Adieu to a Steinway

When we first received the Steinway, it took up a big corner of the house in Bussum. I was afraid it was too close to the fire place. Robert joked, “Well that’s a lot of wood to burn, for a long time.”

Throughout the years, from the Steinway Welkomfest in Bussum to our house concerts in Utrecht, visiting concert pianists brought out the depth and breadth of sound — warm nostalgic tones from the Romantic era.

As I scout the market for its next owner, I can’t help thinking that once again I am saying goodbye to a friend via cyberspace. I am unable to play it, caress it, or hear it. I am on the other side of the world, answering e-mail enquiries and writing to those who might have a hand in its future.

A friend sent me 4 consecutive e-mails of the following video from the New York Times. He really wanted to make sure I got it, I guess. It’s not a nice way to say goodbye, and I surely hope it will not be the death of mine.

Requiem for a Piano (video)

Another friend sent me the NY Times article that wrapped around the above video: For More Pianos, Last Note is Thud in the Dump.

For sale: 1908-1909 New York Steinway model A, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Listen to me playing my Adieu to a Piano on every one of the 88 keys of the Steinway, saying goodbye to its predecessor in London. [MP3]

Adieu to a piano by Anne Ku (3 page PDF)

Independence Day

It’s 4th of July 2012 — my first in the USA in many years. The tweets I’m getting not only celebrate Independence Day but also energy independence. Wean ourselves off oil and gasoline. Welcome electric cars!

In thinking about independence, I also think about words like co-dependence. Financial independence. Emotional independence or detachment.

Are we ever really independent?

In chamber music, each instrument is an independent entity, producing an independent sound. The combined result, however, relies heavily on blending. This blending of independent sounds requires each musician to listen to each other and adjust to each other.

When we first started rehearsing Morton Feldman’s music for several pianos, we were only told to start together (the same note) and try to end together after 7 minutes. Although we were all following the same score, we decided on when and how long to play each note. We more or less tried to listen to each other to make sure we didn’t all play at the same time (after the first note). Ironically, at our last rehearsal, we were told that the composer did not want us to listen to each other at all. He did not want us to be affected by what others played, only to start at the same time and end after 7 minutes. We all had to play softly, so that the music sounded like echoes or ripples.

As for electric cars, by weaning ourselves off gasoline, we become dependent on electricity, which is generated from several other energy sources. Do we become more independent or dependent? At least we are not throwing all our eggs in one basket, ….. but in several baskets.

Surfers and Performers: a parallel universe?

Recently I came across an article entitled “The Surfer’s Guide to Personal Development.” The author Svrinas Rao, obviously a surfer, talks about lessons he learned as a surfer and how they apply to life.

Being a newcomer to the surfer capital of the world, I can’t help but be fascinated by the surfer culture here: the lingo, the way surfers check weather forecasts, the intricate network in which surfers monitor the waves and call each other up for updates. I’m intrigued by how keen they are to get up before dawn to catch a wave and how they talk enthusiastically about it afterwards.

Makena, Maui watercolor by Frances Ku

How does this relate to the world I’m from?

Musicians have our own language. We get information about gig opportunities from other musicians or from participating in certain projects and ensembles. We observe certain etiquette — the way seasoned surfers acknowledge the line-up. Each concert is a real-time experience, just like catching a wave. Each wave is different. The acoustics are different. The audience is different. We have to be able to anticipate and cope with uncertainty. We embrace the unknown.

Rao talks about “being present.”  He translates this to mean “focus on what you’re doing now.” As performers, we can’t afford to be distracted by movements in the audience or unexpected and annoying flickering of light. We have to focus on the music, our playing, and delivering the best.

In his earlier article, Rao wrote “timing can make the difference between a great ride and a severe wipeout.” For us chamber musicians, it’s all about timing. That’s why we first establish the tempo and the rhythm. We have to be in sync even when we are slowing down, speeding up, or doing a rubato.

Here on Maui, I’ve seen men greet each other not just as teacher to student or salesman to customer but also as surfers who have shared a morning together. There is a comraderie built from years of surfing from the same beach. Perhaps these surfers who go to Utrecht, Netherlands will notice how my fellow musicians greet each other, from years of performing together.

Click here for a live webcam from Mama’s Fish House at Hookipa, Maui. Click here to read a sociological study of surfers.

Two year anniversary of Concert Blog today!

Hard to believe that it has been exactly 2 years since we launched the Concert Blog on WordPress.com to document our adventures and discoveries in music. Since our first blog on 24th March 2009, we have evolved from writing about our duo to reviewing concerts and sharing insights into cultural economics of concertizing.

The two-year journey has taken us from the Netherlands to England, Crete, Belgium, Spain, Finland, Denmark, Italy, France, Taiwan, and the USA. In addition to the musicians and composers who have actively contributed to our concertizing and exploration in the world of live and recorded music, we have worked with artists, photographers, film makers, and other interesting people from all walks of life to make concerts happen. What we learned, we shared. We are grateful to all the feedback from readers and audiences everywhere.

It is now time to categorise the different topics and make it easier for readers to access from our Blog Page.

Bekkers Piano Guitar Duo in Wailea, 16 March 2011. Photo: Dennis O'Keefe

Time to celebrate! But Robert flies to Phoenix tonight and Anne to San Francisco in mid-May.

Twitter for musicians

When I got alerted to Brian Reinhart’s article “Music and Twitter” via twitter, I just had to tweet back that I intended to write a blog about it.

Not that I’ve become an expert at Twitter after over a year of tweeting — I joined the Twitter community like I did with Facebook and LinkedIn because I was curious and that I thought everyone else was doing it. The “kiasoo” nature in me pushed me to get a free Twitter account. Kiasoo means afraid to lose out in the Chinese Hokkien dialect.

I decided to follow those that I knew had a Twitter account. I tweeted this blog and everything else I thought was interesting. When others started following me, I reciprocated. It was flattering to get followers. After awhile, I couldn’t keep up. I no longer reciprocated.

I did not know the rules of Twitter, only that I wanted to make sure the number of people following me were more than the number I followed. In other words, I was still a performer — I wanted more people in the audience than on stage. I wanted to blast out my latest thoughts, concert reviews, future concerts, video clips, audio clips, and everything else that musicians use to get attention.

I thought of Twitter as a kind of broadcasting medium, the same way I initially thought of Facebook and blogging and websites.

Twitter is more than that.

When I started tweeting for Price Rubin & Partners, I noticed that tweeting was no longer a game or a personal experiment. There had to be a rhyme and reason to spending time online dreaming up messages and truncating them to the 140 character limit.

When tweeting on behalf of an organization, you are communicating the values of the group — not just yourself. You cannot be whimsical and say something as personal as “I had to pay an overdue fine for library books I didn’t get to read.”

I asked myself the following questions:

• What is the purpose of having a Twitter account?
• What is there to gain from the Twitter community?
• What information do I want to know that I can’t get elsewhere?
• What do I want to see when I sign in my Twitter account?
• What kind of attention do I want to attract?
• What kind of followers do I want to have?
• What kind of messages should I send to attract those followers?
• How often should I tweet — without the risk of being “unfollowed”?

In two weeks, I doubled the number of followers. The number that I’m following now is more than 6 times the number that’s following me. But this is not a numbers game.

It’s about relevance.

I want to deliver relevant content in a timely matter. And when I check my Twitter radar screen, I want to see my own “newspaper” of news, gossip, reviews, interviews, opportunities, etc from orchestras, opera companies, classical radio stations, performance art series, artists with interesting opinions, etc. If I see anything I’d like to share, I’ll retweet it.

I should think other Twitterers are doing the same. Maybe not. Maybe they are like me a year ago, still getting their egos rubbed and tweeting into a void of noise.

Useful advice and tips for musicians on how to use Twitter:

• Use Twitter for music promotion:  this ranks number 1 on Google, which means lots of links to it and people looking at this webpage. This does not mean it’s the best site.
• Musicians twitter roadmap: starts out like this concertblog post but goes into examples of how tweeting leads to deals
• Twitter for musicians: 6 part guide from the basics to more to come

Any other good tips? Please LEAVE A REPLY on the comment section alone. Thanks in advance.

House concerts: a cottage industry

I’m very happy to see someone else writing about house concerts for classical musicians, showing that we’re not the only ones doing it and pushing for it. Collaborative Piano Blog has a page to various links. I’d like to add my own.

House concerts for art music: multiple stake holders, audience development, and sustainability (14-page PDF) – introduction to house concerts through summary of interviews with house concert producers, home owners, musicians, etc.

House concert for your friends: how to get your friends to organise a concert for you in their home

House concert kit: guides to producing a house concert with links to other great starter articles

Audience development: the art of creating demand

What I really should do is to categorise and index various self-help articles for musicians, instead of writing new articles. Perhaps I could make these into an e-book?

House concert kit: guides to producing a house concert

I promised my friend in Houston to write a guide to help her and her friends to produce a house concert for us. She had browsed through my blog posts and concluded that “less is more” — there were simply too many articles about house concerts. What was needed was a simple outline with hyperlinks to the relevant blog posts or articles I’ve written elsewhere.

When I started to draft an outline, I noticed that I was too close to see the woods for the trees. Indeed, I did not know where to begin.

For someone who has never been to a house concert, let alone produce one, how can I describe the feeling you get at a house concert? It’s not a house party. It’s not a free for all. It is a concert in a private home that could lead to a festive ending such as a party. But it’s the live music that draws people to come.

This past June before I presented my paper “house concerts for art music” at an economics conference, I learned from a cultural economist that live music at a concert may not be the sole or primary motivation for concert goers. Human beings are social animals. We have a need to bond.  A concert could be an attraction to make potential bonding happen.

If live music could lure people to get together, surely food, drink, a special venue (such as a newly renovated dream house), or a dynamic personality (host or visitor) could also potentially attract people to congregate.

While I don’t know the specifics or rationale of such social gatherings and group dynamics, I do know that I have witnessed and experienced amazing things at house concerts, also known as salon concerts.

Perhaps these are the reasons why musicians and concert hosts are so keen to share this phenomenon: live music in private homes — by invitation only.

The American singer songwriter Fran Snyder, who has actively championed the cause to support independent musicians, has written a brilliant guide on this topic. The 24-page PDF is downloadable from his website.

Successful networking

A phone call to an ex-colleague I hadn’t seen in more than 10 years brought back memories of my life before music. He reminded me what a conference junkie I used to be. I boasted that I had gone to 3 dozen conferences in 2 years. It was only because I had overdone it and my boss told me to sit still for a staff meeting that saved my life on 11th September 2001. Otherwise, I would have gone to the conference on top of the World Trade Centre.

Going to conferences is one way to meet people, connect, and start new relationships. Networking does not need to take place only at conferences, however. We do it all the time in the music world. Networking skills are essential to opening the right doors.

Some years ago, I listed topics I’d like to speak on — perhaps in a course to help people become better networkers. I most definitely need to build a hierarchy out of this linear outline.

How to build contacts and develop beneficial relationships for a lifetime

• What is networking
• The importance of networking today
• Online vs offline networking
• Making cold calls: overcoming fear of rejection
• Turning a cold contact to a warm one
• How to grow your network
• How to keep your network i.e. how not to lose your contacts
• How to prevent abuse of your network
• Social networking strategies and tactics: using linkedin, facebook, twitter, blog, and other online tools to make new contacts and grow your network
• How to keep your private and professional networks apart (separate)
• How to remember names and faces
• Networking etiquette: how to introduce yourself, how to introduce someone to someone else you know, …
• E-mail etiquette: contact and follow-up
• Thank you: the importance of acknowledgement and appreciation
• Online and offline modes of communication
• Developing relationships that stick
• Guan Xi: the Chinese term for networking and relationships
• Yuan fen: serendipity and how to let go when the time is up
• Ego rubbing exercises
• The art of reciprocation
• Collaboration as a way forward
• Referring and recommending
• Building a contact management system: mailing list etc
• Data protection act: bcc in e-mails
• Developing a rapport (NLP techniques)
• The elevator pitch
• Renewing your contacts
• Staying in touch
• How to deal with awkward moments and situations
• Proper and effective use of social media networking tools

Life in the USA vs that in Europe

My late friend, the London-based architect Ayyub Malik, often critisized me for sounding too American in my attitude towards life. He told me to stop trying to optimise and be a go getter. Just sit back and have some slack. Relax. These were not his exact words, but I concluded that’s what he disapproved of. The fast pace of life, the competitiveness, and the 24 by 7 existence was what he wanted to avoid when he turned down that job in Chicago many years before he met me.

Bekkers Duo with Ayyub Malik and Mayor of London Ealing, 30 May 2003

Now that I’ve lived outside the USA for more than a decade, and in particular, on continental Europe for most of the past decade, I daresay that I have absorbed some of that European attitude, especially when compared to the way I was. I’m not sure if going to the USA will bring it all back.

I notice the differences when I converse with newly arrived Americans.

They are surprised that they can’t get from A to B by car. I patiently tell them that they can hop on a bus (which seems very foreign) or cycle (which requires renting a bicycle or buying one). “I’ll walk,” they say. But they forget what distances are when they are not used to walking.

American students complain of a lack of flexibility and attentiveness of Dutch administration. Having studied in the USA, I do admit that American universities do a much better job of ensuring new students are provided for. They certainly don’t need to sweat for accommodation after they arrive. It’s all taken care of BEFORE they arrive. It’s almost as if their needs are anticipated before they are voiced. In the Netherlands, I learned that if you don’t ask, you won’t get it. Those were the exact words of a student administrator at the Dutch conservatory where I studied for four years.

I explain the recycling rules. Americans that have lived in Germany nod in understanding. Those that haven’t think it’s novel to separate your waste into different compartments: paper, plastic, glass, refundable glass or plastic bottles, compost, and real trash. It does require getting used to. It does take up extra space before the weekly collection or trip to the depot.

I warn them to get their grocery shopping done before end of day Saturday. Unless it’s the first Sunday of the month, expect all stores to be closed and not reopen until Monday 11 am. Restaurants are even worse. I have starved myself trying to find outdoor seating on a warm summer’s evening, only to be turned away at 10 pm that the kitchen has closed. In some smaller towns the restaurants close at 9 pm. [This happened in Doorn on a Friday evening in July.]

One Dutch-American observed that the Dutch seem so much more organised than the Americans. “There are rules for everything, and the Dutch abide by the rules,” he said. On the flip side, the Dutch are not as flexible or spontaneous as the Americans. You could say that the way of dealing with uncertainty is different: rules vs flexibility.

As I plan how to travel from our upcoming concert in Newton, Massachusetts on 22nd October 2010 to the next one in Hampton, Connecticut on 23rd October, I’m amazed that no public transportation is adequate. “You’ll have either get someone to give you a lift,” advised an American friend, “or rent a car.”

Thank goodness gasoline prices in America are not $8 per gallon as we pay here in the Netherlands!

How to blog and get found

Many people have asked me why I blog. Why did I start blogging in 1999? Why did I continue?

There are many reasons why I started and continued. I will save that for another blog post. The important thing I want to get across is to get your blog found by others. You can do active promoting by telling people “Hey! I just wrote something. Here it is. Please read it” or you can just wait to be discovered by the way you write your blog.

There is a certain art to writing a blog to get it found. It’s not your everyday writing. You have to pay attention to the words you use and the hyperlinks you make.

Anne Ku, editor, Le Bon Journal

A blog is almost exactly the opposite of an e-mail campaign that can be interpreted as spam. You readers come to you rather than the other way around.

One of the reasons for blogging on the CONCERTBLOG is to find those readers that are interested in the things I’m interested in: music, economics, concertizing or concertising, chamber music, classical music, concert touring, attending concerts, producing concerts, collaborating, writing programme notes, researching composers, performance excellence, and so on.

If you’d ask me to give a course on “blogging to be found,” I’d propose the following outline.

NEW COURSE: Blogging to be found on the Internet

• Your objective, motive, goals: why you want and need to blog
• Choice of blog platform: own website, free blog engines, other
• The topics you want to write about: can we summarise in a single theme
• The routine and practice of blogging: inspiration, negativity, demotivation, feedback
• Basic writing rules: against plagiarism, respect reciprocation
• Building your readership and expanding your community
• Writing for online reading is different from print; organising your content
• Choosing your words, tags, categories, and “alt”
• Social networking tools to promote your blog
• Optimal image size for fast download

Pre-requisites

• Access to your own computer
• Already have a blog or intend to start one
• The will to learn and the stamina to continue

To subscribe or express interest in this course, LEAVE A REPLY below with your location and time of availability (date or period). It will not be published if you indicate so.