Anyone who travels regularly knows that before you leave, there are a multitude of things to do, arrange, or otherwise take care of before getting on the airplane or driving away. There is no escaping the To-Do list, and the goal is always the same: Get all the important things done, and as many of the not-quite-as-important ones done as possible. New York Philharmonic players are well acquainted with the routine because of the amount of touring we do, and it always involves some amount of stress.
For this trip, some days I have been able to make the list shrink, and other days, as I cross things off, it still grows. And as the departure date nears, suitcases have to get packed while still trying to make the list shrink. In the process of pulling things together for the trip, big messes are created and have to get cleaned up. Sometimes at the end of the day I feel like I got a lot done, and other days I can't really remember what it was that made me so busy.
Yesterday I got the Bike Friday overhauled, and today I took it out for a test ride before packing it up for Australia. It's always satisfying to ride a bike that I've just had apart on a worktable and then rebuilt, so it was a good ride. I'm hoping to use the bike for the commute to UNSW (n addition to some real rides). The ruler feature on Google Earth tells me it's a 2-mile commute to the university, but Joe Wolfe says to think San Francisco hills for that 2 miles. Well, this bike has the gears! I'm looking forward to putting them to good use.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
The IDRS Convention
The last 10 days have been a whirlwind. During the weekend before the IDRS conference, there were a lot of things going on at our place and I had to carve out the time to finish the powerpoint presentation about reed machine alignments. Then Monday the bees got re-located and I packed a car-full of equipment to go to Ithaca for the conference.
The IDRS conference is an amazing event: There are nonstop recitals, presentations, master classes, concerts, and vendors galore selling everything you can imagine for double reeds. I met many people there, including some I have known by name and reputation for years or even decades, but never had a chance to meet personally. There were a number of recitals and presentations I wanted to attend but couldn't because the schedule is so packed together.
Friday afternoon we had a 20-minute sound check on stage, where we determined, with Anne's help, that we had to be farther forward on the stage than the standard placement. 20 minutes goes by very fast when you are trying to decide final balances, cover critical transitions and spots of 6 pieces, and then find a better position on stage to play!
On the concert, Lorelei Dowling played the Berio Sequenza for bassoon (!!!) right after Barbara and I played the Bruns, and in the course of talking backstage, Lorelei said that she knows Joe Wolfe, the physicist I am going to work with in Sydney. Small world. Then on the second half, Terry Ewell played on the Strauss Duo Concertante for Clarinet and Bassoon. It was 29 years ago that he and I were studying bassoon together with Norman Herzberg at the Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. So it felt like my life was circling around and expanding outward all at once. That is a very nice thing.
Saturday morning, Terry Ewell gave a masterclass just before I gave my reed machine presentation. I arrived early to get equipment set up in advance, so we were both setting up at the same time. It felt like we were given a little chance to work together, even though our presentations were totally different from each other.
I really had my fingers crossed that I could pull off the presentation on reed machine alignments. It was my first powerpoint presentation, and I had visions that my mind might just go blank when I needed to talk. But then it got rolling, and it went fairly naturally. I did think of some things later which I wish I could have (or would have) included, but I imagine that's pretty normal. There were good questions from the audience, even some I had never considered before.
On Saturday afternoon we went to several conference events, which was really enjoyable for me since I had my own presentation out of the way! I had a deeper appreciation for other people's performances and presentations, knowing firsthand what it takes to put one together.
On Sunday we spent a little time seeing some of the waterfalls and gorges around Ithaca before driving back to the city. The falls I was really impressed with was Ithaca Falls, right in town. It was fantastic to walk through a clearing and suddenly see such a cascade of water, dancing down the rock steps.
The IDRS conference is an amazing event: There are nonstop recitals, presentations, master classes, concerts, and vendors galore selling everything you can imagine for double reeds. I met many people there, including some I have known by name and reputation for years or even decades, but never had a chance to meet personally. There were a number of recitals and presentations I wanted to attend but couldn't because the schedule is so packed together.
Friday afternoon we had a 20-minute sound check on stage, where we determined, with Anne's help, that we had to be farther forward on the stage than the standard placement. 20 minutes goes by very fast when you are trying to decide final balances, cover critical transitions and spots of 6 pieces, and then find a better position on stage to play!
On the concert, Lorelei Dowling played the Berio Sequenza for bassoon (!!!) right after Barbara and I played the Bruns, and in the course of talking backstage, Lorelei said that she knows Joe Wolfe, the physicist I am going to work with in Sydney. Small world. Then on the second half, Terry Ewell played on the Strauss Duo Concertante for Clarinet and Bassoon. It was 29 years ago that he and I were studying bassoon together with Norman Herzberg at the Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. So it felt like my life was circling around and expanding outward all at once. That is a very nice thing.
Saturday morning, Terry Ewell gave a masterclass just before I gave my reed machine presentation. I arrived early to get equipment set up in advance, so we were both setting up at the same time. It felt like we were given a little chance to work together, even though our presentations were totally different from each other.
I really had my fingers crossed that I could pull off the presentation on reed machine alignments. It was my first powerpoint presentation, and I had visions that my mind might just go blank when I needed to talk. But then it got rolling, and it went fairly naturally. I did think of some things later which I wish I could have (or would have) included, but I imagine that's pretty normal. There were good questions from the audience, even some I had never considered before.
On Saturday afternoon we went to several conference events, which was really enjoyable for me since I had my own presentation out of the way! I had a deeper appreciation for other people's performances and presentations, knowing firsthand what it takes to put one together.
On Sunday we spent a little time seeing some of the waterfalls and gorges around Ithaca before driving back to the city. The falls I was really impressed with was Ithaca Falls, right in town. It was fantastic to walk through a clearing and suddenly see such a cascade of water, dancing down the rock steps.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Bradka Contrabassoon
In response to a request for more pictures of the Bradka contrabassoon I showed in a previous post, here are close-ups of the finger keys. This image is of the left-hand keys. I found these keys particularly interesting, as the touchpieces that represent finger holes are rings. There are no finger holes under the rings, but I presume that the idea was to provide something that felt like finger holes.
This picture is of the Right Hand keys.
Rehearsals for the Victor Bruns Six Pieces for contrabassoon and piano have progressed to a studio at Juilliard that has a Steinway grand piano. Before we had time with the Steinway though, we did quite a bit of work with the Yamaha keyboard I have, which I use to help prepare my orchestra parts. We were actually able to get a lot of work done with the electronic keyboard, but there were certain things which just couldn't be fine-tuned until Barbara had her hands on a real instrument.
A beekeeper came today and extracted our bee colony from the walls of our house. It was a fairly new hive, and the access was relatively easy through an outside soffit, so I think we got off relatively easy. We only have two holes to patch: the one the bees used as access, and the one the beekeeper made to access the bees.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Always something new
Next week my sister Barbara, who teaches piano at the University of Oklahoma, and I are performing at the IDRS (International Double Reed Society) conference in Ithaca NY, and we have been exploring ways of rehearsing long distance. We tried rehearsing using skype, but that wasn't satisfactory because the transmissions are not simultaneous both ways. So while she played the piano part, I recorded it (via skype) onto minidisc. Then I edited it and could use the recording to play along with. Skype distorts rhythms here and there, and makes it a bit of an adventure to play along with the recording. While it is better than nothing, the technique was just serviceable. Then she tried recording the piano part via another third party software, and posting the sound file to me via the .mac service. That recording had lots of distortion in it whenever she hit a big chord after a rest. It was less satisfactory than the skype recording. Then yesterday I sent her some sound files of the different movements of the Bruns piece. I learned how to record straight into the Garage Band program on the mac, edit it, and then via a series of conversions, compressions, exports, and imports, posted it in a folder on the .mac in reasonable file sizes. Then Barbara could save my recordings into iTunes and play them through her stereo in Oklahoma, playing along with her piano part. The learning curve was a little long, but since we have very little actual rehearsal time together, we will be glad we did it.
While I was working on all of this, my practice room became invaded by bees! I kept chasing them out, but knew something was up, as they kept coming out from behind the steam radiator vent covers. This morning I looked online about swarms of bees in house walls and read the sobering news about getting rid of bee colonies in walls. Then I went outside and saw where the bees are going in and out through a gap between the bricks at the outside corner of the dining room. I went back inside and put my ear to the interior wall opposite that spot, and heard a beehive's worth of activity. Stuffing a rag into the gap in the bricks outside confirmed that we have either an established colony or they are setting up house. I called a beekeeper and he is coming to look at our valuable but uninvited guests this afternoon. If it is an established hive, it will probably involve opening up walls and maybe the dining room ceiling to get the hive out. They say you have to do that, otherwise the honey attracts other bee colonies as well as insects and rodents. When a comb is chewed into by insects or other animals, it leaks honey and creates a big mess, so it needs to be taken out. We may soon have a few more holes in our walls!
This project was not included in my sabbatical proposal to the Philharmonic.
While I was working on all of this, my practice room became invaded by bees! I kept chasing them out, but knew something was up, as they kept coming out from behind the steam radiator vent covers. This morning I looked online about swarms of bees in house walls and read the sobering news about getting rid of bee colonies in walls. Then I went outside and saw where the bees are going in and out through a gap between the bricks at the outside corner of the dining room. I went back inside and put my ear to the interior wall opposite that spot, and heard a beehive's worth of activity. Stuffing a rag into the gap in the bricks outside confirmed that we have either an established colony or they are setting up house. I called a beekeeper and he is coming to look at our valuable but uninvited guests this afternoon. If it is an established hive, it will probably involve opening up walls and maybe the dining room ceiling to get the hive out. They say you have to do that, otherwise the honey attracts other bee colonies as well as insects and rodents. When a comb is chewed into by insects or other animals, it leaks honey and creates a big mess, so it needs to be taken out. We may soon have a few more holes in our walls!
This project was not included in my sabbatical proposal to the Philharmonic.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
WHAT CONTRA FOR THE BRAHMS REQUIEM
Yesterday as we were rehearsing and then performing the Brahms Requiem, I was wondering what the contra players who originally encountered this piece were playing on. The Requiem was written in 1868, and there had just been a 25-year period between 1842, when Glinka wrote Russlan and Ludmilla, and 1867 when Verdi wrote Don Carlo, when no orchestral composer that I can document wrote for the contrabassoon. I think that the instrument was so primitive and so weak tone-wise, that composers quit writing for it. But during this time, all kinds of double reed contrabass instruments were being built. All manner of shapes and sizes, as well as materials were tried. The Requiem was one of the first pieces to be written which included the contra again, after this 25 year hiatus. But it was written a full 11 years before Heckel devised the configuration of the contra that we are familiar with. The experiments were still going on! So we can only guess what kind of instruments were used for the performances in the first decade or two of the Requiem's existence. Brahms was not shy about what he asked the contra to do in this piece, so I can only guess what the players went through to execute the part to their satisfaction.
(Picture to the left) The contrabassoon in this display case was built by Bradka, near Vienna, between 1850 and 1880, and it is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is a very sophisticated version of one of the old designs, which is essentially a giant bassoon with a big looping crook. It has beautifully crafted keywork. Click on these pictures for larger images.
The instrument on the right in this picture is a Contrabassophon, a contra design which did not survive. It was built around 1850 near Koblenz, and has a larger bore than even a modern contrabassoon. On the left is a Tritonikon, a metal double reed instrument which plays in the same register as the contrabassoon. These are in the Brussels Musical Instrument Museum. The feature of the contrabassophon is that Haseneier, who built it, re-configured the joints of the contra, and built it in what is called a four-fold wrap. This pointed the way for Stritter and Heckel to use the four-fold wrap for their redesigns of the 1870's, which Heckel patented in 1879, and which became the contra as we knew it for the next 120 years.
My apologies for the poor quality of the photographs! Instrument museums generally have terrible lighting and lots of glare from all the spotlights and glass, and one cannot get a picture of an entire instrument except to stand some distance back from the glass case.
(Picture to the left) The contrabassoon in this display case was built by Bradka, near Vienna, between 1850 and 1880, and it is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is a very sophisticated version of one of the old designs, which is essentially a giant bassoon with a big looping crook. It has beautifully crafted keywork. Click on these pictures for larger images.
The instrument on the right in this picture is a Contrabassophon, a contra design which did not survive. It was built around 1850 near Koblenz, and has a larger bore than even a modern contrabassoon. On the left is a Tritonikon, a metal double reed instrument which plays in the same register as the contrabassoon. These are in the Brussels Musical Instrument Museum. The feature of the contrabassophon is that Haseneier, who built it, re-configured the joints of the contra, and built it in what is called a four-fold wrap. This pointed the way for Stritter and Heckel to use the four-fold wrap for their redesigns of the 1870's, which Heckel patented in 1879, and which became the contra as we knew it for the next 120 years.
My apologies for the poor quality of the photographs! Instrument museums generally have terrible lighting and lots of glare from all the spotlights and glass, and one cannot get a picture of an entire instrument except to stand some distance back from the glass case.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
SYDNEY: WHERE WILL I BE?
Since I've never been to Australia before, I got curious about where in Sydney the house is where I rented a guest room for the months of July and August, and about the location of the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where I will be spending a good amount of time. Google Earth makes this research easy enough, so I'll share of little of what I found out. (Click on an image to make it open in a larger window)
Below is a bird's eye view of Sydney and Sydney harbor. I've put yellow stick pin markers for the location of the Opera House, Sydney's central train station, UNSW, and the location of my apartment.
Below is a closer look at the region of UNSW and my apartment. The track you see just north of the University is the Randwick Racecourse. Horse racing, I presume.
An even closer view of my neighborhood (called Coogee) reveals that I will be just a stone's throw from Coogee Beach! Well, the landlady did say I could be on the beach before I was properly awake in the morning. It's not a large beach, but it is supposed to have a very nice local feel to it.
Below is a bird's eye view of Sydney and Sydney harbor. I've put yellow stick pin markers for the location of the Opera House, Sydney's central train station, UNSW, and the location of my apartment.
Below is a closer look at the region of UNSW and my apartment. The track you see just north of the University is the Randwick Racecourse. Horse racing, I presume.
An even closer view of my neighborhood (called Coogee) reveals that I will be just a stone's throw from Coogee Beach! Well, the landlady did say I could be on the beach before I was properly awake in the morning. It's not a large beach, but it is supposed to have a very nice local feel to it.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
WHEN AN ORCHESTRA PLAYS, MAGIC HAPPENS
Several years ago when I envisioned taking a sabbatical, I imagined that the months leading up to it might feel like an easier time, with a break from the orchestra schedule on the horizon. I also imagined that I might feel like coasting along and not practicing very much in the last few weeks before it began, in anticipation of the free time. Surely, I thought, a year in which I would have six months off would feel like an easy year.
Well, pretty much the opposite of that has happened. We went through a lot of repertoire through the winter and spring, and it didn't feel particularly easy! More than that, though, as the beginning of the sabbatical has come nearer and nearer, I have found myself savoring the moments in the orchestra, because such magical things happen there. Tonight's concert had Brahms' Third and Fourth Symphonies on the program, and since the contrabassoon only plays in two movements on each of them, I had the luxury of sitting pretty much right in the middle of the action and listening to the interplay of the melodic lines, the cross rhythms Brahms sets up, and the delicacy as well as the power of the orchestral writing, for essentially half the concert. Words cannot really describe the experience of sitting in my spot of the orchestra and listening to everyone around me playing full out. It's magic.
I suppose it has helped that I scheduled myself to play on a recital (along with my sister Barbara) at the International Double Reed Convention on June 15th. And that I will be playing for the live-recorded sound samples that we will analyze in the research project in Australia. Preparing for a recital (or an audition for that matter) is one of the best ways to not just be engaged, but to actually get enthusiastic about playing. The good side effect of exploring new playing territory for myself is that it makes me better appreciate all the great playing that happens on a regular basis all around me in the orchestra.
Well, pretty much the opposite of that has happened. We went through a lot of repertoire through the winter and spring, and it didn't feel particularly easy! More than that, though, as the beginning of the sabbatical has come nearer and nearer, I have found myself savoring the moments in the orchestra, because such magical things happen there. Tonight's concert had Brahms' Third and Fourth Symphonies on the program, and since the contrabassoon only plays in two movements on each of them, I had the luxury of sitting pretty much right in the middle of the action and listening to the interplay of the melodic lines, the cross rhythms Brahms sets up, and the delicacy as well as the power of the orchestral writing, for essentially half the concert. Words cannot really describe the experience of sitting in my spot of the orchestra and listening to everyone around me playing full out. It's magic.
I suppose it has helped that I scheduled myself to play on a recital (along with my sister Barbara) at the International Double Reed Convention on June 15th. And that I will be playing for the live-recorded sound samples that we will analyze in the research project in Australia. Preparing for a recital (or an audition for that matter) is one of the best ways to not just be engaged, but to actually get enthusiastic about playing. The good side effect of exploring new playing territory for myself is that it makes me better appreciate all the great playing that happens on a regular basis all around me in the orchestra.
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