Meme is not just a musical warm-up exercise

Kay at Kay's Thinking Cap tagged me with that meme. You know, the one that asks you to reveal all the sordid, mucky details you've swept under the rug about yourself. The one about your ex- that makes it to the top of Google rankings and gets you into a world of trouble.

Just kidding. I don't have secrets. I just have multiple lifetimes of juicy living. And no more than half are X-rated. Yet.

Back to the meme. I'll be tagging some folks, irritating the heck out of some of them, I'm sure. It's kinda like getting those "send this 'friends forever' cutesy poem to everyone in all your address books in the next ten minutes or your cat goes in the river" e-mails.

Memes do two things for me, though. They usually call for at least a brief moment of introspection, which is usually a good thing. They also alert me to blogs that I usually fall in love with. When you're an elderblogger, you tend to meet exceptional people with interesting experiences and decent writing skills, messing around in non-traditional media (for that age group).

When I wrote as The Good Musician, I posted some pearls of wisdom from Margaret Hillis, long-time conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. The coolest thing happened. One of the comments was from a person who adjusted my faulty memory regarding the specific performance in the conversation. It was a thrill to correspond with someone else who had worked for her and appreciated her as much as I did. I savor the essence of music distilled by a lifetime of peak musical experiences. Then share that joy with other music lovers as often as possible. Doesn't have to be classical. I still get turned on by CSNY, tears my heart out. Standing 6 feet from Janis onstage at the Texas International Pop Festival (whole roll of photos--her gorgeous purple and blue outfit), begging me to take another little piece...

Geez, haven't even gotten into the meme yet. Guess I'm not s'posed to yet. Still sore from the concert last night, still have those tone clusters in my head, still awash in the ethos. Doing my own internal debriefing. Music reviews 'R Us.

There are several key components to a vocal chamber ensemble performance, beginning well before the actual concert. Preparedness--how successfully did the group organize and learn not only the material, but how to make an ensemble sound--how to listen and blend. How to present a musical experience the composer would love. How to relate what the composer intended to the listeners. What do the words mean? How does the composer use music to emphasize that meaning? Above all, has the group found the natural phrasing of the piece? The flow that the composer heard?

Professionality--how well did the group commit to making the best sound 100% of the time? Not wasting time in chit-chat or non-essentials while the group has a few precious hours together to get the ensemble sound in their ears, the transitions, the modulations to smoothly connect sections. How willing are the singers to blend rather than blast, use their ears as part of their voice--it's all connected--all the same physical mechanism. The vocal chords vibrate the whole body, and the ears are right next to the throat. Use those vibrations to inform your sound production to sing dynamically correctly and in tune. Critical skills for a professional ensemble singer--you have to be willing to match pitch and diction with every other singer in your group, which requires both ears all the time. That's just for openers.

Performance practice--I don't mean how you get up and down from the stage. I mean are you aware of how the Baroque sound differs from the Romantic. It's a little like role-playing. Baroque instruments sound like this, so their technique of playing them would be like this. The instrument couldn't sustain a sound like a modern one does, so there would have been more separation between the notes in general, a lighter, sparer sound. You can go fairly bombasto in the Romantic. Deep, lush, gigantic orchestras, hefty singing. A conductor friend once said that when performing in the Baroque style, think lace. When doing Romantic, think velvet. Your voice has to make that distinction as well.

Experience--if you prepare properly, you can improve your sound. You can build your skills and get better. Over time, the piece will viscerally become part of you. Those vibrations will have imprinted on your body as well as memory. As you work on a piece over the years, you learn what to listen or look out for. You've memorized it long before now, so that you can swim in the flow with your fellow singers and conductors to really enjoy the music and the experience. It never stops building. The music becomes an old friend, and as such, it's more and more satisfying.

The Music Is The Thing. Not you, not your ego, not your neighbor's annoying habit of humming their part when another section is rehearsing theirs. A rehearsal no-no. Destroys focus and concentration. Do that outside of rehearsal. The sounds need to be in your ears and head before they can be sung well. You might even say it disrupts the harmony of the group (pun intended). It isn't about you. It's about sharing what the composer wrote and felt with someone else as authentically as you can, using proper technique and musicianship. The difference between playing notes and making music is proper phrasing. You have to find where the arrival points are and the most musical way to get there.

Meanwhile, I'm sore from holding up music, breathing deeply, using lots of muscles to support a dimenuendo fading to niente, a four hour round trip by car to Round Top, an up til 3 a.m. visit with my best friend from Princeton Thursday evening and Friday morning, and incomplete recovery from the Thursday night concert. It's time to get a cup of tea, take a couple of anagesic, and take a nap!

Kay, apologies for the side-track--I really will do the meme!

It furthers one to find a good teacher--I Ching

Change is inevitable. You can frequently turn it to your advantage if you keep a sharp lookout. Other times you just have to sit and grieve over the loss of a situation you held dear. And then move on.

Decrypting, our choral director is retiring from our group to focus on his university duties. This is as it should be, and everyone is pleased for him, and grateful for the time he spent with us. He is truly a gifted rehearsal technician and director, and coaxed the ensemble to shine. I was privileged to participate in some uncommonly good music making, singing stuff I adore. He will be sorely missed. I look forward to participating with him and other colleagues at the 2009 Georgetown Arts Festival.

So tonight I'm articulating my appreciation for two of the good teachers I've had the opportunity to learn from and grow with as a musician.

I especially am honored to have experienced the totally awesome Central Europe tour with our director and his wife, who is an equally gifted artist and teacher. I learned much from her about digital photography, both through her gentle tutoring and by observing her interaction with all the glorious sights around us and what her eye was drawn to. She created some absolutely gorgeous mementos of those dazzling experiences for the group.

Thanks, Kenny. Thanks, Star.

9/11--Brahms, flow, and Csikszentmihalyi

I was determined to not get all twisted up about 9/11 and put myself back in the stew of garbage since then. Singing Brahms was much better for my soul. Putting out heart-felt vibrations with my whole body and intellect. In truth, I've come to think of music and being a musician as a simple conduit for that ethereal life force that connects everything. Music, even 150 year old music, has the power to move and heal us, especially if we (musicians) transcend ego and simply let the spirit of the composer flow through us. I strongly believe that this flow is everywhere, we only have to sample the excitement in and of the air that we breath and sing with.

This is the essence of prana, the Hindu word for the breath/life force. It cannot be created, it cannot be destroyed. It just flows. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has cool things to say about flow. One is most holy when one attains flow.

Yay for Brahms!

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a musician's musician and composer. He practiced counterpoint (think Bach Two-Part Inventions) for two hours every day before he put pen to manuscript to compose his own work. I call him the hemiola king. Makes singing interesting. Basically, it's shifting the metric pattern from a 3/4 or 6/8 (triple) time signature to what sounds like a string of duples. In other words, you're banging along 1 2 3 1 2 3 and the accent shifts to 1-2 3-1 2-3. You have to hear it...

At any rate, tonight was first rehearsal of the season for the Austin Vocal Arts Ensemble (AVAE), and we're doing a full program of Brahms, featuring the Liebslieder Waltzes. Brahms' style was Classical Romantic, rather than full-out Romantic. He respected the older forms of music (imitation, canon, fugue, et al) and adapted them to structure his work, as opposed to say, Wagner, who wrote what is known as program music--sometimes called a tone poem--which tells a story, or conjures an image, and may be through composed, which simply means the architecture doesn't divide up into neat sections. Think Prelude and Liebestod--restless movement away from a tonal center, never quite landing on a cadence (think the A-men at the end of most hymns).

Brahms wrote for nearly every genre except opera. His lieder (songs) are de rigeur for any singer, and his piano pieces are difficult, but supremely satisfying--you get to use the full range of the piano, and thunder away all your anger or depression. The symphonies are quite pleasant, but perhaps his best known work is Ein Deutsches Requiem (The German Requiem) for chorus and orchestra, which regularly shows up in every chorus' season. It isn't religious so much as spiritual. His tonalities reach deep inside your psyche and resonate with exquisite passion for the listener and the singer.

If you are in Austin on November 8, come listen. You'll hear lots of hemiola :)

SXSWi, anyone?

South by Southwest interactive is drawing near...

The university has requisitioned a gold pass (interactive and film) for our group, and the anticipation is mounting. Austin transforms from a fairly sleepy college town into a beehive of activity during SXSW. We don't get passes for the music portion, but I don't care. I had a grand time last year, and met lots of brilliant, friendly people, and learned oodles about what's happening on the WWW.

I'm looking forward with great excitement to connect with folks I met last year, and meet new friends. And of course learn lots of new tricks.

Are you planning to attend SXSWi this year? Get in touch with me by commenting on this post, and I'll try to arrange a meet-up.

I know Liz Henry will be here, she's leading some sessions. And of course the ubiquitous Bruce Sterling. Dan Rather will give one of the keynote addresses, and His Wakiness, Ze Frank will be in attendance. The Sims daddy is scheduled, and more Web gurus than you can shake a stick at. And it's OK to end a sentence with a preposition. I said so.

The BlogHer ladies are coming, I hope we have a gathering at some point. I'd love to meet Ronni Bennett, and some of the silverback women bloggers. The boomers are hitching up to the 'net, and my new friend from the Boomer Chronicles may grace Austin with her presence.

This has been a phenomenal year of networking and meeting visionary bloggers and communicators. It has certainly enriched my life, and I've only scratched the surface. To think SXSW is growing annually is mind-blowing. As long as I can live in Austin, I plan to attend this event, if I don't do anything else.

One teeny problem is that I have a March 15 deadline for a fairly hefty, in-depth article about the tenth anniversary of our division's Innovative Instructional Technology Awards Program (IITAP) that's presently eating my lunch. The program awards cash prizes to faculty who have developed instructional tech for their classes, and so much is going on at UT that I'm totally inundated with history and descriptions of brilliant Web applications for the classroom. It's totally cool, I'm just a little worried about delivering on time, there's so much to include.

I have a pretty good angle, but the volume of interviews, notes, and putting the pieces together is taking all my time and effort. Would that I had an assistant to take care of the more pedantic chores--scheduling interviews, transcribing notes, doing laundry and dishes.... I need a housewife or househusband!!

This is going to be a dynamo month. A concert on March 31, SXSWi, the article deadline, and a couple of professional development classes just for openers. Then there's the Zona Rosa writers group, side editing gigs, not to mention my day gig--I'll be lucky to get to April in one piece. And I desperately want to visit my daughter in Boston and meet the Boomer Chronicler.

So if you're heading to Austin for SXSWi, let me know--let's get together!

Mr. Miles and the Boston Lyric Opera

John Miles is one of my heroes. This is a comment I wrote after reading a great spread in the Daily Texan of Mr. Miles speaking to a group of UT student athletes. They were also impressed. He's the real deal. I need to find the original article and put it up so it makes sense. Mr. Miles was a star player in the National Negro Baseball League during the 40's and 50's, and shares his stories about the times to promote awareness of the league. The Firing Line - Opinion

But not tonight. I spent several hours crafting a piece on the Boston Lyric Opera production of "Madama Butterfly" that my daughter took me to see while I was in Boston. I lost it. Extreme frustration. Doncha hate that? It was such a special event on so many levels I can't let it get away. E and I were involved in the Opera Festival of New Jersey production of Butterfly several years ago so we knew it from top to bottom, including costume changes and the particular Brescia version both companies used. Our enjoyment was heightened by the shared experience and knowledge.

Exquisite production. Costumes were breathtaking, and the singing sublime. The stage director employed a Kabuki Theater style of acting which was perfect for the work. The chorus was magnificent in geisha costume on-stage, and sublimely rendered the fiendishly difficult "Humming Song," sung off-stage. I had a view of the pit monitor that allows the out of sight chorus to watch the conductor for cues. It was a very special evening.

I promise you'll get the details, but don't hold your breath...