Color, water, sound at Aster Montessori School: wonder in the everyday

What is it about a fresh ice cube that makes us eager to touch it? Or the satisfying feeling of plunging a paint brush into a new set of watercolor paints? The inviting sound of someone’s voice that compels us to join singing?

The Afield, Anthony Hawley's and my collaboration, spent a week as Artists-in-Residence at the beautiful and forward-thinking Aster Montessori School in Cambridge, MA, investigating these universal impulses. Our program through four visits to Aster during the 2017-18 academic year is entitled Water Partitas, based on Byron Au Yong’s eponymous pieces written for me in 2016. Through the Water Partitas Program we will guide young children to interact with water, color, and sound in the children’s familiar environments, eventually helping them to create musical scores for all of us to perform in their community.

For those not familiar with the Montessori philosophy, Dr. Maria Montessori was an Italian 20th century educational pioneer. She developed a way of learning that puts emphasis on children’s autonomy through giving them tools to make their own choices about their activities and sharing the work of a participatory community. All of the materials in the classroom are called "works" and can consist of, at least in a young children's community ages 3-6, various things like tracing metal inset shapes to continent puzzle maps to washing a table. Each work has a specific purpose, and it is up to the child how long they will spend on any given work. The focus on process and choice in a Montessori classroom is a beautiful thing to witness. 

Anthony and I were both fortunate to attend Montessori schools when we were young, and our own children attended an idyllic Montessori school on a Nebraska farm called Prairie Hill Learning Center. It was here that our girls grew a love for the outdoors and responsibility for self-care starting at the young age of 1 1/2. We also learned a great deal about how to be patient parents.

With these experiences in mind, Anthony and I heard about the Wildflower Schools, a network of Montessori schools in Cambridge and other Massachusetts and Minnesota communities. Founded by a former professor at MIT Media Labs, these are small schools designed to pop-up (like wildflowers) in storefront locations. The network keeps schools small—only two main teachers per school who are also the administrators—for hands-on learning and integral family participation.  We were immediately drawn to the network’s key principles that include having an Artist-in-Residence program within the schools. As artists embedded in a community, we can share our work with children in the classroom by designing work stations and stimulating their curiosity just by doing our daily work routine.

Mid-October marked our first visit to Aster, focused on introducing our work as The Afield to the children through presentation of our materials. We began with a performance for the 15 children and later for their parents and siblings of a few short works by J.S. Bach, Byron Au Yong, Nico Muhly, and Paola Prestini, in addition to some of our own original work for violin, voice, and video.

The week progressed with the introduction of work stations involving water drawings, water videos with accompanying sounds, glass singing, colored ice-making with both tap and sea waters, and vocal improvisation with video. Some of the most empowering work from my perspective was improvising while a child painted—we each gave the other cues. As adults we tend to question every little choice (from both the visual and sonic sides) to the point of paralysis. But when 3-5 year-old children draw with freedom it is a wondrous thing to behold, and seeing them smile as I accompany their drawing with violin improvisation is thrilling.

Aster's morning circle

I was similarly awed and reminded by the power of simple questions to elicit artistic awareness. For example, watching a slow-moving video of a sea star is already a pretty awesome experience for a 5 year-old. If you ask that same child to make a sound for the sea star, they will do so with delight. Other children will contribute different sounds, and suddenly we find ourselves with plentiful artistic choices. Likewise, figuring out multiple ways how to melt colored ice for art-making is an example of a practical decision moved into the realm of art.

Interestingly, there were a few well-thought-out works that didn’t engage the children in ways I would have thought; on the other hand, there were times when an activity I considered mundane was fascinating for the children. One example was when I put on a violin mute because I didn’t want to play too loudly while some children were resting. Other children flocked around my violin case and started asking questions about the sparkles on my mute as well as the sound. I demonstrated the way the violin was muted with the “sparkly” rubber mute, but then took out all of the other mutes I have—leather, aluminum, wood—and we had a fun time listening to the multiple possibilities created with these options.

As Anthony and I continue to develop our plans for The Afield School (our dream to open an interdisciplinary performance art space from where we also offer classes, also in a mobile, pop-up platform), it is important to us that we choose thoughtful and rigorous institutional partners. Thinking of a young children’s community as “rigorous” may sound odd to some, however in terms of the way that the Montessori method creates an environment for openness as well as structure for children, partnering with Aster Montessori School makes so much sense for us. At the young age of 3, children are all eager to explore and experience wonder about the world in an inspiring way. I feel fortunate to be involved in some of these children’s first experiences with the world as an artistic playground.

Exploring the singing of wine glasses

Under every sky: the vox minima and our collective curiosity

“You put yourself into some kind of trance to receive certain songs. You know, it’s like setting a trap for a song.  It’s like fishing or anything else.  You have be real quiet to catch the big ones.” –Tom Waits

Since its inception I have been obsessed with the podcast Meet the Composer on WQXR’s Q2 station.  Not just because I love and admire the host Nadia Sirota (our families have been close through multi-generations) and I know some of the show's guests, but mainly because of the way it challenges me.  This podcast lays bare the creative process for all to see through the featured composers’ unique eyes and energies, and it entices those of us who are always searching for inspiration. 

My MTC obsession makes sense because the older I get the more I crave creative time.  To be clear, being creative for me means making stuff.  Not just playing, practicing, rehearsing in an artistically satisfying way (although I value that too), but literally making something from scratch.  I have never been ok with exclusively following a solid practice routine without other stimulating influences, but these days I can’t function well in the world unless I have time to play and discover inside and outside of my instrumental practice.  For me and many other instrumental performers, the act of interpretation and performance preparation can be so all-consuming that we forget to mess around with the materials the composers (and artists of all kinds) are using.  We forget that we’re still wide-eyed kids who don’t need permission to make things.

Which is where exploring episodes of Meet the Composer comes in. 

Whether introducing us to the deep listening practice of Pauline Oliveros or exploring how Matmos made an entire album using their washing machine, MTC delves into makers’ mindful artistic practices in a way that almost no other resource does.  For me, listening to the final installment of MTC’s third season featuring Paul Simon was a particularly enlightening experience.  On the one hand, I was eager to hear about Simon’s philosophy: “The more you can remove your ego the more your curiosity can lead you to a place.”  On the other, as a life-long fan of Simon’s music I found myself nostalgically noting significant moments of my life punctuated by this or that song (I was first introduced to Simon when my South African cousins brought me a cassette tape of his “Graceland” album on one of their trips to the States in the 80’s).  But mostly I was intrigued to hear about how his brain works, about how he is always moving, always making connections and welcoming collaborations.  And he, like everyone else, is just a person, but a person who habitually acts upon his curiosity to create art that touches audiences in meaningful ways.

In my own life I’ve been making a practice of following and acting upon what for now I am calling the “tiny voice” (vox minima).  This is literally what feels like an early computer graphics-like orb that starts shining as a small point of light and gets more intense as the ideas form alongside it.  This gets me out of bed in the morning and catches me off-guard in a conversation.  It is bright, constant, and takes my quietly paying attention to activate.  Makers of all kinds talk about this inspirational imperative; if they don’t act on it promptly and faithfully, it will go away and find someone else to inhabit.  For me it similarly feels like a rare opportunity, a call to action.

In recent months this tiny voice has guided me to have the courage to improvise more often, dream larger in my plans for the future, and follow my maker instincts in general.  If I hear a melody or pattern of rhythms, I scribble it down; if a line for a poem comes up, I take notes; if someone else’s work enters my mind, I follow up with an investigation into their output or an email to that person.  This is an empowering practice in which every creative impulse turns into purposeful action.  (Of course using the word “tiny” to describe creative direction is perhaps a misnomer because creativity is without size and limit.  But pinpointing the beginning of the impulse for me is key, and the more I follow my instincts the louder and clearer they become.)

When I hear someone like Paul Simon speak so passionately about collaborating with this or that musician, investigating music and art from all parts of the world, I wonder why we don’t all make time to explore every day.  What state of mind do we need to be in to truly listen, to welcome curiosity, to act on our tiny voices?  The thrill that comes from discovery not only pushes us into a higher zone of artistry, we also forget that we thought we needed permission to make something new in the first place. 

creative imperative

Nudging, waking

Necessity

Ready to know

You find

You show me

Formed elsewhere

Where stars are

Fullness

Fierce listening

Is morning

Your tiny clarion voice

Will be

-R.F.

The Chiara Quartet steps into the future

By the time of this post, the news of the Chiara Quartet disbanding in September 2018 after 18 professional seasons together will be public.  Whenever I hear about a quartet ending I worry about the personal health of the members and their families, I am concerned and curious about the relationships within the group, and I hope that all is well.  I feel compelled to let everyone know that all is well.  In fact, all is better than well.  The four of us in the Chiara Quartet came to our decision in April 2017, and it was and is a joyful one.

It is no secret that it is has been one of my life dreams to play in a professional string quartet.  This was my father’s business when I was growing up, but it was also something that intrigued and suited me in particular.  I love working closely with a small number of people in a creative setting, playing some of the most transcendent music I know, giving my all to the experience.  I love analyzing and decoding Beethoven’s greatest works and exploring new languages in quartet commissions by our friends.  I love laughing as a team, seeking out great food on the road, staying with the larger quartet family when traveling.  I love the unique trust within a long-term ensemble and the transformative experiences that happen when this trust is shared on and off stage. 

The Chiara Quartet has always been a high-intensity, honest, focused, supportive group.  Together we have forever pushed ourselves to go deeper into the music, to discover new heights with one another in our rehearsals and performances as well as in our teaching as a group and individually.  I am grateful beyond belief for our shared experiences, and while I will miss quartet life with these fantastic humans, I am ready to move onto the next phase (and stay tuned for occasional CSQ collaborations in the future…).

Something that keeps coming up in our quartet to help explain our decision is the idea of expansion.  In the past few years in particular we have been opening, releasing, extending in our rehearsals and performances to include more creativity, more freedom.  Playing by heart has been motivated by a desire to free ourselves from too much analysis, from getting too myopic in our thinking.  It’s almost like we’ve been trying to see our creative work from space instead of from the stage.  I relate to composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s explanation of the way she sees and hears music in multiple views.  On an episode of WQXR’s Meet the Composer podcast, she questions which view she takes to listen to her musical work; how does a piece sound different from a vertical or from a horizontal view?  Maybe we in the Chiara Quartet have been searching for a new way to experience the string quartet, and human relationships in general.

Throughout this journey of group expansion we have also been expanding our individual creative lives.  All of the outward-focused motion the quartet has encouraged and supported is buoying us forward individually into the career paths upon which we are ready to embark.  We will follow each other’s journeys with continued and enthusiastic interest. 

In my next phase, I am excited to perform in new chamber music and solo contexts.  I am also thrilled to teach violin students and coach chamber music with more regularity.  My husband Anthony and I will continue to perform together as the multidisciplinary duo The Afield, and beyond that, we plan to open The Afield School, an organization pioneering interdisciplinary art-making and performance.  The school will have a central hub (location TBA) as well as mobile, pop-up locations around the world.  It is our dream to change the artistic fabric of communities through new and challenging explorations in the arts at home and abroad.

Many people have asked me if I’m sad about the quartet ending.  Of course I’m sad.  We have spent 17 life-changing professional years playing together.  Looking back even further, Greg Beaver and I played in the Chiara Quartet when we were age 16 and 17, respectively, studying at the Musicorda Summer String Festival in 1993, 24 years ago.  At the end of the 2017-18 season it will be 18 years of professional playing (same members) and 25 years total.  This is a hugely meaningful amount of time dedicated to extraordinary music and each other.  I will expect nostalgia as well as other complex emotions throughout this celebratory season, however because of the gratitude I have for our career, I have not experienced and do not expect to experience regret.  I am fortunate enough to be following my dreams, and for this I am indescribably grateful.    

Refining truth: a guide to surviving the artistic life

“Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness.” Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark

Artists know all about refinement.  This is a large part of what we do every day, constantly retooling our craft, whether it is bouncing a bow on the string just the right way or getting the lighting to work beautifully on a portrait.  The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of refinement for this purpose is: “the improvement or clarification of something by the making of small changes.”  As important as minute, delicate changes are to perfecting a skill for artists, the kind of refinement Willa Cather suggests is far larger and more complex.  I read her statement as addressing a more holistic honing, the refinement process of which helps us to become more authentically ourselves in the world.

On a daily basis artists already deal with an unusual set of demands that bring our inner realities into plain view.  Setting our own schedules for practice or creative time, dealing with our own motivation (or lack of), comparing ourselves to others, reflecting on our rate of “progress,” assessing the relevance of our work, struggling with the size of our vision; these are examples of daily reckoning for an artistic person.

A healthy daily check-in is one of my very favorite parts of being a musician.  I enjoy the methodical activity of making out a practice schedule, deciding between what really needs work and what is fun to play, balancing out my time between wood-shedding passages and experimenting with sound color.  This literal staring at the mirror of my violinistic needs is something I’ve been doing for so long that I don’t question it.  It’s an example of an artistic refinement process that furthers self-knowledge.

But in order to find our true artistic purpose in the world we must balance inner reflection with widening our world-view.  We must take risks that push our comfort zones, learn how to recover from perceived failure, and develop real empathy for others.  How else are we to come to a sense of truthfulness if we haven’t lived to know what it is?  If we haven’t developed perspective?  The life experiences outside of the practice/studio environment are the ones that make us wholly distinctive. They give us the fire to create in a uniquely personal manner. 

So if refinement asks us to go small and seeking truth can ask us to go big, is the idea of “truth refinement” oxymoronic?  I think not, as long as we are constantly aware of the delicate balance necessary for productive artistic growth.  Because of the nature of artistic craft and refinement, many artists will be tempted to go small too often in our work, so we need the reminder to think big on a regular basis.  

Being a venerate list-maker I came up with ten things I do to stay balanced in my own work, when my sense of vision gets dwarfed by single, small pursuits:

1.     Keep two journals (at least): 1. For daily artistic work. Use this for planning out your time, reflecting on what you’re up to.  Doesn’t have to be prose, just keep yourself thinking about your process.  2. For big ideas, creative motivations.

2.     Go outside and walk, run, play once a day.

3.     Read a lot.  Yes, stay up on current events but also read books(!) about people and events that inspire you (biography, history) and worlds that challenge you (fantasy, poetry).

4.     Seek out people whose vision is far-reaching, and keep your own vision ever-expanding (see journal #2). 

5.     Spend time with people who don’t do what you do, don’t speak your cultural/social/political language, and ask them about themselves.

6.     Create and cherish community.

7.     Keep your literal or chosen family close and dear.

8.     Save all-nighters for life-changing moments or creative binges.  Otherwise try to sleep.

9.     Sit with challenging emotions and acknowledge them, be in them fully.  Don’t try to do the work of letting go or transforming them until you are ready. 

10.  Have regular dance parties.

I’m always inspired to hear how certain artists have figured out how to live in the world and still push the limit of their creative vision.  A lot of these people have strict and simple rules for living to protect their artistic time.  Like poet Mary Oliver who in a 2015 interview said she preserves the hours of 5-9 a.m. for her best writing.  Or Haruki Murakami’s novel writing regimen of extensive swimming and running to stay in peak physical condition. All of which of course are examples of refinement.

At this time when the very idea of truth is being threatened, let’s all keep in touch more about our discoveries.  Refining our sense of truthfulness is not just a by-product of artistic growth, it’s also necessary for creative sustainability on global levels. 

Becoming a more resonant body

There is a lot of singing in my family.  Not just singing in church and school choirs but extensive Gilbert and Sullivan, Amahl and the Night Visitors type of sing-alongs over extended family gatherings.  When I was a kid my father sang in opera productions in summers off, and both sets of grandparents revered vocal expression.  Perhaps it’s not surprising that my sister Abby Fischer became a professional singer.  What began as her almost constant humming as a child (sometimes to her family’s annoyance) transformed into a gorgeous, heart-rending mezzo-soprano voice that still brings me to tears every time I hear her. 

Abby’s trajectory (and that of all singers) fascinates me.  The way a beautiful voice grows and deepens with age and experience is different from the way an instrumentalist develops; we instrumentalists traditionally seek resonance from our instruments while vocalists find resonance from within their bodies.  My sister recently sang in the 2016 Resonant Bodies Festival in New York, a festival devoted to programming stunning vocalists in cutting edge new repertoire and configurations.  Just looking at the programs provoked the questions: what IS a resonant body and how do we make sound? 

I have been thinking about these questions of resonance quite a lot recently while exploring the range of my own voice.  For my 40th birthday last winter, my husband presented me with a ridiculously marvelous gift: solo violin commissions from eight composers (and a premiere date for August 2016)!  While this was a surprise in and of itself, two of the pieces were written for “singing violinist” and one for violin and vocalizations.  Byron Au Yong’s music (composer of “Water Partitas” for violin and vocalizations) was entirely new to me and I loved it immediately.  The two composers who wrote for singing violinist, Lisa Bielawa and Rodney Lister, are people whose work I had performed in previous years, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

In 2012 my sister Abby introduced me to Lisa Bielawa’s “Kafka Songs.”  These haunting songs are set to texts of Kafka and were written for Carla Kilhstedt, an inspiring musician I met as a teenager in Oberlin, Ohio where we both studied with violinist Kathleen Winkler.  I had been looking for a challenging solo project, and Abby said, “well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out, go for it!”  (My last great vocal triumph had been as a laryngitis-ridden donkey in “The Christmas Jazz” in 1986, so it had been a while since I thought about solo vocal performance.)  The idea of singing and playing together was exciting to me, if slightly terrifying, so I learned four of Lisa’s songs and performed them in 2013.  At that time I was mesmerized by Lisa’s music and loved the challenge, but I don’t think I was fully owning the vocal aspect. 

This time around, however, instead of focusing on the novelty I wanted to explore the deepening of my own resonance.  That would mean practicing the vocal part a lot, taking some voice lessons, and learning to love the sound of my own voice, something I found to be quite difficult.  It was easy to make excuses—“I’m not really a singer, but I’m doing these pieces…I mean, I’m primarily a violinist, well only a violinist, but I’m working on these pieces, etc”—but that attitude only prevented me from enjoying my voice, however small or wobbly it was at the moment.  And aren’t we all singers in some respect?    

The voice lessons I had with my sister were incredible.  She was patient and kind, and she helped me to ground myself and sing from my heart.  She also stressed the importance of having a character motivation for every single word and phrase I sing or speak.  It occurred to me that although it’s never ideal, one can often “get away” with a mildly boring violin performance the goals of which are things like good intonation and consistent bow technique.  But when there are words involved, one has to make their meaning the focus: purely technically-oriented vocal performances are flat and meaningless.  So for Rodney Lister’s piece “Explanatory Notes: The Only Difference Between” which switches between singing and speaking and involves many character changes, I carefully wrote in my chosen characters beside each line of text: 1. sassy friend, or 2. urgent truth, or 3. judgmental Republican grandmother (JRG), etc.  This helped me to make sense of the text and sell the music more convincingly while also inspiring me to think of all of my performing in these terms, regardless of whether or not the music has words.

Acting as a singing violinist is at the best times an arrangement of true intimacy.  It is an unusual opportunity to dialogue with myself—also the topic of Lisa’s astonishing, soul-searching piece “One Atom of Faith,” set to a poem by Mary MacLane—a time to accompany myself from both angles.  I have great admiration for the singer-songwriters and performers who experience this type of collaborative relationship everyday as pianists, string players, guitarists, percussionists.  And with each performance of these birthday commissions I will keep searching for ways to become a more resonant body.        

From a live performance September 25, 2016, five of Byron Au Yong's "Water Partitas" (video by Anthony Hawley of The Afield):

For more information about the solo violin commissions and performances, visit: www.theafield.com.

The living, breathing memory of wood

When I was a child my grandparents lived in Lawrenceville, NJ.  We drove down from my childhood home in Vermont on a regular basis to visit them, trying not to miss the tricky exit off of the New Jersey Turnpike.  I have vivid memories of arriving at my grandparents’ house, running up the steps to their home while hearing their poodle barking and of the smell of that unmistakable mix of bourbon and maraschino cherries.  My grandfather would be waiting at the door holding two Old Fashioned cocktails, one for each of my parents.  He had mixed them at his bar made of teak wood, commissioned and made for my grandparents in Hong Kong in the early 1950’s when my grandfather was stationed there as a foreign diplomat.  My grandparents brought their bar with them to each exotic location in which they were stationed, traveling mostly by boat in the 1950’s and 60’s.  They were wonderful hosts, throwing parties regularly, sometimes serenading guests with acts from Gilbert and Sullivan (both grandparents sang and my grandmother played the piano), and of course making drinks at the bar.

The smell and the look of the bar were so particular; the aged wood, the mirrors, the old-fashioned (and Old Fashioned) glasses made of thick, durable glass.  In time I came to associate the smell of the teak bar with my grandfather, a serious and brilliant scholar whose very presence filled me with awe and reverence, and my grandmother, an equally brilliant musician and eccentric thinker.

Later in life after my grandfather’s death, my boyfriend (now husband) and I were sharing a brandy with my grandmother at the legendary bar, this time in Houston where she had moved.  Even though the location was entirely different, the bar still retained its magisterial presence; the sweet smell of wood, bourbon and cherries unmistakable even though she hadn’t made an Old Fashioned in years.  She looked at us and said in her classically dry cadence, “when I croak, you guys get the bar.”

The bar came to us years later in a huge moving truck several months after my grandmother’s death at the marvelously full age of 90.  The bar was wrapped in heavy plastic and it took a very long time to unwrap.  Once we opened the beautifully handmade compartment doors, that strong smell came roaring out, flooding me with memories of 20-30 years before, an entirely Proustian experience.  We shared the arrival of the bar with friends, hosting The Great Hong Kong Bar Party I and sharing Old Fashioned and Negroni cocktails in honor of this piece of furniture that had served so many people in my grandparents’ presence across the world. 

We take our entertaining very seriously because of this piece of furniture in our home.  Not only does its presence remind us of the history of its use throughout the past 65 years, it also asks to be used well.  At a molecular level the bar has absorbed conversations in various European, African and Asian languages, it has been exposed to secretive CIA discussions, and it has witnessed over-the-top performances of musical theater and hours of piano practicing and improvising.  Like other pieces of wood, the bar retains its vibrations; it is a living and breathing material that is marked by its experiences.

I only began to think about our bar in this context when speaking to a friend about the way that stringed instruments change and deepen with age.  As a professional violinist, I have played on many instruments of varying ages and pedigrees.  Some were made during my lifetime, and others, hundreds of years before my time.  The finest, irreplaceable ones, made by famous families such as Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri in the 1600’s and 1700’s have extremely distinctive sounds and personalities based on the experiences of their 300-400 year-old lifetimes.

The movie “The Red Violin” chronicles the tale of a 17^th century violin, the people who played on it and the way it was used throughout the centuries.  Although this is a somewhat sensationalist account (spoiler alert: the red quality of the instrument’s varnish is attributed to the maker’s wife’s blood added to the mix), the idea the film presents, of a magnificently crafted violin that takes on the qualities of its players, is absolutely accurate. 

When playing any instrument, one can feel the way the instrument has been played (or not played) in the past.  So if the previous player was a delicate player, the instrument will not respond readily to a lot of force; likewise, an instrument that was played for a while by an overly aggressive person feels beaten up.  Any instrument sitting un-played in a shop or collector’s home takes some time for the sound to “open up” again. For this reason, some notable instruments have nicknames based on their previous owners.  The “Rose” Stradivarius cello, for example, is named so because the well-known cellist Leonard Rose was the cello’s owner for many years, and the way he played was indelibly marked into the cello’s resonant chamber.  For newly made instruments, the same reality applies: my friend has been the only player of his viola for the past seven years—not surprisingly, the instrument responds beautifully to his playing style and continues to deepen and grow as he does.

All of this has to do with wood as an animate material, responsive to people and their playing styles as to weather conditions and environment, much like the tree from which the wood came.  It sounds magical—think Harry Potter wands and the wardrobe from C.S. Lewis’ series—and it kind of is.  So my intuition that our bar commands a certain kind of respect because of its history is a real thing.  And string players’ assertions that their instruments seem to “have a mind of their own,” that they “play themselves,” this is also an example of the personality inherent in wooden masterpieces.  My own violin was made in the early 1800’s in Naples, Italy, and the tree’s wood carries the properties of a humid, seaport town.  Perhaps someday I will take a pilgrimage to Naples to see how my violin responds to its birthplace; if I’m lucky, maybe in its town of origin, close to the geniuses that made it, my violin will reveal more of its secrets.

Update from Maine: what I learned from the Design People

In June 2016 I spent a full week on Vinalhaven, a relatively large, year-round island in the mid-coastal region of Maine.  This was under the auspices of DesignInquiry, an organization for artists, mostly graphic designers, who come together each year to work on projects and enjoy the community of other artists.  My husband Anthony and I submitted a collaborative application and we were accepted to spend time on the island, sans children and wifi.  The conference/residency was entitled “Productive Counter-production” which certainly peaked our interest. 

We stayed at Poor Farm on Poor Farm Road, which used to be a literal “poor farm,” supported by the town of Vinalhaven for indigent farmers, factory workers and stone carvers who were not employed for 12 months of the year.  (For more on the Poor Farm, go here.)  There were 11 artists staying at the Poor Farm the week we went, with shifting residents towards the end of the week. 

11 reflections from the Poor Farm, in no particular order:

1.     Island driving salute.  Everyone, I mean everyone, waves to other drivers.  This can be an entire hand wave or a one-or-two-flnger gesture while the hand is still on the steering wheel.  I first thought the coolness of the person functioned in relationship to how small the motion was (i.e. one finger indicates the most disaffectation), but I think it’s only about exhaustion, given how many times one signals.  And really, one HAS to.  Even when passing five cars in a row, each person gets at least a tiny indication of acknowledgment. 

2.     Interdisciplinary conversation.  I don’t hang out with a lot of graphic designers specifically, but I do spend a fair amount of time with creative people who are not musicians.  The DesignInquiry people are some of the kindest, most thoughtful and knowledgeable people I have met, and they are not only fascinated by all art production, they also welcome all people. I was not treated as an outsider because I’m a musician, but as just another artist with unique ideas and contributions. I shared studio space in a barn with a wonderful visual artist who was quite accommodating of my many hours of violin practicing.  At times we would talk about our process; I learned a lot. 

Studio portrait with Critter Wentworth.  Photo by Charles Melcher.

3.     These people can COOK.  I am guessing that not all graphic designers are master chefs, but each person at this residency turned out to be a pretty unbelievable cook.  Every night we sat around and decided what we were going to make for the next day and who wanted to make it, sometime individuals and sometimes in teams.  And it wasn’t an effortful or over-controlled process, it was lovely, the way people sprang into action, suddenly pulling together French toast and rhubarb compote for breakfast, or an epically-good black bean chili with hot oatmeal bread.  Which brings me to the next item..

4.     Bread.  A Design Inquiry artist listed “bread making” as one of his activities for the week on Vinalhaven, but this was a serious understatement.  I would call it “yeast ritualization realization” or something that more accurately describes the labor-intensive and beautiful artistic work he performed about every other day.  One of my favorite moments of the week was punching down the enormous bread dome that had spent hours rising, getting ready for further kneeding.  New experiences--all manner of productive and counter-productive--bring new levels of wonder.

Punching bread at the Poor Farm.  Photo by Charles Melcher.

5.     Various and sundry productive and counterproductive lists.  Based on discussions at meals or as a result of readings, people would pin up impromptu lists around the farm.  An especially helpful one was a Books to Read list right next to the downstairs toilet.  Or the list that went up as a result of the question “what does peripatetic mean?” Or “what’s another way to explain ‘shits and giggles’”?  Or “what can you tell me”? (which garnered a favorite response: the wind is soft and feels like freedom)

6.     I forgot how much I love practicing.  Or just sitting.  I made my schedules, I organized my time and my work flow.  Even though my husband and I had our own collaborative schedule, there was so much flexibility that I could practice for 4 or 5 or 6 hours if I wanted to.  And instead of having to monitor every minute of my solo practicing because I am always fighting the clock at home, I could take that extra 5 or 45 minutes to explore multiple fingering or coloristic options.  Or sit and look at the grass or the water. 

7.     I am a better parent when I have space and time to do my own stuff.  My mother always encouraged me to continue doing my artistic work even through the most challenging times as a parent.  I consistently follow her advice, even though it means that I am sometimes apart from my children.  The time we spend together as a family is much more meaningful as a result, however, and my children get to see me doing what I love.  This week in Maine was harder than usual on our kids because both parents were gone, but they also had new adventures in our absence.

8.     Even professionals doodle.  At all times at the Poor Farm there were surfaces covered with drawings.  This felt oddly familiar, given my family’s daily drawing activities.  But even the main dining table, covered with rotating large pieces of paper, welcomed doodles.  And these weren’t commonplace doodles, these were clever, fun and intentional drawings of logo’s or just thoughts that transpired during conversations at or between meals.  The visual IQ of this small group of people is staggering. 

9.     Community is up to us to create and maintain, and the more we contribute, the more we receive. When I was younger and going to summer camp or other out-of-school experiences, I always went somewhere desiring something specific out of an environment (i.e. Aspen Music Festival for the violin teacher).  While I still participate in summer experiences, this is mostly in the role of educator, someone who helps to make a summer fabulous for students.  How rare it is to be in an environment where we are all working together in an equal capacity to sustain a place.  At this kind of residency, everyone shares a mindset of gratitude for the time and the space, and as a result, thrilling things happen.

10.  The sun and moon rule us all.  If we needed to skip part of a meal to shoot a video in specific light, or venture to the beach to walk over a land bridge only passable during low tide, then that’s what we did.  And when the sun wakes up between 4:30 and 5 a.m., you can fight the brilliant light, or you can embrace the day and get going.  A good reminder about what really matters.

11.  Am I a designer?  Towards the end of the week, one of the artists at the Poor Farm asked me some thought-provoking questions about creativity and interpretation, challenging my ideas about what labels mean.  I told him I had become empowered to write my blog entries while thinking of myself as an artist rather than “just” a musician.  Somehow the word “artist” encompassed a larger perspective.  Well then, he said, after this experience at DesignInquiry, could you come to think of yourself as a “designer”?  He’s going to check back with me in a few years.

Strawberry full moon on the summer solstice, 2016.  Photo by Anthony Hawley.

The musician's responsibility: empathy is our crucial skill

“Imagination is what, above all, makes empathy possible." - Maxine Greene

It is mid-morning on a Friday in Texas in the early 2000’s. I have never been so nervous in my life waiting backstage. I go over my key questions, thinking about blasting my sound into the large crowd. Connect, connect, connect is what I WANT to be thinking, but what I am actually thinking is: I hope they don’t totally hate this music, and ME.

I run onstage with my string quartet in an auditorium packed with 800 middle school students, all in varying degrees of the tween/teenage experience. We have developed a presentation for this audience that features genre-bending music, music written by our friends, music we hope will hold their interest. We divide the crowd into four parts, each focused on one member of the quartet, we play up our characters, we start challenging the students’ listening.

After a few minutes of being onstage I begin to relax, I start owning the presentation, and the spontaneity of interaction and performance returns. The thrill of connection with this audience overweighs anything else happening, and I am in my element as a Teaching Artist…

Is empathy something that can be taught? After reflection on my years as a Teaching Artist, and now as a teacher of Teaching Artists, I have grappled with how to impart cultivation of this essential skill. Some people are naturally gifted at relating to others, some people have developed empathic skills as a result of life experience, and others seem to need years and years of “awareness training” to be able to notice what people around them are doing.

Eric Booth, master teacher of Teaching Artists and my mentor as a graduate student at Juilliard, always encouraged us to think like “samurai Teaching Artists.” This was the idea that we would be able to go into ANY environment and connect our artistic experience with others’. He challenged us to continually imagine what it would be like to live in another person’s shoes.

Teaching Artists on the whole are trained to put their audiences first. We spend years practicing our art, whether it is music or drama or dance, but when it is time to go in front of an audience of second graders, it doesn’t matter if we play a few notes out-of-tune or miss a line. The 8-year-olds don’t care about that. What they DO care about, however, is our energy onstage. They respond to our excitement, how our activities are relevant to them.

In my own classes I strive to impart this awareness as well. This past semester I decided to put EMPATHY as the overarching goal of my Teaching Artist class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. From the moment the college and graduate school-aged musicians walked into the room, I wanted them to first imagine the complexities of someone else’s experience to the end of creating a musical presentation geared towards varied audiences.

1. 1st in-class assignment: pick a color out of a hat and present this color via music or sound.

2. 2nd assignment due the following week: pick 2 audiences and present your color via music or sound to each of these audiences.

*Audiences from which to choose: 1st graders, prison inmates, community center (all ages), college biology class, high school band class, non-English-speaking 5th graders, high-powered business executives, retirement community ages 80 and up, etc.

This kind of assignment set the tone for the class. We experimented with what it feels like to be outside of our comfort zones, how to think creatively while engaging with the music that we make. Every year it is inspiring for me to see how the Teaching Artists grow as they uncover multifaceted layers of their piece of music while planning for their audiences’ reception.

When the TA’s go into schools at the end of the semester, they feel relevant, they know WHY they are doing what they do, and the kids listening are treated to performances geared especially for them. We can only hope that this experience for both the TA’s and the kids sets seeds for further exploration.

                                                                       ~

In the days since the horrific massacre in Orlando, I have been seeking a space where I can be involved, where I can contribute or somehow make a difference in this fight against fear and hatred. My voice has seemed small and powerless in comparison to the overwhelming block of anger and confusion felt by so many of us. What can I do? As a musician, what is my path forward?

What eventually revealed itself: 1. as a performer, I have extraordinary privilege—the ability to participate in a transcendent activity on a daily basis that I can offer to others. This privilege acts as a voice in and of itself, and a refuge for myself and audiences; 2. as an educator, however, my role in the wake of increasingly catastrophic realities such as rampant shootings seems ever more like a call to action. I MUST involve myself in the practice of empathy in every way possible.

"Empathy training” for musicians feels critical moving forward. Why not start training young artists (younger than college-aged) in elementary, junior and high school to prepare programs for varied audiences and thus be more involved, engaged members of their communities? Why not expect this of them at a young age, so that it is not just the older, more technically competent musicians who are starting to think outside of their practice rooms? What if part of the musical training involved not only weekly lessons and orchestra/choir/band practice in advance of a concert, but also classes on community presentation, from the very beginning?  Obviously some teachers, families and music programs already emphasize this(!), but imagine if it was universal?  Perhaps getting outside of our living rooms and school auditoriums is something we just NEED to know how to do?  

I realize that this may sound like a pollyannic missive to some, to believe that, in the words of David McPhail’s children’s book Mole Music, “music can change the world.“  But why not, right?  As we are fighting for gun control and other changes, why not fight for continued artistic relevance to the same end?  The artistic mindset already demands a full participation in life and our art, and we MUST know that it has the possibility to make a global difference.  Particularly carrying the torch of empathy, of creative inspiration geared towards others DOES matter, and it HAS to. Keep imagining and dreaming and working and we will do this.

Non-violence and the artistic practice

I have always been an active person, but it took me a long time to be interested in yoga.  My husband and many friends had been doing headstands for years, and I always admired them and thought I should do yoga.  I also had enough people telling me “you know that would really help you A LOT” that it was a little annoying but I thought I would try it.  Enter early morning classes, online classes via YogaGlo and soreness for weeks on end.  Much of the time I was excited and fulfilled and part of the time I felt mortified at my apparent lack of flexibility. 

Somewhere around the two-month mark I started getting really into the poses and into the philosophy.  I was reading Judith Lasater’s book “Living Your Yoga” in which she suggests ways to apply the principle tenets of yoga to everyday life.  I was particularly interested in her chapter on non-violence (ahimsa) and how essential it is for yogi’s to create a non-violent space in their practice.  Lasater equates pushing oneself too far and being overly self-critical of one’s abilities/body with the promotion of violence.

At this point I had a sobering realization.  Even in those short two months of practicing yoga I had sometimes created an environment I knew all too well from my own violin practice room.  In just two months I had started to flirt with the ridiculously high standard to which I held my violin playing.  And the annoyance at not being fully “competent” in yoga was like the seeping in of my most unhelpful practice sessions.  Times of absolutist, uncompassionate thinking towards myself. 

As artists, especially performers, we give ourselves license to be internally cruel because self-criticism is an important part of what we do to get better (plus it’s not affecting anyone else…?).  Our growth depends on it, and our expectations can never be high enough!  We get locked into a strange dance of reality: the recognition of our faults translates into building self-awareness, which we say is good, but the amount and manner of our “fault-checking” have no limits, no checks of their own.

My experience with extreme negative self-talk is that, like any kind of violence, it always comes back to us in some way.   When the negativity rises from inside and doesn’t get dealt with, many things can happen over time—physical and emotional tension which can lead to injury and/or chronic conditions, just plain emotional stress, and of course self-intolerance which leads to intolerance of others.  All of these outcomes are destructive for our creative force and output.  

Since reading Judith Lasater’s book I have been trying out her suggestions for changing the way I talk to myself in the practice room (whether it be music, yoga or any other pursuit).  One step is to be aware of the internal dialogue.  Lasater recommends starting and ending your practice with some kind of ritual (like ringing a bell), so in that period of time you commit to being kind towards yourself (practicing ahimsa), transitioning from emotionally charged to more objective commentary.  When I first tried this I was shocked at how few minutes had passed before I broke my commitment.  Over time and with much focus I was able to sustain a compassionate space over an entire practice session.

Last month I was intrigued by an article in the New York Times about how Google identified necessary qualities for great, high-functioning teams.  The best teams at Google were ones in which “psychological safety” and empathetic behavior were cultivated amongst all members of the team.  It was refreshing to read something that proved all of my thoughts about a sustainable working dynamic for musical groups, but it also confirmed how crucial these same qualities are for our internal landscapes.

To be clear: this post is not about relaxing standards or giving up on amazing goals.  It’s also not about eliminating all frustration with oneself.  This is about artists taking charge of our working environments and nurturing our creativity!

#Mesto: recording Bartok 6 (no decisions please)

I grew up in awe of the Bartok quartets.  The year I was born my father’s quartet (the Concord Quartet) played the Bartok cycle at Dartmouth College, and my mother has always said that in utero I moved the most to the 5th quartet.  Perhaps not coincidentally the 5th quartet has always been my favorite.  Also not coincidentally Bartok’s music has always felt like coming home for me, a musical language I welcome. 

The Chiara Quartet started playing Bartok from the very beginning.  When we were college students 20 years ago at the Aspen Music Festival we worked on Bartok 4, coaching with members of the Takacs, Emerson and Juilliard Quartets.  Throughout our career we savored the learning of each of these fantastical, beautiful and raucous quartets until it became clear to us a few years ago that the Bartok cycle needed to be our next project by heart, speeding up our learning process significantly.

We recorded the 1st-5th quartets in what I would call optimal conditions.  We had just performed our first complete cycle by heart at New York’s Barge Music, right before we recorded Bartok 1, 3 and 5, then we recorded Bartok 2 and 4 the following semester.  We were in shape; we eased into the acoustics we loved at Troy Savings Music Bank Hall (where we recorded the Brahms quartets); and we enjoyed working with Alan Bise and Bruce Egre from Azica Records.

Recording Bartok 6, on the other hand, proved to be elusive. 

From a practical standpoint, we had trouble scheduling the sessions, and when we finally decided to record the second week of January 2016, we received a performance engagement the week beforehand that would make our normally intensive preparation quite challenging.  On a musical level, connecting with Bartok 6 is always existentially tricky.  The 6th quartet is a work of uncompromising beauty, sadness, sardonicism and longing.  Written in four movements, the first three begin with a slow introduction marked “Mesto” (meaning sad), and the 4th movement is entirely Mesto. 

These mesto’s are the kind of music the Chiara Quartet has always delved into with relish.  We have also consistently sought personal resonance with the composer’s experience while writing.  Maybe in the case of Bartok 6, however, it is impossible for us to understand Bartok’s deep struggle with his mother’s death and yearning for/frustration with for his home country while writing this final quartet, his last work written in Hungary before emigrating to the United States.

In this recording we realized the most we could offer is our own authenticity, being fully ourselves while playing the music.  Instead of trying to “play well” and “make a great recording” we just needed to give and do more.  How would we be able to find this musically unfettered place?  In the recording preparation we made no final decisions…

Specifically:

1.     We recorded/listened to ourselves very early on in the process.  Instead of waiting until we were close to a finished product, we wanted to hear things that were really raw; this helped us to figure out larger musical moments and risks we wanted to take.

2.     We divided our rehearsal days into distinct types of rehearsing.  One day was only large-scale musical rehearsal, where we allowed ourselves to try wild, on-the-edge ideas.  Another day was a refinement rehearsal day (ensemble, intonation, etc.), each spot only given 45-60 seconds of work, not for perfection but for awareness.

3.     We didn’t make any decisions about the final outcome.  Perhaps the most crucial difference for our group, we prioritized trying ideas and opening our ears instead of locking us into one way of playing a particular passage.  String quartets live for the ability to unify and engage the music with great ensemble and musical cohesion.  But as one mentor wisely said, the singular pursuit of unity can turn into “the quartet disease: over-control.”

Without fail, the ideas from our rehearsal that sounded and felt the most extreme (“can we DO that??”) were the ones we gravitated towards in the Bartok 6 recording session, from the most vulnerable to the most brutal.  We had practiced going beyond our comfort zones, and we had built in judgment/refinement-free rehearsals.  This allowed us to be more us, and more open to the mysteries of the Bartok’s music.

As we listen to the edits of the quartets right now, I am quite aware of how the recording experience of Bartok 6 changed me, and our group.  Building this level of creative experimentation into the daily rehearsal process has helped us to be more fiercely excited and committed in the long term.  It also inspired us (our cellist Greg’s idea) to introduce a new kind of rehearsal--extremify!—into our work.     

I look forward to this Friday’s performance of Bartok 4 and 6 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, and to a continued wider perspective. 

Patience gets us nowhere fast: wearing a trickster hat

I recently came to realize that I have always had more than a normal tendency to think like a martyr.  Maybe it’s because of my borderline workaholic behavior, but at difficult or disappointing times, I have been known to slip into thought patterns like: “it's not fair, I worked so hard and I must be the only person who has insomnia before concerts” or “ life isn’t fair in general, maybe that’s just the way it’s going to be always…” etc etc.  Blah blah.  Sound familiar?  A lot of creative people I know fall into these thought traps which easily spiral out of control, ruining our ability to have joy in the artistic process. 

In artistic training (and most other training), we are taught that if we have patience and work hard, we will achieve what we want.  Isn’t that the American dream?  Impatience is frowned upon, and we need to earn our accomplishments.  My whole life I have held that belief and have been that kind of steady, motivated kind of person. Dutiful in my work, good at following directions, willing to keep going no matter what happens.  That’s all been fine until it becomes prescriptive, until it becomes only about the work for work's sake, until it opens the door to martyrdom when things don’t pan out.

Last month I came upon a new way of addressing creativity in Elizabeth Gilbert’s inspiring 2015 book, “Big Ideas: Creative Living Beyond Fear.”  In one section she presents the difference between a martyr and a trickster.  In her description, the martyr energy is “dark, hierarchical, fundamentalist…rigid.”  The trickster energy is “light, sly, transgressive…shape-shifting.”  If we are martyrs, life is hard; if we are tricksters, life is opportunity. 

In looking back on moments of the trickster vs. martyr in my life, I found that I still recall the trickster moments with absolute clarity and pride.  Example: learning Dutilleux quartet while an Artist Diploma student with a 3-month-old baby, doing most of my work through score study on the A train down to Juilliard.  That piece remains in hyper-realistic detail in my memory even though I wasn't able to physically practice it very much.  On the flip side, the most intense martyr moments (i.e. refusing to touch my violin for a good three weeks after playing a “terrible” performance) are fuzzy and take up a dark, uncomfortable space in my memory. 

Lately I have found applying the persona of the trickster to be revelatory in my violin practicing.  I have literally been imagining myself putting on a trickster hat when I practice, asking the questions: what can I do to make this more 1. Fun, 2. Easy, 3. Different from what I was doing before, 4.  Different from what I’m supposed to be doing?  Maybe I’ve always had enough trickster in me to balance out the rule-follower, but calling upon it is liberating and fun.  In my practicing it could translate into something as small as committing to a daring fingering way up on the G string, or making a drawing of a challenging passage to understand it in a different light.  It could also be as radical as my quartet adopting an organizational system from software developers, becoming much more productive while cutting out 30% of rehearsal time (more on that in future posts).

Being a trickster pushes up against the idea of patience as something that is preferred.  Yes, persistence and patience are cornerstones of an artistic career, but so are quick thinking/acting and taking risks.  Maybe the thing we want to achieve is actually only a 5-minute creative brainstorm away instead of 2 years away through careful practicing.  Thinking like a trickster also immediately gives confidence and artistic ownership; it is the path towards discovering personal artistry.  

(In the book “Trickster Makes This World,” writer Lewis Hyde chronicles the fascinating importance of trickster characters like the Greek god Hermes and the composer John Cage.  These tricksters are the “boundary crossers” and also the crucial instigators of creativity.)

“Patience Gets Us Nowhere Fast" by Capital Cities captivated me from the first listen because I’m not used to patience as having negative connotations.  The band sings “I want it all and nothing less, I want it all, I want the best for you (us)…Patience. Patience gets us nowhere fast.”   In their view, why delay something that is so right, and so right there (love, in this case)?  Maybe if we as artists wear the trickster hat we can have it all ways: the trickster comes in at just the right (or wrong) time to subvert the patient artist, to bring out that desperately-needed, transgressive and creative voice.

Robot Dreams: collaborating with my live-in creative artist

Here is the scene…it is 5:30 pm on a Tuesday in July in Long Island City, NY, and we are under a severe thunderstorm warning.  Five of us are sitting in a friend’s apartment trying to figure out if we are going to cancel this evening’s performance.  The windows are open, spraying in small amounts of rainwater, the thunder and lightning are epic, and I am freezing cold in a purple gown and no shoes.  The argument is not whether or not we can actually pull off the 30-minute performance—we have already figured out a way for me to play the violin blindfolded inside of the car instead of out on the street in the rain—it is more that we are concerned no one else will show up on a night like tonight.  In the tense few minutes that follow, we decide collectively that art needs to happen no matter what, so we have a shot of bourbon, two people pull on white hazmat suits, and we start moving under umbrellas towards the street where the performance will occur…

I started being interested in Anthony Hawley’s work the minute I met him.  We met in college, and not only was he edgy and attractive (full disclosure, we are married), he was also constantly surprising me.  One night he would be studying for an East-Asian film class, another night he would be writing a piece for an Italian lit project, and he disappeared every Thursday at 11:30 pm for Columbia University’s CTV, a late-night comedy team.  Anthony’s voraciousness as an undergraduate continued into his multiple graduate degrees (in fiction/poetry and visual art) and into his multi-genre artistic practice. 

Although we have known each other for 18 years we only thought to start collaborating about 5 years ago.  Maybe this was because I am already in a full-time ensemble, or because Anthony and I already collaborate on so many other aspects of our life, including our children.  But in 2010 we decided that this would be the year to start working together.  We applied to do a residency in Italy, were awarded the grant, and made plans to travel to Assisi, Italy in June of 2011.

The whole idea was incredibly empowering.  Violinist and visual artist collaboration: go!  Until we actually sat down and tried to figure out what we were going to do. 

For several months we had bi-weekly experimental meetings: we made lists, we shared dreams, we tried so many things: Anthony plays the violin. Becca improvises while Anthony etches on paper with a boulder, wearing a blindfold. We wanted to exchange our skills and to guide each other, but even though we kept trying to find a way in, it almost felt like an energy block.  We had so much potential, but we couldn’t figure out what to do with it.  

We went to Italy with many trials in our pocket but no firm idea of what our residency would entail.  For me, this was alarming.  Trained as a classical musician I am used to knowing and planning out most of what I’m going to do.  The creativity comes in the process and interpretation.  For Anthony, the lack of decision is freeing.  The blank slate is the inspiration.

Helped by an idea from the artist Gabriel Orozco—“The work is finished when it represents what really happens in the action of doing it”—we stopped trying to combine our specific talents and skills.  Instead we looked outside ourselves at what was unique to our current experience. We started tuning into the place, to the sounds and colors of the environment, and let the process happen to us instead of forcing ourselves on the process.

The result was a mesmerizing 30-minute work called “Le Segnavie/The Guides.”  Based on St. Francis-of-Assisi’s “Canticle of the Sun,” our materials included fresh yellow flowers collected from the mountain above, a partially-improvised score, and yellow thread which Anthony manipulated throughout the musical performance.  Beginning at 5:30 a.m., our work could not have occurred anywhere else in the world, the materials local to that place and time of year. 

Our subsequent collaborations have happened more organically; the process was easier once we knew we could work together and didn’t have to try so hard.  For the aforementioned performance in a car, a 5-night drama entitled “Fault Diagnosis,” I play a blindfolded interstellar mechanic who “repairs” the car with a score written by Anthony and realized through my improvisation.  In other instances Anthony has directed me in video projects.  Just last week I played a robotic space pilot who rescues a girl in a warehouse.

I am always grateful for the rare moments Anthony and I take to do a project together.  They feel like outside-of-life time, dream-time.  Working with Anthony reminds me of the wonder inherent in the creative process and how essential it is for us to practice noticing more about the world.

Color experiments and creative activation

Synesthesia is defined as “a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.”  In one form of synesthesia people associate sounds with color; an animal sound or an F major arpeggio can illicit strong coloristic impressions for musically sensitive synesthetes, and several composers such as Messiaen drew tremendous creative benefit from this experience. 

I have always been fascinated by the idea that the human senses can collaborate to create heightened artistic moments.  As a child I spent many hours painting with watercolors or drawing while I listened to music and audio books.  My visual art experiments were a joyful way to express myself at home, and I looked forward to this solitary time everyday.  I also loved practicing the violin, but it was the visual art time that more immediately stimulated my creative impulses.  After inspiring trips to art museums and art lessons with a painter, I seriously considered becoming a visual artist because the act of creation was so freeing for me; I had yet to activate the same kind of experimentation in my musical life.

When I was 14 I had a formative experience that forever changed the way I thought about the relationship between visualization and sound.  That summer I was at Greenwood Music Camp, playing barefooted chamber music all day with my friends.  One of my chamber music coaches, violist John Ziarko, had decided that I needed to learn how to play the viola.  I was skeptical of this assignment, but I borrowed a viola and headed out to have an introductory lesson with him. 

When I arrived at the lesson he put Elliott Carter’s “Elegy” on the stand and said, “Play green.”  I was surprised enough to be asked to play in viola clef for the first time, but I also didn’t understand what he wanted me to do.  I muttered something like “what do you mean?” but he just repeated the command.  So after I had figured out what the first note was, I played the opening phrase “green.”  “Good,” he said.  “Now, play it red.”  So I played it red.  Then yellow, then grey, then purple, and so on. 

I was absolutely shocked by the way this simple phrase was significantly transformed with each color.  I wasn’t consciously trying to do anything, just putting myself into a place of trust and using my imagination to create a sound that corresponded to a color for me.  Obviously this exercise translated into real technical differences in execution, but that was not the point.  That could be figured out later.  The point was that my green was unique to my understanding of that color, and I had finally been shown how to explore a deeper creativity in my musical world.

Since that time I have been striving to find more color in my own playing as well as help others to find it in theirs.  I enjoy assigning “color projects” for students who want to open up their palette, try new vibratos and densities of sound, etc. but don’t know where to start.  By literally painting their music in specific ways, using the score as a canvas to try out new colors for the same passage or movement each day, they are able to find their way out of old habits and ways of making sound, thereby unleashing newfound creativity.  I love seeing the pride on students’ faces who might not have picked up colored pencils in five years; at their lesson they reveal beautifully transformed copies of the score to a Beethoven slow movement, as well as a fresh set of ideas for their music-making.

I am grateful to that formative Greenwood summer, and to John Ziarko for helping me to discover a way to access my strong visual intuition when playing music.  I am not a synesthete (or a violist, as it turns out), but the more I let my visual vocabulary challenge my sound vocabulary, and vice versa, the more glorious the collaboration can be. 

Memory and freedom

For several years now my group the Chiara Quartet has been memorizing our repertoire and playing string quartets by heart.  No, not a gimmick, not a feat, but a genuine practice which has made a huge difference to our working relationship in rehearsals and performances; something that makes us feel a renewed excitement and trust in our playing.

Our performances of memorized repertoire began cautiously: we started with one piece on a program which was exhilarating but scary, then two pieces, and then finally an entire evening with no stands.  I still remember the palpable energy of our first concert completely by heart—program: Haydn Op. 20 No 2, Bartok 4th quartet, and Schubert “Death and the Maiden”—there was a ridiculous and terrifying freedom about that performance with nothing between us onstage.

So why memorize as a chamber group?  My answer: memory allows us to release the things that don’t matter.  My group is made up of four very analytical, philosophical, and driven people; part of the reason we’re still playing together after 16 years is the shared and constant striving for depth of understanding and cohesion in our group.  No one in the Chiara Quartet is satisfied with “ok,” which is a great thing, except when no one is satisfied…

This dissatisfaction is what inspired us to start memorizing. We were unhappy with a recording we had made of the complete Brahms string quartets.  Something was missing, a lack of openness and abandon in the sound.  We made the bold decision to scrap the entire project and rerecord the 2-album set, this time experimenting in rehearsal with getting our noses and brains out of the part.  Rehearsing from memory had an incredible effect on our group: all of that healthy left-brained energy was kept in our heads remembering the composer’s intentions, and the focus in our actual playing became about connection and electricity, what we had been searching for.

Memorization forces us to truly grapple with what the composer was trying to say. It is a window into the miraculous world of each composer's language and a game of sorts, resulting in a balance between recalling the score and releasing it in performance.  Questions like: “why would Bartok write 9 ½ iterations of that particular motive instead of 8 (which would be easier for me to memorize)?”  Realizations like: “Oh, that’s because the viola melody sings a little bit longer than expected, creating more awesomeness (Bartok=genius)” etc.  Memorization also equalizes the difference between working on old and new music.  Mozart’s music is no easier to memorize than our dear friend Gabriela Lena Frank’s.      

It also turns out we can’t commit to memory anything we don’t understand.  We make signs, we make maps, we learn in solfege, we sing our parts and others’ parts, we do an immense amount of score study.  And if we can’t figure out the composer’s logic, then we need to create a new one for ourselves.  For example, “the shape of this line in Ravel quartet has an extra “tail,” it looks like a monkey, so it’s a monkey phrase!”  Insert mnemonics and the practices that help us all to commit even the thorniest passages to memory. What better way to get inside the composer’s head?

Here is a performance of Bartok’s 5th quartet, 5th movement that we gave in October 2014 after recording Bartok quartets 1, 3, and 5 for our upcoming CD “Bartok by Heart.” 

Thoughts on playing Mozart, intention, and the permission to sing

When I was a teenager I listened obsessively to the 1950’s Amadeus Quartet recordings of the Mozart viola quintets.  I have a vivid memory of a family trip to the Oregon coast, taking my walkman (yes it was the early 90’s) out to the beach at night and listening to the C Major Quintet K. 515 while lying in the sand.  The longing, the beauty, the vocal openness made life not only bearable, but magical.  Many of us have that loving experience with Mozart. 

But that experience can also be tainted for many performers.  So many of us build up this idea of Mozartian purity and perfection to the point that we are unable to play his music at all.  We have some unpleasant performances and decide that Mozart is an egg not be cracked except by the best performers, the ones who have finally “figured out how to play.”  (I have noticed a similar frustration when talking to composers; not unlike the famous tales of jealously from Mozart’s lifetime, there can be an annoyance and bitterness that sets in when mentioning Mozart: “well, of course the music just flowed right out of him.”)  Trying to find the answer to playing and interpreting Mozart, we practice to be perfect, we over-control, and we miss the point.

I have certainly suffered this Mozart lockdown.  While I have always connected so strongly to his music, for many of my adult years I couldn’t listen to my beloved Mozart quintets.  If a Mozart quartet came on the radio I would shut it off immediately.  I did the same thing in my work.  After practicing for hours upon hours, trying to craft the direction of each phrase and painstakingly tune each note of a Mozart quartet, I thought I could then release it in performance.  But we perform what we practice, so any performance with that kind of preparation sounds micromanaged, with attention drawn to any non-perfect intonation and too-predictably phrased lines.

What I have discovered is that the secret to playing Mozart is a transparency of intention.  Many performers say “I feel naked onstage playing Mozart.”  I agree.  And unless I accept and welcome that vulnerability, playing Mozart is not an enjoyable experience.  The transparency comes from being fully open to the possibilities of the moment, of smiling at risk, rediscovering my heart, and practicing being in that state.  The hours of working on the craft of the music are still necessary and valid, but it is very much the intention that matters in practicing Mozart. 

And these kinds of practice sessions are where I look forward to reconnecting to the magic of my Oregon beach at night.  Listening to singers, tapping into that indescribable longing in Mozart’s music through singing the melodies and finding the release in myself: these pursuits are just as important as any tuning episode.  My group the Chiara Quartet routinely sings Mozart quartets in our rehearsals.  While often devolving into fits of hilarity (especially in the faster movements—we are not opera singers for a reason!), we find that connecting to his ease, his unique vocal energy loosens us up to be more genuinely ourselves.  It is through practicing these intentions that I find it possible to go onstage and play without the fear of cracking the Mozartian egg. 

My quartet recently performed the complete Brahms quartets at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  For an encore we played the slow movement of Mozart’s K. 465 quartet, a piece we have performed for almost 16 years and one I always associate with Greenwood Music Camp and the transformation fostered in that summer environment.  Here is our performance from October 2, 2015: