Malibu morning picture of the day - Monday, October 20, 2014

Dear family, friends, and gentle readers,

Monday has come too soon for me, but here's what it looks like here on the coast:

It's overcast, cool, and grey out here today. You see a break in the clouds at top. I'm sure it'll be powder blue later on.

Nothing worth a second look today.

There's evidently pretty good gym equipment in Hell;
everybody is very buff, if not cut.
Artist: Gustave Dore

Hope you had a productive weekend. My community band played a concert and the second half comprised the four movements of a symphony for band based on the Divine Comedy. I was dining with someone afterward and we were talking about how successful the composer was in indicating various of Dante Alghieri's concepts in sonic form. It occurred to me that in every ensemble I've ever been part of, it has always been a surprise to me to hear the program notes, explanation, and/or analysis that conductors or emcees tell the audience to understand the music they're about to hear and I think it sure would have been nice to have heard that in rehearsal.

When the zither player asked to breast feed,
everybody took 15. "Josie. Do you really need to undress
that much?"   Source

When instrumentalists get together in a group, the issues being settled in rehearsal are very technical: slow here, speed up gradually, loud here,everybody breath here ... that kind of thing. There's usually only enough rehearsal time to get all those things clear (or not) and then perform it. We really don't have discussion (or even lecture) on what the music is about and why the composer made the choices he or she did.

And interestingly, I think most instrumentalists would start checking their phones if a director DID start going on about that stuff at rehearsal. It's an occupational hazard when the piece of paper that's put in front of you is only your part and that's what you have to concentrate on. We are fragmented from the whole from the get go.

Guqin player, zither soul sister...
Source

The ironic turn of playing music is that I think executing the craft turns you off from the enjoyment that inspired you pick up an instrument or to start singing to begin with. I see this distance increase tremendously the more schooled or the more professional a performer becomes. Those who are reading my story will recognize that I touch on this idea when Clete and Feng have a conversation about playing their respective instruments, she the guqin and he the guitar.

The type of music-making I find  most recaptures the joy of listening in addition to playing, is solo improvisation at a keyboard instrument, or playing something you know from memory; not rote memory, but emotional memory. This is where vocalists might have something over the instrumentalists. But I think it comes down to whether you are the one exercising artistic vision or are you just a tool of someone else? I suppose if there's anything an ensemble musician understands well, it's hierarchy (or you don't work).

As you take on the week, I hope you get to be your own solo act, but if you cannot, fully participate in every way, in what you do with your group to make a beautiful thing. Stop being a pro for a bit, and go back to being an ama-teur (a love-doer).

Love,
Pops