John Luther Adams has a long and well known history of writing for and about the environment, and most if not all of his compositions reference these views. Inuksuit perhaps best exemplifies this, as it was composed to be performed outdoors. For the performance a year ago in New York, eighth blackbird was involved with the first performance in an indoor space, and while from my perspective as a performer I felt this was a successful and “valid” interpretation of the work, I feel that this piece more than any other is shaped by the location and physical and sonic space in which it is performed. Though my experience of the two performances differed in that in one I was a performer (Armory) and one an observer (Melbourne), I think the greater difference was in experiencing it indoors vs. outdoors.

It’s worth noting that the Park Avenue Armory is located in New York City, the most urban of environments in the United States. The space of the Armory, while huge, is still enclosed, though it is possible to hear outside noises, particularly ambulance sirens. It’s also very resonant, and as a result created a massive maelstrom of sound at the peak of the work, almost terrifyingly loud depending on where you were during the piece (in both performances, audience members are encouraged to wander around the performance space during the work). The work for me had a “caged beast” quality, in that the performers were trying to harness and explore elemental sounds and gestures within a cavernous space, but at all times within an urban environment; explosive, but contained.

Not so the Melbourne performance. Any outdoor space is at once less resonant but also filled with other noises, if one stops to really listen to them. This was true of the campus of Melbourne University, and the beginning of the piece began visually clearly but inaudibly, emerging from the surrounding noise, with audience members quieting down as the piece progressed. The first call on a conch shell evoked some wild beast calling out to others, soon answered, though with the eventual addition of drums, it evoked for me nothing so much as the machines of war beginning to stir, and eventually of a great human battle. This was enhanced by the addition of sirens (more on this below) and multitudinous cymbals conveying a bloody aftermath, which eventually subsided. And then the real magic, and the real difference between the indoor performance, became apparent.

The end of the work includes high ringing instruments (glockenspiel, triangles, etc.), but also a few flutists and piccolo players, who are instructed to play bird calls native to wherever the piece is being performed. This in itself makes every performance unique to its environment, and I would have loved to have heard this except, from where I was laying down on the grass, this sound drowned out everything else. I learned later that this is the call of the native currawong, and this rather large flock, situated in the trees above the performance space, decided to join the performance, at first loudly in response and then, as the piece died away and the sounds from the performers became more sparse, the currawongs became quieter and eventually flew away. It was a magical moment, and this ending, with the birds having the last and final voice, suggested to me the impermanence and futility of man, that long after his wars and machinations on earth, nature will still remain.

It’s hard for me to hear certain elements of this work as being anything other than man-made, which I realize is a much different view than most people, or even the composer, share. In particular, I can’t help but hear air raid sirens as man-made and evoking danger, whether from tornados or, in particular, man-made disasters such as the bombing of London during WWII. I even asked JLA about this in an email after the Armory Performance:

Me: Let me tell you again what a pleasure it was to do Inuksuit at the Armory on Sunday, which was really transporting. One thing I wanted to ask you about but forgot–sirens. Most of the instruments you specify for the piece, at least to me, have a “natural” sound, or can be derived from nature. Except sirens, which to me sound more “man-made” and artificial, though I thought they worked amazingly well in the Armory (visions of call to battle, firetrucks and “danger” in general). I’ve also heard other pieces where you use sirens—does their sound mean something specific to you, and do they mean something in Inuksuit?

JLA: I use them for purely sonic reasons. And although I’m well aware of the extra-sonic associations, over the years I’ve come to hear them just as they are. At the Armory they seemed to fit in with the surroundings perfectly. During the rehearsal on Saturday, I heard a lone siren very late in the piece. My first thought was that one of the musicians was lost. Then I realized it was an ambulance or fire truck passing by on Lexington Avenue. In our performance of Strange and Sacred Noise out on the tundra, the sirens also seemed very natural. They might well have been wolves howling or other animals calling.

While the Melbourne performance was outside, it felt more enclosed and literally walled off and apart from the city by being contained with a ring of student housing and university buildings, though not as enclosed as the Armory. eighth blackbird’s next performance of Inuksuit, on Sunday August 26 for the Midwest premiere of the work, will be another interesting juxtaposition of the piece vs. its environment, as Millennium Park is right in downtown and the sonic backdrop will be at least as much man-made (people, cars, low flying aircraft, Rahm Emanuel’s motorcade) as it is natural. But still, definitely worth checking out, especially if you haven’t had this experience live.

Ever since I could read, books have been my constant friend. You know, the kind of friend who makes a great travel partner and who’s good company both at a dinner party and a sob party. While I do love my TV shows, I think of TV more as my drinking buddy – but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.

I’m usually in the middle of reading several things, a situation I find annoying but somehow unavoidable. As a little kid, I would burrow into my bed and read a book from start to finish, stopping only for bathroom breaks. If I had my druthers, I would read like this all the time. But life, cruel as it is, forces me to put that book down, and then I forget where I put it, or even that I was ever reading it. As a result, I am in the middle of a book on either side of my bed, two books in the bathroom, a book by the sofa, probably a dozen New Yorker articles, and two books on my iPad.

My lovely colleagues are also big readers. Tim is a fiction junkie, as am I, and he’s usually already read or heard of what I’m currently reading. He is also on a crusade to cure me of my guilt-driven need to finish everything, including books I don’t like. Nick loaned me one of the last paper books I read, and Lisa is currently reading the last book I finished on my iPad. But I had no idea what the tastes of Matthew, Michael, or our staffers were. So I thought it would be fun to take a poll of what everyone’s reading.

Me

Last: The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds

Current: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (iPad), Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks (bed), A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace (other side of bed), Death Interrupted by Jose Saramago (bathroom), I’m a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson (sofa), a million New Yorkers (every location, including the car)

Future: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Ulysses by James Joyce (3^rd attempt)

Tim

Last: Vox by Nicholson Baker

Current: Poems by Philip Larkin, Shakespeare Sonnets, the first five books of a new translation of the Bible, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Gramophone

Future: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Lisa

Last: Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Current: Great House by Nicole Krauss, The New Yorker

Future: Grace in the Wilderness by Aranka Siegal

Michael

Last: The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larsson

Current:  A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, Wired Magazine

Future: A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

Nick

Last: Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

Current: A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin (not so into it), Wired Magazine

Future: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Matthew

Last: Heaven’s Reach by David Brin

Current: can’t decide

Future: Little Bets by Peter Sims, Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn, An Iliad by Alessandro Bariccio

Kyle

Last: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Current: The Black Forest by Christopher DeWeese, Dear Jenny, We are all Find by Jenny Zhang, and The New Yorker semi-regularly

Future: will figure it out when he gets there

Ryan

Last: Honey Badger Don’t Care by Randall (he swears this was a gift)

Current: Some sound engineering technical manual that he refused to name, The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Future: The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose (I’m giving Ryan $100 if he actually understands this book)

Rachel

Last: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Catching Fire – from The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, Dune by Frank Herbert

Current: When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris, Just Kids by Patti Smith, Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Bust magazine, TimeOut Chicago

Future: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, Mockingjay – from The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

I am incredibly proud of my Curtis degree. There, I said it. Even though most people stare blankly back at me when I say I studied there, the ones who have heard of it know what it means to have gone there. Amongst musicians, there’s a degree of mystery surrounding the school because so few people have gone there in relation to Juilliard or other conservatories. My fellow blackbirds (all Oberlin grads) were lucky enough to work with Curtis students a while back and they gushed to me about how exciting the students were because of their combination of skills and enthusiasm. When I asked them what they expected, they said, “Well, I guess we didn’t quite know. Maybe a little arrogance? Disdain for new music?” Ha, I guess that’s why they hired me??

What was it like to go to Curtis? I get this question a lot, and my answer is that it was a kind of musical utopia.  And by that I mean I was in a very tightly-knit community where everyone shared the same passion. There was mutual respect all around because we knew what it took just to get admitted to the school.  We lived and breathed music and didn’t really have to worry about much else. And while it was heavy on the big B composers (Beethoven, Bach, Brahms), Curtis introduced me to The Death of Klinghoffer,The Rake’s Progress, and The Rape of Lucretia, as well as young composers whom I’m working with now.

I’d be lying if it didn’t sometimes feel insular and narrow-minded. Everyone knew your name, everyone also knew your business, and there was no getting away from that. Sometimes I wished I was walking into an art history class instead of counterpoint.  (By the way, they do have art history, but I came to Curtis with most of my credits already fulfilled). I’d definitely be lying if I said the echoes of all the great musicians that had tromped through its halls wasn’t overwhelming. I mean, Hilary Hahn, Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, Jonathan Biss – not to mention the principals of any given section of top tier orchestras in the nation – and these are just the superstars that are my age. Walking down the hallways of Curtis, you see old class pictures of Barber and Menotti, and practice rooms named after Zimbalist and Horszowski. True, there are no nuclear physicists or poet laureates, but Curtis sure does know how to churn out some amazing musicians.

Here’s my dirty little secret. If you had asked me right when I entered Curtis what my ideal career would be, I would have said that I wanted a career performing solo.  After graduating from Curtis, this changed dramatically. I had been introduced to chamber music on a level I never before experienced, and to musicians with wonderfully diverse and fulfilling careers I never imagined possible. By the time I finished my Master’s at Juilliard, I wanted a career in chamber music, and I wanted to teach at Curtis. Of those two things, I thought the latter was impossible. But here I am, not even seven years out of Curtis, getting ready to go back. True, I never thought it would be with eighth blackbird and a new music directive, but I can only control my dreams so far. It speaks to just how much change has occurred at Curtis since I left. It seems that the Curtis I knew has launched itself with great aplomb into not just a new decade, but a new era, with brand new buildings, a brand new president, much greater visibility and national presence through Curtis on Tour. Even though I may not recognize my old school, somehow I know it’ll feel like coming home.

Needless to say, I had to get over this. Playing chamber music meant I couldn’t avoid writing all over my parts, and I would often try to find old scores so some of the work was already done for me (haven’t gotten over the laziness). In fact, this became one of my favorite pastimes at the Curtis library. On the back page of every score was the library log, where I would find signatures of old friends who had graduated as well as those of luminaries such as the Guarneri quartet when they were students. Looking at those parts was like excavating an archeological site: layer upon layer of people’s markings, sometimes erased and sometimes just written over, directions and warnings, people’s names or initials as cues, difficult passages marked to practice later, a coach’s note scribbled in the margin. Often I could figure out the personnel of a quartet by looking at just one part.

Three years in an opera job, however, put me out of practice. Cueing was largely unnecessary because of the conductor, and marking up a part was a delicate matter because your markings could easily derail your stand partner if they had practiced a different fingering. And if your stand partner wasn’t annoyed, the librarian was because she had to erase all the parts at the end of the run. I mostly stopped marking parts except during rehearsal. So when I joined eighth blackbird, I had a bit of a shock. Most of the parts they gave me had already been marked by Matt Albert, my predecessor. Simply looking at the amount of cueing made me dizzy. I asked for clean parts, putting his aside because I thought he was crazy. But at the first rehearsal, I quickly realized my rookie mistake. Not only was it not obvious when to come in after two measures of rest in 4/4, it was damn near impossible. I started playing off Matt’s parts immediately.

Six months into this job, I sometimes spend more time preparing my parts than I do practicing them before the first rehearsal. More often than not, this involves a certain degree of arts and crafts, for which purpose I have invested in a good paper cutter, hole-punch, and an array of colored pencils and highlighters. We also have amassed a collective first aid kit for parts on the road: I keep hole reinforcers in my binder, Lisa has sticky labels for piano prep, Nick has scotch tape in his bag, and Matthew always has a little pouch filled with highlighters and pencils. After accidentally leaving my part to Double Sextet at home, I adopted the binder system that Nick, Tim, and Michael use. Everything we’re playing goes in the binder so I don’t forget anything. This means that I have to photocopy all my parts, sometimes reducing odd-sized parts so they fit. While I’m doing this I figure out difficult page turns, cutting and pasting and attaching fold-outs. My binder itself involves fold-out wings cut from a sacrificial binder attached with gaff tape. By the way, if there’s one thing that could get you off a desert island, it would be gaff tape.

Anything goes. Some of the stuff we play is so over or under-marked by the composer that a great deal of work is required to make the part playable. It’s fascinating how different this is for everyone and I’m always asking to see people’s parts so I can steal their ideas.

extreme highlighting

extreme shrinkage

 

Adam Marks of Fifth House Ensemble has gone completely digital, playing off an iPad connected to an Airturn foot pedal for turning pages. Here’s a video of the Airturn in action, and no, it’s not a joke. I have played recitals with the guy narrating the video.

While this adds to my ever-expanding love for the iPad, I admit it makes me nervous. I’ve already had my music binder fall off my stand in the middle of a piece (luckily it was Music in Similar Motion and my part was covered by everyone else) so even if I could coordinate myself well enough to use the foot pedal while standing, I don’t think I could take the stress of the possibility of the music disappearing on me due to power glitches. Call me a Luddite, but I’ll stick with old-fashioned paper and pencil for now.

Part 1:

Part 2:

You can find out more about Andrew and his work here.

What we don’t quite accept is that this leads to a fair amount of injury. There’s a great deal of avoidance of the topic, as if it might be cancer or mental illness. In conservatory, getting injured is viewed as a consequence of improper technique. In the professional world, it is seen as a career-killer. This stigma on playing-related injuries is apparent in the strange and alternative ways we often deal with them. Where an injured athlete would seek a sports-medicine doctor or physical therapist, a musician will enlist the help of an acupuncturist or a Reiki practitioner.

My own journey on the violin and piano has involved a good bit of pain and injury. I ignored an injury to my right hand, practicing through the pain until I couldn’t use my hand for six months. In college my left shoulder became so inflamed that I couldn’t even touch it without searing pain. Two months after joining the opera orchestra in DC, I had to have cortisone shots in my neck and shoulder to keep playing.

I’ve had years of Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, acupuncture, and yes, even Reiki. I’ve also endured electric shock therapy (just on my arm) and plenty of psychotherapy. For a long time I was convinced that I was doing something fundamentally wrong on the violin. I would compare myself to so-and-so, who has never been injured – what does he know that I don’t? No shoulder rest, a higher shoulder rest, wrist vibrato, arm vibrato, higher chinrest, flatter chinrest – I tried every combination possible and spent a lot of time and money in my search for the Holy Grail of injury-prevention.

my collection of chinrests and shoulder rests

The lesson I’ve learned through all this is that there are two truths that we must face.

Truth #1: it’s possible to do everything right and still get injured. Playing an instrument is athletic, and spending many hours a day doing it is tough on muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

Truth #2: what I do with my body when I’m not practicing is almost more important than what I do while practicing.

After all, I really only practice for a couple hours a day. I spend a lot more time slumped in front of the computer. Even so, I treat my body as an athlete would. The better shape my entire body is in, the better able I am to deal with the demands of playing the violin. This is working so far. Strength training keeps my shoulder girdle and back strong so things stay in the right place whether I’m playing violin or checking my email. And when something hurts, I treat it and stop using it if need be.

my pain treatment arsenal

Have I stopped searching for the Holy Grail? Of course not. Even though I’m not in pain now, I just started seeing a chiropractor three times a week. I’ve ditched my shoulder rest and am currently trying out an arsenal of chinrests loaned to me by the violin setup guru Andrew McCann, who uses a custom chinrest built for him.

Andrew's monolithic chinrest

I might get one built for myself. But I’m no longer under any illusions that a certain chinrest or shoulder rest is the key to never getting injured. While I can make playing the violin more comfortable to a point, I accept that it is inherently an awkward endeavor – the only magic fix is to quit.

My curiosity got the better of me and I kidnapped Kurt, Andy, and Eric during the workshops for a little chat.  (If you’re wondering why there’s a soap dispenser in the background, that’s because the only space we could find was inside a small dressing room next to the toilet.) Unsurprisingly, they were all charming and intelligent, but as different from each other as their pieces were.

Okay, that’s a lie. That’s what I want people to think of me.  That’s what I’d like to think of myself. The truth is, I have immense shame about my lily-livered quitting nature. From a very young age, my mother has admonished me for quitting:

“You always give up so soon! I hate quitters!”

My mom’s right.  She especially likes to tell the story of how I would have quit the violin if it weren’t for her, and now I’m a musician. (Actually, I’m only a musician because I gave up on studying for the SATs.) When I was around twelve years old, I begged tearfully to quit the violin.  My mother, seeing my tragic flaw rearing its ugly head, repeatedly refused. When I persisted, she said I could quit only if I also quit the piano. That gave me pause, because I loved piano. But after some thought, I decided to take her up on her offer, only to discover that it had expired.  I imagined myself the victim of unspeakable abuse and spent the rest of my adolescence punishing her in my head. That might be the only thing I haven’t quit.

As fate would have it, I ended up developing a deep love for the violin, and made the choice to quit piano in my sophomore year at conservatory. Most recently, I quit my job as Assistant Concertmaster of the Washington National Opera in order to join eighth blackbird. This job was supposedly the culmination of all my efforts: a title position that paid the bills, that my mother could brag about, and that didn’t demand very much of my time or energy. I lived in a great city, had a nice condo, boyfriend with a dog, dinner parties with friends. Why would I want to quit?

Recently I listened to a Freakonomics podcast with the same title as this post.  I knew the title was provocatively spun in the way health and fitness magazines cover titles often are (Lose your gut while drinking all the beer you want!), but I was curious anyway.   Perhaps I would find some rationale for my lack of perseverance, some brilliant psychological advantage it gave me.  The first segment was a story about a woman who left a desk job earning $70k for a life as a high-end prostitute making over $300k.  Then there was a statistic about minor league baseball players earning 40% less 10 years after high school than those who never pursued baseball.  At the very least, quitting was looking like the smart thing to do if you cared about your bank account.

When I agreed to audition for eighth blackbird, Nick asked to have a conversation with me over the phone.  He asked me repeatedly why I would even consider quitting my cushy opera job – didn’t I know that I would be working much more and making less? Plus there was no guarantee in this quasi-freelance world.  Was I in a relationship? I’d never see my partner. Planning to have children? I’d better think twice. He seemed to be trying to scare me out of auditioning.  He might as well have offered me money not to audition, which, according to the Freakonomics podcast, is exactly what Zappos.com does.  One week into their employee training session, they make an offer: $3,000 to anyone who wants to quit, no strings attached.  Surprisingly, only 10% of trainees take Zappos up on this offer, even though it represents two months of pay at $11/hr.  When asked why they turned down the money, the trainees said,

“This job is worth a million dollars.”

Bring in the expert, please.  He (Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist) says, “This is about cognitive dissonance.  If you’ve acted in a certain way, over time you’re going to overly justify your behavior.” Meaning, once you’ve turned down the money, you’re going find all sorts of reasons to love your job. We like to suffer, and if we suffer for something, we will decide we love it.  If you think this is crazy, think about fraternities, the military, sports teams, religious cults – they all use this tactic. By the way, this segment ends with one trainee taking the money because she thought Zappos was too cult-like. The afore-mentioned prostitute ends up quitting her lucrative lifestyle because she falls in love. The whole podcast ends with two women who have finally quit their cultish religions to lead normal lives.

Oops.  Is it possible that I have joined some sort of new-music cult? Maybe I should have listened to this podcast before I quit my job, although I’m probably even more confused about quitting than before. Sometimes we don’t quit soon enough, sometimes we quit too soon. You can’t tell which is which until after you’ve made your decision. Whatever the case, it’s too late for me. I’m deep into my decision to join eighth blackbird and now I’m going to find all the reasons why it’s the right one.  I don’t have to look very hard.  I get to vote on what we play. I get to be onstage instead of in a pit. I no longer have to wear all black. I get to play viola — wait a minute…

(Pictured: Tim Munro, composer Andy Akiho, and Michael Maccaferri, during rehearsals for last night’s performance)

Last night the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, hosted the final round of eighth blackbird’s first composition competition.

The performance was the culmination of a year-long process. An initial pool of 504 applicants was winnowed to three finalists, who were each given a cash prize and invited to write a work for eighth blackbird. These three new works were workshopped in an intense, two-day period earlier this week. Last night saw the public premiere of the three pieces, in front of a crowd that included representatives of the competition’s generous partners, MakeMusic and the American Composers Forum.

The following works were performed last night:

Andy Akiho ERASE for sextet (2011)
Eric Lindsay Town’s Gonna Talk for sextet (2011)
Kurt Rohde this bag is not a toy: a very short concerto for mixed ensemble without orchestra for sextet (2011)

Andy Akiho’s work, ERASE, was chosen as the overall winner. He receives an additional cash award and the promise of a future performance by eighth blackbird of the winning work. You can watch videos taken during rehearsals of Andy’s piece here and here.