Zen and the Art of Returning to Practice

It is September! A new season beckons, full of plans as well as many unscheduled surprises! The feeling of "back-to-school" permeates the air, and in spite of the implied work, it is somehow invigorating!

A rather Zen-style tactic that I find helpful after some rest is to focus not on the audible results of my playing straight away, but rather to disconnect from the goal and focus on the elements that will help me to arrive at that goal: good posture and body use, relaxed breathing, generous blowing, making corrections to any errors encountered with a low-stress attitude, and connecting to the pleasure of music-making through improvisation or sight-reading. Even while gradually adding in the "menu" of required exercises, studies or pieces, this Zen attitude can be encouraged and you may be surprised by…the results!

Here's a photo to remind us of the joy and wonder of making music!

"What is making that noise?"

Indulge! (It's August 31st…)

All of a sudden it is the last day of August—how did that happen? I would like to say that I did the European thing of taking the month off, but to be honest, musicians rarely take a month off without "paying for it". Do we all know the classic joke? Here goes:

"If you take one day off, you will notice. If you take two days off, your wife will notice. If you take three days off, the whole world will notice." 

So how about we split the difference, we hard-working musicians who appear (I emphasize the word "APPEAR") to just get up and play, and INDULGE ourselves in whatever counts in your book as an indulgence? It could even be a healthy indulgence (though I think that should count less, no?), but here's the remainder of my little indulgence for the day. Tomorrow is September, and I'm gonna need all the boost I can get!

It's amazing how good these still are…

ESART - Line Up Your Ducks!

Dear prospective students of Superior Courses in Music: this blog entry is FOR YOU! In English we have an (odd) expression: "lining up your ducks". This means getting all the preparation you need organized BEFORE the moment of an audition or applying for a course of study. 

I cannot stress how important this is for those trying to enter into Superior-level Music Courses; these have become highly competitive in recent years, and aside from preparing your playing audition, you ought to prepare to the best of your ability for the written exams, especially including the REQUIRED NATIONAL EXAM(S). Take note: these requirements can and DO change with some regularity, and it is NOT EASY to keep up with the changes. However, you simply must, or you risk being accepted and then not being able to matriculate for lack of an exam or lack of passing an exam. 

This may seem unfair, but at the same time, you should realize that all University-level courses are highly underwritten (i.e. paid for) by the government, and so it would be normal to expect incoming students—"even" in music, art, etc.—to be functional in Portuguese and so forth! So, practice, yes, indeed, but also: LINE UP YOUR DUCKS!

ESART - Flute class, c. 2015

Em Foco - Teses! / In Focus - Theses!

As part of the Summer Flute Academy project, we look for interesting thesis projects that can be presented in a seminar to the students (and Professors!). This is our "Em Foco—Tese" project, and this year's winner was André Cameira, of the University of Évora. He gave an excellent presentation on the 12 Fantasias of Telemann, with an overview, historical information and performance and practice suggestions. Highly useful and inspirational—THANK YOU, André!

Next year we'll be having our 5th (!) Summer Flute Academy, so if you have written a thesis that is nearing completion or has been completed in the last 10 years we'd love you to submit it—I'll let you know when the regulations for 2017 are on the site. Our idea is that many theses are being written but end up on a shelf without having any wider exposure, which is a shame. The winning thesis will also be included in the archives of the Summer Flute Academy online. And we are completely open to theses by non-flutists since many times the subject matter is relevant!

Flutist André Cameira presenting his seminar on the Telemann Fantasias at the 4th Summer Flute Academy

Vital Signs

I've had the good fortune this week of meeting and talking with the American pianist Nelson Ojeda Valdès, a fellow native of Los Angeles, California (which I don't come across too often here in Lisbon!) He's a friend of also-originally-from-LA pianist Raj Bhimani, who is also here in Lisbon rehearsing for upcoming concerts of Syrinx: XXII, so it's been a California-on-the-Tejo week for me!

Nelson, who is very active in New York as a performer, teacher and adjudicator, has a succinct way to refer to the two basic impulses of music, pulse and breath, calling them the "vital signs". He means that pulse and breath are just as necessary to music as they are to bodily survival; we performers should always strive to communicate these elements clearly to the listener, just as our bodies clearly need both pulse and breath to maintain life. 

Of course, pulse is fundamental—we all know the magic when music makes us tap our foot or want to dance along—and I always love to hear a non-wind-player talking about breathing in relation to music and phrasing. Of course, we flutists and wind players MUST breathe, but the bottom line is that the MUSIC must breathe (even Wagner, eventually…). Nelson's concept helps put the issue of breath on the right footing, as something good and desirable, rather than a necessary evil—I love it!

Post-rehearsal R&R with pianists Raj Bhimani and Nelson Ojeda Valdès

On the Road to Success…

If ever a picture is worth a thousand words, this is one! Found it on FaceBook somewhere (thank you, Universe) and it's priceless. Especially for us musicians—we've been playing for X years and we're STILL practicing? Yup! Alas, there are no shortcuts… 

So the only solution is to enjoy the actual practicing, the preparation, the "slog", while we wait for the results to come. The more we focus on the process, enjoying it and even finding a passion for it, the sooner we'll be taken by surprise — in a positive sense — and by "success"!

Words of wisdom…