Streaming Picasso

Rant alert!

In Paris this last weekend to rehearse, I snuck in a moment for “culture” on Saturday morning. Making a beeline to the Picasso Museum, after an absence of 20 or so years, I planned to immerse myself again in the stages of his creative life, represented by innumerable works in a relatively cozy hotel particulier in the Marais. I wanted to put aside considerations of his many personal failings and simply get drunk in his art, in his journey from precocious young Spaniard to the unquestioned master in Paris, working in oils, but also sculpture, drawing, ink, and ceramics.

But no— non! — I was instead assaulted by the 21st Century!

I literally had to ask an employee “where are the Picassos?”. If you like, you may insert TF between “where”and “are”…

I was informed that people nowadays (am I dead?) want something “new”. So the “exhibit” mixed Picassos and … well, some other people’s art. In the Musée Picasso.

(If you want to feel bad about your looks, go to Instagram; if you want to feel bad about your artwork, put it next to a Picasso…)

Worse, the Picassos were really very, very few, extracted, largely, from their chronological context. Which came first, the neo-classical works (one on display, I think), or his blue period (one or two)? If you want to know, well, it’s the 21st Century… go look it up on your PHONE!

Is it too much, or too old-fashioned to want to see the different styles evolving or bursting forth in order? Is it too much to ask to see more than (I’m guessing, generously) 250 Picassos, including many A4 size drawings, at the Picasso Museum, which owns 5,000 works?

Apparently, it is. Picasso has been—like us musicians—STREAMED. His storyline has been cut up into little bits (bytes?), tossed into a bag, pulled out and displayed willy-nilly.

This is the equivalent of streaming services dishing us up Beethoven’s Fifth, second movement, followed by the fourth movement of a Schubert quartet. Do you like that? I hate it. I will venture that Beethoven would hate it. I’d even bet that Philip Glass hates it. Do as you please, but would you watch the finale of six seasons of “The Sopranos” BEFORE the first episode? I rest my case.

The curator, venerated British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, was an odd choice, frankly. Famous for “classic with a twist” styling and a rather good multicolor stripe, I fail to see any connection to Picasso: a hot-blooded Spaniard propelled by ambition to Paris, possessed of an overwhelming and voracious creativity, who renewed his lovers, materials, and aesthetics regularly. Picasso is not “nice”, he is VISCERAL. Blood and guts—a bullfighter.

So maybe when you’re listening to music on some streaming service (no free PR out of me!), consider who—or what—is choosing your music for you, and whether the passive approach is really so great. I know, sometimes we end up somewhere interesting. But in the olden days…it was almost always interesting.

Rant over, just two photos by way of comment:

The Paul Smith stripe

1) a Picasso Museum ramp covered in that Paul Smith stripe (fantastic branding, non?).

STRIPES…again

2) a photo showing the “Stripe Connection”… well, can I just say “painful”? Pénible. Doloroso. (The ghost of my mother, post-G&T, whispers naughtily in my ear: “atrocious!”).

Friends, I still want to get drunk on Picasso, so BARCELONA, here I come. Nada de streaming, por favor!

I'm Quitting Practicing!

(Did I catch your attention?)

The more you know me, the more you know that I actually like to practice. I actually LOVE practicing. So…what gives?

I’ve come to a realization, and it has to do with the fact that the words we use are important. If I tell someone, or myself, that I’m having a “crappy” day…I’ll probably feel worse immediately. If I tell you the sky as “blue”, you’ll probably be less intrigued than if I describe it as “sapphire lit from within”. Words are important.

And this little word, “practice”, gets a whole lotta use in the music world. Most of the time it carries a dreary, heavy, grind-y weight around its neck: “I gotta practice”. “If I don’t practice, my lesson will be crap”. “I’ve practiced N hours today and have X left to do”.

So I propose that we simply DUMP the word “practice”, because when we do it properly, we are actually:

• Enjoying making sound

• Experimenting

• Playing around with different expressions, different solutions

• Listening and feeling

• Playing “for real”

And all of those things we consider fun!

So please join me in this switcheroo: Cancel the ball-and-chain word “practice”; let’s call it “PLAYING” instead. As in: I’m off to PLAY flute! Sounds a lot more fun (because it is).

I hear you saying: but what about practicing SCALES?? It must be done and surely it’s no fun!

Ha! “Even” with scales, approach them as above: experiment, listen, feel the meaning of notes climbing up or dropping down. See if your scales don’t get cleaner and more expressive faster than when you slog it out “practicing”. Dare ya! (BTW: for scales, you may substitute tone exercises, studies, finger exercises, etc.)

The very word “practice” implies you are “trying to get it right” but are NOT YET doing it right…it implies you are not yet doing THE REAL THING. Kinda negative, no?

If you always play for keeps, there will be much less of a shift to the moment of performance. Either way, you are always PLAYING MUSIC. You might be playing music slowly, you might be playing only two notes of music, you might be repeatedly playing small segments of music. But you are PLAYING MUSIC.

How do we eat an ice-cream cone? Do we practice? No! We experiment (top first, before it falls? Bottom first before it drips?), we play around, improvise, feel our way to satisfaction. Why should music-making be any less delightful?

Yup, I’m QUITTING PRACTICING -and PLAYING up a storm!

The Helen Jones Principle

I’ve never met Helen Jones…in person. But I don’t need to (even though I’d love to). She reaches through the screens of Zoom-land and sends me wisdom on a regular basis. (Who’s bitching about Zoom??)

In a meeting some months ago, I was reeling off various delays and hangups and frustrations and complications … . YADDA YADDA YADDA.

“Things take longer than you think”, said Helen.

Well now ain’t THAT the truth?

I jotted it down on a scrap of paper and stuck it on the wall above my desk: REMEMBER THAT!

And in the intervening months, the more I look at those words, the truer they ring. And the more I accept it as NORMAL. Possibly even desirable. While the time is being taken, one comes across hitherto-unknown, felicitous side-roads, discoveries, diversions. In a rush, not so much.

“Anything worth doing is worth doing well”, was the mantra of my beloved grade-school teacher, Mr. L..

And this “doing well”…simply takes more time than you think.

AND THAT’S OK.

This rejoinder came straight away from another member—or several—of the Zoom group; it’s practically our motto. (As in: I didn’t do a scrap of work today…AND THAT’S OK. Or: I worked 15 hours straight today…AND THAT’S OK.)

During March, I was hibernating, hunkering down to get some creative and practicing work done. I enjoyed it thoroughly. And still, the Helen Jones Principle hit me upside the head pretty much daily.

Things take longer than you think.

AND THAT’S OK.

For April…more hunkering. Why? Because “Anything worth doing is worth doing well” (we should insert a caveat about WHAT we define as “worth doing”, but that’s for another day, another blog), and because “things take longer than you think” (except when they don’t…Gladwell/Blink/…yet another day/blog).

Thank you so much for the peace of mind, dear Helen—I’m going to ENJOY my hunkering down to do the work, for just as long as it takes.

Music and the Arena

Before too long, I will spend an afternoon listening intently to young flutists auditioning to enter my class at ESART, part of the Polytechnic in Castelo Branco, here in Portugal.

How self-possessed these young musicians are! Already professional in their attitude, serious but friendly, and very obviously hard-working and well-trained.

Yet how dreadful I find it to be forced, each year, on audition day, to have to grade them numerically. To quote a favorite musician, “it’s not sport…it’s music”.

Would it not be dreadful—and pointless—to “grade” master pianists? Who do I prefer, András Schiff or Murray Perahia? Such comparisons are an absurd proposition…But as there is no alternative within the structure of the Ministry of Education, I agonize and do my best.

All kudos go to the young applicants. They are, as Theodore Roosevelt stated in his famous speech “the man in the arena”, they are the ones out there, risking a loss for the chance at getting a gain.

Imagine, for a moment, the alternative: a system of favouritism—cunhas in Portuguese, cunha being a wedge: forcing or wedging in someone who hasn’t shown up “in the arena”. Or in English, “rigging the system”. A system set up for a predetermined outcome, or worse, filling a vacancy without any audition at all. Indeed, the idea of no audition suddenly makes the audition seem…not so bad!

Even for an eventual “winner”, who is chosen through favouritism, cunhas, or pre-ordained rigging, there’s a downside. There lurks—from that moment on—a tacet knowledge that you “got in” without the due process of being “in the arena”, without risking, without proving your mettle fair and square in the same arena—artificial as it may be—as everyone else.

I remember a mentor humbly stating that when he and his colleague won their orchestra jobs, years back, “we were the best qualified at that time”. He did not say they were the best in the world, the best ever, or still the best. Just that, on the day of the audition, each proved in the arena that they were the best to be had.

I remember another musician just after she won a huge job. She said “it was my day. There was nothing I couldn’t do on that day”. Preparation, some luck, yes, and … stepping into the arena.

So I salute my brave young colleagues who will step into the arena. We don’t always win the prize, but we can always win for ourselves a good chunk of precious self-respect.

LIVE-STREAM of the Launch Concert! - Thursday, Feb. 23, at 7:30pm GMT (2:30pm EST)

Join us in celebrating the official launch of the CD (flut)uações via this link:  https://m.youtube.com/@misomusicportugal . The hour-long program showcases recent music for flutes, percussion, and cello by prominent Portuguese composers.

PROGRAM

Ivan Moody - Istella - for bass flute, vibraphone and crotale

Anne Victorino de Almeida - Três Poemas e um Violoncelo - for solo cello

Carlos Marecos - Five for Two - for piccolo, C, alto and bass flutes, vibraphone, marimba and percussion

Katharine Rawdon - Places I Go in my Sleep - for solo flute

Andreia Pinto-Correia - Sobre um Quadro de Júlio Pomar - for C and alto flute and cello

Alexandre Delgado - Suite “O Doido e a Morte” - for bass and C flute, marimba and vibraphone

PERFORMERS

Katharine Rawdon, flutes

Catherine Strynckx, cello

Francisco Cipriano, percussion

Enjoy a free concert online of some of the best, most atmospheric music from the musical hotspot that is LISBON!

For more about the program, click through to this article in Serenade Magazine, and about the (flut)uações project, click here.

See you there! All Photos © Manuel Luís Cochofel

Catherine Strynckx, cello

Francisco Cipriano, percussion

Katharine Rawdon, flutes and Catherine Strynckx, cello

Tomás Quintais and Eduardo Mota, of Neper Música editors

Remembering…Steven Wasser, CEO of Powell Flutes

There’s really nothing so wrenching as discovering that a friend has been sick and passed away, without you even knowing. Such are the trials of living overseas, I suppose…the Atlantic ocean… the pandemic…traveling—not much.

So it was with shock on top of great sadness that I belatedly happened upon the news (scrolling Instagram, of all places) of the passing of the truly amazing person that was Steven Wasser.

Steven Wasser was the owner and President of Powell Flutes for 30 years, a friend, and might I say a fan of mine going back many years. His obituary reads like the achievements of five very accomplished men—in business, philanthropy, mentoring, and community and family life.

My remembrance here is more personal: what it means to a musician to have a true supporter, and what it meant to flutists to have a real music lover as head of the flute company.

Steven and his wife Stephanie visited Lisbon back in 1994, and we connected as I had recently bought a (newer) Powell in Boston. We visited the Jerónimos Monastery (a World Heritage site) and guess what? Steven told ME all about it! Hmm, I’d lived in Lisbon already for 5 years but no, HE was the one who’d done his homework. Vintage Wasser!

This was the same curiosity and intellect he brought to Powell Flutes, where he championed all sorts of innovations (in a tradition-bound industry) for thirty years, keeping Powell well on top of the totem pole of flute-makers. He turned the shop into a mini-United Nations, bringing in formidable talent from across the globe. The loyalty he inspired was in itself inspiring; I later met the senior artisan who had made my flute; he had been at Powell for over 20 years. Success in handcrafted instrument-making depends on this kind of dedication and continuity, and Steven assembled the most wonderful team.

Steven came to an orchestra concert here in Lisbon back in 1994, and in 2014 drove for hours to attend a Syrinx : XXII concert in Westchester, NY. He loved it so much he asked me to become a Powell Artist, and to give masterclasses for Powell—and he kept his word. This unexpected support, coming from someone who has fantastic flutists passing through “the shop” on a regular basis, was worth so much to me. Many years into an orchestra position, one starts to feel taken for granted…because…one IS taken for granted. It’s a job. (Only, music can never really be just “a job”!)

I last saw Steven a few months before Covid landed, in Midtown Manhattan—for him, another long drive to hear us play. “Making us look good, as usual” was his kind compliment. His being there was the main compliment, of course!

Steven was a Renaissance man—he also collected art by Jewish-American immigrants of the 1930s, and showed me the art he had up in his corner office at Powell. It was real luck for the company that Powell was purchased by Steven in 1986, only the second owner after Mr. Powell himself. A Harvard MBA “star”, he might well have bought a company with less tradition to navigate, and fewer nitpicky details of physical construction to deal with. But I suspect the challenges of balancing tradition with innovation, taking artistic decisions, managing artists, and hand-crafting beautiful objects were the draw for him. Visiting the shop in Maynard, on two floors of an old textile mill, Steven proudly told me “Powell is the only tenant that still makes things”.

I will remember Steven fondly and often—every time I pick up one of my Powell flutes. He was far too young, at 70, and I had looked forward to our meeting again. But I’m so grateful to have known him, and I extend my deepest sympathies to his family—and to the extended family of Powell flute players.