, I decided to begin where our students begin if we do not intervene: they simply repeat mindlessly. I know this, because when I ask, they tell me. Sometimes they tell me this sheepishly, knowing that they should have done better. Sometimes they reveal this practice strategy quite proudly. Take this encounter, for example: Yesterday, Jake played his little intermediate Mozart minuet, which had more mistakes in it than not. My first question is a predictable one. "So, how did you practice this?" "Well, now I am thinking that this wasn't such a good idea, but I just played it a lot of times." Jake at least has enough wherewithal to know that I'm not going to like this answer. I'm somewhat gratified to hear this recognition, but still, given the poor performance I have just heard, it would have been nice if this self-reflection could have come earlier in the week. This practice approach is hardly unusual, and if you think your students aren't just "playing it a lot of times" then you are probably deceiving yourself. In fact, I wrote a paper last semester dealing with self-regulation and student practice and found several studies where researchers examining student practice strategies discovered that overwhelmingly the most popular strategy was repetition. It's time to change that. But change is hard, because if I am honest with myself, I resort to the good old "play it a lot of times" strategy myself from time to time. Repetition has its place, certainly. The key is noticing when repetition isn't markedly improving the situation. So. We begin our list with a nod to the power and temptation that repetition has in our practice routines and the challenge to notice whether or not it is working. Sometimes it will. But often, as Jake would say, "it wasn't such a good idea." http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=201 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=201 Sun, 03 Apr 2011 07:26:21 -0600 I've been thinking lately about Selma. Selma is a sheep, a animal character in Jutta Bauer's children book by the same name. I love this book, and give it to everyone I know. Once in an American Music Teacher column I referenced this charming story in an illustration about learning to love the life you have. That seems a good lesson to return to these days. I was propelled into beginning this Educational Psychology degree for many reasons. I have long been fascinated with the psychology of teaching and learning and the intersection of music as a subject. In the last few years, I have grown increasingly more dissatisfied with the assumptions and values of the music teaching profession, with its emphasis on performance practices rather than on the possible transformation of the person sitting on the bench. But when I am completely honest with myself, I also know that I feared the answer to the question, "Is this enough?" Is my current life--teaching and performing, reading and writing, yoga and hiking, gardening and entertaining--enough for the next 40 years? More than anything, it was the sense of not being sure of the answer that sent me racing after another degree. I want options, I've told myself over and over again. I don't only want the scholarship and knowledge I will gain in this degree program, but I also want the open doors such credentials might provide me. I want options. Now waist-deep in this program, I am no more sure than I ever was. Which brings me back to Selma. For you see, Selma is a sheep who is content with her life of eating grass, playing with her children, exercising, and having her daily chat with her friend Mrs. Miller. In fact, when asked what she would do if she had more time or won a million dollars, she responds that she would, in fact, like to eat some grass, play with her children, exercise, and every night have a chat with Mrs Miller before falling fast asleep. This, we are told, is the secret to happiness. I think about Selma almost every day. I think about Selma when I am overwhelmed with school projects, when faced with hours of lessons, when sitting down to a long rehearsal with a colleague, when staring at the computer willing an essay into shape. What would I do if I had more time? Well, I'd teach some students, practice the piano, rehearse with my friends and colleagues, write a little and at night have a chat with my husband before falling fast asleep. What would I do if I won a million dollars? Well, I'd teach some students, practice the piano, rehearse with my friends and colleagues, write a little and at night have a chat with my husband before falling fast asleep. Enough? I don't know, and to dwell too much on that question may be borrowing trouble from the future. Today it is enough. Today I'm a contented enough student, enjoying my classes this semester, how far I'll make it in this degree program I don't know. But maybe it doesn't matter. Today I am a happy teacher, fascinated by the tiny almost imperceptible moments of learning and transformation that takes place in the piano lesson, and the ever present challenge of teaching kids to think. I am a satisfied pianist, content with my practice schedule and my performing projects, grateful to have such talented and inspirational musical colleagues with whom to make music. I have writing projects that motivate me, and a garden to plan and plant. And at night, after a long day of work and play, I have a husband waiting with a glass of wine. It is enough. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=200 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=200 Sun, 27 Mar 2011 07:48:17 -0600 Last night was my "Chopin" performance class. The Chopin group consists of mid-high and senior high kids, and they take their name from birthday party that several of the girls decided to throw for Chopin last February. That evening they brought cupcakes and I served sparkling cider in champagne flutes. Last night there were no cupcakes. There was, however, a bonanza of "5 Fun Facts." This practice came about because of my insistence that the kids arrive to performance classes with at least five facts about the composer or piece they are performing. At some point, there began a kind of competition among them to see who could find the most outrageous facts. "This one is really fun," Kari would prime us, before telling us about how such and such obscure composer died when falling through the ice while skating. Now, although the original students behind the 5 Fun Facts have left us for adventures in colleges around the country, the practice continues. Last night's class was structured around an article written by Anthony Tommasini for The New York Times in January. In it, he took on the task of deciding who were the top 10 composers in western music and then ranking them in order. His one rule was that no living composers could be considered, but otherwise anyone was fair game. There are 10 of us in the Chopin class, so during the last several weeks I let kids choose their composers from Tommasini's list. The kids had plenty of opinions about his picks. "OK. Where's Chopin?" several of them asked, annoyed that the namesake of their class didn't make the cut. "And Schumann? What about Kabalevsky?" (They are a rather piano-centric bunch, to be sure.) Mostly I just listened to them chatter, thrilled that they knew enough to have opinions. "I'd put on Copland," said one student. "Shouldn't Joplin be on this list?" asked another. Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy, Brahms were quickly grabbed up. "Bartok! Ugh! I hate Bartok. What is he doing here?" a number of them complained. To be fair, they hardly have a holistic view of Bartok, familiar as they are primarily with the Mikrokomos books. I use these volumes for technique work and, across the board, the kids hate them. These exercises are fabulous for teaching how to organize the physical gestures of phrasing between the hands. There is nothing like them for getting straight to the heart of the coordination challenges of counterpoint. And the tonality is so wacky that they inadvertently provide great sight-reading because kids learn quickly they can't trust their ears. But the Mikrokosmos are certainly a microscopic view of Bartok and his compositional range, and exposed primarily to this limited knowledge of Bartok, the kids do not think highly of him. In fact, most of my students now form a group we have named the "Bartok Club." The Bartok Club is full of students who so hate playing the Mikrokosmos that this assignment has become a battleground between us. My compromise is that for every week they successfully play their Bartok ditty, they get the next week off Bartok completely, letting us all feel like we've won. I was curious to see which kid would choose Bartok for their 5 Fun Facts. Finally, late in the process someone rose to the occasion. "Well, I'll take Bartok," said Simone, resigning herself to the chore. "I want to know what is so great about him." Last night we took on the composers in order, each student sharing their 5 Fun Facts. As usual, the kids got straight to the non-essential information, quickly diving into Wagner's anti-Semitism and Schubert's supposed syphilis. And who knew Bartok suffered from painful childhood eczema? Now we do. "Are you going to feel better about Bartok now that you know he had eczema?" I asked them. Some of them reluctantly shrugged, "Maybe." I'll take it. I'm not above using painful medical conditions to help generate good will and respect. After we finished laying out postcards with the 10 composers into their appropriate musical periods on the floor in front of us, Jake looked at the cards and announced, "Miss Amy, these are all dead white European men." I was pretty impressed with this categorization, since I'm fairly sure he has never heard the phrase "Dead White Men" when referring to composers of western music. Of course, he was right. There isn't a non-Anglo or woman in the group, but that is hardly a surprise. Still arguing, the kids trooped out into the evening, another performance class behind us. I wonder, not for the first time, what they will remember about these evenings together. Schubert's syphilis? Their own performances? The occasional cupcakes? It hardly matters. What I most want is for them to feel a part of a community of musicians and to take this identity with them as they grow up and away from us. Bartok's eczema? Now that's a bonus. Tommasini's Top 10 Composers: 1. Bach 2. Beethoven 3. Mozart 4. Schubert 5. Debussy 6. Stravinsky 7. Brahms 8. Verdi 9. Wagner 10. Bartok http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=199 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=199 Sun, 20 Mar 2011 08:18:58 -0600 In the studio, many of my students are learning a stack of Dennis Alexander's new and still unpublished pieces. "You mean I get to play this before anyone else in the whole wide world?" one little guy asked me. "Yep." I replied, "and Mr Alexander wants to know what we think." Josh is going to play one of these pieces on an upcoming recital, and I suggested that he write Dennis and invite him to come. His note read: Dear Mr Alexander: I am playing Capriccio in G Minor on a city recital. I hope that you can come! I think that Capriccio in G Minor is a good piece but there are some changes I would like to ask you about. Josh I am a bit uncomfortable with this kid's spunk. Secretly, I am afraid I no longer have this kind of confidence in my own opinions. "What changes?" I asked him. "You know," he shrugged, "important stuff. Like dynamics." "It's unsettling when you realize there are only so many things you can teach a child," wrote Fred Waitzkin in Searching for Bobby Fischer. "And, finally, they are who they are." http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=198 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=198 Sun, 06 Mar 2011 08:29:14 -0700 Once or twice and maybe again, who knows, the timid nuthatch will come to me if I stand still, with something good to eat in my hand. The first time he did it he landed smack on his belly, as though the legs wouldn't cooperate. The next time he was bolder. Then he became absolutely wild about those walnuts. But there was a morning I came late and, guess what, the nuthatch was flying into a stranger's hand. To speak plainly, I felt betrayed. I wanted to say: Mister, that nuthatch and I have a relationship. It took hours of standing in the snow before he would drop from the tree and trust my fingers. But I didn't say anything. Nobody owns the sky or the trees. Nobody owns the hearts of birds. Still, being human and partial therefore to my own successes-- though not resentful of others fashioning theirs-- I'll come tomorrow, I believe, quite early. -Mary Oliver from Red Bird http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=197 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=197 Sun, 27 Feb 2011 08:32:06 -0700 Ah, practicing. As we know, this is where the rubber meets the road, where the lofty dreams of being able to play an instrument meet the reality of learning to do so. Teaching students to practice well is everything. Now, I have to confess, teaching students to practice is the thing that most excites me about teaching. I love the process. I love the process more than the performance. I would rather practice or think about practicing than about anything else. My favorite, most frequent teaching question is, "How did you practice this?" I ask this question to everyone---regardless of age or level. I ask this even regardless of whether or not the student actually has any autonomy in the issue. In other words, I ask the question even when I fully expect the answer should be, "Just like you told me." But I keep asking the question because I want students to think about the process of practicing from the very beginning. I want students to fall in love with the process, because I am convinced this is the answer to nurturing the life-long musician: If they are engaged in the work, then they will get hooked forever. It turns out that this is just one of the many problems with our public educational system and our policies of No Child Left Behind: the emphasis is no longer on the process of learning, but rather on the product or performance, otherwise known as "the test results." Until we as a society stop demanding performance results, we don't give teachers much choice but to teach to the test. As music teachers our freedom lies in being able to be all about the process, which is why all my Ed Psych friends think I have the best job on the planet. When we, as a profession, start taking the emphasis off of "how did you practice?" and start focusing only on the product, the performance, we are undermining our potential to change the way kids think and learn. I have often said that if our value and reputation as teachers was earned by our retention rates and not our competition winners, we might each very differently. Some time ago I was teaching an adult student. After hearing her play one of her pieces, I asked the infamous question: So, how did you practice this? She began reciting a list of practice techniques that seemed to me to be woefully inadequate in the face of the music at hand. When I then asked if she had done x, y, or z she admitted that she had not, and, in fact, those strategies had never even occurred to her. This was disheartening to be sure, because these were not new or unfamiliar practicing ideas. Indeed, they were strategies we had used many, many times in the past. And so, I was inspired to create what we are now calling The List. The List is a list (hence the brilliant name) of practice strategies that we all should use when working. As I explained to my adult student, while not every strategy would apply to every piece, many do, and if we aren't working through every strategy that we could, there will certainly be holes in our playing. I know this first hand. If, in my impatience and hurry, I skip some step in my preparation, my performance will suffer. Having a list of possible ways to practice helps keep me honest. Hence a new category of posts for this blog has been born. "Practicing Days" or as my students will certainly call it, The List. These will be ideas and strategies about how to practice and work, and over time, will form a checklist we can use and refer to. The List. It is so concrete, simple and obvious, I'm embarrassed I never thought of it before now. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=196 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=196 Sun, 20 Feb 2011 07:44:17 -0700 It's easy to get ahead of ourselves. It's far too tempting to jump joyfully into the new and forget what we already know. What with all these novel pre-scale exercises and chord progressions, it's altogether too easy to ignore those old familiar 5-Finger Positions completely. About the time students think they have escaped the pentachord world entirely, I start circling back, spiraling over old territory. Of course, it's good to have a new twist. Think of these as 5-Finger Positions with a twist of lime. Or lemon. And just to hide the fact that these really are just those same old positions, now we call them "Set-ups." It's amazing how easily students fall for this whole re-naming scheme. But it isn't all old stuff with new names, for we are moving into a more thorough knowledge and understanding of major positions and keys, which, coupled with our flat and sharp codes and good solid pre-scale and chord exercises, is all part of the grand plan. The new "Set-ups" do indeed set us up nicely for adding to our original basic I-V-I chord progressions, which gives us a whole new palette of interesting colors and harmonies to play with. At the same time, I can make darn sure students haven't forgotten their positions, which was my aim in the first place. Set-ups work like this: I usually start with the LH, as my students begin their chord work here. The LH plays a simple--Do Re-Mi-Fa-Sol pattern, and then the thumb moves up a whole step to play the La. Then we circle around to catch the half-step underneath Do with the 5th finger and play the Ti. The 5th finger then jumps back to end on Do. And so we get the full 7 notes of the major scale, albeit not exactly in scale-like formation. Nevertheless there is a rather satisfying completion to the whole exercise. Students get introduced to La and Ti, something that the more curious ones have been wondering about for awhile. They still have to play those 5-Finger Positions, which makes me happy, and now we have notes and labels to use when expanding our chord progression. It's all good. And so, suddenly our options for chords explode. My early chord assignments usually look something like this: 1. Set-up 2. Blocked chords: I-V-I 3. Play chords in.....( Alberti Bass, Broken, Waltz) Students draw a key from my bowl of poker chips, which are each labeled with a different note. (Some of the kids are convinced I am out to get them, and have removed the "C" chip and added five B-flats, but that is simply not true. There is one C, and one B-flat. Of course, there is also an A-sharp, which does double the chances of getting the "devil position" as they like to call it. I didn't say the chips were key signatures, just note names.) The chips they draw are the keys for the week. After a week or two of getting familiar with the whole Set-up thing, I add the V7 chord, making the progression: I-V-V7-I, and then after a few weeks add in the IV chord so we end up with: I-IV-I-V-V7-I--starting with the I-chord in root position and the others in the obvious inversions familiar to every pianist alive and breathing. (Starting this chord progression on the first or second inversion of the I-chord is subject for another day. A day WAY in the future.) And then the fun begins. The third step to the exercise is to play the chords in patterns---Alberti Bass, Broken, or Waltz. Much, MUCH later we explore tangos, bossa novas and other catchy dance rhythms. (Last fall, one of my little students competing in a piano competition chose to spend his allotted warm-up minutes playing a 2-hand chord progression in various keys--roots in the LH, chords in the RH--using a Bossa Nova rhythm. You should have seen the judges' heads jerk up in response to hearing this unconventional chord sequence. It was worth the price of admission right there. That the kid then won his level was icing on the cake.) Students often have the same accompaniment pattern for weeks, even months, until it becomes second nature to them. I want these accompaniment patterns to be learned so thoroughly that they never have to think about them again, making our lives much easier when we find them in our sonatinas and early classical ditties. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=195 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=195 Sun, 13 Feb 2011 08:06:36 -0700 Snow, blessed snow, comes out of the sky like bleached flies. The ground is no longer naked. The ground has on its clothes. The trees poke out of sheets and each branch wears the sock of God. There is hope. There is hope everywhere. I bite it. Someone once said: Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone. What I bite is all bread, rising, yeasty as a cloud. There is hope. There is hope everywhere. Today God gives milk and I have the pail. - Anne Sexton http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=194 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=194 Sun, 06 Feb 2011 09:06:55 -0700 A loyal reader (I believe it might be the "Mary from Montana") once told me that my blogs always made her want to run out and buy some more books. If that is the worse charge anyone can throw at me, I'll take it. Anything to help the straggling old fashioned book these days. I have not gone over to the dark side, as we call it around our house, and succumbed to the convenience of a Kindle. There are people that I love and otherwise hold dear that now own such a gadget, but I'm staying firm in my untrendy ways. In today's world, I'm convinced the most powerful vote we have is how we spend our money. For now, I'll continue dropping whole paychecks in my favorite bookshops. If for no other reason, I value too highly the ability to scribble in the margins of my books, dog-ear the pages, and rifle back to remind myself what was said back there on that right-hand side page about half-way down. None of these things can be done with any satisfaction on a screen, no matter how smart it might otherwise be. In spite of the never-ending festive season of the last few months, it has been a great winter for reading. We've seen frigid cold days and nights with temperatures in the single digits. I interpret this as nature's way of saying, "Girlfriend, curl up under a blanket and just read." There are friends who live too far and visit too seldom, and yet when we see each other one of our first questions always is, "What are you reading?" In the spirit of such friendships, I offer the following list of my most recent favorite books...... Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay. I'm not sure why this appeared on my library queue, but I'm thankful nonetheless. Probably I scribbled down the title after browsing in a bookstore and later reserved it at our library. I then promptly forgot all about it until that friendly email reminder came in my inbox: "The book you requested is waiting...." Our neighborhood library is a short 10 minute bicycle ride away, and very well may win the award for the cutest library ever. It was once a house, and a tiny one at that, but today every wall is covered in floor to ceiling bookshelves. (Actually this sounds suspiciously like our house...) When I search the stacks I often find myself tracing the walls all the way into the closets to find the book I'm looking for. The magazines are housed in the bathroom. You return books in the kitchen. Really, in today's world of slick library showcases, this couldn't be more 1950's. Or maybe 1940's. Actually about 1900. Just my speed. I digress. As I was saying..... Russian Winter. This is a wonderful novel about a retired Russian ballerina who has escaped her country and is living in Boston. She has a large collection of jewels which she is auctioning off to benefit the Boston Ballet. The story behind her jewels is the backdrop of the book. Any novel set in Boston tugs at my heartstrings, and a book with connections to the ballet (I am convinced that I was a dancer in a past life), does so doubly. Last summer friends visiting from Jackson, Mississippi suggested The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I immediately forgot about it until another friend recommended it. Again, thanks to the gods of library reservation, this one came my way just in time for my trip to Texas. I have since discovered that I might be the last person on the planet to have read this terrific book about domestic help and their employers set in Jackson in the 1960's, but I was always behind the trend. I hear there will be a movie made of this novel, which makes perfect sense as the characters are all vivid in my imagination. I have no doubt it has the makings of a terrific film, but read the book first. About the time we were drowning in company over the holidays, I was reading Solomon's Oak by Jo-Ann Mapson, which provided the perfect excuse and motivation to shut my bedroom door from time to time and lie down to escape the non-stop conversation and bustle and dive into this sweet story. The human spirit triumphs, which is my friend Lora's requirement for any good book or movie. As we said goodbye to the last of the holiday guests and prepared to burrow in for a few quiet days alone, I began reading The Postmistress by Sarah Blake. Another triumph for the human spirit and for good winter read all at the same time. This one was set during WWII in London and on Cape Cod, which after Boston would be my next favorite places to set a good story. And then just because the weather outside was frightful and the fire was so delightful, I felt my annual urge to read gardening books. This hits me every winter, just when it would be most preposterous to actually think about going outside and digging in the dirt. Or the frozen ground as the case would be. There is just nothing better than reading detailed instructions about how to prune some plant I have never even heard of. My most recent favorite gardening book acquired from a lucky Christmas gift exchange is The Curious Gardener by Anna Pavord, the genius writer and gardener from England (of course) who brought us armchair garden dreamers The Tulip and last year the glorious photo book Bulb. This is a delightful read of short essays structured around the calendar. I'm already half-way through April's essays. My favorite book as of late has to be Lane Smith's It's A Book. During our recent trip to NYC, we were browsing in a delightful children's bookstore on 18th Street and Matt picked up this picture book. The characters are three cartoon animals--a monkey, a donkey, and a mouse. The donkey asks the monkey what he is holding, and the monkey responds, "It's a book." The donkey asks a serious of irritating questions, "Can it text? Blog? Scroll? Wi-F? Tweet?" To each the monkey patiently answers, "No. It's a book." The questions continue, becoming more and more ridiculous until on the final page the mouse whispers to the donkey, "It's a book, jackass." Which is why this book won't be put on the shelves that house the books for students to read. It takes no imagination whatsoever to imagine how "It's a book, jackass," might become the new motto of the ten thousand stars studio right after those lofty thoughts about birds and singing and learning not to dance. It's a book, jackass. Happy reading, Mary. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=193 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=193 Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:01:29 -0700 There is nothing like a long, long holiday to clean out your ears and open your eyes. (...now the ears of my ears awake, now the eyes of my eyes are opened...goes a favorite e.e.cummings poem.) Due to the gods of scheduling, this winter holiday was my longest teaching break ever. Even when the three and a half weeks still stretched deliciously before me, I knew it would go by in a flash. And it did. But even so, it was long enough for me to feel refreshed and ready to return to my daily slate of students. Although I thought little about teaching over the holiday, still my mind must have been working sub-consciously. Because in returning I found myself listening closer, thinking more creatively, and generally teaching better. My kids were equally refreshed, well-practiced and prepared after nearly a month off, ("You do realize, don't you," my husband asks me, "that your students are kinda nerdy. Who practices over winter break?" My students do, thank you very much. This is is why we get along so well, and why my husband isn't a pianist. His practice habits always did leave a lot to be desired.) The kids were eager to show me what they had learned and beyond ready to put away those Christmas tunes and arrangements, holiday scales and sight-reading until next year. They will be just as excited to see these things appear next November, but limiting our Christmas merrymaking to a few weeks does add to the anticipation. Which only serves to remind me why it isn't a good idea to leave one's Christmas tree up until Valentine's Day, no matter how lovely it might be. Clearly, the break was good for us all. But there is something about a new year that makes me recommitted to reinforcing the basics, the foundations of good music-making and technique. After a little time off, I can return to nagging about posture and hand posture instead of wearily looking the other way. I am happy to dial things back to the basic level of melody and accompaniment, and of rhythm, movement and musical gesture, instead of getting so caught up in seeing the forest that I overlook the individual trees. This reorganization of priorities is a welcomed shift for it reminds me not to bypass the simple foundational things in my quest for the grand lofty idea. Take yesterday, for example. I was teaching an adult student, Susan, who is a mid-to-upper intermediate player. After many different teachers and inconsistent lessons for many decades, there are lots of technical holes to fill in Susan's skill set. Yesterday we were talking about scales, something she had done in the past and knew how to play on an intuitive level, but had very little grasp of on an intellectual level. As is my habit at the moment, I started at the beginning: scaling things back, working slowly, and teaching pre-scale exercises. For once, I resisted the temptation to let her jump in and race through multiple octave scales, something she otherwise might happily have done. Instead of playing actual "real live" scales (as my little kids call them), we did thumb-crossing exercises. I learned these from Jane Allen, who was well respected for her ability to teach fast fluid technique. Her students had chops, or so the story went. I got my undergraduate degree with Ms. Allen, suffering through every scale exercise known to humanity under her stern and unforgiving gaze. Although by the time I began studying with her I had been playing scales effortlessly for years, in our first lesson together she started me on the old thumb-crossing exercises. They work like this: Working hands separately (always a good idea when isolating a technical skill), place your thumb on D. Crossing over your thumb using fingers 1 and 2, play D-E-D-C (1-2-1-2) repeating the pattern four times. Then substituting finger 3 for the second finger, repeat the pattern on the same notes 1-3-1-3, then substitute finger 4 and play 1-4-1-4, and then finger 5: 1-5-1-5, staying on the same pattern of D-E-D-C throughout the exercise. Repeat using other hand. As a variation, do entire exercise using same finger sets with thumb on D, but using C-sharp and E-flat instead of C and E. White/black note-crossings crop up all the time in music, so this combination should be addressed too, but this is actually easier in some respects, because the finger crossing over the thumb doesn't have as far to go. With beginning students who have lived in the stable 5-finger position world their entire piano careers, this thumb crossing exercise can be tricky to negotiate at first, especially when using fingers 4 and 5. (Admittedly, finger 5 is just wacky, as crossing 5 over the thumb is never necessary in scales, but I teach it anyway. It doesn't hurt anyone to fumble through this, and it certainly reinforces the general concept of the exercise to do it with every finger.) Although Susan is an experienced player, yesterday I discovered that this exercise was as challenging for her as it might be for less advanced pianists. Turns out she doesn't have such fluid thumb crossing technique even after years of playing scales. Which only goes to prove that Jane Allen knew what she was doing after all, teaching this exercise to every student regardless of their previous scale experience. That Ms. Allen was a smart cookie. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=192 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=192 Sun, 23 Jan 2011 07:41:06 -0700 The first week of January we traveled to New York City. My sister Beth had a baby boy in November and, this being the first grandchild on my side of the family, there was, to quote my husband, "great rejoicing throughout the land." So like the wise men, we packed our bags, wrapped our gifts and made our way to Brooklyn to pay homage to the newborn baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a vibrating chair. Little Asher is perfect, beautiful, brilliant. The smartest baby ever to be born. "We will spend an hour adoring the baby and the rest of the week playing in NYC," Matt told friends before we left. He wasn't far off. We saw the baby, both my sisters and their husbands, as well as my mother visiting from St Louis. We had brunch with sister Sarah and Momma in Chelsea, and another morning brought bagels and coffee to sister Beth and her husband Matt (we call him "Junior," much to his dismay) in Brooklyn. We went to the Guggenheim with our friend Shane, and wandered for hours window shopping on the upper east side. We sat for an hour in a Madison Avenue espresso cafe and drank cappuccinos. We saw La Cage aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer, who sang flat, but was nevertheless likable and charming. I had dinner with sister Sarah and her husband Laurent in Greenwich Village, while Matt went to see Carmen at the Met. Matt's sister Mary came up from DC and the two of them attended Pee Wee Herman's HBO taping. Shane and I saw A Little Night Music with Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch and while waiting in line at the Times Square ticket booth I met a woman who was a pianist at the Carlyle Hotel. Chatting, we discovered we had friends in common in Boston. The world grows smaller all the time. We went to see The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a highlight of the week. It seemed both completely natural and surreal to be in the same room as Stewart, who is the world's funniest, smartest man. He is more sincere and kind in person than he allows himself to be on the show. My sister Beth has a friend who considers Stewart to be basically a member of his family, albeit one he has never actually met. We think the same. The week we were there, New York was still digging out from the blizzard. The garbage hadn't been picked up in a week, and piles of trash bags, Christmas trees and wreaths were heaped up like mountains on every sidewalk. I was struck, not for the first time, about how many opportunities there are in NYC to indulge in the habit of conspicuous consumption. Everywhere one looks cheap knock-offs are being sold on the street corners. Trinkets made in China fill the stores, and evidence of the ridiculous packaging involved in the Christmas holiday litter the street. And yet, there is so little room in most New York apartments. During our own stint of living in a 350 square foot apartment in Boston, I remember feeling liberated from ever buying another thing, simply because there was no room in the inn. If something came into our apartment, something had to leave. Who buys all this stuff in New York City? Tourists? Or have we become such a throw-away culture that we are forever replacing the slightly worn with the brand new? Looking at the garbage piled precariously on the sidewalk, I wondered. It is easy to recognize the outrageous when one is an outsider. Walking in Chelsea, I pass a guy pushing a baby stroller carrying, not a child, but two bulldogs. It is all I can do to refrain from stopping him and asking to take a picture. During our first meal in a casual crowded lunch spot, the man next to us pulls out fabric swatches. Swatches! This is too fabulous. No one pulls out swatches over lunch in New Mexico. And this occurs in our first two hours in Manhattan. If I want to collect as many absurd moments as possible, this was a good omen for the week to come. Showing fabric to his client he says, "If we choose this one, it will bring the cost down to about $12,000 from $16,000...." (What are they covering? An entire room?) One afternoon, Matt is on the subway when a street musician steps on his train. To the accompaniment of guitar and harmonica, he begins singing "Blowin' in the Wind" in an accent so heavy as to make the words unintelligible. After a few minutes, Matt realizes that the man never gets past the questions, repeating the verses over and over again (How many roads must a man walk down . . . how many seas must a white dove sail . . . how many times must the cannonball fly . . .). But he never reaches the chorus. This goes on for several stops, and then the man gets off the train, leaving the questions blowing in the wind. Garbage issues and unanswered questions notwithstanding, I am there for all of 5 minutes before I feel that recognizable lift of spirits that only a big stimulating city can bring. I forget, until I am back wandering the streets of a metropolis like New York, how much freedom there is in being anonymous. I love the possibility that I can walk for hours and everything will be new, that I can stumble upon unfamiliar coffeehouses to sit in, and bookshops to browse in. There is a rush in knowing that as I nurse my cup of tea and write, I know no one and no one knows me, that the day is rich with possibilities, and that my creative well that so often becomes overdrawn and dry in my desert life, will be filled to overflowing after only a few hours. Once again, Matt and I vowed to get to a city at least once a year for the burst of inspiration such visits bring. I will need to draw on this artistic stimulation for months to come. As much as I love my quieter life back home, I still miss my city self. It is so easy to step right into this bustle as if I haven't spent the last 7 years cultivating a garden and a home in the desert. After all, my entire wardrobe is black, which makes it easy to disappear in the sea of New Yorkers. It's nice to dig out my urban persona, dust it off and wear it now and again. One evening we hail a taxi on the Upper East Side and decide to head toward mid-town to find dinner. Not sure exactly where we wanted to go Matt tells the cab driver to take us to Carnegie Hall. "Carnegie Hall? Where is that" Matt and I give each other a long look. This is unbelievable. This guy just asked us how to get to Carnegie Hall, almost but not quite, feeding us the age-old joke on a platter. But he is not joking. "The address?" he asks insistently. "Do you have an address?" "57th and 7th," Matt answers. Things are different in New York these days. The cab drivers are asking the tourists how to get to Carnegie Hall Returning home, I have to be intentional not to get sucked back into my frantic, fast-paced existence. Even on the plane, I am aware of a tightening in my chest when thinking about the upcoming weeks and months, and walking into the house it is hard not to immediately start multi-tasking. There is a pile of mail on the counter, bags to unpack, a week's worth of e-mails to attend to, phone calls to return. It takes conscious effort to slow down and stop, to pet the cats and to putter a bit aimlessly instead of switching into my hyper-efficient mode. We order dinner from the Thai restaurant down the street. I feed the cats, sift through the mail, unzip the suitcase. Walking down to fetch our take-out food, I try to not hurry. The night is cold, the sky littered with hundreds of stars. Rising over our house is a crescent moon. Tilted at an angle, it looks like rain, according to old farmer's lore. Back at the house, we eat dinner. I take a steaming hot bath in the dark. Friends stop by for a glass of wine and to hear about our trip. Tomorrow awaits with a to-do list as long as my arm. I have one single day to regroup before the semester and all its looming obligations settle on my shoulders. I didn't make resolutions this year, preferring the more gentler word "intentions." I know it is only a difference of semantics, but intentions are something I can more readily embrace. My life is already too crowded. My intention is to embrace slow living in all its forms, which closely mirrors my friend Anne's resolution to "not hurry." Obviously, I am not the only one out there with this resistance to the pace of our lives on her mind. Slowly, I pick up the pieces of my life. I practice, practice, practice, my own version of getting to Carnegie Hall. I put away stacks of books read over the holidays into already overstuffed bookshelves. I find my breath in a yoga class and poach a chicken. At night I dream of swatches and baby strollers filled with baby nephews and tiny bulldog puppies. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=191 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=191 Sun, 16 Jan 2011 08:06:49 -0700 We worry rather than ruminate. We fret rather than speculate. Even football teams take time-outs, but it is so hard for us, as artists, to do the same. So often we feel there is so much we yearn to do and so little time to do it in. We could take a cue from music here: "Rest" is a musical term for a pause between flurries of notes. Without that tiny pause, the torrent of notes can be overwhelming. Without a rest in our lives, the torrent of our lives can be the same. Even God rested. Even waves rest. Even business titans close their office doors and play with the secret toys on their desks. Our language of creativity knows this. We talk about "the play of ideas," but we still overwork and underplay and wonder why we feel so drained.... As artists living with the drone of commerce, we have forgotten that "Rest" is a musical term, and that to hear the music of our lives as something other than a propulsive drumbeat, driving us forward as the war drums drove men into bloody battle, we may need to rest. The ego hates to rest. The ego doesn't want to let God, or sleep, mend up the raveled sleeve of care. The ego would like to handle all that itself, thank you. As artists, we must serve our souls, not our egos. Our souls need rest... -from Walking in This World (p. 28-29) by Julia Cameron http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=190 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=190 Sun, 09 Jan 2011 08:06:12 -0700 The festive season at the Greers' is officially over. I write that with no small sense of relief. This morning I took my dad to the airport at 4:30. When I returned, instead of crawling back into bed, I made coffee, took a shower, did some yoga and read for a couple hours. As I sit here, it is not yet 8am. I feel like I have been given the gift of time, a whole day open in front of me. Except to persuade the cats to move over on the couch, I may not say a word all day. It's been an amazing, magical, but exhausting few weeks. On the heels of finishing up a semester's worth of lessons, statistics projects and papers, I spent a weekend in the Dallas area visiting friends. I have decided that this must become an annual tradition, this ritual of going to Texas in December. This is the state where--bless their hearts-- the motto may very well be: more is more. Texans have never seen a surface that didn't merit a bright red bow or a ledge that didn't deserve a string of lights. In one subdivision I stumbled upon a house that even in broad daylight I knew would satisfy my every over-the-top Christmas fantasy. After dark, I walked back to the house just so I could take it all in without being rushed. There was not one, but TWO Santa and reindeer displays lit up on the rooftop and dozens of snowmen, manger scenes, herds of reindeer, carolers and any other Christmas character imaginable outlined in colored lights on the lawn. Completing the scene was a sparkling Jesus is Lord! written in flashing lights. My favorite touch, the piece de resistance: a life size Statue of Liberty. And, at its feet, were real carousel horses circling around. Taking in this Vegas-like decor, I laughed out loud and, not for the first time that weekend, wished that I had my camera with me to document the whole thing. No one back home would ever believe me. I landed back in Albuquerque just hours before the arrival of a string of guests: friends, my dad, my sister-in-law, three french hens, two turtle doves, and the partridge in the pear tree. This was hardly an introvert's paradise. And so the fun began. For days, I did little besides cook and clean and load the dishwasher. We set out luminaries on Christmas Eve and drank wine at 1:30 in the morning after the last service. We made two trips to Santa Fe: ducked into the Cathedral on the plaza, wandered up Canyon Road with our imaginary budget of 20 thousand dollars, ate enchiladas and poblanos under outdoor space heaters. We had friends over for Matt's birthday, and hosted a Christmas Eve dinner party at noon. I made daily trips to the grocery store and washed a hundred wine glasses. "You two like to entertain like no one I've ever seen," said one visiting friend. It's not quite true. We love filling our home with friends and family, but relish our privacy and solitude just as much. Last night, sitting around our table with our best friends and my dad, Matt turns to me, "What do you want to do tomorrow night? Want to have some people over?" He is joking, teasing me and my Martha Stewart-like behavior of the past days. "No," I said firmly looking around at the people I hold dear. "I love you all, but I'm way done. No more." As wonderful as the last few weeks have been, I close the door on the festive season quite happily. I'm beyond ready to settle in on the couch with my cats and my pile of books. I have music to practice and sentences scrolling in my head demanding to be put down on paper. There are closets that need my attention and at least a million leaves to rake. I plan on taking extra yoga classes and swimming meditative laps at the pool. The pendulum has swung. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=189 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=189 Sun, 02 Jan 2011 08:27:27 -0700 Art is for me the great integrater, and I understand Christianity as I understand art. I understand Christmas as I understand Bach's Sleepers Awake or Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring; as I understand Braque's clowns, Blake's poetry. And I understand it when I am able to pray with the mind in the heart, as Theophan the Recluse advised. When we pray with the mind in the heart, sunside and nightside are integrated, we begin to heal, and we come close to the kind of understanding which can accept an unacceptable Christianity. When I am able to pray with the mind in the heart, I am joyfully able to affirm the irrationality of Christmas. -Madeleine L'Engle The Irrational Season http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=188 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=188 Sun, 19 Dec 2010 14:10:06 -0700 Last month, I went to concert given by a former student. I have to confess I had to bribe myself to get there. I had been doing back-to-back recitals and was in a string of late nights. I had been fighting a bad cold for weeks and was only starting to feel better. There were plenty of good reasons for me to stay home and skip this one. And honestly, I wanted to do just that. I get way too cynical at times, and want to only bother with going to performances that I will get something out of, but this doesn't represent the best side of me. I also get tired of music after long days of making and teaching it, and sometimes can't stand the thought of having my ears subject to more sound. But lately, I have realized that the reason I need to be there probably has nothing to do with the level or the merit of the performance, and everything to do with the idea of supporting another person who is out there making music. After all, over the years, many, many people have supported me and countless others who now make their living performing. We all weren't always so good at what we do. Many people supported us and sat through numerous bad recitals so we could be where we are. We owe it to the future of music, to the future of live performance, to do the same for other musicians. If we, as musicians, aren't attending performances, how can we criticize the non-musicians of the world for not attending our events? We bemoan the lack of audiences at classical recitals, but we are not, in large numbers, supporting our own art form. Even now, after a thousand recitals under my belt and countless ones ahead of me, it still means a great deal to have people I care about and respect come out and hear me play. I know that they must have better things to do, or that they may have heard me play a million times, or even that they probably own recordings of this music played better, but still their very presence in the audience means something. It means something every time. I never outgrow the boost I get when the people I know and love and work with come out to hear me perform. My husband is far better at attending concerts than I am, modeling an example we should all aspire to follow. During one two-week period last Christmas he attended some eight performance by friends, colleagues, and students--a true grand slam of support. In comparison, too often, I am looking for any excuse to stay home. But on this particular evening last month, I knew it would be especially important to my student that I was there. As someone who once taught her piano lessons, my attendance at her recital was important sign of support. Besides, Diane deserves a celebration. She deserves support and a crowd; in the same way my best friend would expect me to be at her wedding, or at the funeral when her mother dies. We all need to hold each other's hands more in this troubled world. Last December I went to a Nutcracker performance. Now I like the Nutcracker just dandy, and enjoyed every minute of the sugar plum fairy and the Arabian dancers and the little girls wearing velveteen dresses sitting in the audience. But attending a Nutcracker performance is not necessary to make my Christmas. I went because I had a student who was dancing in the chorus and whose mother is the ballet mistress of the company. I knew that while I could easily forgo the Nutcracker that year, my presence that afternoon meant something to the student, and probably to his mother as well. In the future, it might make this kid think more about practicing the piano even in those extremely busy times, or give the family more incentive to make music lessons a higher priority. Or maybe not. In the end, it was enough that my attendance stood as evidence that I support this student performing in another, equally worthwhile art form. Because I do. And maybe by being there, I could demonstrate that I don't think piano is the only important thing in my students' lives. What I too often forget is that I, as the piano teacher, become an important part of people's lives. Sadly, I am often the only adult figure outside of family members who spends much time with a student in a one-on-one situation. I have a unique position of staying in people's lives year after year, even sometimes after one of us has moved away or after a child has stopped piano lessons. Just this afternoon I was addressing a card to my high school piano teacher. As I did so, one of my favorite high school students came in the door for her lesson. "Look Kristy," I said to her, "one day you will be writing cards to me and telling me about your adult life." I was teasing her a little bit, but it's true, as evidenced by the variety of communications I still receive from former students, that I might still have a place in their lives, long after weekly lessons have ended. Although I try to wear this idea lightly, I am reminded of this fact when I am asked to attend a performance of some kind by one of my students: it might be important to them that I am there. Sometimes it is equally important for my life that I get out of my little protected world and witness live music. I always leave with something-some new idea about how to conquer the performing monster, some moment of sheer beauty or joy within the music, some new understanding of the performer or the music. I never regret having gone. And in a world that is overrun by our easy ability to download perfect renditions of any piece of music, it feels almost counter-cultural to go listen to live music. My husband reminds me that while his house has live music in it every day, not every home is so blessed. (Admittedly, I think he is somewhat sarcastic when he mentions this, thinking of the hours of practicing and lessons he endures listening to.) But in a world gone techno, it is almost rebellious to spend my time going to concerts when I could just as easily plug in my iPod. I know that I won't ever get to enough recitals, I'll miss plenty I should have made, and I am sure many a cynical night will have me staying home listening to Over the Rhine instead. But the upcoming weeks give me plenty of opportunities to make up for my less than admirable attitudes. Santa, don't cross me off your list just yet. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=187 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=187 Sun, 12 Dec 2010 07:17:37 -0700 Although I might be getting ahead of myself here, let's talk about scales. Because tis' the season for holiday-themed scales, or so my kids think. If I forget, they will remind me. Actually, with the fall recital over and done with, there's a lot of "Jingle Bells" being played around here. My students know my rule---no Christmas music until after Halloween. Once the pumpkins are thrown in the compost pile for the season, all the Christmas sight-reading books are brought out of the basement and the fun begins. Kids squeal with excitement---if you can only imagine---at the idea of getting a Christmas sight-reading book. Suddenly this task takes on a whole new light. And with recital music behind us, kids are welcome to bring Christmas music to their lessons. Sprinkling a bit of holiday sparkle in between their sonatinas keeps them practicing merrily this month. Win-win, I always say. I love these well-established patterns of our lives, and this season brings many such rituals. The weekend after our annual St Cecelia party, I wash 100 wine glasses, put the house back together and get out the strands of cranberries, crochets angels, and stockings to decorate the fireplace. Christmas CDs and books fill the shelves, the dried berry wreath is hung on the door. "I'm taking the simple route," I told my friend Lora. "Too late," she said dryly, surveying the house. The manger is assembled on the floor in front of our fireplace. "Are you going to move all those things so Santa can get down the chimney?" one student solemnly asked looking at the fireplace full of candles and the piles of books and pottery that are stacked precariously in Santa's way. Many years the manger is the scene of mysterious, unexplained events. One year Mary disappeared completely, leaving us no choice but to give Jesus two daddies, which is a modern twist on the story indeed. Another year, I found the animals taking center stage, and day after day I would discover sheep and cows perched in the manger on top of baby Jesus. This week I went to light the candles in the fireplace only to find a mouse plopped down in the middle of the manger. Thankfully, this wasn't a real mouse, but one of the cats' toys. Clearly, some feline in this house is taking seriously the charge to Come Let Us Adore Him. Or maybe they are onto something. I suspect there just might have been a mouse or two in that long ago manger. But I was talking about scales, and holiday ones at that. What two Christmas carols contain intact scales? is my annual question. The older kids know this answer cold by now---Joy to the World and The First Noel. This is all an excuse to play the scale-passages in the carols as our scale practices this month. I like what this does to their brains as they have to think through descending scales for the first carol, and how to set up their fingering correctly to start and end the first line of The First Noel. (mi-re-do...re-mi-fa-sol...la-ti-do-ti-la-sol). It makes them stop and think to begin scales on "mi", and end them, not on the customary "do", but rather on "sol." If the fingering doesn't match the assigned scale, it doesn't count. The older kids even do the carols using harmonic and melodic scales, something just counter-cultural enough to thrill them. "You know, Amy," said one kid, "The major one is the Christian one. The harmonic one is the Egyptian one. And the melodic one is just weird. But I like it." Counter-cultural though it might be, we're playing a lot of scales, doing a lot of sight-reading, and mostly calling it good. After all, I'm keeping it simple this month. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=186 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=186 Sun, 05 Dec 2010 08:30:37 -0700 I have a pumpkin growing in my flower bed. At least I think it is a pumpkin. Could be a watermelon. Or a squash. A really big one. This startles me more than it does you, I'm sure. Maybe for most of the likes of you, growing pumpkins in your flower bed is an ordinary occurrence, nothing to take special note of or worth mentioning. But for me, this belongs right up there with the Ripley Believe It or Not! entry about the fat lady. I shouldn't be so surprised at the emergence of a pumpkin-like thing in the midst of my irises and lavender. After all, for several years now, when it's time to get rid of the pumpkins and decorative squash (I do love my harvest mantle) I have simply thrown whole pumpkins into the compost pile. I don't even pretend to chop them up. I just toss them in and forget about them. From the beginning, Matt has been reprimanding me about this behavior, declaring that those pumpkins would not decompose or whatever it is that we want them to do. But I have great faith in the 500 worms crawling around in the compost, and besides this time of year can't be bothered with chores like chopping up pumpkins. There are better ways to spend my time. Like baking pies. Actually, the idea of baking pies is a pipe dream, right up there with managing compost piles (as opposed to just throwing things in there and crossing my fingers). Who has time for pies? Once again, the refrain of a busy life is the tune we are singing these days. I have come to realize that this is simply the soundtrack of our lives and hardly deserves a headline. It isn't even, I have recently decided, a bad thing. It just is. We are busy people. We are also generally happy people. These two things can, in fact, co-exist merrily. By all rights, we should have eased into this fall. What with that broken leg and all. ("I am a tough cookie," I said to my husband this summer after we learned I had been walking on a broken leg for 7 weeks. He looked at me amused, "Yeah, and for all these years I have thought you were basically a cupcake.") But it turns out I can limp at a record pace. There were concerts to give, a "world tour" to attend to, lessons to teach, rehearsals to play. I gave a workshop at the New Mexico state convention on teaching and thinking holistically. I swam my laps at the pool, and hobbled to yoga classes. I folded cranes. In the moments in between, I moonlighted as a graduate student. This semester I have been taking Motivational Theories and Intro to Statistics. Want to guess which one is motivating? Thanks to motivational theories, I have a hundred and one ways to talk intellectually about concepts I only intuitively understood before. On the other hand, I am a hundred and one standard deviation points away from buying into statistics. Apparently, as I look around at my classmates, I am the only one in the class who understands that these numbers are All Made Up. I will jump the hoops required to pass this class, performing the mathematical operations necessary to manipulate the numbers into strange and unusual shapes, but I haven't forgotten that these numbers represent an experimental world that doesn't actually exist. That this experiments and these statistics might be somewhat helpful in understanding the world, I'll accept. BUT I take it all with a big grain of salt. As far as I can see, we are lightyears away from reality. Nothing about these numbers has any bearing on Lucy and Linus when I am back in my studio trying to focus unruly 8 year-olds. In October a college friend died of pancreatic cancer. Three weeks before she died, Debbie and her husband Dave traveled to New Mexico to visit. We were having dinner at our house, and I shared my frustrations with trying to juggle finishing a degree I am not completely sold on, with the day-to-day challenges of my musical life and career. "Well," Debbie said with the wisdom of someone who had been forced to wrestle with her own issues many, many times since being diagnosed with cancer, "you have to decide, is there any other way you'd rather be spending this time?" I think of that, and her, a lot these days. The answer isn't simple. For all the days I think, yes, I can just shut up and jump these hoops and stop trying to wring meaning out of every step of this degree, there are at least as many days I think that there are 500 other things I'd rather be doing. I want to throw pots. I want to dive deeper into my yoga practice. I want to go on a silent retreat. I want time to hike in the Sandias. I want more time to write and practice, instead of trying to force these practices into the margins of my days. Richard Rohr writes that that wondering is standing inside the question itself. I am doing a lot of wondering these days. In the meantime, my sister Beth in New York is having a baby. Beginnings and Endings. Life goes on. This is the first grandchild on my side of the family, which means every one's focus is pointed east. Around here, the "festive season at the Greers'" has begun, as our friend Jerome calls it. In the weeks ahead, we have a startling number of parties to host, beginning with the annual St Cecelia night. The day after, I will wash a hundred wine glasses and throw out the pumpkins, changing over the house in time for the next round of Christmas parties. Which, of course, brings us full circle back to the mysterious pumpkin. I have no question how it ended up in my flower bed, for in spite of Matt's dire warnings, every year even the biggest pumpkins I toss in disappear completely. The worms are doing an admirable job. Apparently, the compost that then ended up in the flower bed had a pumpkin seed ready to take root, and so here we are. "Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' poet Mary Oliver wrote. In painful, specific ways, we have been forced to look life and death in the face this fall, reconciling our own beginnings and endings. As the festive season begins, we raise our glass once again to the saint of music, celebrating life. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=185 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=185 Sun, 28 Nov 2010 07:45:38 -0700 After a black day, I play Haydn, and feel a little warmth in my hands. The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall. The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence. The sound says that freedom exists and someone pays no tax to Caesar. I shove my hands in my haydnpockets and act like a man who is calm about it all. I raise my haydnflag. The signal is: "We do not surrender. But want peace." The music is a house of glass standing on a slope; rocks are flying, rocks are rolling. The rocks roll straight through the house but every pane of glass is still whole. -Tomas Transtromer http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=184 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=184 Sun, 21 Nov 2010 08:14:45 -0700 I get migraines. Frequently. I am reluctant to admit this, because I am fearful this will jinx any progress I have made on the migraine front. You see, I have been getting migraines since I was 10 years old. Doing the math, that means I have been getting migraines with some regularity for almost 30 years. During one particularly bad 10 year period in my adult life, I could honestly claim to have a migraine about 75% of the time. Now I have migraines about 25% of the time, which, as you can see, is improvement. You don't even have to be in statistics to recognize this analysis. This is why I am hesitant to come out and even give voice to the migraine problem. My favorite way of dealing with migraines is to ignore them. I have been doing this with some degree of success for decades now. But if I am honest, I have to acknowledge their existence, and how, in little, subtle, underhanded ways, they handicap my life. Migraines, for me, always come in clusters. I never have an isolated migraine, here today gone tomorrow. Instead it is always, here today gone maybe in 2 weeks. Many clusters I can more or less work through successfully. I take my drugs, I watch my diet like a hawk, I suffer through. And then there are the five alarm headaches. I had one of those this last week. I had gotten to what I hoped was the end of a stretch of migraines. I was so optimistic about this, in fact, that I had a small glass of wine with dinner, something I would never do in the midst of a cluster. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was just the luck of the game, but I woke up in the night with that old familiar pressure in my head. I thought perhaps that I should take something, but decided to risk it and see if I could sleep it off. At 5:45am when Matt came in to wake me up, I begged for more sleep. "Give me till 6:30," I bargained, thinking that I could still squeeze in my laps at the pool even with this compromised morning schedule. At 6:30 I didn't even negotiate. After all, I was in the middle of a dream. Monkeys had appeared in our backyard and were wreaking havoc. Then lion cubs sprang out of nowhere. I had to see where this dream was going. My cat was curled up next to my head. There was no real conscious thought about the headache pain, just that sleep was my only viable option. At 8am, I finally crawled out of bed. There would be no swimming. I could barely stumble to the shower. The day became one of my "Bare Minimum" days. Sometimes I wonder if these days aren't thrust upon me as a way of slowing me down, forcing me to relinquish my rigid schedule and my ambitious to-do lists. They certainly force me to be creative and resourceful. I teach, usually, and last week also went to class--these being my "bare minimum" tasks for the day. But I don't practice, and make the couch the center of my universe. Last week I read two research articles and a fashion magazine. I ate toast and boiled eggs. I did the dishes and made the bed. If I don't do at least my bare minimum I can quickly spiral downward into an attack of despondency. A few activities to order my day is the compromise, my own bargain with the migraine devil. I suppose that it is the attitude of compromise, of saying, "OK. So what can I do today?" that, in the end, makes the migraine problem bearable. If I feel like I don't have to lose an entire day to the battle, I can feel some level of control, some feeling of triumph. This fall I am taking a class on motivational theories, which, as I anyone might imagine, is right up my alley. I have a 101 ways to think about motivation; my entire life is some sort of motivational game, which is why, I suspect, I understand so well the brain of my 8-year-old students. Just this week, one child and I struck up a new compromise on the practicing front. She is (like all my students) expected to do 5 days of practicing a week, but on tough days, on busy days, on low motivation days, on migraine days, she is allowed to have a "short-cut day". This is her own version of my "bare minimum" days, although I like the jaunty name "short-cut day" better. This is a day where she chooses what might be most important to practice, and does only these things. Her only requirement is that she has to indicate on her practice chart if she opted for a "short-cut day" at any point in the week. Too much of life is presented to us as if it is black or white, when my experience falls squarely in the grey. Truth is "short-cut days" are a reasonable approach to reality and our busy modern lives, and give us options that are not all or nothing. And what I know from my motivational readings, is that the first battle is just getting to the dreaded task at hand. Often times once we are there---in the pool swimming laps, sitting down at the piano bench----we find our rhythm and our resistance melts away. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=183 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=183 Sun, 14 Nov 2010 08:09:41 -0700 In the last few years, I have had three kids break their left wrists.  This may say something about the clumsiness of my studio, or perhaps about how physically adventurous my students are.  In any case, it does put a damper on piano playing.   Luckily, in all three cases, this was not their dominant arm, and so most of their lives were minimally affected, but piano playing was another story.   When something like this happens, the parent calls me in a panic, assuming that I will ban them from lessons, at least until the cast is off.   When I assure them there is still plenty to do, even with one arm, parents are relieved (I'm not sure about the kid).   Indeed, teaching a student with a broken arm just yesterday, I was struck by how easy it was to fill 45 minutes.   In fact, when his mother came to fetch him, Joshua begged to be allowed to stay and finish the improvisation exercise we were working on.   Surely I am not the only teacher that occasionally faces lessons with students with broken arms.  Short of despairing and throwing up our hands (and what good would that do anyway?), what are the options? Although some would say my approach to theory in music lessons is pitiful at best, this is a great time to do all kinds of thorough theory checks----reviewing key signatures, spelling five-finger positions, scales and chords, and so on---in as many creative and fun ways as possible.  Last summer, a friend gave me a set of blocks by Lucy Chu that let students physically spell scales and chords with magnetic wooden blocks.   Each of the seven cubes is labeled with a specific note, which is written in three ways on different sides of the block.  For example:  A, Ab, A# or B, Bb, B#.   A few---C and F come to mind---even have a side for double sharps, which fascinates the little ones beyond belief.   (There's a way to fill lesson time right there, let the kid "discover" the C-double sharp, and watch the questions come flying your way.  "WHAT is this?"  "Why do you need this?"  Why can't that just be a D?"  In all honesty, I have often entertained the same question about that last point.) Whereas once kids might have been less than enthusiastic about spelling scales or chords, now my students beg--beg--to do the blocks.  In fact, they bargain with me:  "Miss Amy, if I play all my pieces REALLY GOOD do you think we will have time to do the blocks?" Another favorite tool in my studio is the magnetic staff board.   I like in particular the one that Music in Motion sells, because the grand staff on the board is large enough to really distinguish clearly between putting magnets on the spaces and on the lines.   I use the magnetic board a lot in the beginning stages of note-reading, but frequently forget how helpful it is even with fluent note-readers.   A great game is to play a note on the piano and ask the students to put a magnet on the correct line or space on the board.  I am always amazed how this is somewhat disconcerting for students, for somehow having to decide precisely where that particular "A" or "C" is on the grand staff makes them stop and think.  We can't do this enough, I think, every time I'm faced with a transfer student who doesn't have a clue that notes indicate specific keys in specific octaves on the piano.  Even my own beginners can get sloppy with this without regular check-in.   Spelling intervals: spell a 5th up from D, spell a 2nd down from G, etc---is a also good use of the magnetic board, but recently I found another related activity that is proving to be educational in lots of ways.  I ask students to spell chords on the magnetic board:  spell a I chord in F, or spell a A-flat chord, or spell a V7 in B, and so on.  This has been great, because just like those written theory exercises that I generally dislike assigning, student start to see what a IV chord in 2nd inversion or a V chord in 1st inversion looks like as opposed to just how the chords feel under the hand.  These are chords they run into all the time, but admittedly sometimes they are slow to recognize by sight that this group of notes is something they know intimately after months and months of playing chord progression exercises.  This is clearly an example where my students ability to read and recognize chords drags behind their playing---something written work would rectify I admit, although I---and the kids---prefer the more tactile magnetic board to work on this.    Obviously, all technique work---five finger positions, scales, chords, arpeggios can be done with one hand.  Often, I hastily jump in with both feet (or both hands as the case may be) in my own playing and forget how important and educational this step can be.  There is nothing bad about a month of one-handed technique work. Sight-reading (or sight-playing as I am trying to train myself to say) is a great one-handed activity.  Even good sight-readers are more successfully reading and playing only one clef at a time.  A great exercise for a broken arm is to play both the left and right hand parts with whatever functioning arm we have at the moment. When playing the left-hand part with the right hand, we often find it doesn't fit that comfortably, which is fine as long as we realize the written fingering is not going to work and we accept a certain amount of good humored hopping around to negotiate the notes. And finally, there are millions of improvisation exercises that can be done with one hand.  So many, in fact, I am not about to list them all here, but let me tell you about the one Joshua and I were doing yesterday when his mother came to fetch him.   Stashed among my studio toys, I have a collection of postcards from art museums and trips and other random sources.  On the back of each postcard I have written a question or exercise of some kind:  spell a 5-Finger position in x major; What is the name of the far left pedal?  How many keys--black and white--are on the piano?  What famous pedagogical composer lives in Albuquerque?  (Actually, what the card says is, "Who is the composer who recently moved to Albuquerque?"  which worked great 3 years ago, but as one kid said last week, "Dennis Alexander has been living here a LONG TIME.")  We spread out these postcards on the floor with only the picture side showing, the student chooses one and then has to answer the question.  I use this game a lot in group lessons, making teams and keeping points.  The kids love it.   Many of the questions are theory or history based and a good way to drill those things, however, on about 20 cards I have sketched some shapes:  three triangles of different sizes, or a spiral and a circle, or stair-steps leading upwards, and so on. When a student draws a card like this his assignment is to improvise something on the piano in response to the shapes on the card.  It was this activity that Joshua and I were in the middle of when his mother walked in.  These improvisatory cards are wonderfully freeing because they are so wacky; there is no obvious answer.   I first got this idea sitting in Jean Stackhouse's pedagogy class at New England Conservatory, and have used it as an ice breaker when guest teaching groups, in my own performance classes, when trying to introduce improvisation to a new student, and with student composers in my own studio.  It never fails to win over even the most reluctant student.  Even good improvisation students "see" music differently after trying to depict shapes on the piano.     One-handed lessons remind me that it is always helpful in life to turn things upside, shake up our expectations and assumptions, and try out our patterns and familiar habits in an unexpected way.  After all this one-handed fun, just try to tell me that my students don't try to break their arm on purpose.    http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=182 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=182 Sun, 07 Nov 2010 06:39:30 -0700 Today on this day of magic and mystery, a story from the studio...... Yesterday, I had to call the home of my student's to talk to his mother. His grandmother answered the phone and in the background I could hear a very hurried and sloppy rendition of one of Mozart's early Minuets. "Nic is playing too fast," I tell his grandmother. "Can you tell him that?" His grandmother calls to Nic. "Miss Amy is on the phone and she wants to talk to you." A few seconds later came Nic's tentative, "Hello?" "Nic, you are playing that Minuet too fast." "It is really you! How did you know?" "I am magic." Nic, breathless with wonder, "Wow." http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=181 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=181 Sun, 31 Oct 2010 09:44:02 -0600 I first read this poem in senior AP English some 20 years ago. Standing at the kitchen sink this week peeling a boiled egg, I glanced out the window and a flock of birds heading south passed by. Immediately I thought of The Great Scarf of Birds. When I went to look up the poem this morning, I discovered that Updike wrote it 48 years ago tomorrow: October 25, 1962. The Great Scarf of Birds Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches. The maples were colored like apples, part orange and red, part green. The elms, already transparent trees, seemed swaying vases full of sky. The sky was dramatic with great straggling V's of geese streaming south, mare's-tails above them; their trumpeting made us look up from golf. The course sloped into salt marshes and this seemed to cause the abundance of birds. As if out of the Bible or science fiction, a cloud appeared, a cloud of dots like iron filings which a magnet underneath the paper undulates. It dartingly darkened in spots, paled, pulsed, compressed, distended, yet held an identity firm: a flock of starlings, as much one thing as a rock. One will moved above the trees the liquid and hesitant drift. Come nearer, it became less marvellous, more legible, and merely huge. "I never saw so many birds!" my friend exclaimed; we returned our eyes to the game. Later, as Lot's wife must have done, in a pause of walking, not thinking of calling down a consequence, I shifted my bag and looked back. ... The rise of the fairway behind us was tinted, so evenly tinted I might not have noticed but that at the rim of the delicate shadow the starlings were thicker and outlined the flock as an inkstain in drying pronounces its edges. The gradual rise of green was vastly covered; I had thought nothing in nature could be so broad but grass. And as I watched, one bird, prompted by accident or will to lead, ceased resting; and, lifting in a casual billow, the flock ascended as a lady's scarf, transparent, of gray, might be twitched by one corner, drawn upward, and then, decided against, negligently tossed toward a chair: dissolving all anxiety, the southward cloud withdrew into the air. -John Updike http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=180 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=180 Sun, 24 Oct 2010 08:57:50 -0600 I am teaching key signatures. About the time students begin working with chords, I start heading us in the direction of scales. Soon the technique path will split in two. Instead of everything circling around the old 5-Finger Positions, students will have scales AND chords. "I have to do both?" one kid said to me in disgust just this week. "Yep," I responded. "Welcome to the big leagues." But before scales comes learning key signatures. After many years, I have this sequence down to a science. It begins with students writing their own mnemonic devices for remembering the sharps and flats. I am a big fan of mnemonic devices. The only way I learned to spell Massachusetts in 4th grade was to create this clever device: Matt Adams Sucked Suckers At Church Helping Uncle Sam Eat Tootsie Tots Sunday. (My Matt finds this quirk of mine to be one of my most charming characteristics, but he does frequently ask me what "tootsie tots" might be. And who, he must wonder, is Matt Adams?) As a kid learning the sharps, I was taught the politically incorrect Fat Country Girls Dance At Every Ball, which did it's job, but did from time to time make me ask why, with all that dancing, were the country girls still fat? My students write their own mnemonic devices, avoiding the fat country girls entirely. We call them "codes", thereby giving the whole learning process a certain air of mystery. Their codes are either random or brilliant depending on the child: Five Chickens Get Deli After Every Ballet Freddy Can Get Donuts After Every Birthday Big Elephants Attack Dumb Guys Called Fred Big Elephants Are Digging Ground Carefully, Fortunately (Have to love that added-on adverb on the end of that last one. This child's mother is a poet, you can tell.) My all time favorite sharp code came from Jonie: Friendly Country Gorillas Drool At Every Banana. I like this one so much in fact, that it is my default sharp code when I am teaching older or adult students. One day, I was working with a teenager. I asked Samantha, "how many sharps are there in the key of E?" She looked at me impatiently and said, "It's that monkey slobber thing, isn't it?" Along with learning key signatures comes spider fingers, a scale preparatory exercise I learned from Jean Stackhouse. This is designed to get kids more comfortable with thumb and finger crossings. It goes like this: Beginning on middle D, RH will "walk up" the piano to the very highest key (Kids love this. How often do they get to play the very top key?), and then coming back down return to the starting middle D. LH does the same walking down the piano to the very lowest key and back to starting note. The intention is that the sequence is played very legato because, as I remind students, spiders don't jump, they crawl. Spider finger combinations: 72. 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2... 73. 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3... 74. 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4... 75. 1-2-1-2-3-1-2-1-2-3-1-2-1-2-3... 76. 1-2-3-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-1-2-3-4-1-2-3.... I don't worry a lot about rather the notes are played rhythmically or even, the idea is that students work through the challenge of figuring out how to do these finger crossings. That may mean some halted and staggering spiders to be sure, especially with the last two finger combinations, but that's OK. There will be time for perfecting even scales when we get to the actual real things. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=179 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=179 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 09:23:38 -0600 I am already starting to call this summer "The Summer of the 1000 Cranes."  While I was living inside these months, it seemed to be all about my crippled leg, which made me want to name it "The Summer from Hell."   But already two weeks into fall, I am starting to see this past summer through a different lens.  This is a welcomed shift, and makes me view the last few months with much more affection and gratitude. But first, the story of the paper cranes.  According to Japanese legend, the person that folds and then gives away 1000 cranes will have a wish granted, and the recipient of this gift will be granted good luck.  This story gained world-wide familiarity when a young Japanese girl named Sadako was diagnosed with cancer caused by the radiation from the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  She began folding origami cranes, and before she died, she folded over 600.  After her death, her friends and family finished the 1000 cranes and buried them with her.  Today there is a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.  In memory of Sadako, people all over the world fold cranes and send the garlands to be draped over the statue.   This summer, my friend and musical colleague Jerome decided that I needed some good luck.  And so, unbeknownst to me, Jerome, his ever patient partner Neal, and his mother Phoebe began folding cranes.   One night, during a stretch of rehearsals together, Jerome arrived at my door carrying two bundles of cranes. Each garland held 40 cranes; there were 25 strings of origami cranes total. One thousand cranes. They were stunning. I was speechless, for once beyond words. This has to have been one of the most glorious gifts I have ever received. We hung them above my desk, gracing my work with their colorful quiet presence. The room immediately took on a sacred hush. Every time I look at them I feel their power. Since then, we've all been folding cranes. Jerome has decided that he wants to fold 10,000 cranes this year, and a total of 100,000 in his lifetime. On the surface, folding cranes looks to be senseless, but perhaps it is a peaceful act of rebellion in this noisy world, a way to nudge the world into a better place. Not so different, I have decided, than making music. One night a bunch of friends got together over drinks and snacks to fold cranes. "Wax on, wax off," Jerome chanted, citing the old Karate Kid movie. For hours, he'd only teach us the first few steps. "You're learning technique," he reprimanded us when we complained. Over the past several weekends, Jerome and I gave a series of concerts in Santa Fe, Taos, Gallup and Rio Rancho. On this so-called "World Tour" (our worlds are very small), we folded cranes. Obsessively. Or at least Jerome and Neal folded obsessively. Lora (who was along as the official Page Turner) and I shopped. "This World Tour should be named Two Men and Origami Paper," Lora said when we wandered into the bar at the Taos Inn, only to stumble upon the two of them compulsively folding cranes while drinking margaritas. Even my students have entered the picture.  Intrigued by the hanging cranes in our studio space, my students have plenty of opinions about this process.  "Your friend must have a lot of time," several kids remarked, surprising me with their astute conception of how precious and fleeting time is.  Last weekend in performance class, once the performances and musical activities were behind us, we folded cranes.  Some students were quickly frustrated and impatient, unable to be precise enough with their corners to manage a successful crane.  Other students were immediately hooked, and a slowly growing pile of paper cranes is collecting in the sunroom.  "Who are we going to give these to?" the students asked.  We are a long way away from our thousand, but already they have some good ideas about who should be the recipient of our labor.  "Too bad Beethoven isn't still alive," one kid remarked.   And so, as summer finally, at long lasts, melts into fall, I find my perspective shifting along with the season.  This will now forever be "The Summer of the 1000 Cranes," Jerome's beautiful act folding into all of our lives.  It isn't hard to identify people in our lives who are struggling in one form or another and need the gift of a 1000 paper cranes prayerfully folded.  Together we may indeed get to that 100,000 goal, all of us a small part of something that has become bigger than any one of us alone.  I shall write peace upon your wings, your heart and you shall fly around the world so that children will no longer have to die this way." -translated haiku by Sadako Sasaki Photos by Jerome Jim and company http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=178 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=178 Sun, 10 Oct 2010 09:39:26 -0600 Madeleine has a song in her beginning piano book entitled "Money Can't Buy Everything." She comes from a privileged upper middle-class home. She asks me what this song means, and I decide to take the opportunity to teach some non-musical values. I give her an assignment for the following week: Write down 10 things money can't buy. She looks confused, but she doesn't argue. The next week she returns with a poem she has written: Money can't make you a cat, Money can't make you a bat, Money can't make you a rose, Money can't tickle your toes. Money can't make you a bear, Money can't buy you real hair, Money can't make you a bag, Money can't make you sag. Money can't make you a cat, So how about that! You will forgive me, I'm sure, for overlooking the fact that there are only 8 items instead of 10. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=177 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=177 Sun, 03 Oct 2010 09:56:06 -0600 The geranium and the begonia bloom with such offhand redundance we scarcely notice. But the amaryllis is a study in disruption: everything routine gives way to the unsheathing of its climbing telescope-- a supernova of twin crimson tunnels, porches of infinity where last week there was nothing. Months of clandestine preparation now implode in pollen that will never brush a bee, fueling the double-barreled velvet stairwell of its sterile pistils with a tapered incandescence that's already short of breath and going blind before a week is out. Such show of breeding, such an excess of cultivation, all but asks us to stop breathing too until it's over. I remember how, the night the somewhat famous violinist came to supper, the whisper of the gown she put on just before the concert filled the parlor of the farmhouse with things it had no room for-- the slave marts of the East, the modes of Paris, the gazing ramparts of the stratosphere. -Amy Clampitt http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=176 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=176 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:38:26 -0600 Just ask my husband, I have been a bit distracted this summer.   What with the broken leg and all, it has been difficult to concentrate.  But now, I'm fully back, all cylinders are functioning normally, spinning frantically at their regular hysterical pace. Which means, I can now finally get back to chords.  Because, of course, everyone know that chords follow bridges, just as autumn follows summer.  Even crazy, surreal summers like this one. My students LOVE playing chords.  They consider this skill to be a badge of honor that somehow demonstrates that they are, in fact, real pianists.  Real pianists, after all, play chords.  They even say the word "chords" with awe in their voices.   Or at least my youngest students do.  My mid-high kids are so over chords, just ask them.  In fact, they are so over everything.  They are too cool for school.  This group of students is huge this year, and they may be my undoing yet if I don't keep reminding myself that they can't help it.  They are too old for games and silliness, and too young for their own awkwardly growing shapes and selves.  There is nothing harder than being a 6th grader.  I have to keep telling myself this when I watch a former adorable child quickly turn into a difficult unruly monster right before my very eyes. But I was talking about chords, not mid-high students, as fascinating a subject as that might very well be.  It is so easy to get distracted these days. After the first variations working with easy bridges, I work to construct the three-note chord, initially using only the I-chord.  Young students will sometimes find it easier to play a broken chord than a blocked one, so we learn that a major chord is built by playing Do-Mi-Sol.  Students love this next variation because it makes their sound big and expansive.  If students can reach the pedal, this is a good time to introduce pedaling because the pedal changes don't happen quickly.  Simply clear the pedal with every chord change.  I first teach this variation with broken chord patterns and then with blocked chords, listening for the three notes to sound simultaneously.   68.  Do Mi Sol Alternate broken pattern LH, RH, LH, RH crossing over hands for a total of four octaves, and then reverse:  starting with RH come down (Sol-Mi-Do), ending at starting position. 69.  Same as above only playing blocked chords instead of broken. Returning to the previous I-V-I progression, we can now add the full I-chords into the progression, leaving the V-bridges for now.  After students are comfortable with this step, I add the entire V-chord. This chord is played in 1st inversion of course, but students don't need to be bothered with this detail.  Although I do name chords---I-chord or V-chord--at this point, this isn't as much theory work as simply labeling.  (In fact, one tiny student called the I-chord a "star" and the V-chord a "moon" for some time before learning the correct names.  This didn't bother me one bit as long as she could correctly identify them.  She could, perfectly, whereas I often forgot which one was which under this labeling system!!)  When adding the middle note of the V-chord, we discover that the third finger moves down a whole step, and remind ourselves that the fifth finger moves down a half-step.  (Stick with LH at first.  This is logical because chords are most often in the LH for young beginners.)  This identification of whole and half steps is, in fact, good old theory, which gets us points.  (My students and I love points, although the mid-high kids are on to me.  "What do the points get us anyway?" one smart kid asked me just yesterday.  "Nothing," I said.) After working with the I-V-I chord progression in all major keys (don't confuse things by throwing minor into the mix too soon), we can start being creative with our patterns.  The next variations can be played using bridges of the I and V chords, or the chords themselves.   Watch students carefully for tension when playing chord patterns.  I emphasize not only hand position, but also careful listening when doing chord exercises.  Listen for all notes of the chords (often times one or more notes do not sound clearly at the beginning), and that the notes sound exactly together so that we do not have uninvited rolled chords.   70.  RH plays:  Do ---Sol---Do, while LH plays:  I---V---I 71.  RH plays:  Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do, while LH plays:  I---V---I,  changing chords on the Do--Sol--Do notes of the RH http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=175 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=175 Sun, 19 Sep 2010 09:13:18 -0600 In the next few weeks, Navajo flutist Jerome Jim and I will be performing in the following New Mexican cities: Santa Fe: Saturday, September 25, 2PM Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Santa Fe 107 W. Barcelona Taos: Sunday, September 26, 4PM St. James Episcopal Church 208 Camino de Santiago Rio Rancho: Friday, October 1, 12PM Rio Rancho Presbyterian Church 1004 24th Street SE Gallop: Saturday, October 2, 2:30PM First United Methodist Church of Gallop 1800 Red Rock Dr. Program includes music such as Kuhlau's wonderful Grand Sonata for Flute and Piano (fantastic piece for both the flute and the piano. Not played in this country often enough.) and the Three Romances by Clara Schumann. All concerts are free and open to the public. (I am especially looking forward to the part that will involve staying at the Taos Inn and drinking margaritas in the bar.) PS. Thank you to all you readers who wrote to let me know about problems with the RSS feeder. We have been working on it, (By "we" I mean not me, but my web designer). We think the problem is at least mostly solved, so try again. If you still can't read it, we suspect that this is a browser issue. You could try another browser, if it is that important to you, or even better, write and tell me what browser you use so we can further troubleshoot the problems...... http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=174 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=174 Sun, 12 Sep 2010 08:32:49 -0600 We were living in Boston on September 11th. I was at school when the terrorist attacks took place. We canceled classes and lessons and I made my way home to join my husband in front of the television. We watched the story unfold on two levels: nationally and locally. Names of the victims on the two planes from Boston begin to be released---this would continue for weeks. I was strangely detached and numb from the stories, and yet I felt shaken by the geographical and social proximity to these events. There is no denying that this felt different than it would have if we still lived in the midwest. We did not personally know any of the victims, but there was not the infamous six degrees to separate us from many people whose lives were changed forever. I felt only fear. In the days immediately after, we heard rumors that Boston was to be the site of more attacks. I woke up in the middle of the night shaken from nightmares about bombs going off in the Prudential Center or in the Hancock Tower. The sound of sirens sent chills down my back. My heart pounded in my chest for weeks. I was not interested in war or revenge. I was interested in getting the hell off the East Coast. I wanted to get in a car and drive west to Kansas. Or north to Quebec City. I was not proud of my lack of courage in the face of these events. I was not proud of my impulse to flee. But there it was; I was scared. I wanted to run away. As time went on, something shifted. While we were newcomers to Boston and had moved to there on a whim and a prayer, about the time the second twin tower fell, we went from being explorers of a new city to simply living there. The tragedy made us claim our lives. We weren't outsiders anymore to the issues at school or at work. Instead, we started to feel invested: I wanted to hear about Natalie's problems with her boyfriend. I cared about the recital policies at my schools. I was invited to participate in meeting with parents and elementary school psychologists trying to determine Jack's learning disability. I was concerned that Julie hadn't learned to read music. "It is in the shelter of each other that the people live," says the Irish proverb. Nine years later and two thousands miles away from the site of so much tragedy, my perspective has changed again. Last weekend we had the seniors in Matt's youth choir over for dinner. This is an annual tradition, a small rite of passage in both their lives and ours. I was in the kitchen fussing with dishes when I overheard the kids talking about their memories of 9/11. It was strange listening to them. After all, they were 7 years-old and living across the country from the center of the events on that day. And yet, every major national decision since that time has been made under the 9/11 cloud. It is, of course, the most important world event of their lives, but one they remember very differently than I do. "This will be our reply to violence," Leonard Bernstein said after the assassination of John F Kennedy, "to make music more intensely, more beautifully, and more devotedly than ever before." All is not right in the world and will never be, I think, as I go about my life, tending and caring for the small corner of the universe I call home. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=173 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=173 Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:14:03 -0600 As I write this, I am standing on a precipice, and on the other side is the next semester.  There is something about standing on the edge of a semester that gives me pause.  Here is another chance not to screw up.  Here is a whole slate of weeks in which to teach perfect lessons.  Here are blank days on which I might still get things right.  It's a hopeful and melancholy feeling all at once.  I always feel a sense of the new beginnings in the fall more than at any other time.  January resolutions leave me cold; I can't muster the strength after the holidays to make changes.  But these days I'm ripe for all things new:  a fresh box of colored pencils for teaching, blank sketchbooks to house my random pedagogical and personal thoughts, a new set of binders to keep me organized.  I have a list of new ideas for group lessons,  CDs made of ear tunes for students to pick out and harmonize, a bowl filled with composition titles to stimulate some fresh creative work at the piano.   So with all of these good reasons to be giddy with my lot in life these days, why the hesitation or the sensitivity to this next turning point?  I don't know, although I suspect this arises simply as a result of stepping outside my normal routines for a few weeks.  At the moment it is easier to see the seams of one's life, the bridges between one season and the next, from one page to another.  Steeped in our daily routines, we lose sight of these transitions, or are so hinged to our patterns that we don't take notice of the changes of direction, slight shifts, and re-navigations that happen all the time.   This reorganization of habits is magnified after time away from regular work routines.  We come back to patterns that can either be taken up again or not.   I can return to my same old routines, schedules, habits and ruts, or I can use this forced energy shift that comes with time away to rethink some of these things.   This year all of these normal shifts are especially poignant.  What did you do on your summer vacation?  I could write the essay right now. This year on my summer vacation I got hit by a car....The hard-won MRI late in the summer showed a "crushed" tibia, but every ligament intact, much to everyone's surprise.  The fractured bone will heal in time---9 more weeks, my surgeon tells me.  But at this point the immobilization and surgery that I had been threatened with earlier won't happen.  I limp along, slowly.  Certainly, there have been forced changes in the last few months, some welcomed, some not.  As I heal I have a choice:  I can hang onto some of these new patterns, or I can return to my old stubborn ways.  It's something to ponder for sure. Standing at the corner between holidays and work days, summer and fall, health and injury, I find myself once again marking time.  The next few months are full of  lessons, rehearsals, dinners with friends, dozens of deadlines, performances, a hundred garden chores, countless seasonal rituals and pleasures.  I am back in school this week, taking 6 hours of graduate credit.  "What are you taking?"  my old college roommate Julianne asked me last week.  "Anything you're excited about?"  "I'm taking two classes---Motivational Theories and Statistics.  Want to guess which one I am excited about?"  "OK. Got it," she laughed, knowing instantly which one I'm dreading.   Although I am less apprehensive about returning to classes this year after a full 12 hours behind me, still underneath my confidence must have been some level of dread.  The night before classes began I had a dream.  In it I was working in a study lounge somewhere, and left my Educational Psychology textbook behind (This book doesn't exist, but sounds like it would be important, doesn't it?).  When I returned to fetch it, I discovered that someone had taken it and sold it to buy a kitten.  "You know kittens are usually free, don't you?"  Matt asks me when I tell him about my dream.  I shouldn't analyze this too much, because if I do I might start to get a sense of how little I value this degree and knowledge. Wednesday night, after my first day of class this semester, Lora and I went out for dinner and drinks, resuming our weekly girls' night out and our ritual of rehashing all the strange things I witness in class.  "I'm Kathryn, by the way," one girl says to me as she sits down next to me in Statistics.  I'm startled.  Shouldn't "by the way" be preceded by an actual conversation?  It is as if she was inserting her introduction into our non-existent dialogue.  "I'm in the Ph.D," she continues smugly.  Welcome to graduate school snobbery, I think to myself, where we organize ourselves in the hierarchy of our degree programs.  "I'm Amy," I say, refusing to play her labeling games.  I'm not going to be so quickly boxed in.   I'm discovering it is liberating to be outside my normal field and subject, because I feel no competition with anyone.  In music that indeed might be another matter entirely, but in educational psychology, I have no claim or identity. As ambivalent as I may be, it feels important to acknowledge the significance of this new beginning again.    Mark the time, Max Coots writes.  Mark the time...  For all of these are holy things, we will not, cannot find again.....    http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=172 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=172 Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:10:28 -0600 Really, by most standards this is the anti-blog. Although some of you faithful readers have figured out how to penetrate the system and send me messages (Thank you!), I do recognize that this site lacks, shall we say, some of the more reader-friendly devices that other more sleek blogs possess. Mostly, I am Ok with that, being rather old-fashioned and not sleek myself. It's not just my blog that is less than trendy, I'm not terribly plugged-in any place in my life. My cell phone has never been off "silent" mode, and I treat my home answering machine like a butler who screens my calls, much to the disgust of all my friends and family. Matt regularly accuses me of being the worst electronic flirt in the world. "It is not fun to flirt with you through emails or text messages if you are going to get them a week later," he complains. Indeed, pony express is more my speed. Recently, my dear husband joined Facebook. He had been threatening to do so for some time, feeling like he needed this tool to help with some of the publicity for his choirs. "I have to be honest about something," he says to me one morning over coffee. "I've gone over to the dark side." I'm still having none of it. I don't need old high school boyfriends hunting me down reminding me of my past errors in judgement. I don't need one more thing to keep track of every day. I realize that the day may come very soon where this attitude will come back to bite me in the ass, but for now I am standing firm. However, there is a new feature on this site that I wanted to alert you to. Some time ago a reader in Canada wrote to ask if there couldn't be a way to be contacted through an RSS feed about new posts. I had no idea what she was talking about, being so technologically slow myself. RSS feed? Does this stand for Random Stories Sometimes? It's only taken me about a year to look into this, and just this week my website designer set up this feature. It works like this: Click on the "Subscribe" link on the upper right hand corner of this page. This will take you to a scroll page of posts, which allows you to easily forward particularly witty and interesting links to other people, and to easily bookmark the page. Hopefully this will make it that much easier to have ten thousand stars a regular part of your on-line reading. You will not get emails alerting you to new posts, unfortunately, that feature was pricey and complicated enough that I will have to wait until my ship comes in. ("Your ship is coming, I know it," Matt occasionally says to me. I think he might be somewhat invested in this possibility and isn't able to give me the most neutral and unbiased assessment of my future.) So until then, micro-step by micro-step, I'll stumble into the 21st century. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=171 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=171 Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:15:02 -0600 Since a large percentage of control over fate doesn't exist, how to go forward? Cultivate interior life as though it were a garden sanctuary. Give away what you can. Squander your love. - from Every Day in Tuscany by Francis Mayes http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=170 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=170 Sun, 15 Aug 2010 06:43:39 -0600 There is nothing like turning another year older to give one a new perspective on life. Especially when coupled with 5 weeks of limping around like a truly older person. And a comment like this from my new friend the orthopedic surgeon, while looking at X-rays of my knees: "Wow. We don't usually see arthritis like this in a 38-year old." Reading an old teaching journal of mine this week, I stumbled upon this conversation: I was teaching Sam, a precocious and funny 7-year old. In passing, I made some comment (there is really no such thing as a passing comment with children--I should have known this) about when I was his age, when Sam interrupted, "Miss Amy, was that when the pictures were black and white?" Before I could answer, his older sister chimed in from the couch where she was waiting quietly for her lesson. "Was there sound on the TV or was it quiet? Did you have radio?" "HOW OLD DO YOU THINK I AM ANYWAY, KIDS?" I asked, alarmed. Sam thinks for a moment, "10?" This took place at least a decade ago. By their accounts I might be all of 12 these days. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=169 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=169 Sun, 08 Aug 2010 09:03:07 -0600 After dozens and dozens of 5-Finger Positions, it is time to move on. Teachers often ask me how long I teach 5-Finger Positions, but there is no real answer.  Some days it seems like forever, and I think a student will never graduate to chords and scales.  Other students rip through these quickly, and after a few months are ready for more challenging technique work.  It just depends on the student, the age, the rate of progress.  Certainly, my average younger student often lives in the 5-Finger world for a year or more, making the arrival of scales and chords something to celebrate. Although these posts have provided ideas for various patterns and ways of approaching 5-Finger Positions, this is hardly an exhaustive list.  When I need more patterns, I dig through various technique books sitting on my shelf, or other creative resources for beginners.  I especially like little pentachord songs with good lyrics that can be transposed into a 5-Finger pattern, giving our solfege a much needed break for a week or two.  Even then, however, I often write out the patterns using both solfege and the lyrics, keeping with the concept that the students never actually see a printed score for their technique work.    Eventually, however there comes a day when I introduce chords.  I always start with "bridges" of the basic I and V chords----Do/Sol for the I chord, and Ti/Sol for the V chord.  We talk about whole steps and half steps, and quickly discover that although the beloved C position is all white notes for the bridges, the equally loved G position needs that tricky F-sharp for the V bridge.  I tell students the right hand can take the week off, and we concentrate on bridges for the left hand the first week.  Little ones are particularly excited about the idea that the right hand gets a "vacation" from positions.  If the foundation of all major 5-Finger Positions is well established, kids do fine learning bridges in all keys that first week.  This, in fact, is often so easy that I am tempted to go ahead and teach the whole I and V chord, but I have learned to curb that urge.  Better that students---whatever age or level---have complete success in a new concept rather than compromising our learning with too many new things. Think like a video game, I remind myself.  Kids like video games because they provide the perfect combination of challenge, novelty and opportunity for success at every level.  If I can coax progress along at just the right pace, real live chords in a week or two are a simple matter. 67.  LH Bridges:  I-V-I  (Do/Sol---Ti/Sol---Do/Sol) Bridges are a great time to really focus on space under the hand.  After all, kids understand that bridges need to be tall and strong.  A collapsed bridge is no good. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=168 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=168 Sun, 01 Aug 2010 09:59:04 -0600 Life has her own way of slowing me down. After my bike "spill" earlier in the summer, (this is how Matt likes to refer to it, As if I was a 5-year-old who just got her training wheels off.) my normal frantic pace shifted considerably. It's hard to move fast on crutches. It's even harder to carry a cup of coffee. Whether it was the crutches or the lack of caffeine, the speed of my life slowed down to what felt like a crawl. Or a limp, as the case might be. I still did plenty, I can assure you. I taught and taught and taught some more---some days as long as 8-10 hours. My students were at first alarmed at my lack of mobility. "My bicycle was hit by a car," I told them, thinking borderline passive voice would seem less threatening to a small child. But I learned quickly this was the wrong choice of words because bike accidents hit home (no pun intended) with children; after all, most of them ride bikes. "WERE YOU ON IT?" one child asked in an alarmed tone. In addition to my teaching schedule, I still hobbled to the piano bench for multiple performances and for too many rehearsals. For the last five years, July has proven to be an extremely busy performing time around here, because my husband organizes what are known as "Thursday Evening Musicales" every---you guessed it---Thursday evening. These are wonderful evenings, where musicians of all stripes and musical persuasions come and play 10-15 minute sets to benefit a local organization called "Healthcare for the Homeless." The musicales not only earn money for a great cause, they are always fantastic evenings. Musicians in Albuquerque have come to look forward to this concert series as a chance to work with different people, or to play music that they don't normally perform in their regular lives. But there is always a need for pianists, piano being the universal accompaniment to just about anything. This year I have played for a chamber choir, a tenor, a baritone, a soprano and flute, a soprano and mezzo, a jaw harp (THAT was a new experience. Ever heard a set of Beethoven variations for jaw harp and piano? I doubt it.). I have done a set of piano duets, and next week will do a solo set of PDQ Bach Preludes and Fugues. July has become a great music-making month, but it puts the pressure on the practicing for sure. So while physically I was moving at the pace of a snail, the demands of my work life hadn't really let up. Just to add to the complications, for the first week I had to pedal entirely with my left foot. There is no subtlety with my left foot I can tell you. I gained great insights to the pedaling habits of my 8-year-old students. The pedal is either on or it's off. There is nothing in between. Keeping up this schedule meant that everything else had to go. It took all the energy I had to get the bare minimum of teaching, practicing and performing done while on crutches. Matt and I discovered quickly how much I do around the house without even knowing I'm doing it, when the cats went 4 days without water and the garden began slowly withering away in the heat. Being on crutches for over 2 weeks put a serious damper on my "The World is My Gym" exercise motto. Although now that I think about it, the world still was my gym, just in an obstacle course kind of way. In the midst of this mid-summer madness we are sitting outdoors one evening with friends enjoying cocktails. Suddenly, Lora says, "You know I don't have my glasses on, but I think there's an owl in that tree." We look up. Sure enough, on a branch hanging over our yard was a screech owl. We look closer, and pick out not one owl, but a total of four owls, hanging out in the trees overhead. They are intent on something in our yard, which I realize just might be the neighborhood cat, whom I call Pinstripe, busy rustling in the bushes. In fact, Pinstripe is after something, probably a chipmunk. The owls never take their eyes off the chase. We go inside. It's getting both dark and a little creepy out there what with the posse of owls and what is clearly about to be a massacre with Chippy as the victim. Two days later my neighbor knocks on the door. There is a dead cat between our houses. she tells me. "You know the cats in this neighborhood better than I do," she says, "Can you come see if you recognize it?" It's Pinstripe, or a cat that could play her double in a movie. Her body is intact, but the look on her face is one of horror and trauma. Could the owls kill a cat? I've heard of hawks killing cats, picking them up and dropping them to their deaths, but a little screech owl? What about four screech owls working together? We call Animal Control, who comes and takes away the body. I'm sad. Pinstripe was a sweet cat and one that has been coming to visit for years. I didn't know where she lived, but she loved our garden, and did her part in keeping the rodents out of the flower beds. More than once, I saw her catch a mouse in my yard, and she rubbed against my ankles whenever I hung out laundry. Days go by, and we notice that every evening at dusk, Godiva, our indoor cat, is sitting by the sun-room door staring out the window. It takes us awhile to figure out what she is doing, but then we remember that most evenings Pinstripe would come to that door. The two cats would bang up against the glass hissing aggressively, and then settle down and stare at each other for some time before one of them got bored and wandered off: Pinstripe to another outdoor adventure; Godiva to come find us to curl up for the night. "It's good to have a worthy adversary," Matt says. "We miss them when they're gone." In the meantime, I am back on two feet. My friend Jerome calls me "Ms. 5/8," because of the irregular manner of my limp. "Walk in 4/4," my physical therapist reminds me. On my good days, I manage common time, largo as it is. It will be a while still before I am back to the regular pace of my life. As I write this, there is only one official month of summer left around here---my fall schedule begins August 16th. This has become the summer that wasn't---all my plans of hiking and biking, gardening and yoga classes disappearing the minute I took that spill on the bicycle. All I have respectably managed is a great deal of summertime lounging, a pile of books at my side. Last week I was outside watering, limping from flower bed to flower bed dragging the hose behind me. A woman walks by with her dog. We exchange a few pleasantries and then she says, "You know, these daisies would bloom again if you'd just deadhead them." Nothing like unsolicited advice from a perfect stranger. I explain about my accident, and say, "I'm doing good just to be watering at this point." "Oh," she grunts, "I'll do them for you," and proceeds to deadhead the entire plant. I shake my head, marveling at both the audacity and the generosity of people that walk through our lives. Inside, Godiva sits at the door, waiting for her friend. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=167 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=167 Sun, 25 Jul 2010 07:39:54 -0600 If at the most susceptible age, from the age of 6 to 16, the child isn't at least once moved by the life-giving power of great music, later he will hardly be influenced by it. Many times one single experience opens the young soul to music for his whole life. This experience shouldn't be left to chance: to obtain it is the duty of the schools. -Kodaly (1929) http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=166 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=166 Sun, 18 Jul 2010 08:05:50 -0600 Music will only enter our souls, live within us, if we plow our souls with our own efforts, with our own music making. -Zoltan Kodaly This month, I took a two-week intensive Kodaly certification course. Zoltan Kodaly was a music educator and composer in Hungary during the first part of the 20th century. His a-ha moment came one day when attending a chamber music concert. He noticed that the only people in the small audience were people who were chamber players themselves, and that the average non-musician didn't attend chamber music concerts. His life's work became about training the future audiences in Hungary---thinking that if they could produce a country full of amateur well-educated musicians, then the professional musicians would always be supported. In doing so, he created a system of teaching music that is largely singing-based. When he died in 1967, he left a country where the music education is among the best in the world. In this country, however, Kodaly is largely viewed as under the umbrella of the classroom music educator. At first glance, this course might seem like a strange tangent in my piano-centered teaching career, but these days I am interested in thinking about teaching and music making from different angles, specifically ones that might include delightfully fresh perspectives after spending my life on the piano bench. Besides, in taking this class, I could earn three precious hours of graduate credit which could be applied to my Ed. Psych degree. As our friend Regina so eloquently put it, I am pretty much a whore for graduate credit these days. I arrived the first day with a pretty cavalier attitude. I was open to the whole experience, and knew it would very likely expose all my musical weaknesses and holes in my training. After all, as Kodaly himself said, music education is about training first the ear, then the mind, then the heart, and finally the hands. Whereas I nearly failed ear training in college, and my knowledge of those solfege hand signs are suspect at best. On top of that, the pedagogy part of this training is all about classroom teaching, and as I told a group of music teachers this spring when leading a workshop, I require parental help when leading my performance classes, and they consist of 10 kids, tops. I wouldn't say that I really have a handle on classroom teaching on any level. But I'm fine with that. I wasn't there to improve my classroom skills, only my musical ones, and to glean some new insights about teaching to infuse into my piano teaching. A lot of this course would roll right off my back, and I had no problem with that. However, I didn't really understand the full immersion environment that went along with such training courses. The day began at 8AM and went straight through till 5:30PM with about 5 minutes for lunch. Just when I thought I could waltz out of there and run home to the several hours of practicing I had waiting for me, I discovered that there was hours--and I mean hours--of homework. Homework? This I had not accounted for. And so it unfolded: days of singing and solfege, choir and conducting (Heaven help me. There is only one conductor in this family for a reason.), lectures and pedagogy classes. I started getting up at 4:45AM to put in a couple hours of piano before I left. (Yes, we have the most tolerant neighbors. Ever.) It's time all of us performance people to lose our superiority complex; there is nothing easy about the music education track. At night I paced the house memorizing pentatonic children's songs, and analyzed songs and games. In an attempt to preserve the true spirit of Kodaly's methodology, which sought to utilize the folk song culture of the Hungarian people, our materials included lots of songs that were in Spanish. This is indeed a true reflection of the community I live in, but let's stop and think about this for a minute. I am roaming the house muttering Spanish words. It's been 20 years since my last course in Spanish and I retained nothing. Nothing, I tell you. That was about the moment when I threw myself in front of a moving vehicle. Which, in retrospect, was perhaps not the wisest thing to do. While there had been plenty of tears and suicidal thoughts among my classmates in Kodaly boot camp, this was perhaps a rather dramatic response. It happened like this: After yet another long day, I was headed home on my shiny blue bicycle. I had just unlocked my bike from the bicycle rack and out of laziness was cruising along on the sidewalk until I could find a convenient place to enter onto the street. I came upon an intersection with an alley, and I knew it was blind for both of us even as I approached it. I saw the car before it saw me (in the driver's defense, most of us do not stop at sidewalks, we stop at streets. This is wrong of us, but we all do it.). I quickly saw the writing on the wall, swerved and was literally jumping off my bike when I was hit head-on. Perhaps not the day to wear a skirt and heels. It could have been so much worse. It could have been my head, my hands, my life. Instead it was only my right knee, which I knew immediately was pretty mangled. The distraught non-English-speaking Hispanic driver and his mother got out of the car, totally traumatized. I was comforting them, and ironically, my only real method of doing so was to sing pentatonic Spanish children's songs at them. I need not ever worry about being left on the side of the road without help again. This was a busy street close to the university with its ubiquitous coffee houses, shops and restaurants (in fact, our "encounter" took place in front of one of our favorite New Mexican restaurants). Dozens of people came running. Not every day does a blonde in a dress and heels throw herself in front a car. I landed in a perfectly lady-like position, just in the way my mother taught me to sit on the floor with a short skirt. Unfortunately, that was my last graceful move for awhile. I am developing blisters on my palms from the crutches, and amazing biceps in the meantime. I will be fine, fortunately, and perhaps even on two feet in another week or so. But Kodaly boot camp is behind me, and triumphantly I have three more hours of graduate credit under my belt. There is no perfect spiritual life without music. The soul has certain regions where only music can penetrate. The purpose of music is to get better acquainted with, make flourish and bring to perfection our inner life. -Kodaly (1944) http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=165 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=165 Sun, 04 Jul 2010 08:58:43 -0600 I believe that the development of critical listening and body awareness skills are as crucial for good technique as fast fingers are. Since musicians of all ages and abilities can only play what they hear, I wonder if the greatest technical skill we teach isn't critical listening skills. We constantly must ask our students questions to help them focus their listening: What do you hear? Are the notes sounding exactly together? Are the hands producing the same kinds of sounds and articulations? Is one hand louder or softer than the other? And then we must ask the follow-up questions: How can we adjust that? Change the sound? Sharpen the articulations? Correct the balance? A great deal has been written about how to play the piano, outlining details regarding the instrument's mechanisms and the physiology of the movements required to produce good sound and technique. But even with my advanced training and understanding, my eyes often glaze over at such discussions. In my mind the important questions are: What do you hear? Do you like it? How can you fix it? While scholarly discourses have their place, the truth is every body is different and the physical gestures that may be comfortable for one player may not work for another. Glenn Gould's low-slung posture would kill my back, but I envy the sound he produced. In my own teaching, I encourage students to listen to their bodies, to observe tension and stress, and to make adjustments accordingly. When it comes to hand position, I look to help construct a hand position that is strong and firm and makes sense to each individual's physiology, rather than prescribing my movements and gestures for every student. I watch for wrists that are neither too high nor too low, and fingers that do not collapse at the joints. I teach students to find space under their hands: "Can you fill up a hot-air balloon under your hand?" I heard one smart teacher ask her students. I challenge students to sense where they are in space: to sit ever taller and wider and check to see where they are holding their feet. Of course, this approach demands a great deal from a teacher. I can't listen hard enough or carefully enough-both to my own playing and to the playing of my students. If I am to guide them to sharper listening skills, then I have to hear everything myself. Additionally, I can't expose myself to enough body awareness and movement techniques. These days my yoga practice regularly reminds me how my body moves, and what bad habits I carry with me. Every class, my yoga teacher reminds me to really straighten my arms, lengthen my back, and to keep following my breath. It doesn't seem to matter how long I practice yoga, or how many classes I have attended over the years, I still need these reminders. My students are no different. Our lazy American culture doesn't affirm good posture or much body awareness. We all need gentle (and perhaps not so gentle) reminders to pay attention. I don't have the definitive answers for precisely how each technique should be accomplished at the piano, but when reading (often conflicting!) discourses on physical movements, over and over again I find myself thinking, Why, that isn't my experience at all. So instead of imposing a uniform set of physical gestures on all my students, I encourage students of all ages to discover their own experiences and their own set of physical sensations at the keyboard. Ultimately, I think piano technique is not a standardized or unified set of movements at the keyboard, but rather that the combination of good critical listening skills and attention to the body informs our technique. Much to my surprise and delight, requiring more from students' listening skills and making them own and develop their physical gestures creates wonderfully diverse and individual playing. In the end, I do not want to foster generically good piano technique, but to draw out each student's personality and character. Little seven year-old Lucy should sound exactly like Lucy, while 47 year-old Camille should sound, not like every other adult beginner, but specifically like herself. Technique practice can provide the space to ask critical questions of listening and body awareness. What kind of sound are we making? What kind of sound do we want? Are the hands curved? Do the finger joints collapse? Where is your head in relationship to your neck? Is it tilted to one side or bent over forward? Are we holding tension in our legs? If we don't like what we hear, how can we adjust? Earlier we introduced the idea of playing the intervals of a third in a variation, but playing the intervals together requires more careful listening and attention. The next variations are much easier if students play the thirds staccato, listening that the two notes sound exactly together. As Chopin's etude in thirds reminds us, the fine motor skills necessary to play third patterns legato are much more advanced, and done without great care could contribute to hand and wrist problems. I assume that legato thirds are primarily suitable for more mature or developed hands and minds, and even then I teach them cautiously. Watch for those shoulders that can creep up to our ears without our awareness in these two variations. By now students should be able to move freely between major and minor keys, so take your pick. 65. Do/Mi--Re/Fa--Mi/Sol--Fa/Re--Mi/Do This is simply thirds marching up the pattern and back down. Slow is good. 66. Do/Mi--Re/Fa--Mi/Sol (Repeat) --Sol/Mi--Fa/Re--Mi/Do (Repeat) I like repeating each half of the pattern, as indicated. This forces one to get out of the keys a bit to reset the next pattern, which helps release built-up tension and works against getting "stuck" or tight. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=164 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=164 Sun, 27 Jun 2010 08:36:30 -0600 You can hardly go wrong if you pay exquisite attention to creation. You can hardly go wrong if you pay exquisite attention to your neighbor near and far. You can hardly go wrong if you will trust that what is happening to you every day carries within it the seeds of wisdom that you are in desperate need of. You can hardly go wrong if you learn to bless the most ordinary things that appear before you every day. You can hardly go wrong if you travel ready to be surprised by God, whether it's across the world or just to your backyard. -- Barbara Brown Taylor, on the practice of faith http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=163 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=163 Sun, 20 Jun 2010 06:49:27 -0600 Last fall, prior to a local competition, Dennis Alexander came to my studio to coach some of my students. "What does this mean," he asked the first kid, pointing to a tempo marking in the score. "I don't know," shrugged the student. "Do you know what Scherzando means?" Dennis asked another student, who simply shook his head in response. "What does Allegretto mean?" He prompted yet another student, who then looked over at me in confusion. By now I wanted to crawl under my chair, because it appears that my students know nothing, and possibly don't have a teacher at all. In fact, in the course of the several hours Dennis spent in my studio, exactly 100% of my students failed to answer his questions regarding musical markings or tempo indications in their scores. I haven't yet taken statistics, but I do know that this is an alarming percentage. I'd like to defend my teaching by saying the problem was that on this particular day they were using my clean score versus their scribbled up one. Of course, the markings would have been written in their own music. But this is only partly true. Dennis might have had more luck if he would have asked the questions a different way: What is the tempo of this piece--slow, medium or fast? Or: What is the character of this music? My students generally do know what they're doing, but they don't always know how they know it. This painful awakening made me put cheerful red music dictionary in a prominent place on the shelf next to my piano, and to start requiring that each student look up all unfamiliar musical terms and write them in their scores. This is a good thing, and makes us more accountable for our work, a reminder we all need from time to time. But the whole incident got me thinking; because taking the time to do this in every lesson takes time away from something else. Which is why, I suppose, I got into the habit of not being more thorough in the first place. On the heels of Dennis' visit, I found this note in a young student's practice notebook: If there is a *, I totally memorized it. If there is a x, I did some. "What's this, I did some?" I questioned young Kathryn. She shrugged. (I am beginning to notice a lot of shrugging in my studio.) "I couldn't do it all. I did some." Later, thinking this over, I had to admit that I have gone into a lot of situations with "some" being my level of preparation. I haven't totally prepared. I have played important recitals with gifted colleagues in which I have not looked up every musical indication in my score. I have some general idea about what to do, but I haven't totally done my homework. This is nothing to be proud of, this habit of doing "some." A cursory look at my life as a whole reveals plenty of areas where that is exactly what I have done. I have done some. I have done some good writing, some hard weeding, some focused practicing, some deep yoga, some thoughtful teaching. But what about the rest? What would it actually look like to "totally" do something? The more I thought about this, the more I realized that it is a myth to imagine that we can totally do anything. We will never "totally" understand the hearts and minds of our students. We will never "totally" learn all the piano repertoire. We will never "totally" be the pianist, or teacher, or human being that we are striving to become. Looking at it this way, changes the equation a bit. And this, in a coded childish way, may have been what Kathryn was trying to say: I only truly honestly know x. Of course, the goal of "totally" is a good one, and one that we should strive for in our performance preparations and in our lives in general, but most of life is about the "some" of what we have done. Next time Dennis comes to my studio, my students should be well prepared to answer his questions. (Although it would help if he would give them to us in advance. In writing, please.) But to imagine that there aren't always going to be holes somewhere is to only deceive ourselves. However, maybe now our preparation of "some" will be more honest than our claim of "totally" ever was. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=162 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=162 Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:54:17 -0600 My latest column in American Music Teacher has just hit the mailboxes, and I have been humbled by the outpouring of response. Readers have written to share their own frustrations and disillusionment with the so-called musical establishment. It has been a thrill to check e-mail the last week and hear what you have to say on the topic. Clearly, there are a lot of rebels out there. None of us are alone. As it happens, this column is my last one for AMT. I had a two year agreement with the magazine, which was then extended by a year. This issue marks the final one for now. It has been quite a privilege to muse out loud in such a forum. I certainly don't plan to stop writing (any one have an inside track with a publisher?); I will stay faithful to this blog, and I'm sure that from time to time my thoughts will appear either in AMT or somewhere else. For the many, many responses you have sent during my Marking Time tenure, Thank You. It has been a true honor to be on the receiving end of your stories. The last three years have been quite a ride. Here's to the rebels everywhere..... PS. One reader writing this week forwarded this link to a music video on YouTube. Thanks to YouTube, we have access to all kinds of wonderful (and some less-than-wonderful!) expressions of music-making. We all need these reminders from time to time, that music-making is far bigger than the small, rigid box of our piano teacher profession. This video link I received this last week is truly joyful. Check it out. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=161 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=161 Sun, 06 Jun 2010 08:55:14 -0600 Meander is one of my favorite words in the English language. We meandered along the path. Meandering down the road.... The word carries with it implications of a slower, more leisurely, more thoughtful life than my current one, but one that I long for. I want time to meander and wander aimlessly. I want time to linger and daydream. We had designed this vacation to be bookended by time in Boston, with one free, no-structure or schedule, week in between. This, of course, is a page taken straight out of Matt's self-titled "Journey of Discovery" last May, but an idea he wanted to repeat with "The Blonde" of his previous narrative. After our tour of the Beacon Hill gardens, we pick up a rental car and head out of Boston. (Where should we go: North, South, West? More importantly: Where to have lunch? Ah, on such simple choices the next week would unwind.) Zipping north towards a late lunch of lobsters in Rockport, I decide that the trip needs a name. "This will not be a repeat of the 'Journey of Discovery,'" I announce definitively. "Nor will it be a 'road trip' of any kind. We aren't in a frat house, after all. What we are doing is 'meandering'. We are, in fact, 'meandering' through Massachusetts." And so, with that, the trip was christened. Rockport holds a special place in our memories, because when we lived here, it was our very first adventure outside of Boston. We moved during the Verizon phone strike of 2000, which is unmemorable if you had a working phone, but since we didn't, and didn't have cell phones either (Imagine!), this was a serious situation. We moved into our tiny apartment in Kenmore Square (writing this, I almost typed "Fenway Park" instead of "Kenmore Square", which is what it felt like when the Red Sox were playing--that we were actually living in the ball park itself.), and spent the first few weeks trying to find work and working payphones on which to call our families and assure them that during this grand experiment in dropping out of responsible adulthood, we were still safe and sound. But about a month after settling in, we had several part-time jobs and a working phone, and it was time to have an adventure. We boarded the train north early one Saturday morning and about an hour later got off in Rockport. We spent the day roaming the little shops and eating lobsters dipped in melted butter. Everything about this experience was thrilling to a couple of kids from Kansas; that we could get on a train and in a mere hour be somewhere interesting blew our minds. There was nowhere interesting to end up an hour in any direction from Parsons, Kansas, where I spent my junior high years. Our Rockport adventure was an early indicator that living in New England would be full of wonderful surprises. Rockport, ten years later, is delightfully the same. The lobsters are as good as ever. The boats are still busy in the water off the coast. I sit on the end of the pier and listen to the waves crash against the rocks. I want to bottle the sound of the ocean and take it home with me. After a couple hours, we get back in the car and land in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for the night. Portsmouth, we decide, would give us options when we wake up the next morning. We could head further into New Hampshire or follow the coast up through Maine, or even turn around and be back in Massachusetts in no time at all. Officially, Meandering Through Massachusetts (With Side-trips) begins. And so, as unstructured and as indecisive as that, the next week unrolls. We wander through New Hampshire for a day and a half, drive through Franconia, stroll through Dartmouth College in Hanover. We stumble upon the famous Mt. Washington Hotel, and spend twenty lovely minutes hanging out in rocking chairs on the porch that circles the back of the huge hotel, taking in the view. We end up in the Woodstock, Vermont area for a day. We have a drink in the Woodstock Inn.... One afternoon, I spend a perfect hour lying on a park bench in the park reading a book... After three days, weary already of the packing up every morning and ending up somewhere new every night, we decide to find a place to stay put for a few days. The temperature is climbing into the 90s, and the humidity levels are unbearable. We are, after all, desert rats these days. Slowing down our pace to a crawl sounds just about right in this heat. We head into New York, and find ourselves in Saratoga Springs for 36 hours: two nights in a row in the same wonderfully air-conditioned hotel room. I do laundry. Matt sits for hours in a coffeehouse and reads. I wander through the park and neighborhoods, trying not to stare too noticeably into the houses and gardens of these spectacular Victorian homes. We discover a fantastic restaurant, Wheatfield's, which was so good we ate there twice. We rent bicycles and ride out past the horse tracks. We pedal out to Yaddo, the artist colony on the edge of town and tour through the gardens. On this hot afternoon, we are the only ones there, the place not yet opened up for the season. I begin to strategize about how we could land a residency. Side-trips completed, we direct our GPS, "Stella", back into Massachusetts. (I had never travelled with a GPS, but became strangely fond of "Stella". Here was another woman's voice nagging my husband so I didn't have to.) We have a lunch date with Alice Parker, who has, over the years, become a friend and important mentor in our lives. Alice lives on a farm in the northern Berkshires. We drink iced tea and sit in her spacious studio. "Someday, you'll have a studio like this," my sweet husband whispers to me. Alice's father bought this farm before he was married. He would take the ladies he courted out to see it. Alice's mother was the first person who responded positively. When Alice was 10, her parents built her a cabin all of her own, down by the creek. Imagining Alice as a child making her way down to her cabin--in the dark, (and snow!) --to sleep, I am struck: these were no helicopter parents. We have lunch in the local inn, talking pedagogy and music. An hour with Alice is like getting an injection of inspiration. After lunch, we get back into the car and direct Stella to Stockbridge, home of our dear friends, Max and Jean. Jean was my pedagogy teacher at New England Conservatory. She and Max are part of the "Thanksgiving" group that gathers in Albuquerque every few years, so we have managed to stay in touch. They have been encouraging us for years to come visit, "Come. We have lots of room. Come and stay with us." Finally, we are. They live on the top of a very steep driveway in a heaven of a house nestled in the woods. At night, the window over our heads pours in cool night air. This is good, because the daytime temperatures are stifling. Jean and I have a project, she is sorting through her library, determined that a good portion of it will be shipped down to my colorful New Mexico studio. I am honored to be on the receiving end, not only of her books and music, but her wisdom and stories for 24 hours. She and Max spent 30+ years in Boston, and then another 15 in Princeton. They know everyone, and everyone, it seems, lives "just down the road." George Shearing is a friend of theirs; they used to do sing-alongs with him at the piano. For a brief day and a half, we stay. Matt hardly leaves a big overstuffed chair in the corner of the den. Jean and I sort music and then take a field trip to Kripalu, the famous yoga center in the Berkshires. I sneak in a hot, steamy yoga class with at least 50 other sweating bodies. It is hot, not because it is Bikram yoga, but because the temperature outside feel like mid-July. Max makes strong gin and tonics both evenings and we sit out on the screened-in porch and talk. And talk. And talk.....There is no end to the things that need to be talked about with these thoughtful people. Too soon, we are standing in line at the post office, shipping a heavy box of music home, and steering the car back on the Mass Pike towards Boston. Our meandering is nearly done. We have two more days in Boston. Time enough for another bowl of chowder at Legal Seafoods. Time to walk along the harbor to the new contemporary art museum. (Fantastic views. Terrible collection.) Time to spend hours in the Harvard Book Store, and to visit the Fogg Museum and the Glass Flowers housed in the Harvard Natural History Museum. Time for long walks down Commonwealth Avenue and through the Public Garden and Common. Time for a bowl of pho and a dinner in the North End. Time for one last nostalgic look at this timeless city. It looks, painfully and comfortingly, exactly the same as in my memories.  I look at the view over the Charles as the Red line pops up out of the tunnel between Kendall and Charles street stations and think, this scene is the same one that has been imprinted on my mind all this time.  It is reassuring to know that it hasn't changed, that it will be here waiting for the next visit.  "Next time we shouldn't wait so long," Matt tells me.  I smile, and start thinking longingly toward home.  Home:  our little cottage in the desert, my piano, my work, our cats, the garden.  Home.   http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=160 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=160 Sun, 30 May 2010 09:03:16 -0600 When we moved to Boston we had a thousand books. When we left Boston, we had acquired at least a thousand more. Moving from our tiny apartment in Kenmore Square under the famous red, white and blue Citgo sign, to an even tinier one (how was it possible to downsize from 400 square feet?) on Beacon Hill, it was the books that almost undid us. My friend Missy, visiting from Missouri, cheerfully helped us lug boxes and boxes of books up to the second floor, and together we unloaded them on every possible surface. We piled them high in the bookcases, stacked them in precarious stacks on the piano, shoved them onto the wide 18th century windowsills. "You know, Amy," she remarked after several hours. "Most people don't have this many books." When we moved to Albuquerque, the moving company we hired did everything short of refusing to move the books. Coming out to do the estimate, the man in charge of determining our "weight" announced, "You don't want us to move your books. It'll double your price. You want to box them up yourself and mail them media rate. It'll save you money." And he hadn't even seen our two offices brimming with music. Determined to stay inside our moving budget, we complied with his suggestion and boxed and then hauled--on foot no less!-600 pounds of books to the post office to be shipped to New Mexico. It may have saved us money, but it made no sense to me that this method was cheaper and more practical than putting the books on the truck headed straight to our new address in the desert. Within 24 hours of arriving in the city, I am reminded of how Boston's bookstores are my downfall. Just before we left, our handyman had installed another set of bookcases in our study, making a beautiful wall of bookshelves just waiting to be filled. A mere hour and a half after arriving to Boston, we stumble into Trident Bookstore on Newbury street, a favorite haunt. Back in the day, I spent many an hour there sifting through the shelves, ducking in after a long day of work for a late night bowl of soup. I waited out most of the great "Nor'easter" of 2001 in a corner window, reading and writing and watching the snow come down on the almost deserted street outside. I whiled away many Sunday mornings in that cafe eating pancakes and writing letters. This trip I leave Trident with two of the four hardcover books I will manage to purchase in the first two days in Boston. Hardcover books are heavy, as Matt -- waving his Kindle loaded with dozens of books -- gleefully reminds me as I lug my volumes around in my over-weighted shoulder bag. This is only the beginning. The next day, we spend a morning wandering the almost familiar-and-yet-not-quite halls and rooms of the Museum of Fine Arts. Where's the Monet I remember in this room? Wait! They've moved the Cassatts. That Renoir I love is no longer where I think it should be. When we lived here, I had a membership to the MFA, and spent countless hours in that building. With a membership pass, I could justify coming in for even a few minutes to stare at a single painting before dashing out into my busy life again. I used to curl up on the couches under the Sargent murals and write. I thought I knew that museum like the back of my hand, the paintings becoming not just acquaintances, but dearly beloved friends. A morning here is good for my museum-starved soul. I live in a place rich in the visual arts, something I appreciate, but I miss these collections housed on the East Coast. I have favorite paintings all over this museum, my dad's game of picking just one "to take home" from every room a strong habit. My favorite Sargent painting probably isn't the famous Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, on loan right now to a museum in Spain. Of course, that is a haunting work, flanked as it is with the two huge blue and white vases portrayed in the painting. But I love more the small portrait of a fellow artist painting in his bedroom. Around him are the messy signs of living---tangled sheets (so many colors of white!) flung around the bed and draped on the floor. This one, quiet and domestic, an artist at work gets me every time. Afterwards, we are scurrying to lunch in Chinatown in the drizzle that had set in for the duration (the weather a perfect foil to my desire to start sobbing the minute the plane touches the ground), when we remembered a great used bookstore off on a side street downtown: Brattle Book Store. One of the oldest bookstores in the country, the sign reads. Inside the place is crowded, stuffed with treasures. My head reels trying to take it in. There is an entire shelf of books about clocks. As we browse, a woman at the counter noisily fusses at the taciturn store owner, "....just closed because they can't handle the rent. But you must have a high rent. How can you stay in business?" "We own the building," the man answers curtly. "But the mortgage? This place can't possibly cover the mortgage, can it? Will you close too?" Her voice is grating. "We aren't closing," he barks at her. I don't blame him, ready to strangle the woman without an ounce of social decorum myself. The point is well taken however. One of our favorite bookstores, the legendary Victor Hugo on Newbury Street, has closed since we were here. We knew this, having read about it in the newspaper some years ago. Walking down Newbury, we try to remember which storefront it was, but all the businesses with their identical-looking, trendy clothing look exactly the same. Nothing about their sleek interiors hint at their previous life as a dusty old bookshop. The absence of Victor Hugo isn't the only thing different. Boston is both eerily exactly the same and strangely not. We keep stumbling upon places we loved that we had forgotten about completely. I have probably spent literally weeks of my time on earth in the Cafe Expressos littered around the city. Matt and I used to sit in the one across from Boston University together. One summer large cafe lattes were two for the price of one. There was another one in a Newbury Street storefront basement. I could read the entire Sunday paper over a pot of tea and watch the feet go by outside my cozy corner window seat. Regularly, I would pick up a cappuccino on my way to my piano pedagogy class at New England Conservatory, and it was this location that we fell upon on our way to the MFA that first morning. A forgotten treasure. Like Victor Hugo, some places are gone. Driven out by high rents and a bad economy, or changed or rearranged like the paintings in the MFA. Our favorite restaurant in Chinatown is no more---replaced by an equally good, but much more spiffed up version of the old dive we liked. Filene's Department Store and its infamous basement is shuttered and closed, a major loss that we had somehow missed reading about. Our T stop on Charles street is redone and almost unrecognizable from the shabby station we knew. But of course, I've changed too in the intervening years since I lived here, and there are moments where the juxtaposition of my present and past selves in this place is particularly startling. One night we are having drinks and oysters in the legendary Four Seasons bar. We are talking, debriefing about the past few busy months and trying to make some sense of our crazy lives. Matt excuses himself to go to the bathroom and I glance out the window and am stunned to see the scene overlooking the Public Garden. I had forgotten where I was, so deeply engrossed as I had been in our conversation. Sitting there, I can almost hear my present and past selves click together. (Leaving the bar, I see tall vases of formal floral arrangements interspersed with vases filled with long sprigs of rosemary. Rosemary! I have this growing abundantly at home. Next time we have a party I am going to steal this trick and fill cut glasses with rosemary wands. If the Four Seasons can do this and call it flower arranging, so can I.) As a surprise, Matt has bought tickets to the Beacon Hill Hidden Garden Tour. This is something we did the year we lived on Beacon Hill. The small gardens were a complete surprise, secretly nestled in the alleys and pathways behind the stately town homes. Surprising no one more than myself, now I too am a gardener, weeding and maintaining my own tiny corner of the universe back home. After two days of rain and drizzle, it is a perfect May day---75 degrees and sunny. After the first garden--a minuscule area behind the Church of the Advent, Matt scoffs, "You'd be on this tour after one year." Secretly, I agree, if for no other reason that this neighborhood has size in its favor; farming my 1/4 acre back in New Mexico suddenly looks ambitious indeed. But I could so fall for these beds of hostas, the dozens of variations in green are heartbreaking, the shade gardens are stunningly beautiful. We can't do any of this in the desert, our gardens will never be a study in the color green, every square inch baked with high altitude sun. Even more than the miniature patches of green, I love the glimpses into the homes with their cozy basement kitchens and sitting rooms. Certainly, these are nothing like the Beacon Hill apartment I knew and lived in. Every centimeter of these places is wallpapered with pastel florals; I find myself rebelliously wanted to take a bucket of Mexican orange-yellow or deep purple to throw on the walls just to offset the sophisticated stuffiness. By the looks of things, everyone has be to willing to hang portraits of early American forefathers in their dining rooms, sit on couches upholstered with large pink flowers, and eat every meal off old English china, a combination that makes me shudder. If the decor wasn't enough to make me reconsider the implications of these addresses, the conversations overheard while standing in line in front of 64 Chestnut and 38 Mount Vernon might be reason to give me pause: "....she was beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. But she was mean, and I told my son after they broke up, 'Next time get a girl with a weight problem or something....'" "....so we compromised and we are spending the summer on the Cape...." "....the dogs are at 'camp' for the afternoon. Most days they spend with Jennifer our dog walker, but today...." And yet, in spite of the reminder of what an exclusive and closed society Boston has always been, I dearly love these quaint cobbled streets with their echos of the ghosts of the rich and colorful past almost visible in the air. Our old---and not in a charming way at all--apartment on the corner of Revere and Grove looks exactly the same. In the next block, we see a young man walking his brand-new bulldog puppy, which delights Matt, who loves the breed, and is on a fruitless campaign to add one to our household. The owner generously allows us to spend 10 minutes playing and holding the puppy, and even I was charmed. (But Matt still can't have one.) On one hand, I could step back into my old paths of living like I had never left. This city is utterly familiar. "How does it feel to be back?" I ask Matt. "Could you walk back into our old life again?" "It feels exactly right to be here, but Amy, I love our life at home," he says gently. As he says this, my mind scans over the footprints our of lives: our sun-drenched brightly colored house, our glorious garden with a least a hundred roses in bloom right this minute, and the two cats, who at this very moment are no doubt curled up asleep together. "Amy has a profound connection with Boston." We were having dinner with friends the week before we left. "But it's not like that for me," Matt said. "Home is wherever Amy is." Remember this, I hear something else click softly into place. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=159 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=159 Sun, 23 May 2010 09:03:51 -0600 I have been thinking about geography a great deal lately. Ten years ago (Ten years! Where did it go?) Matt and I moved from Texas to Boston and encountered a whole new set of geographical definitions. "Where are you from?" new acquaintances asked, not quite able to identify the rhythm of my speech. "The Midwest," I responded. "Oh, I'm from the Midwest too. I'm from Ohio," one person told me. Ohio? Ohio isn't in the Midwest. "What would you call Kansas?" I wondered out loud. "The Plains." "And Missouri?" "The South." Wow. Are we going by Civil War divisions here? One person asked if St. Louis was in Virginia. Another thought Kansas City might be in Oklahoma, which only goes to show you that our American musicals are teaching geography more effectively than our schools. At a party someone said, "Hey! I'm from the Midwest. I'm from Buffalo." As in New York? Speechless, my mouth dropped open. If moving out to the East Coast rearranged my views on geography, moving to New Mexico seven years ago was just as enlightening. Colleagues and friends in Boston overwhelmingly had the same response: Well, you are moving closer to your families. We most certainly did not. Out families live in Missouri. This is still quite a substantial distance. There will be no popping home for dinner or to do laundry. It's too far even for a weekend visit. But after the years of conversations about geography with New Englanders, I was not surprised by this attitude. I knew that Bostonians understanding of everything west of the Hudson was suspect at best. What was surprising is that my mother had these same distorted views. She thought moving to New Mexico meant that we were moving home. "I am so glad you are moving back," she said repeatedly in our weekly Sunday afternoon conversations. My mother has no excuse for this ignorance. She teaches 4th grade in St. Louis and 4th graders are supposed to learn US geography. But every year she starts her teaching in the Northeast and her class gets bogged down somewhere around Pennsylvania. The 4th graders under her instruction have never made it to the Southwest. Unfortunately, this means Momma has never made it to the Southwest in her comprehension of geography either. Gently, I tried repeatedly to enlighten her, but she would have none of it. Somewhere deep down inside, she is still a little girl from central Kansas and even though she is living on the far eastern border of Missouri, her world is still orientated from that little Kansas town. "Mmmmmmm...." she said doubtfully in response to my attempts at enlightenment, "it just doesn't seem that far." There are fewer states in between, Momma, that is true. But these states are big ones, full of vast empty spaces. It's taken all these years, but Momma seems to now understand that the 1000+ miles between us is indeed a fur piece. I have always known with every molecule of my being that this was a foreign, far-away country, for nothing about desert living will ever seem quite like home. I say that and with the next breath will confess that I have learned to love it here, and have no intention of leaving. The patterns of the seasons in this state of enchantment, the spectacular weather we enjoy, the circle of friends that has become our extended family has all become worth more than the promise of a greener life somewhere else. I couldn't easily leave our darling New Mexican cottage, or this funky neighborhood we live in. My garden is spectacular this year, finally brimming with results and glory after the years of sweat and hard work. I have learned the art of gardening in the desert of all places. I shake my head at the thought. And yet. On some visceral level this will never be home. I know this and have even resigned myself to this truth. Most days I am not even saddened by this thought, having so firmly grown roots where I was planted here. But at the same time, I know where home is: home is New England. Specifically, my heart resides in the cobbled streets of Boston and the villages of the Berkshires and western Massachusetts. The fact that this is not actually the area of the country that I grew up in has nothing to do with it, I've learned. You may or may not have the fortune to ever live in your heart's home. You can build a home somewhere, and that I have done. But it is not the same thing. I have been thinking about all this lately, because this month Matt and I are going to spend almost two weeks meandering around Boston and New England. In the seven years since we moved, we have never been back. We have talked about it from time to time, but something always prevented us from visiting---the price of the plane ticket, the long travel days required, another compelling obligation somewhere. Underneath all these excuses has been a pretty deeply rooted reluctance on my part as well. Living in Boston was so important to me; I have never felt so at home anywhere. The idea of New England has become almost sacred in my memories. Would I still feel the same after all these years? And if I didn't, would that rob me of something special? "Amy, I can't see you in turquoise," a friend told me when we announced we were moving to New Mexico. "Matt, can Amy leave Boston?" concerned friends asked him. The fact that I did will always be one of my greatest personal triumphs. The fact I am going back may be another. "I may not return," I tell friends. Imagining being back in our old neighborhood, walking those streets my feet knew so well makes me weepy and fragile. Home, however we define it, will always be one of the holiest words I know. Thinking about this, I pace the wooden floors of my tiny colorful home, chasing the sunlight from room to room. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=158 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=158 Sun, 16 May 2010 09:59:47 -0600 Avoid sharp things like corners, scissor points, words and blades and cheddar cheese. Eschew whatever's heavy, fast, and cumbersome: meteorites, rumbly truck and stinky bus, hockey players, falling vaults, and buffalo. Steer clear of headlines, bank advices, legal language, papal bulls, and grocery ads. Every morning, listen to baroque divertimenti, romantic operas, Hildegarde von Bingen hymns. Evenings, read some lines from Shakespeare's comedies; do a page of algebra; study shapes of clouds and alchemy; make fun of your husbands feet. Practice listening like a doe at the edge of the earth's deep woods, but learn to disregard most everything you hear (especially your father and father-in-law). Learn some Indian lullabies; speak with magic stones beneath your tongue. Finally, I wish, avoid all tears-except that the world and time will have their way and weep we must. Perhaps enough is said of grief and happiness to realize that any child of yours will live a lifetime utterly beguiled (as my child is) by your bright smile, your wild and Irish laugh. -Charles Darling from The Saints of Diminished Capacity http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=157 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=157 Sun, 09 May 2010 10:40:11 -0600 I have become a woman of indeterminate age. I know this because of a conversation that occurred with one of my students this semester. Brett and I were talking about an activity that I had assigned for the next performance class: all the students were to bring their iPods and play a song of their choice for the class. This, I had assured them, could be anything: rock, folk, blues, heavy-metal. My only requirement was that they had to give a brief report on the song or the band that consisted of "Five Fun Facts". The students were psyched about this task, talking for weeks about what music they might bring. "Do you know the Goo-Goo Dolls?" Brett asked me. "Nope," I responded. "But they are a really old band," Brett said. "How old is 'old'?" I quizzed him. "Oh, like the 1990's," he answered. "Not going to be old enough, I'm afraid," I laughed, thinking that I hadn't regularly listened to popular music since college. Brett was silent; I could see him thinking. Finally he blurted out: "Amy, I don't know how old you are, but you aren't that old!" I don't know how old you are, but you aren't that old...could be my by-line these days. I have suddenly become somewhere between a young hip adult and the age of their parents. Actually, for most of my elementary kids I am exactly the age of their parents, or even in some cases, older. But for Brett, a junior in high school, I am of mysterious age. Old enough, certainly, to be a real adult with a grown-up life and accouterments, but young enough that I still seem relevant to their world. This, as I think about it, is an ideal age, but one that I realize will last about five minutes. Then just as suddenly, I will be simply old and outdated, or like my master's degree and my first GRE score, "expired." Going back to school only drives this point home. I am easily 15 years older than the youngest graduate students, their bachelor's degrees still hot in their hands. And yet, I am relatively young compared to the next older generation going back to school in pursuit of a career change. Not that this indeterminate age is helping me, for these days the learning curve to being a student is steep. Research isn't conducted like it was 15 years ago, when we still held actual books and bound journals in our sweaty palms. Entering the university library, I find only computer terminals and a Starbucks. I have to negotiate on-line data bases to dig up journal articles, and there are, quite literally, hundreds of different data bases to choose from. It makes my head spin. I have always used Chicago publication style for citations; now I am being buried alive by the rules and paperclip counting found in my 6th edition APA publication manual (Greer & Greer, 2010; Who Gives a Damn, 2009). For all my writing credentials, I haven't written anything remotely scholarly in over a decade. I feel gypped that I can't get points for self-expression or artistic ideas. No one cares, I am quickly learning. But heaven forbid if my citation comma is in the wrong place. Deep into my "Quantitative Research in Education" class (which I have renamed "Quantum Physics," because I think it makes me sound smarter) I am learning the art of counting paperclips. Or commas. Or peer-reviewed journal articles, as the case may be. Ever the skeptic, I doubt every one of these studies, because I have already learned that researchers can make any findings suit their hypothesis. I come home from class with my head bursting with unfamiliar terms (casual-comparative research, ethnographic research, moderating variables---this is all made up, I am convinced...), and wonder how much steeper the climb towards this degree could get. I plow my way through completely unreadable feminist theories of psychology, and I begin to suspect that my bullshit meter is simply too sensitive for academia. This is silly minutiae, all of it. It is hard to make myself care. "You know, I've gone back to school," I explain to a Jonathan when he asked if I can come hear his Friday night gig at a country club. "I don't know if I can get there." He is young and incredulous. This high schooler thinks adulthood means no more school, an age he can't get to it fast enough. "Why would you do that?" he asks me. Matt overhears this conversation from the next room. "Amy is trying for her GED," he calls out. "Oh," Jonathan says innocently, "I don't know what that is, but it sounds really important." Important or not, I am struggling to keep my head above water. "We're drowning over here," I e-mail a friend after missing our early morning yoga and meditation time. Several hours later I open the door to trip over two life vests outside our sun-room, Patti's good-humored response to my apology. I spent years as a lifeguard; it's time to remember a few survival skills. "Sometimes it's just a matter of swimming fast," Patti reminds me when we talk later that day. "It's good information to realize you can do that." Swimming I can manage; it's the flailing around in water over my head that is getting me in trouble. Last week I walked up to our neighborhood coffeehouse to buy an emergency bag of coffee for the next morning. The next day it was nowhere to be found, which is less of an indication of the state of my house as it is evidence of my state of mind. Later that week I lost a cordless phone, paging it repeatedly to no avail. I have been cleaning out closets lately on the theory that less clutter in my life would also mean less stress, so it is possible that the bag of coffee and the phone are now both at Goodwill. At any rate, these days are taking every ounce of the goodwill and humor we can muster. An occasional life vest doesn't hurt either. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=156 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=156 Sun, 02 May 2010 08:32:42 -0600 It is a sad commentary on my career that "Happy Birthday" is the most requested song I am ever asked to play. This fact only supports my theory that practical piano skills are a lot more useful in the real world than beautifully crafted performances of any Beethoven sonata. Or Chopin waltz. Or Bach prelude. Not that I am about to abandon that music, but it does give me perspective. I want my students to be able to play the glorious traditional repertoire of our instrument, but they better be able to play "Happy Birthday" on demand as well. To this end, once students are comfortably playing two-hand accompaniment patterns in any key (chords in the RH; roots in the LH---usually just the standard I-IV-I-V-V7-I chord progression that makes up our lives), I start in on the Happy Birthday sequence. First the student picks out the melody beginning on C. Happy Birthday isn't the easiest song to pick out by ear, as many students discover. It has a range of an octave, with lots of skips and jumps. And then there is that tricky B-flat, which often throws a kid who might otherwise assume they are in the key of C. (Just because the piece began on C, doesn't mean it is in the key of C. This is a hard lesson to learn.) Once the student has found the tune, we write out the words and sketch in bar lines. What meter is this song? I ask them. Most students get it immediately, but again, because of the pickup notes, the words don't line up to the measures so kids who think about this too much sometimes mistakenly guess 4/4. I pencil in boxes on the first beats of each measure and ask them to find chords that fit. Only once, in all my years of teaching this, has a kid come back with this done correctly on the first try. The kids think they are being smart to match the melody note with the harmony, but Happy Birthday is harmonized against a lot of suspensions, which makes it tricky. Then there are the students that have already forgotten that they are in the key of F, and try to harmonize the song with chords in the key of C, which doesn't work too long. Happy Birthday, we painfully learn, is not so easy after all. But in the end, with a big arpeggiated introduction, and a full 2-hand waltz pattern (no one needs the melody played, I tell students, it will sound bigger and "fancier"--they love anything "fancy"---if you play only harmony), the Happy Birthday assignment is always a hit. It stays on their practice assignments forever, and periodically I will ask for it, just to make sure it still is working. Students are happy to tell me anytime they are able to make use of this ability: Guess what? I got to play Happy Birthday at my friend's party on Saturday! and we often sing it together with someone playing it in our monthly performance classes, honoring whoever might have a birthday that month. It was just such a moment that inspired our recent Chopin birthday party in my mid-high/high school class in February. In that class students have to come prepared with at least "5 Fun Facts" to share with the group about the composer or the piece they are performing, and in January several kids played and talked about Chopin. His 200th birthday, they realized, was in February. "Let's have a party!" suggested one enthusiastic high schooler. "We'll make cupcakes!" I'm always up for cupcakes, not to mention anything that gets them looking forward to performance class with anticipation. To add to the fun, I invited the kids to bring their ipods and to be ready to play a song of their choice for the class. "It could be anything," I told them. "Bring your favorite song." "And 5 Fun Facts," another kid suggested, "Let's do 5 Fun Facts on our song for once." So that month, after doing our customary scale spelling drills and performances of their prepared pieces, out came the cupcakes, the sparkling lemonade in wine glasses ("Wow. This is really fancy, Amy," one kid remarked.), and the ipods. For nearly an hour we sat around and ate and talked about popular music. "This was the BEST CLASS EVER," several kids told me the next week. They were right, I must confess, for not only were the cupcakes fantastic, but listening to the kids share music they love was something worth repeating. I want to cultivate this enthusiasm for music of all kinds, and this idea that a great evening can be had out of listening to music with friends. The original inspiration for the evening, Chopin's birthday, was a bit neglected I'm afraid, although surely he was there in spirit. I suspect a tradition has begun with that group, and that they will go to any ends to find composers' birthdays to celebrate every month, cupcakes and all. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=155 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=155 Sun, 25 Apr 2010 09:36:07 -0600 I have long maintained that technique work does not merely foster physical coordination; it also encourages mental gymnastics. The more challenging the exercise, the more it seems to stretch brain muscles into new places and shapes. This mental engagement and challenge will certainly improve our playing, for it builds new connections among different parts of our brains. I tell my students over and over again that our job when practicing is to take the things we think we know so well-those 5-Finger Positions, chord progressions, and scales-and turn them upside down, inside out, shake them vigorously and rattle their cages. Only then can we claim to really know them. All following variations require students to split their focus and do something different with each hand, a skill that is absolutely crucial to layering sounds, articulations, and voices, not to mention just playing the piano in general. I have found that the first pair of brainteasers comes together more quickly if we make lists of words and phrases to describe each hand. One hand is heavy like an elephant, the other light as a feather. One hand stomps loudly, the other tip-toes softly, and so on. Here is a place where language informs technique. These exercises do not just scramble the brain; we can employ them to think artistically as well. I often have to assign the next examples repeatedly over a period of time before students can voice their hands differently. I have learned the hard way that these examples can't be assigned in the same week. It helps to start with "ghosting": asking one hand to mime silently on the keys, while the other hand plays forte, but even so, most students need to concentrate on ghosting a single hand before trying to switch to the other. And typically, if your students are anything like mine, they will whine about this one, "Miss Amy! This is soooooo hard!" Assume that these exercises are going inspire great drama and wailing and gnashing of teeth. But after they have mastered the ghosting with one hand while playing forte with the other, then try assigning piano against the forte. But beware: this is also rarely mastered the first time around and will inspire more whining. This skill of controlling a different dynamic in each hand has to be circled back to again and again as students progress. 59. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do play LH forte, RH ghost 60. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do play RH forte, LH ghost 61. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do play RH piano, LH forte 62. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do play LH piano, RH forte The next two variations really test how well students know the patterns in each position. I find it helps to identify "markers." For example, in the first exercise, which sets up the positions a fifth apart, the thumbs both play the same note, regardless of how far apart the hands are spaced. As students move up by half-step through the keys, I urge them to move first the left hand and then match the right hand thumb to the left hand thumb. Likewise, in the second example, the fifth fingers match and can be used as a marker through the progression of the keys. If students need more challenge, you can assign various articulations and dynamics to each hand. Of course, all of these can be done in either major or minor positions. 63. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do RH begins in G major; LH begins in C major 64. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do RH begins in F major; LH begins in C major http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=154 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=154 Sun, 18 Apr 2010 08:04:15 -0600 We have been suspicious this winter that we might have mice. I shudder to even write that sentence, and lately with the weather beginning to warm up, I had been hopeful that our days of rodent cohabitation are over. In recent weeks the cats have not been spending long hours guarding the baseboards; there has been no tell-tell rodent evidence left behind for a while now. Things have been looking up. Then, several weeks ago, Matt was out of town for a few days judging choirs in Las Cruces. When Matt is gone, the cats sleep with me, something Matt doesn't usually tolerate since sleeping with the cats means a fair amount of not sleeping at all, due to their antics. In the middle of the night, I wake up to hear a loud crash in the study. Godiva went flying off the bed in search of the party, which immediately told me this was not a break-in, but rather feline-initiated chaos. "Uh-oh," I thought to myself, "they are chasing something." And I promptly fall back asleep. The next morning I was stumbling around the house with my first cup of coffee (barefoot!), when I stepped on something squishy. It was a chewed up-mouse, just waiting for me on the rug under my desk. I screamed. Loudly. I screamed again. The cats looked alarmed, and Yun-Sun ran away guiltily. After I screamed some more, I scooped up the dead critter, (all the while thinking how very much it looked like the grey toy mice around here, only with blood and entrails hanging out), and resumed my morning routines. About an hour later, I went to the piano to begin my practicing for the day. Under my piano bench was another---another!!!--half-consumed mouse. This was unbelievable. The cats have lived quiet, sheltered (boring, they would tell you) lives for the last 5 years under our roof. Other than the annual trips to the vet, they have never even been outside. I would not have thought they would even know what to do with a mouse, let alone successfully murder two in one night. I will never be able to look at them the same way. ("Those blog entries just write themselves, don't they?" Matt said, when I called to tell him about our night of mayhem and carnage.) Of course no one needs to remind me that this aggressive behavior is exactly what I had instructed them to do earlier this year when the mice first appeared. I just never dreamed they would take me so literally, or more to the point, leave their carcasses exactly where I would trip over them. "Yep, that's what cats do," a friend tells me later when I share my horror. "They leave them as trophies where they know you'll find them." "Could they have possibly picked better spots?" Matt remarks. "Your desk and your piano. They've got your number, Amy." But I am still traumatized by the whole thing. I can't sit by and do nothing and hope that this is a one-time only killing spree. "What do I do now?" I ask another friend. "Nothing," she replies. "Your cats are doing just fine. They are taking care of business for you." Now every morning, I put on slippers as I get out of bed and cautiously search the house for any dead rodents. My cats have never looked so well fed. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=153 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=153 Sun, 11 Apr 2010 08:46:51 -0600 "Amy," my true love used to say, "I am marrying you because Ella is unavailable." That's a Take She's just finished mourning for us all the fact that spring is here above the buzz and clatter of this crowded cafe where I have stopped reading the paper because it's impolite to do anything while Ella Fitzgerald is singing. And in the pause that follows, I imagine her turning away from the bright, entranced face of the microphone, kidding with the sound technicians while putting on her hat and a pale green sweater before she steps out of the studio and into a spring day as it played out in 1951, the year I was born, stopping on the way home at a little deli to pick up something for supper, turning words like macaroni and potato salad into tiny American songs for the pimply kid behind the counter who thinks nothing of it, who has his own problems, who bears his own secret beauty through the world. -George Bilgere http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=152 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=152 Sun, 04 Apr 2010 08:13:41 -0600 Ok.  Now I am begging. Groveling, actually.  On my knees. Because I am now a scholar (they tell us all the time in graduate school that we are "scholars".  I laugh out loud every time anyone says this.), I need data for my research on gender and the piano student.  I can't tell you more than that because I understand that then I would be "leading" my inquiries, and that is a no-no.  Totally forbidden in the academic and unbiased (this is also a joke) world.   I am hoping that these posts will get me data for a minimum of 500 students.  Right now, I have, well, hmmmm....not that many.  As soon as I get my quota I will return to writing witty and amusing anecdotes about my fairly mundane life.  (This threat is not coming out as I intended it....) Just so you know exactly what you might be getting into by helping my research, here are the super scholarly research questions.  You can email me  your answers (click on the "contact" link in the upper right hand corner of this post).  Although I won't be using this information for anything besides a class project, (thereby sidestepping any ethical issues), I am happy to send out my findings to anyone who might want the results.   Thank you.  And thank you. ******************************Super Scholarly Research Questions**************************       Total number of students:   Breakdown of boys/girls: E-mail address: First name: State: Have you seen any change in the gender make-up of your studio in the last 5 years?  10 years?  20 years?  If so how?  (If you are like me and don't actually keep good records of past rosters, one teacher reminded me that this information could be collected from old studio programs. Brilliant!) Any other thoughts about gender issues among your piano students? Thank you!   Thank you!  Thank you! http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=151 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=151 Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:47:29 -0600 Last week, apropos of nothing---and I mean nothing--Joshua turned to me during his lesson and announced, "You know, Miss Amy, someday, I'll make you some eggs." This rendered me speechless. As well it should. It's not every day that an 8-year-old offers to cook for me. What I fear this proves is that everyone is sensing my stress these days. If they can't make it go away, maybe they can at least feed me. Things are not that bad, although spring break can't come fast enough. In the meantime, what I could really use is not eggs, but data, as in hard quantifiable facts. (See how well I am learning my quantitative research vocabulary?) I am in need of statistics regarding the gender make-ups of piano studios around the country. (Sorry to the string or wind teachers out there, but my study is focusing on piano teachers.) If you would be willing to supply me with some numbers from your studio, please contact me. (You can easily do this by clicking on the email address on the upper right corner of this page.) You can remain completely anonymous---I simply need first names, email addresses, the state you live in, and some gender numbers regarding your students. And I need it by April 2nd, which is, quite unbelievably, right around the corner. Besides getting to be a part of a cutting-edge study about piano students, in exchange I will happily send around my findings to anyone who asks. In the process of digging up background research for my literature review, I have discovered that there is almost NO real statistics out there about piano students, piano lesson retention, piano anything. This is terrible, and does nothing to advance the cause or understanding of our profession. To sidestep any ethical issues here, let me make it clear that I will not publish the results and this research is for a class project only. I'm off to the kitchen to scramble some eggs. Please contact me, and I'll be in touch with exactly what information I need. Thank you. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=150 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=150 Sun, 14 Mar 2010 08:01:16 -0600 What with an upcoming recital or competition always around the corner, some days I feel like I do nothing but teach to the next test. After all, recitals and competitions, while providing huge opportunities for growth and potential development, inevitably halt progress in some crucial ways. It takes up large amounts of lesson time to get ready for such events, because the demands on performance and readiness are different and higher. Appropriately so, to be sure, but sometimes I wonder: what would it be like to teach for even one year without the forced structure recitals and competitions? What would it be like to not teach to the test? Public school teachers all over my city are asking themselves this question these days as students are deep in standardized testing. My mother teaches fourth grade in St. Louis and bemoans these annual tests and the pressures they put on her teaching agendas. As an independent teacher whose job is not on the line, I still find myself succumbing to the testing pressures, assuming that it is worth the work and struggle to put students in yearly competitions and recitals every semester. Of course, the potential benefits are huge: students gain confidence and poise from performing and learn how to handle nerves and pressure. The process of preparing more carefully and attentively and being subject to higher demands on their abilities and musicality potentially makes students better musicians. Many of the requirements that go with competitions in terms of technical work--scales, chord progressions, and the like--are good ones, and a positive reminder for all of us to not let those things slide. But still. What about all the things we give up in the process? There is no question that in the throes of competition season, I let things go. I don't do nearly enough creative work, don't have time to encourage composition or improvisation, let ear-training assignments fall by the wayside. Performance classes are focused on performance only--we stop doing important rhythm and movement activities, listening games, theory drills. I forget to ask maintenance questions about composers we have studied or pieces we have learned. I let sight-reading slip through the cracks. There are music teachers who take this teaching to the test seriously and are remarkably good at it, their students winning competition after competition. Judging these events, I find myself wondering if these kids parading in front of me, performing their Rachmaninoff and Chopin, have any idea how to play anything but these single pieces. Are they learning to play the piano or learning to play just this music? Are we nurturing future lifelong musicians or simply training monkeys here? I am bothered by the evidence that indicates that many of these same teachers who produce competitions winners year after year, do not have the assumed high numbers of students who go on to become music majors or even continue music lessons in college. Producing professional musicians isn't my goal either, but I'd like evidence that there was some desire to make music in the future. I don't see these kids accompanying their high school choirs or their fellow students in solo and ensemble contests, the assumption being that they don't need the distraction from the more important business of their solo playing. I admire these teachers for the musicianship they get out of their students, but at the same time am not impressed by the lack of musicians they seem to be nurturing. Playing two or three show pieces a year is not the same thing as being a whole, integrated musician. My favorite kind of teaching--and learning, for that matter--is spiral learning: where we encounter the same concepts again and again, just at higher and different altitudes. I am convinced this is how life works, but unfortunately, very little of our educational system is modeled on such a concept. We take World History as sophomores, US history as Juniors, heaven forbid that the two should ever cross. "Battle of Hastings: 1066," my husband and I reminded each other when we were visiting England several summers ago. "Now what in the world was the Battle of Hastings anyway?" Neither one of us, multiple degrees in hand, had any idea as we had only encountered this world event in one single class, in one isolated year, which now was decades ago. Lately in my studio, we have been circling over old concepts and pieces, reviewing past literature, thinking about familiar ear tunes in new ways, with fresh harmonies or accompaniment figures, revisiting chord progressions with new assignments, figuring out what the perspective might be from a higher altitude and a deeper understanding. I love this kind of teaching, but I have to remind myself to do it--the push to the new, more challenging, more impressive is always strong. If we are to learn the piano well, and possess a thorough knowledge of how music is put together and shaped, then it must always be two steps forward, one step back. Circling and spiraling around our work. Truth is, I need this kind of circling and spiraling around my life at large, picking up old good habits and behaviors, reminding myself of things that somehow got pushed into the back of my mind and routines. It is good for me to revisit old teaching pieces, or old literature I once played regularly, and to see it through a more current lens, just as it is good for me to clean out my bookcases and teaching files and to refresh my memory of that beloved book I want to reread, or an article that inspired me. Because I write nearly daily, I have dozens of old journals and forgotten essays, tangible evidence of the tracks of my thinking and my path. Returning to them I am reminded that this prickly issue in my life that I might be currently wrestling with is not a new one, but rather one that sneaks into my life every spring. We may gain perspective and altitude over time, but good and bad, lessons that life wants to teach us return again and again. Or at least they should in an ideal learning situation. Which brings us back to the upcoming competition season. In their own way, these events are important to us--potentially for the student, and also for my professional reputation as well. In the best of worlds, I wouldn't have to give up the good solid progress that happens during the periods between contests and recitals. Instead, we could just benefit from the challenges these opportunities provide us, and still have time for all the important little things: creative thinking, theoretical understanding of what we are doing, strong technical work for the sake of technique alone, ear-training, listening. It's a hard sell though--for each of these things takes up time. And time is always in short supply. Instead, it becomes a balancing game, a careful trade of this for that, at least temporarily. None of this is bad, and indeed necessary, but should be approached with our eyes open and with a full grasp of what we are giving up, and what will need our attention once the recital is done and the competition winners are announced. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=149 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=149 Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:53:50 -0700 Life and Music http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=148 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=148 Sun, 28 Feb 2010 07:45:09 -0700 Already deep into another semester, I am reminded daily of the daunting list of assignments and new lessons I must get through with every student. Most of the time, I have 45 minutes --60 if I'm lucky -- to do so. It is enough to take my breath away. Or at the very least, to make me exhausted before I've even begun. Of course, there are very good reasons why there are so many varied notes in every student's assignment book: I want my students to practice for a good chunk of time (therefore I need plenty to keep them busy) and to work carefully and thoroughly while they are at it (thereby requiring me to write complicated and intricate series of steps, assignments and pieces of cautionary advice: Fix blue marks! Don't forget F-sharp! Play brackets three times, then whole song....) My students' progress indicates that this method of thorough practice assignments is generally successful. Yes, there are the random kids who on occasion ignore or misread something, but most weeks my students come back well-prepared and thoroughly-practiced. I shouldn't mess with what's working, but lately I've been wondering, is all this necessary? Is there a way to keep them practicing with good results that lets me off the hook a bit? The problem, I suspect, is my deeply held belief that my job is to nurture the well-rounded musician and creative person. And this, I have come to realize, just takes time. It takes time in every lesson to work from a wide variety of angles; it demands practicing in different ways with differing intentions. It means there is always a lot to get through, and a lot of different requirements to fulfill. Add to that outside expectations of recitals and competitions and performances and the job can seem intimidating quickly. No wonder I am a bit breathless. I've been thinking about this lately, both in the teaching studio and in my life at large. I wonder how it is that I have ratcheted up the expectations in every area of my life, all with good and honorable intentions, only to be left with a life that's largely all work and little play. I get a staggering amount done every day -- that isn't the issue. But my life lacks empty space, time to meander around the paths my thoughts might take me, or to wander around aimlessly in my world. Taken to an extreme, this would mean that I'd get nothing done, but could I give a up a little productivity in exchange for wallowing deliciously in the gift of an empty hour or two? "I love a broad margin to my life," wrote Thoreau. That's what I want: broad margins to my life. But change is easier said than done. Just ask anyone who made New Year's resolutions. Today Luke came into his lesson without any of his music or assignment notebook. In two years of lessons he hasn't ever done this before, so there is little reason to scold. But a lesson without materials is a different lesson indeed. Even after working through the basic technique assignments and ear pieces we could do without his books, there was time to spare. "I figured out the chords to We Three Kings," he told me proudly. "Can I play it for you?" Time is not usually so much on our side. "Sure," I said. He played his version, and we explored a few different chord changes to try in several places. "Thanks, Miss Amy!" Luke exclaimed and spontaneously gave me a big hug. A hug. All for taking some time to play around a bit during his lesson. It's important to note that this isn't a kid who hates me or his lessons normally. He is a happy student, but this sense of "play" that we had in the last lesson isn't cultivated nearly enough, my determination to see us through his assignments and to set him up well for the next week wins out every time. That might be OK generally. After all, his parents are paying me good money to ensure that we use our time well, but a bit of aimless meandering through a kid's interest and curiosity isn't a waste of time either. Experimenting with harmony in a familiar tune is a good use of time and I know it. I just don't usually allow us to wander off the path so freely. There's a lesson in there somewhere if I can slow down enough to take heed of it. Recently I read that when NPR's Susan Stamberg was asked what she was planning do to after she retired, she answered simply, "Less." I like this. In fact, I like it so much I have made it my motto of 2010. New Year's resolutions with their expectations of "More this" and "Do that" can be damned. I want to take more pride in leaving things on my to-do list undone, and regularly to go to bed knowing that I've let some things go. I suspect that the sun will rise anyway. I suspect that it won't make much difference to my students' overall progress, that they will still practice and will manage to learn even if I am not pushing so aggressively behind them. I imagine that the garden will get watered and more or less weeded, and that somehow food will get on the table, and the house cleaned. The cats will, most surely, remind me when I have forgotten to feed them; and I'll manage to get recital programs learned and my writing deadlines met. But maybe, just maybe, in 2010 I'll stop racing the clock and finally take a deep breath. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=147 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=147 Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:12:12 -0700 The modern biographers worry "how far it went," their tender friendship. They wonder just what it means when he writes he thinks of her constantly, his guardian angel, beloved friend. The modern biographers ask the rude, irrelevant question of our age, as if the event of two bodies meshing together establishes the degree of love, forgetting how softly Eros walked in the nineteenth century, how a hand held overlong or a gaze anchored in someone's eyes could unseat a heart, and nuances of address not known in our egalitarian language could make the redolent air tremble and shimmer with the heat of possibility. Each time I hear the Intermezzi, sad and lavish in their tenderness, I imagine the two of them sitting in a garden among late-blooming roses and dark cascades of leaves, letting the landscape speak for them, leaving us nothing to overhear. -Lisel Mueller http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=146 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=146 Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:46:01 -0700 It's the fiddlers that kill me. You know the ones I mean. The kids who are always fiddling at the piano, mindlessly noodling while you talk. They fish and fudge their way through their technique work and chord progressions, finding notes by ear rather than actually learning patterns. This drives me crazy. I think what I am saying is brilliant; they need to be listening with their full attention. I want them to learn their notes solidly, not meander their way into the correct patterns. I can't understand why their hands and fingers have to be on the piano messing around during every second of our time together. The constant noodling gets on my nerves. I can't hear myself think. And then there are the students in constant motion. Often these are the same kids. Take, for example, Jack. Jack never stops moving from the moment he walks in my door. He is always noodling or spinning around on the piano bench, or, worse yet, lying down on the piano bench with his feet up in the air and his head hanging off the side. I kid you not. Of course, this is the same child who broke his arm the hour before our fall recital. This is also the kid who has placed in performance and composition competitions. I both adore Jack and want to strangle him at the same time. Jack is not an unusual example of whirling motion in my studio. I have more than my share of fiddlers among my student roster these days. Almost without exception, these are also my best students in many respects. They practice faithfully and learn fast. They are creative and love to improvise (as evidenced by their constant noodling). They are enthusiastic, and have strong opinions about their music and their practicing. But, even with all this going for them, they are hard to teach in many ways, because it is difficult to know when I have their real attention and focus. I find myself talking louder and faster to get their attention. I reprimand them for not listening. I remind them constantly, "Don't play while I am talking." These are good kids, and they don't mean to be rude, I know that. But something is not quite working here. Over the holidays I was reading about a form of physical therapy that deals with sensory integration issues. This book by Mary Sue Williams and Sherry Shellenberger called How Does Your Engine Run? focuses on kids who have sensory integration problems of all kinds, from not being able to handle too much outside stimulation and becoming inappropriately overwhelmed, to those who don't have the normal sensory triggers that should give healthy mental engagement and energy. The book offered some specific tools for dealing with kids who have even intermittent sensory integration issues. The examples that most interested me described the kids who needed a certain level of activity in order to focus. Their squirming around wasn't a sign they weren't paying attention, but rather was necessary in order to keep their brains engaged. Asking them to sit still and not move was a recipe for them to zone out completely. This got me thinking, because the applications to teaching are huge. Even when working with students with no diagnosable sensory issues, everyone has different needs with regards to what keeps them engaged mentally. Some people need silence when they read; others read more attentively when listening to music. Some people constantly fidget while watching television or listening to a lecture; others seem to never even blink. Some people concentrate better while chewing gum or snacking on crunchy foods; for other people this would be distracting. Most of us more or less intuitively figure out what we need to do in order to stay engaged in activities requiring various levels of energy and attention. Could it be that my fiddlers were actually paying closer attention to me while they were fussing at the piano? I am suspicious this might be the case, but I don't think the answer is for me to just talk louder above their noodling. After all, I am a person in this relationship too, and I can't think while this constant noise is happening. There has to be a balance and a compromise, which means yes, sometimes I should let them noodle away and spend precious seconds (or sometimes minutes) allowing them to finish whatever energetic spurt of creativity they feel compelled to work out. Sitting there quietly while they mindlessly fiddle usually has the result of startling them into becoming aware that they are fishing aimlessly and they stop on their own. This doesn't mean the habit is fixed forever, or even for the remainder of the lesson, but it is a peaceful, non-verbal way to bring some awareness to the behavior. But if it true that these kids need some physical stimulation to stay mentally focused, then we have to look hard for other ways to work around this. I've learned to ask these kids to get up off the bench, walk the three feet over to the table where I sit and look with me as write, talk through assignments or show them something to think about in their music. They can't fiddle if they aren't near the piano, which is so obvious that I don't know why it took me so long to figure out. Besides, this on and off the bench is helpful---the physical activity feeds their brain, and getting them away from the piano while we chat solves the random noise problem. When I need a longer teaching moment, I'm trying to make available something to keep their hands busy---a tennis ball to pass between us, squeeze therapy balls for them to manipulate while I talk, rubber therapy bands to pull. Whether I like it or not, these kids will be active while we are talking and learning, directing that activity towards things that don't drive me crazy prevents a lot of impatient outbursts. In the end, I'm discovering that all this directed non-musical activity makes them learn faster and, ironically, actually saves time. Without even knowing why, these kids are happier and more focused, because this constant physical motion keeps their little brains energized. Even better, I don't feel like I am about ready to scream because I can't get their attention. This is one more example of the importance of thoughtful pacing: As teachers, our job is to learn to be sensitive to what each student needs and then structure activities accordingly. This is something I think about a lot, but unfortunately, with these kinds of students it has taken a particularly long time to figure out what works. I think I failed to see the problem for so long because on the surface, these students and I look very well suited for one another as we all generally function at the speed of light. In fact, we move too fast for our own good much of the time. But the similarities end there, because I need a lot of silence to think, and find fidgeting not engaging, but rather distracting. Over the years, it has been all too easy just to allow the frustrations and the noise level of these lessons to spiral out of control. Giving these kids permission to move a lot has proven to be a graceful moment in my learning curve as a teacher. With these students I just accept that there will need to be a lot of activity of all kinds---more time fussing at the piano, more systematic rhythmic movement work, more opportunities to manipulate toys in their hands, more time off and on the piano bench. I used to think that much of this was a waste of time, but I'm learning better. In fact, getting these kids to sit still for the length of the lesson is not the indicator that it once was that we have had a successful lesson. A good lesson these days looks entirely different, but I know it when it happens, because I am happier, more grounded teacher, less ready to strangle the joyful bundle of enthusiasm in front of me. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=145 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=145 Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:14:45 -0700 It is sometimes said that the great teachers and mentors, the wise men and gurus, achieve their ends by inducting the disciple into a kind of secret circle of knowledge and belief, make of their charisma a kind of gift. The more I think about it, though, the more I suspect that the best teachers....do something else. They don't mystify the work and offer themselves as a model of oracular authority, a practice that nearly always lapses into a history of acolytes and excommunications. The real teachers and coaches may offer a charismatic model---they probably have to--but then they insist that all the magic they have to offer is a commitment to repetition and perseverance. The great oracles may enthrall, but the really great teachers demystify. They make particle physics into a series of diagrams that anyone can follow, football into a series of steps that anyone can master, and art into a series of slides that anyone can see. A guru gives us himself and then his system; a teacher gives us his subject, and then ourselves. (p. 281) -from Through the Children's Gate by Adam Gopnik http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=144 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=144 Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:07:31 -0700 Last Friday I took the GRE. This was one of those painful hurdles to jump as part of going back to graduate school. I had taken it once before, about 10 years ago, when I had last flirted with the idea of additional graduate work, but that GRE score was, in the words of my advisor, "Expired." (Apparently, so was my masters degree, which left me speechless. Was it like milk?) While I would like to make the argument that my intelligence hasn't actually changed in the last 10 years, the truth is when faced with the math (or "Quantitative" as the GRE deceptively calls it) questions, I had to admit that yes, I was not as smart. Or at least as equipped to do even the simplest math equations. As I have explained in the last month to anyone who would listen, it have been 20 years since I have had a math class. That would be 20 years. Not less than or equal to 20 years, but 20 actual certifiable years. There was no way this was going to go well. Ten years ago when I took the GRE, in addition to the math and verbal sections, there was a logic part to the exam. Surprising myself and everyone who knew me, I earned a perfect score on this portion. But of course, I had a lifetime of juggling hectic schedules and tasks, which was better practice than anything the test prep can design anyway. (If I can only teach M-Th from 3-8pm, and all my lessons are 45 or 60 minutes, and Jack can only come on Tuesdays at 4, but Sophie can come on Th at 5, then when does Marcie take a lesson if she needs to take it before or after Dan's lesson.....) But sometime in the last 10 years the test was rewritten and the logic portion removed in place of two analytical writing sections. This, I can assure you, isn't the same at all. Even with all my writing skills, I don't often use much logic in forming my opinions. So, long story short, my only real ace in the hole was gone. Over Thanksgiving break I bought one of those GRE test prep books and began studying math. The first time I encountered a question involving slope I almost gave up. Why, I screamed to Matt, would I know anything about slope? Honestly, even in my math days, I was no stellar math student, which is just proof that the so-called evidence that says there is a link between math and music is not the whole story. When I encountered remainders for the first time in 5th grade, I cried. Numbers never made any intuitive sense to me. What I was was a stellar student. I could, and did, figure out how to get an "A" in nearly every class I took. But I never understood much about math and retained even less. In fact, my recurring nightmare as an adult is not that I am naked and on stage, but that it is the first day of school and I am sitting in a math class with another year of difficult equations ahead of me. Our friend Katie was home from college for winter break. Katie is an engineering student, and a math whiz, and she agreed to tutor me. A typical session went something like this: Katie: So, slope is y over x. Do you understand what that means? Me: No. Katie: OK. Is there anyway you can just memorize this? It never got better. One practice exam asked me to figure the volume of a sphere and I almost came undone. Complaining later at a holiday party about my GRE woes, I mentioned this to a circle of Sandia engineers. "Four-thirds-pi-r-cubed" they all said simultaneously. "But" why would I know this?" I argued. "Why is this test or these random formulas any measure of my abilities at this point? They aren't, but in spite of myself, I was fascinated with how the practice questions were written. From an educational point of view, these were brilliant. Although I will never be sure, I don't think the level of the work was higher than high school geometry, but the questions themselves were what I would call third-level questions. In other words, they demanded that you understood about three levels of information before you could even approach what the question was asking. A comparable musical question would be: Given a key signature of 4-flats, write a harmonic minor scale. This is easy if you know anything about music, but if your don't, there is no way to fake this. You must know how to figure major keys, relative minors, and then compute the notes for the scale. I am convinced the math questions were exactly like this, but I lacked even the first level of knowledge needed to begin. Before Christmas I had a new dream. This time I was taking the GRE, only instead of taking it on the computer, I had to answer the questions with colored pencils. I didn't like the colors assigned to me, so I was arguing with the proctor, only to realize that the exam had already begun and I was wasting my time. I crowded myself onto a table in a loud room and starting reading through the questions (all math of course). I didn't have a clue about how to do any of them. Not a clue. I was up to question 12 when my alarm rang waking me up to another day. After six weeks of this nonsense, it was time to bite the bullet and just take the damn exam. I didn't know a frightening amount, but I resigned myself that it would be what it would be. I arrived at the testing center at 7:55AM to be met with pages of rules and regulations. It was as if we were entering a maximum security prison. We were searched, our pockets turned inside out. We had to lock up possessions, and weren't allowed water. We had to commit to wearing all the clothes we had on when we entered the room; no removing jackets or sweaters. We were photographed and then led to a computer. At this point I must leave the narrative to give a few disclosures. In my school days, I was a good test-taker. I naturally did those things they teach you in test-taking seminars, like scanning the test and doing the easiest problems first. I was good at dividing up my time. I didn't have test anxiety and usually tested at whatever level I was generally prepared for. This was all about to change. First of all, any of those tricks I might have automatically practiced would not be relevant because under a computer-based exam, there was no scanning the questions, answering easy ones first, or going back to difficult problems. You have to answer each question in turn in order to get a new question, and to rub salt in the wound, there would be no returning to questions once you answered them. You have one shot. I know this going in. I don't like it but I know it. But still, I am pretty confident, if not in my actual abilities, at least in my ability to test at my skill level, or even, on the rare lucky occasion, above it. Entering the exam room, I know what strikes I have against me, but I don't think there are any outside circumstances that will undermine my efforts. I sit down at the computer, and immediately am subjected to a 30-minute non-optional tutorial about how to use the computer. This is only the beginning of the slow drain on my energy and quick wits. I then answer a number of questions about race and background, including several about my "undergraduate institution", which I brilliantly decide doesn't actually mean my undergraduate institution, but rather where I wanted my GRE scores sent. I entered Texas Tech, which makes no sense on any level, but it's too late to change anything. I race through the two writing sections, (are there extra credit points for speed?) and decide to take a quick break. I sign out, use the restroom and get a drink at the drinking fountain. Re-entering the room, I am struck that it now seems rather warm, but too late. I am stuck with the layers I put on that morning when it was a chilly 30 degrees outside and I had to scrape the car windows. I return to my cubicle, and begin what appears to be a math section with a 45-minute time limit. I was expecting a verbal section next, but OK, I begin. This sucks. I get a question about derivatives. W.T.F? There is a question about 14! and 15! What's with the exclamation marks? I have no idea. I am quickly running out of time trying to wade through questions that seem nothing like the test prep questions. Where did they find these questions? Where is something about y over x? I memorized that! My ego and confidence now deflated, I finish the section. "Would you like to proceed to the next section?" the computer asks. Well no, what I'd like to do is go drown myself in a martini, but thinking I have a quick verbal portion to plow through and then I can escape, I answer, "Proceed." My practice verbal tests had typically taken me only 10 minutes. I am growing increasingly more hot and thirsty, but I can handle 10 minutes. Famous last words. The verbal is hard. I don't know too much of the vocabulary, which shouldn't surprise me given the fact that my vocabulary development mysteriously stopped when I entered the 2nd grade. The reading comprehension passages are long, and due to the large font and the narrow columns on the screen, there are maybe one and a half words per line, making it impossible to follow the thread of the narrative. Besides, they are boring and badly written. I am growing dangerously close to not caring and blindly answering "B" on every question. I finish, barely with any time to spare, but hey, its over. The computer asks, "Would you like to proceed to the next section?" Well, yes, I think. The next section is scoring, choosing institutions to send your scores, and then leaving. I would very much like to proceed. I hit "Proceed" and lo and behold! I enter another Quantitative section. (That would be math.) What? And then I remember something I had conveniently chosen to forget. There might be an experimental section that wouldn't be scored, but the tester wouldn't know which section was experimental. Clearly, somewhere along the way, I am being subjected to a math experimental section. The thorn is that I don't know if the previous section was the experimental one, or this one. I actually have to try. I also have to go to the bathroom and my mouth is like sandpaper. And I am really, really hot; my wool sweater is starting to feel like an instrument of torture. But I can't take a break, because now the clock is running and I have 28 more math problems to solve in the next 45 minutes. Slowly the will to live is leaving me. I had smugly thought that there weren't circumstances that could cause me to take a bad test. But that was before the too hot room and the wool sweater, the three hours staring at the too large font, the lack of bathroom breaks and the absence of drinking water. My brain is now mush, and I no longer care. I don't care what my score is. I don't care if I can get into graduate school. I am willing to sign off my life and my unborn children. I will work at Starbucks or collect garbage, anything to make the math questions stop coming. "C." I answer. Stands for Could not care less. I click on "D." Does not give a damn. "A." Actually, any answer would do. Eventually, three and a half hours after I began, the torture is over. The test is scored; I choose institutions to receive my rather marginal scores. I stagger out, my brain foggy, nauseous from staring at a glowing screen for hours. I understand that universities need a universal standard in which to assess student candidates, but there has to be a better way. For last Friday is not a fair or an accurate assessment of my intelligence, abilities, or potential success or failure as a student. This was just an exercise in jumping hurdles. High ones. For hour after hour. Wearing a wool sweater and being deprived of drink. Bring on the next one. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=143 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=143 Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:11:37 -0700 There is a joke about a man who goes into a tailor and tries on a suit. It is lovely suit, but it doesn't fit exactly right. The man points out to the tailor that the pant legs are too long, to which the tailor responds, "But it will be fine, as long as you hold your knees like this," and demonstrates an awkward position of the thighs. Then the man suggests that the right shoulder doesn't hang in the correct place, but the tailor interrupts saying that it will be perfect if the man would just shrug his shoulder up to his ear. "See! Now it works!" the tailor exclaims. Finally, the man nervously hints that perhaps the left sleeve is too short only to be told that it would be ideal as long as the man pulls the sleeve down with his hand. Intimidated, the man buys the suit and leaves the shop, trying to maintain the funny affected posture necessary for the suit to fit well. Two women pass him on the sidewalk and one says, "Look at that poor crippled man." The other woman responds, "Yes, but what a beautiful suit!" I fear that most books written about piano technique have this effect on me. By the time I have obeyed all the suggestions about my posture, where my elbows should hang in relationship to my shoulders, and what level my wrists should be, I end up feeling much like the man in the suit. The suit may look perfect, but I feel crippled and affected. There's a dissertation waiting to be written about the inherent problems with trying to write a one-size-fits-all approach to the keyboard, but I'm not taking on that sacred cow today. But this kind of thinking is a narrow view of what encompasses piano technique, for it can and should be more than just the mechanics of our work. Besides, as evidence of the amount of sheer verbiage out there on the subject, no two people can agree upon that anyway. A more holistic definition of good technique would be one that includes a pianist's authority over the geography of the keyboard itself and knowledge of every major and minor position. With specific work, one can "know" what B-flat major or F-sharp minor feels like, and become friendly with the hand shapes for every possible key signature and chord. Of course, this is exactly the purpose of all those piano proficiency and functional harmony classes required by most music majors. Ironically, the worst students in these classes are often the pianists, so ill-equipped as they often are to think about technique is such a basic and organic way. In the end, this is why I bother with these posts , and why I have spent so much time developing a repertoire of patterns, because I am convinced that the more resources we have for creative ways to do this, the more easily we can concentrate on being physically relaxed during the warming-up process. Which, if you think about it, is the point of all those technique treaties in the first place. And while there are dozens of good, solid books of exercises out there waiting to be bought at our local music stores, I have come to believe that the kind of technique work that involves learning geography and hand shape is most effectively done using rote positions. While you and I may know that the written exercises we find in technique books are based on major and minor keys, somehow the black notes on the page distract most students from that basic truth. Furthermore, from a purely ergonomic point of view, there is no denying that a certain level of tension and strain creeps in any time our eyes, neck and head are reaching up towards the notes on the music rack. However we come down on the technique argument, I think we can all agree that this is the ill-fitting suit we are looking to avoid at all costs. There is something profound about teaching students that you don't have to always open up a music book in order to do good work at the piano, especially in the face of a musical tradition that has become almost completely dependent upon the written score. I want to encourage students to own their knowledge of the piano keyboard as much as possible, and that music isn't just something written on a page, but something we can design and create based on the patterns, shapes and sounds that we discover and learn. Here are a few more patterns to get your brain and fingers moving on one of these chilly winter mornings. I first learned a version of these finger-independence exercises from Jane Allen, and since then have run across endless variations on that theme along the way. I always teach these exercises in this order---holding first Do, and then Sol and proceeding from there. It is easier to hold down one end of the hand and anchor, than to hold down an interior finger and jump around the held note. I suggest doing these hands alone so one hand can't "cover" for the other, perhaps weaker, hand. 53. Hold Do and play forte and staccato: Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do 54. Hold Sol and play forte and staccato: Do Re Mi Fa Mi Re Do 55. Hold Re and play forte and staccato: Do Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Do 56. Hold Mi and play forte and staccato: Do Re Fa Sol Fa Re Do 57. Hold Fa and play forte and staccato: Do Re Mi Sol Mi Re Do 58. Hold Do and Sol and play forte and staccato: Re Mi Fa Mi Re http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=142 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=142 Sun, 17 Jan 2010 08:49:04 -0700 On Christmas Eve I walked home along the luminaria-lined streets after a service I played in a neighborhood church. Sitting on my doorstep when I arrived was a festive holiday bag. I went inside, opened the card which read, "I found this in a second-hand shop and thought of you." The card was signed by a colleague. I reached into the bag and pulled out a knick-knack. It was one of those awful tchotchkes involving cats and pianos and treble clefs that I usually avoid at all costs. But this particular item was distinct for two reasons--first, because it had a particularly horrendous paint job, and second, because I once owned this very knick-knack. It was made and given to me by a student some years ago. When the student moved away, I gleefully gave it to Goodwill. Now it was back, and sitting on my counter. Due to the gods of the public school schedule, this year I had the longest winter break in history. By the 18th of December I was having lunches with friends, meeting colleagues for coffee, and attending Christmas services and concerts. I finished my Christmas shopping and spent entire afternoons on the couch with a stack of novels. My mother arrived on Christmas Day for a visit. We had a Boxing Day party with friends, and spent a day in Santa Fe roaming the plaza. There was no snow, but we had freezing temperatures for days, reminding us that winter had snuck in when we weren't looking. Other things have snuck in as well, for as it turned out, this Christmas has been full of unexpected gifts and guests. It appears that we have a mouse in the kitchen. I say "mouse" ever hopeful that it is only one. Surely this isn't unrealistic given the fact we have two cats who have gone on high alert the last few weeks. Yun-Sun and Godiva now spend hours a day crouched on the kitchen floor staring at the baseboards or under the stove. They even take shifts; one napping while the other stands guard. This mouse must rue the day it chose our house to enter. We think the cats have actually laid eyes on the creature, but Matt and I have only seen evidence of where it has been. This is not a welcomed visitor on any level, for you must understand that I don't have a great history with mice. One summer, I saw a mouse scamper across the floor of our Fort Worth kitchen and nearly had a mental breakdown. In fact, I moved in with a friend for several days until the problem could be eradicated. Then some years later when we were living in Boston, I was rummaging under the kitchen sink for a rag and stumbled upon a box of rodent poison. "Matt, darling," I said to my husband, "why do we have mouse poison?" A look of love and earnestness came over his face. "I didn't want you to know, but one night I saw a mouse." Upon questioning, my husband then admitted that he had been living this lie of mouse cohabitation for over a month. He had assured me that he kept this secret out of concern for my well-being, thinking I had enough stress already in my life. I suspected that he kept this secret out of concern for his own well-being, fearful of living with me and my rodent knowledge. The mouse was tiny and rather cute, he reassured me, and he hadn't seen him in weeks. Considering my past reactions to such visitors, I remained remarkably calm. I didn't start packing my bags and moving out. Instead, we simply named the creature Stuart, and every day put out a large treat of poison for him. Days passed and Stuart never touched the rat poison. He did, however, eat every crumb of the tortilla chips we mixed in to tempt him, which only proved that Boston city mice really were smarter than country mice. Just to show Stuart that we meant business, any time I was in the apartment I took to shouting randomly in the direction of the kitchen, only really demonstrating that I was still borderline mental when it came to rodent cohabitation. But that was years ago. This time around I am ever more rational and mature. No more yelling aimlessly at appliances. This time I have two bored, indoor felines who have been in training for years for such excitement. "There is an enemy in the house," I solemnly explain to them. "Time to do your job." And so they do, spending hour after hour guarding the kitchen. We think this mostly acts as a deterrent to the mouse, as we don't have a lot of faith in the cats ability to successfully hunt and kill anything. "Should we name the critter this time?" Matt asks me, and taunts both me and the mouse by walking around the house singing Somewhere out there....Beneath the pale moonlight.... New Years Eve arrived with a myriad of invitations to dinners, parties and so on. A few days before our friend Patti called. "What are you doing New Years Eve?" "Oh, this and that," I responded. "Can you make me a better offer?" "Well, I might," she answered and began telling me of plans to go snow shoeing on the crest. "It's a full moon, and a blue one at that. There hasn't been a full moon on New Year's since 1971. Afterwards, everyone is having dinner back at my place." I wasn't alive the last time the stars and moon were so aligned, so it felt like a sign of what I should do. Matt opted to make the rounds of other events, (Divide and conquer, we decided.). On December 30, the Sandias got another 14 inches of snow, so clearly God was siding with the snowshoers. At sunset a group of eight of us drove around the back of the mountains and up past the ski area to the crest. We were the only ones up there. The temperature was in the single digits. I could read a book by the full moon rising behind the mountains. The snow drifts reached my knees. We made our way along the crest trail to the cabin that overlooked the twinkling lights of the city below. It and my real life seemed far away; it was as if I had somehow been transported to the moon itself and was literally viewing my world from a new perspective. Which, I suppose, I was. We spiral back around our lives and patterns, over and over again, gaining altitude and new perspectives on the same subjects, issues, and attitudes. Gifts come back into our lives, unwelcomed or not, and we can either rejoice over the distance gained or we can blindly settle back into the same old ruts. Gearing up to begin another semester, I have to brace myself against thinking "Here we go again," and expecting that everything---good or bad--will be the same. In the next few months, I have my usual daunting roster of students, recitals to prepare for, deadlines to meet. I am taking six graduate hours in Ed. Psych. I have workshops to give this spring, and other professional obligations to attend to. I've been here before, I can all too easily find myself thinking. It's better not to drag the baggage of the past into a new year, but rather, to expect that any day could bring a surprise---an ironic gift left on my doorstep, a curious visitor scampering through the kitchen, a new way of seeing my world and my life. It's all new. In the meantime, there is the tchotchke to make peace with once and for all. "Its like a boomerang," Lora said when I told her the story. "Maybe you could send it back home with your mother. If you get it out of the time zone do you think you're safe?" Maybe, although I'm tempted this time to hang onto it, just for the reminder. One way or another, we will continue to revisit the stories of our lives, while at the same time we step forward into new territory with every hour, and every day, and every year. This paradox is a good one to hang onto as we enter a new semester and a new decade, fresh and familiar all at once. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=141 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=141 Sun, 10 Jan 2010 08:24:23 -0700 I check the locks on the front door and the side door, make sure the windows are closed and the heat dialed down. I switch off the computer, turn off the living room lights. I let in the cats. Reverently, I unplug the Christmas tree, leaving Christ and the little animals in the dark. The last thing I do is step out to the back yard for a quick look at the Milky Way. The stars are halogen-blue. The constellations, whose names I have long since forgotten, look down anonymously, and the whole galaxy is cartwheeling in silence through the night. Everything seems to be ok. by George Bilgere http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=140 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=140 Sun, 03 Jan 2010 08:29:06 -0700 From this high midtown hall, undecked with boughs, unfortified with mistletoe, we send forth our tinselled greetings as of old, to friends, to readers, to strangers of many conditions in many places. Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline passengers, and to all those who can't eat clams! We greet with particular warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities! Merry Christmas to the musicians of Muzak and men whose shoes don't fit! Greetings of the season to unemployed actors and the blacklisted everywhere who suffer for sins uncommitted; a holly thorn in the thumb of compilers of lists! Greetings to wives who can't find their glasses and to poets who can't find their rhymes! Merry Christmas to the unloved, the misunderstood, the overweight. Joy to the authors of books whose titles begin with the word "How" (as though they knew!). Greetings to people with a ringing in their ears; greetings to growers of gourds, to shearers of sheep, and to makers of change in the lonely underground booths! Merry Christmas to old men asleep in libraries! Merry Christmas to people who can't stay in the same room with a cat! We greet, too, the boarders in boarding hoses on 25 December, the duennas in Central Park in fair weather and foul, and young lovers who got nothing in the mail. Merry Christmas to people who plant trees in city streets; merry Christmas to people who save prairie chickens from extinction! Greetings of a purely mechanical sort to machines that think-plus a sprig of artificial holly. Joyous Yule to Cadillac owners whose conduct is unworthy of their car! Merry Christmas to the defeated, the forgotten, the inept; joy to all dandiprats and bunglers! We send, most particularly and most hopefully, our greetings and our prayers to soldiers and guardsmen on land and sea and in the air-the young men doing the hardest things at the hardest time of life. To all such, Merry Christmas, blessings, and good luck! We greet the Secretaries-designate, the President-elect; Merry Christmas to our new leaders, peace on earth, good will, and good management! Merry Christmas to couples unhappy in doorways! Merry Christmas to all who think they are in love but aren't sure! Greetings to people waiting for trains that will take them in the wrong direction, to people doing up a bundle and the string is too short, to children with sleds and no snow! We greet ministers who can't think of a moral, gagmen who can't think of a joke. Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of other planets; see you soon! And last, we greet all skaters on small natural ponds at the edge of woods toward the end of afternoon. Merry Christmas, skaters! Ring, steel! Grow red, sky! Die down, wind! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morrow! -E.B. White http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=139 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=139 Sun, 27 Dec 2009 07:09:41 -0700 This morning I was reading a book about gardening and Zen meditation entitled Gardening at the Dragon's Gate by Wendy Johnson. In it, the author was describing the conflict between practicing zazen, or seated meditation, from 4-6AM every day, with the practical realities of life on the farm---the call of the cows needing to be milked first thing in the morning, the babies still sleeping in their cribs who wake up and need to be fed and cared for. "How do grown-ups practice Zen?" she writes, repeating a question asked by a fellow Zen student. I understand this conflict of competing attentions and pulls all too well. Ideally, my life would look something like this: I would get up while it was still dark, meditate and do yoga for an hour, read and write for another hour or two, practice for several hours, and then start my teaching day. At the other end of my work day, I would have energy and attention to cook a real dinner with my husband, and eat it by candlelight. I would spend more time in meditation and yoga before going to bed. Let me assure you, however, that my days look nothing like this. While I am convinced that such a disciplined ritualized schedule would be transformative to my work and my soul, real life in the waning days of 2009 does nothing to help me maintain such practices. I manage some of this, some days, but unless I am going to leave my little noisy corner of the world and move to a deserted island somewhere I have no hope of maintaining this for the long haul. So, to rephrase a question, how do grown-ups practice their art? How do we find and follow the spiritual threads of our work? How do we do better than a merely perfunctory attempt at juggling the many roles and obligations that are required of us on a daily basis? These are questions I struggle with hourly, as I find myself living squarely between the pragmatic and the ideal, the messy complicated reality of my life and the sacred, holy space where my art and my spirit intertwine. For whatever reason, these sorts of questions appear especially pronounced this time of year. A cursory glance at past journals reveals that this is always the case. Somehow, I find myself vacillating between wanting to drown myself in the festivities and spirit of the holidays, and wanting to renounce this world and its material pulls and to go live an austere life far away from the tinsel and glitter that is otherwise threatening to bury me alive. Of course, I recognize that any honest living is always a dance between this world and the next, between the messiness of our daily routines and obligations and a fierce longing for something bigger and grander and more holy than the sparkles and glamour of the season. How do we practice our art and feed our souls in such a place of tension? How do we dance on the line between living completely in our current lives and honoring practices that support our spiritual ones? These are the questions of my soul as I go about the tasks that make up my days. The fact that this conflict of interest is happening just when I can hardly force myself to work given all the distractions of the season proves once again that someone in charge has a sense of humor. I'm finishing the last lessons of the semester, so ready for a three-week break I can almost taste it. Every lesson during this last week is a test of will power, as I call upon every ounce of patience and adult behavior within me. It's all I can do not to just cancel them all, and abandon myself to the sheer joy of vacation days. But instead of giving into the temptation of succumbing completely to the chocolate in my kitchen and the pile of novels on my coffee table, I practice the art of discipline as the days get shorter and the year winds down to an end. I clean my house and go to the grocery store, trying to keep up with tasks that keep the household running and that also, strangely enough, anchor me firmly to my world. I stand in outrageously long lines at the post office, waiting to mail a pile of Christmas cards. I read through new music, making lists of repertoire for my students. I study for the GRE, attempting to learn the math I happily, purposefully, forgot some 20 years ago. I make my way through piles of books and journals, determined to make a dent in the backlog of reading that has collected in the past few months. I make soup and roast a pan of chicken thighs, small acts of healthy cooking in a month otherwise completely taken over by sugar consumption. I practice, learning a Bach suite and other music for several upcoming recitals. I go to yoga classes, stretching my body and mind into unfamiliar shapes. All the while, I wrestle with metaphysical questions of existence and choices, listening for the voices of truth within the clamor of noise on my time and attention. "How do grown-ups practice Zen?" Johnson was asked. "How do grownups practice Christmas?" I ask, and practice sitting quietly, listening for the answer. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=137 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=137 Sun, 20 Dec 2009 08:43:43 -0700 My favorite time of the year, bar none, is the week of Thanksgiving. In particular, I love the two or three days right before Thanksgiving, when the holiday weekend is still ahead of you, pregnant with anticipation and all good things. Like pie . I never teach much this week, and Matt always takes off some extra days, giving us the gift of empty time together. Our shared history has included some wonderful pre-holiday days. There was the year (when we were dating) that we went to see The Remains of the Day at a Westport movie theater in Kansas City, and when we got out of the movie, it was snowing, creating a magical hushed suspense over the world. Another year we were living a comfortable existence in Ft Worth but were spending every spare moment daydreaming about leaving our of familiar predictable lives and moving to the East Coast. ("This is our one and only life," Matt kept reminding me.) That Thanksgiving we had a perfect trip to Boston, getting standby seats (those were the days!) on Wednesday, and arriving in time for a big lunch in Chinatown. We spent the afternoon wandering through the Boston Common and Beacon Hill, chasing strangers carrying pie boxes as they climbed the cobblestone hills. I fell for Boston hard that visit, my heart and soul sighing, "Home" as if I recognized it from some previous life. As a mid-westerner, how could I know that New England was my true home? I swore then that I'd spend every Thanksgiving in Boston for as long as I lived. Of course, I haven't. Although by the following Thanksgiving we had sold two cars and our wedding china, and were living in Boston in a tiny apartment around the corner from Fenway Park, that year we rented a farm house in New Hampshire for the weekend. On our way up, we drove through a dangerous early season snowstorm in a bad rental car. We spent the weekend snowed into that classic white farmhouse. (The woods are lovely, dark, and deep......Matt murmured in my ear when we finally arrived, toasting New Hampshire's famous poet who lived just down the road.) Icicles as long as my arm hung from the windows. We kept a fire going the entire four days, made soup, drank wine, read piles of books, and listened to the snow plows trying to dig us out from the haven of a cozy bed covered with a pile of quilts. I think I took three hot baths every day. It was heaven. Snow is a recurring theme among my fondest Thanksgiving memories. Another Boston Thanksgiving my sisters came for a visit: Beth from Los Angeles and Sarah from New York. They arrived on Tuesday, and we woke the next morning to discover that during the night we had gotten several feet of snow. It was breathtaking, and so quiet. We walked for hours through the snow, up and down streets with no traffic, stopping for cappuccinos in an Italian coffee house on Newbury street. To date, my favorite picture of us might be from that afternoon, bundled up in coats, gloves and hats, grinning at the camera from the middle of a snowy Commonwealth Avenue. Those Boston years were good ones indeed. But life is unpredictable, and in spite of my deep attachment to New England, we now find ourselves building a life in the desert. We own a house and a car, have two cats and a garden, and at least three sets of dishes. Thanksgivings here have included days on our own, roasting a chicken and drinking a bottle of champagne, raking leaves and planting tulip bulbs. We have spent some years with friends around their bountiful tables. One year we went to San Francisco for the week. The only discernible pattern is the intention that these are special days, moments to treasure. This year was no different. I taught an easy week of make-up lessons, finishing the last one at 7pm on Tuesday. We went to Old Town for dinner, taking advantage of a new set of wheels in our driveway to get us there and back without incident. Wednesday morning I went to an early yoga class, stars still shining in the sky as I made my way along the darkened streets. We worked in the yard. I practiced, wrote, and read, enjoying the magical afternoon hours on the couch watching the subtle play of light shift across the walls. I made green chile potato soup, and after dark, walked up to the Nob Hill Flying Star to pick up dessert. Inside it was deserted, except for the festive table piled high with pies for take-away that was getting a brisk business. We spent this Thanksgiving day with friends--Carolyn and Earl--and their extended chosen family. Carolyn and Earl, Max and Jean, and Martha and Jake met in Boston while in graduate school in the 1960's. Earl was working on a graduate degree in astrophysics at MIT, Jake was in economics at Harvard, and Max was at Harvard Divinity School. Between them, they raised 7 children in Boston, vacationed together, and built careers: Martha taught school in Belmont, Carolyn taught piano in Lexington and was music director at Lexington United Methodist church, Jean founded the piano pedagogy program at New England Conservatory. Over the years, they attended graduations, weddings, baptisms. Grandchildren were born. Carolyn and Earl moved to Albuquerque 18 years ago. Max and Jean bought a summer home in the Berkshires and moved to Princeton. This year all three couples celebrated their 50th wedding anniversaries. And for nearly 5 decades they have not missed a Thanksgiving together. The spring we determined that we were moving from Boston to Albuquerque, I wrote my friend and teacher Jean, with whom I had taken piano pedagogy at NEC. "My best friend lives in Albuquerque," she wrote back, "You need to find her. She will take care of you." She has. As it turned out when we finally put two and two together, Carolyn had been on the search committee that hired Matt, and picked him up from the airport when he came for his interview. The world grows smaller all the time. Today she sings in Matt's choir at church, and has been to nearly every performance we have given here. Every three years, the infamous Thanksgiving gathering is in New Mexico, which means every third year we are privileged to sit in on the day. After nearly 50 years of this, there are a few rituals. The group, which includes the three original couples, children and grandchildren, and honored witnesses like ourselves, gather in the living room for what has been christened "Circle Time." Each person takes a turn and summarizes their year, shares joys and sorrows, and breaks big news. Everyone has their moment, from the oldest person to the youngest. This year we heard about the grandchildren's soccer games, and the elders' health problems and struggles with learning to retire. Matt announced that he was having a mid-life crisis ; I talked about going back to school and the challenges of becoming simultaneously rooted and attached to a place, and trying to stay stimulated and challenged at the same time. This year, Cynthia spoke last. Cynthia is Carolyn and Earl's daughter and has the distinct position of being the oldest of the "kid" generation. "When I was younger," she began, "I used to hate Circle Time and thought I would die of hunger before it ended. But what I have realized as I sit here listening is that over the years I have had a glimpse of what looks like to be an adult at different stages of life. I heard about your careers, and how you coped with your elderly parents. I learned when you were first thinking about retirement, and now I see what it looks like to figure out how to grow old gracefully." Turning to the grandchildren she continued, "Maybe someday you'll remember that someone was having a mid-life crisis, or going back to school, or coping with health challenges and that these things were just a part of life. Circle Time is a microcosm of what it is to be a person, and what it means to make sense of your world as you go along." As Cynthia spoke, I looked around at the founding members of Circle Time--the three men sitting together on the couch, the women scattered around the room gently guiding the discussion. In a world of broken relationships and missed connections, Circle Time is a powerful place to land every few years. "Home" will always be one of the most holy words I know. Although I will spend the rest of my life feeling in exile from New England, home---be it in our small jewel-boxed New Mexican cottage or our former tiny colorful apartment in Beacon Hill---is still my favorite place to be. Home, however, is more than a single place. It is also chosen family, mentors and teachers, sacred empty time, holidays and holy days . It's a rented farmhouse in New Hampshire. It's being snowed in a Boston apartment. It's driving home in the snow after a great film, and being with friends and family we treasure. Home is struggling to grow up and grow old, and learning how to build a world and life for yourself. In one form or another, home comes down to Circle Time, and the stories that make up our lives. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=136 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=136 Sun, 13 Dec 2009 08:38:44 -0700 They sit around the house Not doing much of anything: the boxed set Of the complete works of Verdi, unopened. The complete Proust, unread: The French-cut silk shirts Which hang like expensive ghosts in the closet And make me look exactly Like the kind of middle-aged man Who would wear a French-cut silk shirt: The reflector telescope I thought would unlock The mysteries of the heavens But which I only used once or twice To try to find something heavenly In the window of the high-rise down the road, And which now stares disconsolately at the ceiling When it could be examining the Crab Nebula: The 30-day course in Spanish Whose text I never opened, Whose dozen cassette tapes remain unplayed, Save for Tape One, where I never learned Whether the suave American Conversing with a sultry-sounding desk clerk At a Madrid hotel about the possibility Of obtaining a room, Actually managed to check in. I like to think That one thing led to another between them And that by Tape Six or so They're happily married And raising a bilingual child in Seville or Terra Haute. But I'll never know. Suddenly I realize I have constructed the perfect home For a sexy, Spanish-speaking astronomer Who reads Proust while listening to Italian arias, And I wonder if somewhere in this teeming city There lives a woman with, say, A fencing foil gathering dust in the corner Near her unused easel, a rainbow of oil paints Drying in their tubes On the table where the violin She bought on a whim Lies entombed in the permanent darkness Of its locked case Next to the abandoned chess set, A woman who has always dreamed of becoming The kind of woman the man I've always dreamed of becoming Has always dreamed of meeting, And while the two of them discuss star clusters And Cézanne, while they fence delicately In Castilian Spanish to the strains of Rigoletto, She and I will stand in the steamy kitchen, Fixing up a little risotto, Enjoying a modest cabernet, While talking over a day so ordinary As to seem miraculous. - George Bilgere http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=135 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=135 Sun, 06 Dec 2009 08:59:23 -0700 I am tired of 5-Finger Positions. I am also tired of doing supported half-moon pose using the wall and downward-facing dog while hanging in ropes. I want acrobatics and fancy techniques, both in my teaching and in my yoga practice. I want to be doing headstands, not working on my alignment in more basic poses. It's easy to grow impatient with teaching major and minor 5-Finger Positions when it seems more fun to work on challenging Czerny Etudes and harmonic minor scales in 3rd and 6ths. Although everything in our society of immediate gratification rebels against this, it's risky to move too fast and be sloppy at the expense of good, thorough work. The secure knowledge of being able to play in all keys easily with a variety of patterns and techniques is too valuable and important to be hurried. It's altogether too attractive to jump into scales, but I've learned that rushing into poses on the yoga mat only gets me into trouble. I'm not sure that it isn't the same on the piano bench. There's a trend in the food world called the Slow Food Movement. Proponents of this movement advocate dining with intention, embracing locally grown foods, and participating in a more ritualized and leisurely way of cooking and eating than our fast-food nation usually enjoys. This philosophy has led to offshoots in all kinds of areas. I love this idea, however contrary it is to my human nature to slow down. I suspect it would do me some good to adopt a "Slow Piano" attitude, especially when I am tempted to teach harder music or trickier techniques than any of us are ready for, just keep up with some faceless ideal of what "serious" piano teaching looks like. If anything, a close look at our profession suggests quite the opposite of any Slow Movement. Even a cursory glance at most competitions reveals that younger and younger students are taking on harder and harder repertoire. While I move quite fast by nature, I have never been able to buy into the idea that an 8-year-old should be playing Liebestraume or tackling Bach Preludes and Fugues. "What's the hurry?" I often mutter to myself when faced with daunting repertoire lists. There is no guarantee that moving quickly into difficult music at a young age will lead to a career in music. In fact, too often the opposite occurs: after years of the pressures of competitions students burn out, and quit music lessons during high school. What's even more disturbing is the evidence that in spite of learning challenging, impressive repertoire, these same student lack basic musical skills, and have little ability to learn music independently. Are we training monkeys or are we nurturing lifelong musicians? Of course, this endless striving and competing isn't limited to the piano world. Pre-schoolers are taught Mandarin to quiet parents anxieties that their children won't be able to keep up in today's global world. Red-shirting to improve the odds in sports has become fairly common among parents of kindergartners. For all the ways that the United States lags behind in education, there is an atmosphere of fearful reaching all around us. There is plenty of time to teach Liszt, I remind myself when working with a talented child. As pianists, we have such a wealth of repertoire at all levels, we don't have to be in a hurry to take on the most difficult masterpieces of our instrument. Looking around at my professional colleagues, most of them claim not to have been particularly precocious at their instruments as children. They weren't necessarily on the competition circuit at a young age, and many talk of childhoods juggling many equally compelling activities and passions. This is good to remember, that in a time when we didn't need Slow Movements to force us to stop and be present in the moment, plenty of talented musicians emerged to become esteemed teachers and inspiring performers. My yoga teacher reminds me that there are always multiple benefits for any single pose ranging from strength to flexibility, balance to focus. You don't have to master every aspect of a pose in order to receive the benefits, he tells me. Sometimes an abbreviated version of a difficult pose that requires me to be attentive and balance is enough. Is, in fact, more than enough. It's the same in the piano pedagogy world. Students don't have to be ripping through multiple octave scales to be challenged technically. Indeed, often reaching over our heads only means that we are sacrificing other equally important aspects to our work to get there. A good thorough knowledge of 5-Finger Positions is never wasted time, because there are so many ways to challenge and strengthen our technique even within this simple framework. Just yesterday, I was working with a younger sibling of a current student, and teaching her a simple 3-note rote song on black keys. I was accompanying this ditty with a I-V jaunty accompaniment in F-sharp major, when it occurred to me that older brother Joey sitting on the couch could do this just as easily. And it was true. After brief instructions from me ("F-sharp major, roots in the LH, chords in the RH, alternate I-V chords like this.....") the two kids (both under the age of 10) were off and running, much to the delight of the parents watching. It's thanks to hundreds of 5-Finger Positions that Joey was able to do this with his younger sister, not even blinking at the challenge of playing in F-sharp. What's the big deal about 6-sharps if you've been playing them forever in your technique work, and your hands understand the pattern intimately? Boredom, however, is never the goal, and the minute my mind begins to wander in yoga class I know I am missing the point. The more skilled students become at pentachords, the more challenging the exercise should be on any given week. The next two are significantly more difficult, but fun. I call these exercises 2 to 1. (While not wanting to get ahead of ourselves here, 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 are great exercises for multiple octave scales as well.) In #51 RH is playing eighth notes, the LH quarter notes. Although it is difficult to write out the spacing of notes here, hands will start and end together, with the RH playing twice as many notes as the LH. (Actually I lie, I can get the spacing perfectly on my screen, but somehow it loses placeholders in the dozens of translations it goes through to get to the web page.) Sometimes I coach this to young students by chanting "ice-cream ice cream" with hands playing together on every repetition of "ice". Obviously, the reverse (#52) works just as well, but it is the rare beginner who can tackle both the same week. These patterns work nicely in both major or minor keys. With a little imagination, you could almost hear these as early Czerny Etude. 51. RH: Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do LH: Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do 52. RH Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do LH: Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=134 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=134 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:05:05 -0700 My brother Bob loves apples. I mean, seriously, he LOVES apples. Although I don't know his current apple consumption as an adult, I can tell you that when we were kids he could eat an entire bag of apples in one day. Our house was littered with apple cores--- tucked behind cushions, set on bookshelves and counters, tossed into the fireplace or thrown under the sofa. That is, when Bob didn't just eat the entire thing, core and all. I love apples too, although my daily consumption doesn't anywhere touch my brother's. More often than not, I eat an apple as I down my last gulp of coffee in the morning. Many days I get to lunchtime realizing that's all I have remembered to eat. A lack of apples in the house motivates me to go to the store immediately. Only the absence of cream in the refrigerator or coffee in the pantry provokes a similar sense of urgency. Last night after choir rehearsal Matt called. He said he was stopping at the store, did I need anything? Cream, I replied, and apples. This morning I noticed he had bought Jonathans. My grandparents used to grow Jonathan apples on the farm, but I haven't eaten a Jonathan apple since they sold the farm some 20 years ago. However, a bowl of Jonathan apples may inspire a pie this weekend, just out of nostalgia for my grandmother and her delicious pies. Mine is a variation on the apple pie theme, introduced to me by my friend, Lora. This one uses a store-bought crust (something my grandma would never do, but then I haven't yet achieved her domestic goddess status), and frozen cranberries, giving the dessert a tartness that cries out for a good ice cream. I could say that I need to practice making my pie in preparation for the rounds of Thanksgiving courses we will be attending next Thursday, but that would be a lie. Although we will need lots of pies in hand as we progress from course to course, I don't need practice on this one. I could make this pie in my sleep. But making pies is a small step towards entering the Thanksgiving season, something I desperately need to do. Honestly, it has been a tough couple of months, which have climaxed recently in an especially trying couple of weeks. Last weekend, in fact, could be renamed The Weekend to Try a Woman's Soul, and the entire few months should be called The Season of Our Discontent. There are a dozens of reasons for this, both personal and professional, but I am tired of whining about it. Truth is, it's past time to stop and count our blessings, of which we have hundreds. Just for starters, we should stop and remember the dozens of friends and neighbors who have literally carried us through the past few weeks, when our 20-year old car finally shuddered to a complete stop. There was our neighbor Jay who dropped what he was doing and came and jumped the car, allowing me to drive it the final few yards home. There was Dan, who with his three boys, arrived at our door late one Saturday night with a battery charger, in hopes of getting us through a couple more days. There were the various parents of my students who called with car leads, and offers of rides. There was Patti, who loaned us her car so I could get to my fall studio recital, and Lora, who in her own stalling, dying vehicle drove me to a concert I was playing so I didn't have to ride my bicycle. That's only the beginning of the Thanksgiving litany, for in various ways both Matt and I have needed a lot of support this fall. Friends and mentors have been there with compassionate ears and shoulders to cry on. Students and colleagues have forgiven us when we have failed; friends and family have offered their hands when we fell down. When the roof leaked for the 500th time this season, we discovered to our dismay that our roofer had broken up with us, and wouldn't return our calls. But thanks to a quick referral from a friend, we soon had a new roofer and a patched roof. We still have work that we love most days; we have a colorful home that is ours; we have two funny, quirky cats. We have each other, and a marriage that I believe in. While there may always be limited funds in our bank account and an ancient car in our driveway, we have more than enough, and people who love us. And so, in one friend's words, it's time to start the festive season at the Greers'. Next Friday after the day-long progressive Thanksgiving dinner with various friends, we host our annual St. Cecelia party , our yearly toast to the patron of music. It's time to raise a glass, and be thankful. For the harvests of the Spirit, thanks be to God. For the good we all inherit, thanks be to God. For the wonders that astound us, for the truths that still confound us, most of all that love has found us, thanks be to God. -Fred Pratt Green http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=133 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=133 Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:59:59 -0700 I think my biggest problem these days is that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, I still think it is about July 15. This might explain my reluctance to embrace the season. It also might help explain how easy it has been to deceive myself into not acknowledging that I am teaching more students than ever, five days a week, and that often I find myself in a two or three week stretch without a single day off. If my brain still thinks it is mid-July, than clearly I am living in a parallel universe. Because several weeks ago it snowed. Yes, that's right: it snowed. As in big fluffy white flakes being dropped from the sky and sticking to the ground, causing one adult student to call from the highway to cancel her lesson and head back home. While I have no doubt this was not the first time New Mexico had seen snow before Halloween, it was the first time since we moved here that I have seen snow before Halloween. Indeed, last Thanksgiving Lora and I made one of many attempts at La Luz, something we would have never considered if there had been any snow on the mountain. For sure, this storm was odd. In fact, I had just picked up Matt from the airport when the snow started coming down. He had been in upstate New York all week, where the temperatures were happily settled in the 50's. Ironically, he just missed getting delayed in Buffalo because of snow in Albuquerque. But since my internal clock is convinced that it is July, I am having a hard time adjusting to most things this season, the snow being just one. Although I am generally on top of things and thinking far ahead, things like my fall studio recital are not just sneaking up on me, there are in danger of sprinting wildly past me if I don't wake up. I just this week realized that it is next weekend that I am to do a pedagogy workshop at the NM state convention, and play on Matt's Composers 101: Copland concert (aka: Copland for Dummies). On this performance, I am accompanying a singer doing several American folk songs, playing two of the four hands on The Promise of Living, and playing the Piano Variations. I think I am in fine shape on all of the above if I could just wrap my mind around the fact that all this takes place next weekend instead of several months away. Last night I woke up with a start, panicked, realizing that I had no real time to waste and that I had to get in performance mode soon. If it isn't July, then I have some serious mental and emotional catching up to do to get in the game. So, while I have lagged behind in many ways, for months now I have been absolutely convinced that the time change happened this year on October 25, the Saturday night after we returned from our annual Taos getaway. The time change in the fall is an occasion to be marked and reason to celebrate, as far as I am concerned. We look forward to that extra hour in bed for months. It wasn't until 7pm on Saturday night the 24th, while talking to my mother, that my mistake was pointed out to me. I almost went to bed then, just to protest. In my defense, both of my calendars---not one but two--show the European time change, which apparently did indeed take place on October 25. While we might live in a global economy I don't really need that information, especially when it is likely only to confuse me. I am not the only one confused. My garden, which had seen the most glorious fall due to the unseasonable warm weather, now stands limp and despondent. The cabbage roses are wilted and pitiful, the cosmos shriveled up out of fear. Even the courageous irises, stubbornly blooming in hope the last month, are now painful to behold. It's time for all of us to come to terms with the season: tulip and daffodil bulbs need to be planted, it's time to rake the millions of leaves on the ground, time to buy cranberries and yams, and remind ourselves how to cozy up for the winter to come. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=132 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=132 Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:19:04 -0700 It's better to be a cat than to be a human. Not because of their much-noted grace and beauty- their beauty wins them no added pleasure, grace is only a cat's way of getting without fuss from one place to another- but because they see things as they are. Cats never mistake a saucer of milk for a declaration of passion or the crook of your knees for a permanent address. Observing two cats on a sunporch, you might think of them as a pair of Florentine bravoes awaiting through slitted eyes the least lapse of attention- then slash! the stiletto or alternately as a long-married couple, who hardly notice each other but find it somehow a comfort sharing the couch, the evening news, the cocoa. Both these ideas are wrong. Two cats together are like two strangers cast up by different storms on the same desert island who manage to guard, despite the utter absence of privacy, chocolate, useful domestic articles, reading material, their separate solitudes. They would not dream of telling each other their dreams, or the plots of old movies, or inventing a bookful of coconut recipes. Where we would long ago have frantically shredded our underwear into signal flags and be dancing obscenely about on the shore in a desperate frenzy, they merely shift on their haunches, calm as two stoics weighing the probable odds of the soul's immortality, as if to say, if a ship should happen along we'll be rescued. If not, not. by Katha Pollitt http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=131 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=131 Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:10:50 -0700 Yesterday I was just beginning my early morning warm-ups on the piano when I heard a knock on the door. Several mornings a week I teach an 8am lesson to elementary age students whose school, a few blocks away, doesn't begin until 9 o'clock. But this particular morning, I didn't have a lesson scheduled. Instead, I had already drunk several cups of coffee while dabbling in a few books piled on my coffee table, had checked e-mail, and was now settling down to begin an hour or so at the piano. But standing at my door, I find young Teddy and his dad, music books in hand. Teddy is only "kind-of" taking lessons. I teach his older sister, but didn't have an empty space to begin his lessons this fall. We did a few over the summer, and Teddy was an enthusiastic student. So enthusiastic, in fact, that I agreed upon a compromise until a regular spot appeared in my schedule: Teddy would come for a short 30-minutes every other week, instead of my default weekly 45-minute beginner lesson. This way, I reasoned, I could pretend he wasn't exactly my student. He was young enough that this non-commitment was hardly a problem, and in the meantime, he'd get a healthy taste of music lessons. Win-win, I thought. Except that I am having trouble remembering to write down, from month to month, when it is that he will be showing up at my doorstep. This isn't exactly a problem, because there's no danger I would be teaching any other student on those mornings and I am not likely to be out running errands or anything, but his rap at the door does sometimes startle me. "Come on in, kid," I told him yesterday. "I forgot you were coming, but let's have a piano lesson." This fall I am teaching Sunday afternoons. I resorted to this schedule after discovering that most Ed Psych courses are offered in the late afternoons, which is, by all accounts, prime piano lesson time. In order to carve out room in my schedule for even one class, I had to find another three hours I could teach. And so, Sunday afternoons find me working. In a similar attitude to pretending that I don't actually teach Teddy, I am trying to pretend that I don't really teach five days a week or on weekends, but rather that random kids I happen to like just "show up" on Sunday afternoons and we do piano. Mostly this is working, which tells you how easily I can ignore reality. But my success here has me wondering: what if I could persuade myself that there was no difference between work and play, that it was all equally appealing and fun, that my life wasn't unbalanced, but instead a bountiful manifestation of what I loved doing? This would be a wonderful way to live if I could just wrap my mind around it. Some month ago, someone knocked on the front door. We have two entrances to our sun room and the big French doors that open to the courtyard are rarely opened. Everyone--Matt and I, our friends, my students---generally just walk into the house through the side door. So a knock on the French doors is a sign that it is someone we don't know. I peered out, and there at my door was a man I recognized as being someone who lived down the street. I opened the door, and he said, "Hi. I heard that piano lessons were given here. I am looking for a piano teacher for my daughter." While I have gotten students from a variety of sources, never, in all my years of teaching, has someone just walked up off the street and inquired about piano lessons. This makes me fear that I have become like the piano teacher in The Music Man who has a sign in her window: Piano Given. Teddy's surprise appearance this week, and my pretending that I don't actually teach as much as I do, only confirms this suspicion. A friend recently suggested I should embrace the "eccentric" label, as it would be an easy way out of so many traditional expectations of our profession. The way I see it, it is only amount of time before I will be known around town as the crazy piano teacher with the cats. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=130 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=130 Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:27:33 -0600 Recently our local MTNA organization held district level competitions. Like in many places, these are pretty competitive events. Students compete by age group, with first, second and third places awarded. Winners go on to the state competition, which takes place next month at the state convention. Honestly, I am rather conflicted about the whole thing. On one hand, such events give students goals and force us to work more carefully and thoroughly than we might otherwise do. It is a chance to get what hopefully will be helpful, constructive feedback from judges, which can validate our work, and remind us what still needs our attention. This is all a good thing. On the other hand, such events can be so arbitrary. Judges can be fantastic, thoughtful, and sharp or they can be thoughtless, harsh and hold a completely different set of values than we might practice in our teaching and music-making. Assuming that the level of playing is strong, which is often the case, than the picks for the winners can seem almost like a game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors." There are many years where I am very thankful not to be on the side of having to pick among good performances a single winner. I work hard to instill in my students a certain confidence in what they do, and to remind them repeatedly that ultimately we have no control over what a judge might be thinking. But I cannot guarantee that students completely understand this, which is the risk. Which students are psychologically and emotionally sure enough to handle such pressure? Which students will rise to the standard required, and be better for the experience? Which students will gain assurance knowing that they are part of a special group of talented, committed students, and that their presence at such a competition is a sign of their hard work and musicianship? It's a puzzle trying to figure these things out, and wakes me up at 3am, worried and anxious. Even years like this one, when my students played well and were rewarded for their efforts by the judges, I question seriously whether it is worth the hours we spend in preparation, or the internal wrestling that is required to make sense of it all. Even with my best attempts at undervaluing the event, it is hard not to place a certain significance in what judges might decide, and to question my work as a teacher as a result. My husband reminds me that I get to filter this event for my students, and that their experience is somewhat subject to how I treat the whole thing. I know this, and I squirm under this pressure. I can handle this as a potentially important teaching moment, or I can make the whole thing mysterious and confusing to an 8-year-old who didn't place. My choice. Here's a teaching moment I am faced with this year: how to handle contradictory comments from the two judges. This is somewhat delicate. Obviously, in our preparation over the last two month, my students have gotten my opinion about how these pieces should be played. But in my own teaching, I err on the side of letting kids do quirky things in their music-making rather than molding perfect but uniform little models of piano students. This means that in more than a few cases, my students were actually doing things I didn't love. I think that's OK. Several weeks ago, Dennis Alexander came and coached all the kids on their competition pieces, and we got his wise opinions about the music. As always, work with Dennis is enlightening and extremely helpful. He reinforced certain things I had been saying for weeks. He reminded us of some things I had been ignoring, hoping they would work themselves out. He pointed out things I had never thought of. It was wonderful to have his musical guidance, and we were all better for it. But now I have to explain such opposing comments from the judges as: Great use of the pedal to accent beats. And then to the same student: You are using too much pedal. This should be played without pedal. Or: I loved your second movement. It was so lyrical. As opposed to: Your second movement is too romantic. You have missed the style completely. My head is spinning after reading such remarks. How does a 12-year-old make sense of this? You could certainly argue (and I will) that this just proves that everyone has a different opinion about how music should sound. I have an opinion. Dennis has an opinion. These two judges also have differing opinions. But from the child's point of view, these judges had the power of awarding winners, which makes Dennis's and my opinions seems secondary in comparison. How are the judges' remarks (good, bad or neutral) not inherently worth more? One year I was in such disagreement about the way the judges handled the comments, that I shredded the papers and never let the students see them. Interestingly, none of the kids even asked or seemed to care. I lost a teaching opportunity of having the judges reinforce things we had been working on, but it was worth the price of not exposing the students to some inappropriate and unconstructive comments. I would not want to make this action of tossing out judges' remarks a habit, but the kids were perfectly happy about their experiences that year without the judges' sheets. All of them wanted to participate again the following year, which says a lot. Well worth the loss of a few helpful suggestions. In spite of how tempting that might be, I won't do that this year. Instead, we will wrestle with our own evaluations about how the day went, and the somewhat differing opinions of the judges. I saw one student yesterday, who placed last year, but not this time. I had worried that he might be devastated, but he wasn't, having moved on to the next thing. He has his winning composition for Hey Mozart! to get ready for his recital with New Mexico Symphony Orchestra players (which, just between you and me, is far more exciting anyway). One student, who did place in the competition, headed off that afternoon to his two weekend gigs -- one at a retirement community, and another at country club, where he earns several hundred dollars every Friday night. Another child had played in chapel at school last week, and still another had played service music at church a few weeks before. One student is working on an arrangement of one of his compositions for his school band that he has been asked to do. Two others are doing a set of four-hand duets on our fall studio recital, and were busy planning their rehearsals. I hang onto these tangible signs of how functional and versatile these young musicians are becoming. I never want to be a teacher that is teaching only to competitions. It is far more important--in spite of our success in the narrow competition arena---that they become flexible musicians, able and willing to play in a variety of styles and places. Talking with friends later, I shared my struggles with the whole competition subject: my fear that by bowing out completely I won't be taken as seriously as a teacher; my need to prove through my students' success my worth as a teacher; my suspicion that I am being called not to step to the beat of the drum of the traditional esteemed teacher, but to foster a different way of being a teacher and a musician altogether. This brings up a host of conflicted feelings, which I have only begun to recognize, let alone sort out. But when talking this through with trusted friends, one commented, "Amy, it seems to me that your kids had a great experience doing this event. It is only you that is conflicted." It's true, and worth remembering. Just yesterday, Claire, who competed for the first time and did not place, came to her lesson. We talked about the competition and the judges' comments. "So," I asked her, "how do you feel about the whole thing?" "I think it was fun," she replied brightly, having clearly worked out the whole thing in her mind just fine. "Can I do it again next year?" Later that day, out of the blue, one of my youngest students asked me, "Miss Amy, are there places you can go and play the piano and then someone wins?" Yes, I told her, wondering where she had gotten such an idea. "Cool," she responded, and, without missing a beat, turned back to her romping rendition of O Susanna. It's altogether too easy to give a judge's opinions too much weight, and all too tempting to want to start teaching toward next year's competition now. I have to remind myself that I value the quirky, original kid in my studio. I have to tell myself that my kids out there making music in the real world is worth far more to me than having a winner in every age level. This is easier said than done, which, of course, is why I am wrestling with the whole issue. But there is something important here, if I can only sort it out, and worth struggling with in those dark 3am hours of the soul. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=129 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=129 Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:49:55 -0600 Today is pie day around here, which has become a deeply held September tradition in the Greer household. The New Mexico state fair is under way, and the Methodist churches in town have a infamous "Pie Cafe". For months, good Methodists around Albuquerque bake pies and freeze them to be sold at the Pie Cafe, and every Methodist church staff takes a shift or two running the cafe. Today is Matt's shift, which means that today is pie day. He will bring home pie not only for the two of us, but for my long-standing Monday night student, who happens to be the daughter of some of our best friends. Celia's dad and Matt spend most every Monday night having a "Man Date" (which is mostly an excuse to sit in the backyard and drink wine), while Celia and I have our lesson. Tonight the lesson will end with pie. We look forward to this every year. Celia is a senior, so sadly this will be our last pie day together. But in one form or another, pie day will surely go on, some other lucky Monday evening student getting the perk next September. It is rituals like these that keep our lives ticking along. As I write this we are already knee-deep in another fall semester. Another fall semester, I think, and almost weep. It's not because I find that depressing. Quite the contrary, I love fall and all its seasonal gifts: big pumpkins to pile by my doorway; the changing leaves that around here include the most joyful color of yellow; the shorter, crisper days and cool nights where an extra blanket on the bed starts to seem like a good idea; pots of soup simmering on the stove; the smell of green chile roasting all over New Mexico; our annual October get-away to Taos. No, fall doesn't make me blue, but I feel bittersweet about the idea that yet another school year is here. This will be our seventh fall in Albuquerque and I have never lived anywhere so long in my life. The years and seasons are starting to run together, which frightens me. I am afraid at this rate I will wake up one day and find myself 80. "I still feel 16 inside," my grandmother used to say and shake her head. I am starting to understand this. Indeed, just this morning I was at the grocery store where I saw the first pumpkins for sale. Back at home I remarked to Matt, "So this weekend we have got to get all our fall stuff: pumpkins, green chile, and pansies." (Matt responded, "Excuse me. Pansies?") Participating the rituals of putting up green chile, planting pansies, and filling my courtyard with pumpkins makes me look forward to the weekend, which is otherwise crammed full of performance classes. We are quickly approaching the first fall competitions, students recitals, state conventions. If I blink I might miss something. This fall is especially significant because I am going back to school. I hesitate to write that sentence, because I am not yet sure what that will mean long-term. At this point it is all an exploration, but I am taking a graduate course in Educational Psychology with my eye on an advanced degree. (Hmmm...."Ph.D" has a nice ring to it, don't you think?) While this might seem a strange detour in my professional life, it makes perfect sense if you know me well. What I have long cared about in teaching was never simply the notes on the page, but the transformation of human potential that can happen for both the student and the teacher through the learning and teaching processes. I am not looking to get out of music, and in fact have the freedom of knowing that if my life looks exactly like it does now at the end of this possible degree, that would be just fine. However, I am interested in exploring further the psychology of what it means to teach and to learn, and to think about this subject specifically under the umbrella of the private music lesson. More and more, I realize that we private studio teachers are very powerful creatures. We work individually with a students, often for years, with frequently very little thought about how strong our influence might be. We are in a strange position of being "experts" at our subjects, and completely untrained in the art of teaching itself. This makes for a dangerous combination, as anyone who as ever suffered under a brilliant but ego-driven teacher can tell you. Examining this work from an Ed. Psych. angle is different than straight piano pedagogy, because it isn't driven by the technicalities or the body of pedagogical literature of our instrument. It may be uncharted territory to link the art of teaching and the psychology of learning with the private music lesson, and at the moment it feels like a thrilling journey to begin. But deciding to actually jump in and do this, has been a long time coming. After all, I rather like my life as it is, and taking even one three-hour course this semester has turned it upside down. Besides, I am one of those people whose recurring nightmare is not that I am on stage naked, but that it is the first day of school. I don't love school, and never have. It comes easy enough for me, that's not the issue. I just don't like having someone else dictate my learning process, even for a few months. So going back to school is going to take some adjustments; I fully expect there will be some growing pains along the way, but underneath it all, I'm excited to begin this adventure. In the grand scheme of things, going back to school is just one more marker of the season. I hung my wreath of red chile peppers on the front window and made my first pot of soup last Saturday night. The Boston Red Sox have made the playoffs, which means the neighborhood bird is now "scarfed" with a jaunty Red Sox cap. My friend and musical colleague Jerome Jim appeared this week on the NPR show Native American Calling , where he was interviewed and excerpts were played from our new CD. Like any self-conscious musician, I hated every second of my playing, which was recorded several years ago and seemed on this recent hearing to fall several yards short of my intentions. I feel like a different pianist today than I did last week, much less two years ago. I cringe at all my shortcomings, but hearing them (however painful) is yet another marker---this time of my tangible growth as a musician. My favorite part of the interview was when Jerome said that I "terrified" him the first time we met, evidently because I was all business, no nonsense and knew my stuff. I think that's all part of the protective armor professional pianists put on when faced with another possible collaborator. I don't know yet if I am going to invest in this, we think to ourselves, I'll decide after we've worked together a bit. This could be just another gig, or it could turn into something wonderful. Or my aloofness very well might be due to the fact that he had called ahead of our first rehearsal and asked if he could bring his two chihuahua puppies. Uh, NO! Lucky for me, our work together has become one of the great musical collaborations of my professional life. But I wonder if I could cultivate this characteristic of terrorizing others a little more. It would be helpful to be able to put the fear of God in my students from time to time, something I sadly am completely unable to do. Especially this month, as we head toward Halloween, not to mention our fall studio recital, terrorizing might just come in handy. In the meantime, my best friend Lora has put an offer on a house a mere 12-minute walk from my corner. Although this is farther than the current 2-minute walk between houses we now enjoy, it's close enough to continue to share wardrobes, and just far enough to increase my daily exercise minutes just a bit. "There's a lot you are going to be able to do with this yard," she tells me when we spoke this morning. Somehow I have become the resident gardener among my friends. (In fact, just yesterday Jerome randomly remarked, "If Lora, you and I were stranded on a desert island, this is what would happen. You would grow the food, I would cook the food, and Lora would complain about the food." Yeah, that's about right on all counts.) At the moment, my garden is aflame with scarlet autumn sage and dozens of roses. Even a few courageous irises have dared to bloom in our Indian Summer. The mums are on their second round of buds, and the cosmos are in full adorable glory. (Is there anything in the world more cheerful than cosmos?) It's a short run of flowers now; the first frost will come anytime. I'm hedging bets about when I'll have to bring in the dozen huge geraniums that need to winter in the sun-room. Blink and you might miss something. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=128 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=128 Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:27:11 -0600 In the typical urban landscape which is home to most advanced students of music, their physical and metaphysical companions are for the most part noise, grime, traffic, the behemoth skyscrapers which dominate sunless streets, beggars, bag ladies, the homeless, the whole panoply of driven and derelict society, hypocrisy, and injustice. What is comfortable, elegant, and fashionable lies beyond the student's price range, and often beyond the bounds of good taste (atriums and malls). There is solace in the hot-dog vendor, the boutiques for cheese and sushi, jeans and shades, the neurotic squirrels hustling the curbs, the crummy theaters showing old movies. There is solace in the museums, parks, and libraries. There is solace in each other, struggling and hoping, trying to figure out the game, waiting for reinforcements to prop up old and frayed ideals. And there is solace in music, despite its illusory path as the ladder to success (but mostly to failure). From this environment, better or worse according to one's quota of resiliency, must grow the Elysian fields of musical majesty and expression. It works best if you believe that sensory deprivation stimulates the senses. (p. 109) - from Piano Pieces by Russell Sherman http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=127 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=127 Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:28:02 -0600 Because I don't require my students to do regular written theory work, I am always looking for ways to incorporate theory into the lesson. Technique work is an obvious place to begin, because Five-Finger Positions, scales, chord progressions and arpeggios not only work on finger dexterity; they also can be used to review and drill key signatures, to work on spelling scales and chords, and to reinforce relationships within the Circle of Fifths. But if I am truly going to claim that my students have a working knowledge of music theory, then I can't stop there. We must connect our technique and theory work to our music. The longer I teach, the more I realize that I'm never going to get on top of the time issue. I will never have the luxury of extra time in lessons, so I have to use our time well. Intentionally using the assigned music to work on theory kills two birds at once: we practice our theory knowledge, yes, but perhaps more importantly, we gain a deeper understanding of the music at hand, which should make the learning process go quicker and more smoothly. In upper levels this is easy: we can analyze the form of our music, identify key centers and harmonies, mark phrases. It's the beginning levels where I have been rather haphazard about this work. Partly it is because beginning music is so simple (duh) that there is little to talk about. Sure, we can identify similar phrases or sections, but in two or three lines of music let's face it: this isn't going to be a long (or maybe even very enlightening) conversation. One of the biggest challenges for beginning student is learning to read music. I have a variety of games and strategies using note-flashcards (I particularly like the ones Bastien sells. The notes are big and they print the whole grand staff on every card, something other brands don't do.), but students often struggle a bit making the link between the flashcards and the notes on the page. This has always been mysterious to me, but nevertheless it's a widespread bump in the process. And then there are the kids who seem to immediately to lose all their note-identification skills the minute they "graduate" from flashcards. I have long needed another way to firm up the connection between the knowledge of the notes on the flashcards and the notes on the page, and to drill note recognition after the students no longer have flashcards as part of their assignments. One day, during a frustrating lesson with a stubborn 6-year-old, I stumbled upon a solution: I-Spy. This was a rather liberal adaption of the old car game, translated to the music lesson. "Let's play I-Spy," I said. "Follow my directions: Second page, third line, fourth measure, right hand first beat: what is the note?" This child (who had only moments before resisted all my attempts at correcting her wrong notes or even answering my impatient question, "What is this note?") suddenly became animated. "Wait! Say it again." I repeated the instructions, and she happily (and correctly as it turned out) identified the note in question. We continued this game for a while, the student becoming faster at following directions involving pages, lines, measures and beats (I quickly figured out that it is important always to prompt the line of questioning in the same order: page, line, measure, then beat). A tense moment was diffused. She got some good theory drilling of note-identification. In addition, she had to practice following verbal cues: Second page, second line, second measure, second beat... and so on, which will serve her well in any ensemble work later in life. Most importantly, I got that damn wrong note fixed in her playing. Since that day, hardly an afternoon goes by without a game or two of I-Spy. I use it to correct wrong notes (it's less threatening than saying, "You played this note wrong. What it is supposed to be?") and to regularly drill theory concepts with my beginning students. Sometimes they identify notes, sometimes intervals, sometimes rhythmic things, but I always begin the same way: "Let's play I-Spy...." As I explained to a young teacher recently, there are a thousand components to good teaching, but some of it is just having tricks to turn to. I-Spy is one of these a trick, but it has proven to be a valuable one. I wonder if it would work on my husband? "Let's play I-Spy. Marigold-colored study, purple chair, random pile of clothes. Whose are they and when are they going to be put away?" http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=126 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=126 Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:04:34 -0600 I am suspicious of people who don't write in their books. Mine are marked like a map into my soul. I write my name and date in books when I buy them, often scribbling the location and bookstore. With a glance, I can tell that I bought this one at Victor Hugo Bookshop on Newbury Street in Boston or that one in New Orleans during a trip made on my 26th birthday. I often date when I read them, and jot in the margins as I go. Countless times I have been able to follow the journey of my own growth by simply reading my remarks along the edges of the pages. Sometimes, years later, the same passages are meaningless to me, or I realize I missed the point entirely the first time around. It is with this same degree of enthusiasm that I read published journals and devour artists' sketchbooks. By doing so, I am convinced I will gain fresh insight into living, or a new understanding of the creative mind. Often, I am shocked to realize that these brilliant people were merely human beings who struggled with the same insecurities and fears that I fight on a daily basis. Writers don't always write well in their private lives. Highly creative beings are frequently terribly uninspired on a daily basis. Somehow such knowledge gives me comfort. So, it with equal suspicion that I don't trust musicians who don't mark their music. Mine is a mess of colors and scribbles and remarks: Slow down! Listen for every sixteenth-note. Quiet!! Sometimes I mark dynamics in colors or record metronome tempi like swimmers might record race times. In my filled-to-a-brim life, I don't have time to make a mistake more than once. It doesn't matter what it is-an accidental, a rhythm, a missed rest-the pencil comes out. I am equally aggressive with the colored pencils when teaching, my students' music becoming a rainbow of colors and corrections. "What color should I use today?" I frequently ask students. Such markings allow me to see at a glance what is a repeated mistake, and with every color that is added students know they can't hide their lack of careful practicing. At the same time, the absence of color across the page is its own sign of progress. "Look Miss Amy!" little Joey announced to me, "there are less colors on this page." He is proud of his careful work; I am too. In spite of all this happy scribbling, I resisted keeping a practice journal for years, certain that I remembered just fine what need to be done from day to day. But as I gathered and adopted more and more different practice techniques, I found that the inefficiency of forgetting the details of my practicing made me impatient. Not only was I losing ideas that came to me during particular practice sessions, I wasn't hanging onto small triumphs or discoveries that I stumbled upon. Overnight I would forget what metronome marking I had managed to achieve in my current Czerny Etude, or when the last time was that I had reviewed my memory of a certain piece. So, rather reluctantly at first, I began keeping practice notes for myself in a blank notebook. The results were immediately obvious. Now when I had a flash of insight about what a piece needed, but no more time, I could simply write a note to myself and try it the next day. When after practicing a certain way one day, I realized that the music really needed this next, I wrote it down, freeing my conscious mind to bounce around in other ways. There are no rules about what goes in my practice journal: I make notes about great recordings or books I want to find. I scribble down quotes I want to remember. I draw maps and graphs when I am memorizing. I use it to brainstorm words and concepts when trying to break through to the essence of some piece of music. I suppose such a habit of keeping a practice journal serves the same function journaling serves in other areas of our lives: it forces us to think through and make sense of our actions. Whatever the reason, I'm hooked. I don't have the time or patience to return to my random pre-journaling practicing. But here is a perfect example where lessons learned in one area of my life don't quickly transfer to other areas, because even after swearing allegiance to my practice journal, I didn't start keeping teaching notes for a long time. Now I do, religiously. It's hardly a model of meticulous record-keeping; my good organizational skills are hidden behind a rather haphazard approach. But my 12x9 inch blank sketchbook is a wealth of information---each teaching week gets its own page and over the course of my lesson days I scribble down random information in wild colors: Sophie---begin minor chords. Lucy-ask about student recital. George---duet with Jason? I also record reminders to myself: check on Fantaisie-Impromptu edition. Order rote pieces. Play through Arabesque. My mind is a sieve. Without these promptings I'm likely to waste precious moments staring blankly into space. But a quick glance at my teaching journal gives me direction in the odd extra minute. I rarely have large swatches of time to devote to anything, but I can move mountains in the random empty moment here and there. It is from years of teaching journals that I have collected dozens of technique ideas, and my own notebooks give me quick ideas when I'm not feeling inspired, which, I should admit, is more days than not. The next couple of variations are an advanced version of the one I suggested way back in an earlier technique post. My students and I call these 5-Finger Positions "Doubles and Singles". 47. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do--RH (Singles and Legato) Do Do Re Re Mi Mi Fa Fa Sol Sol Fa Fa Mi Mi Re Re Do Do---LH (Doubles and Staccato) played at the same time---RH will be quarter notes, LH eighth notes. 48. Reverse---LH Singles and Legato, RH Doubles and Staccato The next two are harder than the above for some reason I have never completely been able to figure out. Obviously, all these work the technique of one hand playing legato while the other hand is staccato, but the next two seem to get right to the point. I suggest doing #47 and #48 first before tackling the following. It's also a good idea not to assign both---#47 and 48 or #49 and 50--on the same week. Often with young beginners they can handle one way---RH singles, LH Doubles for example--but the other way isn't simply the reverse, but rather a whole new coordination to conquer. Take it slow. 49. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do RH legato, LH staccato 50. Reverse---RH staccato, LH legato http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=125 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=125 Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:19:21 -0600 When love is felt or fear is known, When holidays and holy days and such times come, When anniversaires arrive by calendar or consciousness When seasons come as seasons do old and known, but somehow new When lives are born or people die When something sacred's sensed in soil or sky, Mark the time. Respond with thought or prayer or smile or grief. Let nothing living, life or leaf slip between the fingers of the mind for all of these are holy things we will not, cannot, find again. -Max Coots http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=124 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=124 Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:11:04 -0600 Some of you might be curious about the timing of our trip to Italy. I mean, who goes to Italy in August? Don't they know, (I can hear the whispering) that Italy is unbearably hot and crowded in August? Of course we knew. But when the travel gods offer you a trip you don't argue about the time frame; you simply say, Grazie. Besides, this is Italy we are talking about here. Italy. Rome was 100 degrees every day we were there. (It sounds less hot if you translate it to Celsius.) We took a tour of St Peter's crypt. It was fascinating seeing thousands of years of history piled up under that formidable basilica. It was also 97% humidity down there, and, for heaven's sake, we were basically in a tomb. Let's just say the air in New Mexico never sounded so good. We bought tickets to the Vatican Museum. As an art buff, I usually can't get enough of art museums. Italy promised to be a binge of great art viewing. I had been looking forward to this for months. The lobby of the Vatican Museum was delightfully cool after the long walk in the sun around the walls of Vatican City. There was little to no line. I could almost taste how much fun this was going to be. Armed with Rick Steves guide to the museum, we enter the first room. Rick tells us that the Vatican Museum is a one-way road ending with the Sistine Chapel. You don't have to make decisions about where to go, you simply have to follow naturally from one room to the next. The first room has probably 200 people. I don't know if there was any art because I couldn't get close enough to see it. The air begins to feel less than great. The next few rooms grow progressively more crowded, and the heat increases. Clearly, they only air-condition the entrance to the museum. I have yet to actually glimpse any art, because the crowds are starting to be shoulder to shoulder. Everywhere there are signs pointing you to the Sistine Chapel. Rick Steves is right -- we aren't going to get lost -- but after about 15 minutes, we realize these signs are taunting us, because we have a long, LONG trek to the end. There is no turning around. I am beginning to grow faint from the heat and lack of fresh air. After an hour of steady trudging, pushing our way through the mobs, we enter the Sistine Chapel. There must be 1000 other people in there. I take one glance up at this ceiling I have been reading about for a decade and run out of the room. I can't really say that I have seen the Sistine Chapel, only that I have run through the Sistine Chapel. This proved to be the only art museum in Rome we attempted. Some day we will go back to Rome (preferably in January) and see: the Spanish Steps the Trevi Fountain the Colosseum the Forum the many art museums the Sistine Chapel ....but this trip, we had no choice but to seek solace in long siestas; leisurely, wonderful 3-hour dinners; and lots of gelato. After all, When in Rome.... We spent a week on the Adriatic Sea in a hotel on the beach with at least a million Italian tourists. Beach umbrellas were lined up in the sand like soldiers. You have to reserve one of these umbrellas in advance if you want to sit and read a novel while burying your feet in the white silk-like sand; otherwise some angry Italian will come and scream at you and wave their hands dramatically. While on the coast, Matt led choir rehearsals, I played choir rehearsals on the worst keyboard imaginable (It didn't even deserve the term "electronic piano." It was like playing a kazoo.). There was an inspiring performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in a little coastal town called Vasto, with the American choir, a choir from Italy and an orchestra from Romania, which was a musical Olympic moment if ever there was one. It was the evening of the Beethoven performance that Matt had what may yet prove to be the highlight of his career. During the solo bows, he is brought out to take a bow as the chorusmaster. Leaving the church, he is enthusiastically embraced by a random Italian woman who shouted "Maestro!" and kissed him on both cheeks. Then she dragged him over and placed him between her two parents (105 years old, about three feet tall, no teeth), and took his picture. His moments of fame and glory may all be downhill from here. We ate four days in a row at a fabulous restaurant in Ortona called La Vecchia Lanterna. The first day we ordered bruschetta. When the grilled bread arrived, topped with perfectly oiled and seasoned slices of tomatoes, it was so good that it made us weep. One night we ordered lentils-- lentils I tell you-- that were life-changing. These Italians have a cooking gene that we simply don't have. The last day, Matt tried to tell the owner, who spoke no English, that we were leaving to "go back to America." The man became very animated, shook our hands, and from behind the bar brought out a little ceramic cup with the name of the restaurant on it and presented it to us. I will grow cactus in it and long for that bruschetta. As lame Americans with barely one language at our disposal, we had numerous humorous incidents trying to communicate: One night we stopped in a cafe for a nightcap. Matt ordered "Limoncello" (pointing at me), "Amaretto" (pointing at himself), and, having seen beautiful looking cantaloupe being consumed for dessert all around us, "melone." The waiter was understandably confused by this combination of items, so Matt repeated it, this time making a round globe-like gesture for the melon. (Surely the international symbol for cantaloupe.). The waiter continued to look confused. After a while he brought out a lemoncello for me (Go Matt!) and something mysterious for my dear husband, which we can only speculate was Amaretto mixed with melon liqueur. Matt found it absolutely undrinkable. Some time later, a cantaloupe appeared on the table. It was delicious. Another time we were having an argument about whether or not everything would close during siesta in the afternoon. I said yes. Matt thought not. We were planning a picnic on the beach that evening and wanted to get some food at the market, but Matt didn't want to carry it around. "We'll get it after lunch," he argued. "It'll be closed," I replied. "I'll just ask," he said impatiently. There was no way this exchange was going to go well. First he accidentally said the name for church (chiesa) instead of closed (chiuso) leading the puzzled proprietor to start naming big churches in his little town. Then he said, "No chiesa. Chiuso. Are you chiuso?" Which puzzled him more, as clearly Matt now wants a closed church. Then he mimed falling asleep (there was lots of miming on this trip, making us in good shape for our next game of charades), which lost the man completely. What the hell? He must have thought. This crazy American wants a closed church for sleeping. We didn't get our question answered, but I won the argument. Everything in Ortona closes for the siesta. We had four fabulous days in Florence, our time there book-ended by drinks we had in a rooftop bar we stumbled upon the first night. From our perch in the sky, we could almost touch the Duomo. Like all of Italy, Florence was overrun by tourists, but by this point in the trip we had starting adapting our expectations and had grown more tolerant of the heat. We took an interesting walking tour one morning, and stumbled upon a parade, which seemed to have something to do with different sections of the city making their annual allegiance to city hall. We didn't see David, only the copy in the Piazza della Signoria. We attended Mass in the Duomo. Matt, being a former Catholic, could at least follow the gist of the service. I, raised Methodist, couldn't and so concentrated on trying to keep my shoulders covered with my gauzy shawl, and tried to imagine what the tiny charming old priest might have been saying. The next day we ran into the priest in the street. He greeted us with a huge smile, clearly recognizing us from the previous day, which was a sweet small-town kind of moment in a foreign country. We continued our pattern of eating copious amounts of gelato and nearly wore out our shoes walking the cobbled streets and alleys of the beautiful city. Our Italian holiday ended with a journey of at least a dozen legs: a walk with our luggage to the train station in Florence train to Rome two buses to our hotel night in Rome taxi to the train station train to the airport countless shuttles to various terminals delayed plane from Rome to Atlanta missed connection to Albuquerque later flight to Albuquerque car ride home. From the first step to the last--nearly 48 hours. From the taxi ride in Rome to walking into our door back in Albuquerque---a grueling 24-hours, sans sleep. This holiday required as much internal shifting as actual physical traveling. Faced with the Disneyland-like crowds and the unmanageable heat, we quickly learned to stop expecting to see or do much and started learning simply to be in a wonderful place. In many respects, this was both disappointing and enlightening all at once. August will never be my preferred travel month, but I learned that I can do it and keep my mostly good humor intact. This is no small lesson, and worthy, perhaps of all the sweat, mobs, and gelato. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=123 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=123 Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:01:59 -0600 Don't tell my mother, but I have started hiring a housekeeper. I am embarrassed to admit this, thanks to my mid-western upbringing which frowns on such luxuries. It does seem like a luxury; after all, I work from home. One would think that I would be able to keep my house clean. But I can't -- not even close -- and I have finally accepted this truth. Either I spend every non-working minute cleaning house, or I get some help. Finally, ("It's about time!" my husband said) I have resorted to the latter. I still have not completely gone over to the dark side. Ellen comes once every two or three weeks and gives me a couple of hard hours cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom. I do the rest. Truthfully, I can't afford to have more help than that, and most of the time I manage fairly well. Although I say that rather sheepishly, as the rug under my feet needs seriously vacuuming for it has collected a good week's worth of crud--not to mention the shavings from the pencil sharpener that a kid dumped on it on Friday. Talking this housekeeping thing over with my friend Lora, I am reminded that Lora lives alone, is hardly there, and rarely cooks, which makes cleaning her house a snap. On the other hand, I live with a "closeted-neat person" ("It's time to let that neat guy out of the closet," I frequently grumble to Matt.) and I have a serious amount of traffic in my sweet little 1250 square-foot cottage. Just to prove my point, I counted the number of visitors that came into my house last week. It was 91. Yeah, that would be 91. Let's say that just 20% of these people use the bathroom, and you see why Ellen has her work cut out for her. Last week nearly a hundred people were in my house (and this would be a week without one of our frequent music parties/receptions--last November we had four of those, including the annual St Cecelia party , which alone is 100 people easy.) AND I worked some 8-12 hours a day. This is my dilemma. But in spite of all this, I still am in conflict about hiring Ellen, sensible, no-nonsense female genes run strong in my family. The branches of my family tree are full of women who kept immaculate houses, cooked dinner every night, and raised lots of children. I never saw my maternal grandmother less than perfectly put together: hair in place, jewelry on, clothes ironed and missing no buttons. Her house could pass a white glove test. She owned knick-knacks, decorated at Christmastime, and always had fresh towels. My paternal grandmother lived most of her life in an old farmhouse, which possessed somewhat less than the modern standard of technology. We worry when we are without high-speed Internet; she didn't have indoor plumbing until she was 40. While her house was a delightfully messy assortment of projects: she planted acres and acres of gardens, canned enough vegetables every summer to survive any emergency, sewed her own clothes, and was easily the best cook in my family. My favorite childhood memories of holidays are in that rambling white farmhouse, waking up to the smell of a turkey roasting all night in the wood stove she still used in her kitchen. It's daunting, however, to imagine living up to Grandma's domestic skills; I, who have never grown a vegetable, let alone canned one. Although fully equipped with modern appliances, my mother was also no slouch in the domestic department. She raised six children. She never opened an empty refrigerator at 9pm and declared that we were ordering pizza. Her plants were always watered. She never sent her laundry out just because she was too occupied with reading Haiku poetry to do it herself. The babies always napped at the same hour. We children went to bed every night by eight o'clock with our piano practicing done. She didn't do yoga or see an acupuncturist. She even taught Sunday School. In all her years of teaching school, she has never called in sick. Momma doesn't have a massage therapist or a herbalist. She has no weakness for fine leather and has never needed shoe therapy. Neither my mother nor any of the other matriarchal figures in my family needed two pots of coffee in the morning to counter the effect of a late dinner and a bottle of wine. These women didn't drink wine. Good grief, they didn't even drink coffee. In spite of these stalwart genes, I won't cook dinner tonight. Truth be told, I haven't cooked in weeks. The irony is that there is every evidence that there are active domestic genes winding around my double helix. I garden. I read cookbooks and M.F.K Fisher. I knit. I have a sun-room full of geraniums . But there are holes in my domesticity: I have never ironed my husband's shirts. I couldn't roast a chicken if my life depended upon it. I pay someone else to hem my skirts. ("Why didn't you do it yourself?" Because I can't, Momma.) I forget to clean my kitchen. In fact, it only recently came to my attention that some people set aside time to clean their kitchens, and don't just assume that it is clean enough if the dishes are done. Instead of cleaning the kitchen, this week I have: spent 4 hours in the recording studio with a singer taught 27 piano lessons answered countless e-mails and phone messages finished a column for a music journal gone on several walks read Billy Collins' new book of poetry practiced God-only-knows how many hours listen to a recording of Angela Hewitt playing Bach held Downward-Facing-Dog until I turned purple. I have a hard time justifying Ellen cleaning my bathroom so that I can have more time to practice. I have a million and one good reasons to need some help around here, but that doesn't mean I have made peace with the voices in my head that say I---childless and working from home as I do----ought to be able to manage it all. Sometimes I want different examples, different mentors, different voices in my head. I am searching for the crazy aunt who ran off to Turkey with a lover and who wrote books. I want a cousin who knits not only gorgeous scarves but gorgeous melodies. I want to find the distant grandmother who didn't have kids until she was 40 because she was too busy riding horseback on beaches in the Bahamas. I want to know someone like the sister of a friend, who once left a note for her husband: "Gone to Paris. Took the kids." I want to know that she kept her hair long after the age of 30, made marinara sauce on a single burner, and sang opera arias while she cooked in a garret apartment. I want to know women who disobeyed the rules, who were not well-behaved, who didn't care about their husbands missing buttons. Whatever domesticity, whatever womanhood I may manage, my version will be more messy than the examples I grew up with. But thanks to Ellen this morning, my kitchen is, for the moment, spotless---or would be, if I hadn't thrown my empty lunch dishes in the sink. As I write this, there are three pairs of shoes lying in the living room; if I don't do laundry soon we may have to actually go buy new clothes to wear; I have no idea what might be for dinner. On top of it all, I just had another birthday. I think growing older has turned up the volume in my head. Now that I am firmly in my mid-to-late 30's (Matt lovingly puts the emphasis on the "late" part of that phrase, but that's not fair, or entirely accurate.), there is no question that I am now an adult. Whether or not I have accepted or approved of it, I am living some version of what it means to be a woman. I almost shudder to think of it, but this--dirty kitchen and all--may be it. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=122 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=122 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:01:26 -0600 I think there will be just one technique exercise to chew on today. You see, I'm just back from Italy and, what with all the food, wine, cappuccinos and art, I haven't been thinking seriously about anything very technical. (Except perhaps how to duplicate these pasta recipes at home.) Yesterday, buying lunch meat at our deli counter back home in Albuquerque, Matt said "Grazie" at the end of the transaction, his brain still on all things Italian. This is especially humorous if you understand that neither one of us actually speaks the language, as demonstrated by numerous stymied attempts at even the most basic communication (buying shoes in Rome and leather bags in Florence being just two important examples). But as evidenced from all this, there is little attention at the moment for mundane things like how to sequence good piano technique for beginning fingers. And so, while I am tempted to chat about Rome, the Adriatic coast, our hotel on the beach, or the open leather market in Florence, (my new nomination for the happiest place on Earth) instead I will leave you with this little exercise. I must confess that I stole it straight from the Edna-Mae Burnam's A Dozen a Day books, but truth is, I don't think Ms. Burnam can really claim this one either. Everyone and their mother has played some version of this exercise over the years, making it as classic as, well, Michelangelo's David. 46. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Play first in quarter notes, repeat in eighth notes, and then in sixteenths, thereby doubling the speed with every repetition. Either major or minor positions will do quite nicely. Doubling note values with every repetition isn't hard, but it might be challenging to determine, from the quarter-note speed, what a reasonable sixteenth-note tempo might be. This is a great exercise to use rhythmic language with: I instruct students to say "watermelon" with every ascending quarter-note and "ice cream" with the descending quarter notes, thereby setting up a good tempo from the beginning. (If you can't say it, you probably can't play it, I often remind students.) Speaking of watermelon, Italians do take their melons seriously. This being the season, they were on every menu, slices were sold from stands on the street corners, and there were advertisements on billboards around the country. As far as ice cream goes, I am officially in gelato withdrawal, having had it at least once a day for the last three weeks. By the way, I've decided that "gelato" is my new best word for the syncopated rhythm that is a hard match in the English language: short-long-short (could be eighth-quarter-eighth or sixteenth-eighth-sixteenth as two possibilities). Or "granita" would work as well---both having an accent on the second syllable. Using these words as much as possible, just might---might---help me get over the life-changing lemon granita and blueberry gelato we found last week in Florence near the Duomo. If you're in the neighborhood, find it. You'll thank me. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=121 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=121 Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:19:59 -0600 is where in the pinewoods in the moments between the darkness and first light two deer came walking down the hill and when they saw me they said to each other, okay, this one is okay, let's see who she is and why she is sitting on the ground like that, so quiet, as if asleep, or in a dream, but, anyway, harmless; and so they came on their slender legs and gazed upon me not unlike the way I go out to the dunes and look and look and look into the faces of the flowers; and then one of them leaned forward and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life bring to me that could exceed that brief moment? For twenty years I have gone every day to the same woods, not waiting, exactly, just lingering. Such gifts, bestowed, can't be repeated. If you want to talk about this come to visit. I live in the house near the corner, which I have named Gratitude. -Mary Oliver http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=120 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=120 Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:47:19 -0600 It is officially too hot to do anything. It's during times like this that I most need a plan, because if I don't have one ready, nothing gets done. I need a to-do list made and waiting, because in my numbed, over-heated state, all I can do is blindly follow orders. Unfortunately, this means that I have to put aside time to sit down and carve out plans, make lists, set schedules and agendas, or else I will most likely succumb to the lure of sparkling lemonade and a chair in the garden during any empty minutes. Times like this are precisely why I need technique exercises to turn to. My notebook of scribbled technique exercises -- Five-Finger Positions, scale patterns, chord progressions, and so on -- may very well be one of my most valued possessions, perhaps the first thing I'd grab in a fire (after my husband and two cats, of course). The dog-eared pages have saved many a day lately, when without such resources I might very well throw in the towel completely. Here's a few more to get us through the next heat wave..... 42. Do Re Do Mi Do Fa Do Sol Sol Fa Sol Mi Sol Re Sol Do 43. Do Re Re Mi Mi Fa Fa Sol Sol Fa Fa Mi Mi Re Re Do I love to teach both of these using two-note slurs if students are ready, guiding students into "leaning" into the first of the two notes and releasing "back" off the second. ("Lean-back, Lean-back....") But if a student isn't ready for such subtleties of touch, #42 can be one legato phrase going up and another going down, or the whole thing could be staccato. Because of the repeated note, number 43 is written in such a way that any legato is going to require the notes to be grouped in twos. This doesn't mean you have to teach the two-note slur gesture, but it is great exercise for this skill because with little guidance it almost teaches itself. The next two are simpler patterns, but demand musical finesse and control of touch. Five-Finger Positions are a great way to practice our control, especially on patterns that by this point we know inside and out. 44. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Crescendo going up; Decrescendo coming down 45. Same Pattern Decrescendo going up; Crescendo coming down When all else fails, suggest the student compose their own patterns for a couple of weeks. Insist that they write them in their assignment notebooks in solfege and practice them in all positions. This lets you off the hook temporarily, allows you to sneak some creativity into their assignments, and gives them a chance to take some ownership of their practicing and technique work. Besides, you never know when they might stumble upon brilliant patterns that you haven't thought of, and you can steal them for future use! http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=119 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=119 Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:12:49 -0600 I probably should go on record saying I don't think theory books are a waste of time. Some people, based on my previous rants , might think otherwise, but I actually think that most of theory books that are packaged with various methods are quite good. Life is full of hard choices, however, and choosing not to assign regular written theory work is one of the tough pedagogical decisions I make about how to use our time. But this summer, I decided to have some of my elementary students do some written work when they have less schoolwork in their lives. I purchased theory workbooks and started handing them out. On the first day, no fewer than 100% of the students squealed with delight as they grabbed the books from my hands, some even asking me, "Can I do extra pages if I want?" "Goody goody gumdrops!" one child exclaimed, a phrase one doesn't hear enough these days, much less in piano lessons. Now, one might take this response as an argument for using theory workbooks all the time, but instead I think it only strengthens my choice to limit their use in my studio. Because clearly, by doing so -- and through no real forethought or calculation on my part -- I have increased their value and appeal to my students. I can coast on their good attitude about this assignment, and get some dedicated written work out of them this summer. Hopefully, they won't do it long enough to begin dreading it, but surely even a few months will help to further secure some of basic concepts that the books will reinforce. Life is all about making tough choices about how to spend our time. In and out of music lessons, these decisions have to be made, because if we don't make them, we end up doing too many things rather poorly, instead of a few things well. Theory books aren't the only thing in my studio I choose to do in the summer months that I wouldn't do during other times of the year. I've got a number of drop-in students this summer: extra adults, college students home for a few months, even former students interested in revisiting their piano skills for a few months. I don't have time for these students during the year, hanging on as I am by a thread most of the time, but in the summer, when my normal load is less predictable, I can take on extra lessons. I find myself teaching them differently: I'm more relaxed with these students, letting them call the shots about what they want to work on, not prescribing my usual doses of etudes and technique work. This has got me thinking, wondering if this attitude of: well, what do you want to do on the piano this summer? isn't a healthy change from my always dictating the learning schedule. I'm not suggesting this would be a good idea taken to an extreme, because I have lots of experience knowing the best way to get from Piano-Playing Point A to Piano-Playing Point B, and that's what I am being paid to do. But shifting my focus a bit away from my assumed "best" way to learn the piano, to a more open-minded: what would serve the student best here in the next few months and give them joy? isn't a bad way to think either. Honestly, I could use a dose of that philosophy infused into my life at the moment; dragged down as I am these days with the heat and unfamiliar humidity. The New Mexico version of air-conditioning, the swamp cooler, which work fine in a dry heat, can't hold up when the air is retaining moisture. I swear some students are going to melt during one of their sweaty lessons, and leave a puddle on my piano bench. Asking the question "What would serve us all best here and even make us happy?" would be a helpful survival technique during these scorching days. There are moments when the clearest answer to that question is "ice cream." However, if theory workbooks can make a child utter the words, "Goody goody gumdrops," then there's hope for all of us. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=118 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=118 Sun, 12 Jul 2009 09:36:13 -0600 It's a good thing that I am not overly dependent upon technology, because at the moment we have a dead television, a dead cell phone, a dead laptop, a 20-year car hobbling along on its last leg, and a dead metronome. This may be the universe's way of mocking me for not keeping up, although honestly, only the latter was a real problem this week; it's hard to be a piano teacher without a functioning metronome. But all of these broken machines serve to punch holes into the assumed routines and patterns of our days, making us think more creatively about how to share our one functioning laptop, causing us to read or talk in the evenings instead of automatically putting in a movie, forcing us to think twice before jumping into our car on some avoidable errand. This is not a bad thing, to rethink patterns and routines, and summertime seems a ripe season to do so. Schedules and habits are already turned upside down this time of year: I teach at random times throughout the day, instead of the blocks of after-school hours. I fall out of bed with the first light---this morning Lora and I were "scarfing" our neighborhood bird at 5am (Actually "grooming" the bird would be more accurate, as we were preparing the bird for a lovely summer wedding, complete with a top hat and white tie, with a smaller plaster roadrunner "bride" to be put at his feet in a few days---brides are always late for their weddings, we reason.). After our stealthy costuming we went hiking for a few hours in the foothills, but even at such an early hour it was light, the sun bursting over the Sandia mountains by the time we headed back to the car. Instead of teaching through the early evening hours, summer finds me outside at dusk: weeding, watering, deadheading spent yellow marigolds and burgundy petunias. This is my unwinding time every day, happily puttering in the garden, after which Matt meets me with a Campari and soda and we linger in the yard. I have filled a half-dozen bird feeders, making our property a virtual aviary. One feeder I hung just inches outside the study window. Godiva spends hours and hours every day watching the birds with her nose pressed against the glass, guarding the house from any feathered invasion. The Adirondack chairs have recently gotten a new coat of paint: the peeling fire-engine red on two chairs has been replaced with different shades of deep rich purple. Adirondack chairs, with their many slots and edges, are a pain to paint. I resorted to what I referred to as my "Zen painting time" at 5:30 in the morning to get them finished, trusting that during the 30-minutes I allotted for the job that I would be too asleep to notice how much I hated this task. But there is nothing like an hour in an Adirondack chair with a drink in hand to assure you that all is right in the world; even the neighborhood stray cat that I have taken to calling "Pinstripe" agrees, often joining us in the evenings to roll around in the thyme patch. I love this shifting of tired habits that take place in these long days. Although I have never had the luxury of summering in Maine or on the Cape, there is no question that life tastes different during these months. I still teach a lot, requiring students to take a minimum number of lessons during June and July in order to retain their spots in the studio in the fall. This summer I have already played two big concerts in a two-week span, requiring hours of practicing and rehearsing. One recital included the Franck violin sonata (transcribed for flute) with my musical buddy, Jerome. This piece is my vote for one of the most transformative pieces in Western music, encompassing every human emotion in its four movements. The first movement is simultaneously peaceful and anxious, a dreamlike calm with an undercurrent of restlessness. The second movement rips open in anger, passion and fierceness, only to break down several times with a stirring lyrical melody, heart-wrenching in its beauty. The third movement is the embodiment of desperate, deep sadness and mourning, colored with a passionate outburst of drama. And the final moment seems to me to encapsulate the survival and triumph of all humanity. It is a canon between the piano and the soloist and the tune starts on an upbeat; beginning this movement feels like joining in a universal triumphant march already taking place under the surface of the entire work. This movement is deep contentment, peace and happiness, a resolution of all the upheaval of the previous four movements. Working on this piece I was reminded what an honor and privilege it is to be able to play music like this. To have this kind of sweep of humanity and emotions as part of my life and my days, my work and my play, is both humbling and thrilling at the same time. But I was so buried in work that I woke up a couple of weeks ago to realize that it was just then officially summer, the solstice taking place that very day. This surprised me greatly, for in my mind, we must surely be halfway through the summer months. We've had a record cool June, only to be hit by an early monsoon season giving us muggy days and low clouds breaking into sudden violent thunderstorms at a moment's notice. Already I am thinking about fall schedules and planning music for next semester's recital, and in just a few weeks I will be finished teaching summer lessons. There's been an increase in break-ins in the city in the last month, fueled by desperate people in a bad economy. But in spite of this nagging worry, summer brings a measure of quiet and calm, space and peace. Tonight will be an al fresco dinner with friends, a bottle of champagne and a martini glasses full of chocolate mousse already chilling in the fridge. These seasonal joys disappear in a flash: these long days of sunshine, these evenings spent outside under the stars. Although its been a great, successful summer already, I can't help reminding myself to stop and really attend to the details of these pleasures, for so quickly they will be gone. Actually, this year our summer ends in one last hurrah. Matt has a gig in Italy the first week of August. I love saying that: Matt has a gig in Italy....He is helping to prepare a choir for a festival taking place there, and so the end of July has us heading to Rome, to the eastern coast just above the boot heel, and then to Florence for a whirlwind two and a half week trip. I have no duties while in Italy, and plan to spend my time wandering from café to café drinking cappuccinos and wine and looking at art. I can't wait. Riding home recently from picking up our weekly box of produce from Los Poblanos, our farmers co-op, I was pedaling along slowly with two bags of vegetables and fruit when from behind me came a guy on another bike. "Carrying beets?" he asked as he eyed my baskets. "Now that's a Nob Hill pick-up line if I have ever heard one," said Lora when I reported the incident. "Only here would you have that kind of encounter with a stranger." It's true; I forget how unusual my little neighborhood is. Here it isn't that startling to not have a working television (indeed it has recently come to my attention that I have a huge percentage of students who have televisions but no cable, basically indicating there is little to no TV-watching taking place in many of my students' households. Maybe this is why these families and I are such kindred spirits.). Recently I went up to our neighborhood Flying Star to spend a much needed hour with a pen and a stack of blank paper. I was at the counter ordering iced tea when I realized that in switching bags I had left my wallet at home. "Never mind," I said, "I forgot my wallet. Let me run home and get it." "You only want iced tea?" the girl behind the counter asked, "Don't worry about it. Here you go," she said and handed me a complimentary glass. "We'll catch you next time." Later, sitting in a booth by the window, I overheard two guys talking behind me, "How many cow bells do you have?" one asked the other. How many cow bells do you have? I almost laughed out loud. Only here would this conversation even be somewhat normal. After all, dressing a bird hardly seems strange on our eclectic streets. Indeed, at this moment, around the corner sits a funny-looking creature, dressed up like a groom, patiently waiting for his roadrunner bride. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=117 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=117 Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:08:55 -0600 My stepdaughter and I circle round and round. You see, I like the music loud, the speakers throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so each bass note is like a hand smacking the gut. But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four and likes the music decorous, pitched below her own voice--that tenuous projection of self. With music blasting, she feels she disappears, is lost within the blare, which in fact I like. But at four what she wants is self-location and uses her voice as a porpoise uses its sonar: to find herself in all this space. If she had a sort of box with a peephole and looked inside, what she'd like to see would be herself standing there in her red pants, jacket, yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject for serious study. But me, if I raised the same box to my eye, I would wish to find the ocean on one of those days when wind and thick cloud make the water gray and restless as if some creature brooded underneath, a rocky coast with a road along the shore where someone like me was walking and has gone. Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego, leaving turbulent water and winding road, a landscape stripped of people and language-- how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors. -Stephen Dobyns http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=116 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=116 Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:53:10 -0600 I am not exactly what you would call "cutting edge" when it comes to using technology. My husband and I have a long established pattern: he brings some form of new technology into our house without consulting me; I eye it suspiciously for weeks, before generally allowing it to slowly seep into our lives, mostly without my active participation. Often I am won over; sometimes not. I am afraid I am one of those people that has to remind herself to check her cell phone and see if anyone has called, sometimes realizing after several days that I am not even sure where my cell phone might be. This drives all my friends crazy. "The world might fall in and we wouldn't be able to get a hold of you," says one friend disgustedly. And it's true. Case in point: I went a good 10 days before I caught a reference to the recent airplane crash. This isn't terribly surprising, given that I see only the Sunday edition of The New York Times and never watch television. I'm no better at answering the home phone, considering the answering machine to be my personal butler who screens my calls. In fact, I don't even blink when it rings, causing guests sometimes to exclaim in alarm, "Amy, your phone is ringing!" But I remain skeptical of all those gadgets that allow us to communicate with one another immediately. I think that they are fooling us into thinking we are more important than we actually are. I can't think of a single time someone really needed to contact me at a moment's notice, although we invent at least 25 of these circumstances every day. "What if you need to get in touch with your students at the last minute?" one friend asked me, trying to make an argument why my life would be better if I would just join Facebook. "Kids are always on Facebook, you could get a hold of them quickly that way." I can't even begin to describe the problems I see in that theory. First of all, chances are that if I have a last minute "emergency" in my teaching life, then I haven't been doing my job well in their lessons. If I did my job, I shouldn't have to check in a dozen times during the week. I'm supposed to teach students not to need me, not to become completely dependent. What happened to that old proverb of teaching a man to fish? Secondly, I don't want them to think even for one minute that I am available to them 24/7. I teach piano, for goodness sake; I am not a brain surgeon. I question seriously whether there are ever piano "emergencies." Given that I work from home, I have too few boundaries as it is. I can't have needy students on top of it all. My life (and my home) is already consumed with my teaching. If I give them much more of myself, my students might as well move in. Finally, if there ever was a last minute thing I needed to communicate to a student, I can't imagine that the most efficient method to do so still isn't picking up the telephone. ("I'm surprised you don't advocate pony express," my friend said sarcastically.) It may be important at this point to make a distinction between doing something worthwhile in the world, and doing something that involves real life emergencies. I absolutely believe that the arts mend people's lives and souls in real and tangible ways. I also believe strongly that there are very few "GET AMY!" moments in my work. The gift of music is that there are no emergencies; no one dies; no one is bleeding from the head. Sometimes we lose sight of this. I think there is a great temptation with all of these communication devices to think that because we can be reached at a moment's notice, we therefore are important enough to need to be reached at a moment's notice. We have a default mode of having these gadgets at our side all the time. Although perhaps it is a radical idea, I would like to suggest that because I am important, I deserve to have a life that isn't attached at all times to a cell phone, a laptop, or a BlackBerry. And not only that, maybe the people I am with at any given time deserve the same attention from me. My students, friends, and family should be valued enough to have my non-electronic presence when we are together. But the truth is these lines are getting harder and harder to draw. We hardly think it is rude anymore when someone takes a call or sends a text message in our presence. On the other hand, we are quite put out when people don't respond to our email or text messages within minutes. When did the rules change? I have no doubt that from time to time Matt will sneak in new technology into my life, and I will huff and puff, and then resign myself to whatever magic it will bring me. But I'm trying not to lose sight of good old courtesies and rules of relationships that demand, quite simply, that the person I am with deserves my complete attention. I want dinners without the interruption of taking phone calls or reading text messages. I need evenings spent with a book and a glass of wine, not slaving over returning e-mail. I guard carefully those days every week when I don't check my phone or e-mail, giving the constant chatter that otherwise makes up my life time to quiet. I am not giving up my vacations to check voice mail. I refuse to hand over the keys to my autonomy to the gods of modern instant communication. So I will probably miss a great deal. I will miss out on friends I could rediscover on Facebook. No doubt I will be last to learn of anything important. The world will have to miss out on hourly Twitter reports of what I am doing each minute of every day. It is bad enough that I write a blog. We have covered the yellow walls of our sun-room with framed New Yorker covers. This collection began years ago when I, tired of storing ten years of magazines, told Matt they had to go. He whined, "But I love some of these covers." "Fine," I said, "we'll hang them up. But the magazines have to go." What started as twelve beloved covers now has become nearly 50. We can track not only the price increases over the years, we can also trace significant moments in history captured in cover art. There is the one after Princess Diana died, depicting a Buckingham Palace guard with a tear running down his face; or the many 9/11 anniversary covers, haunting with their drawings of New York without the World Trade Center; or the issue after Hurricane Katrina, where a lone saxophonist stands above a river of water. We already have a series of Obama covers gracing our walls, and more covers by the wonderful French artist Sempé than we can count. Matt has a favorite that he says reminds him of me. It is a beach scene with a crowd of people, each engaged in some form of technology. Several men are striding down the sand, talking into cell phones; nearby a woman is working on her laptop. In the middle of the illustration stands a little girl holding a sea shell up to her ear, listening intently. "That's my girl," Matt says. It's true. Half the time I don't even know where my cell phone is. The world may be coming down around me, but I'll be the one holding a sea shell. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=115 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=115 Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:33:45 -0600 It occurs to me, not for the first time, that there are way too many numbers in this business. I mean really, there are fingering numbers, counting numbers, and scale degree numbers, just to name a few. No wonder this whole business of learning to play the piano is bewildering to a 6 year-old student. There are no substitution for learning fingering numbers, but almost every other use of numbers can be avoided at the beginning. This is easier than it sounds, actually. Rhythm can almost completely be taught without the traditional number counting, using, instead, the wide-spread "Ta" for quarter notes, "ti-ti" for eighth-notes, chanting "half-note" for (duh) half-notes, and "hold-for-three" and "hold-for-four-beats" for dotted halves and whole notes. Or one can use the colorful rhythms of our own English language, substituting "ice cream" for eighth notes, "watermelon" for sixteenths and so on. As far as scale degrees go, when teaching things like 5-Finger Positions and merrily composing new patterns every week, using solfege instead of numbered scale degrees is the easiest way to go. I'd love to claim that it was part of my calculated avoidance of too many numbers that led me to this system, but I can't take credit for such genius. Instead, I can blame a crazy parent. This one came into my life years ago when I was teaching in Boston. Dominique was French, and knew nothing about music except that it should involve an active use of "Do-Re-Mi". After the first several lessons with her young daughters, she came to me and accused me of not teaching correctly because her girls were learning note names like "A-B-C" instead of "Do-Re-Mi." I was completely puzzled until I realized that she knew just enough to be dangerous, and that she was referencing her very limited knowledge of the French method of using solfege to name notes. "OK," I thought to myself, "I can fool her. I will simply start writing out her daughters' 5-Finger assignments in solfege and she will be satisfied." That's what I did, and Dominique was perfectly happy from that point on. But my little trick taught me something too, because I quickly discovered that solfege was a much easier way to write out 5-Finger patterns than my previous use of scale degrees. Furthermore, it was easier to sing the patterns and even to transpose them. Kids never questioned the solfege language, and later it worked equally well when learning whole scales. I should write and thank Dominique; although at the time I considered her to be quite the pain in la derriere, she unwittingly helped me discover a whole better way of teaching. Here are a few new patterns to try. These test a student's knowledge of the positions "upside down," which can be harder than it seems like it should be; they force students to learn the pattern of notes backwards, and starting somewhere other than "Do." I have discovered through much trial and error that number 38 is a good first step into the real live "upside down" patterns. 38. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do--forte and legato Sol Fa Mi Re Do--piano and staccato 39. Reverse dynamics and articulations and play above pattern 40. Upside down: Sol Fa Mi Re Do Re Mi Fa Sol--Do (Use various dynamics and articulations) 41. Repeat numbers 38-40 using minor positions http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=114 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=114 Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:10:42 -0600 "I don't want a mistress. I don't want a sports car. All I want for my 40th birthday is a road trip by myself. And I want you at the end of it." This was the announcement my husband gives me last summer, some months before his birthday. I have come to learn that I didn't respond to this wish exactly as Matt might have hoped. "Hmm..." I answered nonchalantly, and desperately changed the subject. I hope it never is said that we don't support one another's hopes and dreams, and that we are each other's best advocate against the world, but I missed this one. Looking back, I think I hoped this plan would go the way of all good things. Or, at least, the way of most plans made after sharing a bottle of wine in the courtyard on a beautiful summer night. Ah, the ways we fail each other. Matt was deadly serious about every part of that statement. He didn't want a mistress; he didn't want a sports car; he wanted a road trip and he wanted me at the end of it. "Boston, maybe," he said. "Or New York. I want to walk into a hotel bar and find you there." And so over the last six months, Matt began making plans. He was granted a month's sabbatical at work. Road maps and travel books began littering the study. He booked a week long retreat at the Abbey of the Gethsemani in Kentucky. He reserved a rental car. Instead of me being at the end of the trip in a city we both love, I'd be at the beginning, for the trip would start in New York with my sister, Beth's, wedding. From there we'd take a bus to DC and visit Matt's sister, Mary. I'd fly home, Matt would pick up a car and start his adventure, which, by the end, even had a name: The Journey of Discovery. I didn't like the name at all. ("What do you need to discover?! I feel threatened.") I also didn't love the idea that I'd be flying home to an empty house, to be alone for two weeks. It's not that I don't like to be alone -- after nearly 15 years of marriage, solitude can be a welcome change of pace -- I just wasn't at all sure I wanted or needed two weeks of it. After all, too much time left alone to my own thoughts is simply too much time. And, the way my teaching schedule fell, I was going to be not working for much of the time, leaving me plenty of time to fully experience the solitude. "Why can't you do this when I am working around the clock and won't notice you're gone? Or, even better, why don't you do your discovering on day trips, with Albuquerque as your home base?" But in the end, Matt got his road trip, which he renamed A Journey of Non-Discovery with a Happy Reunion at the End. He is somewhere in Tennessee as I write this, perhaps taking in the sights at Graceland. Meanwhile, my friend Lora, usually a reliable source of both company and entertainment, is on her own journey: a six-day backpacking trip in Yosemite. She spontaneously signed up for this trip after a bad breakup last winter, and has regretted it ever since. On our hikes together, I am always the one saddled with the coffee and croissants and jam, with the flora and fauna guides, not to mention the water. (Just call me "Sherpa.") The fact that Lora would have to carry some 40 pounds on her back during multi-day hike made her panic. She began training by carrying hand weights in a backpack on our early morning strolls through the neighborhood. I fully anticipated her to cancel and consider the $500 non-refundable deposit a generous donation to the Sierra Club, but Thursday morning, with my husband lost somewhere in the deep south, I drove Lora to the airport so she could fly to California. On the way she announced, "You know, this is the first time I have left the house without make-up since I was 16." "Hmm," I responded. "I can't remember the last time I wore make-up." "I know. And it's just wrong." Lora said. "God invented make-up, and we should wear it." The night before, when we were searching for supper in my refrigerator, she said, "I need a name for my trip. Matt has a name for his trip." "How about The Trek of Stupidity?" I responded. "I was thinking The Hike of Doom," She shot back. "The Trek of Stupidity. The Hike of Doom. For an adventure of your magnitude surely you need a double name," I suggested. As it happened, I have ended up with a few discoveries of my own, most of which seem to be things I have learned before, but have failed to retain. The first is that, while I may not be teaching, I will always be busy. This never ceases to surprise me, that I manage to overfill even my vacation time. This time around I have been gardening for hours a day, reading at least eight books, practicing for a couple of upcoming recitals. I have had dinners with friends, taken extra yoga classes, done some much-needed planning. It hasn't been hard to roll out of bed at first light with the cats, and to hardly feel like I have had time to catch my breath for the next 14 hours. None of this should be a surprise. It certainly isn't to Matt, hearing about my days on our nightly phone calls. But for some mysterious reason, I always think time off will literally be "free time." It isn't; it's just filled differently. The second great lesson gets its own title. For some time now I have been interested in exploring meditation, perhaps in a Buddhist setting or community. I have tried meditating from time to time on my own, but have never been able to settle down with it at home. Quite simply, I am too distracted by the many competing forces on my time and attention within the walls of my own house. Maybe, I thought, if I found a committed meditation "sit" I would do better. So, last night I accompanied my friend Patti to the neighborhood community for a 40-minute "sit." "We can go later if you think that might be too long," she had offered earlier in the week. "No," I answered. "I want to try the whole thing." Later I regretted this almost as much as Lora regretted her impulsive decision to spend six nights in a tent. In fact, in the days before, I seriously panicked. "Well," said my friend Anne, "you better hope you are meditating for that length of time, because if you aren't you might just be going crazy." I needed a title for my meditation evening, I thought. Something that would appropriately express both my hopes and my fears. The Journey Within, With the Possibility of Crawling Out of My Own Skin seemed about right. Miraculously, I was fine. Good, even. Now, I was plenty pleased when the 40 minutes were over, but I was not crawling out of my skin. I wasn't even itching. This proved what I had suspected, that this would be both a highly spiritual and grounding practice for me to do, and that my big lesson is to figure out how to manage it at least some of the time in my own living room, even with a thousand of pulls on my attention. I get that this might be the point, that I need to learn to center myself especially when the forces of life yank at me from many directions. There seems to be one other lesson this month. This one isn't really a surprise either, although it's not a bad one to be reminded of every once in a while: I miss my husband. While the house is more orderly without Matt spreading out his stuff from one end to the other, it isn't home without him. My life might be less messy without him around, but it much less colorful. He makes me laugh. Without him, I lose sight of the ground. Busy as I might be in my own work and thoughts, there is some point every day when Matt makes me stop working. Without him I forget to eat, and lose track of the time. I didn't need to learn that I need the rock that Matt is in my life; I've known that for the last 17 years. He may be lost in Tennessee somewhere, but I'm lost at home without him. It's the Happy Reunion I'm yearning for these days. I'll be at the end, my darling, waiting. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=113 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=113 Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:13:54 -0600 ...To write of Katharine simply as a gardener would be like writing of Ben Franklin simply as a printer. Gardening was indeed a part of her, but it was never her major interest, consuming all her thoughts and all her talents. She simply accepted the act of gardening as the natural thing to be occupied with in one's spare time, no matter where one was or how deeply involved in other affairs.... ...Katharine never belonged to a garden club. I don't think she would have fitted in very well. In fact, had she joined, there is a good chance she would have been expelled for insubordination: she refused to pay any attention to the National Council with its dicta governing the acceptable arrangement of flowers in a container. Her garden was her clubhouse, where there were bugs but no rules... ...When Miss Gertrude Jekyll, the famous English woman who opened up a whole new vista of gardening for Victorian England, prepared herself to work in her gardens, she pulled on a pair of Army boots and tied on an apron fitted with great pockets for her tools. Unlike Miss Jekyll, my wife had no garden clothes and never dressed for gardening. When she paid a call on her perennial borders or her cutting bed or her rose garden, she was not dressed for the part--she was simply a spur-of-the-moment escapee from the house and, in her early years, from the job of editing manuscripts. Her Army boots were likely to be Ferragamo shoes, and she wore no apron. I seldom saw her prepare for gardening, she merely wandered out into the cold and the wet, into the sun and the warmth, wearing whatever she had put on that morning. Once she was drawn into the fray, once involved in transplanting or weeding or thinning or pulling deadheads, she forgot all else; her clothes had to take things as they came. I, who was the animal husbandryman on the place, in blue jeans and and old shirt, used to marvel at how unhesitatingly she would kneel in the dirt and begin grubbing about, garbed in a spotless cotton dress or a handsome tweed skirt and jacket. She simply refused to dress down to a garden; she moved in elegantly and walked among her flowers as she walked among her friends--nicely dressed, perfectly poised. If when she arrived back indoors the Ferragamos were encased in muck, she kicked them off. If the tweed suit was a mess, she sent it to the cleaner's. The only moment in the year when she actually got herself up for gardening was on the day in fall that she had selected, in advanced, for the laying out of the spring bulb garden--a crucial operation, carefully charted and full of witchcraft...As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion--the small, hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection. -taken from the Introduction by E. B. White to Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katharine S. White http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=112 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=112 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:52:01 -0600 In case anyone might think that my life is all music and bubbles and kittens, it is past time that I come clean. Most of my life is the opposite of glamorous. Instead it is just like every working musician, which means it is mostly hard work. Strangers immediately have some other idea entirely when they ask what I do and I tell them that I am a pianist. "Wow!" they inevitably exclaim. "Are you, like, a concert pianist?" Does this mean, do I play concerts? If so, then yes, sure. "Do you play with the symphony?" is often the next question. I have played with the symphony, and even have an upcoming performance with the New Mexico Symphony wind players doing the Poulenc sextet for a house musicale fundraiser. But it's not my normal gig, and even if it was, any symphony player will tell you it's not all encores and bouquets of roses. True, it's also not digging ditches, but in general, symphony gigs and other performances included, it is safe to say that my life is not particularly sparkly. Case in point: We live in an old house with constant need of repairs. Our most regular visitor is the plumber, who must come at least once a month. (Small house, with one bathroom. If there is a problem, it is quickly an emergency.) Years ago, our cats took at early, immediate dislike to plumbers, going into hiding the minute they hear a plumber drive down the street. This is strange to me, as the cats have no choice but to become friendly with the idea that this house has lots of daily guests. Nevertheless, plumbers are a different breed entirely in their eyes. We developed a problem with the bathroom sink one weekend last month: it went from behaving fine to becoming sluggish and basically not draining at all. This was suspicious on lots of levels: first of all because the problem happened suddenly without the normal gradual buildup, and secondly because Friday night I had a bustling performance class with ten wild elementary-school students. No doubt, we decided, one of them put a foreign object in the sink. Monday afternoon the plumbers came, our latest favorites consisting of a guy who looks about 12 and his chubby sidekick. "Hey guys," I greeted them. "Good to see you." They "blasted" the foreign object through the pipes (Their word, not mine, but the use of the word "blasted" convinces me of the plumber's level of maturity). As the chubby sidekick was writing my bill, the 12 year-old asks me, cell phone in hand where he is clearly in the middle of writing a text message, "Hey! Do you know how to spell 'gorgeous'?" "You are talking about me, right?" I shot back as I handed over my credit card. "As in, this lady is gorgeous." He looked confused, which only made me feel old. I'm feeling plenty old lately. My middle sister Beth is getting married on Saturday in NYC. I was the first wedding among my siblings, and then 13 long dry years elapsed before the next one. Now my younger siblings are getting hitched one after another, with breathtaking speed. Only one will be single after this weekend. None of this should be surprising as I have had plenty of years to prepare myself, but somehow it is anyway. In a similar vein, it was recently pointed out to me that I was old enough to be the mother of my favorite high school students, and that Matt and I have been together long enough that we could, without stretching the imagination at all, have a high school student of our own. I am not scared of getting old, and have no problem celebrating birthdays, but when I have turned the corner and become invisible to the plumber, useful only as a dictionary, then something has shifted. I am not sure I like it. It's all very humbling; and last weekend only drove home this point. Saturday night was my end-of-the-year studio recital . In the weeks prior, I had organized a local music evaluation event with some 70 little pianists. I had attended meetings of various kinds here and in Santa Fe. I had met several writing deadlines for various publications. My dad came for a week-long visit. In other words, I wasn't without something to do. But there is something about pulling together 25 students to play in a recital that is its own special kind of stress. Even after all these years, and countless successful recitals, I still feel the weight of the event. For one thing, I usually perform myself, because I feel like it is good for my students and parents to see me play, and I always have certain prepared remarks to make. This, coupled with the energy and focus required to channel 25 students' performances, makes the focus and energy for my own music-making rather diffused, to say the least. And then there are all the details: Getting the recital space cleaned up and ready, hauling all the supplies and setting up the reception, proofing the program at least ten times. For someone who prefers to think globally, this is a lot of unwelcomed minutiae to attend to. Having said all of this, the recital went beautifully. The kids played better than ever, my Ravel and my new lace green skirt a friend had made for me in India both came off as planned, the spoken remarks were well received. After weeks of details of one form or another, after Saturday, I felt like I could coast: one week of a light make-up schedule and then I was on a plane to NYC to read e.e. cummings poems at my sister's wedding. To put it simply, I had cruise control on and was taking in the view. Cruising is dangerous indeed. Sunday morning I woke up, read some of the New York Times with my coffee and started to pull together my thoughts for the church service I had agreed to play that morning. I was looking through music and picking out a prelude and postlude (yeah, I confess, I was doing this at the very last minute.), and glancing over the service music. I cruised into the kitchen, found a mango that needed eating, and began peeling and slicing it. At which point I promptly sliced off the end of my thumb. It was quite a clean slice, nothing that would need stitches because there was nothing left to stitch. It didn't even hurt that bad (although I should qualify that statement by admitting that I have a very high tolerance for pain, given that I am a life-long migraine sufferer). I wrapped a towel around it and went back to my music. It would not stop bleeding. I put some band-aids on it, and covered my hand with a towel and decided that I was still going to follow through with my plans to stop on my way to church and buy the rest of the plants I needed for the flower bed that runs along my driveway. With a bloody towel covering my thumb, I drove to Kmart, loaded my cart with lilies and petunias, and proceeded to the check-out counter. And this is where it really hits you that my life isn't glamorous at all, for as I am standing in the check-out line with my cart full of plants and my bloody towel-covered thumb, I reach into my over-sized purse and discover that I have dumped an entire bottle of water into my purse. This would be of the 32-ounce size. I am holding a bag of water. Everything is soaked. My wallet, weeks worth of receipts needing to be filed, the scores I needed that very morning. Everything. Of course, I quickly become soaked as well, which doesn't mix well with the fact that I am still gushing blood. Immediately, I am covered with not just water, but bloody water. And I am now late for church. Forget that lovely recital of the evening before. Forget that every once in a while, I clean up quite nicely, looking, well, almost glamorous. Forget any pretense I might have that I have my act together. Forget everything. I am standing in a checkout line -- at K-MART! --my thumb is squirting blood, and I am carrying a purse full of water. This is not what strangers have in mind when they think "concert pianist." A plumber about now would come in handy. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=111 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=111 Sun, 24 May 2009 09:55:37 -0600 I think every recital could use a little personality. I love it when performers talk from the stage; I like good program notes that give a glimpse into the mind of both the composers and the performers; I like lecture recitals infused with humor and insightful anecdotes. My desire for some pizzazz quadruples when it comes to that potentially deadly event, the piano students' studio recital. So some time ago, I began working in what might be viewed by some as a "shtick" but what I prefer to think of as an antidote to death by boredom. It's not that I think my students are boring; quite the contrary -- they entertain me every day. But a piano recital should be an evening that everyone looks forward to, not an evening that we all have to endure. One year I asked many of the parents in my studio, who happen to be professional musicians, to also perform. Another year, I had poems and short passages about music read by various parents in between the student performances. Still another year , the kids did performance maps of their recital pieces (either a drawing inspired by their piece, or in the case of the more intermediate to advanced students, a musical flowchart to assist memory) and we did a visual display in the performance space. It has gotten to the point where I feel a certain kind of pressure to have a shtick at my studio recitals, that there is a certain level of expectation about the program, that if families drag aunt and uncles and neighbors and grandparents to our recital, it had better be an entertaining evening. As I was mulling over what to do this time, it occurred to me what I most wanted to do was to educate my audience (hopefully in an entertaining way) as to why it was we bothered with these recitals in the first place. Especially in this dicey economy, it seemed a good time to reaffirm why music matters. The following are my notes from last weekend's spring recital. In spite of the healthy amount of verbiage below, there really were fine student performances of great music as well. No one wants to hear me talk that much. *** Another year, another recital. At some point is it fair to ask: why are we doing this? After all, we all have plenty we could be doing with our evening, and for that matter, with all the time devoted to the pursuit of music making. So why? When modern life pulls at us from five million directions all the time, why do we bother? As a person who has decided to pursue music as a profession, one answer seems so obvious as not worth mentioning: that is, music itself is reason enough. This assumes that one buys into the idea that art matters, and music is important and worthwhile. "Without music," Neitzsche said, "life would be a mistake." But you all also must believe this, or you would not have prioritized music and music lessons in your life. Surely I must be preaching to the choir, standing before a group of people who don't have any trouble accepting that music in and of itself is reason to be here. I mean, you must accept this premise on some level, as here you are with your cell phones and cameras turned off for the next hour. You've brought cookies and cleaned up your children quite remarkably. We are all dressed up and ready to go, so, let's just play some music, shall we? But let's assume for a moment, that we needed more reason than just the inherent value of music itself to motivate us to spend the kind of time, money and energy it requires to take up a musical instrument, much less set aside a whole Saturday evening to attending a piano recital. Here's the thing: if you have thought for even one moment that we what were doing in piano lessons was limited to learning notes and rhythms, then you have underestimated what music lessons can be. While music is my tool, and piano is my artistic medium, maybe the most important job of a good teacher is to nurture the transformation of self that happens through learning, through the growth process inherent in becoming a sensitive and compassionate human being. What I know is that, through music, I have the chance to teach life lessons: how to work, how to learn, how to think creatively and artistically. If I lose sight of the person on the bench in the worthwhile pursuit of music making, then I have missed the point. We aren't just developing musicians here, but creative, artistic, whole persons. Another valuable reason to hold this musical celebration every semester is that it is the only time we all get together. Look around, folks: this is a community. Semester after semester, year after year, you become a unique group of people who take interest in one another and each other's children, you care about the progress of kids other than your own, you might sense that you have more in common in your struggles and battles to keep your children practicing and engaged than you might think on the surface. I watch you all pick up your kids from performance class every month and catch up with each other in my sun-room and driveway. Those of you who have helped in group classes know that that these kids have become friends, and that sometimes way too much fun happens in the shadow of my six-foot grand piano. In a world where we are losing important connections with one another and becoming more and more fragmented and scattered, this community matters. We are part of each other's lives. Thank goodness we get together like this twice a year. Finally, I believe that it is in the pursuit of making art or in any all-consuming artistic passion, that we most easily lose ourselves and become part of the great creative process of the universe. I think we are born to create and that making music feeds part of our souls and spirits that otherwise hunger for nourishment and sustenance in this complicated world. It seems that in the act of making music, whether that be time spent on a piano bench or in a choir, playing in a garage band, or singing in the shower, or whatever musical act we might find ourselves engaged in, that in that process of losing ourselves, we most often find ourselves, and claim and connect to all the disparate parts of our minds, souls, spirits and hearts. Vita Sackville-West wrote: "For the last 40 years of my life, I have broken my back, my fingernails, and sometimes my heart, in the practical pursuit of my favorite occupation." She was talking about gardening, but it applies pretty nicely to my life as a pianist, and even more to my life as a teacher. I started playing piano when I was four, and as the oldest of six kids, I have been teaching my whole life. I taught siblings to ride bikes, and read, play the piano, and sneak out of the house at night. I taught my first piano lesson for $5 to neighbor children when I was 14, and I have really never stopped. If my mother were here tonight she would be happy to tell you that I did not always practice without first throwing a tantrum, and that it was not always smooth sailing to get me here. It might make you feel better to know that, but I'm not sure it much matters, for what I can tell you as I tiptoe rapidly towards 40, is that most of the happiest moments of my life have been spent on a piano bench, or in some form or another teaching. I have that heady experience of losing myself everyday, both in my own music-making and immersing myself in the act of teaching, and really, there's no better way to spend a life. Whether or not your kids become professional musicians, you have given them the gift of being able to lose themselves in making music. There's no better gift. If I were to end this evening with one thought it would be this, stolen from the book Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin, "It's unsettling when you realize there are only so many things you can teach a child. And finally, they are who they are." Although music lesson may always be about more than just the piano, to imagine that any of us have much control over what happened here tonight is to deceive ourselves. It's unsettling, really, and very humbling, but they are who they are. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=110 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=110 Sun, 17 May 2009 10:01:02 -0600 Over Christmas break I cleaned out the refrigerator. This, I am embarrassed to admit, was a first both for the four-year-old refrigerator and for myself. I have, from time to time, gone through the refrigerator and emptied it of food that had begun to grow its own bacteria, and I have wiped out empty refrigerators when preparing to vacate an apartment. But to clean a refrigerator without the objective of trying to get a security deposit back . . . no, I had never done that before. It was past time to do so, however, and one day having found some spare time due to The Break and the quietness of the days immediately following the holidays, I got inspired. I took everything out of the fridge, and set about removing shelves and drawers and spent the next hour scrubbing down four years worth of messes: clumps of jam, outside layers of onion skins, sauces and dressings that had spilled at some point and begun to form a permanent coating of grime on the inside surface. Afterwards, the appliance was sparkling; it gave me some kind of strange pleasure every time I opened it and gazed into the gleaming beauty. I almost became a convert to the joys of housekeeping. But that's the thing: my real life doesn't allow for the kind of time to do more than basic housekeeping, much less the luxury of time to keep a sparkling refrigerator. I am suspicious that as far as housekeeping goes, survival mode is the only one at work around here. But the clean refrigerator got me thinking, because I realized that in too many areas of our lives survival mode is all we are managing. Looking around, I see colleagues and friends who regularly live in that maxed-out place of too much work, too many obligations, too much stress. They manage, but barely, one step away from a possible breakdown--if not of the catastrophic nature, then at least of the kind of minor meltdown we all have experienced at one time or another. My students are no better off: there is too much homework, rehearsals, activities, sports practices and very little unstructured time. I know that my best creative ideas bubble out of moments that almost look like boredom. I also know that its been forever since I allowed for the luxury of such unscheduled time, and that I have never conscientiously prioritized such empty spaces in my life. It isn't just our refrigerators that are messy, but our lives are stuffed and overflowing. We are so busy and stressed out that we have little hope but survival mode. Both personally and professionally, this is a concern. Obviously, living one beat away from insanity is not desirable, but more than that, what I know is that when we are in survival mode we don't have any mental or emotional space for artistic, creative thinking. Not only do we fail to clean out our refrigerators of unwanted science projects, but huge areas of our lives get moldy and dusty. It's hard to think big idealistic thoughts when we are barely getting our basic needs met. Of course, this is psychology 101, the idea that we until our primary needs of food, shelter, and love are met, we are not capable of anything more complex. While we may be lucky enough not be primitively fighting for fundamentals, I wonder if there isn't a parallel somehow that says as long as our lives are completely full of pressing obligations and time restraints, artistic and creative thinking is but a faint probability. Recently, this idea was brought home to me. I was traveling, doing a workshop for teachers about creative thinking in our studios. At the end of the talk was a discussion period. Although I liked to have thought that I shared lofty, cosmic ideas about teaching, the questions I got were basic survival kinds of things: What do you do when your students don't show up for lessons and don't call? How do you handle it when your students come to lessons without their music? What do you do about students who can't afford a full-size keyboard? "Wow," I found myself thinking. "Did you even hear me?" I dealt with the questions as kindly as I could feeling all the time a little like the Alice Waters of piano, proselytizing on the benefits of healthy, organic music-making and teaching, only to be asked how I prepare Hamburger Helper. Although I may not deal regularly with the above problems, I think I get it. I get how teachers might be fighting so hard for such fundamentals like a committed student roster and regular paychecks that high level creative teaching never gets to be part of the equation. I understand that, for many classroom music teachers trying to manage in rooms without a piano, perhaps seeing a class of children once a week at most, that teaching complex harmonies might not be at the top of their agendas. I recognize that for every teacher who might get the privilege of teaching highly dedicated advanced students, there are dozens of other teachers working to keep music alive in our society no matter how basic the level. For people who actively have to fight for every meal, whether or not the food is organic is not really important. Yeah, I get that. So what's the answer? On the one hand, I love big lofty ideas (Music in every home. A piano in every classroom....) and think that as a functioning artist and teacher, I need motivation as much as the next person. Obama resonated with voters because we were people in desperate need of inspiration. But taking a good look around our profession reminds me that we need both: we need encouragement and a motivating reason to do what we do and we need practical tangible solutions to the problems we face every day. While we can get by without clean refrigerators, that doesn't mean we should ignore the fact that our starving spirits need to survive too. Truth is, I know altogether too well what survival mode looks like. I face plenty of it in my life, and certainly it is not only my creativity or my refrigerator that suffers. The difference between surviving and thriving is relevant to us all. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=109 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=109 Sun, 03 May 2009 08:25:10 -0600 I am convinced that playing staccato makes pianists nervous. Unlike other instrumentalists, when pianists play staccato they lose contact with their instrument completely. Think about this. No wonder it makes us uncomfortable and anxious. I am not sure that the antidote to this nervousness is to just play staccato so often that we get used to the idea. That might work to a certain degree, yes, but does feel a bit like a band-aid solution, for while it might get us friendly with playing staccato passages, it doesn't do much for the issue of becoming confident with leaving what I like to call the "air-space" of the piano. We might feel OK about the distance of one or two inches that most staccato playing requires, but to develop ease with the bigger drops and lifts out of the immediate air-space that lovely physical playing requires, well, that's another issue entirely. I guess I've seen too many "helicopter" players. Pianists that, no matter what they were playing, hovered over the keys, barely ever losing contact with the surface. This is a perfect example where the physical action informs the mind, because such hovering not only looks, but actually is, rather nervous and insecure, and sends a corresponding anxious signal to our brains. (Quite on the opposite end of the spectrum is those extremely flamboyant pianists whose gestures are so big as to seem ridiculous. I was recently at a concert of such a pianist, whose playing I quite admire, but I couldn't really buy into the need to throw his hands OVER his head three times in the first five minutes. This was more than dramatic, it was unsightly.) So today's 5-Finger Positions address the skills of lifting and dropping into the keyboard, and creating physical gestures that bubble up out of both musical phrases and natural, organic technique. I keep these positions simple, since the goal is the gesture, not the pattern. Obviously, these can be done in both major and minor positions, but the focus is on the shape and movement between octaves, not really the notes themselves. Ascending: 34. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Play hands alone the pattern one time in three ascending octaves. Watch for beautiful "arc" between each octave which occurs from the lift out of the first pattern and the drop in to the second and so on. 35. Do Mi Sol (Same instructions as above) Descending: 36. Sol Fa Mi Re Do 37. Sol Mi Do Young students like these an awful lot, and they lead to all sorts of ease moving around the keyboard. This also sets us up nicely for those kind of rote pieces that have lots of moves up and down the piano. I have been told more than once that I play the piano like a dancer, that whatever my playing may lack in certain areas, it is beautiful to watch. It is true that I have sometimes cared more about how playing looks and feels than how it sounds, which may be screwed up on lots of levels, but working with these positions allows me to teach "dance" moves on the keyboard, making me at the very least, a content teacher. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=108 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=108 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:32:46 -0600 St. Patrick's Day Scarfing.....Easter sunrise morning scarfing (albeit sans scarf) occurred at 6AM (something about the sunrise part makes the whole crime very Biblical we think). The question has arisen: what kind of bird is it? A raven? A crane? A falcon? Could it be the elusive Maltese Falcon with special magical powers?If you "scarf" a bird, do you "duck" a pond?During this scarfing, we discovered that underneath the St. Patrick's Day twirly headband someone had left a note: I Love You! Clearly, this is a message from the bird. We are reading this as encouragement to keep up our seasonal costume changes. Cinco de Mayo here we come! http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=106 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=106 Sun, 19 Apr 2009 08:33:15 -0600 Today I bought four roses: two climbers and two small bushes. They were 75% off at my local Jackalope because they were "mystery" roses, which means someone lost the tags that should identity variety and color. Since the whole art of growing roses is a mystery to me, I don't see the "mystery" roses as particularly risky or threatening so I gleefully bought them. Such a purchase is a gesture of hope, not only that the winter storm we had this week is only a fluke and not a return to cold weather, but also toward another whole year of gardening. I am ready--beyond ready--to reclaim the garden for another season of outdoor living, turning our front courtyard and back garden into "bonus rooms" to our house. In fact, I have resorted to bribery to keep myself from hauling outside all the geraniums and catci that have been wintering indoors in my sunroom. My favorite weekend every spring is the one when I can clear out the dozens of plants that fill the corners of my house for a long six months every year, making our tiny living space that much more crowded. I have decided Easter weekend is the chosen date this year for this happy event, although every day I practically have to tie my hands behind my back to prevent myself from carrying outside even one little plant. Maybe it won't matter, I try to persuade myself. Maybe this is the year we won't get a late spring frost. I know this is futile wishing, because it is simply too early to risk even the heartiest succulents. But hourly I have this internal conversation with myself, counting the days till Easter. In the meantime, I am trying to quiet my distructive gardening urges by reading books by other gardeners. Lately, I have been consuming Onward and Upward in the Garden, by Katherine White, who was the wife of Charlotte's Web's own E.B. White. Ms. White, as I feel sure she was called, wrote about gardening for The New Yorker, and her astute observations about everything from gardening catalogues to flower arranging make her a fine companion to my first cup of coffee in the morning. Up to this point, she is even suppressing my urge to do something in the garden that I will most likely regret later. Recently, we have celebrated spring break, both in the public schools in our city and in my studio. I spent the much of the week throwing myself into domesticity, as I so often do whenever there is a pause in my work schedule. I planted my new mystery rose bushes, and spent many happy outside hours doing those early spring gardening chores. Inside, I cleaned a bit, sorted through winter clothes in the first attempt at turning over our closets for the season, organized files and piles. We refinanced our house, finished the last of the tax details for the year, and shredded twelve months worth of random papers. It felt good, this sifting and sorting, filing and fussing around the house. Undoubtedly, it will make it easier to work in the weeks to come because I am simply more organized, but more than that, this kind of cleaning seems to open up space in my brain and my life, rearranging tired old patterns and behaviors, and dusting off abandoned but valuable ideas and habits. It's a good thing, this spring cleaning of the soul; I feel sorted out and polished up, and almost---almost--ready to tackle the next daunting, full-to-the-brim, six weeks. In between bursts of spring weather and cleaning was a trip to Lubbock for lessons with my coach, Bill Westney . This time I traveled with a musical colleague, Jerome , and my always-up-for-anything-kind-of-friend, Lora . ("Lubbock Funfest Spring Break 2009," as Lora took to calling it.) Twelve hours in the car, four hours of lessons, one pair of snake-skin cowboy boots purchased, a visit to the grave of Billy the Kid, and a cooler of Blue Bell ice cream smuggled over the border will be the lasting memories from Funfest 2009. The following week, Matt and I did an overnight in Santa Fe that produced a great black wrappy thing bought in a boutique, but was mostly colored by the stomach flu I fought all week. I played a New Mexico Symphony concerto competition with a symphony-playing colleague (she--we--won!) and finished up a recording project with a singer. I read a lot, fell asleep every night to old Quincy episodes, saw friends for drinks, coffee and dinners. It was, in spite of the stomach flu, a great week. In a front yard halfway between Lora's house and mine sits a funny bird statue. Last fall, during one of our early morning walks past the house, Lora decided that the bird looked cold, and needed a scarf to get through the winter. "I am going to scarf that bird," Lora announced, and proceeded to knit a bird-size scarf. The evening of January 1, after several glasses of wine, Lora and I snuck over to our nameless neighbors and "scarfed the bird." I thought the mischief was over, but as the scarf remained on the bird seeing (the neighbors apparently liked it), Lora began making further plans. These involved costumes and accessories fitting every major holiday. For Valentine's Day there would be a new bright red scarf with fringe. (The fringe part made me nervous, because I knew Lora can't fringe. That could only mean I would fringing the bird scarf, further implicating me in this crime.) On February 13, I finished Lora's knitting and fringed both ends; Lora bought glittery heart-shaped stakes to stick in the ground below the bird, and "Scarfing the Bird, Take Two" was accomplished, documented by our friend Katie, home from college. (We really ought to know better than to get underaged people involved in our criminal behavior.) Since then, there has been a St. Patty's Day costume: a green scarf, and a headband decked with twirly shamrocks which sits jauntily on the poor statue's head, and large shamrocks on posts driven into the ground in front. The men who live there clearly don't care, and also don't appreciate the stealthiness in which we are managing the change of costumes. The morning of St. Patrick's Day we got the changeover down to about 15 seconds. There is a pink bow in the works for Easter (with rabbit ears and rubber ducks to float in the Zen pond nearby), a sombrero and poncho for Cinco de Mayo, something white and wedding-like for June, and so on down the calendar year. It is always a good idea to have a back-up career ready to go, and perfecting my stealthy scarfing the bird routine is a good place to start in case the music thing doesn't work out. Meanwhile, I have my own mysteries right here in my little patch of the planet, what with the four new roses and all, and plenty of musical and pedagogical work to keep me out of trouble for a while, as I take a deep breath and plunge into the next marathon month. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=105 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=105 Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:18:45 -0600 ...Could teachers gather around the great thing called "teaching and learning" and explore its mysteries with the same respect we accord any subject worth knowing? We need to learn how to do so, for such a gathering is one of the few means we have to become better teachers. There are no formulas for good teaching, and the advice of experts has but marginal utility. If we want to grow in our practice, we have two primary places to go: to the inner ground from which good teaching comes and to the community of fellow teachers from whom we can learn more about ourselves and our craft. If I want to teach well, it is essential that I explore my inner terrain. But I can get lost in there, practicing self-delusion and running in self-serving circles. So I need the guidance that a community of collegial discourse provides--to say nothing of the support such a community can offer to sustain me in the trials of teaching and the cumulative and collective wisdom about this craft that can be found in every faculty worth its salt. Resources that could help us teach better are available from each other--if we could get access to them. But there, of course, is the rub. Academic culture builds barriers between colleagues even higher and wider than those between us and our students. These barriers come partly from the competition that keeps us fragmented by fear. But they also come from the fact that teaching is perhaps the most privatized of all the public professions. Though we teach in front of students, we almost always teach solo, out of collegial sight--as contrasted with surgeons or trial lawyers, who work in the presence of others who know their craft well. Lawyers argue cases in front of other lawyers, where gaps in their skill and knowledge are clear for all to see. Surgeons operate under the gaze of specialists who notice if a hand trembles, making malpractice less likely. But teachers can lose sponges or amputate the wrong limb with no witnesses except the victims. (Italics mine; p. 141-142) -from Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life by Parker J. Palmer http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=104 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=104 Sat, 04 Apr 2009 10:19:24 -0600 I go through cycles in my 5-Finger Position assignments. Recently its been all about rhythms, but lately I have flirting with minor-key positions. My students are introduced to minor positions early on, when we first explore D position on all white notes. "Does this sound different than C position?" I ask. Inevitably they describe minor positions by calling them "scary" or "sad" which, while being of rather limited imagination, does reinforce why we so often associate suspenseful or tearjerker movies with music in a minor key. While beginning students are first learning the notes of positions, I let them play both the major and minor forms of D and A, and this usually firmly establishes their life-long fascination with all things minor. After several weeks of playing both versions of D and A, I begin writing in their assignments, "Only happy positions," accompanied by the requisite smiley face. This often provokes groans, especially from my younger male students, who would happily play minor positions all day if I let them. "OK." I bargain, "You can play the minor positions for extra credit," thereby assuring we all win: I get them firmly secure in their grasp of major positions AND usually get extra practice of the minor positions as a bonus. They get to happily explore minor positions, feeling like they have gotten away with something illicit. And by taking minor positions away from their regular assignments for awhile, I can usually guarantee their enthusiasm when we return to focusing on minor keys some time later. I think it is important not to confuse the issue by switching suddenly from major to minor keys too early in the process. Most kids need a lot ---and I mean A LOT--of time playing all the black and white major keys before they have developed the technical security and confidence to swing easily back and forth between major and minor. Because of that introduction to D and A minor way back in the beginning , students greet these two like old friends, but often the next step gets dicey unless I am careful. "What did you do to make it minor?" I ask. "Finger three moves down to a white note," they respond. The problem is that while that answer is correct for D and A minor, it won't get them very far, and shifting to C position quickly illustrates that misunderstanding. Students have to discover that finger three moves down a half-step, or one note. This starts to work better, but F always throws them for a loop, because F requires that we really understand that finger 3 and ONLY finger 3 moves. (If I had a dollar for every impatient student who tried to make natural the B-flat of F position thinking they were playing the minor, I could stop teaching and could retire to Hawaii.) D-flat position also throws up some challenges to the concept of the half-step moving down, because students don't naturally see that one quickly. G-flat is another one that is visually puzzling at first---all those black notes confuse students. All this is to say that, while teaching minor positions is an important part of working with 5-Finger Positions, they aren't as obvious to kids as they might seem to be, which is why it is important to wait until major keys can be done forward, backward, upside, in the dark, and with one's eyes closed before we even try to go there. Years of trial and error have made me particular not only about how I introduce minors, but also about how I sequence the patterns for practicing. (Good teaching is 99% sequencing, I am convinced.) The following patterns are ordered as I assign them. Notice how many patterns swing back and forth between major and minor positions before I assign patterns using only minor positions. This is to ensure that students really do know how they got from major to minor and haven't just learned minor keys as a whole new set of positions. I want to make sure they see the connection between the two, and not that minors are an unrelated new world. To this end, I also have students spell, spell, and spell again individual positions, starting first with the major ones and asking EVERY time: "And how do we change it to minor?" "OK then, spell the minor position." If I have been lazy about the spelling work up until this point, I make up for it now. 31. Do Re Mi (Major) Do Re Mi (Minor) Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do (Major) 32. Do Re Mi Re (Major) Do Re Mi Re (Minor) Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do (Major) (Note: played as one long pattern with no breaks in the legato or rhythm.) 33. Do Re Mi Fa Sol (Major) Do Re Mi Fa Sol (Minor) Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do (Major) At this point I go back to old solfege patterns and familiar rhythmic patterns and concentrate solely on playing minors. See Recipes for Technique for ideas. Of course, creativity with articulations and dynamics is always encouraged. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=103 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=103 Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:59:34 -0600 I am a huge fan of big blank sketchbooks. At any given time, I have a half-dozen blank notebooks in use: one contains teaching notes, another serves as my practice journal, another holds recipes, and I carry still another everywhere to capture miscellaneous thoughts and ideas. My husband, on the other hand, likes the small moleskin notebooks to record all of his random information, and he teases me about the size of my sketchbooks. "Why do they have to be so big?" he asks, eyeing my pile of black spiral-bound sketchbooks. "My ideas are too grand to be contained on your tiny little pages," I retort, as he slips his admirably compact volume into his jacket pocket. Not only do I swear by these big sketchbooks in my personal life, but I require that my students own and use theme for their practice assignments. This is, admittedly, because I have a lot to say when writing down assignments for students. I am fanatical about assigning specific practice steps. For example, a beginner working on a new piece might have the following assignment: play RH 3x, LH 3x, BH line 3 5x, then whole song BH 3x. Or something that looks like: tap BH 1x, play RH 1x, LH 1x, BH 3x, repeat from beginning each step 1x. An advanced student might have an assignment such as: Practice each section of the piece a different way every day: using metronome, hands separately, different rhythms, in phrases, etc. This comes straight from my own practice journal, full of ideas about what is working and what needs to be done next. Keeping a journal reminds me of what I've already done, and what I might have neglected. It is a place to catch those brilliant, if infrequent, moments of insight while practicing, when suddenly it is perfectly clear what might fix a particular problem; it is a map of my learning process for every piece of music. For years, I was convinced I remembered these moments of enlightenment and the intentions I might have for the next day's work, but after years of keeping a practice journal, I know I was only fooling myself. It is amazing what I forget when I get up from the piano bench. It is quite startling to realize how painfully blank the slate might be every practice session if I don't have a means to catch my progress. So, I have become compulsive about writing down Every-Specific-Practice-Step for students, and this teaching habit borders on both the obsessive and the dogmatic. I know this, of course, and find it a bit ironic given how laid-back I generally am. Compulsive behavior isn't really a problem with me; establishing and maintaining habits are more of a challenge. But because of this, perhaps, I am more conscious of how important it is for students to have a plan when they sit down at the piano to practice. Students with a set plan are more likely to feel a sense of accomplishment when they work, and practice plans make the whole ordeal more objective. Have you practiced all your assignments carefully? Yes or No? Sometimes I scribble this in the margins of student's assignment notebooks just to see if they are reading their practice plans. Certainly in my own life and work, I welcome anything that will make this nebulous art form more black and white. If I have a practice plan and complete it, I can, in good conscience, feel like my work is finished for the day. I find the same to be true for my students. But to counter this controlling tendency, I encourage students of all levels to think about their own practice plans. "How should we practice this?" I routinely ask students. "We don't have time today for 'Waltz'. What should the practice plan be next week?" This is good for all of us: it gives the student more authority and ownership and requires them to think about what constitutes a reasonable practice plan for a given piece. Equally important is the fact that it starts to write my role and absolute authority out of the equation. As a teacher, I want this for my students: I want them to become independent musicians, not dependent upon my holding their hands through the learning process. But even on a more personal level I want this: if I can give them ownership over their own music-making the work gets easier for me as a teacher. It takes an enormous amount of energy to push and prod students along; it is no small thing to step back and just provide the healthy atmosphere for music-making without all of the energy coming from me. If I can allow them to make more of the decisions and make more of their own learning discoveries, I am a far better teacher at the end of the day. I'm also far less exhausted. I was reminded of this just this week. For three years, I have been pushing and prodding Jake along. This has been necessary, or so I tell myself, in order to get this now 4th grader to the point where assignments are being learned accurately and thoroughly. Suddenly, he is taking off at a breathtaking speed, sailing through his pieces, where once it took him weeks to master even the simplest skill. This is thrilling for me, as you can imagine, and as I watch this unfold in front of me, I am deliberately trying to hand him the reins whenever possible. "So how I am supposed to practice that?" Jake asked me as I was writing down a new assignment this week. "Hmmm....how about you use your own brain and figure it out?" I suggested, "You write the practice plan and follow it." "Oh, good." Jake responded. "I like to use my brain. It makes me feel less like a robot." If we accept for a moment that our real job is teaching life skills, not just music skills, then using one's own brain ought to be on the top of the list. Daily, hourly, I have to remind myself of this and relinquish control: stop jumping in to correct every small or large mistake, but allow students to stumble through and discover their own process in my presence. This doesn't mean I stop making my assignments specific, but it does remind me that there is a line to between healthy, appropriate guidance, and putting students more in charge of their work. These are contradictory ideas, to be sure, but there's a balance to be found in the tension between these practices, if we can only learn to embrace that grey area. Occasionally, when I am faced with another big empty page to fill for a student, I feel a lot like a robot filling in the blanks. But when I am doing my best work, and being attentive to all the complex nuances built into the art of teaching, its a far cry from anything mechanical. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=102 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=102 Sun, 22 Mar 2009 07:52:01 -0600 1. My teacher lies on the floor with a bad back off to the side of the piano. I sit up straight on the stool. He begins by telling me that every key is like a different room and I am a blind man who must learn to walk through all twelve of them without hitting the furniture. I feel myself reach for the first doorknob. 2. He tells me that every scale has a shape and I have to learn how to hold each one in my hands. At home I practice with my eyes closed. C is an open book. D is a vase with two handles. G flat is a black boot. E has the legs of a bird. 3. He says the scale is the mother of the chords. I can see her pacing the bedroom floor waiting for her children to come home. They are out at nightclubs shading and lighting all the songs while couples dance slowly or stare at one another across tables. This is the way it must be. After all, just the right chord can bring you to tears but no one listens to the scales, no one listens to their mother. 4. I am doing my scales, the familiar anthems of childhood. My fingers climb the ladders of notes and come back down without turning around. Anyone walking under this open window would picture a girl of about ten sitting at the keyboard with perfect posture, not me slumped over in my bathrobe, disheveled, like a white Horace Silver. 5. I am learning to play "It Might As Well Be Spring" but my left hand would rather be jingling the change in the darkness of my pocket or taking a nap on an armrest. I have to drag him into the music like a difficult and neglected child. This is the revenge of the one who never gets to hold the pen or wave good-bye, and now, who never gets to play the melody. 6. Even when I am not playing, I think about the piano. It is the largest, heaviest, and most beautiful object in this house. I pause in the doorway just to take it all in. And late at night I picture it downstairs, this hallucination standing on three legs, this curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile. -Billy Collins http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=101 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=101 Sun, 15 Mar 2009 09:31:21 -0600 Quite unbelievably, spring has arrived to New Mexico. I say this with some trepidation, because last year we had a frost on May 6. Or so the woman working in my neighborhood nursery told me. I went there last weekend to buy seeds, trying to satisfy my hungry inner gardener with a cheap fix. "Don't even think about pruning back roses now. If it gets cold again, you could kill them. And wait before planting these seeds; it's just too early." This isn't what I wanted to hear, my fingers itching to get outside and dirty. However, I can start cutting back all the summer flowering bushes, I understand, which is enough to keep me out of trouble and away from the rose bushes and seed packages for a few weeks. I don't know if spring is the cure I need these days for, truth be told, it hasn't been a tough winter. In fact, its been the mildest winter for years. We have had so little moisture of any kind---rain, snow, ice---that I have had to water faithfully. Although we finally fixed the roof above our bedroom, late last fall another problem appeared in the canale (that's a drain spout in New Mexico) outside the sun-room, and we've been lazy about getting to it. So far this procrastination is paying off quite nicely, because we haven't needed it repaired. But this dry, dry weather makes me think my skin just might flake off completely, leaving me a raw pile of muscles and blood. I am convinced every March that this is the year I just might shed my skin, crawling out of it and leaving it in a corner to decompose. Especially these days, when my old tired patterns seem especially exhausting, the idea of a fresh start is a welcome one. So even though spring feels a bit like a too-early, undeserved gift at this point, I'm taking it. I need the boost, the shot of pure new energy in my veins. Oh, there's been plenty of energy expenditure lately, activities piling rapidly on top of one other: I played a recital with a UNM faculty member last week and am deep in rehearsals for an upcoming recording session, as well as practicing for the next recital and competition. I am off to do a workshop in El Paso next week, and am in the preliminary stages of organizing the PEP student contest next month for our local MTNA group . Last month Matt organized a workshop with composer and teacher Alice Parker , which involved a weekend of events: a dinner party at our house Friday evening, a day-long workshop, dinner out with Alice Saturday night, Alice's community "Sing" Sunday afternoon, another dinner party in her honor Monday night, and on and on. "I'll feed you lunch if you come over and help me for a half-hour," I begged my friend Lora Friday morning, fearing that I couldn't get my house dug out and my party hat on by the start of the weekend. "Another dinner party?" Lora asked on our Tuesday pre-dawn walk. "You were at another dinner party last night? How important is this woman anyway?" Pretty important, I'd say. Alice is inarguably one of the most recognizable names in the choral world, and one of the most important---perhaps the most important-- composer and teacher of her generation. Matt has studied with her several times, and has always told me "You and Alice are kindred spirits." I've always taken that with a grain of salt, for I know Alice to be a fiercely determined teacher who, for all of her gentle demeanor, does not suffer fools gladly. (Matt says she has "dimples of iron.") But I've always suspected that he might be right; that we think about music and teaching in much the same way, and that we share an intolerance for Mickey Mouse. Having Alice here for the weekend--in our house!--was one of those rare opportunities to rub elbows with a professional, musical, and personal hero, well worth all the dinner hoopla that went with it. In performance classes last weekend, we held "Scale Olympics," which is my sorry attempt to get some dedicated scale practice out of my students. Students play scales---majors or minors; one to four octaves depending on the level---with the metronome, higher speeds getting more points for their teams. This is always educational for me, finding out which kids buckle under pressure. Ian, who had been nailing four-octave major scales in sixteenth-notes for weeks now, completely crashed on the first scale. Later that week I asked him, "So what happened?" "Too much pressure," he responded, "I can't do it when everyone is looking at me." "Being able to do things under pressure is a life skill," I reminded him. "Think about that pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson; thank goodness he didn't crack." Without missing a beat, Ian replied, "Playing scales is harder." But the idea that our practice should teach us about life seems to be the theme of the week, for just this morning in yoga, our teacher said the same thing, reminding us to breathe as we struggled through our various poses. "We get stressed in life and we hold our breath. What we are doing here isn't really about perfecting poses on this mat. It's supposed to be teaching us how to live our lives." Lately it seems all my good ideas come from yoga class, this practice teaching me at least as well as any piano pedagogy course ever did. During lessons, I find myself asking over and over again, "Am I teaching a life skill here? Is there any value in any of this away from the piano bench?" Most of the time, I think that most of what we do does teach something relevant outside the walls of my studio, but sometimes that question clarifies things quickly, making me get right to the essence of what we might be doing, or should be doing. It's amazing how much Mickey Mouse exists, even for those of us with a high degree of sensitivity towards it. In the middle of this burst of spring and insight, I woke up last Tuesday and realized it was Mardi Gras. "Where are our pancakes?" I asked Matt as I poured myself a cup of coffee. "I'm eating pancakes twice today," he replied. "I'm going out for pancakes for lunch and tonight we are having pancakes at church before my meeting." This seemed rather overdoing it, but it did inspire me to wander down to the neighborhood Flying Star for my own pancakes at lunchtime. "Do you want a dinner roll with that?" the girl behind the counter asked me. "No, I think I'll be OK for carbs, thanks." I repled. Reeling from all the strangeness of the last few months , I'm embracing the idea that I, too, could turn over a new leaf and shed some skin, holding out hope that something of beauty might emerge from all this unsettledness. In the meantime, yesterday, the first yellow and red-striped tulip peeked her head out, and with it--garden wisdom be damned--spring has just tiptoed into my yard. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=100 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=100 Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:04:50 -0600 ...All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older. But they start off without self-consciousness as they paint their purple flowers, their anatomically impossible people, their thunderous, sulphurous skies. They don't worry that they may not be as good as Di Chirico or Bracque; they know intuitively that it is folly to make comparisons, and they go ahead and say what they want to say. What looks like a hat to a grownup may, to the child artist, be an elephant inside a boa constrictor. (p. 57) ...The artist, if he is not to forget how to listen, must retain the vision which includes angels and dragons and unicorns and all the lovely creatures which our world would put in a box marked Children Only. (p.21) ...In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars. (p. 61) -from Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=99 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=99 Sun, 01 Mar 2009 08:41:47 -0700 Years ago when I was living in Boston, I audited a piano pedagogy course at New England Conservatory, taught by Jean Stackhouse. It was there that I was first introduced to the enlightening idea that rhythms could be verbalized some other way than simply the traditional "One Two-and Three-e-and-a Four." Jean introduced me to the idea that we could use a non-traditional rhythmic verbalization to "count" rhythms, making use of the natural rhythmic nature of our language. Later my experience in Dalcroze Eurhythmics only strengthened the idea that there was a more organic way to feel rhythms than the dry, unrhythmic counting of my childhood. Using our rhythmic English language to teach students to feel rhythms is not, as I previously supposed, cheating. So over the years I have developed lists of words I frequently turn use to verbalize rhythms. Jean has so many phrases and words for various rhythmic patterns that I suspect she must make lists of them at night when she can't sleep. I often have kids in performance classes come up with words that work for various note-values in hopes that over time they will develop a rhythmic language of their own. Of course, the flip side is that while my students are fantastic at seeing rhythmic patterns as opposed to individual note-values unconnected with one another, they often are a bit suspect when counting in traditional ways, which makes them appear awkward when talking about rhythms in band or orchestra. I try to remedy this by switching back and forth between the traditional and the non-traditional when dealing with rhythms, in hopes that, like children who grow up bi-lingual, they will develop ease in both languages. Here are some rhythmic words and phrases to get you started in making your own lists. I cannot claim most of these; they are ideas picked up in various Dalcroze and pedagogy workshops, or stolen from students along the way. It is time, however, they became part of the public domain. Quarter-notes: Yum Cone Ta Yeah Boom Eighth-notes: Taco ice-cream ti-ti eighth-note mommy Triplet: blueberry strawberry beautiful melody merrily Sixteenth-notes: watermelon pepperoni alligator Mississippi huckleberry Many times when teaching rhythmic 5-Finger Positions I will use rhythmic language and "Ta/ti-ti" language interchangeably. In fact, I may very well write out both in students' assignment notebooks. Looking back at the previous five rhythmic examples, in rhythmic language they would look like: 26. Ti-Ti Ta Ti-Ti Ta Ti-Ti Ta Ice cream Cone, Ice cream cone, Ice Cream Cone 27. Ta Ta Ti-Ti Ta Ta Ti-Ti Ta Yum Yum Ice Cream Cone Yum Ice Cream Cone 28. Ta Ti-Ti Ta Ta Ta Ti-Ti Ta Yum Ice Cream Cone Yum Yum Ice Cream Cone 29. Ta Ti-Ti Ti-Ti Ta Ti-Ti Ta Yum Ice Cream Ice Cream Cone Ice Cream Cone 30. Ti-Ti Ti-Ti Ta Ti-Ti Ta Ta Ice Cream Ice Cream Cone Ice Cream Cone Yum (Note how often I use the same words over and over again. This is mostly because I don't want to confuse the issue and using the same words repeatedly ingrains the patterns. Or you can just assume that I really like ice cream.) I don't limit my verbalization to younger children; using it with teenagers and adults often unravels rhythmic tangles immediately. My older students tease me saying that all I do is talk about food, which isn't far from the truth. Lessons make them hungry, they tell me. There are worse things. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=98 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=98 Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:10:54 -0700 I have a cat that often spends entire days under the covers. Lately, I can relate. We all have moments when we want to pull the covers over our heads, but recently these kinds of days have been all too frequent. January and February have never been my favorite months; after the sparkle and shimmer of the holidays, they seem bleak in comparison. They signal the beginning of what is always a daunting spring schedule of recitals and competitions, which require working more weekends than not. There are tax-related chores to be done, "taxes" being my least favorite word in the English language. (I am a self-employed person, after all . . .) And to make it worse, the weather is tiresome at best. Even though we have had an unseasonably warm winter, this limbo time of "is it cold or is it not?" gets on my nerves. On top of all that, the last month has brought more disappointments and angst than I normally deal with. Sometimes it doesn't take much: a couple of pieces of particularly bad news, a major disappointment or two, and I can be sent reeling. No wonder the covers have their allure. The root of the problem is probably not what life has thrown at me this month, but rather how ungrounded I have gotten the last few months. It started back with the hand problems I developed last winter. These have come and gone, depending on my performing load at the moment or how taxing the music I needed to learn might be. But some time ago, I promised everyone in my life that I would take some time off from playing the piano, give my hands a complete break and see if I could unwind this problem even further than my daily maintenance therapy allows me to do. I played my last recital of the semester on December 15, and then took a month off. ("The Break," as my friends and family named it.) "How's The Break going?" concerned friends would call and ask. Fine, I'd answer, most days breezily. Over the holidays there were plenty of distractions to keep me busy; it was actually a less stressful holiday than usual, because I wasn't trying to practice. There were a few touch-and-go days, and hours when I thought I just might climb the walls if I couldn't practice; nights where I thought surely the center of my being had been taken out and buried somewhere far away. I have long known that I don't just practice to stay on top of my chops or to learn music for some upcoming gig. I practice because that time on the bench grounds and centers me; it is both my meditation and my art. Without it, I am more than a little lost. I began edging back to the piano bench in mid-January. I was ready -- beyond ready -- to get back to the piano, but getting back into it hasn't really been that easy. My hands are status quo--neither significantly worse nor significantly better. I am blessed with a triple whammy of carpal tunnel tendencies: I am a small woman, which gives me little room for error in my joints; I have an aunt and a mother who have had CT surgery in both wrists, signifying genetic tendencies; I am both a pianist and a writer, spending hours on one keyboard or another. I will have a lifelong fight to stay ahead of the problem which, even with the best technique and conscientious care, will be a tough battle. But my hands haven't been the recent issue. Instead, there was the realization that my life was plenty full enough without doing three hours of practicing a day. In the days before my return to practicing, I wondered exactly how I was going to manage again. Days of teaching and writing and general household chores of cooking and cleaning kept me busy enough, I was surprised to find. I got a glimpse of what it might look like not to be maxed out all the time. I taught better; I wrote better; I was a better friend and wife. I wanted more than anything to get back to the piano, but what I didn't want to get back to was the sense that my best self was once again compromised. So, as I eased back in, I found myself conflicted: eager to play again, but resentful of what taking on this art form demands of my life and my relationships. And several weeks in, I am far from finding my stride. Although I am not playing more than two hours a day, tops, it still is hard to squeeze in. I've all but stopped writing, the books I picked up over the holidays are sitting on the floor by the couch, unopened. I haven't cooked in ten days. Every morning, my black and white cat Yun-Sun and I have a ritual. While I am sitting on the couch drinking my cup of coffee and reading, she jumps into my lap and places her head onto my shoulder. She nuzzles against my neck for several minutes, purring her quiet purr, and then jumps down again. This happens every morning like clockwork, and my husband says that this ritual is a significant one, that by this action Yun-Sun is saying, "OK. I'll be your cat for another day." By snuggling up with her, I essentially reply, "OK. I will take care of you for another day." And so, daily we repeat this ritual, re-establishing our bonds for another 24-hour period. It occurs to me that this is not a bad way to live one's life: to take every day as it comes, and to actively revisit our commitments and relationships on a daily basis. Certainly, it makes more sense to me than those Five-Year Planners they sell in bookstores, with pages for long-term and short-terms goals and action items. I can handle today, at least most days; I can build a life and a schedule, even complete with daily to-do lists and action items. But beyond that, goal setting seems futile and useless. I have never been able to dream big enough to capture all of what life might throw at me. If I were in charge, no doubt, my life would be much smaller and much less rich than my current version. In fact, I think we get into trouble the minute we start projecting too far into the future, because the future is not guaranteed, nor can it be predicted. I would have never dreamed I would be living in New Mexico. I didn't manipulate life's events so I would end up being a writer and a pianist; it just sort of happened, one day of authentic living folding into another, until a life's work began emerging. Here's what I know: tough months, physical challenges, professional and personal disappointments be damned, I can handle today. OK. I will take care of my two cats. I will be a wife, a daughter, a friend, a sister to my loved ones. I will be a teacher for another day: fixing mistakes, problem-solving thorny passages, witnessing small acts of making music, all the while juggling the roles of mentor, musician, and psychologist. I will be a pianist and a writer, committing myself to spending hours wrestling with notes and words for another 24-hour period. My ability to cope might get dicey if I think too much about what is being demanded of me or if I look too far into the future, but today, today, I can manage. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=97 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=97 Sun, 15 Feb 2009 08:49:24 -0700 To Play Pianissimo Does not mean silence. The absence of moon in the day sky for example. Does not mean barely to speak, the way a child's whisper makes only warm air on his mother's right ear. To play pianissimo is to carry sweet words to the old woman in the last dark row who cannot hear anything else, and to lay them across her lap like a shawl. -from Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems by Lola Haskins http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=96 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=96 Sun, 08 Feb 2009 09:57:11 -0700 In the last issue of American Music Teacher, I wrote a column which dealt with some of the issues around student competitions. Specifically, I talked about Charlie, a young precocious student of mine, who, while having plenty of problems certainly, is a delightfully spirited kid who plays with great flair and enthusiasm. In fact, I argued, he was exactly the kind of kid I like to put in competitions because he performs with such drama and exuberance. He exemplifies what I want to nurture in students: creative, passionate music-making. But competitions are not typically rich ground for such vitality. Indeed, many competitions seem designed to suck all the life out of a room. Participants' playing is usually restrained and careful; judges are encouraged to reward perfect reditions of big, ambitious pieces over tasty, spirited playing of age-appropriate music. It becomes all about the details, and as a result we drill every last marking on the page into students, in hopes that we can prevent them from being marked down for exhibiting any offbeat or unexpected personality. In my column about Charlie, I even suggested that this debate could be enlarged to include all the work we do every day in the studio: are we developing unique, colorful artists, or generically boring and inhibited musicians? I been overwhelmed by the response to this column. People have written from all over the country, echoing many of the same questions and concerns. "You know, Amy, we all think this. You just had the courage to say it out loud," one person from Houston told me. Many have written to ask what happened to Charlie and his "Jungle" pieces, wanting an update or a follow-up column. So here it is: Charlie placed third in his age group. I was thrilled. Given the competition that afternoon, I was perfectly satisfied with third place; it felt like a validation of what I was trying to do with all my students that entered that day: give them permission to show some personality, even maybe at the risk of showing less polish or perfection. This didn't work in every age level, but my students had a better showing this year than ever. One teacher told me, "You know, across the board your students play with personality. It's great to see." That comment alone was worth the gamble. There is no predicting what a judge will think, I never agree with everything judges say or do, but this felt like evidence that I was on the right track. I'll be braver about taking musical risks with my students in competitions in the future; I can already tell a greater confidence in doing so, even in their weekly lessons. And Charlie? I can assure you he is still asserting his personality at every possible opportunity. Yesterday, he had changed one of the notes in Dennis Alexanders's Troubadour, insisting that an F# in a couple of places in the left hand would sound better. I compromised on that one, saying that as long we talked to Mr. Alexander about it he could do whatever he wanted. Even though Dennis lives minutes away from me and is a frequent guest in my studio, my hedging will certainly buy some time. In that case, Charlie's F# sounds pretty awful, but still every time he stubbornly played it, I found myself thinking, "Isn't it something that he can embrace this funky sound?" I can assure you, he is flagrantly breaking all harmony rules when adding that F#, but still, give me Charlie any day. We need each other, Charlie and me. He needs me because I just might be unusual in my willingness not to get in his way too much. I need him because he reminds me to embrace the unexpected and to question the conventional. We don't always win around here, but day after day, we continue to make our strange funny little noises, trying to find our voices in this world. Most days, you could even call it music. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=95 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=95 Sat, 31 Jan 2009 07:58:44 -0700 We've been playing with rhythms lately in the studio. Beginning last month, when all my scale-playing students played descending scales to the rhythm of Joy to the World, I've been on a rhythm kick. I love using 5-Finger Positions to teach rhythms; it is not uncommon for my students first to play eighth-notes or dotted quarters here before they stumble upon them in their music. But lately I've been spending a lot of lesson time with these rhythmic patterns. First, I write them out in their notebooks, then I clap and chant the rhythm using generic "Ta" or "ti-ti" kind of language. The student imitates my example and then we improvise movement to the rhythm pattern using claps, snaps, foot stomps, patting our heads, and so on, each taking turns to make up a sequence. Following Richard Chronister's example that students should first improvise on new rhythmic patterns to help learn them, I then take the pattern to the piano and improvise something using the rhythm. The student does the same, and we take turns back and forth for a few minutes. Finally, after all these steps, we look at playing our 5-Finger Positions, which seem easy after all this preparatory work. While this takes up a great deal of lesson time, the benefits are huge. The students get some creative improvisation work both in the movement sequences and on the piano; the rhythmic patterns get internalized and becomes organic and natural; I have a chance to teach new rhythms and note values in a non-threatening way. Even after only a few weeks, my 5-Finger kids seem to look forward to this work in their lessons. So here's a few basic rhythmic patterns that work in 5-Finger Positions. (I keep a list of possible rhythms handy that I can refer to in low inspiration moments, like the last lesson on a rainy Thursday afternoon.) When doing these, the basic note pattern is always: Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do--only the rhythm changes. Teachers who like balanced meters may be dismayed to discover that these are assymetrical meters at best. I don't worry about that a lot, instead focusing on the pattern itself as a unit, not rather or not it fits into a 3/4 or 4/4 measure. Students can play these in major or minor keys, using different dynamics. I generally teach these as legato patterns, but different articulations could be used as well. I write these out in the student's notebooks using quarter notes and eighth notes and may write "Ta" or "Ti-Ti" under the notes values if needed for clarification. For lack of better options here, I am notating the patterns below in "Ta" and "Ti-Ti" language. 26. Ti-Ti Ta Ti-Ti Ta Ti-Ti Ta 27. Ta Ta Ti-Ti Ta Ta Ti-Ti Ta 28. Ta Ti-Ti Ta Ta Ta Ti-Ti Ta 29. Ta Ti-Ti Ti-Ti Ta Ti-Ti Ta 30. Ti-Ti Ti-Ti Ta Ti-Ti Ta Ta http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=94 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=94 Sat, 24 Jan 2009 08:22:44 -0700 It's been a lovely holiday. Truth is, holidays can go either way. No matter how much I might profess to love the season between Halloween and Christmas, it doesn't mean that it isn't without its complications. Those two months are always too busy, there is way too much sugar tempting us at every turn, I work too much, play too much, sleep and exercise too little. On top of that, every year the Christmas season reminds me of how too much of a good thing is simply too much. I always end up feeling buried alive by the sheer amount of gifts coming into the door, holiday decor cluttering the house, and cookies filling my kitchen. No matter how much I may enjoy all of those things, a little goes a long ways. I can't remember a post-Christmas week where I haven't resorted to blindly throwing away wrapping paper, ribbons, boxes, food items, cards, and more in the hopes of digging us out. No wonder that in January I inevitably find myself supporting the simplicity movement. And then there is the issue of holiday travel. We've lived a long distance from our families for many years now -- long enough that there are no expectations about whether or not we will come home for the holidays. This is a good thing, and allows us freedom to make our own plans. Some years we head back to Missouri and spend the week on I-70 so we can do Christmas with both Matt's Kansas City siblings, and my St. Louis family. Stressful as it can be, it is always good to be home, see family, catch up with friends, visit old haunts, and have some time away. But this year, we stayed in New Mexico for the holidays. As it turns out, this has been a lovely place to keep Christmas. After finishing my last lessons for the semester, I crammed in last-minute Christmas shopping, wrote our holiday letter, started wrapping gifts, finished my studio newsletter. The Saturday night before Christmas we were invited to Jerome and Neal's for a "Dutch dinner." Jerome is not only a flutist, but also a superb cook. He has been casually mentioning his Dutch dinner ever since I met him. When pressed, he would say it was a winter meal, and then change the subject. Several weeks ago, I was at the house to see his Christmas tree, and Jerome said that he had some Dutch dinner leftovers in the refrigerator, did I want to try a bite? Never one to turn down food of any sorts, in short order Jerome placed in front of me a bowl of steaming hot mashed potatoes with slices of ham in it. I almost swooned. "It's not much," Jerome kept saying, "just ham cooked in butter with mashed potatoes." Oh. Oh. Oh. I kept repeating over and over again. Oh.... I must have convinced him that this was a special meal indeed, for although Jerome seemed almost apologetic to serve us such a "simple dinner," upon hearing that Matt's sister Mary was to be in town for the holidays, he invited us up for Dutch food. Mary, for her part, was sceptical at best. After all, she had lived in Holland and had nothing good to say about the food. But she was eager to meet Jerome and Neal, and so willingly arranged her plans to be here Saturday night in time for dinner. Served up to all its glory, the "simple dinner" went something like this: Jerome scooped a mound of buttery mashed potatoes in the middle of each plate. On the potatoes he laid three strips of rolled ham, which I had seen simmering in about 6 inches of butter on the stove. In between each slice of ham, he gently set spears of white asparagus, and then topped the whole artery-clogging pile with a sliced boiled egg. This dinner could give you a heart attack, if you didn't die first of happiness. Matt took one bite and was transported to his happy place. Mary was completely won over to Dutch cuisine. I was convinced this was comfort food of the highest order. Jerome wouldn't stop apologizing for the simplicity of it all. Having lived through the cholesterol-soaring dinner of the previous evening, the next day were Matt's Lessons and Carols services. As a church musician, this is both one of the highlights of his year and the cause of the most stress and anxiety. He was coasting a bit this year, it seemed to me. I remarked upon this, saying that he seemed less stressed this month than in the past. "What gives?" I asked him. "Is it that you've just done it now about a dozen times? Or that the choirs are in better shape this year? Why are you so calm?" "Probably it's all of those things," Matt said. "I"m just thinking that this is going to be a lot of fun. I get to conduct 115 singers and a 30-piece orchestra doing great music. What's not to love?" Mary, on the other hand, woke up Sunday morning with two goals. She needed to get a new camera so she could take pictures during the service ("Strictly forbidden," Matt reminded her, but then remembered this was his big sister, who has attended every big event of his since his 2nd grade choir concert with a camera in hand.). In addition to the camera, Mary wanted a Christmas sweater to wear, as the one she had brought she had been wearing since the early 1980's. Apparently, before she left DC, a friend took Mary into her office, shut the door and gently told her that the sweater was no longer fit to be worn in public. I am one of those people who feel strongly that no one needs a Christmas sweater, but Mary was to be a reader during the 6:00 service and wanted one to wear. Faced with this information as I am drinking my first cup of coffee, my mind starts racing to see how I can get out of stepping into a store that might sell holiday attire. "Listen," I told her, "someone just gave me a Christmas sweater. Maybe you could wear it? And if you like it you could keep it." It was true. Not two weeks before, our friend Carolyn had called to say she was dropping off a sweater that I could have or could pass along as I wanted, but that no one in her family could wear it and it needed a new home. Apparently she had given this sweater to her mother-in-law the previous Christmas, who happened to be my size. The mother-in-law was in her 90's and died last January, leaving an unworn Christmas sweater, which was now in my possession. Mary, I reasoned, could have the 90-year-old woman's sweater. Amazingly, she agreed, which solved two problems at once: the immediate issue of the Christmas sweater needed that day, and the long-term problem of finding this sweater a loving home. So, with Mary attired in her new bright red Christmas sweater, we went to both services, which were indeed lovely. I persuaded Mary to only take photos while Matt wasn't looking, and to her credit, she kept the flash turned off. Afterwards, we went to dinner and began plotting the next event on the week's agenda. In two days, Matt was turning 40. This, more than anything, was the reason for Mary's trip to New Mexico this year. Aided by plenty of other people, I had been scheming for months about how to celebrate Matt's big birthday appropriately. At one point, one friend had written on her calendar, "Top Secret Mission" to mark a possible surprise party date. This was just in case Matt ever saw her calendar. Certainly, "Top Secret Mission" would not arouse suspicions. But in the end, the party was not a surprise after all. Instead, between about the seventh and eighth party of the season at our house, I exhaustedly said, "Baby, I'll throw you a party. When do you want it?" Monday morning began with a hike, followed by breakfast and a huge grocery shopping trip. And then the fun began. I pointed in the direction of lights and luminaries, and Mary and our friend Katie went to work, while I baked a triple layer chocolate cake, cleaned house, iced champagne, gathered cards and letters into a basket, and so on. That night our home was filled with friends ready to toast the completion of my husband's fourth decade. The cake became my domestic goddess moment of the year. There were speeches given, toasts made, songs sung, many bottles of champagne drunk. Katie and her mother must have washed dozens of dishes and glasses, for when I made my way to the kitchen at one point in the evening, there were piles of neatly stacked plates washed and dried and ready to put away. At about 11:30pm, Anne and I made pasta carbonara for the late crowd, and the final bottle of champagne was opened at midnight. Matt's brother Mark phoned from England a few minutes later to be the first sibling calling to wish Matt a happy birthday. All in all, it was a wonderful night, a perfect final party of 2008. The next day--Matt's actual birthday--Mary, Matt and I went to Santa Fe. Mary had a friend who had offered her condo while she was away. "How is it that Mary has these friends with empty condos in Santa Fe, and we don't?" we asked one another. We spent the day wandering around the plaza, eating nachos in the St. Francis Hotel, having a late dinner at Cafe Pasqual's. The next morning I took a soul-feeding solitary walk down Canyon Road (My nomination for the happiest place on earth. Forget Disneyland -- I'll take Canyon Road any day.), and then we headed home so that Matt could get ready for Christmas Eve services. Matt went to church, Mary and I put out luminaries once again, keeping that delightful New Mexico tradition. Mary went off to church, I stayed home, unpacked, tried to put the house in order, and made a Christmas Eve dinner of roast beef with cranberries and two kinds of potatoes, which we ate between services. We all went to the 11 o'clock service, and then home for dessert and drinks at midnight. After a holiday like this one, crashing was inevitable, and crash we have. We thought we'd rent a car and go on an unplanned adventure, but the couch has had too much appeal. Having not slept past dawn for month, we've been sleeping late, easily getting 10 hours of sleep every night. We've been reading and watching movies, going on walks, and eating our way though the huge quantity of sugar that we have accumulated in the last month. I have been gardening, working through the late outdoor projects of gathering leaves for the compost pile and cutting back perennials. Slowly, now that 2009 has arrived, I am in the process of de-Christmasizing the house: taking a load of ribbons and bells, cranberry strands and candles every time I go downstairs. This always takes longer than I think it should; inevitably in mid-January I will still be finding miscellaneous Christmas items--CDs, books, angels--that I have overlooked. We are down to the last of the peanut brittle and chocolate. I have read through at least half of the pile of books on the coffee table. Here's the lesson of this holiday season: by bowing out of certain expectations, practicing the act of saying "no" a bit more often, and experimenting with not having every minute pre-planned and over-scheduled, we have found a bit of heaven the last two weeks. If there is anything I need to infuse into my breathless life this year, it is the practice of quietness, stillness, centering and breathing. Sitting in a courtyard behind a gallery on Canyon Road, listening to a fountain bubble behind me, it hits me, not for the first time, that what I need in 2009 is not more of anything, except for moments like this. Oh, I have no doubt that my high speed multi-tasking personality will still function at a frantic pace, but what would happen to my life--my physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological health--if there was more nothing, more space, more breathing room in my world? "I am replacing the desire to be good with the desire for authenticity," artist Tinka Tarvers said. "I am replacing the desire for perfection with the desire for wholeness." Yes, I whispered upon reading this, and something inside of me quietly, slowly exhales. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=93 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=93 Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:04:09 -0700 It has been a wacky season around here. Case in point: Several years ago my mother gave us a nativity set. It is one of those lovely hand-carved wooden ones she bought at a Beyond Borders kind of market. I am happy to own it, and love to get it out each December. However, every year there is drama around this nativity scene. When it first arrived, I unpacked it and was setting it up when Yun-Sun (who was then just a kitten) jumped up and grabbed a lamb and went scampering off delightedly. All month it was a battle to keep the little figures out of the cats' mouths. Another year, I thought I had gotten it high enough to survive a season with the felines, when we came home to find the scene in a disarray: sheep toppled over, cows turned upside down, and Mary---the Queen of Heaven---nowhere to be found. Since nothing else in our house was touched, clearly we had not been robbed, this was simply another case of a cat getting her paws where she didn't belong. "Godiva!" I hollered, knowing it was probably her. Mary didn't appear until the following summer when I was moving furniture during a painting project. Instead, for the remainder of the season, Jesus was watched over by Joseph and a stray Shepherd, giving new meaning to the concept of a baby having two daddies. This year, the nativity mischief continues. For days I have been walking by the chest in the sun-room that houses the manger and noticing all kinds of strange behavior: a cow sitting on a wise man's head, a sheep standing in the cradle. I have tried blaming Matt, thinking he was playing games with me, but he has denied any wrong doing. My students would be the next suspects, except it isn't clear who, day after day, is doing this since I see different kids every day of the week. The cats? While they lack opposable thumbs, they have been known to do unbelievable things. It is totally possible. In the meantime, it is simply a mystery. Truth is, Christmas season is always a bit strange around our house. Like many musicians, my work can crescendo this month due to numerous extra rehearsals, recitals, juries and other odd gigs. But usually, about ten days before Christmas my work falls off, suddenly--subito--leaving me with unfamiliar gaps and holes in my schedule. Likewise, my teaching grinds to a halt about the same time. The final week of the teaching semester occurred mid-December and was followed by a much less busy make-up week. (My students are never sick. I appreciate this come make-up time, as I have few lessons to teach, but I'm less fond of this mid-semester when I can go weeks, months even, without a cancelled lesson). My husband, on the other hand, makes his living in church music, which means his life accelerates all the way up to Christmas Eve. This means he has more rehearsals and more performances to deal with in the ten days before Christmas, just as my life is slowing down. Early on in our marriage, this juxtaposition bothered me, as I was left alone to my own devices in the days before Christmas. I remember one year in particular when Matt, in typical procrastination fashion, spent Christmas Eve working on his bulletins and I spent the day home alone. At the time, I was upset that he couldn't have planned better; today, I'd welcome the solitude--the gift of a day to myself. This year the pattern continues. I am done teaching my final lessons and have a blessed two weeks of vacation ahead of me. Matt has been up to his ears in work, most nights not coming home till 10pm or later after an evening of choir rehearsals. I have welcomed these quiet nights more than ever, because for the last month I have been fighting one sickness after another, clearly because I am exhausted. Of course, I have been teaching through it all -- no doubt the root of the problem -- but that is water under the bridge at this point. Anyone looking back at the past would see a pattern of December colds, flu, and general exhaustion in my life. I recognize this is not the best way to keep Christmas. But other yearly rituals help counter these bad tendencies. Besides the manger, the house is decorated in full spirit---stockings hung; icicles dangled from windows and chandelier; beads draped across the fireplace; crocheted angels, bells, and strands of cranberries on the mantle. Of course, I have added collections of stars wherever possible, turning our home into a virtual galaxy of sorts. There is a star collection hanging above my piano, another decorating a dining room corner, and in my latest creative burst, I hung cookie cutter stars above my kitchen sink, making a Milky Way of shadows on the wall. "Ooooo...." said the 12-year-old girls from Matt's youth choir when they came for cookies and cider after an evening of caroling. "That looks soooooo cool." At least my decorating is a hit with the pre-teen crowd. I wish on lots of stars these days, sending my prayers for peace and happiness across the universe. As we approach a new year, I am ever hopeful: I am hopeful about this new administration coming to Washington. I am hopeful that these enforced changes on our lives due to economy will usher in a gentler, more authentic world, less driven by consumerism. But still I wish, and still I pray, finding stars to direct my thoughts. "I was out for stars . . ." Robert Frost wrote. These days, so am I. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=92 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=92 Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:24:23 -0700 I am a pretty decent sight-reader, and I have always prided myself that my students' reading is better than average. In the past, this has probably has made me lazy about doing specific sight-reading work on a weekly basis, both in lessons and in the students' assignments, but in the last few years I have mended my sorry ways. I am a big fan of Hannah Smith's Progressive Sight Reading Exercises for Piano, which has 534 examples of one- or two-line sight-reading exercises that progress in difficulty (at a glacial pace) throughout the book. This allows me to pick two or three examples at random to do during a lesson, or several pages if time allows. And because there are SO many examples in the book, we can jump around somewhat at will, and not worry about doing them all. Some of my kids love it when I say "OK, let's sight-read," (others groan loudly), but having this book on my shelves gives me an easy source for sight-reading material. In addition, I have started a sight-reading library of music. (This has been an expensive thing to get going, involving me buying hundreds and hundreds of dollars of method books and pedagogical literature so that my library is big enough -- and the levels accessible and varied enough -- to be helpful.) Each week, all my students--with the exceptions of the very beginners--check out a sight-reading book. Their assignment is to play each piece in the book once and to bring it back the next week. Then I allow them to pick something that they liked from the collection to play for me, after which I choose something for them to play (thereby lessening the possibility that they actually only played at home the one piece that they then picked in the lesson). This whole ordeal takes a life-sucking amount of time. Me: "Did you play your sight-reading book?" Kid: "Yeah." Me: "Great. Pick something to play." Minutes go by while the kid picks something to play me. I try not to act impatient, fully realizing that just because I move at the speed of light, not everyone does. "I want to play, 'Frogs on a Log.'" "Fantastic." Kid plays. I then say, "OK. Now lets hear the first three lines of 'Minuet.'" Kid plays. Then the kid checks off his name from the sight-reading library sign-out sheet, signs the back of the book and then puts it away. More life-sucking minutes go by while the kid chooses a new book, usually verbally describing how he feels about each one as he browses through the basket. "Have I done this one? Oh, yeah, I signed the back already. But I don't remember it. I want to look at the music to make sure. OH! I loved this song. Could I just play it again really quick?..." Need I point out that this proves the kid likes to play the piano and has generally warm fuzzy feelings about the whole sight-reading process? I have the books labeled and organized by level to save time, although I laugh as I type that sentence because NOTHING about this process saves time. In fact, it is all I can do not to rip the book right out of the kid's hands, file it away myself and grab a new one. So why do I bother with this waste of probably 8 minutes every lesson? Because although I can't begin to list them all, I think that all sorts of life skills are being developed and self-suffienciney encouraged when I let the kids do this whole sequence themselves. I see too many examples of parents doing things for kids to save time, and children as a result are more helpless than they need to be. So that's one reason I sacrifice lesson time. Another reason is that students are free to have uninfluenced opinions about this music with very few cues from me about whether or not they "should" like something. Because they read through an entire book every week (at least that's the goal), there's lots of music going through their lives and under their hands. Some books they love, and beg to be allowed to take home again. (Mostly I say no to this request, so that when I do agree, they think I am absolutely wonderful. I know, I know, cheap psychological trick.) Other books they hate, and are quick to tell me all about it. I think this is great in every way. Mostly I teach music I love and kids are quick to pick up on this fact. (Life is too short to not teach the music you love. Besides, as pianists, we are blessed by never being able to exhaust our repertoire so there is no reason to teach bad music.) I have an easy rapport with my students, so most of the time they wouldn't think they were hurting my feelings if they didn't like their assigned repertoire, but still that music has certain expectations that their sight-reading books just don't, so they are free to love or hate their sight-reading books at will. The final reason is simple and profound: since I began this six months ago, my students have leaped forward in their sight-reading skills. They read way above their levels, they learn their assigned music faster, they are more confident about starting new music and tackling new assignments on their own. This has been one of the biggest win-win pedagogical things I have ever done. The only drawback is the time involved, and honestly, that's just me and my own impatience. But the whole concept of sight-reading has, from time to time, led to some misunderstandings. There was the time with Yun-Sun (not my cat, but my cat's namesake). Yun-Sun was probably five at the time and a pretty precocious reader already. Her mother had a masters degree in piano performance, but English was her second language, and so occasionally we had communication issues when discussing practicing. For some time, I had been assigning Yun-Sun to "sight-read" through such and such pages, and then one day in the lesson discovered that she and her mother had taken this to mean that Yun-Sun should say out-loud every note on the page. No actual piano playing was happening, jsut verbatim "sight-reading." More recently, I have discovered that even kids who have been speaking English since birth misunderstand "sight-reading". I had been writing "Play your SR book" in their assignment notebooks only to find out that some of the kids thought this meant "Play your silent reading book". (How they were translating this assignment to piano playing I have no idea, but those kids are nothing if not flexible and creative.) Last week, I stumbled upon Richard Chronister's term for sight-reading: sight-playing, which is wonderful and accurate in every way. However, I tried renaming the assignment with one kid only to have him whine, "But I like sight-reading. I'm used to that." You can't win. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=91 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=91 Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:35:28 -0700 Several weeks ago (or was it longer? I am completely losing track of time around here), I wrote about a new 5-Finger Position idea that was inspired both by an Alfred little ditty and the rain that we had been receiving in the desert. It hasn't rained since, which probably has to do with the fact that we had part of the roof repaired---nothing like a nice roofing bill to ensure that it will never rain again. There has, however, been plenty--and I mean plenty---of raindrop-inspired 5-Finger Positions around here. I only have a few students playing 5-Finger Positions these days, most of my students having moved on to scales and arpeggios and such things. (And yes, I have as many ways for playing scales as I do for pentachords, much to my students' dismay.) But the ones that are in the 5-Finger Position world are struggling mightily with these damn raindrops. It's an interesting thing to watch and think about pedagogically, for some of the kids who are having the most trouble are the ones who have successfully been playing these patterns for a while now. But what I notice is that the act of alternating hands makes all the gaps in their skills show up. Just this morning little Annie was demonstrating her positions in her lessons. When she started playing I was writing in her assignment notebook and not watching her, and they sounded fine---notes jauntily sharp and staccato, all the notes of every major key correct. But when I looked up and watched her, she was sliding her fingers all around the keys, not adhereing to the correct fingers on each note, but instead skipping over weak fingers and using 2 and 3 of each hand whenever possible. Now, Annie knows better than this, but clearly the challenge of managing this pattern was enough to make all of her good habits go out the window. (Ah! I can sympathize with this in a million areas of my life--the idea that under stress we fall apart and all our good behaviors disappear.) And so, we continue to tackle our raindrops, being vigilant about not letting the notes slide into one another, not letting our fingers slip out of position, and making sure the staccatos are nice and pointed. Although it is hardly worth saying, the original Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do pattern would not be the only option. We are also doing some "doubles" where each hand plays the same note twice: LH Do-Do, RH Do-Do, LH Re-Re....etc. (and, of course, the reverse with the right hand leading). After mastering the singles and the doubles, lots of other patterns in both major and minor keys could be used (see Recipes for Technique for more ideas). It is the driest part of the year around here, humidity levels dipping into the single digits. The pitch on all of the pianos in this state is falling as I write this. We could easily not see rain again for months. But, roof intact, we are playing up a storm around here. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=90 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=90 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:43:12 -0700 Although I can hardly wrap my mind around it, Thanksgiving is upon us. Staring us in the face. Jumping in our laps, demanding us to Be thankful, damn it! I love Thanksgiving. It is by far and away my favorite holiday. I like it because, aside from those awful paper turkeys you could tastelessly tape in your windows, Hallmark hasn't taken over this day. I like it because I have fond childhood memories of Thanksgiving on my grandparents' farm, with dinners of turkey and roast beef, a million sides of creamy vegetables from the garden, ending with cherry and apple pies with fruit from Grandpa's trees. Once my grandmother came to visit us, and Matt persuaded Grandma to teach him to make her piecrust. Grandma called it, "Bride's Simple Pie Crust." Matt didn't find it so simple, apparently, because he has never made it again. I also love Thanksgiving because I love the food, and any excuse to gather a lot of people around a table to eat is a good one in my opinion. When we lived in Boston we used to have Thanksgiving at my cousin's farm in southeastern Massachusetts (a small farm bought, incidentally, out of my cousin's own nostalgic memories of my grandparents' farm). Scott's farmhouse and Thanksgiving table were special indeed, always a merry assortment of cousins and friends, and food to die for. But mostly I love Thanksgiving because it is blessed time off in what is otherwise a dauntingly busy time of year. Some years we travel, but my favorite Thanksgivings are by far the ones we stay home. This is one of those years. Some months ago, my friend Anne invited Matt and me to share Thanksgiving with her family: "Are you going anywhere this year? No? OK. You are having Thanksgiving with us." But about a month ago she stood in my kitchen and rescinded the invitation, saying that they had to go to Austin to visit Dan's brother or some other lame excuse. (In her defense, I must say that she did this with an extremely guilty look on her face, but still...) Fortunately, we have lots of good friends. We accepted an invitation with a family from church -- daughter Katie used to be in Matt's youth choir, but is now away at college. She and her parents are dear friends. We shudder to imagine that we are nearly old enough to be Katie parents, and like her folks we are eagerly awaiting her visit home. (She e-mailed me just this morning: "You seem really stressed out. Any errands I could run for you of the non-musical sort?" What a great kid. We'd happily be her parents.) Jerome, my flute-playing buddy and frequent collaborator, also sent an invitation our way, saying that we "probably had never had Thanksgiving with real live Indians." That is true, and would, no doubt, be a story to tell. Maybe next year. This year in particular I am thankful not to cook or do dishes on Thanksgiving. I say this after a weekend in which I did little but load and unload the dishwasher. Jerome says that the "festive season at the Greers' has begun" and indeed that does seem to be the case. Several weeks ago, Jerome and I played a recital together, after which we had a champagne reception at our house. "If I bring a case of champagne and all the food, can we have the party at your house?" Jerome had asked me. Of course. Then, last weekend, we had visiting our dear friends Ken and Beverly. Ken Medema is a pianist and composer who happens to be blind. I say the last part almost as an aside, because his blindness is not the most remarkable thing about him. Matt laughs that Ken is the only man who is allowed to walk up, hug his wife and say, "Hello, gorgeous!" I point out that the man is blind, so one must to take that into consideration when assessing his judgment. "Oh, but Ken knows," Matt assures me. Ken was in town to sing and lead worship at church, and to do a concert on Matt's series. He sings and plays the piano, but his biggest schtick is that he invites audience members to tell stories, and then improvises a song to illustrate the story --music and lyrics. The music itself is of such originality that it would be impressive alone, but the lyrics---they are poetic and profound, and even rhyme. It is a stunning thing to see. But that gift should be balanced with the fact Ken "can't drive very well," as one of my little students astutely noted, causing us to laugh. "Yeah, you're good, Ken, but you can't drive," we reminded him all weekend. A visit from Ken and his wonderful assistant Beverly, whom we also adore, is reason to pop open more champagne, for sure. So one night, we had a small group of friends at the house to meet Ken and Bev. Matt made Algonquin Punch, which was potent indeed, and many of our closest friends gathered to talk and drink and nibble cheese. As always, at the end of the evening, Ken graced us with music, playing his arrangement of "All The Things You Are," which also wove in "Fly Me To the Moon," and somehow, incredibly, a four-voice fugue on the first phrase of the original tune. Improvising fugues is one of Ken's trademarks. "Oh yeah," I said sarcastically to him, "anyone can do that." Then he made up a song about the evening -- incorporating the punch and the cookies, the jokes and the stories, the idea that this was a moment in time that we would always treasure. Everyone in the room was in tears when he finished, sealing his point completely. The next morning Ken taught my performance classes. This was a morning I had been enthusiastically selling to my students for months. The kids were prepped and ready, "Wow. He is the opposite of Beethoven" at least four of them told me. One little girl, remembering our class last spring with pedagogical composer Dennis Alexander, said, "Cool. Just like Mr. Alexander. Only blind!" Not surprisingly, Ken was brilliant with the kids. A handful performed for him and he made musical suggestions. I had a couple of students who compose play for him and he helped with their compositions. One high school kid who has a Friday night gig at a country club played the arrangement that he had worked out by ear of the theme from Titanic, after which Ken proceeded to sit down and play it about a dozen different ways, demonstrating how the song could be varied. Greg stood behind him with a grin from ear to ear, just shaking his head. When Ken finished I asked, "So, what do you think?" to which Greg answered, "I think this was amazing." Parents stayed for the classes and raved about it, one father remarking, "It is so good for the kids to just see what might be off the charts like this." I agree. This was not necessarily a class to inspire them in any concrete way, for Ken's ability is so extraordinary that it isn't something any of us can really aspire to. But I wanted the kids to rub elbows with this kind of talent for a little while, for you never know what might stick. Ken, Bev and Matt went off to do choir rehearsals in the afternoon in preparation for Sunday's events. I loaded the dishwasher with another load of wine glasses, vacuumed, put in a pot roast. Saturday night we had two of our favorite couples-Brad and Karen, Anne and Dan--over for dinner with Ken and Bev. Sunday was full of church and the concert, and then dinner in Old Town complete with a pitcher of margaritas. Ken has recently re-recorded a song he wrote 30 years ago for the Bicentennial, called "I See America." There is an underground campaign to get it to Obama in time for the Inauguration, for it reflects the hope and dreams that seem tangible these days after the election. It's been my soundtrack for the last two days, its text scrolling through my brain this Thanksgiving week..... Well I've seen the white sand beaches near the town where I was born..... and I've breathed the mountain air so fresh and green. But I've been in other places where it's hard to breathe the air, and the high-rise nightmare blocks the morning sun. And once played in the dirty streets and no one seems to care. America's children, look what we have done. I see America through the eyes of love, and I long for all the children to be free. And if you see, put your hand to the job, there is work that must be done till freedom's song is sung from sea to sea...* This work week is short, thankfully: two days of teaching, an extra choir rehearsal to play, and then tomorrow Lora and I are hitting the mountains at our second attempt at taking La Luz, said to be the toughest hike in the state. Today is a grey November day; you can taste winter in the air. Writing this with a cup of coffee at my elbow, I am acutely aware that there are a lot of reasons to be thankful this year. We have families that love us, wonderful friends who fill our lives and our home with their laughter and music. In spite of daily warnings about the state of the world, I am more optimistic than I was four and eight years ago. We have work we love, and are privileged enough to get to spend our lives doing tangible things that make a difference, nudging the world in a small way towards futures we believe passionately in. Friday night is our annual St. Cecelia party, another marker in the festive season. It's time to raise a glass to fact that for another year, we got away with making a living making music. ...Well I've seen the untold millions whose birthplace freedom made, who nourished by her dreams grew strong and tall. And I've seen them teach their children so that the dream would never fade. And I've seen them stand to answer freedom's call. But I've seen how greed and carelessness can wipe that dream away, create a living nightmare in its stead. Well, rise up children, dream again, for its time for us to say, though some may scoff, the dreamers are not dead....* But this weekend there will also be time for the stack of books I've been collecting by my bed, maybe a movie or two, some time alone with just the two of us and the two felines with which we share our home. I'll raise a glass to that. ...I see America through the eyes of love, and I long for all her children to be free. And if you see, put your hand to the job, there is work that must be done, till freedom's song is sung-- and freedom's bell is rung--from sea to shining sea.* *I See America music and lyrics by Ken Medema http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=89 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=89 Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:32:20 -0700 I am resorting to bribing myself these days to get my work done. This is really a last resort, because nothing else is working. I shouldn't imply that I haven't been working, because I have. Obsessively. All the time. Morning, noon, and night. I am in a high energy cycle, which is dangerous on lots of levels. Dangerous, because I don't get enough rest, and because I don't allow any space between my actions, thoughts or obligations. Dangerous, also, because I get totally out of balance during these times. I am acutely aware of this at the moment, because I just returned from yoga class and every pose only illustrated how out of kilter my body (and therefore my life) was. My scoliosis makes finding symmetry hard on the best of days, but today, I had no idea where center was. This, I should admit, was the first yoga class in over two weeks, which is the first sign that things have gone awry around here. I know better. I KNOW BETTER. I know that in order to have some kind of center, some kind of balance in my life I need certain things: I need to eat well, get enough sleep, go to yoga regularly, bike and walk, write every day, and practice. Of that list, I have been managing decent eating, marginal sleep and way too much practicing. And therein lies the whole problem. Other things that help keep me healthy and on top of my life: taking some time to do some teaching preparation, instead of just winging it every day. (Yeah, I'm good at winging it, but that's not the point.) My days start better when I take time to do some reading as I drink my coffee in the morning. My days end more serenely and contentedly when I have dinner and conversation with Matt. But a close look at that more detailed list only shows more holes, for the last several weeks have been all about my fall studio recital, which took place last Saturday night. That is a big megillah indeed, requiring serious attention to picking out recital music, working especially hard in lessons on recital pieces, and then doing the program and organizing the reception. In addition, no matter how confident and together my students generally are, there is always an increased amount of hand-holding for both parents and students in the week prior to any big performance. So in answer to why I am not on top of teaching stuff I have two words: Fall Recital. And the rest? Well, I have been as preoccupied as the rest of the country with this recent election. I have read the paper more closely, watched more news than usual, and in general, given too much time to the whole thing, considering how little I could affect the process. ("Yes we can!") Election day itself, I baby-sat for someone doing voter rights kind of stuff, doing my extremely small part to insure that this state turned its rightful shade of blue. On top of all that, Matt has been gone the last week, taking any hope of my staying firmly anchored to my life with him. So while some of the reasons I am less than well balanced right now has to do with these very specific things and my own energy fluctuations in response to them, the other huge part of this equation is just the normal cyclical nature of being a performer. Given all of that, I have lots of reasons these days to be thinking about recitals and what they require of us. Not only was Saturday night the fall recital in my studio; last weekend I played a big recital with a flutist; this weekend I am doing a recording project with a singer. Without a doubt, there are certain areas of my life I have to put on hold in order to have the attention and focus required to do these things. In students' lessons, I have no choice but to let many important things go in order to simply have the time to devote to getting recital pieces ready. I fall out of habit of doing teaching prep work----picking out new music, reading through collections, sending organizational emails and newsletters out about upcoming events----because these things seem less pressing when we are getting ready for a recital. In fact, to look too far into the future when the present needs our attention is more than just distracting, it can actually be unhelpful. Of course, now that the recital is behind us, I find myself swimming madly to keep my head above water. I'm out of habit of putting in the teaching preparation time, and now I need to do so desperately. If we are going to take this recent performance momentum and run with it, I have to do some major catch-up work both in terms of picking out and reading through new music, but also in terms of asking myself, "OK. What does this kid need next? What have we neglected lately? What do we need to circle back to? What should we be revisiting now that we are playing at this new level?" This is a lot of work for 25 students, but it has to be done. And it is the same with all the other things I need in my life---the writing, the exercising, the time with my husband. It is so easy to get out of the habit of making sure my days include all these things, and so painful to realize how out of balance I have become when they are missing. Which is a long way of explaining why I am now resorting to bribery. I don't have to bribe myself to practice: That has never been a problem, and at the moment the sheer pressure of the gigs in front of me is enough to get my butt on the piano bench. But all those other things: the exercising, writing, reading, teacher preparation and so on that I need to do in order to not spin off this planet, I am now bribing myself to accomplish. I am a big fan of bribery and reward systems, if not used by organized crime or our government. I have broken bad habits by using rewards; I get myself to yoga class and in front of the computer with the promise of chocolate or lattes. I may be too old for such silliness, but I have years of evidence and piles of accomplishments to prove that it works. At the moment, I don't even care about accomplishing anything, I just need to find a way to slow down, breathe deeply, and gather together the loose ends of my life and sanity. Or at least that's the idea. But in the meantime, there's chocolate waiting. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=88 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=88 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:50:53 -0700 Uncharacteristically for fall in the desert, it has rained lately. Quite torrentially, actually. Although I like cozy rainy day more than about anyone, this weather pattern hasn't been particularly welcomed as we now have a leak in the bedroom. More like multiple leaks in one sad corner, causing the ceiling to begin to peel away alarmingly. We need to get that fixed, and would have on Tuesday if it hadn't rained again. If I can just ignore the whole leaking roof business, I could fall head over heels with this season. Certainly, there has been nothing not to love about the weather lately. The days are delightfully warm and sunny, when it's not raining at least, and the nights are deliciously cool, requiring us to dig out that comforter and the cozy pajamas. "A two-cat night," as my husband says. I have been making soup and green chile sauce around the clock. Green chile is harvested and roasted in the fall, sending wonderful smells wafting throughout the city. The first year we were brave enough to buy our own green chile (as opposed to just going to Frontier and eating it there), we hesitantly bought a half-bushel thinking there was no way we could eat it all. It was gone by February, and this was before I had learned to make my own green chile sauce. The next year we worked up to a bushel; now we calmly order two bushels (thanks to Lora and her empty freezer around the corner, which gives us more storage options), and know that it will be gone by mid-winter. Sigh. But with the abundance of fresh green chile at the moment, and the fact that every time I turn around someone is thrusting tomatoes upon me, I am making green chile sauce practically every other day. This requires a good hour of peeling, chopping, and assembling, which explains why I don't know the Bach sonata I am playing with a flutist in two weeks as well as I should. Besides the autumn rituals around green chile, last weekend I bought pumpkins for my courtyard. One of the benefits to being childless, yet working with children, is that I feel authorized to adapt any child-like custom to my own adult desires. Hence the need for pumpkins, and lots of them, scattered on walls and tables, and propped against doors and pots. But here's the best part: I don't have to actually carve them, as I have no demanding children requiring this. I don't much like carving pumpkins; it's messy and frankly, I'm no good at it. I'd be better off spending time on that Bach sonata. This year must have been a particularly good year for pumpkins because my piece de resistance is a 44-pound pumpkin sitting cheerfully by my sun-room door. "Miss Amy!" Madeleine squealed when she came into her lesson this week, "Is that pumpkin yours?" But all these seasonal rituals have me thinking: just this week a student was playing a little piece in his sight-reading book. One of those older Alfred books has a piece called "Raindrops." It is a jaunty, staccato number, just as you might assume, which for this little guy proved not to be that easy. It requires hands to alternate, playing the same notes one after another like little raindrops. This was a trick, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get that left hand to lead. Which, of course, got me thinking about our next 5-Finger Positions. Like "Raindrops": 24. LH leads; all notes staccato: Do (Do) Re (Re) Mi (Mi) Fa (Fa) Sol (Sol) Fa (Fa) Mi (Mi) Re (Re) Do (Do) 25. Same; RH leads I do hope that teaching this 5-Finger Position this week won't produce the adverse affect of causing more rain, or at least not until that roof gets patched. However, another seasonal rite waits for me this weekend: buying and planting pansies to line the flower bed along the driveway. I'll be happy to water them by hand and save the raindrops for the piano. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=87 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=87 Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:11:55 -0600 It would be easier to keep my ducks in a row if I didn't keep losing one. Thinking about ducks reminds me of the "Make Way for Ducklings" statues in the Boston Public Garden, whose inspiration comes from the children's book by Robert McCloskey. People were always stealing these gold-plated duck statues, which was a bit unsettling. There was nothing like dashing through the Garden on the way to the Arlington subway stop, only to discover that Jack or Mack or Ouack or Quack was missing. Lately, I can relate. I understand that the whole point of ducks is that they like queuing up--when it's their idea. However, they will resist falling into lines of my choosing, instead wiggling and waddling in a disorderly fashion. I get this. But what is perplexing to me at the moment is that I keep misplacing one. Actually in the last week, I have lost like five ducks. I'm usually good at keeping track of my life, but lately I am forgetting important things right and left. I'm sure this has something to do with the busyness of the past several weeks, and all the weekends I've been working recently. It can't be avoided. There is just a lot going on at the moment: extra recitals, performance classes, workshops, lessons, and competitions. I want my students to be a part of these things, and am willing to give up a few weekends in return. But I am waking up in the middle of the night remembering that I forgot to send footnote information with my last column, or that I never returned the phone call to a student's parent. In a recent redistribution of chores, I have taken on making Matt's lunch. I have yet to remember actually to make his lunch, and the dear man is kind enough not to nag me, which means that he must be going hungry. Yesterday I forgot how to spell the name of the street I have lived on for the last three and a half years. I am not kidding; I could not get past the third letter. Yes, I am an awful speller, but this is beyond belief. Today I forgot an appointment with my acupuncturist. She has a 24-hour cancellation policy or you pay anyway, something I totally agree with, which means this overlooked duck will cost me. Ironically, I had just laid down on the couch with a horrible headache when she called wondering where I was. I didn't pick up the phone, because I was feeling too sick. I'd like to say that the headache was so terrible that I forgot my appointment, but the truth is, it was never on my radar. I never knew I had this on my schedule, even though the entry "12:30 Acupuncture" was staring me in the face when I looked at my calendar. This indicates there are even things written down that are no longer registering or prompting my attention. I think this is a cosmic sign that my brain hasn't been allowed to wander or unfocus for weeks now. Last weekend topped everything: Matt was in Houston for a performance. I suffered (there really is no other word) through seven hours of a piano competition with six students on Friday. Saturday, I endured the winner's recital (four kids playing), and a two-hour rehearsal with a splitting migraine. (See above: "missed acupuncture appointment.") I was in bed and asleep by 8:45pm, only to be awakened at 10:30 because the bedroom roof was leaking. In my migraine-drug-induced state I reasoned that it never rains very long in the desert, and I threw down a towel and went back to sleep. At 2am I was jerked from a deep slumber because it was leaking in about five spots over in the corner, and it was still raining. As it happens, just last week we had the roof checked out, only to be told that it "looked great"! Apparently, not so great after 12 hours of downpour. Sunday, sleep-deprived and still fighting this headache, I taught two make-up lessons, and played two rehearsals, putting in a six-hour work day. In no alternative universe does this list of activities count as a "weekend." I fear it is not just the cracks in the roof that are showing up, but the cracks in my well-being. In a strange twist of fate, this is all happening just as the latest American Music Teacher hits the mailboxes around the country. In my most recent column, I brag that I am handling time just fine. Although that may have been true when I wrote the column three months ago, it's now officially a lie. I am beyond exhausted, irritable, and simply not handling even the slightest challenge being thrown my way with any grace. I find myself lashing out at the world, only to discover that the world as we have known it is cracking apart at the seams as well. It's a difficult time on all fronts. My problem is that the line between being quite well and being far less than so is very fine. It has been the same with my migraines: I never had the signs that a headache was coming on; I just went straight from being well to being sick. It wasn't until I figured out that there had to be a place in between being well and being sick I needed to be attentive to, before I started to turn my migraine habit around. I know this personality trait of being mostly fine until I am most certainly not must work in the same way. I have to recognize signs that might mean I am in trouble before I start cracking open, or misplacing important ducks. As anyone who has spent time with unruly ducks can tell you, this is easier said than done. In fact, the characteristic that makes me gifted at handling many things at once is the very one that hurts me here, because normal warnings don't register. What my migraine therapist told me again and again (until I practically had the concept tattooed on my forehead) was that I would need to learn to actively look for danger signs. I would need to learn to not overextend, even when I thought I felt OK. I would need to play it safe until I figured out what a pre-headache looked like. "The signs are there," Patti told me over and over again, "You just aren't recognizing them." I know its the same thing here. As much as I think I ought to be fine with working five weekends in a row, that needs to be not OK in the Amy Wellness Manual. (My father would remind me that this is just common sense, but I never had a lot of common sense. I have lots of sense, just not of the common variety. "Amen!" my husband would say to that confession.) Over Labor Day, I played a huge recital with a professional flutist. Afterward, my friend Anne greeted me backstage and asked about the rest of my weekend. "Oh, this is an easy weekend," I told her. "All I had was this recital, and now I am coasting." She looked at me in alarm. "You know there is something wrong with your life when playing a major recital is an 'easy' weekend." Although it is weeks too late, I get it. I can't afford to lose any more ducks, or suffer any more cracks in my facade. This weekend we are headed to Taos for our annual "escape the balloon fiesta" trip. We will stay in the Taos Inn right on the plaza in a cozy, charming room with a fireplace. We will eat well, wander through art galleries, hike along the river, read and sleep. I might even look for ducks, for some of my missing ones might be hiding in an old adobe house, waiting to be found. In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I stole that first photo off the Internet and I have no idea whose photo it is. I, however, took all the other, less-than-fabulous, pictures. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=86 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=86 Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:53:12 -0600 "Fred and Ethel were the wacky neighbors in I Love Lucy," my husband Matt explains to me for the hundredth time. "What were you doing as a kid anyway? Playing the piano?" Maybe because of this general ignorance regarding all things involving popular culture, I was particularly taken aback one Sunday when a New York Times headline caught my eye. As kids log 6 1/2 hours a day of screen time... Six and a half hours! I nearly gasped out loud. As someone who only uses the internet when I exhaust other options and whose knowledge of television culture would loosely be considered to be non-existent, I realize I am an anomaly. However, six and a half hours? There has to be a middle ground. But there doesn't seem to be much of a middle ground that I can see. Even in my circle of musicians, cell phones regularly go off during concerts; conversations before and after student recitals concern what software we are employing in our studios. Everyone seems to have seen last weeks' episode of "Desperate Housewives," but the recital of a local pianist was scantily attended. I rarely have face-to-face conversations with friends anymore: instead we e-mail to schedule phone dates. I can't remember the last handwritten letter I received. There is no inherent problem with technology-cell phones make our lives more convenient, the internet provides us with easy access to endless information, software programs that teach theory and music history save valuable time in lessons. The problem is that as artists we are supposed to be counter-cultural and the cultural norm of technology is ruling our lives and our work. Matt, who is a choral conductor, maintains that choirs by their very definition are counter-cultural. In this world of high tech, individualized everything, where the ease of plugging in programmed music generally wins, working with groups of people to produce a specific sound using only their voices is radical. Indeed, this almost makes my work with the complicated mechanics of a grand piano look positively progressive. But even so, in our world today, the painstaking work of teaching individual students musical values and skills is inherently counter-cultural and old-fashioned, and in a world ruled by technology, scarce and precious. It seems to me that our jobs as creative teachers and artists may be to actively embrace what is counter-cultural, both in the way we teach and in how we program our lives. However, there is a raging debate in the pedagogy world about embracing technology, about not resisting the seemingly inevitable decline of traditional lessons: one teacher, one student. According to some, we should all teach group lessons, we should all incorporate the competitive sports terminology of winning and losing into our vocabulary, we should all become more understanding with students having only limited time to devote to preparing their assignments. I'm rebelling. Yes, I can be a flexible and forward-thinking, but I wonder at what price? At some point along the way, I made the decision not to let technology creep into my teaching. I have no electronic keyboard in my studio, just a six-foot grand piano. I do not program computer time to learn theory or history; if I can't teach it in lessons, then I have to reprioritize my teaching time and goals. We use flash cards and magnetic staff boards to learn note names; we use movement, balls, scarves, and percussion instruments to internalize pulse and rhythm. My students know that their time with me is all theirs-I don't answer the phone, I don't check e-mail. Based on that newspaper headline, this kind of live focused human contact may be rare in my students' lives. There is no single answer here. My lack of technology may be too conservative for some teachers; certainly technology is here to stay, and teachers who use it creatively prepare students in ways that I do not. My high expectations scare some students away, and teachers who teach shorter lessons to students with lower levels of commitment touch lives that I do not. But as artists, I wonder if it isn't our job to resist the urge to follow blindly in the way of the rest of society. Perhaps it is our job to consciously decide how far we are willing to go in allowing technology in our music, teaching, and work. Maybe it is our job to be counter-cultural and radical and to value real experiences of music making and human contact over virtual experiences-no matter how "educational" the packaging. Is it possible that the more traditional path might be the more original one? A couple of years ago, the church where my husband works built a new pipe organ. In an age where organists are a dying breed and organs are being replaced with rock bands, this act in itself was radical. One month for performance class I took my students to the church to play the new organ. They got a mini-lesson in how the instrument worked, complete with a backstage tour of the pipes. Afterwards, they played their prepared pieces on the organ and we experimented with using different stops, different manuals, adding simple pedals. Parents who usually rushed off during performance class lingered to watch and listen. Even the littlest four-year old student was hoisted up to the bench and allowed to try out the instrument. The next week the students' reviews of their experience were glowing. All this excitement, and yet the common assumption is that no one under the age of 50 is supposed to like pipe organs. "Can we have performance class every month on the organ?" seven year-old Jake asked. No, I responded. "Well," he bargained, "could we at least have our recital on the organ?" We are selling our students short if we insist that they need gimmicks and technological tricks to like music and the arts and to win them over. We are lowering the value of what we do if we assume that we must teach only short, high-energy lessons that further feed the attention deficient disorder in our society in order to keep students engaged. Children and teenagers are the most open-minded among us; it is we who have become cynical and closed-minded, thinking that we can't get them to practice unless we teach only Disney songs. It isn't our students who need the slick and well-packaged. They aren't looking for piano lessons to be more of what they already have too much of in their lives: screen time, technological gadgets, or recorded music. Instead, they want real live music, real live time with an interested adult, real live engagement with something and someone that responds to their attention and efforts. If I assume that I must look, act, and adopt the attitudes and behaviors of the rest of society in order to make music lessons palatable, I have sold us all out. I need this reminder as much as the next person. For every battle I have won in controlling the amount of technology in my life, there are plenty of times that I cave in. I am plenty guilty of tuning out in front of a brainless movie and letting the pile of books next to my bedside go unread. While I am good at turning off cell phones and ignoring e-mail, a recent vacation reminded me that it makes me nervous and anxious to be cut off for too long. I too often distract myself with checking and answering emails when I should be practicing. I know that I am a more centered and grounded teacher, musician, writer, friend and wife when I remove myself not only from technology's grasp, but from the demands and expectations of everyday society and follow the beat of my internal drum. Yes, Fred and Ethel were the wacky neighbors, but we can choose carefully when to let them in. Jake, for one, doesn't need the distractions. He is busy preparing for his next chance to play the organ. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=85 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=85 Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:39:07 -0600 Fall has blown into New Mexico. Quite literally. Last week the wind ripped and raged every night, which is nothing compared to what it did to our friends in Texas, but enough to cause one to take notice. With this wind has come every sign autumn is coming: the nights and mornings are positively cool; days are gorgeous beyond description; leaves are turning the brilliant yellows and golds that characterize this part of the world; the smell of roasted green chile is everywhere; and the state fair has been going strong. Today is the day that Matt works at the pie cafe at the state fair: an annual tradition in his church office, with all the proceeds going to Albuquerque charities. This means that, for the third year in a row, my student Kristy and I will get pie delivered during our evening piano lesson, now a yearly event we look forward to. "Next week is pie day!" we reminded each other last Monday night.With all these seasonal marks comes the normal push and pull of full schedules, long days, taxing routines. I work the next four weekends doing piano teacher kind of things: recitals for my students, competitions and master classes, performance classes and extra lessons. It's all good, as the kids would say, but I resent it a bit. I wonder what will happen to the almost habitual Friday morning hikes Lora and I have been doing. We are hoping to squeeze in a morning to go horseback riding; I would love to get to one of the art shows around town in the next month. When a colleague asks me to play another rehearsal, I nearly fall apart and weep at her feet. It should have been no big deal, but at that moment it was more than I could take on. I'm saying no almost protectively these days, without even consulting my calendar first. I know I am teaching more than I should be. I have several upcoming performances and the corresponding rehearsals to play. And then there are the next four weekends; my next two-day stretch with no obligations is a month away. I swallow hard even writing that sentence. Short of pulling out her hair, what's a girl to do? Actually, the hair point is no small one, as yesterday I realized getting out of the shower that I had forgot to wash my hair for the fourth day in a row. Yep, that's right. That illustration speaks volumes I'm afraid. But unless I lead you to conclude that all is spiraling out of control in my life, let me tell you about last Friday night. New Mexico has a program for young student composers called Hey, Mozart! The program was founded in New York some years ago by a composer named Alejandro Rutty, and three years ago it came to New Mexico. Students under the age of 12 are invited to submit original melodies (or fully worked-out compositions) and 16 winners are chosen. These compositions are then orchestrated by composers/arrangers from all over the country, recorded by the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, and then presented by them in a concert. Last Friday was the concert, and one of my students won for the second year in a row. Now, I would like to take lots of credit for Henry's work, but the truth is, he was totally on his own for this. I encourage compositions and improvisations in my studio, make creative thinking a priority, and will even offer advice and suggestions on kids' inspirations, but beyond that he got no help from me. Last year I went to the concert dragging my feet. It had been the end of a long week and I wanted to stay home and drink wine with my husband. But it ended up being one of the highlights of my year. The program is constructed so that each child plays their original composition on the instrument of their choice, and then the orchestra (the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, no less) plays the orchestrated version. Neither the students nor the orchestra players have heard the other until the concert. Watching both the students' amazement at their pieces coming to life in all the colors and timbres of the orchestra, and the jaded, cynical professional orchestra players looking at these young kids -- and perhaps remembering, "Oh yeah, that's why I got into music. I used to be like that." -- was nothing short of magical. This year was no exception. We had a cheering section for Henry, and his composition ("Turmoil") was played right before intermission. At the break I spoke to the founder of the program, who was in town for the event. "I thought that in five years I'd be rich on Hey, Mozart!" he told me, laughing. "I wish you were." I responded. "This is exactly how music education could and should be." And so diving into our fall semester, we are riding on big and little triumphs, and trying to keep some healthy perspective on it all. There are dawn-to-dusk workings days, and then there's pie. There are students and situations that make me want to pull out my hair, and then there are programs like Hey, Mozart! that motivate me to keep on. There are twenty yellow leaves on the tree across the street; the first green chile sauce of the season is simmering on the stove. It's all good. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=84 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=84 Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:46:03 -0600 At the risk that ten thousand stars will become a blog all about teaching piano -- when really I am just a pianist and teacher who writes a blog -- this is another post about with some theories on teaching. Specifically on teaching music theory, which makes for a bit of a word twister indeed. But recently, a reader recently wrote and asked that should the muse strike, she'd be interested in hearing what I might have to say about teaching music theory--how to make time for it, ideas for teaching it away from the piano bench, and so on. "Uh-oh," was my first thought. No one is going to like what I have to say about teaching theory, because I simply don't toe the party line on this one. Over the years, music theory has been given center stage in music lessons, or specifically in piano lessons (I do not see this same trend among our friends teaching other instruments.). Nowadays, every self-respecting piano method has a set of corresponding theory books. There are competitions out there for theory geeks, and students who keep up with theory throughout their piano lessons are told that they might be able to "skip" the first year of theory in college. Whoa baby. First of all, there is an assumption here that I don't buy. That assumption is that we are teaching as if college theory was even a goal in sight. as if our reality was that the majority of our students would someday be sitting in a college music theory course. This implies that teaching a lot of theory is a worthwhile goal because it knocks off hurdle kids will someday have to jump. This assumption is way off base in my book. This is right up there with another trend I see throughout our educational system, which is to speed up the pace that we teach everything. College-bound students now routinely take algebra and geometry in junior high, and sometimes have several years of calculus before they hit a college campus. I have a student who is a junior in high school in French VI. Yes, that would be French VI! I spend a lot of time bemoaning the failures of our educational system (My top complaint as of late is that no one teaching problem-solving skills or creative thinking---see the Aug/Sept Marking Time column all you American Music Teacher readers out there.), but I think that we have lost sight of the fact that there are plenty of successful adults that never took math beyond Algebra II, that might not have bothered with physics, that managed their pre-med requirements just fine starting their freshman year of college. Sometimes I look back at my high school years with a shudder; as a top student, I was pushed into a lot of math and science classes ("You'll want these on your transcript."), and steered away from what I really was interested in: drama, art, music, and writing. I hated every minute of math and science; in no alternative universe was I ever going to do anything that needed the square root of pi. I even took calculus in college to fulfill some general requirement; I got an "A"--that's not the point here. The point is that even if I would have decided to major in mathematics, I could have chosen to do so at that time--even without having taken the pre-requisite calculus in high school. Now I am not arguing that we should start systematically slowing down the accelerated pace we teaching the basics, nor am I interested in lowering the bar, but maybe we need to remember that we have a lot more time to teach some things than we act like we do. Which brings me back to the theory argument. Because I was taking math and science in high school on some career track of my guidance counsellors' making, and because my piano education up until college was rather non-traditional, I went to college without knowing what a V-chord was. (I can sense the piano teachers across America shuddering at this statement.) Now, I should qualify that I had been accompanying choirs and soloists of various kinds for years; I could sight-read anything; I gave a full-length senior recital right before high school graduation that included the Chopin double-thirds etude. In other words, I was no slouch. But not one of my teachers had bothered with theory. I could, and did, zip through all my scales--major and minor--in octaves, thirds, sixths, and tenths; if pressed, I probably could tell you what the key signature was of any piece I was playing, but that is about it. In other words, for an advanced pianist, I was a totally beginning theory student. It worked out fine. Now I think my story is unusual, and not necessarily to be imitated. However, theory was easy (especially after all that math). I whizzed through it all with no trouble, and, as a result, have taken a much more relaxed approach to theory in the private lessons of pre-college students, than the average teacher. Specifically, here is what I do: I teach theory in conjunction with technique. In the beginning, this consists of the technique of 5-finger major and minor positions; primary (I-IV-I-V-V7-I) chord progressions and inversions. Later this will be key signatures of major and minor scales and more advanced chord progressions and harmonies. We talk a lot from the very beginning about what "position" we might be playing our pieces in: G major, D minor, A major in the right hand, E minor in the left, and so on. We identify chord positions in our music: "that's a IV chord in D position," or "a I chord in B-flat," which may or may not be related to what key the music is actually in. I don't think it much matters to an 8-year old. If I could rewrite my own history, I wish I would have had naming information earlier so that I would have had a way to identify what was going on in my hands. But the now-emphasized skills that include lots of writing: part-writing, writing intervals, spelling out scales or chord progressions seems to me to be unnecessary for the average student taking piano lessons. Having some verbal identification of what they are doing is a good idea, and one that I wished I would have had earlier. Needing to be able to explain how a V chord functions seems less vital somehow. I also get some theory in edgewise through my ear-training work. I use the Suzuki Piano Book One for ear tunes, because almost every one of the pieces harmonizes with basic I, IV, V chords. This gives solid ear-training and harmonic work at a very early stage. I do a million things with these tunes that would make the more strict Suzuki teachers among us cringe. My students write out melodic rhythms of their Suzuki tunes, transpose them with different accompaniment figures (blocked chords, Alberti bass, waltz, broken chords), improvise variations on the melodies, and later make up two-hand accompaniments that they can use to accompany a soloist on another instrument. They have then gone on to accompany violin-playing friends, or flute-playing siblings with their accompaniments of "Lightly Row" or "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" in recitals or talent shows. All this is to say that my students don't, by any traditional definition, do written theory work. Occasionally, I will find a great worksheet that I will copy and use in my group performance classes (I have discovered that having a written activity at the beginning of class is a great way to start when kids are straggling in). Some beginning students who need more work with note-reading besides my exercises with flashcards are sometimes assigned to download a free note-reading game on-line (www.teoria.com/exercises/reading.htm is a good one) and use it daily for 5 minutes or something. Having said all of this, my students have proven (if I could brag a moment) to be really functional pianists in all sorts of settings. (In another post, I'd be happy to list all the problems my students have. Trust me, there's plenty.) Not only can they write their own boom-chick kind of accompaniment patterns in any key with simple harmonies, they have gone on to play in high school jazz bands and orchestras because they had working knowledge of chords and keys. I realize as I write this that this is theory in a nut-shell, but my students would be the first to tell you that they "don't have to do theory" with their piano teacher. They will tell you this as an example of a benefit of taking lessons from me. (Many of them might say this is the only good thing about taking lessons with me.) Like I said, I wouldn't wish my lack of theoretical knowledge before the age of 18 on any piano student. However, I still think music lessons should be about the art of making music, and that too much paper work or computer time distracts from this. I have also seen too many theory whizzes that couldn't translate this paper knowledge to the keyboard, making me wonder why we bothered in the first place. There is a real danger, and I'll be the first to admit it, that my students couldn't translate their piano-theory knowledge to paper, but I'll take that risk. When and if they major in music, they can get that fast enough. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=83 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=83 Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:38:02 -0600 For many students, learning an instrument requires skills, behaviors, and thought processes like no other activity. It requires intense listening, something not usually required in our noise-polluted world. It requires great concentration, a skill not often tested in a society of 22-second commercials and 30-minute sitcoms. It requires a great amount of discipline and engagement from the very first lesson, which can be very challenging in a world where we prize convenience, speed, and the technology that makes our lives easier. In an internet-fueled society, where everything is available at the touch of a button, we do not value highly skills that take months to acquire, or music that may take us a lifetime to learn. Because of this, it is crucial that we teachers work to engage our students' minds and concentrations as deeply as possible. We must demonstrate through our own actions and behaviors, that the skill of playing the piano demands not only the students' complete attention, but ours as well. We must show that, even though we may be teaching the 45th lesson of the week, we aren't phoning it in. For two years, young Auden wailed at me every Friday night at 5:30 when he arrived at his piano lesson, "But Miss Amy, I am sooooo tired." At that point I had already taught 40 lessons that week. "What number lesson are you?" I would ask him. "Number 41," he would reply, "just like the Mozart symphonies." "Exactly, kid. I am tired, too. We can do this together." I tell parents that the most important skill needed to be a pianist is not talent, but the ability to practice constructively and faithfully day after day. It is this skill that we must teach and teach and teach again. After a lifetime of practicing, I know that practicing can be tedious and boring, or it can be engaging and fun. If we can teach engaged practicing even with the very youngest child, from the very first lesson, then we can set students on a lifetime of active practicing and music making. There are a million ways this can be done. But technique work, which has often been considered to be brainless exercises and necessary but boring drudgery, can be a perfect place to teach active learning and thinking. Instead of assigning or practicing the same old thing week after week, we constantly should be changing things in some small or great fashion. Students may be working with five-finger positions for six months, but they should never play them the same way two weeks in a row. Even in the beginning stages, when students are struggling to learn the positions, the assignments can be altered. They can be played piano one week, forte the next. Still better, students can alternate playing every other position forte then piano to really shake things up and get their minds and ears working. My challenge to myself in my own practicing and my teaching is never to do the same thing two days or two lessons in a row. I try to practice differently every day, and no matter how badly the student may be playing, I never assign the same thing to be practiced the same mindless way. "Do this again," isn't in my repertoire of teaching phrases. Instead, I might assign five-finger patterns to be hands alone with left hand legato and forte and right hand piano and staccato, even if they have been playing them successfully hands together. Or I might rewrite the solfege pattern, but leave the musical concept of crescendos and decrescendos in place. My hope is that giving such deliberate technique assignments from week to week might produce deliberate and equally thought-provoking practicing of repertoire. All of the previous variations I have offered in Recipes for Technique were written to be played in parallel motion. The next ones introduce contrary motion in two ways. Contrary direction is often easier and more natural for students to play physically; however, negotiating the note patterns of all twelve positions makes contrary direction more challenging for the brain. Because of this, I always assign students to start by playing Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do in parallel motion to "set-up" their hands. Add different dynamics and articulations as you desire. 22. Play starting on thumbs in BH: 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 23. Play starting on finger 5 in BH: 5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=82 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=82 Sat, 30 Aug 2008 09:02:00 -0600 Recently I was standing in my kitchen studying a recipe for pizza dough when lightning struck the 70-foot elm tree outside our front courtyard. I had been meaning to tackle pizzas for months--going so far as to even write on my summer wish list "learn to make tarts and pizzas". But it has been an unusual summer. I'm sure this is a character flaw of some kind, but I tend to develop one great friend from each area or era of my life going all the way back to high school: There's Lisa, my "twiend," separated-at-birth, best friend from high school. When we were sixteen, we looked so much alike that people could confuse us. I look back on blurry photos taken from those years and can't tell who is who. Even now, 20 years later, we look more alike than not, passing easily as sisters if not twins. Julianne remains my closest friend from my three semesters at Trinity University. She lives outside Dallas and still manages to call several times a month, even while working full-time and raising three kids. Missy is my best friend from Mizzou. We studied with the same teacher, and both practiced too much. We should have been having more fun; we know that now. She teaches piano and raises three kids in Springfield, Mo. For my 30th birthday, Matt surprised me by flying Missy to Boston to visit. She arrived the day we moved into the smallest apartment imaginable on Beacon Hill. I will always owe her for the days she spent scrubbing and cleaning and unpacking with me in a horrible heat wave. Julia is a soul-mate that I discovered within weeks of moving to Albuquerque. She had grown up here and was back for a year of intensive study in flamenco dancing. We became fast friends and met weekly for coffee. She left the next summer, but I was in her wedding two years later. This summer she has been living in Santa Fe, while her husband coaches at SF Opera. Lora is my best friend from Boston, now living around the corner, much to my constant surprise and amazement. She is now my weekly hiking partner, and my permanent cat and plant sitter. She is always up for a drink, an emergency shopping trip, or a day in Santa Fe. Anne is my newest dear friend. She's a terrific pianist and a favorite musical partner. She teaches piano, and raises three brilliant boys--the oldest, Simon, is in my studio. She and I suffer from the same trait of always juggling ten things at once. Just yesterday, we had an hour to do a rehearsal of a four-hand piece we are performing in a couple of weeks, and it took 50 of those minutes to simply get up to date on one another's life. That left 10 minutes for practicing, which is not setting a good example for our students. Never have the stars aligned so that I had multiple best friends in the same place at the same time. But this summer, it happened. Lora had moved here; Julia was living nearby; Anne was five minutes away. Thinking tarts sounded easier than pizza, I started there and in June hosted a dinner. "Come to Girls' Night with Tarts" (I mean that EXACTLY like it sounds. Tarts, as in the pastry thing.) I invited Julia, Lora, and Anne. "You making tarts. Now THAT is something I can get behind," Anne responded enthusiastically. The tarts were pretty decent. I made a savory mushroom tart with a corn meal crust. A tomato, mozzarella, basil tart and a fruit tart for dessert. We drank Campari with soda in the garden, opened a bottle of wine with dinner, sauteed green beans in butter, nibbled on cheese and olives. It was a good night. If only life wasn't so busy. I thought the summer would be full of such evenings. But alas! My regular life of teaching and performing got in the way. Lora, Julia and I went to see "Sex and the City" one afternoon. There was the "ladies hike" with Anne and Lora, and a day puttering around Santa Fe with Julia. Various spontaneous drinks, dinners and walks in the neighborhood with Lora. I have hardly seen Anne, except for quick drop-offs for Simon's piano lessons. But back to the "learn to make tarts AND pizzas" goal, which I was determined to see through. Tarts weren't exactly easy, I discovered. Would pizzas be harder? After all, there was yeast involved in pizza crusts, something I generally try to avoid. But here I was standing in the kitchen trying to figure out the pizza crust recipe when the loudest thunder I have ever heard exploded around me. I wasn't immediately aware of what just happened. I glanced out the window to see dozens of birds taking flight. The air looked, well, struck, for lack of a better word. The cats streaked by me in panic. At that moment, I realized with alarm, my beloved husband was sitting in a bathtub full of water, perhaps having just been electrocuted. I called out, "Matt. MATT!" "Yeah," he answered casually, "that was loud." On closer inspection, it wasn't just loud. The lightning had struck our huge old tree down the middle. It had also (pierced? burned? what would be the correct verb here?) a hole right through the strawbale wall in our front courtyard. Smoke was pouring out of the hole in the wall; limbs, leaves and bits of wood were everywhere. Neighbors whom I had never met began spilling out of their houses to examine the damage. Cars slowed down, one man claiming he had seen it from down the street. A guy living across the street came to gawk. I have seen him around, said hello to him when we passed on the sidewalk. But as we were standing there staring at the wreckage, I realized that I had either been struck by lightning myself and was seeing double, or this young man has an identical twin standing next to him. I have been greeting one or the other of them for years now, not realizing there were two of them. It was a surreal moment. They say that lightning only strikes once, and probably never again will I have so many good friends living nearby. But given this fact, I wasn't about to let this year's birthday celebration go ignored. After the last performance of the summer, we invited a group of friends over for ice cream cake and champagne, new friends and old rubbing shoulders for a few hours. At the last minute, our dear friends from Texas, Mary and Glenn, came, which was more icing on the cake than any birthday girl deserves. Anne and Dan, the die-hards who are always ready to finish the last bottle of champagne after every party, stayed late enough to eat eggs with us at 1am, . The evening was one of those strange slices of life, friends gathered from different periods. It happens at weddings, when most of us can't appreciate it (In our case, Matt and I were too young to have collected the treasures of friends we have now). Lora said later that she could only imagine such a gathering of her friends at her funeral. What a gift to be around to enjoy it. Lightning only strikes once. And that pizza? Amazing. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=81 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=81 Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:48:57 -0600 Eddie is a high school student and quite a talented pianist. In the last year, he has evolved from someone who practiced because a parent made him, to someone who has decided he IS a pianist. It's a lovely shift indeed, making my job all the easier. He is also a great tennis player, and this summer he has been teaching tennis lessons to young children. He tells me about these lessons, comparing piano with tennis. Apparently, he has been incorporating piano ideas to these youngsters, telling them "You may not like to practice, but you should stick with it!" making me beam with pride that this good-looking kid has adopted this view of the world and his music lessons already. Just like my teaching teaches me at least as much as it does any of my students, I can see this happening with Eddie. He is suddenly more interested in what I say, how I talk about practicing, what the process of learning a new piece might be. "You know, the little kids I teach love me," he told me the other day, "but the 12 year-olds hate me because I make them work hard." "Yeah," I agreed, "I have the same problem with 12 year-olds. It's not about you; it's just being 12," I reassured him. Last week we were discussing his Beethoven sonata before he began to play. "Should I play it room temperature or performance tempo?" Eddie asked me, not catching his slip of the tongue. But I got it. I know exactly what he means by "room temperature" playing. Room temperature is the slower break-down practicing that we do. It is the place where I have long coached him to spend most of his practice time, instead of always racing through at top performance tempo. "You will need to practice performing this piece at some point, but not too much," I tell him frequently, "because you know things unravel with too much performance tempo playing." Room temperature. Performing frequently this summer has meant a careful balance of room temperature playing and performance tempos, the yin and yang of my musical life. Every day I catch myself saying something really smart to a student that I need to listen to, something that I would do well to apply to my own work. Every day teaching teaches me, if only I would take heed. Too many days, I practice the same way, falling into familiar and dangerous ruts of my own work and habits. I could use more time with room temperature playing, and less run-through performances. More breaking apart, and less putting together until absolutely necessarily. I know this. But saying some version of this to a student reminds me once again. It's humbling to imagine that there is still a gap between what I know and what I actually do, but there it is. My students mirror my own frantic patterns all too well. As I write this, I am quickly approaching the end of my summer semester. I have a blessed few weeks off before diving into the fall semester, the return of monthly performance classes, the many recitals and competitions that litter the next season. It's hard to believe that the summer months of teaching are nearly behind me and that I might need to start gearing up to the next round of learning. I have plenty of homework over this break: music to read through, newsletters and studio info to get out, a teaching schedule to put together and finalize for what seems to be the 500th time. (If one more parent calls me with the leading sentence, "Oh Amy! We just found out about David's chess club practices and now can't do Thursdays at 4pm." I will scream. The fact that I inexplicably got a perfect score on the logic potion of the GRE means that I should be able to easily handle all these variables. True, I can. I just don't want to.) It is also the time of the summer when I hit my own seasonal wall. I have read that we are best suited to the season that we are born in, but that couldn't be less true for me. I may have an August birthday, but every year about now I grow weary of the summer heat. I fight the cabin fever of too many weeks of staying inside avoiding the sun. I get restless and depressed and moody. I seem to be better suited to the season in which I was conceived--that delicious fall season between Halloween and Thanksgiving. It's then that my spirits really rise and soar, sending positive endorphins throughout my body. These days it's all I can do to keep from spinning off the planet and to continue acting normal and rational. Years and years of this cycle makes me know it well: I can sense it coming; I even know strategies for fighting the declining sprial. It helps to keep my routines of work and play in place. Too much time off right now is almost dangerous. It is good to get out early enough on a daily basis to walk or ride my bike, or to garden in the evenings so that I have some connection to the outdoors in these hot months. But above all, it helps to just "observe," as my yoga teacher would say. To think, "oh yeah, that's what's going on. I'm not losing my mind. I just have had enough of summer." It's strange to imagine that every year I start the summer season full of hope at all its possibilities, that summer this year could be full of lemonade and long afternoons in a hammock on the porch. I don't have a porch or a hammock, and when I get too hot I get a migraine. Instead I have a courtyard full of baking in the sun. Summer is not my best season. Yet here I am almost mourning the end of it. "There hasn't been any gelato all summer," I said to Matt. "That is a crime, considering our three-block proximity to gelato," he replied. The reality that next week I will start my last break before the fall semester startles me, even the first yellow leaves turning on the tree across the street seems a bit bittersweet at the moment. Yet, as conflicted as this seems I am ready for the room temperature of my life to shift again--settling into a cooler cozier place of sweaters, mugs of hot tea, our annual October weekend in Taos. But all this push and pull of emotions, the yin and yang of my struggles with time have me thinking: I may need more practicing at room temperature, but I need more living at performance tempos--the act of diving into every potential blissful summer day we have left and squeezing every last lemon needed for that elusive lemonade. "Should I play it at room temperature or performance tempo?" Eddie asked me. Let's try some performance tempos for a change, I tell myself, as find I peace with yet another hot afternoon. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=80 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=80 Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:49:53 -0600 One Saturday morning last month at the bright hour of 5:30am, my friends, Anne and Lora, and I gathered in my sunroom to mark the beginning of the first ever Ladies Hike. Living near the mountains and genuine wilderness areas has whetted my appetite for hiking, something I had previously abandoned after a childhood spent dragging baloney sandwiches and tepid water up Colorado mountains with my family. Matt and I win no records for our hiking attempts, but we manage to get out to the Sandias every few months for an hour or two. We are pretty pathetic though, as can be seen in our inability to actually stay on a trail. We don't intend to rough it, we just find ourselves wandering through the brush and running into cacti, having lost the path completely. I thought it would be good to go hiking with someone who knows the trails and the mountains, and could therefore introduce me to places I would never manage to locate on my own. I had been talking about getting a group of women together to go hiking, and one evening at a dinner party mentioned it to our friend Kent, who is a serious hiker. "Would you consider taking a group of ladies on a hike sometime?" I asked him. "Sure," he replied and so plans began and a date was set. I was certain I could collect a fun group of women, but when the day was finally decided and the start time of 6am determined, I was amazed at how many formally enthusiastic ladies were suddenly "very busy" at 6am. (And 6am was a compromise. Kent thinks all summer hikes should begin at dawn, avoiding heat and sun issues.) So in the end, it was only three decidedly girly women who embarked upon the Ladies Hike. Anne's first words that morning were, "Is the coffee on?" which I think says much about our lack of familiarity with that time of day. I was barely managing to get my shoes on; nothing as complicated as making coffee was happening. So caffeine-deprived and blurry-eyed, we drove to the trailhead to meet our fearless leader. Our first indication that this was not going to be quite the "stroll through nature" that we had imagined (picture ladies carrying parasols) was Kent getting out of his off-road vehicle a pair of what can only be described as serious hiking poles with grip-like things. Eyeing these suspiciously, I asked for clarification, "You said, 30 minutes in and 30 minutes out, right?" reminding him of our conversation earlier that week. After all, Anne was concerned about having enough time for pancakes, and Lora thought that if the hike time equalled the breakfast time to follow we were on the right track. "Well," Kent admitted, "30 minutes would be really pushing it, but we should be able to get up there in 50 minutes." Keep that in mind, he said 50 MINUTES. From there he took off on what can only be called a sprint through the foothills, the three of us panting to keep up with him. At one point, he turns around and graciously says, "Amy, why don't you lead so you can set the pace?" At which time he must have thought we had slowed down to a crawl, but Lora and Anne later assured me that I was still moving plenty fast enough. After about 45 minutes of this sprint, we reached the first of the many rock-climbing passages in the canyon: ....which looks more innocent than it really was. In truth, it constituted 4th and 5th class moves. (See "Terminology" footnote for definitions of all technical hiking-related terms.) Lora began swearing in her charming colorful vocabulary, all of us abandoned any hope of pancakes in the next century. If we made it out alive we'd be doing good, we thought, as we started making bargains with the devil. At this point, we have been hiking for 50 minutes. (See above: "50 minutes should do it.") For the next two hours, the madness continued as three girly women tried to "scramble," "chimney," and "parallel bar" over rocks and up cliffs in an attempt to keep up with Kent. By this time I am convinced, this man is not a human being after all, but a mountain goat. "At what point this week," I said to him huffing and puffing, "did you think that this would be the ideal 'ladies' hike?" He smiled, motivated by the thought that he would never have to drag women up a mountain again. Where were we headed anyway? To this point..... Which looks like nothing, but constituted a 1300 foot gain in 1.75 miles, which is roughly one foot in elevation for every 2 feet forward. In other words, nothing to be scoffed at. Kent called this the "Forbidden City" hike, which impressed me, until I realized that he made up the name. In fact, he made up the whole damn hike. Nowhere in one of those lovely guides to hiking in the Sandias were you going to find this hike. Nor would you be able to replicate it on your own. For although I had visions of learning new beautiful trails via Kent and his years of expertise, it has, in fact, been years since he actually has done a real trail as would be published in a Sandia Hiking Guide. Two+ hours later, we made it to the top. During the last scramble across the rocks, Lora dropped her prescription sunglasses, leading her to express herself in more colorful language, and Kent, our intrepid leader, to chimney down in the crevices to rescue them. We three ladies were sunning ourselves on the pinnacle, taking in the view: ....when Lora turned around, now wearing the prescription sunglasses that Kent has retrieved, and said, "There's a snake." Immediately behind us, not 6 inches away from Anne's butt, was a rattlesnake. (From this point forward referred to as a "rattler.") Kent: "Move!" At this point, I would love to show you a picture of the rattler, but I didn't stop long enough to take one. You'll have to do with the "I survived a rattler" (not to mention Kent's "Ladies Hike") photo: From this moment on, having braved hanging out on a rock in the sun with a rattler, nothing could faze us. We happily traversed down the mountain chatting merrily of kitchen renovations and what food might be eaten in such a kitchen, and what food had been eaten in other kitchens in the last month, as well as what was planned to be eaten at breakfast that day and in the next month, all to Kent's amusement. We made no record speed, mind you, but considering the climb up, this "walk back" to the car flew by, allowing us to get back to the parking lot in a record slow finish time of 3 and a half hours. Yes, that would be 3 and a half hours. (See "30 minutes in, 30 minutes out"). So with the first ever ladies hike behind us, we are ready to plan the next one (sans rattlers). Who's in? Later, over pancakes and scramblers (not to be confused with rattlers), we agreed that it had been an amazing morning (how quickly you forget the pain. Is this like childbirth?). Even though Anne and Lora admitted, "Amy, we thought we were going to die," given enough recovery time, we just might do it again. After all, being the opposite of Outward Bound types, none of us had ever had an experience like this before. The next day talking over the hike with Kent's wife Jacque, she sympathized, "Amy, I thought you knew what you were getting into." Uh, no. (See the "30 minutes in, 30 minutes out" or "50 minutes should do it" quotes as to my state of mind and mental--not to mention physical--preparation.) I spent the rest of the day on the couch. Jacque said Kent was worn out too. Apparently he reported to her that it was tough to go at that "slow pace." Whatever. "Amy, we thought we were going to die," is a better, more accurate description of this experience. *For those brave enough to join the next Ladies Hike, here's some technical hiking terminology you should know: PUTTING UP A ROUTE: This means that you are not actually following an actual trail from the Sandia Hiking Guide. Instead, you are forging your own path through the wilderness. (Think "Road Less Traveled"). While Kent acted like he knew where he was going, in all likelihood we were actually "putting up a route." WATER-POLISHED ROCKS: rocks so smooth that we will certainly slide right off of them onto our butts. SCRAMBLING, CHIMNEYING, PARALLEL BARRING: These terms pertain to the actual climbing of rock cliffs. Lora, in particular, was quite gifted at chimneying, which involves going up on your butt. Several times, Kent recommended that Anne "parallel bar" between two big rocks, which given her long legs was the best option. My technique involved a lot of falling back on yoga-trained flexibility and putting myself in the zen place of "maybe if I imagine I am not doing this, it will go away." 3RD, 4TH, AND 5TH CLASS MOVES: Also, rock climbing terms, 5th class being the most difficult moves. Make no mistake about it, we did 5th class moves. TRAVERSE: This is what you do to come back down the mountain post rattler. FORBIDDEN CITY, TOILET BOWL CANYON, HAPPY FACE CANYON, LITTLE MAN TRAIL: These are all made-up names and routes forged by Kent and his buddies. None of these constitute a "ladies" hike. PINNACLE: highest point in the rock climb, where rattlers hide out. (A million thanks to Kent for braving the first ever ladies hike and for putting up with our tortoise-like pace, not to mention Lora's language. And for finding Lora's sunglasses, which contributed to Lora sighting the rattler. We're ready to take on your hikes again. Next time we'll make t-shirts to mark the achievement.) http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=78 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=78 Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:45:43 -0600 Recently I was talking to a friend who is also a piano teacher. We were talking about the need to have students spell five-finger positions, scales and chords, and how amazing it is that this is often an unexpected challenge. "Of course," I said at one point, "in the very beginning I wouldn't have them spell anything, because they don't really know the correct spelling for many positions since they only know flat names, no sharps." Anne was shocked, "What do you mean they don't know sharps? What about D major position?" OK. I must confess that in the beginning weeks of piano lessons I only teach the white note names and even then use my made-up piano town: This is a piano town. There are big houses with three windows and dog houses. The big houses have a front door and a back door. Who do you think lives in the dog house? A dog!! You got it. But this is a very strange town because the dog house is guarded by a cat and an elephant. Inevitable giggling at this point. And guess who lives in the big house? Miss Amy who always comes in the back door, and her cat Godiva who always sits in the front window. This is silly, yes, but it works. The kids know each note specifically, instead of counting up from middle C. (If I could have a dollar for every time I have seen a transfer student in their second or third level method book, who, when asked what a specific note is on the piano counts up from middle C, I could stop teaching.) But there is no room in the piano town brain of a beginning student for sharps and flats, so I don't confuse the issue. When a student learns D major position, it is just "D position with a black note in the middle." The black note doesn't have a name, and little kids are fine with that. (Of course, older students can handle all the naming immediately, as can a student of any age curious enough to ask, "So what do you call the black notes?" But if they don't ask, I don't tell.) When it is time to learn the black positions, we call them flats: D-flat, A-flat, etc. and don't bother with sharps just yet. After all, there is so much to learn in the first few months that I feel successful if students are nailing other more basic info: right and left hands, finger numbers, white key names, quarter and half-notes, treble and bass clefs. So the dark secret is out. In spite of my work in teaching students to spell positions (and then later scales and chords), we don't do this in the beginning. Besides, students will be happy to make up their own names. Just last week when I asked Luke to play his assigned pattern in B-flat, he looks at me and says, "B-flat is the devil position." I laughed. I don't love B-flat either. Devil positions or not, here are a few more early patterns to explore: 17. Do Re Mi Fa Sol-- Do Mi Sol Do Mi Sol Sol Fa Mi Re Do 18. Do Re Mi Fa Sol-- Do Mi Sol Mi Do-- Sol Fa Mi Re Do 19. Do Re Mi Fa Sol-- Sol Mi Do Mi Sol-- Sol Fa Mi Re Do 20. Do Re Mi Fa Sol-- Sol Mi Do Sol Mi Do Sol Fa Mi Re Do 21. Do Mi Sol (rest) Do Mi Sol (rest) Do Mi Sol Fa Mi Re Do Mi Sol (rest) Do Mi Sol (rest) Do-- I like mixing and matching legato and staccato articulations throughout all of these patterns to shake things up a bit. Various rhythms work here (or no rhythms at all--I know some of you cringe at that, but sometimes our practicing can be without rhythm and be very effective at securing technical problems. Sometimes B-flat position needs some work negotiating the black and white geography of notes before we add the challenge of a jaunty rhythm to the equation. Just as Luke.). I have suggested a rhythm for number 21 that I like--think of all the syllables as being eighth notes, with the rests being the fourth eighth of each grouping. This does create an asymetrical meter, but that's OK, and gives it a nice kick. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=77 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=77 Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:03:34 -0600 To know my husband is to know that he has, shall we say, hair issues. These aren't the normal hair-loss issues of a man rapidly approaching middle age. No, Matt's problem is that he has a lot of wild, unruly hair, and absolutely no hair management skills. His hair tools consist of a comb, which dates back to the 1980's. One wonders if it wasn't once lodged in the back pocket of a pair of skin-tight Jordache jeans, which isn't a particularly sexy image in 2008. The other product is a tube of dollar hair gel, which I bought him out of desperation. "This costs a dollar. Couldn't you do better?" Matt questioned me. "Don't I deserve the expensive stuff if I am going to start using product?" Not in my opinion. He needed to first prove his dedication to product before I was spending any real money on hair gel. Admittedly, it doesn't help that he is married to a woman for whom hair doesn't rank very high in importance. I have relatively thick, wavy hair that has still managed to stay mostly blond. I wash it, blow-dry it, and throw it up in a curlers for a few minutes every morning. Otherwise I ignore it. I don't want to be bothered with Matt's hair. But other people are, and in huge numbers. His kids in the youth choir comment about it. His older female volunteers nag him about it. He was even once stopped on the street and asked to be a hair model for a salon. His hair is a running joke at church and among all his friends. Recently, he went golfing with a couple of high school kids from church. "Will you bring clubs for me?" he asked Katie, having never been golfing before. "I'll bring the clubs. You bring your hair," she responded. The issue is that he doesn't get regular haircuts, letting it grow out to the point of becoming unwieldy. He talks a great deal about getting a haircut, but then many, many weeks go by before he can bring himself to actually make an appointment. For a while he had a regular hairdresser whom he liked, who cut hair in a trendy neighborhood salon that served wine and beer. He was more inspired to get a haircut then, but then Rachel moved to Taos. After that he would wait until there was practically op-ed pieces in the newspaper about his hair, and then would frantically drive around until he found an open barbershop. His opening line was, "I'm here for a haircut. It has been a long time since my last haircut," which echos of his earlier Catholic days in the confessional. Needless to say, the haircuts were never good, looking much like he was about ready to ship out to boot camp. This scene happened one year at Easter, Matt becoming completely disheveled and in desperate need of a haircut, but then unable to find somewhere to get his hair cut on Good Friday. This led our friend Regina into calling the late stages of Matt's hair growth his "Easter hair." Just recently, Matt had a big performance, no time for a haircut, and had to once again go on stage with "Easter hair." Lora commented afterwards, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, the music was amazing, but let's talk about Matt's hair. Your husband has a great head of hair." Sure, if you like the look of Kramer on Seinfeld. At some point recently I finally accepted the hair responsibilities in the relationship and sent Matt to Leonardo, my hair guy, with a note. The note read, Dear Leonardo, This is my husband, who desperately needs a haircut. He has great hair, but is unable to talk coherently to hair stylists. Hence the note. We like it long on top (I am a fan of his curls), but shorter and neater on sides and back. He does have the unfortunate habit of running his fingers through it during rehearsals, which does nothing to contribute to the style, but does add to the mad artist look he's got going. Help! Lately, Leonardo has been doing a great job, and consults me seriously as to my opinions about Matt's most recent haircut every time I see him. Matt still doesn't get regular enough haircuts though, which forced me to instruct him last time to "take your calendar and do not leave without making another appointment in three weeks." I almost called Leonardo with the same instructions, but refrained, not wanting to win the award for the most controlling wife in New Mexico. Last week Matt left on a youth choir trip to San Antonio (he says his mission in life is to introduce these desert kids to humidity, taking them first to Washington DC, then two years ago to New Orleans, and this year to Texas.). The first stop on the trip was a church in Granbury, Texas, where Matt served as the music director years ago. The congregation was thrilled to see him and enjoyed the kids' production of Godspell. One former member of his choir was especially enthusiastic. Bill, a successful businessman, was always very generous to us, and as he left the show he handed Matt an envelope that Matt assumed was a donation to the choir. Later he opened it. It was a personal check made out to Matt for a hundred dollars. The memo line read: "Haircut." http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=76 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=76 Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:06:29 -0600 Last week I went to get a pedicure. It was the middle of a work day, and very quiet in the shop. There was a young girl of maybe ten or eleven years hanging out in one of the chairs with the foot baths, who clearly belonged to one of the people who worked there. A woman gestured me into a chair next to the girl and began filling the tub with water. I put down my bags and climbed up. Just as I was getting settled in to read a magazine, the girl turned to me and said, "What's your name?" "Amy." I responded. "What's yours?" "Jennifer." "Hi, Jennifer." "Where do you work?" "I work at home." Without missing a beat: "You teach from home?" I'm impressed that she might guess this. "Yeah." "That's cool. You mean, you teach math and science at your house?" "No. Piano." "Oh." Long pause. "Piano is hard, isn't it?" I nodded. "It can be." "I'd like to play the piano." Another long pause. I am about to return to my magazine when.... "Do you have any kids?" "No." "How about dogs or cats or fish?" "I have two cats." "Oh, what are their names?" "Yun-Sun and Godiva." "What do they look like?" "One is black and white...." "Like an oreo," Jennifer inserted. "You could have named her 'Oreo'." "True," I agreed. "What does the other one look like?" "She's chocolate-colored. You know, like Godiva chocolates." It is clear she has no idea what Godiva chocolates are. She is quiet, thinking hard. "Oh. You could have named her 'Reece's' or 'Hershey's' or 'Twix'." This girl has some good ideas, I must say. I was resuming my reading, when out of the blue.... "If you could be in a time machine and could go back and do any other job, what would you do?" I was taken aback by this question. Stalling for time like any good Miss America contestant, I said, "Wow. Interesting question." "Not interesting, good question," she corrected me. "Ok. Good question." Still stalling, I asked, "What would you do?" "I would be a doctor." "That's good. You could be a doctor, you know," I told her encouragingly. "I know. Now what would you be?" She clearly was not going to let me off the hook. "Hmmm....a writer?" I said. (When I relayed this conversation later to a friend she said, "That answer was cheap, Amy. You are a writer." Yes, but Jennifer doesn't know that.) Long pause. "What's that?" "You know, someone who writes books." "Oh. You could still do that, you know. There is still time. You could go back to school or something." I was floored by this response. There is still time, this child has just encouraged me. There is still time. Never have I needed this piece of wisdom thrown in my direction more than now. It may be only the first of July, but already I feel the summer racing out of my reach. I am teaching a ton, playing a ton, and every day seems to hold more obligations and responsibilities than hours. Recently, Matt and I were discussing the possibility of having some friends over for dinner. But there was a trip home to the midwest for a week, then on the heels of that Matt left for 10 days with his youth choir to Texas. "Stick a fork in it, June's done." Matt said. Something panics within me at this statement. Summer can't be done yet. There are too many things I planned to do: clean out the garage, finally organize my teaching files, read through a tall stack of music, learn the Chopin G Minor Ballade. At the very least, I was hoping for one empty afternoon to sit in an Adirondack chair, drink lemonade and watch the lavender blow in the breeze. "What does 'having a summer' really mean to you?" I asked Matt. "What do you need to feel like you really 'had' summer?" "I don't know," Matt admitted. "I haven't known what I wanted out of summer since I was a kid." I think I know what I want: time to play aimlessly with no end goal in sight. Which sits in opposition to the lists that I scratch out in my calendar and journals: learn to make tarts and pizzas, dig up two new borders around my flagstone walks, read poetry, write letters. It is this conflict between all I want to do and the desire to have plenty of time to do nothing that haunts every summer. Too many years, I just throw in the towel, resign myself to my normal ambitious tendencies of over-achieving, and bask in all I manage to accomplish. Not the spirit of summer at all, I'm afraid. There is still time. I will need a regular reminder of this gentle thought between now and the unofficial end of summer somewhere around the middle of August when school begins around here. Luckily, I know where to find Jennifer. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=74 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=74 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:09:14 -0600 16. Do--Sol-- Fa Mi Re Do--Sol-- Fa Mi Re Do This pattern has been in hundreds of technique books in some form or fashion, but it is also the one that Dylan "made up" last week and brought in to his lesson. His version has a jaunty rhythm of quarter notes (Do-Sol) then triplets (Fa Mi Re...). He was quite proud of his creation, having only taken lessons for a few months, and even more proud when I asked to "borrow it," for which he gladly gave his permission. Perhaps this is where the whole thing gets sticky, for while it is true that I don't use a traditional technique book or method, it is also the case that I can't claim to have really made up any of these patterns. They have existed forever in technique books and in repertoire, and are so much a part of our technique vocabulary that I can come up with any number of these without blinking. If you experiment with five-finger positions for just a few weeks with students, using them systematically and intentionally as part of their warm-up exercises, then you'll see what I mean; literally dozens of ideas will pour out of your hands. It is this deliberate use of five-finger positions with beginning students as part of every practice session, and as part of every lesson, that makes the difference. It would be easy to assume that you could rely on the default knowledge students gain of five-finger positions by working through the many popular method books that use these, but that isn't enough. Most books stay in only a few positions for book after book. Students learn C position, but B-flat? No way. Although I feel like I have mastered the art of teaching and reinforcing these positions in a million different ways, I can be faulted for assuming that students then know them away from the piano. They don't, necessarily, which puzzles me every time I am faced with little Sally who can't spell a position without first going to the piano and nervously fingering it. Nor could she "color" the position on a favorite worksheet I use, which asks students to indicate on a drawing of a piano keyboard, what a F major or C# minor five-finger position would be. This throws them completely for a loss more often than not, which does remind me that playing something is one form of knowing it, but not the only one for sure. Of course, if I think this through, this is no different then the student who can play a piece by memory in a tactile sense, but whose brain knows no real information about the piece in a concrete way: doesn't know the starting pitches, doesn't know the structure, what key it might be in, can't play the piece starting in different sections or with hands alone. I know that this step of memory work has to be intentionally and concretely addressed: so does understanding five-finger positions aside from playing them. And so, today I leave you with Dylan's pattern and the thought that after all this emphasis on the benefits in terms of coordination and muscle training and musicality, there might just be some need to work these patterns away from the piano as well. Spell them. Ask questions about the number of black and white notes or which positions are most similar or most opposite. Sneak some theory work into the technique knowledge (my favorite way to address theory!). Find out what your students might actually know or not know about the positions they are mastering and playing every day. The answers may surprise you. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=73 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=73 Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:26:14 -0600 We have had the windiest spring ever. Day after day, the gusts knock us senseless, rendering gardening and bicycling impossible. The season itself seems confused, the normal schedule of blooms following no particular pattern this year. Some flowers were super early, others very late. The forsythia bloomed before Valentine's Day, but the poppies (usually a spring break fiesta) only started appearing recently. This has been both wonderful and disconcerting at the same time. On one hand, having the season unfold in slow motion has allowed me to really enjoy every stage. On the other hand, I find myself wondering what is going on, missing the predictable arrival of poppies in March, tulips in April, roses in May. One week the temperature shot up giving us days of 80 degrees, then unexpectedly the temperature plummeted and the next morning we woke up to snow on the mountains. The next week the same thing happened: we had record high in the mid-90's; but then it rained and overnight the mountain peaks had a new fresh layer of white. Unbelievable. Maybe every year is unpredictable and I just haven't noticed before. Or maybe it is just another sign of the rootedness I am beginning to feel here, that I might think I know how a season should unfold in this landscape. I am having an unexpected love affair with New Mexico at the moment, brought on, I imagine, by seeing this state through a newcomer's eyes. With my friend Lora moving around the corner, I find myself introducing to her (and to myself with delicious freshness) the wonders of living here. She calls with questions about hardware stores and restaurants, dry-cleaners and nurseries, and I discover in answering her that I know this city well--my affection for neighborhoods and businesses and people coming through. This summer we pass the five-year anniversary of living here--a monumental landmark for us. Already I see the difference: in various ways I have loved every place we lived, but moving every few years meant that most of my energy was spent on the act of creation: creating a life, creating a reputation, building a studio, establishing rewarding playing gigs. While a certain amount of recreating and tweaking will always be necessary, my efforts these days are different. For the first time, I have the pleasure of teaching students for the long haul--seeing their progress over many years and watching them develop into fine young musicians, versus starting a group of enthusiastic youngsters and then handing them to another teacher just when they might take off . I now have musical partners with whom I have played multiple concerts and recitals, our collaborations reaching new depths and comfort. At home, I am beginning to sense the danger of not moving, for it forces me to clean out every drawer and closet. Already the basement is turning into a default "Oh, just put that downstairs," black hole. Yet at the same time, the house and garden are assuming a gentle grace of living that reflects our lives: the Adirondack chairs in the backyard becoming part of our summer evening landscapes, the canisters of dried beans, nuts and fruits living on the kitchen windowsill, the herbs in the courtyard an easy step away when cooking. Even events have found a certain ease and routine: the night Matt takes his youth choir to the Santa Fe Opera every summer, the dinner we hold for the high school seniors in the choir every fall, the twice-yearly studio recitals, the annual get-away to Taos in October, the big St. Cecelia party the Friday night before Thanksgiving. Since when were these things we "always" did, I wonder? And yet here we are, expecting these occasions every year. I look forward to the beginning of the downtown farmers market every June, wait with anticipation for the first whiff of roasting green chile every August, count the days until we can do our trip to Santa Fe to take in the holiday decor every December. As I write this, I am back to teaching, my between-semesters break before the summer session behind me. It seems I have "always" had this break, although really this is a custom of the past few years, born out of necessity due to travel schedules. But my families now expect this break, and this year especially I am happy to oblige. We all needed a rest before buckling down to the business of summer lessons and schedules. For my part, I needed time to get a few pleasurable summer pursuits in place. The last two weeks I dipped into a pile of guilt-free, no-work reading for the first time. I put on five coats of bright weatherproof yellow paint on an outdoor table and giddily spray-painted five folding-chairs loud happy colors. I put in the last of the season's plants and got a basil plant going outside my sun-room door. I re-potted the kitchen cacti and set outside for the summer. I planted a gorgeous yellow climbing rose ("Golden Showers") outside the French doors into my courtyard, and dug up some baby agave cacti pups that had sprouted up around their mothers. These I potted in big ceramic pots to set in the courtyard, hoping to convince them to fill out their new homes. As always after a long semester, the first thing my body did was rebel and sleep. Ten-hour nights weren't long enough, I still found myself dozing on the couch in the afternoon, my system crashing after months of being "on." Suddenly, my highly efficient routines went out the window; it took me all day to practice a few hours. My e-mails went unanswered; I forgot to return phone calls. One weekend I hardly dressed, puttering around the house all day in my pajamas. Wearing sunglasses and sloppy gardening clothes, I went to Frontier to buy tortillas incognito, hiding behind my grubbiness, my blissfulness at not having to obey regular rituals of bathing or doing my hair. This has been the first time in recent history that a break from working didn't involve traveling. It couldn't this time, as both Matt and I had performances over the weekend, but it was still a pleasant shock to realize how much this time felt like a vacation nonetheless. I spent a morning puttering around Old Town looking for something to wear for my performance with the symphony. It had been years--literally--since I had made time to go to Old Town, real life and demanding schedules taking precedence. I had forgotten how charming it is--the old adobe buildings and winding courtyards with their tiny low-ceiling shops. It may be a ten-minute bus ride away, but it feels like a whole new city to explore: even the vegetation is different than my neighborhood: big old cottonwoods cover the square, the ruffled hollyhocks were already blooming--growing up through every crack in the bricks and patios. One Saturday morning, Matt woke me up before six to go hiking. We were on the east side of the mountains by 6:45am and climbed for an hour without seeing a soul. Another night Matt and I went to Betty's Bath and Spa in the North Valley--another part of the city I rarely visit-- to spend an hour in a private hot tub, and then afterwards dine at Los Mananitas, a New Mexican restaurant nearby. On this particular night, the place was empty, the old building crumbling around us, a cat sleeping in a chair nearby as we feasted on posole and fajitas. The place is said to be haunted--I'm buying it, both charmed and spooked by its eeriness. "We could be in Taos," I said to Matt. "It has that old runned-down feel." Later, making our way back to our neighborhood, we were astonished to notice that we were only 15 minutes from home. It felt like another country, which only goes to remind us that we don't have to go far around here to have an adventure. I need more adventures like that--more small escapes that remind me anew why I might just be in love with this city and this landscape.  The longer I live here, the more I need to infuse my daily routines with newness and novelty if I am going to be able to balance the boredom of familiar routines with the security of deep roots.  As it turns out, the last two weeks proved to be the best vacation ever, juggling a few hours work with a lot of play every day.  It was also the easiest vacation to recover from--because we continued to work throughout, it took less effort to overcome the inertia of laziness to pick up our normal routines again. Actually there has been nothing normal about the last week.  On Friday, I picked up my mother at the airport.  Friday night I was one of the pianists for the Saint-Saëns Carnival of the Animals with the New Mexico Symphony.  The performance was at the zoo, their final concert of the season.  Some 3,400 people were in the audience, which is stunning considering I have lived in towns smaller than that.  On Sunday afternoon Matt's choir, joined by choirs directed by our friends Brad Ellingboe and Sid Davis, performed the choral work The Armed Man by Karl Jenkins with orchestra.  The work is a Mass for Peace with texts from the traditional Mass interspersed by poetry about war.  It is a powerful piece, and the two performances Sunday were stunning.  But needless to say, all this made for a stressful, highly social weekend (as rehearsals were interspersed with dinner parties and evenings out).  Monday morning I participated in a Dalcroze workshop with Dr. Julia Black from Seattle.  Tuesday night I hosted a dinner party for Julia and friends--drinks in the backyard, dinner in the courtyard under the stars.  All week I skipped and pranced ("How are the eighth-notes going in your feet?" Matt loves to ask.), and then rushed home to several hours of teaching.  Last night I saw my last lesson end at nine.  I would hardly recognize normal life if it came and hit me in the face. As fun as it all has been, I'm ready to get back to my boring little existence.  Even the task of putting laundry out on the line sounds satisfying at the moment, ready as I am to dive into the essence of summering.  There's a watermelon in the fridge and a friend coming over tonight for drinks.  "Champagne and hors d'oeuvres in the garden, what could be better?"  another friend wrote after an evening together recently.  She's right.  And we have a whole summer--a whole summer--ahead of us. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=72 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=72 Sat, 07 Jun 2008 15:04:17 -0600 Last month in my youngest performance class which consists of kindergarten through third graders, we were reviewing performance etiquette.  After many, many classes, my students are good at this, and they had plenty of suggestions:  "You have to smile before you bow."   "Put your hands in your lap between your songs."  "The audience has to sit politely  and not talk."  "Clap when the music finish."  "Don't wiggle."  Then Audrey, my tiniest, youngest student raises her hand.  "Silence all cell phones."  Often I find myself out at dusk watering, watching for the first stars to appear.  "Choose something like a star," Robert Frost wrote.  I'm needing some inspiration these days, worn out once again after months of recital and contest preparation.  I need to be reminded why I do this, why I love it, why I just might be called to this life.  "So when at times the mob is swayed/ To carry praise or blame to far/We may choose something like a star/To stay our minds on and be staid."  In my little corner of the universe, I hang my stars, Frost's words scrolling through my brain.  Choose something like a star....like a star....like a star..... http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=71 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=71 Mon, 19 May 2008 10:03:33 -0600 These days I am writing a regular column for American Music Teacher, a journal that I have regularly contributed to and to which I also serve on the editorial committee. My writing schedule forces me to work quite far ahead--my deadline for columns is several months ahead of the day it arrives in the local music teacher's mailbox. This means that sometimes when colleagues or strangers write or call to talk to me about something I have written, it may take me a moment to remember which column they might be referring to. For at any given moment, there is the column out there in the most current journal, there are the four or five I might be working on at any time, there is the latest one I have just proofed for the upcoming journal, and there is the one I am finishing up for the next deadline. Having said all of that, recently I ran across this quote that pertains quite specifically to the column that is in the April/May issue of AMT about learning to work without being overly attached to the daily results. While it is written from the religious/spiritual view, it is yet another way of looking at the same issue we all struggle with: how to devote one's life to the work and not to the outcome, whatever our calling may be. **** To keep one's eye on results is to detract markedly from the business at hand. This is to be diverted from the task itself. It is to be only partially available to demands at hand. Very often it causes one to betray one's own inner sense of values because to hold fast to the integrity of the act may create the kind of displeasure which in the end will affect the results. However, if the results are left free to form themselves in terms of the quality and character of the act, then all of one's resources can be put at the disposal of the act itself. There are many forces over which the individual can exercise no control whatsoever. A man plants a seed in the ground and the seed sprouts and grows. The weather, the winds, the elements, cannot be controlled by the farmer. The result is never a sure thing. So what does the farmer do? He plants. Always he plants. Again and again he works at it--the ultimate confidence and assurance that even though his seed does not grow to fruition, seeds do grow and they do come to fruition. The task of men who work for the Kingdom of God, is to Work for the Kingdom of God. The result beyond this demand is not in their hands. He who keeps his eyes on results cannot give himself wholeheartedly to his task, however simple or complex that task may be. --From The Inward Journey by Howard Thurman http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=70 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=70 Tue, 06 May 2008 12:12:53 -0600 I have been tackling salad dressings lately, long on that hypothetical to-do list. I eat a lot of salad--green leafy things worm their way onto my plate nearly every day. In fact, last week I chipped off my front tooth on a fork while eating a salad. This was the third time I have done this, as I explained to the dentist when I went to have my tooth repaired once again. "Lettuce can be the hardest thing to eat," she sympathized kindly. For a while around here, we had a default vinaigrette we made, which I loved but grew tired of. In recent months, I have been lazy and have enjoyed the ease and convenience of dumping copious amounts of store-bought dressing on my salads, but I wonder about this habit when reading the long list of unpronounceable ingredients in many of them. This can't be particularly healthy, and may even be undermining any positive benefits salads would otherwise be giving me. So last week I decided to try making my own salad dressings on a daily basis. I approach this as I attack most things: I learn the general concepts behind the task and then I improvise from there. This approach makes my husband and best friend shudder, both of whom have never seen a recipe they didn't love and follow precisely. Substitute? Never. I have never not substituted, leading to all kinds of disasters in the kitchen. Salad dressings, I read, are easy. They are just oil and vinegar, and then whatever else you want. I love everything about this, yesterday experimenting madly with a salad dressing of orange juice, lemon juice, crushed red peppers, thyme and olive oil. This is exactly how I view teaching in general and piano technique teaching in particular. Give me the general concept and let me fly. I suppose it is this nonchalance about any strict pedagogical theory that makes me puzzled when I learn other teachers don't function like this, instead adhering strictly to a prescribed set of method books: lesson, performance, theory, technique. Teaching strictly out of method books may be the equivalent of succumbing to the convenience of store-bought salad dressing--it is easy, requires no thinking, and doesn't demand anything of me. In the end, not so good for any of us. I am perplexed by the idea that there is anything radical about creating and improvising technique exercises every week. "Use those resources to get some general ideas and then run with them!" I want to scream to reluctant teachers. To me the end goal is obvious: we want students who are at ease playing in any key on the piano, we want students with a wide range of sounds and touches, we want students playing with such comfort and familiarity that they don't have to think about notes, but can concentrate on tone and character, nuance and artistry. To this end, there are a million and one paths. Of course, I will undoubtedly resort to store-bought salad dressings in moments of panic and extreme busyness, just as I regularly browse technique books for ideas I can use and improvise upon. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, but can be a lovely combination of a little of this, a bit of that. Here are a few more early five-finger positions to play with: 11. Do Mi Do Mi Re Fa Re Fa Mi Sol Mi Sol Sol Mi Sol Mi Fa Re Fa Re Mi Do Mi Do 12. Do Re Mi Fa Sol--legato Sol Fa Me Re Do--staccato 13. Do Re Mi Fa Sol--staccato Sol Fa Mi Re Do--legato 14. Do Re Mi Fa Sol--forte Sol Fa Mi Re Do--piano 15. Do Re Mi Fa Sol--piano Sol Fa Mi Re Do--forte Obviously, numbers 12-15 are not challenging patterns, and therefore allow you to concentrate on articulations and dynamics if you haven't already done so. Often times I will do a few weeks of easy patterns and focus on different sounds and touches and then go on to some more challenging coordination patterns and ignore complicated dynamics and articulations again for a while. The key here is to shake it up. I NEVER assign the same pattern two weeks in a row, even if the student hasn't mastered it. (Unless, of course, the student simply didn't practice; that's another story entirely.) Instead, I change something about it: make it forte, piano, staccato, legato, hands alone, or hands together. By always changing these exercises, students become more flexible, and less bored and hopefully more engaged. It makes me stay on my toes as well, because I constantly have to ask myself "OK, what next?" -- thereby making me a more creative and versatile teacher. We all get better. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=69 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=69 Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:55:13 -0600 Last week I was in Denver for the MTNA convention. This isn't something I do every year, but certainly every few, and with the convention relatively close this seemed like a good time to attend. Matt and I flew up a few days early; he was in need of a getaway after the pressures of Holy Week and Easter. As someone who works from home, I'm always in need of an escape. For two days, we ate our way through downtown Denver. We started our culinary adventures with lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, which, admittedly, is embarrassing to confess. But after spending several wonderful hours at the Denver Art Museum taking in an Impressionist exhibit in its impressive new building, I was ready for something good and familiar. Besides, I have eaten amazing salads at Cheesecake Factory in the past, and Albuquerque doesn't have one. Even though it was lunch, we must have waited nearly a half-hour for a table, and then the hostess marched us to our seats spouting the exact same pleasantries I had overheard her tell every other person. Our food was good, but not spectacular, and the waitress had the identical habit as the hostess of saying word for word the same thing to every table she served. I became annoyed quickly, and commented about the lack of personality of the whole scene to Matt. He replied, "In their defense, they do have the word 'factory' in their name." Shaking off the whole anonymous lunch experience, that first night we ate dinner at Strings, a restaurant we had visited on our honeymoon some 14 years ago. After a wonderful meal and a delicious bottle of wine, the waiting brought us free dessert, thinking that we were celebrating an anniversary. We were, of sorts, not having set foot in Denver since that night many years ago. The next day we had an amazing lunch at a Mexican place called Tamayo. This meal was a revelation to us, accustomed as we are to all New Mexican food being "smothered." (It is said that this is the most common verb on menus in this state: "smothered in chile," "smothered in cheese," and so on.) This Mexican meal was not smothered; in fact the individual ingredients popped out distinctly. I had beer-battered fish tacos with pico and cabbage that danced in my mouth. Delicious. Another night we ate dinner at a small Italian cafe, Osteria Marco, noteworthy for its lack of tourists. The menu was simple and casual, but they prepared their own meats and made their own cheese. In fact, there was a "cheese woman." What is not to like about this? Still another lunch we walked over to Steuben's Fine Foods, because we had read about their lobster rolls. Lobster rolls were not something we were anticipating eating in land-locked Denver, but the owner of this diner had an uncle who owned a supper club in Boston in the 1950s, and this place was an homage to him--complete with the best lobster roll and fries I have ever eaten. That statement includes all the lobster rolls I have had in New England. Who would have thought?After two days of eating, Matt went home and my friend Anne joined me for the convention. Some years the convention gets me all fired up and sends me home with dozens of ideas to try immediately. This was not one of those conventions, but I made some good connections, saw some old friends, attended a meeting I needed be at. Traveling back home, I was struck how very few new (or even old) tangible ideas I had to take back to my teaching, and the next day I had to hit the ground running--my first lesson showing up at 8am. But in spite of that, I had a fantastic teaching week; the kids were well prepared, I was energetic and on fire, even considering the extra long week. It reminded me that many times I don't need a convention to get re-inspired, I just need a break.On the heels of all this, my best friend from Boston moved to Albuquerque, renting a house just around the corner. It feels like family to have Lora here, for there are very few people in the world I could rely on as easily and as simply as Lora. In a thousand and one ways, it will be wonderful to have her around the corner, and hopefully comforting to her to have me two blocks away. But it isn't without its potential challenges, for although I have the best friends one could have, most live far away. This is new territory to have a best friend in the same town, let alone in the same 'hood. I'm thrilled, but as Matt says, I do like my boundaries. Sometimes he is suspicious I would do well with him being long-distance too. What will it be like to have a friend dropping in on a random weeknight, or phoning for a cup of sugar? I hope we fall into the easy habit of checking in to see what the other needs when we head out to the store, or bringing back gelato to the other when one of us visits the Italian ice cream shop up the street. I think we Americans are, in large, too isolated from one another, that we are out of the habit of thinking about helping each other as a matter of routine. Just last week, my friend Anne confessed that she had had a near breakdown about getting everything done before guests arrived. "Why didn't you call me and ask me to help clean your house for an hour?" I asked her. "You know I would have been glad to help." It was clear it had never occurred to her that this was an option, but if the roles were reversed, she would have been at my house sponge in hand in a heartbeat. In her defense, I'm not sure I would have been quick to ask for her help either, no matter how stressed out I might be. I'd like to change that, however, and learn to take and receive other's kindnesses better. If nothing else, I'd just like to connect more with my circle of friends and loved ones. Having Lora down the street is a great way to start. In dozens of ways, we are back at it: working at living a normal life after the pressures of the Easter season, after the mid-semester travels and convention. Just ahead lie spring recitals and contests, final performance classes and workshops. One high school student asked me if we had done anything at the convention to "revolutionize piano." When I admitted that we had not, he exclaimed, "I know what you could do! You could add an extra key. That'd change everything!"At the moment I am OK with not changing everything, enjoying an unexpected respite of normal busy days, instead of extraordinary overflowing ones. Spring is in full bloom. The wisteria hanging off every trellis in town; the tulips and irises blooming their hearts out. Even though this is the desert, we are experiencing a rare fiesta of color, like the technicolor of Oz after the black and white of Dorothy's Kansas home. Tomorrow friends are coming over for Sunday brunch with "bubbles" as my friend Jerome says. Tonight Matt has promised me cocktails in the courtyard. Lora just called saying she has finished at the gym and she'd stop by as soon as she went to Walgreens. As I write this an ice cream truck is going down the street playing "Greensleeves," an odd departure from the overly saccharined music it usually gives us. Aside from this, no one is revolutionizing much of anything around here, and on this lazy Saturday afternoon, that seems suddenly, completely, right. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=68 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=68 Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:41:49 -0600 Recently I spent a day judging a piano competition in Los Alamos. This was the kind of contest where the students aren't actually pitted against each other; instead they play for a rating and comments from a judge. In this particular event, there are some guidelines: students must play three contrasting pieces from three different styles or periods, and must prepare technique work (i.e. scales, chord progressions, arpeggios) in the key of each piece. It was a long day, but a good one. Matt and I spent the previous night in Santa Fe--ate a couple of good meals, hung out in the hotel room, generally wound down from another long week. Saturday morning I was up early, had breakfast in the French cafe on the plaza, and then drove up through the mountains to White Rock, where my judging site was located. The organizer of the event had done a good job with the scheduling: the students weren't so closely packed together that I didn't have time to write thorough comments, and she had scheduled 15-minute breaks every few hours. Enough time for me to stretch my legs and take a walk around the block, or go to the bathroom. When judging, I never lack for things to say or comment on. Indeed the only challenge is not writing a full page just about the first scale I hear. I don't want to make a career out of judging, but I want these kinds of opportunities available to my students, so I am happy to take my turn when the time comes. Aside from an aching hand from writing so much, I was a pretty contented judge. But as I watched the parade of students marching in to play for me, I was struck by several things. First of all, as someone who take a very holistic approach to teaching theory and technique, I was alarmed by the students I saw who seemed to have only learned scales and chords for this particular contest. The technique work was sometimes in the wrong key. This was not out of any attempt to be sneaky, I think, but rather simply that the student might have been confused about which scale went with which piece, so unrelated the two things seemed to be in their minds. The technique work was sometimes at a very different level than the pieces. Maybe the student was playing mid-elementary level pieces but trying to get through--unsuccessfully I might add--two-octave hands-together harmonic minor scales. This was unsettling, indeed, and a pretty good indication that these scales must have been learned just for this particular event. "Teaching to the test" is what I would call it. Oh, I do it too sometimes, when faced with requirements that don't necessarily match up with how I teach on a weekly basis. I think technique requirements are a good thing generally, but wonder if there isn't a way to make it both more specific and less constricted at the same time. Wouldn't it be possible to set the general requirements for technique at every level in very specific ways-- for example: level one, hands alone five-finger patterns; level eight: four-octave scales hands together--but leave open how the technique had to be played. I would have loved to see some interesting new ways to practice and play scales and arpeggios; after all, I assign these things in a million various ways every week. As a teacher, I would love to be able to send my students to such events with a more natural example of how they were currently practicing their scales, instead of having the method dictated to us. Requiring the technique work and the literature to be at the same level would solve the problem I saw of students playing technique work that was too hard (or too easy). Students in early literature should be playing a ton of five-finger positions, and later, full octave scales with hands together. Forcing that the level of the technique and the literature be the same would be better for the students and the teachers. Allowing the technique to be played in any number of ways (staccato, legato, crescendo-decrescendo, eighth-notes, triplets, one octave, three octaves, or whatever ever creative approach used in the studio), would make things more interesting for the judge.In spite of my speed and ease in writing lots of comments, it struck me that three pieces and all of the corresponding technique work was a lot to deal with when crammed into eight minutes. I stopped making comments when I ran out of room on the judging sheet (sometimes even after I had only heard half of what was prepared), and I am sure it was plenty for the students and their teachers to think about and wrestle with. Some kids raced through their playing: writing furiously, I often had no idea what piece they were doing or what was coming next. My confusion wasn't a problem in terms of having something to say, but did make the whole thing rather frantic. I know as a teacher that these kinds of competitions are culminating events, and the the real growth is in the preparation, not in the eight minutes with the judge. However, I wondered if there wasn't a way of making the whole thing a little more engaging for everyone. Because I knew I had 35 kids to listen to that day and because I didn't want to make the students (and teachers!) nervous with my questions, I hesitated to go much beyond the cheerful pleasantries of conversation, but I would have loved to have been able to freely ask students about their pieces, the styles they represent, the key signatures of the technique work. In other words, to check in and make sure the learning was really thorough and more than just notes and rhythms. As a teacher, I am always aiming for my students to be able to converse comfortably about anything prepared for a performance; I would be thrilled to have my students given the chance to have these conversations with an interested judge. Of course, this requires more in terms of preparation, but if we are already going to this level of effort, it is only a good thing if students can explain the structure and style of their music, and give their opinions (and even their struggles and triumphs!) about their process. This would also take more time, something always in short supply, but I believe it would result in a more thorough, organic experience for the students. It would also require the teachers to work differently, and perhaps more holistically. A good judge would be able to balance the need to have students play their entire prepared work, with the time reserved to talk specifically about one or two things. I can imagine it might go something like this:"Hi Susan. What do you have to play for me today?""I am going to play 'Minuet' by Bach, 'Sonatina' by Clementi, and 'Rhythm Roulette' by Dennis Alexander.""Wonderful. What key is the Sonatina in and which movement are you playing?" "I am playing the third movement in the key of G major.""Could I hear a G major scale then?"...."'Rhythm Roulette' is one of my favorite pieces. Do you know Dennis Alexander lives in Albuquerque?" ...and so on. This wouldn't have to take a great deal of time, but ideally would make students more learned and more engaged in every part of their work. Finally, I know that I participate in these kinds of events because they make me better as a teacher. I always learn things from thoughtful judges' comments. I am sometimes taken aback by the same comment on multiple judging sheets, realizing that this must be something I need to work on as a teacher, as it is showing up repeatedly in my students' work. Requiring multiple styles and music from different musical periods means that I have to work more carefully, making sure my students don't fall into easy ruts of playing all 20th century music, or all sonatinas. But this very point has got me thinking. I wonder if we haven't fallen unexpectedly into a new period of piano pedagogy. In the last 20 years, there has been such an explosion of pedagogical literature (and good music, that kids love and respond to) that I think we have a new category to work with: modern/contemporary pedagogical pieces. These would be the Martha Mier, Dennis Alexander, Robert Vandall standards that we all teach and that our students want to play. Of course, these are in a variety of styles: neo-classical, neo-romantic, etc. but nevertheless seems to fall into a specific general category of their own. I wouldn't want to send an intermediate level student into a contest with three of these kinds of pieces, any more than I would want to send them in with three Schumann or Kabalevsky pieces, but teaching this good literature is not only practical, it is important. It supports living, working composers, and counters the popular notion that "classical" music training is all about dead white guys. After all, the history of pedagogical composition is a long one, and there is a good chance that some of this current music on our teaching shelves will make its way into the standard literature in time. But until then, let's acknowledge and celebrate it by giving it a category of its own, and not lumping it into 20th-century literature. I don't want to be penalized for teaching Bartok and Alexander, that seems insane and certainly misses the point of using this engaging music. But under our current system, even though the 20th century has been over for seven years, we classify both Bartok and Alexander as simply "20th century" or "Modern". I think this group of pedagogical music is different, refreshingly so. Some of it may make it into standard piano literature, some won't, but for now, I'd like to see it given its own specific and recognized category. As always, there is little doubt that I learned more than any of the students I heard. As I prepare my students over the next few weeks for the same event in our local chapter, I think I'll be braver about not following the rules, about not teaching to the test, about using less familiar, but charming, literature instead of the old war-horses. I'm still a young teacher, quick to want to obey the system, especially in a new place with unfamiliar rules. However, events that make us more thorough teachers help all of us, and I know it has to begin in my own studio in the next month. Just today I told a student that I had decided he could play his favorite Dennis Alexander piece and the Persichetti piece for our upcoming contest next month. "Yeah!" he told me, eyes glowing, "You know, I love them both!!" That's the point, isn't it? http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=67 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=67 Sat, 05 Apr 2008 14:21:02 -0600 I have completed a grand slam of organizing lately.  I do this when I am in-between jobs or projects, suddenly inspired to clean out closets, drawers, the garage and basement.  As a result of all this clearing out of space, I have gone to the tailor three times with various items, long in need of repair.  We have our taxes done, although far from filed or paid.  (Gulp.  Self-employed folks hate tax time, don't we?).  The hall closet has been tamed and beaten into submission.  I actually have one empty drawer in the chest in the sun-room, waiting to be filled with miscellaneous items.  Life is good, or at least organized.I'm intentionally in-between musical projects.   Earlier this year I had so many splits in my fingers caused by dry skin (I do live in the desert, after all), that during one recording session I was bleeding on the piano.  Not pretty, and extremely painful.  Coupled with these ugly, raw hands, I have been showing the early warning signs of carpal tunnel problems:  hands falling asleep at night, minor tingling on and off during the day, etc.  This comes as no great surprise given what I do, but since I have a horrible tendency to ignore physical pain (see migraines) I am trying to take stock of this now.  All said, I have had little choice but to impose a restricted piano schedule on myself.  In typical Amy fashion, this does not actually mean no piano-time, but less.  I went two weeks with little to no practicing, and am now back to a couple hours a day.  I'm trying to be disciplined and take at least one day completely away from the piano every week, sometimes more.  I'm not taking many gigs, trying to protect my time and my hands for a while and also looking ahead to a gig I have with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra in May, playing Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals."  Everything about this more careful, cautious approach to my music-making goes against my nature; I find myself fighting it every time the phone rings with another potential gig.  I suffer from the fear that I will jeopardize future performing opportunities by saying no right now.  Crazily enough, I fear this more than the danger of jeopardizing my performing future by hurting my hands.  I know all too well what it feels like to not have the phone ring, and not to be on the short list for the great gigs.  I also know that work creates work, and that just doing a certain amount of work keeps my name out there and active.  Every day that the phone doesn't ring I'm afraid its a sign that I will never work again.  No, the hard thing here isn't coping with the physical symptoms, it is coping with the potential professional consequences of getting out of the game, however temporarily.I know what the antidote to all of this is:  I need to drown myself into some new creative projects so I can stop tormenting myself with my insecurities and fears.  With enough time and attention elsewhere, my self-destructive tendencies cannot take root.  I know this.  Just like work begets work, energy begets energy.  Positive energy stirring up something--anything--will generate endorphins, if not the next great thing.  Experience has taught me that doing the work I need to do to get ready for what may come next will often cause that thing to appear as if by magic.  Getting my business cards made is the first step towards having someone request one.  Reading through intermediate literature makes it more likely that I might get a call about a talented intermediate student.  Learning a new solo recital program makes it more likely that I will be asked to play one in the near future.  I don't understand how this works exactly, but I trust in the process.  I also know that like everything else, these cycles of lack of confidence and increased anxiety come and go--the physical break from the piano hasn't brought them on, just revealed what is always there under the surface, lurking in the dark.  That I just might be as insecure and fearful and scared as the next person isn't fun to admit.  Yet there it is:  the truth, staring me in the face.Around me, there are a thousand signs that the creative burst of spring is taking hold.  In my garden, I have the first yellow and red tulips--their cheerful colorful faces braving the elements yet again this year.  The daffodils I planted last fall are beginning to emerge.  My rose bushes are sending out hundreds of tiny new leaves, bursting into bud right before my very eyes.  There are a thousand chores to be done outside, if I can dig out an hour or two.  But lately, the wind has driven me indoors.  We have had gusts as great as 50 mph over the last few days.  My big happy red umbrella has been lying on the ground for weeks now, knocked senseless by the roaring winds.   I forget every year that spring in the desert means horrible winds.  I must repress this information because I find the wind utterly life-sucking.  I may be a girl from Kansas, but Dorothy I am not.  These winds do not bring out the adventurous side of me; if anything they make me restless and irritable.  ("That's the vata in you," my physical therapist told me, "air doesn't like wind."  I'd question the underlying validity of this statement, if it didn't ring so utterly true.)  Just last weekend, Matt and I were in Santa Fe; I had been invited to judge a competition in Los Alamos the next day, so we made a getaway of it.  I needed a day-long Julia Cameron-inspired artist date puttering around the Plaza and Canyon Road, but the wind--there were no words.  Instead, we checked into our hotel early and spent the afternoon watching college basketball.  Which, I suppose, is an afternoon outside the norm for me as artist dates are intended to be, just not what I had planned. But today the winds are quiet. This morning, while pedaling to the tailor, I saw the neighborhood roadrunner sitting in someone's birdbath, just hanging out as if he was pretending to be a duck.  Later, on my way home, I saw him again, wet and rumpled, acting as if he there was no place in the world he needed to be at that moment. For all I know, he took another dip with the sparrows before getting on with his day. In my courtyard, I am trying to lure the birds to my feeders, at this point to no avail.  Free food!  I feel like shouting to the skies.  If anyone knows why birds might be wary of certain feeders in particular places, do let me know.  At this point, I can only blame the cats, sitting in the windows scaring them away.  Outside my laundry hangs on the clothes line, blowing in the sunshine and the breeze.  Inside, my house is ordered, for once blessed with a real spring cleaning.  That all this cleaning would stir up debris within me is no great surprise, disheartening as it may be. But like all seasons, this too shall pass, and the next unknown chapter will unfold.  Next week is spring break, a blessed break from teaching.  We are headed to Denver on Wednesday for a couple of days away, then Matt will fly home and I will stay for a convention.  Recently, one of my students saw the journal advertising the convention on my desk.  "Are you going to a convention, Amy?" she asked me.  "Yep," I answered.  "Is it a piano convention?  At the end will everyone gets snacks while someone plays the piano?"  I smile just thinking about her idea of a piano convention.  As I write this, my two cats are basking in the sun-room daring the birds to just try to enjoy the birdseed scattered on the courtyard walls.  But just now, one brave bird with a reddish throat has made his way to the bird feeder.  I could just shout for joy, watching him.  http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=65 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=65 Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:17:13 -0600 I think most beginning method books wait too long before having students play with hands together.  The delay is caused by the added complication of note-reading, but students can conquer this coordination milestone sooner by working on playing hands together in five-finger positions.  By the time students have learned all the white key five-finger positions-C and G, D and A, and the more challenging ones of E, B and F--I think they should be playing hands together in parallel direction.  Adult students or students with previous piano experience can do this immediately, while with some young children who have extremely underdeveloped hands it may take weeks or even months to perfect this skill. "But it is so hard!" a young student whines at me, trying to play C-position Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do hands together.  "Yes, but you don't want to be one of those one-handed pianists, do you?" I gently prod him. As soon as students can play all the white-key major positions with hands together, I teach the five black-key positions.  Some teachers never do this, adhering to the traditional rule of no thumbs on black keys, but in my work I have needed to use my thumb on plenty of black keys.  Other teachers like to teach only the positions that students are currently facing in their music, which directly correlates the keys of the technique assignments with the keys of their literature.  There is some sense to this certainly, as it relates technique to the music at hand.  However, too often beginning literature only requires C and G major for months.  I think if students wait too long before playing black notes and black positions they become intimidated by the prospect.  Besides, I love the transposing possibilities that are immediately available if students can play any position.  Students who play all twelve positions don't know to be scared of G-flat or B major; they do not need to know that G-flat major has six flats in order to play a piece in a five-finger position.  Above all, I get a secret thrill from the look of terror that comes over their parents' faces when I say, "Hey!  How about playing this piece in D-flat?"Since beginning students may not possess yet the terminology of sharps and flats, I call all the black positions "flats":  D-flat, A-flat, E-flat, etc.  Even the littlest student can understand this basic naming, if we do not confuse the issue. My decision to call the black keys "flats" versus naming them by "sharps" is somewhat arbitrary, based mostly on the fact that the positions (except for G-flat/F-sharp which can go either way) are more easily spelled as flats.  Often we throw too much vocabulary at students, thereby confusing issues that really can be very simple.  There is plenty of time later to introduce sharps and the difference between the two.  The important thing at this point is to get the student playing all twelve major positions as soon as possible.I encourage students to identify the notes of the black-key positions by using their ears as a guide, just as we did with the white-key positions.  Students quickly discover many devices for remembering the patterns of white and black keys, "Look!  E-flat has two white notes.  It is the opposite of E position."  Or "D-flat and A-flat are 'Oreo' positions:  black cookie, white filling, black cookie."   For many months, seven year-old Jack told me, "Amy, B-flat position tilts this way," tilting his hand to the right, "and B position tilts this way."  tilting his hand to the left.  "It's a seesaw!"  This is what I most desire, for students to find their own way through all these keys and relationships.Weekly, I vary the patterns in the simplest of ways, still writing every assignment in students' notebooks in solfege.  First, I write out the solfege and sing the pattern, only demonstrating by playing it on the piano as a last resort.  This isn't rote-teaching, but ear-training, for with time students learn to translate the singing of the solfege patterns onto the keyboard and often will sing the patterns as they play them. The following are more easy patterns to use as you are continuing to teach through the twelve positions.  As soon as possible, I require students to be playing the positions by moving chromatically through the keys.  Remember that this is not a prescribed course for teaching technique.  No student of mine has ever done all these variations; instead I pick and choose based on students' needs.  Some adult or older students, after learning the twelve positions, only need to do the most challenging of the five-finger patterns, and then they move on to scales, chord progressions, and arpeggios.  Young children often need months and months of staying in the five-finger world to develop muscles and coordination and all kinds of musical skills before we approach more difficult technique. 6. Do Re Mi    Do Re MiDo Re Mi Fa Sol     Sol Fa Mi    Sol Fa Mi  Sol Fa Mi Re Do...7.  Do Re Mi Re DoDo Re Mi Re DoDo Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do...8.  Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Sol Do...9. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Mi Do...10.  Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Mi Sol Mi DoThe last variation begins to outline a chord.  Students don't necessarily need to know this to play the pattern.  You can discuss how Do-Mi-Sol builds a chord, or just talk about steps and skips to teach.  In all of these, layer away dynamics and articulations as appropriate and helpful.  With students who have some piano experience, this makes sense to do early on--as the challenge of the five-finger positions alone may not be enough to keep them engaged.  With young beginning students, often just making those tiny fingers move in these prescribed patterns is enough for awhile.  You can always return to these same patterns later and assign more layers:  one hand staccato, the other legato, both hands legato, then both hands staccato, and so on.  Again, the possibilities are endless.  http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=64 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=64 Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:24:19 -0600 The other day after performance class I overheard two eight-year-olds talking. "Can you come over and play?" Bobby asked Jason. "No. There is no way. Right now I have to go to gymnastics and then I have a play date with David," Jason answered. This conversation took my breath away. After all, these boys were second-graders, not CEOs with important and busy schedules to maintain. And yet, Jason sounded just like me, dismissing yet one more thing with a "No. There is no way. I've got to...and then I have to....." I'm nursing a funk at the moment, which is a direct consequence of working every weekend since the first of the year. Saturday I am playing for an all day NATS competition. Sunday afternoon and evening I have rehearsals and lessons to teach. In the next month I am doing extra rehearsals, judging a piano competition, attending a conference in Denver. It would be altogether too easy to make the answer to every question thrown my way, "No. There is no way...."I resent this, even though I must take the blame for my own crazy schedule. I'm tired and cranky, lashing out at my husband and my students. Last night while rehearsing the prima donna song, "Art is Calling Me" in the ninth hour of a deadly long work day, I found myself thinking, "If there is anything that isn't calling me at the moment, it would be art. Or this song. For the love of Pete, will this day ever end?" Exhaustion is hardly attractive, I remind myself as I hurl through another day. I've temporarily lost the ability to dwell blissfully in the present, or to slide gracefully from one thing to another. Tomorrow is Leap Day, which should be a cause to celebrate: a gift of an extra day. I love the concept, but I'm too tired to decide how to spend any extra time, buried as I am at the moment under a daunting list of demands on my attention. I'm not the only one that is living a Charlie Ravioli existence, nor is it just my eight-year olds that feel the pinch. My students, in general, are simply too busy, frayed and frazzled at ages where their lives ought to be able to handle any spontaneous play date invitation. My high school students are driving me crazy right now with their constant conflicts with performance classes and even weekly lessons, and these are kids I like and want to help keep in music lessons. Every activity is closing in on them with multiple demands, and we are all losing as a result. Because my patience is short at the moment, I am more frustrated than usual, struggling to know when to gracefully bend my policies for favorite students and when to send them packing. When I allow myself to indulge in a pathetic pity party, I imagine that all these conflicts are evidence that everything comes before piano, but I know that is not the real truth, for at times they must also go to the tennis coach or the study group with piano lesson conflicts. The problem is that there are just too many conflicts. Either I bend with them if I can without breaking in two, or I get awfully angry in the meantime.Certainly, there are too many conflicts in my own life, which is no less busy than my eight-year-olds or my eighteen-year-olds. I've been trying to reach my two sisters in New York for a month, the two-hour time difference and our hectic schedules making it impossible ever to connect. "What I need is an extra day in every week," I tell Kara, a smart and witty 15-year old student. "No. If you had an extra day in every week, other people would just fill it with more work. What you need is a secret extra day that no one knows about." She's right, as usual. What I need is a secret extra day.We all do, as I stare Leap Day in the face, wondering if by its very nature this isn't the extra day of my dreams. Writing this, I wonder what it would take to rewrite the script of my life so that my default response was not, "No. There is no way...." but rather, "Why not?" After all, if there can be a legal day just inserted into the calendar every four years, then it seems anything might be possible. "Why not?" I practice saying to myself. Why not? http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=63 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=63 Sun, 02 Mar 2008 09:27:22 -0700 Just today a student I have taught for over two years discovered the large stack of Harry Potter books in my sun- room, where she waits every week for her dad to pick her up after her lesson.  I say "just discovered" because Tuesday was her ninth birthday, and she received the entire set of Harry Potter books, which has made her hyper-aware of anything having to do with the magical boy.  "I just started this week, and look how far I am!" she exclaimed to me as she picked up my copy of the first volume, found her place and began reading.  I smile thinking about it, remembering a favorite student of years ago who first introduced me to the series.  We teachers take out memories of old students, like favorite books on a shelf, and browse our recollections fondly.   I taught Kathryn and her sister Elizabeth for a couple of years while I was living in Texas.   Then I moved to Boston,  after which I got long rambling letters from Kathryn for several years.  I haven't heard from her in a long time, and she must be,  by my shoddy arithmetic, either a senior in high school or maybe even in college.  Back when I knew her, Kathryn was a great reader, and we often talked about favorite books.  One summer her family traveled to England and she brought home the first three Harry Potter books--the English versions, as they had yet to hit the states.  "You have to read them, Miss Amy," she told me, her eyes wide and shining. "They are so good!"  I did read them, at first just to appease her, but then because she was right, they were so good.  The summer I left for Boston, the fourth book came out.  She stood in line late at night to get her copy and then brought it to me the next day.  "You read it first," she told me earnestly. "You are moving."  Now that's love. I have read all the subsequent Harry Potter adventures as they came out, but somewhere along the way lost the thread of the story.  Or maybe it just wasn't the same without Kathryn.  Last summer, however, I joined millions others and reread the whole series to the final chapter, reliving the tale and recapturing the excitement I had back when Kathryn and I first read the English versions.  As a kid, I was an avid reader, and I bond easily with students who love to read.  This month I have a review published in American Music Teacher of a pre-teen book.  I asked a current student of mine to read it as well, and help me review.  Grace's opinion and ideas were helpful, softening my perhaps otherwise harsh judgement of the story.  My sun-room is overflowing with books -- both for students and for their parents to read as they wait.  And read they do, students reading and reading again the Olivia stories and all the Harry Potter books, Stellaluna and favorite Dr. Seuss tales.  Parents read and frequently borrow volumes of poetry and travel books, and laugh over The Gashlycrumb Tinies.  A mother of one of my students is a poet; I have several other studio parents whom I talk books on an almost weekly basis, as others might talk about the weather.  Students routinely ask parents to wait for them as they finish some book.  Most do, good-naturedly.  Over the next few weeks, I'll be interested in watching my newest Harry Potter fan as she dives into volumes of the story while waiting to be picked up from piano lessons.  And somewhere out there, I hope Kathryn is well and happy, playing the  piano certainly, but more importantly, still reading. *** Throughout the years I have carefully built up my studio library of books.  Longtime favorites include: *All the Olivia books by Ian Falconer.  If you don't know the Olivia books, you should.  These are hands down the favorite books for early elementary.  My husband is convinced based on my stubborn, feisty attitude that I could have been Olivia in another life. *You Can't Take a Balloon Into...Three picture books about taking a balloon into the National Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum created by two sisters:  Jacquerline Preiss Weitzman and Robin Preiss Glasser.  These are wonderful picture books, simultaneously telling the adventure of the balloon outside and the museum visitors inside through clever reproductions of how art mirrors life.  *365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental and Joelle Jolivet.  Matt got me this book last year for Christmas.  My students gravitate towards it first because it is physically larger than the rest, but then they go back to it because it tells the charming story of a family trying to save penguins in danger due to global warming. *Stellaluna by Janell Cannon.  A classic. *Oh, the Places You'll Go!  and The Butter Battle Book both by Dr. Seuss.  The first has become a standard gift in life tranistions; the second, written during the cold war, is a thought-provoking tale of an escalating fight between two disparate groups, warring for nonsensical reasons.  Hmmm... Sound familiar? *The Big Box by Toni Morrison.  This is really a children's book for adults.  Every teacher should read it.  *The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey.  A picture book for adults in which riduculously horrible things happen to children. ("N is for Neville who died of ennui....")  I shouldn't like it, but I do.  Some days more than others. *Blue 2 and 600 Black Spots by David A. Carter.  Fabulous pop-up books.  Like tiny little sculptures.  Last week one of my high schoolers was looking at these books and I could hardly drag her to the piano bench.  "Amy," she said, "these books rock my world."  Mine too. Do you have favorite books in your studio?  I'd love to hear about them. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=62 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=62 Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:07:42 -0700 My husband, who is a choral conductor, often comments, "Your students could warm up a choir!" as he overhears them practice their five-finger positions, moving effortlessly from key to key. I first became aware of how valuable five-finger positions were when I was a graduate teaching assistant teaching piano proficiency classes. In these classes we worked extensively in major and minor pentascales. These positions quickly built tactile familiarity of the keyboard and enhanced the ability of the student to transfer exercises and music to multiple keys-important concepts for students who need some basic piano skills. But I began to wonder, if we wanted these skills for music majors, why we didn't teach the same skills to all students? Very quickly I adopted the habit of teaching all the major and minor five-finger positions to all my students, regardless of age. Today I use them with the younger beginning students; the older beginning students; the students who have been taking piano lessons but have weak fingers; and the students for whom piano is a second instrument. I begin teaching five-finger positions in the very first lessons and use them to teach musical ideas of dynamics, articulations, and tone, as well as adapting them to challenge the students' coordination and control. With beginning students, we learn the positions as we are learning to name the notes on the piano, starting first with C and G major positions hands alone. We then move onto D and A patterns, discovering that when playing D and A positions on all white notes they sound "different." Even if this is only the second week of lessons, I use this opportunity to introduce the difference between major and minor positions, by allowing students to identify by ear whether I am playing a major or minor position. We throw around words to describe the different sounds, deciding that major sounds happy and bright, sunny and cheerful, while minor sounds dark and sad, scary and grey. Young children hold up signs in response to the sounds: "Major!" They will shout. "It sounds happy." "Minor," they will respond, " it sounds dark." After all this ear work, the students then experiment by changing notes from the all-white key D and A patterns until they can find the major positions. "Hey! D has a black key mountain in the middle!" one student announced to me, "and A is a twin!" Exactly. Especially in the beginning, when note-reading is still a skill to be developed, practicing technique without the added difficulty of reading music allows them to focus on the single task of making their fingers work at command. Because I start five-finger positions before students are reading music, I write the assignments in their notebooks in solfege, using movable "do." No student has ever come to me with a background in solfege, but that's the magic behind that language--it is intuitive and the less I give it a long-winded explanation, the better. Using movable "do" makes the process of transposing the exercise to other keys a non-issue; they simply reset their hands and then play the pattern. With very young children, I have also experimented with different kinds of non-staved primitive notation, often allowing students to help write out their patterns in their assignment notebooks in their own symbol systems. Many of you are nodding your heads in agreement that it seems like a good idea to teach five-finger positions to all students, following my logic after seeing the light while teaching piano proficiency students. You might be even thinking to yourself that, of course, you use five-finger positions all the time, after all, most beginning music is written in pentascales. However, this default usage is different than systematically and purposefully teaching them to students almost as an end unto themselves. You'll see what I mean in no time at all. Once taught, the variations are endless. Now I can hear the murmuring begin. (Yep, I can sense that you are balking already. "You mean I have to then do something with them besides just teach the notes?" That's the point.) Not only are the options endless, but rather fun to play around with, experimenting from week to week. Even as students are learning them, you can make the assignments different and entertaining every lesson. I'm afraid too often this is where we show how uncomfortable we might be with anything not taken straight from a published source. The point of technique is that it ought to be generated out of a student's need, and should be developed both independently from and organic to their other skills. Hence the reason it is so downright lovely to teach technique not from a book, but from your imagination and creativity and common sense.From the beginning, I coach students to listen carefully to their sound and to form good hand positions by watching for space under their hands ("hot-air balloons" my pedagogy teacher and mentor Jean Stackhouse would say), firm joints in their fingers, avoiding tension in their arms and shoulders, and making sure they are sitting as tall as possible on the bench. The following are my earliest five-finger positions assignments. Use them with whatever keys students have learned, either hands together or hands alone. 1. Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Do Do...2. Do Do Re Re Mi Mi Fa Fa Sol Sol Fa Fa Mi Mi Re Re Do Do... 3. Do Re Do ReMi Fa Mi FaSol Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Mi ReDo...4. Do Re Mi Do Re MiDo Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do...5. Do Re Mi Fa SolDo Re Mi Fa SolDo Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do... Because we should be learning more than just patterns of notes of the 5-finger positions, whether it be major or minor, all of these can be given further musical instructions: play forte, play piano, play staccato, play legato. However, and this is a big "however," I am a proponent of students really getting the physicality of playing in their bodies before we layer musical complications. This means I encourage students to play with big, strong fingers, long before I talk about subtleties of soft playing. I hear too many students with weak fingers and pathetic sounds when I judge competitions, which makes me think more athletic playing would be good for all of us. There is a difference, of course, between playing strongly and fully and playing stridently and harshly, and that is a line worth drawing in the sand from the very first lesson.So layer away as it might be appropriate, adding different dynamics and articulations. Beware though, that it might be worth encouraging big sounds at the beginning as students are learning to navigate the patterns and discovering what their fingers can do. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=61 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=61 Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:27:36 -0700 It's been an odd winter.  First, it didn't get cold, warmer fall temperatures lingering into most of December.  Then when winter arrived it came with a vengence.  It's been cold, cold, cold and dry as only the desert can be.  The cats spend the days with their bodies draped on the baseboard heaters, warming their paws, wishing someone with a warmer house had adopted them.  My skin may yet fall off.  My fingers crack and bleed, getting me back, perhaps, for the hours of abuse they take daily on the keyboard.  I slather them with lotions and liquid band-aid, but to no avail.  One finger has been cracked open for six weeks.  This is not an exaggeration. This has been not only the winter for cold temperatures, but for colds, as in the flu-like symptoms of congestion, coughing, aching, and sore throat.  Right after Thanksgiving I came down with strep throat--something I only had once before, way back in childhood.  I was as sick as I have ever been, spending a week in bed contemplating death.  Then, right after the holidays, Matt caught the respiratory bug that has hit Albuquerque, coughing and hacking his way through two weeks before going to the doctor with a sinus infection, blocked ear drums, and a cough that wouldn't quit.  Armed with cough syrup laced with codeine, we thought we were on the other side of this madness and that we would both be blessed with a good night's sleep, when I came down with the same crud.  I lost my voice for four days and so far have spent a week coughing and nursing a sore throat.  This is no way to really enjoy the season.But in spite of it all, we are branching out this winter in small ways.  Because we are now subject to a box of produce from the co-op every Monday, we are eating differently, learning how to deal with things like collard greens and kale, and making regular meals out of salads with avocados and beets.  This has turned out to change our eating habits more profoundly than I had imagined, because organic produce spoils so quickly.  Inspired not to let good food go bad, I wrack my brain on a daily basis trying to figure out what must be eaten NOW.  Tangerines appear in our box almost weekly, so I have started taken mid-morning breaks to slice open a couple of tangerines and gnaw at them right off the rinds.  I have always considered tangerines (and oranges, and all fruit that must be peeled) more trouble than they are worth.  But now they are here, sitting and staring at me accusingly from the bowl on the dining room table, so I eat them.  Surprisingly I have fallen in love with tangerines this winter, savoring their very tangerine-ness, like a burst of sunshine in my mouth -- pow!  I come alive just thinking about it.  Today I roasted a pan of beets, tossing them in olive oil and sea salt.  Now there is a sentence I have never written before.  I also roasted a pan of purple onions, small potatoes, Japanese sweet potatoes (what are those exactly anyway?) and two whole heads of garlic, just because we had them.  I'll eat these roasted vegetables for breakfast and lunches over the next few days, surely shaking me out of any food ruts I might have gotten myself in during the last 35 years.It's also been the winter of fantastic reading. Over the holidays, I read Run by Ann Patchett and Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo, both memorable books, something I don't often find.  A friend sent me The Used World by Haven Kimmel, a book I found quite wonderful.  I am in a book group of local music teachers who this month read Piano Lessons by Noah Adams, another book I enjoyed very much, if for no other reason it gave me new insights into the minds of adult students dabbling in music lessons.  Last fall our group read The Sparrow and Children of God by Maria Doria Russell, two books that stunned me and kept me thinking for weeks.  When my dad was here for a recent visit, I loaned him The Sparrow and he read it in 24 hours.  It's really that good. And although I write a blog, I must admit that I don't much read them.  (My husband told me for years that I should write one, to which I would repeated ask, "Now what is a blog, anyway?")  However, last year Matt discovered a blog which now I read regularly and savor, although (or maybe because) it isn't about music.  Indeed, orangette is about food, and written by someone you'd like to have cook for you.  Regularly.  I sigh often when I read it, however, because it appears this woman, who must be several years younger than I am, manages to cook real meals and play in the kitchen on a regular basis.  Last night, dining alone, I ate:  two slices of brie; a handful of peanuts, cracking the shells over the sink; two tangerines; three cookies.  I can cook, and I am even halfway decent, but too often don't bother.  Ms. Orangette makes me want to don an apron and start baking biscuits, something that isn't likely to happen anytime soon.This winter I have also been able to play some fabulous music, working on a recital with a flutist, Jerome Jim.  For the last month, we have been rehearsing the Fauré violin sonata, (transcribed for flute) and the "Histoire du Tango" by Piazzola, both fabulous pieces with wonderful piano parts that have demanded and absorbed my attention for weeks.  Following this recital I have an empty window of time in terms of performances, something that hasn't occurred in the recent past.  I am determined to claim it and learn some solo music that has been on my wish list for some time. I've been working on Chopin's Nocturne in D-Flat, but after this recital, I'm going to tackle his G Minor Ballade, Barber's Excursions, and Haydn's F Minor Variations.  I don't have performances in mind for any of these works, but if I don't learn them I can't ever perform them, so I'm going with the "build it and they will come" theory. Last year my resolution was to go on more hikes, seeing as we live in great hiking country.  My interest in hiking took a 25-year detour after having been dragged up every mountain in Colorado as a kid, lugging baloney sandwiches, which I detested.  But after living here several years, I found myself interested in seeing more of this spectacular, unusual landscape and saw hiking as a good, cheap recreational activity for my otherwise rather indoor-centered life.  After making this resolution, my husband and I went on two hikes last year, which was two more hikes than any other year, but still nothing to write home about.  Already this year I have lured my husband, brother-in-law, and nephew up into the foothills, and then also my father when he came to visit, telling him it was revenge for all those childhood hikes.  "But you were young and I am old," he told me, which is true but didn't affect my plans. During our hike on a snowy and icy path, I fell five (Five!) times, which once again is an actual number and not an exaggeration, leaving me bruised and sore for days.  "That'll teach you," he said.Even my teaching is forging new tracks, as I am making more of a concerted effort to teach new music, and to organize my materials better.  The impulses to organize come and go in my life.  Over the years, I have learned to heed them when they arrive, as they are usually a sign that a new burst of creative energy is bubbling to the surface. "I spend a lot of time getting organized to be creative,"  I read somewhere.  That's it exactly, for I spend a great deal of time getting organized to be creative, even recognizing the urge to be organized as something that might have a creative root.  Several weeks ago, after almost a year of being nagged at, I held a rhythm and movement class based on Dalcroze ideas for music teachers.  I sent out the e-mail announcement about the class secretly suspecting no one would come.  Instead, my living room was full of eager movers and shakers, so much so that I have scheduled classes monthly through May.  It's been good for me to get out of not only my eating ruts, but my teaching ruts. So, in little microscopic ways, we are shedding old skin around here, making us healthier and opening up our minds a bit to a new perspective.  Of course, this health angle hasn't contributed to a real improvement in the state of our health (see "colds" above), but big changes often start small, spiraling the contents of our lives in a whole new direction.  Cutivating a new-found love of warm roasted beets isn't a bad place to start. http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=59 http://tenthousandstars.net/blog.php?post_ID=59 Sat, 09 Feb 2008 09:14:58 -0700 Recently my 13-year old nephew came to visit. Sam doesn't play a musical instrument; he plays football. He must have been told not to touch "Amy's piano" before he arrived, because he although he eyed it from across the room, he maintained a wide berth of space around it. Noticing this, I assured him that nothing he could do would break it, and that he was welcome to play the piano as long as he didn't bring food or drink near it. In fact, I told him, I'll teach you to play something. So later, after Sam had fiddled around on the keys for awhile on his own, I showed him a simple black-key rote piece that I teach during many first and second lessons. I played it once, then broke it down in small enough segments that he could emulate. Hovering nearby were my husband and my brother-in-law, eager to witness this exchange. Not only were they curious, but quick to jump in with a correction