Journey of 100
A very gratifying experience for me, and the listeners as well, I believe. There were about a dozen people who had prepared for the performance through Yoga and guided Meditation.
Performance was good…my work done a week or so ago on the ending (mentioned previously) really has held and shaped it well. I think I want to work through the first and second sections with a very defined rhythmic groove and see if it focuses the form a bit better. I suspect that as I have been exploring freedom in the variations I may be losing power from focussing the flow.
A great way to end a day that started with the Dress Rehearsal of Berlioz’ Les Troyens – all 5.5 hours of it!
Nice intimate audience; great colleagues on this program organized by guitarist Sean Harkness, who was a wonderfully supporting colleague to me, singer Carole Demas, pianist Ian Herman, singer/guitarist Ellis Paul and a curiously funny comic whose stage name is even curioser: Brute Force.
I was very pleased with the flow of a number of segments of the Chaconne: the three-tones on A sequence (in the major section) and the build to the end from the return to D minor where I was really able to hold back and hold back and then release the stored anticipation. Additionally the most difficult variations to play three voices as independent musical lines – the dotted rhythms right at the beginning – started to show the work I have been putting in on them.
The notion of repetition seeking depth and center of the great work seemed to have a lot of resonance with our listeners.
December 3, 2012 7 PM at The Players
16 Gramercy Park, NY NY
It was nice to be able to plug back into this world amidst the weeks of opera (and Firebird rehearsals for Sunday’s upcoming Carnegie Hall Concert with the orchestra). I prepped a bit in the afternoon, starting with the last section (return to d minor). The location was somewhat overly resonant, so tempos had to be scaled down accordingly. Today I explored pulling more directly (harmonic rhythm) from the 3rd beat into the 1st beat of the measures in a number of the variations. I think one could organize this sort of treatment (and others) into a distinct vocabulary…all part of an in-the-moment set of creative options.
The first two dotted rhythm variations were good (where balancing each line as an independent voice with its own continuity) – they seem to have developed on their own without a lot of additional attention from me in practice.
#8) Better than last night. Still need to craft a better working method for developing the right internal balance between rhythmic groove and rhythmic freedom. Nice to play the same work, with the same bow and violin, in a larger more sound-friendly space. A moving experience for my audient.
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 100+% in front of a small group of people when in the midst of the opera season. Definitely more mental and musical effort in preparation is required than the 15-20% difference between 80% and 100%. Causes me to remember a comment made to me by an experienced colleague: that it was much harder to improve as you get to increasingly higher levels of skill and artistry. Determining exactly *what* needs to be applied into your daily routine in order to proceed is a significant question.
I am not intending to be negative – the music did flow, as was evidenced by the attention and gratitude expressed by my listeners.
One Comment
Our riverfront room was lit only by a spray of candlelight. A large votive was placed in the center representing the ritual fire. Here was the Stillpoint. My students had spent sixty minutes engaging in lyrical, fluid movement patterns that progressively brought them into a deeper state of “awakedness”, attunement, and meditative openness. At the end of the movement hour, their bodies formed “rays of moonlight” around the center fire, as they lay on their yoga mats, feet toward the fire, their physical comfort supported with bolsters, blankets, and eye pads.
I led Shem into the room in silence. He took his place inside the Stillpoint, quietly lifted his bow, and began playing/living the “Chaconne”. The notes of the music wafted overhead, but the echoes of Bach’s heart vibrated in my bones. I felt entered by the music. The immediacy and intimacy dangled me on the edge between ecstasy and exquisite agony. Breathing into my own heart helped me to stay with it. Eyes closed, the portal to my limbic brain opened. I was not judging the music. I was inside the music.
After a while, it seemed like three or four violinists were playing alongside Shem, and yet, when I forced my heavy lids to open for a moment, a solo player on a solo violin stood before me. I remembered learning that Pagannini had been accused of working alongside the devil when he played. It suddenly did not feel ludicrous. Only here we were in the realm that clearly belonged to angelic entities.
When the Chaconne ended, we sat in a circle and shared responses. It was extraordinary to hear how each woman had been touched deeply by the music, by the violin, by the physical proximity of musician to listener/collaborator, by Bach himself.
Judith Rose, Founder of Vital Movement™.