Journey of 100

On campus in the CAPA LENS.

Tuesday night’s 10 p.m. performance of the entire D Minor Partita produced one of the most memorable results I have ever experienced as a soloist.  The audience of about 60 or so stayed sitting together in a profound, relaxed silence for a good 8-10 minutes.  Slowly, one or two students at a time would quietly put their things together and leave the room.  About six stayed for talkback and conversation that was captured by our Catamount Access cameraman.  I will put the students’ insightful comments together in an edit, and post it here as soon as I can.

One of my comments about the performance is that the emotional arc of my performance felt sloppy to me – and when I shared that, Matthew (one of the students) replied that “emotions are sloppy” and that the rawness of my musical expression (his words) was what made it so powerful. That gives one *much* to consider in terms of balancing personal expression with expressing musical understanding of Bach’s fine works.

7:00 Holiday Concert at the Jackson Heights Jewish Center, Queens

I have played this seasonal concert for many years and it is always great fun  – so many wonderful people from the neighborhood show up, and the programs are always interesting!   A really fine Tango segment (singer Chris Vasquez and pianist Cesar Vuksic), Arabic music (including Simon Shaheen’s Alhambra Trio which we commissioned a number of years ago for A Night at the Alhmabra Café), which I performed with Rex Benincasa, Tar  and Carlo Valte, Oud), Tangos, music by James Primosh (beautiful piano solo Ryan MacEvoy McCullough and singing from Judy Kellock.  

I played the Chaconne following the last movement from the Messaien Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps, it was a good pairing.  The room we were playing in had very dry sound, so I had to speed the tempos slightly. Having done three or four of these performances in the last couple of weeks, it was pretty easy to drop into a somewhat mind-less space and allow the music to flow.  

We were fortunate to have the services of a spanish translator – one of the staff at the Jewish Center – so that the spanish-speaking audience members would know clearly that I was asking the listeners to participate with me in this Journey of 100  – to come to our website here and write their experiences – I hope we get some comments.

for colleagues and friends.  This performance was a good one – I was happy with the spirit and mood I was able to create; I had to keep substituting listening deeply for thinking, for mental activity.    I worked a lot at exploring many places for playing at soft dynamic levels, leaving the higher levels for the most important emotional and spiritual moments. 

A funny thing was that in the afternoon I had to decide if I was going to cook dinner (we were hosting the evening) or practice – and I decided to cook and work on the music in my mind and body while cooking.  A good choice, so it seems.

Well folks, I am really happy because tomorrow morning I am playing the Chaconne for approximately 150 5th grade Violin students at PS K 179 in Brooklyn.  I am performing courtesy of Principal Bernadette Amato, Director Toby Kasavan of Neighborhood Music and Arts  (who provides the music program for the school) and the children’s violin teacher Megan Berson.   Stand by for the results in the next few days!  

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Well this turned out just great – we had terrific support from Principal Amato the classroom teachers Ms. Campili, Ms. Moshitz, Ms. Orlando, Ms. Pacheco-Vitulli, Ms. Durka, Mrs Dibella and Ms. Crass, as well as the children’s violin teach Ms. Berson.

The performance was pretty good, I had enough time to warm up. I used a new approach to rhythmic organization – really letting the time drive hard and build all the way through the first section into the major section, and then treat that section in a similar manner, only letting the third section meander and wander as it would.

It was very gratifying to feel the kids being with me the whole way through the Chaconne – a good 15 minutes of solid music.  As I anticipated, there was no problem whatsoever with their attention span.

Afterwards we were able to capture on video the most informative reactions of a number of individual students (I will edit them and post them here in few weeks).

5 P.M.   NY, NY

We were a lovely gathering of people, including one musician, in a beautiful apartment that was perfectly suited for live music; after the music we all sat together for quite some time sharing reactions and questions.  I noticed that there was a large degree of ease and comfort among the group of listeners for  silence,  which to me is a testament to the power of the music.

Our location was new to me, and I had decided that would arrive and just start playing, without excusing myself to another room to warm up…in lieu of the warm up I repeated the first part of the opening movement  (Allemande).  It sort of worked; however, in the future I will explore a warm up that is in effect an open improvisation that leads into the work itself.

I felt slow overall, but calm and attentive, so instead of pushing and driving the music arbitrarily, I simply relaxed and tried to open myself to the flow of the work, and let it come to me and take me where it wanted to go.  I also noticed that while in my preparation of the previous three of four days I did *not* run the whole work for continuity (probably would have been a good idea), the parts I did practice were really fine.  

A private performance late in the evening for colleagues – long time collaborators and good friends –  here at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference.

It was a great pleasure to share this performance with friends with whom I have studied and performed many works of great – and not-so-great [smile] – musical significance.  As we began, I was not so sure that I would play the entire Partita (what I first had in mind), but decided to just start at the beginning and let it all flow as best as it would after almost two week of daily teaching and rehearsing.  The Chaconne is often played by itself, as a stand-alone work – yet I am coming to the firm conclusion that it is an integral part of the entire work (Partita in D Minor BWV 1004): better said, that the 4 opening movements based on old (in Bach’s time), known dance forms completely flow into the Chaconne, that the Chaconne is an organic emotional, musical and spiritual resolution to the questions raised in the previous movements – Allemande, Corrente, Sarabande and Gigue.  One of my colleagues pointed out that many musical elements in the Chaconne are foreshadowed in the dances, linking them together, and that those dances are part of the internal balance, so to speak, of the whole work.

I tested out – with apparent success – ideas that I have been working on in the studio – a few of them in brief: the opening (Allemande), a declamatory call for the attention of the Spirit and a reminder of the  Soul’s spiritual journey; an encapsulation of the struggles of Life (Corrente), deeply seated questions of Life’s meaning (Sarabande).  I also used the organizing principle of rhythmic drive and groove described below in the recent practice session.  They all apparently came clear to my listeners. In particular the rhythmic drive in the first part of the Chaconne set up great freedoms in the return of the theme in the concluding section (minor).