Chaconne #7 – StringPoet Series, Long Island Violin Shop

This was the first performance for me since the MET season started. I felt as if I was operating at about 80-odd %  of optimal   –  small flaws, touching in and out of depth as opposed to living in the depth of the music…humbling to recognize the increased degree of preparation to perform at…

Read More

Chaconne #6

6) August 12, 2012 Williamstown, MA Private home for 2 longtime friends and music lovers.  Drove down from Bennington where I have been performing and teaching at the Chamber Music Conference for the past 2 weeks …packed up my things, got in the car, arrived and played. There were a few funny concentration issues: I…

Read More

Chaconne #5

July 29, 2012 Lake Oneida, NY  – Weekend Chamber Music party.   Balance of rhythmic discipline and rhythmic freedom felt a bit awry, but then, it *was* first thing in the morning.  Also noticed that some passages need some technical cleaning…new ones that used to be settled…

Read More

Chaconne #4

July 25, 2012 NY NY private apartment at Lincoln Center for Russian friends and colleagues.  Played all four dance movements as part of performance …spieled  as well about Why 100?.  Deep concentration a bit of an issue.  Was confused about the balance of freedom and form, freedom and rhythmic pulse between the dance movements and…

Read More

Chaconne Journal entry 7/17/12

July 17, 2012 I have started to hear the first four movements linked to the Chaconne…as one spirit….a sense of urgency within the music, within the lines…an urgency to travel ahead…to go, to move towards a destination distant and magnetic…Have never heard or felt these phrases in this way….

Read More

Chaconne #3

Performance for colleague Hastings-on-Hudson, NY June 22, 2012 8:30 P.M. He loved the purity of pitch and sound…his comment was that I used vibrato in some places but not others, and because he found the purity of my sound so persuasive,  it made him wonder if I might consider not using any vibrato.    Personally…

Read More

Chaconne #2

The Players, NY …May 22 2012 7:30 pm Program Dvorak Romance, Prokofiev Vocalise, Messaien Vocalise-Étude, Brahms G Major Sonata, Enescu Impressions D’Enfance, with photographic images by Peter Laytin. Colleagues present.  In this performance and the previous one at Lincoln Center, I felt free to allow fancy to direct my timing and dynamics in many of…

Read More

Chaconne #1

May 19, 2012 2:30 pm   Lincoln Center, NY Bruno Walter Auditorium  Recital with Robert Merfeld Many colleagues present!  Went really well, wonderful reception…great to have a resonant hall that allowed me to really push the envelope with the soft dynamics…Program Dvorak Romance, Prokofiev Vocalise, Messaien Vocalise-Étude, Brahms G Major Sonata, Enescu Impressions D’Enfance, with photographic…

Read More