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.

Married for 25 Years?!

Where has time gone?

My wife, Elizabeth, and I are getting ready to celebrate our 25th Wedding Anniversary. She and I both think it's crazy that 25 years has passed by in what seems like a handful of years.

We had had a crazy time leading up to our wedding.

Beyond the seven year dating that led up to our nuptials - which included a few big break ups, long distance bills totalling in the thousands of dollars, multiple cities, and four college degrees - we decided to finally tie the knot mostly because she had "found the dress" while visiting Iowa during the summer of 1991. I was suffering in an internship position in the upper MidWest while waiting to move to New York City to join my on again girlfriend. Elizabeth called me up one day and asked me to marry her. Over the phone. It went like "So, I found the dress..." pause "And..." pause "I think we should get married."So Romantic.

You see, I had asked her to marry me two summers previous, on a very Romantic afternoon on a mountain in Colorado, with a ring and all. She had said yes, but then a year later we were breaking our engagement. Long story. Let's just say it's hard to commit to each other during seven years when you had only been together about 12 months total during those seven years...

But we decided it was now or never! We were going to get married or risk losing each other all over again.

So the plan was for me to move to NYC to start my fellowship at the Juilliard Opera Center (joining Elizabeth who was already a member of the JOC), live "in sin" (as it used to be called) and then get married a few months later. Simple. However, a few too many operatic events tried to prevent that plan from being implemented. First off, the same weekend I moved to NYC, Elizabeth flew to Chicago to audition on the stage for the Lyric Opera of Chicago's young artist program. She signed a 12 month contract with LOC that weekend which began two weeks after our planned December wedding. Oops.

Then she was cast as Vanessa in Barber's Vanessa at Juilliard. It hadn't been performed in NYC since its premiere with Steber and Elias, so everyone came to the performances (two weeks before our wedding, yikes) including the NYTimes (great review), Carol Vaness (rumoured to be among the cast of a never-happened Vanessa at the Met), and many others. In the cast was a young Jay Hunter Morris as Anatol, Jane Gilbert as Erika, and Carlos Conde as the Doctor. Richard Bradshaw conducted and it was directed by Ed Berkeley. Wow. Then just to make things really interesting, two weeks leading up to the premiere, my Dad had a major heart attack (but managed to recuperate and be at our wedding less than 4 weeks later.) Crazy month, eh?!

The night in question, December 28, 1991, was a cold, extremely typical, winter's evening in Burlington, Iowa. We chose the Saturday between Christmas and the New Year in order to accommodate our friends and family who, we'd hoped, were free that week. Outside of disappointing my parents, as their wedding anniversary was December 26th ("Why not just get married Thursday?" my mother would whine during the preceding months), the date was perfect because Bethany Lutheran Church was decorated to the nth degree with Christmas poinsettias, a lovely tree, and that holiday "air".

So many friends came, our relatives (my family: small, hers: ginormous), and our wedding party looked marvellous, from Maid of Honor Lisa to Best Man Rusty and all the rest. We did a very traditional wedding, complete with communion (in order to garner more time for more music), a church reception with requisite punch and the big white cake. The evening, though, ended in a totally unique family potluck party graciously hosted by one of Elizabeth's cousins. A keg was donated and the DJ was also a cousin. Lots of dancing into the wee hours. We honeymooned at a local Bed and Breakfast for two nights.

We could not have had a more perfect wedding, really. The music was provided by a bunch of our friends from Simpson College singing many favourite madrigals and Christmas Carols. The most memorable one was a totally unique rendition of "Good King W" that had to be heard to be believed! Anne Larson, our voice teacher extraordinaire from Simpson, sang our favourite Sven Lekberg song (look him up - amazing art song and choral composer!) and blew everyone away with her voice and musicality. We wish we had a video of her singing (we could barely afford the photographer).

Speaking of afford - the wedding was really "given" to us by so many others - our parents, yes - but more so by our musician friends, Elizabeth's two amazing cousins who provided the reception space and all of the flowers as their wedding gift, and all of the family that brought food to the second reception. We were unbelievably poor and were getting ready to embark on the next few months with practically no money in our pockets, living in two separate cities (Chicago and NYC). What were we thinking? In fact, we drove home from Iowa to NYC and then a week or so later back to Chicago on the cash we'd made during those many dances at the reception where people would put dollar bills in our wedding finery.

I remember thinking we had it all. We didn't need money, we had each other, we had our futures.

Those futures, at the time, seemed boundless. Elizabeth was at the height of her success as a young artist, going from Santa Fe to Juilliard to Chicago in only a few years. I had finished my masters in KC and had gotten the JOC fellowship, spending the fall playing for Marlena Malas, Frank Corsaro, Nico Castel, and making my collaborative pianist debut at Alice Tully Hall. All was well. I foresaw many years living in NYC, getting onto either the Met or NYCO music staff and just, well, succeeding.

But that was not to happen as I envisioned. A year later, I was on tour with Opera Iowa and getting ready to start my own contract at the Lyric playing for Maestro Palumbo. Elizabeth and I never returned to NYC, except to visit or for auditions. Our careers happened far and away from that city.

Which was totally okay, in the end. I think that it's important to go with the flow, go with what doors open, but especially to not have regrets in life. First off, if you're a fan of the movie About Time, going back to change something in your past typically changes the rest of your life and why in the world would I want to do that?!

So years later, twenty-five in fact, I sit in Alexandria, Ontario typing these words in front of a roaring fireplace as an ice storm rages outside. My wife is listening to "Time after Time" from the movie soundtrack from Julie and Julia sung by Margaret Whiting (it occurs at the end of the movie as Julia finally gets her published cookbook delivered). It's an apt song for us:

"Time after time
I tell myself that I'm
So lucky to be loving you
So lucky to be
The one you run to see
In the evening, when the day is through
I only know what I know
The passing years will show
You've kept my love so young, so new
And time after time
You'll hear me say that I'm
So lucky to be loving you."

Here's a link in case you'd like to listen to her sing it:
Time After Time

My wife and I are a team, something many still don't quite get even after I've blogged about it for years now. She is my muse, my harshest critic, my heartiest fan. Her voice sits in my head whenever I coach Mozart or Puccini or Barber or Schumann or Handel or, let's just admit it, any kind of music. We both come from the same place: southern Iowa (I'm Missouri River coast, she's Mississippi River coast) and that gives us a massive commonality that is our glue. We also have mirrored talents - she's a great singer who could play and I'm a great pianist who could sing; she can teach belting equally with the more refined classical style and I move in and out of opera and musicals with a great deal of ease. She was an amazing actress onstage and I direct my operas thinking that she's playing all the parts (male and female). She is the butter to my bread, and the breath to my life (to quote Julia Child.)

So we sit comfortably together in our living room, and it is now December 26, 2016.

Twenty-five years later. No party plans. No big trip. We want to spend our time together with our sons while they are still at home and so have decided to spend the evening together, maybe go out. We will play it by ear.

If anyone out there is lucky enough to know what it's like to spend 25 years together as a married couple, I tip my hat to you. Looking back, it seems like it was an inevitable journey that I can't imagine making with anyone else.

Here's to 25 more!

The Music Is Not The Music

The Music Is Not The Music?!

My wondrous piano teacher at the Conservatory of Music at University of Missouri - Kansas City, Joanne Baker, taught me many things. Chief among them was to disregard musical scores while playing them.

What?

Yes. You see, all of her students played their pieces from memory during their lessons. All the time. From the very first lesson. No opening up a Beethoven Sonatas book to Op. 109, placing it on the piano, glancing at it to see the key signature (E major) and perhaps to gather your thoughts before entering into Beethoven’s world via the keyboard and your ten fingers. For Jo-Jo (my pet name for her that I shared with only a few other students), learning “the music” happened before the piano lesson. The point of the lesson was to make something OF the musical score, which she would place onto her music stand, coloured pencils in hand, ready to make her markings (all lovingly dated, which now are a sort of nostalgic trip — on November 20, 1990 I neglected Brahms’ bass lines and kept missing the same notes in the same passages, all the while earning exclamation points here and there…)

Initially, this process was maddening. Then one day we had a conversation about it. Jo-Jo lived before hashtags and memes, but if I could put a tag on that conversation (and practically any other interaction with her) it would be: Jo-Jo Convo = Mind Blown.

This insistence on memorization from Day One annoyed me during my first semester studying in her studio. I spent my days ingesting musical scores as quickly as possible so I’d have something to work on in our lessons, at the expense, I strongly felt, of the musical score’s details. A typical lesson might move along the lines of Me playing a movement of a sonata by Haydn, then Jo-Jo would hobble over to the second piano in her studio (she walked with a cane but was incredibly agile for her age) and sit down. She’d say something along the lines of “so, you played the first motive like this”, then she’d play it exactly how I had played it. Pause. Then she’d look at me and say, “is that how you meant to play it?”. Then she’d smile, sweetly. Like a cat playing with a mouse. “Well”, I’d say, “I guess.” Then she’d say something along the lines of, “well, is that what Haydn wrote?”, and smile sweetly again. Ugh. This was EXHAUSTING.

But this was an invaluable process. It taught me to memorize the SCORE, not just the notes. We had to know — as soon as we knew the notes — when the crescendo started, if there were dots or carrots over notes, if there were slurs tossed in. We also had to know if they were editor markings or composer markings. And, ultimately, her process taught me to really, truly listen to how I was playing the piano and the music, instead of looking into a score to see the notes and markings and be distracted visually. For you see, to really be able to transport our listeners into the worlds created by those geniuses, we need to really concentrate on everything BUT the black dots on the white pages. So why practice doing exactly that during our once a week lessons, and THEN at some point in the future have it “memorized”?

Why indeed. But that didn’t stop me from asking her about it. She had a few things to say in response to me questioning her process. Three of those ideas really stuck with me. I don’t have what she said verbatim in my mind anymore, as I’ve morphed her ideas into my own. The following is my attempt to write about these three notions as I remember them, (the final one being the MIND BLOWN one, fyi.)

Where The Eyes and Ears Meet

Sitting at the piano while playing through any score, causes your head to be up and looking at the music in front of you. Not necessarily conducive to listening. In fact, if the brain is focused on looking at those thousands of notes and the hundreds of musical markings in something like a Chopin Ballade, can the brain also really be focused on listening to those notes and remembering all those markings? Researchers tell us that humans actually can’t multitask. Jo-Jo insisted this to be true as well. She wanted us focused on every sound that was being created by our ten fingers, our wrists and arms, our feet on the pedals, and how our inherent musicality and our intellectual choices influenced those sounds. When one focuses just on sound, without the distraction of the information passing through our eyes and visual cortex, there is a whole other level achieved. Why not practice this way all the time to prepare for your eventual performance of it? I’ve written extensively about “seeing with your ears and hearing with your eyes.” This is where that concept initially came from.

Knowledge Is Memory

How can we just play through a score over and over and over and over and over and over (you can only really get this picture if you’ve practiced the piano for tens of thousands of hours) without trying to actually learn the score. It is so easy to just “play” through a piece, thinking you are practicing it. Yes, there are hard sections that get practiced - big octave passages, fast sections, double trills - and easy sections that are just so pleasant to practice, but all too often pianists are playing through a score without actually committing its details to memory until they actually have to do so. To memorize a piece, from the very first moment, the very first note, is a whole different ball game. I learned to memorize instantaneously, measure by measure. Once this happened (one day, all of a sudden, it became possible after months of struggling), I was able to learn - really learn - at a crazy fast rate. I learned the entire Brahms F minor sonata in about ten days. Mind you, I was never a diligent practicer either. I brought in the first movement after looking at it the day before the lesson. My fingers knew how to play, I just needed the knowledge residing in those black dots on those white pages to be in my mind. Jo-Jo’s genius was also telling me to do this backwards by starting at the end of a piece and memorizing measures backwards. I still do this today when time is tough. As you move forward into a piece, it’s like you’re following a well-trod path in a forest of millions of trees. The further in you go, the clearer the path. 

The Music (Musical Score) Is Not the Music

Jo-Jo wasn’t all that impressed with Urtext scores, critical editions, or editions by some famous so-and-so. She was more interested in interpreting the scores. She told me that those who looked into scores to find the music were “forever deluding themselves”. She hated correctness for correctness’ sake. Music seemed much more apparent to her, particularly the great masterpieces by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, etc. She didn’t understand how anyone could just play the notes and think they’d done something special. “Anyone can play these notes, but only a few of us can make music out these notes” was something I remember her saying. She compared musical scores to churches. “No one goes into a church thinking that God is the actual church. You walk into a church to discover God.” Then she added, “A musical score is not the music. You enter the structure of the musical score to discover the music, to discover the composer’s intentions, wishes, dreams.” Everyone, in her view, entered a church and saw different things, felt different emotions, and found God in different places and times. The same was true for pianists, we entered into a score to gain knowledge and then we moved beyond it to find the music in the music. That’s why Horowitz and Ax are very different pianists, they aren’t the same people but they went searching for the Truth and then put their version of the Truth onto a stage for others to experience. 

Lessons with Jo-Jo were best kind of lessons. Each was an adventure. An act of Discovery. Like we were sailing uncharted waters in familiar ships to find new lands and peoples, to be dumbfounded at the undiscovered countries waiting for us in the works of the great masters. 

At our last lesson, Jo-Jo smiled at me, took my hands in hers, (I can still see her eyes so clearly in my memory!) and told me, “You make so much music out of so many missed notes. Change that last part and you’ll have something real to share.”

But ironically, I never changed that last part, really, but it's led to my success in opera. 

Working in opera is all about missed notes. Rehearsal pianists have to learn to drop tons of them because they are playing only a ten finger version of a score meant to be played by a 50 piece orchestra. That’s mostly impossible unless you drop a bunch of notes practically every measure. When you coach a singer, you should be focused on what they are doing, not on the notes you are playing. Good coaches know when to play all the notes and when to give outlines of the score, what the singer might actually hear coming up from the pit, for instance. As a conductor, it’s about focusing on moments within the present moment; during any given moment a conductor might be focused on a singer’s breath, cueing a chorus entrance, looking over towards the oboe to see if he’s ready to enter at a tricky point, or collaborating with the concert mistress on a final pianissimo ending to an act while watching her bow. Hundreds of thousands of notes dropped in order to concentrate on just a few notes each and every millisecond.

Joanne Baker is no longer on this Earth. But she lives on in all of her students and their music making. She definitely is present in almost every single coaching and lecture I give or rehearsal I might lead. She was an architect of musical sound and she showed me the secret garden where such a vast and rich array of structures to walk into and find the music resounding off the walls. I’ll never be able to thank her now, but I try to thank her through my work with my students, the music I try to make with others, and in my writings on music. She, along with Robert Larsen (my über-mentor), Berneil Hanson (my first piano teacher in Council Bluffs), and R. H. Fanders (my Humanities teacher at T.J.H.S.), give credence to the adage that sprang from Galileo Galilei’s mind: “You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”

The Secret To (My) Success

Recently, an article made the rounds on Facebook about how creative types succeed (or don't succeed) based on their abilities to network. I agree with much of the article, particularly the sentence about Luck playing an important part of success.

Here's a link to the article:

The Unfair Truth About Why Creative People Succeed

He references a terrific writer, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, who wrote a book that was pretty influential back in the 90s. I heartily recommend it: "Flow".

Here's the wiki link about Mihaly:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wikipedia site

Go ahead, click on those links and read away!

Now that you've read some bits from the above links, we can move forward.

According to Jeff Goins, the author of "The Unfair Truth…", there is a systematic approach for creative types who achieve "success" (let's not even discuss what that word means!)
These steps are:

1. Individual
2. Field
3. Domain

"First, an individual must master her craft in a given domain (art, science, mathematics). Then, this person must offer the creative work to a field of influencers in that domain who are trusted experts. Finally, the gatekeepers decide if the work is worth being accepted as authoritative into the domain."

I see this very clearly when I look back at my "path". Of course there's no PATH out there (I've blogged about that one a few years ago) it just seems like there's a path when one turns around and sees where they've been and how they got to where they are now.

But this Systems Approach is an interesting way of looking at How To Succeed In Creative Fields By Trying. There's some great stuff about needing a network, moving to find a better field, and talking about the idea of 'gatekeepers'. 

Let me explain by using my life as an example. Then, at the end of this blog, I promise to reveal the Secret To My Success!

PJH's "Systems Approach" history -- in an extremely truncated version!

INDIVIDUAL: 

Yes, I mastered my craft pretty early on. I was playing Beethoven sonatas in Jr. High and playing them well (Op. 2 No. 2 is not a sonata that most 13 year olds start out on, considering the leaping left hand 10ths.) I got noticed and found myself playing Chopin Ballades and the big Romantic concertos before I was even in high school. I discovered musical theatre and used my talents for faking dancing and my bass to tenor range (none of it all that great) to get me into school shows as well as community theatre. Because I could tap dance (sort of), I found myself in a community theatre show where I met a guy who was putting together a show in Omaha and they needed a pianist/music director. So at the ripe old age of 17, I got my first pro job as an MD for the "musical" Trouble in Tahiti. It was the perfect operatic start -- Bernstein courtesy of my musical theatre network (and my tap shoes!)

FIELD:

I offered my "artistry" to many trusted experts, from local stage directors wanting to take me out to bars with names like "Neon Goose" in Omaha's Old Market when I was barely 16 (welcome to the world of theatre…), to  Drake University piano professors who thought I was too distracted by musical theatre to be a "serious" pianist, to my teacher at Simpson College, Robert Larsen who opened up a literal whole new world for me at Des Moines Metro Opera during my first years as a wannabe opera coach. One person in this new operatic field was the DMMO apprentice program director, Stewart Robertson (who later became my boss at Glimmerglass and Florida Grand Opera.) My "Field" opened up considerably when I moved to NYC to accept a fellowship at the Juilliard School's Opera Center. All of a sudden I was playing for Marlena Malas' best students (including Troyanos on occasion), and playing repertoire I'd never gotten my hands on in Indianola, Iowa or Kansas City, Missouri. Seemingly overnight, I found myself playing on the Met stage (Levine in the house) for a soprano whose audition repertoire that day included arias from Lulu and Die Walküre. WHAT?! SERIOUSLY?! And on an upright piano, no less!

My Field had become the Opera World.

DOMAIN:

There were many mini-gatekeepers along the way who helped me move forward and opened doors. (Actually, I ran into many who thought they were THE Operatic Gate Keepers but I quickly was able to steer clear of their egos for the most part.) But there were three exceedingly important Gatekeepers in my life, two who intersected one day in line for coffee and the third I met because of the second Gatekeeper.

Yes, my success was really about standing in line for coffee in NYC with one Gatekeeper as he ran into an old friend, the other Gatekeeper. It is called LUCK. Here's the story (I wish I could animate it like the story of the three brothers in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"!):

It happened in my second semester at Juilliard -- Luckily, I was assigned to play rehearsals for a 20th century scenes program that was being presented by The Juilliard Opera Center during my first year as an Opera Fellow. The director was the legendary Frank Corsaro and the conductor was a rising young American, Hal France. Hal was, at the time, the husband of the amazing soprano Sylvia McNair and he'd later go on to be the artistic director for Opera Omaha. But for me, back then, he was what I wanted to be: an opera conductor. Yet I really had no idea how to go about becoming one. I had practiced the literature for the program and it was HARD SHIT. Berg, Stravinsky, Floyd, Walton, Bernstein, and some others. Maestro France seemed impressed, but he was there to coach the singers before stagings began and that was his focus. We were up in his Julliard apartment waiting for a singer to show and, as LUCK would have it, the singer didn't show. Hal finally said, "Do you want to go get a coffee or something?" I said, "Sure, would you like me to bring back something for you?" (I didn't even think he would go with little old me) and he retorted with "No, let's both go and we can talk about you."

Really? Talk about me? What was going on here?

You see, back in 1992 we didn't have "mentors", nor did we even describe our mentors as "mentors". That just wasn't in the vocabulary really. I was hoping to just not get fired, let alone find a "mentor" who could offer advice.

So off we went. We walked into some place across from Juilliard (no Starbucks in NYC then) and waited in a long line. 

Lady Luck smiled that day…

The guy in front of us heard Hal and I talking and he turned around and said "Hal?" and Hal said "Donald? What are you doing here?" and then Donald said "I'm auditioning pianists" and Hal said "You should hire this kid." Yes, that's a true story!

Long story short, Donald did hire me. He hired me based on Hal France's recommendation that happened in line in a coffee shop because a singer had forgotten to come to a coaching that I was playing because I was pretty good (frankly, fucking brilliant) at playing 20th century scores because I had no fear of opera because I had gone to Simpson where a great man, Dr. Larsen, had taught me that opera was something to never be afraid of, and that I met Dr. Larsen because a friend of mine in High School had gone to the Simpson College summer music camp and recommended it to me because she and I had studied with the same wonderful piano teacher in the 70s and 80s in Council Bluffs, Iowa (Berneil Hanson) because I had lost my first teacher when she and her husband moved out of the state.

If that first piano teacher hadn't moved out of town, I would not be typing these words now.

So Hal France was the first Gate Keeper.

The 2nd was the freaking god of all opera gods: Donald Palumbo!

You see, I had no idea who "Donald" was at the time I was standing in line waiting for coffee with Hal. In fact, while he asked me questions, I kept thinking "who is this guy, and what job am I up for, and how embarrassing it was for me that I had NO CLUE!"

In case you might not know who I'm talking about, here's a great NYTimes article:
NYTimes on Donald Palumbo

So my first big gig after leaving the midwest and getting to The Juilliard School (one has to capitalize the "T" in "The" when one speaks of The Juilliard School, fyi) was at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Lucky Dog!

I played 15 operas under Donald Palumbo, who at the time was the chorus master for the Lyric Opera of Chicago (now he's working his magic at the Met.) Cosi, Wozzeck, Trovatore, Traviata, Boheme, Le Cid, Susannah, Don Quichotte, Tosca and others.  From Maestro Palumbo I learned that it was possible to be the pickiest musician alive and still get astounding results. I learned that if my ass wasn't on the piano bench 15 minutes before rehearsals began, I'd be fired. I learned that I would have to start at "Rehearsal 1" a thousand billion times in one night because the men couldn't get their first entrance in act one of Traviata to an acceptable level. I learned that there was no such thing as good enough. I learned that you had to insist on perfection in order to gain access to perfection's universe. I learned how the Boheme chorus goes, every last syllable of it. I learned how to redistribute choral lines in Tosca the way Toscanini did because that's the way Palumbo's mentor, the La Scala chorus master Roberto Benaglio, did things. I learned that the art of being a great operatic chorus master was a rare art and that Palumbo was the Michelangelo of opera chorus masters.  

But boy did he scare the shit out of me every single rehearsal that first summer. During the first month of rehearsal, I would wander home at night and my wife (we'd been married 6 months by that time) would ask "how'd it go" and I'd say something like "I missed a few notes in the Tosca and Maestro gave me the look of death but the Verdi went better, only a dozen or so notes missed". Later, I started to focus on what he was hearing, how he'd react, how he was fixing things or drilling certain sections, and I'd think to myself "he's going to stop for this". And guess what, slowly and surely, I was there. I was understanding his process and his expectations. His ears were simply the best in the business!

I learned so very much from Maestro Palumbo, and I'm certainly indebted to him for not firing me, and for rehiring me for the next season of rehearsals because that's how I met my 3rd Gate Keeper.

In the middle of June I think, Maestro Palumbo turned to me at the end of a rehearsal and spoke to me. I was stunned. He didn't really speak all that much to me, in a direct way, about anything other than "2 before rehearsal 45" or the occasional "don't drag". Come to find out, he'd recommended me for an assistant chorus master position at Pittsburgh Opera. Really? I practically cried on the L going home that night. I was elated. I had been recommended by my operatic god! For a job!

SO --- I prepared my audition (Storm scene from Otello, Komponist from Ariadne -- no problem there, it was my party piece as I sang it up the octave in my best dramatic counter tenor voice, "Salut!" aria from Faust, and the opening of Rigoletto and probably Carmen quintet) and was flown to Pittsburgh one fateful July 4th weekend. The audition was an awful experience. A dour chorus master who did not appreciate my fabulous high Bflat at the end of Komponist said "please play it again and sing down the octave" with a face that said "please die and leave my space".  I had knocked that Strauss outa the park, thank you very much.

I didn't get the job, but I had met Tito Capobianco and a few others there, and somehow I'd made an impression (in my youth, I was rather charming.) Side note: Three years later I was hired by Pittsburgh, probably because of that impression. Anyway, I was back at Chicago and my contract was coming to an end. It was August and it was hot in the city. My time at Juilliard was at an end and so I was looking at trying to struggle through being a freelance pianist in Chicago. Not. An. Easy. Thing. To. Do. In 1993…

Just as I was contemplating looking for a real job selling watches, I got a phone call from the third Gate Keeper. It was Michael Ching.

Michael had been up at Pittsburgh Opera doing an onsite evaluation and so had known that Pittsburgh had just pulled in a few young guns to audition for their assistant chorus master position. Michael called up Tito at Pittsburgh because he was looking for a rehearsal pianist in Memphis and asked him who his second choice was. They gave him my name.

Michael is the third Gate Keeper because he opened up a whole new section of the operatic world for me. Michael gave me my professional conducting debut (a matinee of Gretry's Zemire et Azor,) He got me my job as Resident Conductor for Ash Lawn Summer Festival, where I conducted 36 performances of 4 operas and 2 musicals in just six weeks during my two seasons. Later -- years later -- he would hire me back to direct an Orpheo in Memphis and then yet later -- a few more years later -- recommend me to David Hamilton (Fargo Opera) who was looking for a stage director for Fidelio (FIDELIO! I GOT TO DIRECT FIDELIO!) But more importantly, vastly, he reconnected my operatic DNA to my musical theatre DNA and allowed me to realize how I had ignored my musical theatre background while pursuing classical music. This ultimately led me to Ithaca College, btw.

Oh -- Michael's second in command was the operatic prodigy Karen Tiller. We were put together as the artistic team for Opera Memphis' The Turn of the Screw and loved working together. Later Karen would hire me to be the Music Director for the Opera Festival of New Jersey for which she was the general director at the ripe old age of 16. Okay, maybe not 16, she was in her 20s I bet. 

In New Jersey I got to conduct Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle. BLUEBEARD'S FREAKING CASTLE!! My favourite one act of all time! In Hungarian! With the players of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia! And did I get a good review? I got a freaking awesome review from a Pulitzer prize-winning critic that used the phrase "pyschosexual angst" in a sentence talking about my conducting! 

And, in New Jersey I learned about treachery first hand; but that's not part of this blog, that'll be part of my book.

BUT back to the present day -- Here we are now in 2015, I'm living in Ontario, Canada, still teaching at McGill and still freelancing down in the states. After years at Ithaca College and lots of summers at Brevard and a few daring, daunting years at Florida Grand Opera, I'm returning to conducting this January. It'll happen at the end of January, 2016 -- Opera McGill's production of L'elisir d'amore in Pollack Hall. I'll be sure to blog about that process, and it's being webcast in HD so anyone reading this blog can watch it.

So, as promised -- the Secret To My Success!

We have to go way back to the summer of 1984. There I was, pouring a gin and tonic for the director of the DMMO apprentice program, Stewart Robertson. I was at DMMO because of LUCK. I got the job this way -- I was playing a voice lesson for a student of Doug Duncan, DMMO's general director, and he said something like "you wear nice clothes, how would you like to work at my opera company?" "Um… sure… I guess…"

So I was a house staff member for DMMO that summer (hearing my first Nozze, Dialogues des Caremlites, and AIDA!) answering phones, sharpening pencils for bitchy NY coaches, taking notes at Dr Larsen's feet during orchestra rehearsals, moving xerox machines and pianos on and off trucks, and tending the bar in the lobby of the theatre. But I also tended bar for private receptions and I found myself speaking with the wondrous Stewart Robertson.

Back to Stewart and his Gin and Tonic -- Stewart, in his very dashing Scottish brogue asked me if I was a student at Simpson. I said "yes." He asked if I was a singer. I said "no, not really, although I do sing, I'm a pianist." Then we talked a bit, I don't remember anything specific. I do remember saying to him something about how I loved playing Trouble in Tahiti in high school and how I loved playing Hansel and Gretel my Freshmen year but that there were too many notes and how frustrating piano reductions were. I was desperately trying to say something that was impressive.

Stewart's a nice guy, but he had people to see. So he ended our little talk with this nugget: He leaned in and said "Next time, don't try to play all the notes; just be careful to choose which notes to leave out." And he turned and walked away. There should have been mist. He disappeared into the mist. I sort of remember the moment with mist...

That's the secret. Don't try to play all the notes.

I've left out hundreds of thousands, if not millions of notes over the years. There's simply no way to play them all. That's been my secret.

But I'm not just talking about notes on the piano, or notes in an operatic score. There are other notes.

These notes are all around you. They are distractions to learning your craft. They are ugly people in your face saying ugly things to you or about you. They are your inner demons keeping you from focusing on your dreams. They are also your family, the people who love you, the people you love. They are the wonder of the world and its beauty. These notes connect us all to the past and give life to the present. They speak to the future as well - where we might go, what we might become. It is so important to remember that they are not all equal, these notes. 

Let some of them go. Forget about them, just as your right hand forgets about playing all of the octaves in a Verdi cabaletta. Let the bad notes go, for sure, because they don't belong in your opera anyway. Embrace the notes that give you purpose, that give you strength, harmony, and a backbone of rhythmic drive to get things done. 

Learn as many notes as you can, but know that you will not learn all of the notes. It is impossible. Even our operatic idols dropped a few, or more likely a million. Absolutely.

So go out and work on your CRAFT as an INDIVIDUAL. Then go out and share that art with others in your FIELD. Gravitate to those who are positive influences and those who help others become successful, or at least help them along the way. When you get to a Gate, say YES and know that you are ready to move forward.

And most importantly, don't forget to help as many others as you can. 

But most of all, learn to pour a really good Gin and Tonic. Be generous with the Gin, make sure the tonic is fresh, not too much ice, and the lime: juicy.