Brandi Carlile lyrics - now go listen to the eponymous album! (2005)

Hold out, I know you feel it getting cold out
Without the blanket for your soul now
Before you know it you'll be frozen
You have to see this through
There's no one here but you

Don't go to sleep and cry because tomorrow
If you let it, it will swallow
You up and none of this will matter
Will matter anymore
---

Tracks 2, 4, and 6 are my favorite, but I also like 1 and 3 a lot.

The Piano Problem

There's only one solution: record record record. Otherwise, I'll sound bad forever.

Today's count:
--Prelude: 11
--Fugue: 6

Glenn Gould

Stress

You know something's wrong when:

- your jaw is so tight from clenching that you can barely open it
- your knuckles are sore, creaky even
- you feel shooting pain in your back as each new knot begins to form
- you pop pain killers in vain hopes they'll relax you
- your friend, out of pity and alarm, starts demonstrating stretching exercises in the middle of a restaurant, over brunch
- in spite of all your efforts, 8 hours just isn't enough

Recital 5

Final recital in summary: There were 3 hearing aids going off THE ENTIRE RECITAL (that high-pitched whine) - I couldn't hear anything else, not what I was playing, nothing, just the incessant electrical screech. And then in Schumann, the piano began rolling away. Between every etude. I was adjusting the piano and bench constantly. But the audience was great and seemed to like everything. And in spite of these problems, I played mostly well, minus a couple spots in Schumann where I was so frantic about the piano being too far away to play that I kind of ignored what notes I was actually playing. They want me back next year for another recital.

I still have to blog about 3 and 4. Soon. Oh, and I got a review from Carmel, very short, which I'll post next time.

2 down, 3 to go

I'm bad about blogging regularly when I'm out of the country. That country. Deutschland.

Number 1: private recital on the Upper East Side, New York - I really enjoyed playing in this relaxed yet sophisticated atmosphere, surrounded by friends, fellow musicians, hosted by my favorite New York family in their lovely home with their lovely Steinway. And I got through the whole recital without falling off the bench, which considering my current program, is quite a feat.

Words: Kelly at JFK, brownstone, Madison Ave, guest room, apples, blue tile, practice practice practice, wintry Central Park, Greek Parade, MSM, John Williams, lying in the park, Dean Noon, scheduling office, Celeste, tagliatelle with cabbage, tea and Sara, cake at Mozart, former roommates, old friends, a very surprised ex, grapes, wine, home-cooked dinner for me, Lincoln Center, buses and subways, noise, smells, honking, taxis, shades of gray, Hungarian Pastry Shop, croissants, cool cement steps, warm spring night, heady bouquets, falling in love with a city I hate in so many ways, feeling like a New Yorker again - and liking the feeling.

Then: California. Studio class at the university. Interview with the newspaper. Big article printed in Friday's paper. Playing for my old teachers. Not being able to swear while practicing because of family in the house. Eroica Trio at Saratoga in the most beautiful villa situated in the coastal hills. Shostakovich and wine with Sara, schmoozing at the reception, talking to the girls.



Number 2: recital yesterday, audience of 300, Steinway D, packed hall, three standing ovations (after Schumann, Wagner, and encore), best performance to date, didn't feel so great though, family members coming from various surrounding cities, flowers and exhaustion, tired hands today. Timed it - 2 hours with intermission and encore. Serious business.

Tomorrow: practice practice practice. Yoga. My back is crunched these days.

Soon: recitals, competition, travelling, seeing more people (including my COUSINS and Joe!), feeling lonely still, wanting to talk, to have a real conversation with a real person that I'm really connected to.

Hey, you're alive, you're ALIVE, and I love it, I love being alive, together, breathing, feeling a gaze tingling on my skin, breathe in the night air and just be, quietly, separate, at the same time, words or no words, talking or not talking, makes no difference.

Schumann is a galaxy.
Epic, he said.
Best Beethoven 109 I've ever heard, in my life, all 60 years of them as a pianist.

Hey, sit by me tonight.

Five Minutes of Fame

www.sacbee.com/172/story/161118.html

Recital Program

For the morbidly curious.

How to attempt suicide in four simple (or not so simple) steps:

Bach Partita No. 4 in D Major
Beethoven Sonata in E Major, Op. 109
Schumann Etudes Symphoniques, Op. 13 (including all posthumous variations)
Wagner-Liszt Isoldens Liebestod

The French Vote

The major European event of the week is the upcoming French election. How should you pick your candidate? Well, why not start with classical music?

As posted on the Alex Ross blog:

The French music site Altamusica has posed several questions to the French presidential candidates, including this one: "One often hears that classical music is elitist. What do you think?" Nicolas Sarkozy, of the conservative UMP party, says in response (my rough translation): "The music called 'classical' is by definition the most popular because it is that which has transcended time, fashion, and society to reach us. The music of Mozart and Beethoven was perhaps revolutionary, seen as elitist in the time of their contemporaries, but how can one pretend that it isn't popular? The number of people who have heard this music over several centuries is simply incalculable! Even the music that certain cultural functionaries call 'musiques actuelles', even the most contemporary rock groups, draw their harmonies from the tonal system invented by Bach and Rameau."

Joshua Bell Plays in the Subway: Four Responses

If you say "response" too many times, it doesn't sound like a word anymore.

After sending the article (link in previous post) to a friend, I received this email. Never one to back down from a challenge, I replied back to my friend's response with a longer, more convoluted, less well written email, I'm sure, but posted, nonetheless, now on this blog for any of your comments or insights, dear readers. And after my reply, my friend wrote again, a response to my response to his response. And then I responded again, a long one, that maybe diverts from the point a little too frequently. The author of the first/third response is a writer and thinker for a living, whereas I only attempt these activities from time to time, blatently ignoring the "do not attempt at home" warning. Thus, the disparity. And the disclaimer.


Response to article:

This is very interesting; thanks for sending it. I wonder, though, what it shows. I suspect that I'm closer to Paul Guyer's opinion (reported in the article) than to thinking that it shows something something definitive about American society. I actually doubt Bell would get a much better audience in Paris or London (or Brazil, despite what that one woman claims). Rush hour mornings are not a good time anywhere in the western world (evenings would probably be better). And I wonder if it says anything about modernity. After all, more people listen to and study Bach today than at any other point in human history, since most people in human history labored in mines and on farms and in factories for 10 hours a day and didn't have the kind of time and training it requires to develop a sensitive ear. Some people, after all, stopped and recognized him. Sometimes people make analogous thought experiments with books and films, but I'm never sure what to think about them. As cynics always point out, lots of Nazis had fine taste in music and literature.

Now it's your turn to disagree with me :)


My response to this:

So you want me to disagree with you? I don't, actually, but I think there's a missing dimension to your argument.

I also doubt that Joshua Bell would've gotten a better audience in London or Paris (although since he's American, you'd like to think that Americans would at least notice they have produced great musicians), and I agree that morning commute was probably the worst time to have him play - the frantic rush and early morning stupor certainly didn't do any of the passersby justice.

However. What bothers me most is not that people didn't recognize him or that they didn't stop to watch for awhile -- but they didn't even notice. Most of them had absolutely no idea that a violinist was even playing there. The utter blindness to anything of substance, beauty, something different in the daily grind of cattle cars in the subway - they didn't even notice!

Art of out context is clearly a problem with this situation - stick Bell in a concert hall, tell these people who he is and what he does, and they'll probably listen. Spoon-feed them, yes, and they'll listen - that's why Bell plays to sold out audiences everywhere.

What's lacking here is the independent ability to make an aesthetic judgment. I find this article to be mostly a criticism of American modern society, a rat race to the finish line of every day, unable to see the surroundings, and thus unable to appreciate something outside themselves or make a decision about it. This isn't even their fault if the system they were raised in emphasized money and power (and therefore a complete self-saturation and inability to look beyond the daily battle for the cheese) instead of observation of a greater world around us.

Where is the awareness of tradition, of past and present beauty, of something that transcends the years and survives after we've all come and gone - not just music, but all art forms? And by art, I don't mean Britney Spears. Sadly they would've all recognized her had she been singing. They might have even thought that was quality worth listening to. Spoon-fed.

American society, and society in general, I think, is ill-equipped to think and reason independently, to continue self-education beyond the school years, and to recognize an experience that may expose them to something beyond their immediate comprehension. No sense of wonder.

Instead we have an appalling tendency to compartmentalize - work is one thing, home is another, personal life separate still. We eat up pop culture as an escape, delving into the petty lives of the rich and famous when our petty lives get boring. American society has lost the ability to allow other dimensions into their narrow world view, so focused on the little boxes they've so parsimoniously designated as "life" that they don't notice the rainbow overhead.

This line captures it for me:
"If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?"

The inability to stop for a minute, consider, listen, and on some level, understand - this is the modern tragedy.


Response to my response:

I don't disagree with you that our society is too rushed to notice people like Joshua Bell playing in a subway. But it's complicated. "Noticing", for instance, isn't a very clear action; there may have been people who listened without standing there studying him. In fact I think the guy who most appreciated him said he stood far away so as not to get in the violinist's space. Also, I'm sure a great many people pretended not to hear him because they didn't want to put money in the hat. It's rather embarrassing to outright reject a musician playing for money right in front of you. (It is sometimes for me, at least.)

But the larger point, more to you than to the ambiguously conceived experiment, is that there's nothing distinctively modern or American about ignorance of great art. Understanding art, like understanding many complicated activities, requires a great deal of training, and most people, today and in the past, haven't had the luxury. This is bad in some ways, but hardly all. Boorish engineers designed the computers that we're writing on now, and without the unimaginative busy-body bureacrats commuting to work that morning in D.C., many social institutions would be in a lot of trouble. Poets, thank God, aren't assigned to perform heart surgery. The question about "what else are we missing" is a good one, but some people might sincerely answer: not much. Living with people who think that may simply be part of living in a modern democracy. Disagreeing with them requires having, and maybe even imposing, a very strong theory about human flourishing.


My response to this response to my response:

You're tough! I don't disagree with you, but I don't exactly agree with you either. From my understanding of the article, it appears that many people didn't even register that a violinist was playing. It's one thing to shut something out but another thing to miss it altogether. And the people that purposely shut it out, either out of annoyance or personal preoccupation, demonstrate a deplorable lack of discernment, either willfully (categorizing subway music as transient noise) or due to a lack of education in music, specifically, and art, generally.

This is hardly an excuse, proved by the man with no musical education who stopped for 3 minutes before work because he realized, innately, utterly naturally, that this violinist was something special. He's quoted as saying he felt "at peace." Such is the power of music to break through all stereotypes, cultural and educational barriers. Something in the makeup of this man allowed Bell's music in, not only to his ears, but into a level much deeper. There's an art to discerning quality, but generally things of highest quality are apparent without scrutiny.

Those who passed Bell without noticing, whatever that might mean, is a failure of the senses, visual and auditory. This is not a conservatory kid playing in the corner, proficient but stiff, lacking perhaps stage presence and sawing away on a $20,000 violin. This is one of the most dynamic performers in the world, playing absolutely stunning music on one of the great violins of the world, $3.5 million, filling the space with a resonant, golden sound (as you can hear on the video) - the sound alone should make a person stop dead in his tracks. Add to this the total-body involvement characteristic of Bell, as well as his extreme good looks, and you've got aesthetic pleasure up the wazoo.

Had Joshua Bell tried this experiment in Europe, the results may have been different. Art is much more ingrained in the national consciousness of European countries as heritage, history, and contribution to the world. I've noticed a big difference between American audiences and Berlin audiences, for example: not only do concerts tend to frequently sell out here but also the percentage of audience members under age 40 is much higher than in the States. People are interested because they're raised to be interested, because it's part of being German, or French, or whatever nationality, raised to be proud of a great artistic history, even if they aren't necessarily aware of its finer aspects.

America, however, has made a formidable effort to erase classical art out of the culture. One is hard pressed to find an American church employing professional musicians playing a traditional liturgy (England's Anglican tradition, however, keeps this flourishing). No longer do households have pianos, a meeting point for the whole family, as was the norm 80-100 years ago. Music and art is no longer taught in schools. People used to be [insert profession here] as well as amateur musicians on the side because it was part of being a well-educated, well-rounded person. Einstein, they say, was an excellent violinist. This trend of profession-plus-musician has become increasingly rare, with one exception - many doctors these days happen to be amateur musicians, two fields that actually have more in common than what you might think, a rigorous attention to detail, intense concentration, long hours of study, and steel nerves under pressure.

Everything is, or should be, connected. But it appears that the chasm between aesthetics (beauty of all kinds, not just art from a certain period) and a technologically efficient but spiritually dead modernity continues to widen.

Say It's Possible

I love finding new artists who, in one song, one chord change, one photograph, one poem, get it. Whatever is there, floating above our heads, between our bodies, through our hearts, only a few get it, capture it - part of it. Their part of it. So as a habitual gatherer of the human experience, I love finding these fragments, whole in themselves, putting them together, and making my world as it goes.

This singer/songwriter just won the YouTube best music video award, which doesn't say much, but her song certainly does. I listened to some of her other songs as well which, I have to admit, didn't do a lot for me. But this song is definitely worth a listen.

www.myspace.com/terranaomi
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHyRI9_NB4


Say It's Possible - Terra Naomi (on a personal note, what is up with these pop singers with two first names?)

I see the lights are turning and I look outside
The stars are burning through this changing time
It could have been anything we want
It's fine, salvation was just a passing thought
It was just a passing thought

Don't wait, act now
This amazing offer won't last long
It's only a chance to save the path we're on
I know there are more exciting things to talk about
And in time we'll sort it out

And though they say it's possible
To me, I don't see how it's probable
I see the course we're on spinning farther from what I know
I'll hold on
Tell me that you won't let go

And truth is such a funny thing
With all these people
Keep on telling me
They know what's best
And what to be frightened of
And all the rest are wrong
They know nothing about us

And though they say it's possible
To me, I don't see how it's probable
I see the course we're on spinning farther from what I know
I'll hold on
Tell me that you won't let go

I'm not alright

This could be something beautiful
Combine our love into something wonderful
But times are tough I know
And the pull of what we can't give up takes hold

from Alex Ross's blog

Proust predicts Messiaen

"Somewhere in one of the tall trees, making a stage in its height, an invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem shorter, was exploring with a long, continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly."

— Swann's Way

Learning the Hard Way

So while at the grocery store this evening, I decided to take a walk down the cookie aisle. Usually I don't allow myself the temptation (the plethora of bakeries in this city is sinful enough), but this time, I thought, I'll just look.

And while just looking at the bags of yummy things, I ran into my neighbor, the one 5 floors up who has been a big anti-piano advocate to the building owners, the one who has complained from day 1 about my practicing, the one I haven't seen in two weeks and was hoping to continue the streak.

I've done everything possible to cut down on sound - mattresses against the wall, meters of thick acoustic foam inside the piano and stuck into all sorts of places underneath that you didn't even know existed, blankets heaped on top. In fact the piano is now so quiet that I can barely hear it when I play.

But he apparently still can.
And wants to meet again next week to discuss the "problem."

I should never have walked down the cookie aisle.
I may never go to the grocery store again.
After the food I bought today runs out, I'll probably never eat again.
I've learned my lesson.

The Art of Critic

Richard Aldrich of the New York Times reviews Sergei Prokofiev's local debut, on Nov. 20, 1918:

"It is for Prokofieff the mere breaking of a butterfly on a wheel to perform other men's music. But the gracious butterfly of Scriabine was metamorphosed into a gigantic prehistoric pterodactyl with horrid snout and crocodile wings which ominously whirred as they flew over the pianist. Ah! a Jabberwock, it was, not a butterfly!"

New Day

The miracle of today isn't the new year. 2007 is just a number. But after a long, celebratory night of fireworks and bubbly, standing in the middle of a party-ravaged kitchen and watching dawn break over old gray buildings, the magic is in the melting of night into day, blackened darkness into a deep-blue/cold-blue/charcoal-and-ash-gray hinting at the nearing of a sun still below an unseen horizon.

"Look," I said to my exhausted companion, we two the last remnants left standing in the silent dusky room. I pointed to the window. "A new day."

To start off your new year, check out Norwegian/British singer/songwriter Kate Havnevik by going to www.myspace.com/katehavnevik and clicking (on the right sidebar) her song entitled "New Day." Listen to the whole 7:42 minutes of dark strings, atonal slides, techno beat, electronic austerity, and gorgeous lyrics, a landscape of sound you've never encountered before. Her music may be familiar to you if you watch "Grey's Anatomy" - they seem to use her music whenever the tension becomes too unbearable and the show hits emotional zero, most notably the finale of season 2 and the recent episode "From a Whisper to a Scream."

Go to That Opera Again; Singers Are Only Human

By ANNE MIDGETTE
Published: December 30, 2006, New York Times

The lesson was not about endurance. Opera lovers are generally glad to sit through as many performances of a favorite opera with a strong cast as they can get tickets to. Two measly performances of even a four-hour opera like “Don Carlo” is nothing compared with, say, four hearings of Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” to which I happily subjected myself in my college years.

Rather, the lesson concerned performance. I had heard the mezzo-soprano Bruna Baglioni, who sang the role of Eboli in 1992 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. She was, on the first night, little short of ghastly. I seem to remember a wobble, vocal unevenness, missed pitches and the kind of war-whoop effect peculiar to a certain type of putatively dramatic singer seeking to convey excitement without the technique to support it.

I thought she was awful. So when I returned two days later, I was rather dreading Eboli’s scenes.

But Ms. Baglioni was absolutely terrific. She marshaled her forces and gave a fantastic, powerful, exciting portrayal.

It is a truism in opera that you’re only as good as your last performance. Human variability is supposed to be one of the exciting things about live music, making it like a high-wire act. Will the tenor successfully negotiate the course? Or will he fall spectacularly, in plain sight of everyone, cracking on a high note (or, as Roberto Alagna infamously did nearly three weeks ago, storming off the stage)?

This mutability has given even superstar singers screaming cases of stage fright. (The soprano Rosa Ponselle used to walk to the Metropolitan Opera as slowly as possible, hoping she might be hit by a bus before she arrived at the theater and had to go onstage and live up to her reputation). And it’s what draws opera fans to attend multiple performances of the same production, to hear what variations may emerge from one night to another.

And still people are prone to snap judgments in a society rife with cultural experiences, where they are chronically challenged in finding time to process them. Another favorite saying in critical circles is that you don’t have to eat the whole egg to know it’s rotten. Yet this saying reveals a tacit, and incorrect, assumption: that live performance can be equated with a book or a film, and that a constantly changing art is comparable to something that is fixed and will be encountered in the same form by everyone who apprehends it.

After I began writing this article, a passionate debate on the same subject erupted in an online discussion forum: how can you presume to judge a singer after a single hearing? It’s a thorny question, particularly for those of us whose job it is to do just that. Had I been reviewing Ms. Baglioni, I would have written a blistering assessment of that first performance and never gone back to learn how wonderful she could be at her best.

Yet anyone who listens to music can cite performers who have varied wildly from one evening to another. I recently reviewed a gifted cellist who on the night I heard him happened to have trouble with his intonation. I’ve been assured that he has been brilliant on other nights.

Or take the tenor Salvatore Licitra, who has by now sung quite a few performances in New York, ranging from brilliant to so-so. Audiences here have had a chance to form their own opinions. Yet when he sang Canio in the Metropolitan Opera’s “Pagliacci” this fall, some of the problem spots in his voice seemed to have improved strikingly: the upper middle, once strained, was strong. He had been working on his approach. Is it still possible for him to change fans’ minds?

Here I might invoke another cliché: performers are only human. And I believe the most appropriate response to the recognition of artists’ human failings is not necessarily to hedge your bets by making allowances, speculating on outside factors that led to their being bad on a given night, or hypothesizing that they might improve with more practice. (It would be equally true, or equally fallacious, to qualify a description of an excellent performance with the observation that the artist could well buckle at the next show.)

Art matters. And if it doesn’t matter enough to provoke strong opinions in the people who passionately love it, it can hardly be expected to awaken responses in anybody else. Indeed, it is vital to the future of the field that music lovers of all kinds remain judgmental and passionately involved; that fans care enough to be upset when someone turns in a dog of a performance, or to defend a favorite performer against charges of inadequacy.

But the corollary is to remember that listeners too are human, and that we too can be wrong. The best acknowledgment of an artist’s human weaknesses, and the mutability of live performance, is to keep your ears open and your judgment suspended. For the lesson I learned from Ms. Baglioni is that if you love music, there is great joy in being proved wrong by an old pro who, versed in Italian style to her fingertips, may not always have it in her to be good but who, when the chips are down, can pull it all together and deliver a fantastic performance.

Addition to the Hit List

So I didn't think it could possibly get worse.

And then after a Thursday with no opportunity to practice (choir rehearsals and yoga classes drove me far, far from the church), driven by the fear of another lesson this weekend, I decided I would try again at 10pm after the last choir rehearsal. At 9:30, a half hour early, I practiced a bit on the upright (free for the first time that day - the yoga room, the daycare room, the voice coaching room), waiting for the sanctuary and the grand piano to be free at 10. Finally the choir leaves. I walk downstairs, anticipating a night with the piano all to myself, and I open the door...and there, seated at the harpsichord, is an ancient man tuning the thing. Oh fine, I think, and stomp back upstairs to the upright. Tuning a harpsichord can't take all that long can it? I remember the tuner at MSM, and she didn't take too terribly long. I think maybe an hour ought to do it.

No. Exasperated and sick of the upright, I finally left the church over 3 hours later, at 1:30am, and the old man was STILL tuning the harpsichord. The worst part? It was still out of tune. What was he doing in there? WHAT was he DOING in there for all that TIME??? I mean SERIOUSLY. Somebody out there hates me.

The Code

There is an unspoken code amongst musicians, a code governing behavior and social manners between colleagues. Every musician knows it and most follow its rules. For the benefit of non-musician readers, I will enumerate the main points below - if anybody would like to add to the list, please comment. (These are across-the-board valid for all musicians relating to one-another with the exception of a teacher-student relationship or between musicians who are good friends).

1. Never, never, never ask a fellow musician how much he or she practices. This is a very personal question, a very touchy subject. It's like asking, "How much do you weigh?" It's absolutely none of your business. Besides, it's more important how a person practices than how much. Some people need more time to accomplish what others can do more quickly. Of course, the best musicians combine the how and the how much, and in 8 hours, get done what mere mortals can't do in a week. To each his own.

2. Don't volunteer information about how much you practice. That's just rude. Nobody cares, and nobody is impressed. You're probably lying anyway.

3. Nobody wants to hear all the technical exercises you do. "I play the complete Hanon in a different key every day." Yeah, nobody cares. And you're probably lying. If you want a high-horse, be a gymnast.

4. Don't give unsolicited advice. If they don't ask, they don't care. "You should play the complete Hanon in a different key every day." Who are you, my teacher? Um, no.

5. Occasionally, if the conversation progresses in a civilized way, it's ok to ask current repertoire. But you have to cough up your current repertoire too. Please remember that personal anecdotes and stories about how you learned and performed Carnaval in 4 days are prohibited. Unless you want people to hate you.

6. If all the above problems have been avoided and the conversation is moving along nicely, civily, respectfully, and both people are interested, it's ok to talk about the interval span of one's hand. "How much can you reach?" is an more or less a neutral question. Everyone's hands are different, and everyone must come up with unique solutions for unique hands.

Again, in a teacher/student relationship, all this changes. A teacher should give advice--should make demands--and should ask all the tough questions, especially the "how much are you practicing" question, though usually it's clear by the playing; a student, in return, should be able to ask the teacher those "how" and "how much" questions. Also, musicians who are friends and need each other for support and inspiration may cross the line every once in awhile since it's not about bragging but about helping.

I don't know how much any of my friends practice, except that it's a lot. I don't ask; I don't need to know. And they don't ask me. We know the code. We follow it. However, it was my recent misfortune to encounter someone who crossed the line, someone who should've known better. It's insulting, offensive, and eliminates the benefit of the doubt we usually extend to new acquaintances. Maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal to non-musicians, but it is. The code-breakers are the type who put razor blades between the piano keys.

----

Moving on, I listened to some recordings of mine from ages 17, 19, and 20, and it alarms me a bit to say that I like my playing back then better than I like my playing now. Especially at age 17. I was much closer to my aesthetic ideal back then. I think conservatory derailed me into main-stream thinking for 4 years. Somehow I've got to get back. Back in the old days, my Bach was a pretty good (if mild) imitation of Glenn Gould - and you know what? It sounded really good. Now...now it's just a mush of half-piano style, half-harpsichord style, half-nothing style, a battlefield of differing opinions. I sound like nothing because I can't make up my mind.

I also listened to some chamber music recordings from the past couple years. I miss my girls, Sara, Rena, Joanne, Gaby. Making music is so much fun with someone else. Those were special times. These days making music is a lot of work. My lessons are fun, sometimes, when I'm not terrified or he's not kicking my butt. Then we start laughing and can't stop. A threatening comment like "I'm going to KILL you if..." usually sobers things up. Actually, he's one of the most wonderful, generous people I've ever come across, not to mention a fantastic pianist and teacher. I'm very lucky.

----

Tonight I babysat two adorable, clever little American-German boys, ages 6 and 9. We played soccer for a long time in their attic, and the older boy showed me all sorts of tricks. Sometimes I wonder if I never developed beyond the 4th grade. There's something to be said for sweet little kids who just like you because. Because nothing. Just because. I like them too, just because.

Trumpet Tragedies, Queen of Nightmares, and God

Just when you thought things were starting to get boring....

http://www.billandellie.com/sounds/TrumpetBloopers.htm

Also includes that not-to-be-missed Queen of the Night by the notoriously esteemed Florence Foster Jenkins. Really, your life is not complete until you hear this recording.

To cleanse the palate, watch God play the violin. Go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwEbOoVIwak

Pianist as Psychologist

Dear Greg,

My love life sucks. I haven't been on a date in over a year. I find the piano more interesting than any of the guys I've met lately. What should I do?

Desolate in Deutschland


Dear Desolate,

Good grief! I'm not a psychologist, nor do I pretend to be!

Regardless, I can offer you two bits of common sense. 1) Be authentic. If you'd rather interest yourself with the piano, no one's stopping you. If you'd rather be out on dates, get yourself out there. 2) The piano is there to enhance real life, not supplant it.

Now, if your some reason, you are intimating that pianists (myself included) are stuck in the practice room and have no love lives, I suggest you reconsider! "Us Weekly" could easily devote an entire issue to the torrid romantic records of the great pianists.

-Greg

(www.andersonpiano.com/interact/ask.html)