Department of Practice

Many of us study or work in schools of music, or departments of music. At McGill, I work in the Department of Performance which is just one department of the larger Schulich School of Music of McGill University.

We call ourselves that, I guess, because we are performing professors who teach about performing to future performers.

Or do we? Is it all performing all the time? Certainly it looks that way with over 600 public performances given each year in our various venues on and off campus. (That's a lot, mind you.) Each of those performances represents hundreds of hours of preparation, score research, listening, active learning, studying with mentors, and - especially this - practice.

"Practice makes perfect" or my favourite (NOT): "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice."

Both of those famous quotes are truly not true. Far from it. Research has shown that too much practice focused on achieving perfection oftentimes does not give one perfection. And really, what's perfection? Totally unattainable outside of a few Olympic gymnasts or divers, (or Julia Child's recipe for boeuf bourguignon.) As well, getting to Carnegie Hall is pretty easy nowadays. Put together some money, gather your forces, and rent the hall. I know lots of people who've performed at Carnegie, but I can tell you honestly that very few got there just by practicing.

But practicing is a huge part of a students' world. When I was a piano major, I never practiced (I've blogged about this probably too much. It sounds like a boast, but it actually is my only regret in life.) There's a famous memoir "I really should be practicing" by the great pianist Gary Graffman. The title speaks deeply to many instrumentalists during their student years, and it really spoke to me as it was my mantra at Simpson. I'd say it late at night while painting a set, or I'd say it later the same night over shared Dominoes Pizza with others who should've been practicing too.

Nowadays, just like in yesteryears passed, students stress out about practicing - either they're risking injury by practicing too much or ignoring the pile of music on their desk. It's stressful just typing about practicing!

I think what might be adding to this stress is that, through social media, we are now teaching young people that learning itself is stressful. Because, you see, stress sits very close to the feeling of being uncomfortable. Stress is now being seen as entirely negative, which is too bad because stress is not always a negative force. Uncomfortable, yes. But not always a negative thing.

"Stress kills!" read the headlines. Then there are all the medical sites, with their "stress and high cholesterol", "stress and depression", "stress and binge eating", etc., etc., etc.

Depending on what motivates a musician to practice, the stress is magnified or lessened. Deadline to memorize a movement of a sonata looming? Good stress. Accepting a gig at the last minute that causes you to have to learn gobs of music overnight? Good stress. Taking on too many gigs while starting a new program of study and a new job bartending at night? Not the best kind of stress. Forgetting to translate your texts until the day before stagings begin? Shame on you!

Practice is not solely a sole activity. Collaborating with others is what most musicians do as the next step beyond their own practice. And collaboration can be difficult. Everyone in the room seems to have done more research than you, prepared more dutifully than you, had more coachings and lessons on their role than you. And they're all skinnier it seems and wearing cooler outfits in order to impress their new colleagues (why did I choose to wear the tight jeans today?) The stress of collaborating, especially with new colleagues, is like the stress of a blind date. You know the name of the restaurant (La Boheme), and the name of your date (Marcello), but you know little else and have to wing it, even though you've prepared for your date simply by living your life. Preparing for the first rehearsal of an opera takes a lot of practicing, a lot of preparation. Everyone is nervous and trying to impress, so everyone is stressed (and don't you hate the person who knows everyone else and is running around kissing everybody on the cheek?!) Why have sweaty palms too?

Collaborating is the big step towards being able to perform in public. It is a courageous act. It is also a joyous and wondrous communal act as well.  Collaborating is the reward for practicing. A lot of times, I think young singers misunderstand that rehearsing is practicing. We even use those two words for the same activity (particularly in high school when your parents would say "how was practice tonight?") But practicing is really something that happens before collaboration and rehearsal, and those two things are continuations of actual practice, to be sure. For most of us who do this long enough, collaboration is usually pure joy.

If one doesn't feel some sort of joy in the activity of practice or feel mostly joy while learning something new, collaborating on it, and then performing it, perhaps one shouldn't be encouraged to study music.  Music schools think they teach performers, but it is a misnomer really. We teach "practicers", because that's what we all do 'till our own song ends.

Practicers are who we are, really, because it's what we spend 98% of our time doing.

Practice doesn't make perfect, but it does make performers.

Giving not Taking!

A few years ago, I heard his holiness, the Dalai Lama, speak at the Bell Centre in Montreal.  I was a guest of Sanford Sylvan's and was also in the presence of my rather spiritual, yet firmly agnostic oldest son.  We were there mostly because of my son's interest in Buddhism - an interest he's had since our days in Ithaca (when he was barely 6). To say the least, it was an inspirational afternoon spent in a hockey arena with 15,000 other human beings.

The Dalai Lama talked about educating the heart to be more compassionate.  He also talked about how important it was to bring happiness and joy to others.  That's certainly something opera strives to do - bring joy to others, happiness to those experiencing it live or on recording, as well as bringing joy to those creating opera in the rehearsal room, coaching studios, or on the operatic stage. He also discussed the importance of human beings communicating with others as equals. Hmmm... Operatic equality...

It got me thinking about what makes a good coaching.  For me, a good coaching happens when the singer in the room shares with me their ideas/art and I share mine. I give, they give; a non-competitive tennis game perhaps. Recently, however, I have started to worry that singers are wanting to "take" something away from their coachings.  It's a phrase I've heard a lot lately: "I really took something from that coaching we had last week" or "I really got a lot from the program - really feel I got my money's worth". Stuff like that.  It's worrisome.

I was remembering what it was like to work with singers who gave, and thought about a "Camelot" production I directed a few summers ago at Ash Lawn.  My cast of leads was a remarkable trio: Peter Clarke, Katherine Pracht and Christopher Burchett.  They GAVE so much in rehearsal and allowed me to GIVE BACK. We spent our days and nights rehearsing by giving to each other and we received back in spades - and that resulted in the audience enjoying really remarkable performances in that "Camelot".

I also distinctly remember one of my best coachings I ever "gave". It was with Matt Worth one summer at Glimmerglass. He walked in to his first coaching with me (and of course we were both wanting to make good impressions), and said he wanted to coach some Weill songs. Now, I just don't do much Weill and I didn't know these specific songs he was programming for his upcoming recital. So I asked him who he'd last coached these songs with, and when he mentioned it was one of NYC's greatest coaches, I about lost my lunch! What could I possibly have to say that SuperCoach hadn't already covered? But off we went and got right down to making music (and boy can Matt sing!) Matt GAVE so much while singing these Weill songs, that I was able to respond and GIVE back some of the best I had to offer. By the time we were done, I felt like I really knew the piece in a new way, knew Matt as an artist, and felt that Matt had explored the song even further than before. As I remember it, we both were a bit giddy afterwards.

I love that sort of collaboration - and think that most of the time the idea of collaboration is missing; certainly the collaborative spirit has begun to disappear.  Too many singers wait to write in their blocking dictated to them by their stage director, or worse, judge the direction before giving it a try.  Too many singers judge their coachings based on what they "got" or what they "took from" their hour working on whatever they've chosen to try to make better. Imagine walking into a coaching or rehearsal and deciding that everyone in the room was going to become part of the process of creating music by GIVING -- starting with yourself.

It's time to step back and remember we're all human beings and start giving our talent, time, and focus to each other.

Stop taking from people, it's not what our art form was based on and it's taking a toll on the music and art that can be made.