it's all about the timing

a metronome sure makes a difference. i bought it on the weekend, and am using it to steady my rhythm in the Shostakovich prelude and fugue, especially. tonight, i used it for my Czerny etudes - wow, they're fast... i'll have to build up to the full speed. good work out for my left hand...

so there it is, in the middle of the pic, flanked by Ste Cecile (patron saint of musicians), and at the bottom of the pic you see part of the Shostakovich fugue - with Russian text.

what a useful tool :)

composing in Europe

uh huh, have been inspired to compose while i'm here. started composing a 12-tone piece while in Barcelona last week, and in Arles this week, i started a slow string quartet. i have no idea what any of these sound like yet. apparently there is a piano in the hostel we're going to in Florence, so i'll try them there.

how fascinating that this happens when i just sit at a cafe, and decide that i will make good use of my time :)

i'm hoping for more... it makes my days so pleasant when i start out that way, and makes me happy to know i can do this. i imagine the more i do this, the better i will get at it, and the easier it will be. i want this to be a regular thing in my daily life :)

my performance program

as you can see, I'm going to be studying music at McGill starting in September. i will still be studying piano with Julia Gavrilova, as i have been doing since last August when i started taking lessons again - which is awesome. she is a great teacher, and i love her approach. she pushes me and makes me work hard, and she encourages me too, she has a perfect balance.

so she asked me what kind of program i'd like to have for my performance requirements next year. she started with the idea of playing a Beethoven or Mozart sonata, a Bach prelude and fugue or partita, and some Chopin. then she said i could also consider a program in which i might play a Shostakovich prelude and fugue, a Schubert sonata and some Liszt or Debussy or something else from the French Impressionists.

:)

i did not choose the standard classical program, i'm happy to say! i'm going with Shostakovich, Schubert, and it looks like Granados is for my third piece.

i'm preparing the Shostakovich prelude and fugue in A major. i have a copy of Keith Jarret playing all the 24 preludes and fugues - they're amazing, each one - and this one seems to be so different from the rest. it's got a cute melody, and seems light. it is a very difficult fugue, but so amazing. every intricate detail is so important and so tasty - i'm only working on the first half for now, and am going at it quite slowly, i do have a lot of time to prepare it, so that's ok, but going so slowly gives me the chance to savour the awesome craft of composing that Shostakovich displays in this. wow, imagine this stuff as it's being written... that's really cool...

i'm also preparing a Schubert Sonata, in A minor (the earlier of his A minor sonatas). here too, there are some fine details and emotions expressed, so simply yet so enticingly. what i love about Julia is that she breaks down a piece when we play it in the lessons, and she explains what instruments she imagines playing the line, or what emotion is typically expressed with the pattern of notes used, and it all gives the music so much more meaning and intrigue. i'm often speechless when she does that, and sometimes close to tears as i get a sense of what it really means to compose...

when i came back from New York, i told Julia about the Yamaha concert i'd been to and that the artist had played El Amor Y La Muerte from Granados' Goyescas. she said then that it was a piece i would be able to play at this stage, which was definitely interesting to me. so when, a few weeks ago, we were discussing our choice for my third piece, Julia mentioned Granados and i asked if she meant this one, and she said yes! how amazing. now, i couldn't remember the piece - it's been several months since that Yamaha concert - so I've found a recording of it that is wonderfully rendered. i've done some research - the piece is the 5th of 6 pieces written for an opera called Goyescas, which was inspired by the painter Goya. it's an OPERA PIECE! imagine, i'll be playing something that is not only an amazingly beautiful piece, but it is from an opera... and it is about 16 minutes long... i wonder if it will be too long for my 15-20 minute program...

anyway, this is all just amazing stuff. sadly, i won't be able to practise for the next four weeks or so since i'm going to be traipsing about in Europe, but as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. i'll really be looking forward to playing again when i return :)

Ching-Yun Hu

ok, i'm back, at least temporarily, from a short hiatus during which i've pondered many things, most of them relating to my take on life in general. all is well, once again, in kelly's world.

so, Ching-Yun Hu. this is the pianist i heard play at the Yamaha Artist's Studio in Manhattan last week, April 5th. she was amazing. she's 24, she's from Taipei, and has won so many awards it's unbelievable. at her recital last week, there were maybe 50 people in attendance, and i sat in the second row, close enough to see how she moves when she plays. and this, for me, was a real treat. finally, the things my piano teacher has been trying to instill in me were made real for me to see with my own eyes. she's like a ballerina at the piano. sometimes moved by the music and her expression, and sometimes obviously just having fun with a Beethoven variation, and moving so beautifully. now i know what to aim for :)

her programme included El Amor y la Muerte by Granados. that was my favorite. i showed the programme to my piano teacher last weekend, and when she saw the Granados piece listed, she said that it's something i could play now if i wanted to. i almost melted... another of my favorites in her programme that night were the Beethoven Variations in c minor, WoO 80. Beethoven was just a genius, and Ching-Yu did him justice that night.

i kind of missed the rest of her programme, as i was concentrating really hard on not coughing. i'd been sick since the previous weekend and, although the fever was almost completely gone, the cough was just settling in, and the Ricola cough drops i snagged from Carnegie Hall earlier in the week did not help at all...

speachless :)

i've been practising for the past three quarters of an hour, maybe even an hour by now. i just finished playing an old Chopin Nocturne that i learned 19 or 20 years ago, the Nocturne in E minor. it made me weep tonight.

first, that i can remember a piece 19 years after having played it in the Kiwanis festival (i placed, either first or second, with my performance). and second, at the beauty of the piece, and the maturity of emotion i am finally bringing to it, even if i'm not playing it perfectly. although i really like Chopin, there are several of his works of which i'm not very fond, and that list keeps growing. but this Nocturne, i'm in awe. this will always be on my list of favs when it comes to performance.

i learned it as a student of Mme Contant's, in North Bay. she was my teacher from my very first lesson, when i was 4 years old. i played the Nocturne for her one last time before heading off to the Kiwanis festival. for the first time in my recollection, she sat back and just listened, no interruptions with her conductor's baton, no utterances of things to improve or correct. she just listened. and when it was all over, she wept too. she wept for the recent loss of her husband. i'll never forget this piece.

ian gillan

i've got this amazing song in my head, i believe it's sung by ian gillan, with Deep Purple. it's called Child in Time. what an amazing song. the version i have is just over 10 minutes long. i think tom copied it for me in the middle of the original Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack - why JCS? well, because ian gillan sings the part of Jesus on the soundtrack :)

Child in Time really rocks. there isn't much to the lyrics, just a few lines, but the instrumentation, and the drive of the music, it's sooooo cool. and when gillan sings, ooooh, he's so awesome, what a solid voice he's got. it's definitely a song from the 70s, prog rock at its best.

definitely a great choice for the voice of Jesus, recorded in 1970. oh, to hear him singing lines like "why should you want to know? why are you obsessed with fighting?" and "bleed me, beat me, kill me, take me now, before i change my mind"...

phew...

havin' a good music day

hey, this music stuff sure is fun. i've put in a full week of 8-hour days (and then some) for my regular job which, may i remind you, has nothing to do with music whatsoever. i've had some very intense emotional hours too, peppered throughout, and spent at least three hours last night teaching whistle and dancing some fun irish set dances.

and with all of that, i still managed to practice the piano every day this week (except last night) and watch at least one episode of either CSI or Carnivale every night too. i even watched Nosferatu and Minority Report somewhere in the midst of it all...

tonight was even better. i spent about two hours at the coffee shop writing a very brief imitative duo and working on what might be the next exercise to be introduced in tomorrow's counterpoint class, due to be handed in next week. so i'm jumping ahead a bit, for the fun of it. it's great!

and i've just spent an hour working on my new Debussy piano piece and the 2nd and 3rd movements of my Beethoven piano sonata. woohoo, i'm loving it! and get a load of this postcard of Beethoven that i found - it's awesome. maybe some day i'll pose like that too :)

so now, i deserve a bit of relaxation, right? of course, right. time for an episode of CSI. i'm exhausted, but happily so.

still no news from McGill... for now :)

i'm still waiting for a decision from McGill, in case you're wondering. i was in touch with the admissions office today to make sure they have everything from me that they need to proceed. and they do. so there's nothing left for me to do but to wait.

they said i should know end of March, beginning of April...

gearing up for the imitative duo

yay, California trip's over, i can focus on my passion now, fully and completely.

so the homework for tomorrow's class is to write a canon in 1st species counterpoint, between 14 and 20 whole notes, with a cadence (etc etc etc... more instructions were given but they're meaningless here).

before heading to Cali on Monday, i managed to get out one canon in mixed values (quite different and perhaps more complex than 1st species), and had about 93% of a second canon completed in mixed values. tonight, remembering that the homework was for 1st species counterpoint and not mixed values, i wrote a few more canons for that very purpose (as i sipped on a Caramel Corretto at the local Suction Cup).

at some point, i noticed that the next phase, after writing canons, is to write an imitative duo. by the end of that next chapter, i'll be writing a duo based on themes of my own invention. (whooaoh... i just re-read that paragraph in chapter 12, i'm excited) and it occured to me that this imitative duo could have lyrics.

i wondered what lyrics i would use. then i thought of asking someone to collaborate on it with me, they providing me with the lyrics - i was thinking of someone like Raphael, given that he's probably done this before, even if it is a few years ago, and he's an enthusiastic musician too, and it could be an excuse for us to become friends.

then i realized that i have a poem of Tom's in my possession (geez, i hope he doesn't mind that i'm posting about this - Tom, if you ever read this and are apalled, please let me know and i'll revise my posting!). this is a poem he wrote for his class a few months ago, and it was inspired by the misery that i've so often expressed to him regarding my current job, and how anxious i am to get out of it and finally into my real field of interest. (only a few short months more...)

i've just re-read it. it's a long poem, in terms of writing a simple imitative duo. but it might just work if i decide to expand the idea of the duo into several parts. wow, was i ever excited when the thought came to me. i haven't told Tom yet. that can wait. i want to see if i'm inspired to write some music to it first!

how cool would that be, to write music to someone else's works. and imagine if that someone else, or those someone elses, like what i write, and then it gets used in a play, or a movie or something like that...?! yeah, bring it on, bring it on. i'm sooooo going in the right direction.

Molinari Quartet

i attended the Molinari Quartet's performance at Pollack Hall last night. the concert was one in a series for the MusiMarch 2006 programme.

this year, MusiMarch is called Des impressions - music from Scandinavia and Canada. last night's concert featured works by Penderecki, Ratniece, Thoresen, Sokolovic, and R. Murray Schafer. this is all 20th century music which, often, can sound quite bizarre. to watch it being played is even more unreal.

the Penderecki and Ratniece struck me as very tentative pieces, full of very quiet glissandos on the strings. it seems the composers were very hesitant in their expressions - perhaps that's what they intended. Ratniece's piece, Alvéoles, was inspired by various textures and colours of honey. I could certainly picture the honey dripping throughout.

Thoresen's piece, Pyr Aionion, was more interesting to me. he seems to use a hybrid between a major and minor second between two specific degrees in the minor scale (that is not to say that this piece is in a particular key either, but it was certainly more tonal than the first two). it definitely sounded nordic, and i liked the feel of it. it was more solid-sounding to me.

Sokolovic's Blanc Dominant, based on Molinari paintings, was again very atonal. i was pleased to be able to recognize a recurring theme in some of the variations.

R. Murray Schafer's Winter Birds was more interesting to me, given that it is inspired by cold winter days in northern Ontario. you can hear the solitude of existence in that environment, which must surely be akin to winters in the scandinavian countries. no wonder the scandinavians were included with the canadians in this year's programme. in this piece, you can hear a variety of birds skillfully mimicked by the strings.

the quartet is quite skilled. to play this music, you need to be able to play your instrument in the classical way, but you must also learn how to do the weird things the composers call for.

i saw the cellist use the bow on the tail piece (the wooden bit at the bottom of the instrument that pulls the strings tight), and all four at some parts were clicking the sides of their instruments with their fingernails. in some cases, they were hitting the wooden part of their bow against the body of their violin.

they whistled, and they spoke. they used the edge of their bows to get a metallic sound on the string. they pizzicatoed, out of sync with each other. and all of this is written in the score. i wonder what the score looks like... how do you notate a diminished-major second (which is not quite a minor second)? how do you notate a tail piece note? how do you know what pitch you're going to get?

still, with all the skill and expression, i have difficulty enjoying this level of atonality. they're good at what they do. i just don't have a way of fully appreciating what they do just yet. but it's definitely good exposure into the possibilities of movie-music writing. and i'm all for that.

my music career - the next phase

i've entered the next phase in my music career - i'm still waiting for an official letter from McGill that will tell me i'm either invited or i'm not invited to register as a student in the faculty of music in the fall. however...

... julia, my piano teacher, who also teaches in the faculty of music at McGill (also known as the Schulich School of Music), asked me today if i would be joining her piano class in the fall, or someone else's. i told her i would join hers, of course. she proceeded to explain how i would most likely be admitted into first year piano studies right away instead of the pre-requisite courses, given the speed at which i've improved in the past 6 months, and we will need to plan my program for the exam at the end of the first year...

... all this talk, it's about me being a student in the faculty of music this coming September! it's unofficial, true, but it sounds quite promising!

we're talking about improving my technique by learning some Czerny studies, selecting another Beethoven sonata (or Mozart or Haydn), and anything else i feel like playing as long as it's appropriate. yeeha! woohoo!!

i started a Debussy piece today called Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir. it's beautiful. it's atonal, it sounds like movie music. i loooooove it. this is the kind of thing i'd love to write.

i have a feeling Debussy and i will become good friends.

puzzle canons

we're studying puzzle canons in my counterpoint class. they're quite fascinating - i'm told there are puzzle canon books, just like crossword puzzle books. boy, would i like to get my hand on one of those.

a canon is a composition with 2 or more voices. each voice sings the same melody, offset by a few bars or so. take, for example, the tune row row row your boat, or frère Jacques. one person starts to sing, then a little while later, a second person sings the same thing, and the whole thing sounds good together.

a puzzle canon is similar. what happens is that the composer writes out one line of music, a nice singable melody. then to solve the puzzle canon, you take this line and find a way to have it repeat itself on top of itself, with its second version coming in after the first version has already begun. it may stay in its original pitch, or it might need to be transposed by a perfect fourth, or perfect fifth, or by an octave (or maybe something else!). and when the two are heard together, the rules of renaissance counterpoint must be observed - consonants must be heard where expected, and dissonances must be treated properly. musicians were expected to figure this out for themselves, being given nothing more than one line of music and instructions for turning this into a canon by augmenting or diminishing or inverting and transposing.

oooooh, what fun. i've found references to Bach's Musical Offering (BWV 1079) in my internet search for information on puzzle canons. if you haven't yet listened to the Musical Offering, i'd highly recommend it. it's an amazingly interesting set of canons, fugues, ricercars and a sonata based on a bizarre theme given to Bach by Frederick the Great. he's taken the theme, augmented it, diminished it, transposed it, inverted it and written it backwards against itself. what a brilliant man...

post-audition wrap

phew, it's done...

what a day. talk about an emotional roller-coaster... i wrote the theory placement exam in the morning, that was a breeze (although i still don't know what scale degree the mediant is).

then i wandered around a bit, walked through a shopping mall, bought myself some nice pj's, and checked into a local Second Cup for a chamomile tea and a piece of carrot cake. i read my book for a few hours, and took the time to write up my audition programme since i knew they'd want to have it written out.

julia had suggested i drink some hot cocoa before the audition (not the regular hot chocolate, but real cocoa). i found a great place on ste catharines, across from the paramount theatre, that serves hot cocoa and i got myself a double. ooooh, that was yummy and sooo rich - good place to go back to, that's for sure.

i headed back to the music building and changed into a lovely black dress for my audition. i sat around, waited for my time to come, then got myself a seat just outside the audition room. i chatted with a nice young guy who was due to audition before me, then wished him luck as his turn came up.

i repeated to myself "i am good" and "i can play a good audition" and "i am relaxed" and so on, until i was called in. i started with brahms, then they asked me to play beethoven and finally the bach. i didn't get to finish any of them - they stopped me before i could finish brahms and beethoven, and to my utter chagrin, i found i was unable to deliver when it came to the bach fugue. i tried two or three times, but kept fumbling in the same spot - a new spot, i had never fumbled there before. but all in all, it went quite well. still, i couldn't believe i'd screwed up the fugue, i love that piece...

i found out one of the judges actually lives in my backyard and has been hearing me practice for the past few months. she recognized my playing on the pre-recorded audition, and again today. isn't that funny - it's a small world, and you never know who's listening.

julia called me at about 9:30 tonight and told me she had just spoken to one of the judges. it seems i made a pretty good impression, regardless of the trouble with bach. she is quite confident that i have done well enough, although i still need to get the official invitation to enroll for studies in the fall. she wouldn't have called just to make me feel better, so i'm hoping that this is all a really positive sign, and feel encouraged about my performance earlier today.

so, officially, i will know the judges' decision by the end of march. geez, waiting is the hardest part! but no matter what, having done this today changes everything after this. wow, what a day...

:)

pre-audition jitters...

hey, wow, i've never been affected like this before.

i'm nervous, but not like shaking-like-a-leaf nervous, i'm hyper-sensitive today. i had a lesson with julia this afternoon, started with the brahms, and when brahms was done, she looked at me and said, with her russian accent, "i don't like you today, you seem nervous..." and i broke down and cried for half a minute. how bizarre...

i'm not worried about my performance tomorrow, so i don't know if i'm nervous about it, or just super aware of what i'm headed towards and how different it is from anything i've ever done. it's quite exhilarating, and understandably it's also a bit trepidating, if that's the correct word. i love this new direction. it's amazing to see how well it fits with who i am and what i love.

i think i'm overwhelmed rather than nervous. and although i often notice a feeling of aloneness in all of this, i also know i'm getting support from all sorts of people who want nothing but for me to be happy and to follow my bliss - you all have such faith in me.

thanks everyone.

practice makes perfect

actually, i don't know what's truer - practice makes perfect, or perfect practice makes perfect... that was a point of pointless debate at music camp years ago.

anyhow, i've just had an amazing practice session. i'm more relaxed, i can feel that in my forearm muscles in both arms, i'm aware of it. in the beethoven, i've found a way to play those left-hand triplets more musically, just by giving them some thought.

i really like all my pieces. i think that makes a difference. they're starting to take on new meaning at this stage too. it's like learning to walk - you focus on placing your feet one in front of the other and working out your balance. you don't notice anything else, until one day, you don't even give walking any thought anymore. and now, you notice everything you pass by, and how it all fits together, and you consider all the work and effort and heart that went into all of this beauty. and you wouldn't even know about it if you hadn't learned to walk in the first place.

how lucky i am.

count down to the audition

ok, we're a week away. i just had my penultimate piano lesson with julia this afternoon (well, penultimate before the audition) and she had some pretty nice things to say.

she said the brahms is just right, nothing needs to be done to it. i actually found myself drifting off to another world when i played it for her this afternoon, and felt tears behind my eyes. tears of ecstasy, really.

the beethoven is much better at this new speed (metronome 84 for the quarter note instead of my usual 72) but i'm losing the tempo in some parts. when i replayed it, it was much better. just a little shaky on the trills in the right hand, i just need to relax more when i get to them.

and the bach, gotta keep the prelude singing, think about hearing all the notes, and the voices. the fugue, finally, is in really good shape. i don't think i'll balk when it comes time to playing it in this friday's pre-audition recital.

and... julia's giving me advice on how to dress. this is a good sign. when your teacher takes time to help you choose your wardrobe, you know there isn't much criticism left for your performance. and a good choice in wardrobe can only enhance the impression i make on the jury.

woohoo! i'm feeling pretty good about all of this right now. a cutie-pie singing grad student named John whom i met a few weeks ago stopped me in the hallway just before my lesson and had a quick 30-second chat with me, another reminder to me that i AM meeting other musicians and artists, even some who might be interesting to me and fun to hang out with. yeah yeah yeah, bring it on.

olympic opera

lookie here, the cbc has a contest on right now called the Studio Sparks Winter Olympics Contest. to enter, you must be canadian, and submit a plot for an opera set at the 2006 winter olympic games, in 150 words or less.

grand prize: an mp3 player from CBC sports, cbc sports olympics magnets, and a cbc sports olympics ball cap.

this sounds like fun! i can't wait to hear them read some of the entries on the radio next week.

McGill piano audition

so, they've asked me to play for them live after listening to a pre-audition recording i prepared around christmas time (with the help of a cutie pie sound recording student at McGill named Carlos). yay for me! february 20th is the date.

what am i playing? Brahms Rhapsody Op. 79 No. 2 (brilliant piece); Bach's prelude and fugue in E major from Book I of the well-tempered klavier; the 1st movement of Beethoven's piano sonata No. 6 in F major. i'm just loving it. my teacher says she pictures me playing Rachmaninoff preludes. that made me slightly giddy.

Debbie Quigley and Kim Vincent come to Montreal

Debbie and Kim were in Montreal last weekend from Toronto. sadly, i missed Debbie's whistle workshop but i got to catch up with her later that evening at a really awesome house session. it's been a while since i've played in any session, let alone one as great as this one. the tunes were flowing, conversation was fun and the home-cooked food was scrumptious.

Debbie and Kim played a concert at McKibbins on sunday, and that was just delightful. i love the sound of pipes and fiddle together. like when ivan goff and patrick ourceau play The Old Bush and Spike Island Lasses...

it was a musically invigorating and motivating weekend for me, in a celtic way. such a pleasure to see Debbie and hear her play, and i'm always up for meeting new musicians, so hearing Kim was a treat too. man, the chicken leek pie at McKibbins is to die for!

Radu Lupu and the MSO Feb 7 2006

the MSO performed Shostakovich's 8th symphony, followed by Radu Lupu's Beethoven's 5th piano concerto last night in montreal. i know Beethoven's great, but the Shostakovich elicited much more of a reaction from me than the piano concerto did.

after the concert, back in the comfort of my shared apartment, two friends (one newer than the other) came by to pick up a bag of books, and i got to discussing the concert with the new friend who is a graduate of McGill and a former double-bass player. i'm amazed at the energy of the conversation - it's been a while since i've been able to discuss music with someone this way.

he said the Shostakovich 8th is rarely played in concerts. it was written 2 years after war began in russia, and is quite an intense composition full of emotion, despair, subdued hope. and wonderful music. i loved it instantly.

the beethoven was cool - watching Lupu sit back in the chair and play as if he was mixing a bowl of pasta on the dining table before diving in to eat it. he's obviously quite comfortable at the piano. something for me to strive for :)