I’m here to promote a website just started by a lovely person:

Musically Mac is started by my friend Amelia, and was a direct response to the announcement that the Linfield Chamber Orchestra was not long for this world. It’s an amazing and beloved little orchestra, and I was heartbroken when the news came that there were two concerts left before it would cease to exist.

I was even more heartbroken as the news was delivered to us mere minutes before we were giving our last concert. That, however, is a rant for another day, when I’ve had more time to process and deal with those particular feelings.

But I invite you to add this to your reading list – the disappearance of this wonderful orchestra is a tragedy. I have played the Mozart Requiem several times in my career, but this was the first time I’d played it through tears.

Every couple of years, it seems, I reevaluate my set up. It usually involves trying lots of expensive accessories, staring intently at my colleagues to figure out what they do that makes it look so easy, and it usually concludes with a product that makes me swear I’ve FINALLY found the secret to playing the violin. It also usually comes at the worst time possible – this time it’s about a week before an audition.

I thought I had the solution, but I’ve come to remember why I don’t like my shoulder rests so darn high. Turns out that leads to an achy shoulder, which is what I’m suffering from after a three hour opera rehearsal last night. So I’m deciding between a couple more to try, and I may end up ordering a couple and returning the one that doesn’t work. Or, let’s face it, keeping the one that doesn’t work because chances are it will end up working eventually.

In an effort to understand why the heck my muscles feel this way, I attempted to take some pictures of what my shoulder looks like from different angles with different shoulder rests.

Here, first, is the way I wish I could play, completely sans shoulder rest.

You can see the daylight poking through, and the temptation to bring up my shoulder in order to close the gap is pretty great. This also puts more strain on my left hand, and makes shifting into high positions significantly more difficult. Makes me yearn for Baroque music, because if I could learn to get this to work for me, the sheer lack of equipment on my fiddle would make it sound INCREDIBLE.

Here’s my current setup:

It’s fairly solid when all is said and done, but the problem is this:

As you can see, the curve with the fiddle is pretty significant. And since it’s an older shoulder rest, it’s a little too flexible. All it takes is a small amount of pressure to get the thing to buzz on the back of the instrument. So, initially, I thought I needed something similar, but with not such a curve, which is what lead me to try this:

Not nearly as dramatic, right? Unfortunately, it ends up feeling just like it looks, which is high and awkward, no matter how I arrange the feet:

I have a couple more coming next week, but the damage from this last one has been done. Holding my head up has become a chore, so I think I managed to tweak my neck somehow. I’m hoping it will be better tomorrow – most of the pain has gone away – but it makes for a frustrating situation in the meantime. I’ve been told very firmly that the violin SHOULD NOT HURT, and if it does, it means you need to rest and re-evaluate. And do nothing. This kind of thing drives me nuts. Especially when excerpts are staring me in the face. It’s a lot of positive thinking that gets you through a couple days such as this.

I’ve been mysteriously absent, yes. And for that, I apologize. It turns out that March and April decided to conspire and explode on me together. It was very messy.

I’ve been up to some cool, stuff, though. Check it out:

Newport is one of the many lovely coast towns this state of ours has to offer. In March, I got to play a fantastic concert with their orchestra, conducted by their assistant conductor, Mr. David Ogden Stiers. He did a great job filling in for the orchestra’s regular conductor, who was busy becoming a new father. The cool thing about him was the bragging rights he gave my dad for being able to tell people I worked with him, but the cooler thing was the Poulenc double piano concerto he programmed. I had never played it before, and it’s delightfully kooky:

Spring break hit, and I purposefully did as little as possible. I’m finding I love being a teacher as long as I give myself frequent breaks from the job. I don’t know how the year-round ones do it.

Then, I got an email with a request to do THIS:

This is actually from our show! If you look carefully, you can see me with my unmistakable red glasses just sawing away. I’m standing right next to the incomparable Roddy Chong. Near the end of this bit, you will see flames shooting up behind us all… yup, we had no idea that was going to happen. We felt an enormous rush of heat, and I thought to myself, “Yup, that’s a wall of fire.” When holding a very expensive instrument in this environment, you find yourself fighting the instinct to dive offstage to protect it – especially when that instrument is as flammable as ours. It only occurred to us after the show that WE were also flammable. Once you get used to the random acts of arson, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra puts you in a pretty good mood. The guys were super nice, and really easy to work with. They have a really specific kind of thing they do, and they do it REALLY well.

In fact, they do it so well, I’m going to let you take one more look at Roddy:

Seeeee? You can do just about anything with a music degree.

Finally, rehearsals have started for our final opera of the season, Candide. Bernstein wrote this, it seems, to kind of marry the opera and musical ideas. There are some wicked hard licks in this one, including this little number in the first act:

Opening May 11th!

As you can see, it’s been a fun and unusually busy time for me – although I couldn’t be happier with the variety my career is bringing at the moment. I do this for a LIVING.

What kind of musical moments have come your way lately?

“You know, in violin playing, everything that looks pretty is good, and everything that looks ugly is bad.”

The voice you hear from the beginning of this video is of the great pedagogue and mentor of my grad school professor, Mr. Ivan Galamian. The student, if you can believe it, is a young Joshua Bell.

Ivan Galamian wrote the book on violin playing. Literally. I use his scale/bowing book as technique practice on an almost daily basis. And it’s rare that I’ll flip through his famous publication of “Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching” without having at least one moment of awe in how clear he’s able to make things. Even through this masterclass, it’s his simplicity which is most staggering. Violinists have a tendency to over think pretty much everything. The amount of time I’ve spent getting straight bows on my students seems to come so naturally and effortlessly to Galamian’s teaching.

Plus, it’s always nice to see superstars like Joshua Bell at their starting points. Even he struggled every now and then. It helps to think about.

I know I keep coming back to this guy. It’s partly because I adore him, his playing, and all that his music has been able to do. But it’s also because that through all the masterclasses I sift through on youtube, his are consistently the most able to speak to a wide audience. You don’t have to be a violin player – heck, even a musician – to understand these concepts he’s talking about. And they’re all so fundamentally important, the ideas of colors, characters, etc. in music. They’re some difficult concepts for professionals sometimes, and yet he is able to demonstrate so completely what the real core of music is all about.

Happy Valentines Day, blogosphere! In the spirit of love – love for each other, love for music, love for the arts – I present you with the very beginning of my love for the violin. I don’t know what year this was, but I know I saw it when I was a young child, and it was my first exposure I can remember to the instrument. It was absolutely my first exposure to Itzhak Perlman, who is one of my greatest violin inspirations. I can only hope Sesame Street is still this good.

I’ve been telling my students about the many, many Heifetz masterclasses that are available online, but specifically referencing this one. Carol Hodgkins (who, evidently, recently passed away) starts, and chooses a scale as her first thing to play. I wondered why Heifetz seemed so surprised, and commended her for her bravery. Then, he launches into choosing the scale FOR her. Ah, to be the subject of a terrifying masterclass again.

Just the style and general dress-up-ed-ness of the students is enough to make you see why Mad Men gets it exactly right in their stylizing. However, the quiet, mannered teaching of Heifetz is what gets me the most. One does not question anything he says (why would you? A short excerpt of any of his recordings would shut someone right up), and there’s an interesting combination of wanting to soak up all he says while wanting to play your absolute best. Sort of a “don’t disappoint Dad” situation, if your Dad was as close to technically flawless on the violin as anyone has ever gotten in history.

Enjoy!

It’s not often you’ll see American singers playing Japanese characters who sing in Italian. Puccini is amazing music to play – the time goes by so quickly, since the music’s so fascinating. This is the most often performed opera in North America – you could almost see it accidentally.

Madame Butterfly opens TONIGHT!! at the Keller Auditorium. Also a 2PM matinee on Sunday. Hope to see you there!

Okay, kiddos – can you hear it? Many of you are working on this, or have it in current review status in your Mark O’Connor book:

Amazing, right? Starts off sort of basic and then gets downright FUNKY.

Here are some interesting observations to note:
-The music sitting in front of Mark O’Connor on the stand is most likely NOT “Boil ‘Em Cabbage.” He’s making all of the variations up as he goes.
-When Mark O’Connor turns around and says something to the bassist, he’s letting him know which chord comes next in the sequence. (Remember – the chords are the little letters above your line.) This means that these musicians have not played this piece too much together before. In fact, it’s possible this is the first time they’ve done it.
-Wynton Marsalis is the fellow on the trumpet. Notice how his style and variation differ from Mark O’Connor’s? And yet, it’s the SAME PIECE.

A little bit of practice motivation for you all.

A shortie but a goodie here, by another one of my favorite violinists to listen to and watch. This short clip is from a fantastic documentary called From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China. Mr. Stern talks about something I often ask my students to do to help with phrasing: singing the piece. Whenever a student tries this for the first time, they’re often bashful and nervous, much like this girl is in the clip. But the fact remains that we often have very instinctual phrasing and musicality built into our minds… we just forget to use it when we put the violin up to our chin. The point is exemplified beautifully here, and the audience picks up on it immediately.

We miss you, Mr. Stern.