Playing on the Point

Sometimes you just have to paddle faster!

2011-08-30T22:59:00.001-07:00

A few days ago I was talking to my friend Robert about how much we enjoyed our first trip to Alaska this summer. He proceeded to tell me about this kayaker who inadvertently became dangerously close to becoming a cracker for this whale's kelp dip. It got me thinking about how most of the big stresses that overtake me in life get most of their intense energy from their inherent "surprise" factor. However, in spite of my adrenal surges, to everyone else involved the "whales" in my life are really not so surprising. Truthfully, it is quite miraculous that there is so much smooth water for most of my paddling day after day. Still "kelp" happens and there are those times when we simply need to paddle faster.

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Reclaiming the territory

2011-08-30T04:05:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of my studio after the piano was moved in earlier this summer. I am still putting things back into order, but it is a glorious space in which to work. It seems as if I have been throwing things away all summer and there is still too much "stuff" for the space. This week I am working on Beethoven op. 81a and some pieces by Griffes. Oh yeah, school starts today, too.

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Parting Thoughts to My Graduating Students

2011-05-04T14:30:00.001-07:00

As a rule, people don't ask me to give commencement addresses, homecoming speeches or to speak at formal convocations. But if they did, this is the kind of thing I would say. . .

Read at least one book that changes your life every year (or, at least has the potential to do so). This could be something by Dostoyevsky or something a bit more serious like, Snorkeling for Dummies.
Every so often learn to do something new that is hard. Remember how to be a beginner.
Teach something to somebody else who really needs your help, if and when they ask, the rest of the time, not so much.
After you are 35, listen to music you cared about 20 years earlier. And even more importantly, remember why it mattered.
Invest yourself in people and causes that you care about passionately. Bind yourself to these with all the heart you can muster.
Keep a journal or notebook so you can write down things you think matter: ideas, things you want to do, song lyrics, drink recipes, phone numbers, etc.
Collect interesting stuff, sea shells, old cameras or wood carvings.
Wear clean underwear most days. (If you are male, wear underwear most days.)
Get over yourself; allow your screwy habits and failures to make you interesting, rather than living in denial.
Do what you are good at; it is usually what you love doing.

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A Backward Glance at 2010

2011-01-02T08:58:00.001-08:00

Today I was reading a post in Seth Godin's blog where he posed the question: What did you ship in 2010? (read it here)

In response to the question I have compiled this short list of highlights from my year.

Performed a recital to celebrate Chopin's 200th anniversary recital at PLNU the Preludes Op. 28 (complete)
Recorded and launched Garden Music CD with a great release concert featuring a jazz quartet. Thanks so much to John Reynolds, Nate Hubbard and Doug Welcome for making the music so much fun to play. I think a sequel is in the works for later in spring of 2011
Presented two lecture-recital programs in honor of the Chopin and Schumann Bicentennial celebrations for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the UCSD campus. I will be returning to Osher in June 2011 to play an All-Beethoven program with violinist, Philip Tyler
Played for the first time on Chamber Music at Cuyamaca College with Päivikki Nykter and Cecilia Kim, and enjoyed the Mendelssohn D minor Trio. What great performance partnersand what a great venue!
Played a solo recital with music form the Chiaroscuro CD and presented two workshops (Beginning Improvisation for Clssical Pianists and Performing with Poise) as part of Piano Discoveries Camp at the University of Mississippi
Directed the 12th annual Point Loma Keyboard Institute on the PLNU campus
Sent my 2^nd son to college in August, the house now feels much emptier
Played music from the Garden Music CD at the Kenyon Organics Tomato Tasting Party in Salt Lake City
Played a solo recital at Master’s College with music from Chiaroscuro and Garden Music CDs
Gave a Schumann lecture and Masterclass to Presto Piano Group of San Diego
Played a sonata recital with violinist, Päivikki Nykter, on the PLNU Cultural Events series with music of Janacek, Nietszche and Magnard. What a privilege to play with such an extraordinary artist and such unusual repertoire!
Presented a Schumann lecture at Ambrose University in Calgary, AB, and enjoyed the first blizzard of their season!
Played the Schumann Piano Concerto with PLNU Chamber Orchestra. What a treat to play this great music with our students and it was a great way to finish the year.

Over the past few weeks I have been reflecting upon these things and making plans for projects to come. There has been a lot to celebrate this year, and I am not always good about acknowleging when things work out well. Along the way, I also learned several lessons for improving my work so that I can do some things better the next time around. At present, I am in the middle of crafting a paralel list of things that I hope to deliver in 2011. In a few days I will be posting it here as a way to keep myself accountable over the coming months.

I would really enjoy hearing about your celebrations and lessons from 2010 and you dreams for 2011, so send me your lists and comments when you have a minute.

Many thanks to Erica Sipes who shared an interesting New York Times op ed piece from Oliver Sacks about a different kind of New Year's resolution. To read it cick here

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Back At It Again

2011-01-01T17:10:00.001-08:00

About six months ago I abandoned my blogging habit to focus upon some other things, such as summer vacation and sending our second son to college. At the time I was also finishing a semester-long sabbatical and the re-entry process was a bit more daunting than I had anticipated. As the calendar page has turned and there seems to be a natural punctuation mark in my life’s narrative, I have decided to get back into the habit of writing here on a more-or-less regular basis.

During my sabbatical leave of spring 2010 I posted some 60 odd entries to this blog, and the response generated was very gratifying to say the least. Many friends sent flattering comments about my writing, and I have been pleased to learn that some of my ideas resonated in helpful ways. Probably the most useful thing about this little writing habit of mine is that it provides a level of accountability for me with people who support my work.

So, in this first posting on the first day of a new year, please let me know if you have ideas about where you would like me to explore with my writing. At this point I expect to spend some time thinking more deeply about material from my Performing with Poise workshops. Also, I am always interested in exploring ways that musicians can build lives that are viable both artistically and financially.

Please leave comments here, by e-mail or connect with me through social media. I would love to hear from you so we can learn from each other.

All the best for 2011!

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Schumann on Bastille Day

2010-07-14T14:58:00.001-07:00

It's July 14, so it is time to celebrate Bastille Day. It is also the Schumann bicentennial. In a rare confluence of thought I was reminded today of this well known lied that incorporates the "Marseillaise" in its closing lines.

Here is a wonderful video of Darnell Ishamael singing Robert Schumann's Die Beiden Grenadiere op. 49 No. 1

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All Children are Artists

2010-07-14T09:35:00.001-07:00

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.

Madeleine L’engle in Walking on Water

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Searching for Ithaca

2010-07-05T10:39:00.001-07:00

This morning I was catching up on reading the odds and ends that had accumulated in my inbox over the holiday weekend when I came upon this poem posted on Chris Guillebeau's blog the Art of NonConformity Cavafy's verses have been favorites of mine ever since my mentor, Dan Bredeman, shared them with me years ago at a time when my impatience with life was limiting my progress.

Searching for Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon — do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

-Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

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Feux d'Artifice

2010-07-03T19:43:00.001-07:00

In honor of the United State's annual Independence day celebration I share with you a decidely French musical celebration. Debussy's Feux d'Artifice from Preludes book 2 remains a perennial favorite for its pianistic brilliance and colorful depiction of a fireworks display.

Enjoy this a brilliant performance by Hoang Pham, from the Hilton Head International Piano Competition in 2008.

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Evelyn Glennie on Listening

2010-07-03T05:55:00.001-07:00

Yesterday a Twitter friend posted this link to a fabulous video that I had
forgotten about. The message would be profound on its own, but it is all
the more remarkable coming from a member of the deaf community. Oh, and by
the way, the performances are absolutely stunning.

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Summertime and the blogging is . . .

2010-07-02T19:56:00.001-07:00

Well, I wish I could say this was easy.

For several weeks I have been resolving to get back into my writing routine with more or less regular postings. With the July 4 weekend and the official onset of summer, I am without excuse so here I am with humble “I’m back message.” It has been a wild and wooly year so far, with the release of the Garden Music CD, some exciting collaborative projects with new partners that took me in new directions, and some great playing and teaching opportunities in various parts of the country.

I must express my deepest thanks to those of you who are so kind to say that you read these entries and find them useful or at least entertaining. The new academic year promises to be exciting with performances of Schumann (both in recital and with orchestra) and some lesser known chamber music by Janacek, Magnard, Weill and others.

So wherever you find yourself this weekend, keep listening and savor the juicy moments that make life worth living.

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Raising the Horizon Line Once Again

2010-05-09T21:57:00.001-07:00

This poor blog has been scandalously neglected over the past few weeks as I have been pouring my energy and attention into some very satisfying performance projects. However, this evening I have come to a spot in the calendar where I am not performing again for a few weeks. With this pause in my routine I have opportunity to assess where I am, what I have accomplished, and what I truly want to do next.

Every so often my life seems to come to one of these moments that I describe as punctuation marks; where there seems to be an actual or a metaphorical corner to turn, where it seems obvious that I am moving from one season to another, or that my energy is shifting from one focus to another. While it is certainly tempting to overdramatize these moments, there are certainly occasions when my circumstances serve to remind me that the most serious limitations upon my life and work are my own thoughts, attitudes and beliefs. Today I am encouraging myself to raise my eyes a little higher on the horizon, to see out a little farther, and to imagine bigger things.

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On Making Music with Your Friends

2010-04-14T17:46:00.001-07:00

This afternoon I rehearsed with a singer who has been a friend of mine for a long time, but we have never performed together before, at least that I can remember. We are putting a concert together in a few days that we will perform as part of a festival where we are both adjudicating and coaching. Sometimes first rehearsals are erribly unsettling for me as I need to figure out how people work and think about things, but today it was such a treat to simply make music together. While we had both performed most of the music chosen for the program on other occasions with other partners, it was surprising to me how little explanation was necessary. We simply checked tempi a few times and then the music happened almost without effort. There are precious few fringe benefits that come with aging, but for musicians, a few decades of accumulated experience can go a long way. Today, I simply savored the privilege of making great music in collaboration with a good friend.

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The Roller Coaster of Creative Work

2010-04-13T22:55:00.001-07:00

This week I delivered a new recording to the manufacturer for replication. My CD release event is scheduled for May 9 in San Diego, and if all goes according to plan I will have a product ready to distribute by then. All told this particular process has been a little more intense than some of my prior projects because I have imposed some more stringent deadlines on myself to produce the recording quickly. All told, from conception to completion the recording took about a month to complete, and by the time it shipped I felt absolutely drained.

Recently, it was pointed out to me that I tend to work in spurts of manic productivity followed by lulls of recovery. This sort of creative bipolar condition sounds horrible to me when I hear it described, but undeniably this is my customary pattern. Intellectually, it seems that it would be so much better to work more steadily and incrementally, with a predictable routine progressing sanely from day to day. While I hold this notion as an idealized objective, it simply has not been born out in my daily experience.

My projects consume me, in every sense of the word, leading me melt down into an inert puddle after the immediate project at hand is finished. It usually takes a few days before I fully regain consciousness, and then I start the process all over again. Well I am exaggerating a bit, but that makes for a better story. Still, I find the cyclic rhythm of my work very curious. I certainly value the idea of workman-like discipline, where regularly measured steps advance the work little by little, and that is how things typically start out for me. But then something takes over, the muse descends and then my manic side takes control leading to a frenzied episode of crazy-making energy.

Not that I am complaining. It's just curious to notice.

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Otherwise Sharing

2010-04-13T00:39:00.001-07:00

Today I was catching up on some reading and was startled to find that a writer I admire had posted a poem by another writer (now deceased), whom I also admire greatly. The poem had touched me very deeply when I read it for the first time more than 10 years ago. It always surprises me to learn that someone else shares my taste in anything. That even though we read the same poem in very different places, separated by long stretches of time, we both shared our deeply personal reaction to the poet's words written at yet another time and place. The poem dealt with the finite nature of existence and how we need to savor the good of life while we can. My reconnecting with the poem reminded me of how easy it is to believe the lie that our modern lives are spent in isolation. We can be tempted to think that no one outside or our own skin could ever think or feel what we do. This leads us either into the hubris of thinking our stuff is so much deeper or better than everyone else’s, or conversely that we are frauds and the outside world just hasn’t caught on yet.

Earlier today I was speaking to a group of university music students about the importance living into one’s own personal narrative—that it was a dangerous thing to attempt to make your life conform to some external pattern as if there was some map to follow. I suggested that the language we use to talk about who we are, and what we do reveals tremendous insights into what drives our behavior.

During my interactions with the class, a student in the room said he was terribly afraid of sounding “arrogant” when he talked about his musical work. He was inquiring honestly and I had to stall for a moment to collect some better wisdom before I answered him. A moment later, I explained that the difference for me was found in the motivation of our work as musicians. Are we posing to prove how good, talented or adequate we are? Or, are we motivated to serve the people who listen to our music by nudging them toward a deeper understanding of our common existence. I like to think that my best playing can open people to thoughts and emotions that they might not have otherwise. But as I tried to explain to the questioner, ultimately it’s not about me. The big idea is how the music enriches people who listen, by nudging them into thinking and feeling things that they would not otherwise know.

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Garden Music CD available soon!

2010-04-08T07:04:00.001-07:00

Just a quick update. . . here is the album cover and another sample MP3 from the new recording.

Rosemary by Paul Kenyon, Piano
Download now or listen on posterous

Rosemary.mp3 (2557 KB)

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Music for Easter Morning

2010-03-31T03:25:00.001-07:00

Morning Has Broken by Paul Kenyon, Piano
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Morning Has Broken.mp3 (2346 KB)

I have been traveling this week and have not had opportunity to write as much as I wanted while away. Here is a selection from my forthcoming CD Garden Music. This is my own arrangement of the traditional Gaelic hymn tune, "Morning Has Broken."

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Are you listening?

2010-03-26T20:30:00.001-07:00

Earlier today I posted most of this post as a comment in response to blog written by Dan Kreider about how we are losing the ability to truly listen. Please read the original article here because it is wonderfully written and expresses some truly valuable ideas. I want to express again my appreciation for this pertinent reminder to savor the ability to listen for the blessing it truly is.

Mr. Kreider’s blog also prompted me to share a personal illustration that happened to me 5 days ago, when a group of about 16 music lovers was gathered at a friend’s home. We are a collection of pianists, some professionals but most amateur practitioners, who gather once each month to play for each other and enjoy musical conversation. Our host chose to finish the performance time with a rendition of the Liszt Sonata and it was a deeply personal reading of a transcendent musical work. When George had finished playing, I was astonished to notice that the woman sitting on my right was overcome by the music to the point of tears. Another friend on my left was also visibly touched and moved by the music he had just heard. After the applause died away both of my companions confessed that they had never heard this music played “live” before and that they were overcome by the experience.

As I took this all in I was humbled to realize that while I had been “listening” to the performance after a fashion, but I had not had the deep immersion experience that these friends had just enjoyed. I expect that some days are just better than others, and there are times when we are more tuned in to deeper meanings of the music around us. Still, I think that we forfeit so much when we assume an air of entitlement or “taking it for granted” when listening to the amazing wealth of timeless music that is so readily available to us each day. I continue to be grateful for this “wake-up call” to choose to listen deeply when we have opportunity.

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Download a Sneak Preview of my Garden Music CD

2010-03-26T16:37:00.001-07:00

Ivy by Paul Kenyon, Piano
Download now or listen on posterous

Ivy.mp3 (1691 KB)

My new CD, Garden Music should be available very soon. There are just a few last minute graphic design details to finish and then it will be sent off for manufacturing.

This is an original composition called "Ivy" that attempts to depict the steadfast persitance of vines climbing on a wall against all odds.

I would love to hear your comments about the music.

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Stop it!

2010-03-25T17:29:00.001-07:00

Charrise McCrorey shared this hilarious video with me earlier this week.

Words to live by!

Next?

2010-03-17T21:17:00.001-07:00

This afternoon while in the car, my daughter and I were comparing notes about our schedules and performance commitments. (She is dancer and I am a pianist.) As we talked, we laughed about the way performers focus obsessively on upcoming performances, with so much adrenaline and so little time. When I asked about a show that she is scheduled to dance later this spring, she answered that since her company was in the throes of last minute preparations for a production set to open soon, no one was thinking about the May performance just yet.

After a lull in the conversation she made an amazing observation. She said, “I never realized before that we don’t have a synonym for the word “next.” We talked around the idea for a while and I concluded that she was probably correct. A quick check of some reference sources confirmed that while there are English words and expressions that loosely convey the idea of proximate order in a sequence, none carries quite the same meaning as “next.”

If Inuit peoples allegedly have so many different words to illustrate nuanced descriptions of “snow,” then why do we not have a few more words to talk the idea of “next” as our immediate focus or impending priority? For example, we don’t have a distinct word for a “next” that gives pleasure. Nor do we have a word for a “next” that makes us apprehensive. We don’t even have a word for “almost next” unless you really want to use the word “penultimate.” In my humble opinion, I think this would be a fruitful field of investigation for aspiring linguists and word mavens.

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Morning Prayer of St. Patrick

2010-03-17T07:49:00.001-07:00

I arise today
through the strength of heaven,
light of the sun,
radiance of the moon,
splendor of fire,
speed of lightning,
swiftness of the wind,
depth of the sea,
stability of the earth,
firmness of the rock.

I arise today
through God's strength to pilot me,
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's hosts to save me
from the snares of the devil,
from everyone who desires me ill,
afar and near,
alone or in a multitude.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

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Gratitude

2010-03-15T21:43:00.001-07:00

This morning I was overwhelmed by the this view of the ocean from South
Mission Beach. Inspiration can come from many sources but the simple
beauty of this quiet moment transcended words. The least I could do is to
share this with you.

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Be Focused

2010-03-14T20:33:00.001-07:00

One of the traits most frequently identified as a hallmark of successful people is the ability to focus on desired objectives long enough to achieve desired results. It is also a curious thing to notice that really creative people often have trouble with staying on task long enough to see the results they envision. For many, concentration becomes a process of trying to narrow one’s vision and closing ourselves off to outside information because we are afraid of being distracted. At its worst this manifests in obsessive adherence to repetitive practices that may have nothing to do with the results we are trying to achieve. Often disciplined focus shows up as a “no pain/no gain” approach that does not foster inspiration, and may cause far more harm than good, either in the form of physical injuries or as crises of confidence.

So how do you learn to keep your eye on the ball anyway? At first glance it would seem that staying focused is essentially a question of concentration and trying harder. As a student I often found myself frustrated with trying to measure up to the ideal of fixing my mind on a specific target without wavering. I just don’t seem to be wired that way. To the degree that I try to focus my mind on object “A,” the more objects “B” and “C” become increasingly fascinating. The odd thing is that when I stop fighting the urge to notice the items that are “not important” in the moment, often there is a bigger pattern or truth that emerges. Usually this more diffused view ends up yielding a much more valuable “big picture” concept than would have come from remaining doggedly attuned to the “micro” level details.

While developing a wholesome self-discipline is certainly an important part of becoming a grown-up, I think there are some significant flaws in the way most have learned to think about the ideas of focus and concentration. In my teaching I often ask my students to treat themselves in the same way that they would treat a wonderfully talented child. If you have spent any time with a person under that age of 8 recently, you will have an appreciation for the creative potential of curious questioning. Most of us recognize the flitting from topic to topic and the disparate combining of seemingly unconnected notions as a normal part of children’s learning. Ordinarily we tolerate the random questions and we are gentle in the way we lead kids back to the task at hand.

In contrast, if you were to honestly listen to the inner dialogue you engage in during you daily work, would you be comfortable using those same messages in conversation with another person, let alone a child you cared for deeply? While focus is certainly a tremendously valuable asset, it is much more a process than a destination. I believe that nurturing your own sense of wonder and curiosity about your daily work process is probably the most important thing you can do in the service of developing your own creative potential. As you notice yourself making room for the “bright sparkly bits” that captivate your attention in ways that threaten veer you off of your expected path, look to see if a bigger, more expansive view can actually deepen your focus on the thing you were trying to achieve in the first place.

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Piano Recall (spoof)

2010-03-14T18:44:00.001-07:00

Yamaha recalled 20,000 pianos due to pedals sticking, causing pianists to
play faster than normal, causing dangerous accidentals. The sticky pedals
make it hard to come to a stop at the end of a piece~very risky for
audiences. The accidentals have caused no deafs. Analysts see a damper on
the bass market and ask if sales can sustain. Congress is calling the
President of Yamaha to ask when they learned of the treble.
(Humor stolen from Yvonne Marie Glass without permission)

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Be Visionary

2010-03-08T19:42:00.001-08:00

The ability to imagine a potential future that has never yet existed is a wonderful trait. I am talking about being able to “think things up” in ways that have never been tried before. Children seem to come from the womb with this capacity hard wired into their essential natures. But then all too soon something happens as most of us mature, and the world around us squelches that imaginative vision. The result is that we become much better at seeing limitations than opportunities, challenges and obstacles rather than rewards and clear pathways.

In her classic book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards explains how most adults’ artistic abilities are frozen in time at some point in elementary school. She explains that our ability to draw accurately or expressively typically stagnates at the point when our critical abilities overtake our artistic skill development. The tragedy is that along with our artistic skills, we usually begin a lifelong pattern of denigrating our inborn capacities to envision new possibilities. As I work with university students, it is tragically common to hear them say something like, “I am just not creative.”

The biggest lie of the “I’m not creative” myth is that most people are incredibly adept at imagining negative possibilities. In my experience, most of us can think of horrific scenarios that might happen if the wrong sequence of circumstances happened to befall us. Chicken Little ain’t got nothing on me, that’s for sure.

What if for just one day you made a different choice? Could we imagine it better? How else could events unfold? What if the story took a different turn? Then that would be visionary.

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Get Connected

2010-03-08T09:27:00.001-08:00

Creative work demands a curious balance between solitude and socialization. The nature of my work as a pianist requires that I spend significant amounts of time in a room alone with my instrument removed from human contact. During these working hours I interact with the composers whose music I am studying. They speak to me through the notes they have written and the encoded messages that they have left on the printed pages of musical scores. But this is not what most people would think of as social interaction. Rehearsing for performances has many intrinsic rewards but it can be a lonesome process at times. Then there are other days when I crave solitude, especially when my schedule has been overfilled with teaching or speaking commitments, or if I have been travelling more than I like, or if I have been pressed to attend one too many committee meetings. While I am careful to feed and acknowledge my inner hermit, I know that this cannot be my normal condition. For my work to have any significance or value it needs to be shared with others, and that requires that I connect with a larger community.

Marketing literature is filled with clichés about how each of us has a circle of personal contacts that, on average, total about 250 different people. Typically these relationships vary in their degree of intimacy, but most people can generate a surprisingly long list of acquaintances that they know in some substantive way, and who are not just names on list. Too often we fail to see the size and quality of our personal networks until we need to leverage the list in order to sell a product, to solicit help in finding a new job, or to sell their candy for our kid’s little league fundraiser. When we fail to connect with other people, we impoverish ourselves. If you are like me at all, too often we tell ourselves the lie that we are alone in the world and no one understands what we are trying to do in life. The best remedy for this tendency toward self-pitying victimhood is to get busy connecting to other people, and not just in a “hey, how are you?” kind of way. Instead, the magic formula seems to be to ask, “How can I make this person’s situation substantially better?” Or maybe not just better, but what would make things far better than they ever expected or imagined.

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This, not That

2010-03-04T21:42:00.001-08:00

So much of our everyday thinking centers upon the things we need to do each day. As an experiment, I have been intentionally thinking about how I want to be as I move through my day. Especially in the face of encounters that make me nervous or fearful, this week I am trying to adopt the following list of qualities as a series of “better choices.”

When I am at my best I choose to be. . .

· Connected, not isolated

· Visionary, not limiting possibilities

· Thriving, not withering

· Articulate, not mumbling

· Decisive, not waffling

· Focused, not distracted

· Present to reality, not in denial

· Indomitable, not succumbing

· Energized, not weary

· Poised, not wobbly

This list was generated as a set of responses to Map #3 in Michael Bungay Stanier’s new book, Do More Great Work. While the formula is not magical producing instantaneous results, I have found myself manfesting more of my desired qualities as I have made a conscious effort to think about it.

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I am a Tech Immigrant

2010-02-21T20:13:00.001-08:00

My laptop has developed an annoying idiosyncrasy in the last week. It seems to like connecting to the web via Wi-Fi in the vast majority of situations and conditions where I need it to work, that is until I try to use it from home. From time to time it simply won't connect using the Wi-Fi network at my house. My techie friends roll their eyes and then patiently roll out elegant explanations of why this is happening and then offer solutions as to how to remedy the problem. My favorite is from one of my own offspring who will remain anonymous despite my funding of his college degree in computer science, who prefaces his comments with. . ."I'm not really a hardware guy, I usually only deal with programming code." Some time later his remarks conclude with the words, "buy a new router." And of course, the arcane incantation or metaphysical rant that was spoken during the space in between these two endpoints induced a narcoleptic reaction in me that rendered me comatose and made it impossible for me to remember anything said in between. While, I know that there is a solution to my laptop's aversion to social interaction that will probably not require extensive therapy or a religious conversion, it has prompted me to think about the ways technology effects my work life.

Several months ago a friend of mine commented to me that in terms of computers, the web and other technical wonders that have emerged during our adult lives; we are immigrants while our children are native citizens. My friend and I are both older than 45, and it is still possible for us to remember a world without e-mail and cell phones. She observed that we generally enjoy using new tools, especially when they work, but we freak out a lot more intensely than they do when a gadget doesn’t work. As immigrants, we are never quite “at home” with the new technology that surrounds us. When things don’t work smoothly, our tendency is to fear that we have done something irrevocably wrong and that we will never get the misbehaving device to conform to our wishes. Whereas, younger people tend to understand that it is the nature of machines to malfunction. Most gadgets have steeper than expected learning curves, and they tend to deliver something less than nirvana that was advertised in the hype prompting their purchase. Even so we look endlessly to these new toys for deliverance from our daily grind, or at least to make some piece of it a little bit easier.

So what does this mean, really? I still have lots of friends who seem to live with a deep seated belief that technology will save us yet. They are always looking for the newest wrinkle in software innovation or the latest greatest bright shiny object. Just dip a finger into the online buzz about Apple’s new I-pad™ or Google’s Buzz™ and you can see how hungry that segment of the population is for anything that feels like innovation. It doesn’t seem to matter if the thing works or not, just let it be something new and exciting. Others in my circle have decided that they just aren’t going to try to keep up anymore. They aren’t really Luddites who are ready to go back to the horse and buggy, but they have seen the pace of change and have decided they have done all they are going to do.

Me, I am somewhere in the middle—I do send text messages (albeit slowly), I use social media periodically, but then I refuse to pay the access fees for an i-phone™. Two years ago my PDA stopped syncing to my laptop and I decided to return to paper-based systems for many of my planning processes because I simply judged the personal costs of transitioning to something unknown as too high. My son tells me that the video game industry is just aching to capture the folks in my demographic group who have not yet bought into this realm of personal entertainment. While my kids’ exploits on Playstation™ have never had much appeal to me, I hear some of my friends talking about how much they enjoy using Wii-fit™ programs, and Amazon’s Kindle™ e-book reader has started to gain some traction with some of us. So yes, I am an immigrant and not a native. The tech stuff matters to me and my work demands that I use it effectively, but from time to time there are these odd barriers to access that simply baffle those of us who were not born into this world. And yes, I need to go buy a new router.

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A Clear Mind Leads to Mastery

2010-02-17T23:25:00.001-08:00

I have to admit that the winter Olympic Games in Vancouver have captured my imagination more than I expected this week. It seems that there is no limit to the variety of events that seem to be added every four years. I am incredulous over jaw dropping demands that these competitions place on human bodies, often at unimaginable speeds, or aloft high in the air, or across terrain that God certainly did not intend people to navigate on skis, skates or snowboards. I was thinking about how athletes need to train to do these ridiculously hard things so that movement looks effortless. And then I was thinking about how pianists develop technical skills to overcome challenging difficulties so that their movements are as facile and fluent as a champion ski racer on a slalom course. This reminded of quote me from Robert Schumann’s Advice to Young Musicians: “Only when the form grows clear to you, will the spirit become so too.”

One of my pet theories that I think applies with equal veracity to both music and life is that mastery of anything worth doing excellently starts with clear thinking. It is only after I study a passage long enough to understand how it really works that I can make it sound easy. I may be able to read the music accurately and push down the proper keys in the correct sequence, but if I misread the essential design or form of a musical gesture, the results will usually sound awkward and clunky. Often my first understanding of a thing is superficial and distorted because some small detail has captured my attention inappropriately, and then I miss the big picture. Curiously, my first readings of things tend to be unnecessarily complex when underneath there is a simpler idea that is far easier to think and bring to life. I am coming to understand that cultivating this clarity of mind is the real work both in the music I play and in living life.

Incidentally, Project Gutenburg offers a free download version of Schumann’s Advice to Young Musicians. This .pdf is a beautiful reproduction and includes the complete text in both German and in English translation. You can download it here.

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Music for Mardi Gras

2010-02-16T11:46:00.001-08:00

Happy Mardi Gras or Pancake Day or???

Here is some Brazillian Carnival music from Heitor Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras #4 to help you celebrate. Enjoy!

Villa - Lobos Bachianas Brasleiras No. 4, Iv. Dansa by Paul Kenyon, Piano
Download now or listen on posterous

Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras #4, IV. Dansa.mp3 (2527 KB)

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The Joys of Puttering

2010-02-15T19:49:00.001-08:00

Spring sprung at least a little today in San Diego. My wife and kids were home from school for the President’s day holiday, and the warm sunny day made it a struggle to work much. My work day has been punctuated by brief but intense episodes of training my mind and hands to navigate the vagaries of the Chopin preludes that I will be performing soon. These periods are interspersed with communications to colleagues across the country about upcoming projects, reading books and articles that catch my attention and then an occasional household errand. The bass rumbles from my son’s music two rooms away provide the accompaniment for my writing tonight. He seems to think that loud music of a contemporary urban extraction helps him study more effectively. Hmm, I don’t know what life is like for other practicing musicians, I only know the oddly textured surface of my own dappled experience. Still, elements that used to seem chaotic or disparate in my life years ago now seem normal, and I now choose to laugh at the odd juxtapositions of sounds and enthusiasms that float through our house at any given moment.

Focus and concentration seem to mean something different for me than for other people. These days my life seems to be composed of dozens of little twenty-minute cells, wherein I am totally absorbed in a given task, only to have myself shift to something completely different when I shift into the next cell. So I spend my days, changing mindsets and wandering around. Experts tell me that this is due to an “associative” rather than a “linear” thinking style. For a long time, I was absolutely convinced that it was a symptom of dysfunction and I tried to learn to make myself follow more “logical” paths through projects. The effort was doomed from the outset. It felt like I was running a race in someone else’s well-worn shoes, and I had the blisters to prove it.

I laugh about this now because I once recognized this same trait in my Grandfather years ago. He was a woodworker, a gardener and he had his hands into lots of other things all at once. His habit was to spend his days puttering here and there all day long, working intently on something until he came to a pausing spot where he could safely set it down. Usually, the projects would need to sit for a while as time was required for glue to set, varnish to dry, or seeds to germinate. I like to think that my way of working has some ingrained connection to a simpler, more natural way of moving from task to task than is typically understood by productivity experts. What probably looks like an attention deficit disorder to an outside observer seems perfectly normal to me by now. Throughout the day I do lots of things and even get things accomplished—just don’t try to track my progress on a flowchart.

Does anyone else think about these things? As I continue to study my own work process and learn how to help others, I would really enjoy hearing about what your patterns look and feel like. It would be great to hear from other creative folks about your experiences in this realm. Please leave comments here or send me an e-mail.

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A Gorecki Moment

2010-02-14T20:26:00.001-08:00

Savor this sublimely moving music, sung here by Rebecca Evans

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How Much Great Work?

2010-02-14T19:48:00.001-08:00

A few days ago I received the box from Amazon bearing my copy of Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book, Do More Great Work, and I have thrown myself into reading and working through the exercises vehemently. Over the years Michael’s work has consistently prodded me out some of my ruts and confronted me with important questions about working more creatively and courageously. If you want a quick taste of his ideas, then watch this short animated video called The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun. Through interviews, case studies and other research Michael has been developing material around the theme of “great work,” which he distinguishes logically enough for "good work" and "bad work." Great work is deeply connected to our sense of purpose and gives our lives an intrinsic sense of meaning. The basic premise of Do More Great Work is that most of us invest most of our lives doing things other than great work. The distinction is important and it does provide an interesting criterion for measuring one’s individual contributions.

The text of the book is organized around 15 areas of inquiry, labeled “Maps.” After an introductory overview, Map 1 begins, simply enough, with an inventory of the work you are currently doing. Since the start of the year I have found myself in a season of exploring my personal approaches toward delivering measureable results through my various work processes. It has been interesting to observe my own work habits, routines and rhythms. My assumption has been that my big idealistic vision of the “great work” that I feel is my deep calling and purpose in life is too often deferred by the necessary business of doing good but lesser work. To my surprise, the map that I drew of my current work distribution did not show a picture of my great work being sabotaged by worthwhile but less important “good work.” The uncomfortable reality revealed in this snap shot of my daily work life is that I have spent more time during my work days than I have recognized doing “bad work.”

The ugly truth that this exercise revealed is that I have some really stupid habits. Apparently, I am addicted to checking my e-mail inboxes and some other trivial data points of my online existence, not just once in a while but constantly, over and over again. Last week I heard Seth Godin say in an interview that he doesn’t watch television and that he just couldn’t afford to be on Twitter. While I am not ready to jettison social media yet on a wholesale basis, I understand why he said this. My OCD fixation with some of these things has become ridiculous. What’s worse, I have been using these behaviors to distract and deflect myself from working on stuff that matters—my self-defined “great work” of touching audiences with great music and advocating for that process with my teaching and writing.

Earlier today I came across the following quote in a blog post from Clint Watson about visual artists and marketing their art: "Does it take you away from creating in your studio? The most important thing you can be doing is creating your artwork. So even if an idea is "good,” you might want to skip it for better uses of your time." During my current semester-long sabbatical I have had an unusual level of freedom in creating my own schedule and work routines, as I do not have the usual volume of fixed appointments for lectures, lessons and meetings. And, to be honest, I have always been pretty good at creating own structures and adhering to them. I suspect that some of the time I have spent connecting with others online is a mild compensation for the lower level of social interaction I am experience during this time of not going to my campus office each morning. Still, it is surprising how easy it is to get detoured from one’s central purpose.

So, here’s to my best effort to keep my eye on the prize this week. I will let you know how things continue to work out over time.

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Daniel Pink on intrinsic motivation at TED conference

2010-02-12T22:23:00.001-08:00

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A Different Project (Name the CD contest)

2010-02-12T18:15:00.001-08:00

Hey, I need you help. I am terrible at thinking up titles for things and I could use some creative assistance.

Last summer I was inspired to play around with a concept that was inspired by my sister Carolyn's new business venture. You see, my sister, has a green thumb and can grow amazing things, especially tomatoes. If you want to see pictures you can click here to visit her blog and look for yourself.

Anyway, I found the images so stunningly beautiful that I decided to create some music that expressed some of those impressions. You should be able to hear three sample tracks that were recorded last summer while I was in the middle of my work on my recently released album, Chiaroscuro. These takes are unedited and quite raw, so you will need to forgive some of the warts, but you can get an idea of what the music will sound like.

Carolyn says I need to get this finished in the next few weeks so she can have them in her booth at the farmers markets, so I need to get moving on this. Oh yeah, about the titles--so far the working title has been "vegetable music" but no one I've talked to thinks that is any good. So here's the deal, send me your best ideas and I will send the winning entry a CD of your choice.

Download now or listen on posterous

Appologies to Anna Magdelena.mp3 (2883 KB)

Solstice by Paul Kenyon, Piano
Download now or listen on posterous

Solistice.mp3 (3080 KB)

Phases by Paul Kenyon, Piano
Download now or listen on posterous

Phases.mp3 (3916 KB)

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"Like Grass Peeking Through the Melting Snow"

2010-02-10T07:44:00.001-08:00

The title of this post comes from today's installment of Robert Ian Winstin's series 28 in twenty-eight. The blog that posts the recordings and performance notes describes the project as:

"A month long text and audio blog about the creation of 28 new pieces of 'art music' in the twenty-eight days of February by composer & conductor Robert Ian Winstin."

The composer has created a companion site that makes the scores of these pieces available as free downlaodable .pdf files. Most of the 10 pieces produced thus far in the series are written for the piano and are admittedly short. In his notes the composer has written about how much he enjoys composing "miniatures" and that the series has afforded him an opportunity to do this.

Even if you don't like the music (but I definitely do), the concept of disseminating this much material in a serial offering over an 28-day period is an amazing idea. Smart people who know more about these things will provide comments about the long-term sticking quality of Mr. Winstin's writing, but I find the music well-crafted, intriguing and often filled with humor. Prior to the appearance of the series, I had heard the composer's extended work for violin and orchestra, "Taliban Dances," and as I have delved a little deeper into his past work it is clear that he is the genuine article--a living composer making music that matters.

So how cool is this! We can gaze into the composer's workshop window for a month to see what is going on inside, at least a little bit. Personally, I am fascinated by what I see.

Click here to visit the 28 in Twenty-eight blog where you can hear the music and read the composer's comments.

Click here to see the music scores for the series.

Click here to visit Robert Ian Winstin's artist website.

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Enjoying the Dissonance

2010-02-09T19:56:00.001-08:00

A few days ago I played for a group of music students at a local college. Immediately after I finished playing the faculty member presiding over the gathering lead a discussion with the kids about what they had just heard. In my experience these interactions can be awful or wonderful depending upon the skill of the moderator, the collective maturity or experience of the individuals in the room, or the particular lunar phase marked on the calendar for that date. In other words, it’s usually a crap shoot and I never know what I am going to get. My playing went reasonably well and I had enjoyed telling a few brief anecdotes about the three composers whose music appeared on the program. I was not prepared for one of the first comments that popped out from one of the bodies in the seats, "I really liked the dissonance in this music." This was a first. I don't remember anyone commenting on that element, especially in connection with the music I was playing--Scarlatti, Chopin, and Villa-Lobos. As a rule, this was pretty melodious stuff.

The student went on to explain that he had heard a very clear sense of the musical tension rising and then releasing through these composers' handling of dissonances. I have been reflecting upon this notion for a few days and I continue to be surprised at how insightful the comment was in reality. For my part, those tensions had become familiar and no longer carried the same sweet and sour tang that they would have when I was hearing the music with fresh ears. The fallout from the experience is that this week I am noticing these qualities in fresh ways both as I listen to recordings and as I listen to myself practice.

Click here to hear a beautiful performance of a Scarlatti's Sonata in B minor, K.87. Listen the way the harmonies morph and shift through moments of dissonant tension and release.

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Sometimes When it Rains, it Pours

2010-02-08T12:41:00.001-08:00

Over the past few days I have had a series of minor mishaps, unexpected changes of circumstances, or other petty annoyances show up in my life. Actually, these have been appearing with an alarming frequency, at a rate of 1-2 per day. In fairness I must qualify these comments by saying that no serious tragedy has befallen me and I have suffered no serious injury during this series of unfortunate events. No laboratory animals or small children were harmed in any of these experiences. The problems that showed up were merely irritating setbacks to my creative output, my income and the smooth operation of my blissful daily routines. The most alarming effect of all of this is that it is 12:26 p.m. on a Monday and I have yet to touch the piano or do anything else musical today. Instead I have spent my day simply "handling stuff." Nothing big or traumatic, just necessary stuff that needed to be processed. So with a head that is filled with distractingly noisy voices and an energy level that is less than optimum, I am going to fight against the urge to go back to bed. Instead, I am going to walk over to the piano and make some music.In the face of all that would oppose me today, I am going to practice. My intention is simple, that by the end of the day I will be able to play something just a little better tomorrow than I did yesterday. This, my friends, is the best revenge I know.

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On Editing Myself

2010-02-07T21:33:00.001-08:00

As I have been developing my blogging concept more intensely over the past month I have learned a few things that seem really important:

1. Starting is the most important thing. It seems that I rarely have an idea of what I am going to say or even what subject I will cover until I begin. Once I start to put words on the screen, a reasonably coherent idea or message starts to emerge but almost never beforehand. The old adage, "Ready, fire, aim!" seems to be especially applicable to this phenomenon. The least productive thing I can do in a day is to sit around ruminating about what I should write, and how, all the whill tell myself that I really need to get started writing.

2. No matter how much I edit and improve my work as I am creating it, something will be wrong. There seems to be no end to my typing errors, grammatical gaffs and other regrettable awkwardnesses of style or voice. I am just beginning to grow up in my thinking about this reality. I will indulge my perfectionism for a few hours after I push the send button, so I do go back to correct the worst offenses as I compulsively check back to see if anyone responds to a particular piece. However, I have started to impose a statute of limitations--after 12 hours or so, it is time to let it go. Some of these issues have been connected to some annoying idiosyncrasies of the tools I am using. For example, I learned early on that my preferred word processor doesn't play well with my chosen blog platform.

3. The voice that is emerging through my writing is mine, for better or worse. At first, I wasn't sure if I was okay with what seemed to be coming through the pipeline, but I am settling in to a way of working that feels comfortable and sounds authentic most of the time. As I have said earlier, the positive responses to several of my pieces have been very encouraging, and I look forward to continuing the conversations that several of you have already initiated.

4. The things I have written have provided a wonderful opportunity to deepen relationships with people who have only known me through social media sites online. There are people whom I have never met who tell me that they value what I am offering and I gaining confidence that there is a need for the content I provide. I do not know yet how this will intertwine with my performance life but I imagine that it will all be a very good thing. Ideally, my musical work provides the fodder of material to write about. And then in turn, my hope is that some of the people who read my blog will engage with my performances and recordings over time.

So please forgive my self-consciousness as I continue to venture forth with this work. It is an interesting time to be a creative person. There has never been a time where an individual can be heard so easily by so many people. I also suspect that the world has rarely had a more desperate need for individual people to exercise their God-given artistic gifts and give voice to the vision that calls to them. So as I invest myself in making music and crafting words today, I would heartily encourage you to follow your own inner calling to craft beauty or meaning in your own unique ways. Don't allow the resistance of inner criticism, fear or indecision to keep you from exercising your own gifts and contributing your unique offering to our collective experience. We need you.

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Recovering Equilibrium

2010-02-07T00:56:00.001-08:00

Yesterday served as an interesting laboratory experiment to test some of my theories about making my performance life work.

On Friday morning my life started normally with the household routine running smoothly in its divinely inspired order. I was fueled and lubricated by caffeinated coffee and a just enough bagel-borne carbohydrates to allow my brain neural networks to operate. This was a concert day as I had a performance/demonstration scheduled at a local college music department later in the day. So I was happy to get the family out the door so I could get to the piano to gently remind my head and hands about what they were supposed to remember later in the day.

All was going according to plan, but I made the mistake of checking my e-mail one time too many. Of course on the last glance there was an urgent message from someone on the East coast who desperately needed to tell me that my next performance trip scheduled for 5 days hence had fallen apart. I will spare you all the particulars, but the essential fact was that the trip was going to be postponed and my thoughts for the day would be overshadowed by all the things I needed to communicate to people on the other side of the country. All the while, I really needed to have my head on straight to play some demanding repertoire for an audience who was expecting me to be on the top of my game.

Honestly, my first response to the situation was not particularly poised or clear-headed. My initial reaction was to honestly own the disappointment with the reality. It probably did not take that long but it seemed important to just sit with the mess for a minute, in part to figure out what was true and what was not about the circumstance, but it also seemed important to own the emotional response in the moment. This is not my first inclination--usually I am one to bottle things up and go into deep denial. Soon I realized that it would be better for everyone involved if I took a brief period of time to verify the facts on the ground. My thinking was that then I would be able to put the necessary decisions behind me so that I could effectively turn my attention to the concert I was about to play.

As it turned out, the denouement of this mini-drama was boringly uneventful. After two phone conversations and some quick decisions about how to best frame the necessary communications with some disappointed people on the other side of the country, I was able to set the matter aside well enough to get on with the day. At the performance in the afternoon I felt that I played well and that I connected with my audience in a meaningful way. During the question and answer period that followed, the students were quite engaged with my ideas about the music and the process of performance.

So the moral to my story is this--shifts happen. Those adverse changes that we cannot predict and seem to disrupt everything we understood before. As performers we like to minimize the scariest of the surprises, but sooner or later your life will run over a speed bump of some kind. In those moments we rarely have much control of the big circumstantial framework in which we operate. There really isn't much of a choice except to adapt to reality to the best of our abilities. As Byron Katie has eloquently written in many different places, "You can choose to argue with reality, but you probably won't win very often."

As we prepare for our lives' performances we really cannot control the circumstances that confront us along our own individual paths. Sooner or later something is going to just show up that is at least inconvenient, or at other times even life jarring. In each of these moments we are presented with a choice of how we will respond in the face of the situation. Truthfully, one way or another, my plans will work themselves out over time. The best thing for me was that, at least on this one occasion, I did not allow the challenging change in next week's plans to ruin the work I needed to do that day.

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Heavy Weather

2010-02-06T12:09:00.001-08:00

Big storms have been brewing hither and yon. Yesterday I was on the phone
with a colleague in the Washington, D.C. area who was leaving her office
at midday to get home before the blizzard hit. Of course, we don't have
snow here in San Diego but the rains are back today and are falling
heavily. It is hard for people in other regions of the U.S.A. to
understand how catastrophic rain can be in southern California. So, I am
thinking of friends in blizzards as I peer out through rain covered
windows. The natural inclination is to hibernate, preferably in a warm
cozy place with good company or a good book. Productivity will best be
served another day, and today will be a mandatory break from the customary
scurry to get things done. The respite imposed will likely have benefits
that we don't readily notice. I expect that when we emerge from our
burrows once again after the sunshine returns, we will better for the
time.

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Showing up

2010-02-03T21:20:00.001-08:00

When I opened my computer this afternoon to start writing, I discovered that the last 500 words or so that I had completed the day before had now disappeared. It was lost and it had evaporated out into the cyber universe. I could imagine my orphaned paragraphs, lost and alone on a street corner or in the middle of a crowded intersection somewhere, holding up a sign that reads, "misplaced paragraphs, will provide inspiration in return for a new home."

Okay, maybe not. Still the fruit of a day's labor was lost, probably forever.

At this point my temptation to fall into despair was palpable. I could feel the tide of hopelessness rising, as one of my more obnoxious inner voices pronounced, "Well, that's it! If the work we finished yesterday is gone already, why should we sweat and struggle to create any more? You never know when stuff is going to get trashed around here, so why bother?" My calmer, more sane mind did its best to ignore the pessimistic complaining, and I tried to search the hard drive for every likely handle that might turn up a clue for the missing material. No luck, the stuff was just gone. Reluctantly I went back went back to the outline of the chapter I was writing, and by this point any inspiration that I had left had made a quick dash for the emergency exit. Nothing in my plans for the day's work sounded right. The pessimistic voice in my head returned with a vengeance, saying, "Who's idea was this anyway? This is stupid! It will never work, and by the way, this is a dumb idea for a book anyway."

The episode closed with a blank computer screen open before me, as I quietly started filling up the empty space with words. On this day I didn't allow the discouraging voice to keep me from doing at least some of the work that I had originally intended. Putting text on the page didn't silence the inner critic but I did demonstrate a resolve that I wasn't going to be deterred by a technical problem, a problem that was likely due to my own error. As I reflect back on this otherwise trivial event, it is clear that the things that keep me from making and doing the work I want are rarely big challenges. If I had listened to the voice that told me that my writing was pointless, I would have allowed a small, and routinely reccuring, mechanical failure to deter me from moving ahead on a project that matters to me. In this light, it is really amazing that human beings ever get anything done, let alone really great things.

The irony in all this is that the real threats to my productivity rarely come from what I most fear. In pursuing creative work my great fears tend to focus on my own perceived lack of talent, or that I don't have the proper training or experience to do what I am trying to do. These days if I miss a deadline or fail to reach some stated goal, it is far more likely that the failure was simply my unwillingness to fight through the petty inconveniences that show up each day as I make my way to the studio door.

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You Are Here. . .

2010-02-02T23:59:00.003-08:00

You know the big maps that are posted on the walls of rest areas along interstate highways, those places where you stop while driving en route to some family vacation or similar event. Typically these maps have some sort of indicator, either drawn with a marker or printed more professionally, pointing to a precise spot with the words, “You are here.” My kids have read a little too much existentialist literature for their own good, and when I point out where we are, they typically respond by asking questions such as “How do they know?”

Trying to find yourself on a map seems to be the adult version of the clichéd children’s travel question, “Are we there yet?” We pause at the map to calculate how many more hours are left to ride in the car, how long before we need to fill up with gas, or how many more times do we have to listen to that same CD or DVD before arriving. Getting to “there” is always the obsession. Reaching the destination and arriving always seems to be the point of the trip.

So why am I thinking about this today? What does this have to do with bringing forth creative work into the world? As I read writings from really smart people who know what they are talking about, there is a lot of talk about learning to savor the journey; to find joy in the process not the product, etc. I do think that learning to cultivate enthusiasm for the day to day stuff of making your work happen is really helpful, and may in fact be essential if we are to stay in the game over time. As a student I was coaching last week observed, when you start to really pay attention to the qualities of what you are bringing forth, the work takes on the nature of meditation. In optimal moments, there is an amazing sense of timelessness and ease. Then there are other days.

Still, I am interested in the “You are here” message. As I mature in my work process I have a better “map” for my journey than I once did. There are experiences that are similar from one project to another, and this makes it easier to infer from past experience how things may unfold this time around. Even so these predictions are more in the manner of an experimental hypothesis, and not factually reliable based upon known information.

For me this means that most mornings, I start my workday by looking at my map. I always (or almost always) have an idea of where I want to go—a particular concert I am preparing, something I am writing, or some correspondence needing an answer yesterday—and then I plan out incremental steps that I believe will move me in my intended direction. Sometimes my map is harder to read and there are confusing details that just don’t look right. Occasionally, I make wrong turns and I need to go back to the map to get back on the desired route toward my destination. Still the process begins with a map and the words, “You are here.”

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Priorities, Commitments and Stories

2010-02-01T22:51:00.001-08:00

I ate lunch with my brother a few days ago. He was in Huntington Beach on a business trip and had a gap in his work schedule. Since he lives in Saint Louis and getting to Orange County was a much shorter trip, I decided to squeeze the 75-minute drive north into my plans for the day. We connected easily enough and we found a place to eat that was not far from John Wayne Airport, from where he was to depart later that afternoon. After exchanging the odd greeting rituals of two middle-aged Caucasian males (more stiff and awkward than ever), I blurted out something about not doing a good job of keeping in touch. My brother simply said that he didn’t even try any more. And then to elaborate, he told the story of one his former bosses who had told him in a similarly awkward moment, “If something is a priority, then you do it.” It seemed an odd thing for him to say in the moment. Even now, I can’t decide if should get mad about what he said, or feel defensive, or just thank the serendipity of God’s universe for using the moment to teaching me an important lesson. Today, I am choosing to check box number 3 on the survey and express my thanks for the wake-up call. There is no point to arguing with the simplicity of this thinking, of course it is true. Our best intentions and rationalizations are simply stories that buffer our egos from a reality that scares us and actually serves to keep us in a state of mild distress over that large list of other things that “we really ought to be doing.” So today, my life seems to be calling me to keep my inventory lists of commitments short, and then to actually deliver what I promise both to myself and to the people who depend upon me.

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Buy Lara Downes' CD's and Help Haiti

2010-01-31T22:09:00.001-08:00

Here is one last post in my series promoting piano recordings distributed through CD Baby. Remember that if you order before February 6, a portion of the purchase price of these recordings will be donated to support earthquake disaster relief in Haiti.

Lara Downes is currently Artist in Residence at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at the University of California at Davis. Her latest recording is called, Dream of Me: Daydreams and night visions. She sumarizes this collection of new solo piano music with the following description:

The musical journeys you take and can’t remember in the morning. This is distinctive, timeless music by some of the best New American Romantics, including William Bolcom’s “Dream Shadows”; Aaron Kernis' richly poetic "Before Sleep and Dreams"; Adam Silverman’s “Nocturnes and Reveries” and Dan Coleman’s “Burden of Dreams”

Both the music on this CD and the performances are stunningly beautiful!

For the next week you can order Lara’s recording CD Baby and a portion of the purchase price will be donated to the Haiti earthquake relief effort.

To visit to Lara’s artist page on the CD Baby web site click here

Visit Lara's web site by clicking here

For more information CD Baby's Haiti relief program click here

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After Three Weeks and 20 Posts

2010-01-31T20:17:00.001-08:00

So I have been writing this month. Well, after years of journaling
fanatically and religiously I have always written. The difference now is
that in at least this modest way I am actually publishing what I am
writing. A few days ago one of my mentors, Charrise McCrorey, asked me,
"So how is this writing business working for you?" It seems that whenever
we talk by phone during my weekly coaching sessions, there is always a
point in the conversation where I am completely at a loss to know what to
say. My brain just freezes and I struggle to utter even the dumbest
banalities. So after what seemed like forever, I blurted out that I was
surprised at the favorable responses I had received. What I had expected
to be a quiet little exercise to make my brain work differently than my
ordinary patterns, had begun to feed a part of me that felt pretty good.
Still, I was surprised to get these quick little messages on Facebook and
Twitter indicating that at least a few of the things were connecting and
resonating with people.

To any and all of you who have taken the time to respond to these blog
entries, I say "thank you so much for your encouraging words." If you have
suggestions for where you would like me to go with these explorations,
then I would love to hear from you. My goal is to use about 100 or so of
these postings to "workshop" my way through some material that has been
germinating in the well-fertilized soil of my consciousness for a decade
or so. If I develop the stamina to persist in the process and the thick
skin to ignore criticism, then my intent is to craft the sum of the parts
into a book manuscript over the next 12-18 months. The foundation for my
work is the Performing with Poise seminars that I have conducted since the
early 1990's but the material continues to morph over time. Stay tuned and
we will see where it all leads.

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Buy Grace Nikaes CDs to Help Haiti

2010-01-30T15:19:00.001-08:00

This is the next installment in my series of posts promoting the recordings of pianist friends who distribute their music through CD Baby. Remember that if you order before February 6, a portion of the purchase price of these recordings will be donated to support earthquake disaster relief in Haiti.

Grace Nikae is an immensely talented American pianist who plays an astounding range of repertoire in a manner that simultaneously exudes mastery and nuance. I am particularly fond of her performance of the Scriabin Sonata-Fantasie in G# minor, op. 19 that opens her debut recording, entitled Fantasies. For the next two weeks you can order both of Grace’s piano recordings CD Baby and a portion of the purchase price will be donated to the Haiti earthquake relief effort.

To go to Grace’s artist page on the CD Baby web site click here

You can learn more about Grace Nikae from her web site by clicking here

You can see a video of a performance excerpt from the first movement of Brahms’ Concerto no. 1 in D minor here

For more information CD Baby' s Haiti relief program click here

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Raising the Horizon Line

2010-01-30T12:44:00.001-08:00

For the last few years I have been teaching a capstone course for our upper division music majors includes a focus on career development and related life skills. In the last year I uncovered a fascinating phenomenon as I listen to my students talk about their intended career paths and their individual aspirations. These kids could not bring themselves to the place where they could say in an audible voice, “I am a musician.” They would describe themselves as music students, or use their chosen degree program as an identification badge, but they struggled to use the word “musician” to label themselves professionally. When I first discovered this, I went apoplectic, blurting out things like--“How can you hope to have anyone else take you seriously if you can’t even say the words yourself.”

After I regained both consciousness and a modicum of sanity, I recognized that my students are following the same pattern that I have lived out myself over and over again. In life there is a very fine line between confidence and arrogance. And when our own talents are concerned, there is an even finer line between who we are and what we do. Our culture teaches us to fit in, to conform and to not stick out from the crowd. To make matters worse, that same culture has concluded that being a musician, or any other kind of creative artist, is just not normal. This week I have been listening to several presentations and interviews by Seth Godin as he talks about this phenomenon that he has called the “Lizard Brain.” The basic premise is that to be artists, which he loosely defines as anyone doing cool stuff that matters, we need to turn off and deny that part of our brain that resists innovation, growth and other related risky behaviors.

In my teaching I have seen this as a process that I call “raising the horizon line,” by which I mean we have to consciously cultivate bigger possibilities than we have allowed ourselves to think about before. Until now I have not understood how important this element of suppressing our internal resistance is if we are to move forward with our visions and deliver positive changes in our world. It may help to know that the Lizard Brain is really just trying to preserve the status quo to keep us safe. Still, this resistance doesn’t get us to where we want to go or inspire us to be who we want to be.

A video of a talk Seth gave in 2009 called “Quieting the Lizard Brain” is here.

Some other aspects of this notion are developed in an interview with Seth Godin by Merlin Mann on 43 Folders is here.

Seth Godin’s latest book the The Lynchpin can be found here.

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A Tranquil Moment

2010-01-30T03:40:00.001-08:00

It’s been a busy week and I have been getting stuff done. This morning I wanted to create some calm space to remember important things, so here is an image that I found inspiring.

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Buy Fabio Parrini’s Music

2010-01-28T05:22:00.001-08:00

Today I am continuing my series of plugs to promote the recordings of my pianist friends who distribute their music through CD Baby. Remember that if you order before February 6, a portion of the purchase price of these recordings will be donated to support earthquake disaster relief in Haiti.

Fabio Parrini has been a friend of mine for more than a dozen years or so. As a musician he is a consummate artist with an amazing capacity for both technical detail and interpretive nuance. Every time I hear him or listen to his recordings, I learn something new, about either the music he performs or how it really should be played. I especially recommend his most recent recording of the Schumann Fantasie Op. 17, which captures an absolutely visionary performance.

For the next two weeks you can order both of Fabio’s solo piano recordings CD Baby and a portion of the purchase price will be donated to the Haiti earthquake relief effort. To go to Fabio’s artist page on the CD Baby web site click here.

For more information CD Baby' s Haiti relief program click here.

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Down but not Out

2010-01-28T04:16:00.001-08:00

Life ran me over this week, like a Greyhound bus. And I had been doing so
well, too. Truthfully, I have been pushing hard to make some very cool
projects come to life and then yesterday my body just rebelled. Not an
all-out mutiny, but certainly a loud uprising that got the aging
dictator's attention. (Okay, I know that was an awkward metaphor.) So the
question remains, how do you build healthy boundaries into your life?
Those polite little caution signs that tell you, "This much I can handle,
but this is too much and might kill you." My way is generally more
extreme. My thinking tends toward--"If 4 hours of rehearsing at the piano
is a good thing then 6 must be better; and if 30 minutes on the elliptical
machine at the gym is helping me, then 45 would be so much better; And of
course, if two cups of coffee are great in the morning. . ." Well, you get
the idea. So yesterday, the body told me that it was time to slow down. I
will spare you the narrative of my gastrointestinal saga, except to note
that by midday I was at least three pounds lighter than I was the night
beforeenough said. With some rest, the worst of the symptoms subsided and
by evening I was feeling human again. I was able to do a little bit of
productive work along the way, and I doubt there will be serious
collateral damage from the internal attacks. Still, I wonder about this
cyclical yin and yang of my work patterns.

The odd thing I am learning about the ebb of flow of my creative energies
is that I am very poor at predicting how things will work, or even what a
certain project is really costing me in terms of my time or physical
capacity. I really do believe that creative work is essentially
regenerative, meaning that inspired work has the ability to create energy
rather than sap it away. There certainly is work that is soul killing and
unfortunately I have experienced enough of that. However, in the language
of "flow psychology," there is work that serves to feed us at that soul
level, and in turn, it serves to make us more alive. This is, of course,
what we yearn to spend our time doing, and there has been some
enlightening work produced recently about the amazing benefits of choosing
to invest one's energy in purposeful work. Still, there is a boundary line
at a certain margin of our daily lives that distinguishes healthy
productivity from either maniacal dysfunction or rusting decay. As one who
regularly cycles through intense seasons of pushing hard, today I see that
I want to pay better attention to what that boundary line looks and feels
like.

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Buy Sandra Mogensen’s CD’s!

2010-01-25T23:16:00.001-08:00

This week I would like to shamelessly promote the recordings of pianists who are friends of mine and who I think deserve significantly more recognition for their work. These folks also happen to distribute their music through CD Baby so a portion of the purchase price will support disaster relief in Haiti, if you order in the next two weeks

Sometime during the last year I asked the Twitterverse if anyone out there had experience organizing house concerts of classical piano music. Almost immediately I received a reply from a Canadian pianist named Sandra Mogensen, who told me that she had been arranging house concerts to raise money to fund her recording projects. In fact, she blogging about her process on a page that is titled, fittingly enough, Building a CD. To date her recordings have been devoted to Edvard Grieg’s solo piano music, which really does need to be better known by pianists and audiences alike. As it happens, she is a wonderful musician with a deep empathy for Grieg and I find her performances thoroughly enchanting.

For the next two weeks you can order Sandra’s two volumes of Grieg’s piano music from CD Baby and a portion of the purchase price will be donated to the Haiti earthquake relief effort. To go to Sandra's artist page on the CD Baby web site click here.

For more information CD Baby' s Haiti relief program click here.

Listen to a beautiful performance Grieg's "Tenderness" on YouTube by clicking here

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Buy Music to Help Haiti

2010-01-22T19:27:00.001-08:00

This afternoon I learned that CD Baby has announced that starting on January 25 they will donate $1 of their profits from every qualifying sale to the American Red Cross and Mercy Corps. The program will extend for 2 weeks and will potentially raise thousands of dollars for the relief work of these agencies.

As CD Baby is the online outlet that distributes my recordings and digital downloads, as well as those of many, many other independent artists, I have decided to match this contribution with $1 of my own for every dollar that CD Baby contributes from the sales of my products.

You can order copies of my CD's or download digital albums from my artist page on the CD Baby web site by clicking here

Donate directly
I also urge you to make your own direct donation if you haven’t done so yet. Together, we can make a difference. Please click below to make your tax deductible donation right now.

Mercy Corps donation form

American Red Cross donation form

Please join with me in making a difference for people who really need our help.

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5 Books about Fostering Creativity (Productively)

2010-01-22T14:10:00.001-08:00

Pursuing creative work of any kind usually presents daunting challenges that often yield fascinating lessons about life. Of course these challenges are only fascinating as long as you are a dispassionate observer and not actually trying to get your work done. As both a musician and a writer I find that the birthing process of bringing a performance, or an essay, to life requires a very different skill set than seems to be required of other people who live around me, i.e. “normal people.”

The ugly reality is that inspiration doesn’t always show up at the time I have set on my appointment calendar. And, part of living this life is, to a large extent, a question of overcoming your personal demons, rather than expressing your innate talents. Toward this end, I have learned that the most important part of creating work that matters is to remain persistently engaged in doing the work. In other words, I need to stay with a given project long enough to see at least a reasonable facsimile of my vision come to life. As Woody Allen is famously quoted as saying, “90% of success in life is showing up.”

Here is a list of books that I have found incredibly helpful as I have worked to "show up" and craft my own personal work process around the rest of my daily life.

1. Bayles, David and Ted Ortland. Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking (2001)

2. Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles (2002)

3. Ristad, Eloise. A Soprano on Her Head: Right-Side-Up Reflections on Life and Other Performances (1982)

4. Shahn, Ben. The Shape of Content (first edition, 1957)

5. Tharp, Twyla. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (2003)

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Eating my Own Words (Revisiting "Is that Okay?")

2010-01-22T13:16:00.001-08:00

They say that confession is good for the soul. Well, today I come before you guilty of an act of arrogant hubris. Friends, I humbly beg your gracious forgiveness.

A few days ago I was writing about a friend’s struggle to find her own voice as she was interpreting a Scarlatti sonata. She was seeking to play the music with a sound and style that sounded “correct” and still rang true to her musical sensibilities. Well, sometimes I need to be more careful about the pronouncements I assert so confidently. Just sooner had I so pompously advised my friend to blissfully follow her own musical instincts and to let go of her concern about being “correct,” in less than 48 hours I found myself in the throes of an almost identical quandary.

As I have shared here previously, I am performing a series of Chopin programs over the next few months in celebration of the composer’s bicentennial celebration. I love the music, it has been immensely satisfying to prepare, and I enjoy playing it very much. So far so good, but over the past few days I have fallen into a new creative crisis, and of course it is all of my own making. You see, on this program I am playing a set of Mazurkas that have become an absolute thorn in my side. These little dances are technically among the easiest bits of music that I am playing on this particular program and I have played them successfully for a long time. However, now I have started questioning everything about my approach to their fundamental rhythm, sound, and shape. A short while ago I caught myself actually asking myself the damning question, “Is that right?” I could have lived with “Is that the way I want the phrase to sound?” or even, “Maybe I should hear this differently?” But no, I was trying to be correct, which means I was really saying that I was afraid to be wrong.

Today I will spare you the narrative of my internal debate about the interpretive details that prompted my crisis of confidence. It is enough to say that in the process of making creative work happen, this question of being correct tends to show up with regularity. I suppose that my initial idea in challenging the need to be right was not to negate the question itself so much as to challenge our dependence upon the approval of external authorities. For a long time I have recognized that part of the maturation process as musicians, or just becoming a grown-up, is learning to trust ourselves as we live life and do our work. My own recent crisis of confidence is a solemn reminder that this business of learning to be bold in our choices comes at the price of doing it wrong, and probably failing often before we land on the solution that rings with the resonance of truth. Today I am praying for the courage to risk failing more often than I did yesterday, at least it will be more fun than worrying about being right.

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Is that okay?

2010-01-20T23:15:00.001-08:00

Last month I was at a gathering with a group of pianists and a friend of mine pulled me aside to ask me about a Scarlatti sonata that she was learning. She had not played Scarlatti’s music before and she was concerned that she was making the music too romantic or sentimental. Her concept of correct performance practice was that this music should be fairly strict in its tempo and should avoid expressive nuance. Fortunately, as we were talking in a social situation I did not feel comfortable going to the piano to demonstrate how the music “ought to go.” Instead, I simply told her that she should play the music as she heard it in her imagination and that over time she would probably land on a performance approach that worked for her.

Fast forward to this past weekend and we were together again and my friend had opportunity to play her sonata for the assembled group and it was really quite lovely. Afterward, her first word to me was to ask, “Is that okay?” It was clear that she needed a positive verdict to validate the work she had done in preparing her performance. Before I had opportunity to answer her question several other people gave a ringing endorsement of the beautiful tone she had created and the masterful shapes of her phrases. Okay, indeed, her performance was far more than okay, but why did she need us to tell her so.

This little micro-drama prompted me to wonder about this desire to be correct. As students of the piano, it is certainly laudable to be diligent in our learning to master disciplines of playing notes and rhythms accurately. There is also much to be said for becoming as literate as possible with the ways great musicians have solved problems of style or interpretation in the past. But it seems clear to me that there is a definite time to let go of the need to be correct. Far too often, being right becomes a safe substitute making a genuine musical moment.

Frequently, I have opportunity to coach a piano student who has become obsessed with being correct rather than saying something through her performance. On such occasions I often ask the student to remember a performance or recording that moved them deeply, and then to identify what it was about the performance that was so striking. Usually, they will say that the performance was intensely passionate or stunningly dramatic, but I cannot remember a single instance where the distinguishing feature was the performer’s accuracy.

Listen to this heartfelt performance of Scarlatti’s Sonata in B minor, K.87 here.

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My “To Do” List

2010-01-17T21:32:00.001-08:00

I have this big “to do” list of things that I have very good intentions about. On January 1, I sat down to list different professional colleagues, concert presenters and other professional contacts that I felt were strategically important for me to connect with during the first weeks of this new year. Well, stuff happens. And more often than I want to admit, the stuff that I really intend to do gets set aside. So my list of 100 things I wanted to do promote my performances, build my concert calendar, and market my recordings has stagnated in a way that embarrasses me. Now some of this can be explained away by cool things that showed up in the interim, but a lot of my inactivity is due to my fear of failure, rejection, or the taunting voice of the “good enough” demon that lives in the lower left quadrant of my cerebral cortex. So as I look ahead at the start of a new week I am resolving to get over myself and get busy with working through my list. A friend of mine who was a master at persuasive marketing used to say about approaching sales prospects, “Some will, some won’t, but so what. . .” Check back in with me next week to see how I am doing with my list, and yes, please bug me about it.

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Words Fail Me

2010-01-17T21:30:00.001-08:00

Tonight I happened to be sitting in a quiet corner of my studio listening to Robert Shaw’s recording of the Rachmaninoff Vespers when I was simply overwhelmed by its beauty. Words fail me as I try to explain the way this music moved me. When this happens the verbal part of my brain just seems to simply seize up in a momentary coma-like state until a particular musical moment passes. This shifting of my mind into and out of this mode of awareness must be an ongoing, normal part of my every day experience as a musician, but I don’t think I noticed it much until very recently. The “coma-like” bit can be pretty inconvenient if it occurs at socially awkward times, but most people who know me well are not terribly alarmed if I go “vacant” from time to time. I once had an assistant who would ask me where I went during these episodes. When my answer failed to satisfy her curiosity, she followed up by asking if I was earning frequent flyer miles in the process.

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Chopin Immersion

2010-01-15T22:22:00.001-08:00

I suppose that we will soon be saturated with Chopin's music in the same
way that many of us have recently overdosed on Christmas music. With the
bicentennial of the master's birthday landing in a few weeks on March 1, I
am a little surprised that the ubiquitous hype machine hasn't made more
obnoxious noise about the event yet. Maybe I simply haven't been paying
attention to the proper channels. With my own celebratory concerts
scheduled I am as guilty of cheap exploitation as the next guy, so I have
been busying myself with mazurkas here and a polonaise there. The good
news is that I really love this stuff! Each day that I return to practice
this repertoire remarkable revelations have been waiting for me. This
music is truly wonderful. My first performances of my Chopin celebration
program for this season start next week with a school concert in La Jolla,
California. I really can't wait to play it.

Here are some pictures from an earlier performance visit to the Preuss
Charter School.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Breathing

2010-01-15T10:03:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I was taking a lesson with my Alexander Technique teacher, Eileen Troberman and we spent much of our time working on breathing. She had just returned from a workshop in New York and she was overflowing with enthusiasm for some new things she had learned. Eileen is always working on something new in her understanding of how the body works and moves so I learned long ago to just go along for the ride. I credit my longstanding work with her for most of what I know about playing and teaching the piano with something akin to fluency or ease.

Breathing is such an inherent part of our everyday life experience that we don’t give it much attention until the process stops working the way we think it ought. And since playing the piano doesn’t require an exhalation to create a tone, unlike singing or playing a wind instrument. As a result I have never spent a lot of time thinking about breathing as a technical feature of my work at the piano. Years ago when I was a university music student I discovered that I had a tendency to hold my breath when I was struggling with some really tough technical challenge. In these moments I would also observe that the difficult bit would cause to me tighten up all over, to the point that it seemed that every muscle in my body was absolutely rigid with tension. I have since learned a myriad of strategies to cultivate physical ease in my playing and to counter this impulse toward rigormortis. Still, I rarely think about breathing as part of this process.

On the other side of the coin, there have been some wonderful moments when playing with other musicians when we would find ourselves intuitively breathing together as a single organism. This spontaneous empathic unity almost always creates an absolutely amazing musical experience for both the performers and the listeners alike. Organizing rhythms and phrases around the ebb and flow of breathing seems like such a natural thing to do. So why isn’t this something I think about customarily?

This week I am spending time thinking about these details both at the piano and away. I have learned that there is lot to this business of respiration that I don’t really understand, so I have been simply observing what happens when I breathe. For example, it has taken me some significant mental gymnastics to develop a clear understanding of how the diaphragm moves downward in space as it expands with an in breath. And conversely, that the release of the out breath has it returning upward towards its starting place. Also, it has been surprising to learn how flexible the ribcage is during the whole process, as it expands and contracts with each breath. A fringe benefit of this investigation is that there are few things found in every day experience that will provide as much restorative energy as a period of ten minutes of sitting quietly in order to simply observe your own breathing.

You can learn more about Eileen Troberman’s teaching here, and see samples of her work on Youtube here.

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Where is the Fence?

2010-01-14T06:45:00.001-08:00

Last month my next door neighbor made a special point to stop by to tell
me that the fence between our houses needed to be replaced. As he is a
practical guy, he came armed with a solution to this problem about which I
had been blissfully unaware up until then. Apparently, the fence dates
back to the 1960's and has provided an extensive feast for termites during
the intervening years. He proposed that we split the cost of materials,
and he would make sure that the work gets done satisfactorily. As the plan
did not require that I provide manual labor or use power tools it all
seemed like a great idea.

By the way, the thing about power tools is that I play and teach the piano
for a living. I made the decision a few years back that I really ought to
forgo using anything that might jeopardize the viability of my hands. I
remember shaking hands with more than one carpenter or high school
industrial arts teacher who was missing a phalange or two. The encounter
always included some entertaining story about fingers, saws and the
resultant disfigurement. So anything that demands the use of circular
saws, hedge trimmers or even some office paper cutters is just not open
for discussion for me anymore. I simply will not use them.

Oh yeah, about the fence. . . So the old fence came down about two weeks
ago and there are optimistic signs that its replacement will manifest
itself before long. The most telling of these signs was the appearance of
a large Home Depot truck last week that delivered a very large pile of
lumber. The pile seems to be about the right size and density to plausibly
constitute the raw elements of a new fence. A few days later some very
deep holes were dug at evenly spaced intervals along the property line.
And now a vertical post has been anchored with cement in each of the
holes, so I live in hope.

The point of all of this is that the presence or absence of the fence
would ordinarily be of negligible consequence to me. I probably would
never have given it a second thought, except I have dogs. Yes, two dogs
who are rather mature and quite set in their ways. Removing the fence put
them absolutely over the edge. Now these two have been coconspirators for
years as they have plotted and schemed to break out from the incarceration
of our back yard. In past years we have been summoned to retrieve them on
more than one occasion from the city's Animal Control Department because
they were picked up by the dog catcher while they were out on the town
carousing. When the fence came down all of this changed.

With the fence removed, the absence of a physical boundary seems to feel
dangerous to the dogs. They spend odd periods during the day in restless
fits, pacing frantically and panting heavily. For the first few days they
were up in the middle of the night barking because they wanted to check
what might be lurking into their territory. They seem to resent the fact I
now go out into the yard to supervise their outdoor time and it took some
doing to convince them the world was really going to continue turning
despite the missing fence.

Watching my goofy dogs go neurotic over the missing fence prompted me to
wonder about my own reaction to changes in structure and routine. At the
start of this New Year I am making some radical changes in my work
patterns and habits. In place of my usual load of teaching and
administrative work, I am spending the next few months rehearsing,
performing, researching and writing. How well am I adapting to these
changes in my boundaries? Do I really prefer more defined and limited
spaces?

Throughout my professional life I have been blessed with an
unimaginable amount of autonomy about what, when and how I work. Honestly,
I cannot imagine myself living any other way, but I also know that I have
imposed fences of my own making around what I think of as possible,
probable or worthwhile. In the past year I have learned that much of what
I have seen through the lens of "I can't" or "That won't work" is really
just a story that is made up in my own mind. So I ask you as I ask myself,
where is the fence around your yard these days?

Posted via email from pkpiano's posterous

Shut Up and Play!

2010-01-12T08:50:00.001-08:00

In her wonderful book, Bird by Bird, author Anne Lamott describes a one-inch square picture frame that she keeps on her desk. She defines her daily task of writing as simply putting into words whatever she sees inside that frame. The big idea is that my creative work becomes overwhelming when I try to create an epic in an afternoon. In my musical work I often despair that learning new performance repertoire feels excruciatingly slow at times and I am sorely tempted to be overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible task before me. If I forget to keep the perspective of the miniature picture frame, I will soon convince myself that 1) my memory just isn’t what it used to be, 2) maybe I have no real musical talent after all, and 3) God surely made a mistake when he created me in the first place so I really don’t deserve to live.

These days my antidote to this musical version of author’s angst is to simply tell myself, “Go sit at the piano and for the next twenty minutes and see if we can make this page of notes sound more like our imagined ideal performance. . .“ My favorite euphemisms for this bit of therapeutic monologue include “focusing on process not product” or “seeking incremental improvement over time.” The far more effective version that I repeat often in my teaching studio is this: “Shut up and play!” Of course I say it with a smile in my voice and my students laugh about our shared melodramatic experiences. Still, the point is to get on with the work of creating the universe of our vision in increments the size of a one-inch picture frame.

You can see an interview by Anne Lamott my friend Dr. Dean Nelson here.

Posted via web from pkpiano's posterous

Deeper than We Know

2010-01-11T21:09:00.001-08:00

I played at a memorial service a few days ago for an elderly friend who
died on Christmas Day. My friend, Les, would have celebrated his 91st
birthday had he lived through this past weekend. Not that it would have
meant that much to him, as Parkinson's disease and dementia had left him
frail and disconnected from much of life. Still a devoted group of
friends, family members and fellow travelers gathered on Saturday
afternoon to share memories and to celebrate the life of our dear friend
who is no longer with us.

It seems that I have played for more funerals in the past year than ever
before, and certainly more than seems appropriate. As I watch myself and
others process these experiences it seems interesting to notice how we use
music on these occasions to connect and communicate about things for which
words fail us. During the memorial service for Les we sang the hymn, "It
is Well with my Soul," and the gospel song, "Under His Wings." To the
assembled Lutheran crowd of mostly older adults, singing this music
brought comfort, assurance and hope. As they made their way through the
familiar verses, these people sang with ringing voices unlike what I hear
on most Sunday mornings. The heartfelt singing gave me goose bumps as the
sound reverberated through the sanctuary.

So as I remember Les today, I am especially grateful for his life and the
ways that it touched mine. And as I think about these things, I feel ever
so grateful for the ways music touches us, moves us and inspires us. I am
humbled by the privilege of serving as a musician who is called upon to
facilitate these moments that transcend the particulars of our individual
experience. Moments that move us to the point where we are drawn together
by a bond that is far deeper and richer than we ever expect.

Posted via email from pkpiano's posterous

Mondays

2010-01-11T21:01:00.001-08:00

Mondays carry an odd sort of stress for me. It is my habit to see days,
well at least certain days anyway, as markers or signposts along some
metaphorical time line. The start of the New Year, the start of the
semester, the start of the fiscal year, the start of the month, and even
the start of a new week—these are all fictitious landmarks that serve as a
sort of boundary to be crossed and signaling a new beginning point.
Habitually, I invest these days with a deep symbolic meaning that
indicates that it is time to check my "progress," or relative lack
thereof, as I pursue my odd collection of endeavors.

This particular Monday is carrying an unusual burden because today I would
ordinarily be starting a new semester of university teaching. Instead, I
will be enjoying a sabbatical leave for the next six months or so, during
which I will be focusing on my playing and writing. One of my students
sent me a message on Facebook earlier today asking me if it was strange to
be away from school and to know that they were starting without me. My
predictable response was that, yes, the feeling is indeed truly, truly
strange, but that I would face the challenge bravely.

So as I start this new chapter of my life that will be defined by a most
generous gift of time away from my usual routine of teaching and
administrative work, I am savoring this time of new beginning. The
projects I have designed for myself are big ones and I have enjoyed the
initial phases of planning and starting the work. Looming in the dark
shadows of my awareness is a foreboding that I probably cannot do all that
I have set out to do in the time that I have allotted. Still, I enjoyed a
quiet day working at the piano, writing letters and relishing an unusual
oasis of solitude,

Posted via email from pkpiano's posterous

“Push Reset to Restore Factory Settings”

2010-01-09T09:00:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I had a day. It wasn't completely terrible, but is was one of the proverbial THOSE DAYS. Most of the agenda I had created for myself was delayed, deferred, or otherwise scuttled by events that were either unanticipated or out of my direct control. My usual pattern is to shake my fist at the heavens, drink another three cups of very caffeinated coffee, and then push F2 to start another game of Spider Solitaire.

I guess you could call this "all or nothing" thinking in that the internal monologue sounds something like this... "So if I can't finish this task, and I can''t reach that progress benchmark the way I planned. . . well then, the day is just a waste so I am not going to try to do anything productive." To compound matters, if I allow it this pattern can easily extend to a series of BAD DAYS, BAD WEEKS or . . . Well, it doesn't usually extend that longer than that.

My point is to recognize the negative cost of defining the quality of my experience with a value-based label. Calling the day a bad one just reeks of subjective judgments with sinister implications that all may not be quite right with the world. The day was just a day. Important things happened in lots of places, some even quite near me. In fact, much of what I did do was worthwhile and needed to be done, it just wasn't on the list
I made at the start of the day. Hmmm

Posted via email from pkpiano's posterous

Name the Piano Contest

2009-07-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

I need your help. We need suggestions for a new name. In a few weeks we will be making room in our home for a new addition. No, not a new baby, we’ve been there and done that a few times (actually three but who’s counting). This time it’s a new piano for my home studio.

For the last 24 years I have had a very reliable instrument that has served me well but it has started to get a little creaky and grumpy. So much so that my piano technician friends have needed to resort to Superglue on more than one occasion to keep it playable. So I am thrilled to report that through a surprising set of circumstances a very nice Steinway B has been made available to me and it is scheduled for delivery in a few weeks.  In anticipation of the blessed event, Brenda has decided that the new piano needs a name. We have agreed that the piano is female but we are fresh out of good ideas. So, we will accept nominations from all corners and I will send a complimentary CD to the best suggestion for your trouble.

Here is a picture my new piano on display at Paul Robinson’s Acme Piano Company in San Diego.

How big is your world?

2009-06-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

It is probably an obvious thing, but today I noticed how my circle of relationships carries the potential to expand my world and teach me new things if I let it. On Saturday afternoon I attended a showing of 18 short films at a local theater that specializes in documentaries, independent and foreign film. This is not my ordinary routine, but on this ocasion I had a special reason for going. One of the films was directed by my 17 year-old son. In fact, all of the films had been produced by students enrolled in a high school film class. As you might expect, most of what I saw was not quite ready for prime time, but many of the films delivered very effective moments and almost of all gave me something to think about. Of course the greatest benefit of going to the showing was the opportunity to share it with my son. Our time together afforded me a very interesting window into the inside of his head and how he thinks about his particular creative process.

As I ruminated about these things, I remember my father mentioning on several occasions that he wished he could have had the opportunity to study the things his children had learned—I am a professional musician, one of my brothers is a computer programmer, the other brother is a mechanical engineer, and my sister studied interior design but practices all sorts of creative arts. We are an eclectic bunch—two in our “right minds” as artistic types and two more nerdy left brainers who are more technically oriented. My own kids seem to be following their own desultory mix of passions with my first-born immersed in both computer technology and music in equal measure, the second son is the afore-mentioned film maker who still plays baseball with a deep passion and then my daughter, the youngest, lives to dance and literally spends most of her waking hours in the studio between classes and rehearsals.

As parents we have encouraged our kids to do things that we found interesting but that certainly didn't keep them from finding their own ways in the world. It occurs to me that one might be tempted to stop living one’s own life to be swallowed up by living vicariously through others’ experiences. So far, that hasn't really been my problem. Today, I am simply marveling at the ways my world expands through the lives of the people around me. If it is true that each of us has a circle of approximately 250 reasonably close personal contacts, think of how much we can learn those people that we could never experience for ourselves in any other way.

Who are you and what are you doing?

2008-07-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

I will not remember where I heard this so I apologize in advance for stealing this story without attribution.

Once upon a time in Czarist Russia, a Rabbi was out walking when he was ordered to stop by a young soldier who shouted, "Who are you and what are you doing?" The Rabbi looked to the young and without hesitation asked in return, "How much is the Czar paying you today?" Startled, the young man answered, "In return for guarding the city this day I will receive 20 rubles." Then the Rabbi said, "Young man, I will pay you 40 rubles each day if you will stop and me your questions again, Who are you and what are you doing?"

I was thinking about this today in connection with two rather disparate ideas. 1) In working to market myself, my performances and the rest of my professional work it has become very clear a fundamental starting point is a clear answer to the question, "Who are you?" Far too often the quest for language to describe myself and my work has been absolutely paralyzing. Right now I am working though Ariane Goodwin's book Writing the Artist's Statement in order to refine the language I use to explain the contributions I intend to offer the world. 2) I have been using Twitter for several weeks. In my brief time using the service I have enjoyed connecting with people around the globe who share some common interests with me. The interesting thing to me is that the basic premise of Twitter is one of the same questions from the Rabbi's story--"What are you doing?" While there can be a lot drivel that spews forth from this and other social media, an earnest accounting of how I am investing this moment remains a most valuable exercise.

So today as I rush from task to task, these two questions are still worth at least 40 rubles each day.

John Adams on Route 66

2008-07-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

For the past few days I have been soaking in a collection of John Adam's works written for smaller media than his more well-known orchestral and theatrical pieces. Road Movies includes music for solo piano, two pianos and violin/piano duo that evokes an atmosphere steeped in Americana akin to movies, such as Easy Rider or Thelma and Louise. In in its sound there is still the perpetual rhythmic motion in much of this music that has been the hallmark of Adams, Glass, Reich and others who created the minimalist path more than a quarter century ago, but there is a whole lot of morphing going on here. Harmonic colors and melodic fragments melt from one to another with prismatic hints of a stylistic reference or quotation peeking through in glimpses. The second movement of the title composition begins with passages that are eerily reminiscent of the Copland violin sonata but out of the desert heat mirage images dance fleetingly before fading back into the stark vista of open space. The disc concludes with the rambunctious American Berserk for solo piano that romps its way in loping, disjointed rhythms. At times this music reminds me of Ives' Three Page Sonata crossed with ragtime and boogie-woogie. There is a a fine video of pianist, Izumi Kimura, playing this piece on YouTube here.

Making the Earth Move

2008-07-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday morning I was in Encinitas playing some Chopin on a friend's piano. Just as I was approaching a loud climax, my friend who was sitting nearby said, "Paul, stop playing!" At first this seemed oddly out of character for her because I thought I was playing rather well at the moment. But then a split second later I noticed the mirrors shaking on the other side of the room and felt the floor rumbling beneath me. Since moving to southern California 18 years ago we have had very few earthquakes, and most go unnoticed by me (deep observer that I am). Still the this was an amazing, even if unsettling, phenomenon to experience. The weird thing about this trembler was the close synchronization of the vibration with the music I was playing at the time. For a moment the shaking did not seem incongruous to me at all, but rather that it belonged as part of the composition. A short while later the story of the quake was leading news coverage and we learned that it had measured 5.4 (rather mild) with no significant damage or loss of life. Later in the day I had a rehearsal at the church where I will be playing tomorrow evening. When I got to the moment in the music where I had been interrupted earlier in the day by the quake I had to laugh at myself when I wondered if I would ever play well enough to make the earth move again.

A Moving Farewell

2008-07-23T01:53:00.001-07:00

On July 9, 2008 a dear friend and colleague, Willo May Beresford, passed away at the age of 91 after being diagnosed with a brain tumor 27 days earlier. Her obituary from the San Diego Union Tribune is here. This past Saturday a memorial service in the Crill Performance Hall of the Cooper Music Center afforded a joyous opportunity to celebrate her rich life that was marked by dedication to her faith, her family and her many musical involvements. Pictured here is a quartet performing Victor Labenske's arrangement of her favorite hymn, "O Thou in Whose Presence," on four nine-foot concert grand pianos. I am privileged to have Victor as a piano faculty colleague at Point Loma Nazarene University and he is numbered among the many who studied both piano and music theory with Mrs. "B" as an undergraduate student.

Osvaldo Olijov, Oceana

2008-07-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

Osvaldo Olijov's Oceana has been on my shelf for a few weeks now and I have listened to it more than most new recordings in my collection. The CD features superb performances by Dawn Upshaw and Kronos Quartet among many others. Especially noteworthy is the voice of Brazilian bossa nova singer, Luciana Souza, whose pliant phrasing is featured prominently in the disc's title composition. Throughout the recording, Olijov's music juxtaposes elements of folk musics from both South America and the Middle East in ways that are surprisingly effective. The rhythmic precision of the choral singing in Oceana's fifth movement, "Third Wave," teems with life and stirs me deeply. The recording also includes an achingly poignant, Tenebrae, in two movements played by Kronos Quartet and then a set of three songs performed by Dawn Upshaw.

I must confess that Olijov's music is new to me and that I have just begun to immerse myself into his sound. His web page is here and through it you can hear a broad sampling of his work. In the liner notes to the Oceana disc, Olijov says that he never wants the diverse materials that he weaves together to be heard as merely "eclectic," but rather as an authentic voice that flows out of his own personal journey. Throughout, Olijov's music is finely crafted and quite clear in its communicative intent. This is a quality that seems increasingly rare in the world of post-minimalist new music.

Full week of piano camp

2008-07-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

Today was the fourth day of our week-long piano camp on campus. I started the Point Loma Keyboard Institute about 10 years ago and the thing just seems to keep on going. Jane Bastien taught the master-classes this morning, coaching some Chopin and Kabalevsky. In the past few days I played a solo recital and presented a series of lectures on the piano sonata across historical periods. Today we finished with a very respectable recital of the students playing solo pieces. Tomorrow is the conclusion with more classes, lessons and a concert of piano ensemble music. Fortunately, I have had a wonderful group of colleagues and graduates who have been helping with the teaching and otherwise keeping me sane.

Zo Concerts

2008-07-16T18:12:00.001-07:00

For the past few years I have been playing concerts in private homes on a sort of an ad hoc basis. Sometimes they are concert series, as in Kathyrn Hull's Encore! series in Palm Springs or Colin McAlister's Synergy Concerts here in San Diego. At other times, I simply ask friends if I can try out a program for an upcoming recital on their piano in front of an invited audience. While the performance conditions are sometimes suspect on these occasions, the opportunity to develop a direct rapport with a small audience is tremendously satisfying.

I have recently learned about a pianist named, Paul Cantrell, who hosts concerts in his own home that he calls, Zo Concerts. The FAQ page alone is well worth the time it takes to read. The concerts are made available to the public "by reservation" which of course can be done on-line through his web page and has a price tag of $5 per seat. I have not yet investigated how often Cantrell schedules these salons or what sort of revenue they generate for the performer. Still, what an ingenious idea.

Maybe if I clean the living room and have the piano tuned. . .

So yes, we were in Maui. . . Wanna see pictures?

2008-07-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

So yes, we were in Maui. . .Listening to Rhapsody

2008-07-12T15:03:00.001-07:00

Yes, it was as good as it looks and I have to say it was even better than I expected.

Now that we're home . . . We had a fun evening with friends last night where the question came up, "What's your favorite song of all time?" Now, some of us who were in the room are professional performers by trade and it is entirely impolitic to blurt out something about Bach's Goldberg Variations or Beethoven's Grosse Fuge in mixed company. Clearly, the communal expectation was to reference iconic or emblematic artifacts of popular music, with a strong preference for songs popular during the 1970's as everyone in the room was on the north side of 45 years-old already.

A harmless enough exercise so far, but the "cool" part happened next. Our host had his laptop open and had his subscription to Rhapsody fired up. One by one we took turns finding our songs and then listening to significant bits here and there. First came It'll Shine When It Shines by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Then I pulled up Bruce Hornsby's Love Me Still. Some Elvis (Presley that is, not Costello) showed up and then jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut's recent cover of You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog. Eventually, the Beach Boys and Randy Travis were represented and now my memory fails what else made the cut. All of this spontaneous, eclectic mixing and matching was made possible by this fairly new distribution medium that is surprisingly easy to use, even for those of us who refuse to stand in line to get the latest i-phone.

As I listen to the daily handwringing about the death of the music industry as we know it, I see this kind of nearly universal access to music as something really powerful. To my mind, our contemporary culture values musical experiences as much as any who have come before us. Performers may take issue with audience preferences and tastes, but to an extent we have never seen before, people find deep pleasure and even comfort in music they have known from prior experiences. These emotional bonds with "my music" may sometimes make it difficult for new things to find sufficient space in the marketplace. Still, the love for music that resonates deeply at a soul level seems alive and well, even in these discouraging days.

The Power of Bad Dancing

2008-07-10T05:09:00.000-07:00

Further proof that a simple idea executed with creativity and joy can do powerful things. . .
click here to watch this video! I have no idea what it really means but it is fun to watch. For me, the work seems to make a universal populist connection in the manner of the Coca Cola "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" variety. And I am an absolute sucker for the whole thing. Frankly, I needed a teary-eyed-happy-good feel moment to start my day this morning. So quit your job, find some music that you think needs broader exposure and then travel the world with a video camera. Sign me up!

I found this when Lawrence Mortenson posted the link to this video on Twitter a short while ago. Incidentally, Vimeo claims that the file has been viewed 1.2 million times as of this writing. There is a Wikipedia entry about Matt Harding and his video projects here.

Books in your inbox?

2008-06-30T01:10:00.000-07:00

I have been digging up all sorts of geeky odds and ends this month. A new favorite is something called DailyLit.com

In their FAQ page they offer this explanation--"We created DailyLit because we spent hours each day on email but could not find the time to read a book. Now the books come to us by email. Problem solved." Currently, I am about 6 daily installments into a free offering by Tom Peters, called 100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money. They offer a number of additional public domain titles free of charge, such as Jane Austen or Shakespeare. And then of course you can order titles that actually cost money.

While I don't expect this would ever become my normal channel for accessing the printed word, I have enjoyed the ride so far and it seems an idea worth watching.

Caitlin Rowley aka "Minim"

2008-06-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight I am enjoying music from a composer, whom I have discovered online through Twitter. Listen to her piano piece Catharsis by clicking here.

She describes herself as an "australian, living in london, hoping never to have to leave. many years ago, i accidentally became a composer of classical music. some years later, i accidentally became a web designer. now i am engaged in reverting to the first accident and relegating the second to its correct status as a hobby." She also asserts that "capital letters are an unwarranted luxury."

Twitter. . . my new obsession

2008-06-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay. . . I have fallen off the blogging wagon yet again. I played a concert Sunday afternoon and I have not posted to this poor blog ever since. Anyway, the concert went well despite the ridiculously hot weather (we are absolutely spoiled in San Diego, at least that is what people tell me routinely, so 90 degrees feels really hot to me). Also, this concert provided an opportunity to get my get the e-mail program in my Hostbaby account working. For this performance, a group of about 150 near neighbors got both an individualized e-mail announcement and a follow-up notice for the concert. Very cool! As a result, some folks came who I haven't seen in forever, but I digress. . .

After the concert I read a bit on David Hooper's Music Business blog about Twitter. He asserts that this is the next big thing social networking resource for musicians trying to build an audience through their online presence. Well, I am hooked. For the past four days I have been simply messing around with it, and I must say in a very unsophisticated way. I don't really know what I am doing yet but I am having fun playing with the toys.

The Work We've Been Given

2008-06-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

"Go home and be good to your wife. Treat your children with respect. And do a good job at whatever you've been given to do."

--Eugene Peterson's response when asked what he would say if he knew that he was about to preach his last sermon, quoted in Subversive Spirituality

I read these words this morning after taking my mother to the airport so that she can fly across the country to see the next of her grandchildren graduate from high school. My oldest son gave his valedictorian address this past Monday evening. Needless to say, I am an obnoxiously proud father and my life has been overflowing with more emotions and memories than I have been able to process. So today, my 71 year-old mother is flying across 3000 miles of sky just so that she can witness another piece of our tribe's history and to build even more memories. I have heard it said recently that it takes a whole life to make real art. These days this is the context that informs the notes I will play tomorrow afternoon as I recreate my versions of Beethoven and Chopin. This is the work that I have been given to do, and I pray for the grace to do it well.

Scaring Myself into Productivity

2008-06-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me this week that my summer break was approaching the halfway point. So while I should be enjoying my son's graduation from high school and all the other great things that happen in June, underneath it all I have this undercurrent of apprehensive worry about all the work I was hoping to do this summer. Each year when our semester ends at the university, I start what amounts to a fresh set of New Year's resolutions, except these are the things I plan to do while I am on summer vacation from teaching college students.

This year the list was pretty clearly defined: 1.) I absolutely have to record my next CD before I start another season of concerts and tours (the one with the all-Beethoven and Chopin program); 2.) Then, I really have to learn the music that I am scheduled to play next season--the Liszt Sposalizio and Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras number 4 are the new things that I am starting from scratch; 3.) Oh yes, I really need to get my diet and exercise routine back into a pattern that works; 4.) And finally, I need to finish booking my concert calendar for the year with another 8-10 dates to fill out my two concert tours and then meet my quota of public appearances for the year.

When I think about all of this stuff my immediate impulse is to go to the beach and indulge my huge capacity for denial and then down it with a chaser of self-denigration. Instead, I have decided to post my most pressing goals in a somewhat public place so that I feel accountable to the three of you who actually read these meandering entries. Incidentally, the image at the top of this post is the painting by Raphael that inspired Liszt to write the Sposalizio as part of the Années de Pèlerinage.

Val's Art Diary

2008-06-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I participated in the SmArtist Telesummit, an online seminar devoted to teaching artists to market their work more effectively and to build entrepreneurial art businesses that work. During one of the initial sessions, presenter Joan Stewart of Publicity Hound profiled a painter, named Valentina, who has developed a marvelous career by posting videos of her work in progress on YouTube. Since starting her series of weekly videos, she has sold each painting that she has finished and has more commission requests than she can fulfill. At this point I do not know how many creative folks can capture lightening in a bottle and reap rewards this rich from the new media outlets created in a web 2.0 universe, but it does seem clear that there is room for new ways of delivering authentic aesthetic experiences to new audiences through these channels. Stay tuned. . .

In memoriam: Barbara Schneiderman

2008-06-16T14:45:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I was saddened to learn that Barbara Schneiderman had passed away after succumbing to pancreatic cancer. She was a wonderful colleague and teacher from Del Mar, California. You can read an appreciative tribute to her life and work on the Suzuki Association of the Americas web page here.

I had the privilege of adjudicating competitions with Barbara from time to time, and I always appreciated her wise insights about the performances that we heard together. Her book, Confident Musical Performance, gets heavy use in my studio, as I find it to be one of the most helpful resources for understanding the art of performance preparation. Both of the copies on my shelf are worn, ear marked and almost illegible in spots from the heavy highlights and underlines.

With her passing, our circle of friends--pianists, teachers and thinkers--has diminished.

Prince of Virtuosos

2008-06-14T20:36:00.001-07:00

I am currently reading Charles Timbrell's Prince of Virtuosos, a wonderful biography of Walter Morse Rummel who was one of the greatest American pianists that no one has ever heard about. The book provides a fascinating portrait of an expatriate American musician who made the European musical world his playground but also reveals his close connections to Ezra Pound, Godowsky, Debussy and other fascinating characters--a totally captivating adventure.

What are you learning now?

2008-06-14T14:09:00.001-07:00

This week I began learning Heitor Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras number 4. For longer than I wish to admit, I have had the Amsco publications volume of Villa-Lobos' solo piano music sitting on the piano at home. I have read through the notes several times and listened to recordings of both the solo piano version and the version for full orchestra, but I never took the plunge to dig in and actually learn the music. Since starting, there have been a few odd moments of deciphering an odd indication or two in the score. For example, there is a curious Da Capo al Segno at the end of the first movement that seems to go nowhere, as the only segno for the movement in my copy of the score is found over the meter signature of the first measure. This is far from causing enough annoyance to dissuade me from learning the music, but I do wonder how it will work out in performance. The music is lush and very gratifying to play at the piano, and for now, it has been a pure pleasure to immerse myself in these wonderful sounds. By the way, I heartily recommend the orchestra version in a recording with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the New World Symphony Orchestra.

A Great Gift

2008-05-15T06:16:00.000-07:00

"To be a musician is a great privilege, but also a very great responsibility. One must think that to be a musician is a gift-a gift from nature. There is no great merit in us except in loving this gift with respect and devotion and doing everything possible to do honor to that gift by work and more work. We must work with conviction and humility-searching for beauty, simplicity-not for effect, but for truth. And it is for us musicians to do all in our power for a better world. Music must carry the message of beauty, of love, and of peace".

-- Pablo Casals

Scheduling Habitat Concerts in June

2008-05-13T06:24:00.000-07:00

This week I am in the process of scheduling a series of recitals in June to benefit San Diego Habitat for Humanity. Currently, I am asking churches in the greater San Diego region to make their sanctuary available for me to give a performance and then collect a free-will offering on behalf of this most worthy cause. My program for these concerts is entirely music of Beethoven and Chopin, and I always include commentary to help audiences find their way comfortably into the listening experience.

Do you think that your church would be willing to host one of these performances?

I'm back!

2008-05-12T17:42:00.000-07:00

After an absence of far too long, I am poised to start again with this little project. A few weeks ago I heard a seminar presenter say that the leading cause of death for all blogs was author inattention and lack of new content. My conscience was pained so that I am back again with my tail between my legs, hoping to resuscitate whatever life is left in this poor little thing that is my blog.

How to Practice?

2006-09-04T16:26:00.000-07:00

It’s Labor Day weekend in California and I have been reflecting about the fruit of my labor, or more accurately, the process of my work as a pianist. As the fall semester gets started, I always have a few new students joining my studio who need to figure out my way of doing things and it always takes a bit of time to get them up to speed. I have been wondering if I needed to write some sort of FAQ sheet for new students or at least some sort of guide to my approach.

Yesterday I was reading a thread on the Piano World Forum that started with this post from a piano teacher in New York:

“I was wondering what you do with a new piece. What do you do from the time first sit down with it to the time when you know all the notes and start to make music with it? Do you learn the difficult technical parts first? Do you memorize the piece first? What do teachers do?”

I found it an interesting exercise to try to put my ideas about learning new music at the piano into a fairly brief statement. While not precisely a method, this is what I try to do in principle:

I start by studying the most basic information--notes, fingering and rhythms—as thoroughly as I know how, in order to secure the foundation before I try to do anything with style, expression or interpretation. Most often this means working phrase by phrase, at times very slowly. I try to mark fingerings clearly enough that I can discern my fingering easily when I return to the piece years later. I also practice conducting the phrases and counting carefully as I play (yes, out loud) to make my rhythmic understanding of the music clear.
As I work through the score I also address any mechanical/technical challenges that have emerged. I attack the most difficult passages in isolation, often hands alone as necessary. My goal is always to play as slowly as I need in order to allow myself to think and hear each passage clearly. Also, as my sense of the ideal sound becomes clearer, I work to clarify the choreographic elements of the playing so that the movements of my hands/arms/body integrate with my musical ideas. In fact I have developed a certain internal mechanism. A “Yuck!” detector, you might say. Whenever my thinking or listening gets clouded over because the motor control computer has overloaded, there is this little warning that goes off inside my brain that says “Yuck!” This is the warning that says, “Pause, slow down, go back, look again, re-think, and try it again.” The weirdest aspect of this is that when I am doing my best work it is quite intuitive and almost completely non-verbal.
I continually work to refine my sense of the ideal sound for each phrase in a composition. One game I play with my attention is to ask at every joint in the musical structure, “What’s new here?” I try very hard to find some new information or nuance that needs to be highlighted with the arrival of each new idea. Even the sameness of a repetition can bring its own kind of expectation—“Hey, if I just said this same thing again, then something different must be coming.” I work on this element through score study away from the piano initially, and then by mentally "pre-hearing" a phrase prior to playing it.
As for listening to recordings of repertoire that I am learning, I have mixed feelings. I was taught that if one listens to recordings during the learning process, you really need to listen to many performances (5 or 6 minimum) and not just one. While this is not always practical, it can be instructive. In my own teaching, I ask my students to wait to listen until they have formed some idea of how they hear the music. Too often, hearing the CD makes them rush through the learning process too quickly. Often they are tempted to play too fast too early and the music is less thoroughly absorbed. However, I do like to work with recordings of my rehearsals. Even though I am absolutely phobic of microphones in nearly all situations, there are few things that will improve performances more efficiently than hearing recordings of my trial runs. It does help to do it often so the process is less stifling and less foreign.

There is nothing new or earth shattering here. Good teachers have taught most of these things for a long, long time. Still, I think this is as close to a manifesto as I will produce any time soon. But then again, I will probably remember something else later.

MF Horn No More

2006-08-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning my good friend, Dan Nelson, came into my office and said, “My heart is heavy.” With Dan, I never know if an opening line like this is to be taken at face value or if there is a tongue jammed into one cheek or the other. It turned out that he was quite serious and that he came to tell me that Maynard Ferguson had died on Wednesday. This information has an immediate impact on us because the legendary trumpeter is booked to play on our Jazz at the Point series later this year. His passing will require us to do some quick adjusting but there will be plenty of time for that. We talked a while longer and reminisced about when we first heard Maynard and what his music meant to us.

In the middle 1970's when I was a teenager growing up in a small town outside of Niagara Falls, New York, Maynard could be heard on AM radio playing his versions of MacArthur Park and the theme music for Rocky. His albums were marketed with splash and energy, and his band was always filled with some of the most amazing young players I had ever heard. As a young pianist trying to find a way into contemporary music of that day, Maynard's recordings caused me to seek out the music of Chick Corea and Stan Kenton. As my listening to jazz stretched both forward and backward, I was hooked for life.

In a time when all pop music was dominated by guitar driven bands of one flavor or another, Maynard carved out a successful niche for himself and inspired a generation of band geeks to keep playing and listening. I doubt anyone knows how many concerts and clinics Maynard gave in High School auditoriums over the last 30 years.

As Dan and I reminisced yesterday, he commented, "This is really the end of an era." Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Buddy Rich, Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson were the last of the serious touring big bands. Kids like us dreamed of being good enough to be picked up by one of them. The personalities that led these bands were towering figures for us and with their passing we feel smaller, more vulnerable.

P.S. Here is an amazing video on YouTube of Maynard from the 1960's playing 'Round Midnight. This is fabulous!

Tennis anyone?

2006-08-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

Here is a very entertaining photo collection of famous musicians playing table tennis. My favorite of the bunch has Thelonius Monk in his signature pork pie hat playing gleefully.

Shown here is Arnold Shoenberg happily engaged. Yes, Virginia, it's second Viennese school ping pong. Who knew?

Strings by the Sea

2006-08-12T05:13:00.000-07:00

For the past decade or so I have spent a few days each August working as the staff accompanist for a marvelous camp, Strings by the Sea, that is hosted on our campus. Along with running the usual gauntlet of Bach, Vivaldi and Seitz concerti in student performances, each summer there are also opportunities to make music with other members of the camp faculty.

This year brought some extra special treats in that I was asked to play with two very gifted faculty cellists. Renata Bratt is based in Santa Cruz and plays incredible jazz and fiddle music. Together we played some old New Orleans style jazz and then samba'd with Jobim. Then, collaborating with Evangeline Benedetti, playing masterworks from the French cello repertoire, was an absolute highlight of my summer. Learning and playing the Fauré Elegie with her was a profoundly moving spiritual experience. "Van" has served as a member of the New York Philharmonic since she was appointed by then-music director, Leonard Bernstein.

Back at it!

2006-08-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

Had a great time away--Bruckner 7th with the Grant Park Symphony, the Field Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Like many of you, summer is my opportunity for more reading or at least different reading than at other times of the year. While away I read Noah Adams' Piano Lessons for the first time, lots of fun. This gave me an interesting look inside the mind and motivations of someone coming to the instrument without any agenda other than playing for themselves.

Later, I read Anthony Storr's Music and the Mind (1993). This set of thoughtful essays traverses a dizzying range of material from the anatomy and neuroscience of human hearing to a quite exacting parsing out of Freud, Jung and most of German philosophy from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche. While not exactly light reading, there is much food for thought here. In particular it was interesting to read a psychiatrist's analysis of why humans make music and why listening for aesthetic pleasure is so deeply important to so many of us.

Storr's earlier book, Solitude: a Return to the Self (1989) was an absolute revelation. With so much of a pianist's time spent alone in confined spaces with only his instrument for company, Storr's exploration of the ways solitude operates in human experience is absolutely enlightening.

Ready for Time Away

2006-07-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

"It's been a quiet week in Lake . . . "

Well no, but I am getting ready for about ten days of vacation during which I intend to rejuvenate and recalibrate sufficiently to gear up for a new school year.

In this season of my life I juggle my playing and teaching very awkwardly around my kids' schedules. Summer camps, ballet classes, immersion Spanish at the local junior college, a middle school graduation—supporting these involvements often trumps memorizing another page of notes or pitching a concert proposal to a presenter two time-zones away. With three adolescents in the house life is never boring but I also know that this time is fleeting.

My wife and I are not nostalgic for the “terrible twos” but we’re not ready for the grandkids either. It has been a while since the sight of a newborn gave my wife that “I want another baby” look. We are solidly confirmed in our middle age, and we enjoy the vast majority of it. For two musicians to build a reasonably functional life in the same city, stay married and reasonably sane is no small achievement in these times.

One of the reasons I was drawn to the strange and wonderful life of college teaching was the calendar with the long summer vacation. Ironically, "summer" has become one of the more difficult of my life management challenges. This summer we could only find a single week when all five of us can get away at the same time.

My ideal vacation is close to a beach or the mountains with books, quiet and comfortable access to a piano. The kids have roundly vetoed any such concept this year. They want to be tourists, see a White Sox game, climb the Sears Tower and generally exhaust themselves with over-stimulation. Warning: it really is a bad idea to raise children who think independently--it's just so inconvenient. So we’re off to Chicago and we’ll have a blast.

An aside: Paul Robinson, my piano guru/technician/friend, took me to visit the newly rebuilt Steinway D that he recently finished at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown San Diego. It is GORGEOUS. A beautiful piano that plays like an absolute dream, it is a magnificent achievement. Bravo!

Where's the Juice?

2006-07-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

This past week I was directing the Point Loma Keyboard Institute for teenaged piano students where I spent quite a bit of time talking about developing clarity of musical intention. The patience necessary to read a score deeply enough to communicate its content is not common anywhere, let alone among the young. As I worked with these kids, in brief glimpses I saw moments of it spark to life (often in the midst of Clementi sonatinas and Burgmuller etudes).

There are different ways to pursue the poetic realm but it certainly is essential to our craft. Olivier spoke of being "workman-like" in developing a character and Serkin drew analogies between practicing the piano and digging ditches. However, this labor is in the service of a mysterious alchemy aimed at gilding our inner selves.

I am fond of telling my students that the music they learn today will become part of their intellectual furniture for the rest of their lives. A weekend post from Cathy Fuller reminded me that this golden stuff is the magical juice we long to find, and all too often we despair when it is absent.

Walter Rummel Bach Transcriptions

2006-07-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

This morning I stumbled upon a fascinating CD of Walter Rummel's Bach transcriptions at the Hyperion website. Rummel was a Godowsky student who was active in the "Golden Age." Does anyone know of scores for these pieces? The MP3 provided by Hyperion is a gorgeous performance of Rummel's arrangement of "Die Seele ruht in Jesu Händen" BWV127, played by Johnathan Plowright.

Released in 2005, the 2-disc set is number CDA67481/2 in the Hyperion catalog

What kind of English?

2006-07-07T01:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a funny diversion for speakers of American English that might be a fun at your next dinner party. I chafe a bit at writing the oxymoronic misnomer, "American English," but when I took the quiz found on the page linked below, my geographic origins were pegged very precisely. Quite weird!

As an upstate New Yorker, educated in the Midwest, my quiz results identified me as 55% General American English, 15% Yankee, 15% Upper Midwestern, 0% Dixie and 0% Midwestern. Now I know this is not high linguistic analysis, but it is a surprisingly accurate interpretation based upon a short questionnaire of customary usage habits.

Try it yourself and see what you think.

And another vote for Rzewski

2006-07-05T00:04:00.000-07:00

Today on listen 101, Steve Hicken has written a very interesting post about the revolutionary nature of Rzewski's "the People United. . ." To me these are stirring words that musicians need to hear in a time when being revolutionary is as daunting as ever and certainly not a safe choice. I was especially taken with the images of Jasper Johns' and Barbara Kruger's flag pieces that Mr. Hicken uses to illustrate his entry. Heady stuff indeed and very timely in light of the recent congressional debate over a proposed flag burning ammendment.

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