Some of my confident piano students admitted to “nerves” or “stage fright.”
This is not uncommon for first time performers.
I said to them,”You’re used to sitting in the audience, as a student. I’m used to standing in front of the class. It’s natural that you’d experience stage fright when we swap places.”
We brainstormed on how to overcome stage fright.
One student said that taking drama class helped a lot. There are exercises in impromptu acting which helps you think on the spot. You are forced to stand in front of an audience you can’t see because the spotlight is directed at you.
Another said practice. The more you practice, the more you know the piece and the less likely you will mess up.
Yes, practising the piece you’re going to perform is important. But you should also practise giving performances.
I told the class that I once pursued a bad habit of looking for grand pianos in hotels. I would force myself to go to the piano and play something from memory. The audience was anonymous and so was I. I had nothing to lose but everything to gain.
I also recalled forcing myself to make announcements at meetings or ask questions at conferences. Once upon a time, I worked on the trading floor for dealers who were impatient and intimidating because of the large sums of money they were managing. It was scary to join their late morning meeting, make an announcement and become the center of attention for 3 minutes. I was sure they’d rather go get lunch.
The important thing is to overcome your fears.
Long ago, I remember my hands and fingers getting antsy, sweaty, and even numb. I can’t remember when I stopped feeling like that.
They say it takes 10,000 hours to get good at something. How many thousand times does it take to overcome stage fright?
In preparation for my next concert in mid-July on Maui, I decided to check out performances of the selected works on the Internet. The interpretations are much faster, crisper, and cleaner. It’s really hard to play fast, crisp, and clean —– that is, with many pianists on many different pianos.
Darius Milhaud’s Paris: Suite for 4 pianos spans different arrondissemont of Paris. I try to remember the Paris I know but I only remember Montmartre, L’ile Saint-Louis, and the Eiffel Tower from the 6 movements. I could not find a video clip of this fantastic work against the different scenes of Paris though the 2 on Youtube are sufficiently interesting. This piece is by far the most demanding of our entire 1.5 hour program.
Next, I looked for Gerald Busby’s Four! a statement for 4 pianos. Instead, I found Plucked — 15 hands on one piano. It’s a most remarkable and funny piece. If you have time to watch it, do enjoy the performance art.
Another 4 piano 8 hand piece is Wallace DePue’s 16 Pawns. It’s a short and fast one page work. No videos on the Internet. No background description. Perhaps we can get our own recording at the concert.
We will be playing two multi-hand pieces by Robert Pollock, founder and artistic director of Ebb & Flow Arts, the non-profit organization that is putting together this concert of Sunday 14th July 2012. The titles reveal just how many pianists and pianos. Five for Four. Three for Six. Answer: Five pianists on 4 pianos. Three pianos for Six hands.
I finally get to play a work of Morton Feldman, a composer I have heard much about but never studied. His “Piece for 4 Pianos” is interesting in that all pianists have the same score. It’s up to each pianist to decide when to play each note. Everything is soft. The result? a kind of rippling, echoey effect. Watch the meditative result below.
John Cage’s “Music for Piano” is another aleatory piece (one which the composer instructs the performer to decide on duration or other aspects of the composition). We each chose two consecutive pages from the album. It’s prepared piano at its best, though it would take about 30 minutes to prepare. We each have a bag of black rubber and white felt objects to insert between the strings of the piano for those notes we need to mute. The result? Texture that we’d otherwise not hear. Again, we decide when and how long to play each note. Last time we had agreed on the piece to last 7 minutes, but some of us were too fast and others too slow. It does take some practice to get 4 pianists to end at the same time.
Below is one interpretation of John Cage’s “Music for Piano”
Sadly there is not enough music for many pianos. Ebb & Flow Arts commissioned composer Thomas Osborne to write one for us. The mp3 version of his “Canyons” for four pianos is very powerful. I will try playing it today.
Luckily there is plenty of fun pieces for two pianos and even two pianists on one piano. As 14th July is Bastille Day, we decided to choose works of French composers. Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite; Faure’s Dolly Suite; and Debussy’s Petite Suite.
I am so glad to be able to participate this time. Last year my multi-hands on one piano work “Three on One“ was performed in the Battle of the Pianists concert in Maui while I was in Utrecht. Ironically, rehearsing these multi-hand, multi-piano works with other pianists just makes me miss sightreading chamber music with string and wind players even more!
Free concert – no reservation required. Get there early — last year was standing room only!
First I met the conductor, Celia Canty. Then I saw the college choir perform. Next I wrote reviews.
Now I accompany the singers, arrange for them to perform, and blog about their upcoming performances.
Maui College Chorus, April 2012. Photo: Lloyd Canty
I asked Celia about her choice of songs for the Spring 2012 concert. “They all have to do with the earth,” she replied in a recent interview. “The songs are from all over the world, and the choir sings them in original language. But ‘earth’ also has another meaning, too — as in planting trees, jasmine flower, etc.”
In the beginning, the choir was a collection of individuals with separate voices and universes. After weeks of rehearsing, they blend into one single sound. It requires hearing oneself and hearing others. Celia Canty, who has perfect pitch, can hear if someone sings out of tune. She says it’s both a blessing and a curse to have this ability to hear absolute pitch, as it’s sometimes called.
When we arranged to have the college cable TV crew film the singers, it was intended as a concert performance with no audience. I would have preferred a video of a rehearsal, for that’s far more interesting than a concert. At a rehearsal, one gets to learn. One gets to see how the raw material becomes refined into something beautiful. See the video below of a rehearsal of the popular Chinese folk song — Jasmine Flower, which Puccini used in the opera Turandot and which I once arranged for harp (PDF) because I loved it so much and wanted to play it.
I was surprised how difficult it was to get my students to play the same note at the same time to make the sound of one note.
Pianos are, after all, not stringed instruments that can ease into a single sound. Pianos are not wind instruments either.
At my first rehearsal with three other pianists on four pianos, I noticed the same phenomenon as I had in class. We were easily out of sync. Our leader turned up the volume of the metronome. We followed the loud beatings at the expense of not hearing each other. Eventually we stopped the amplified metronome so we could really play like an ensemble.
At the second rehearsal a week later, we had improved greatly. Not that we had practised more, I think, but that we got used to each other. We were in tune. And in sync.
It’s hard to expect 4 pianos to sound like an orchestra. But it sure is fun to play. And it’s difficult to hear who is playing what part. We are all pianos after all!
Concert date: 14th July 2012 at the Maui Music Conservatory in Queen Kaahumanu Shopping Mall
Watching a rehearsal of a choir or the behind-the-scenes of a film production makes me want to go see the real thing (when it’s ready). Like watching a chef prepare a meal, I start to get hungry.
Not the concert itself, Utrecht Conservatory June 2008. Photo: F. vd Meer
Twitter led me to watch the work-in-progress of The Hobbit which will come out next here. The youtube video is not short by any means, but you grow to love the people working on the set and film.
On Facebook, I played a video of the rehearsal of the 88-member student choir of the New England Conservatory. So much goes on in a rehearsal that is not obvious. For the bystander like myself, I see beauty that is being created. I am reminded of my days as a conservatory student, singing in two choirs per year to improve my solfege. For others, it’s the awe of the director — how he manages to get the choir to produce an impressive sound.
The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam offers free lunch concerts each Wednesday. I remember queuing 45 minutes before one such event, shoulder to shoulder in the reception area, standing like sardines in anticipation of a 45 minute concert. When the doors finally opened about 10 minutes before the concert, we rushed in and exclaimed a unison “wow!” It was the stendhalismo effect of arriving at a historically important place, feeling the special feng shui and grandiose atmosphere, and all of that we normally don’t get to experience in daily life. Once we sat down, I realized that it was just a rehearsal. Not even a dress rehearsal. But it was the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. They were rehearsing a Brahms violin concerto. All musicians were informally dressed, despite being on stage and in front of a full-house of eager listeners. We fell silent when the conductor raised his stick. I closed my eyes. This could easily be the concert itself. The conductor brought the violinist into his solo. After leading the orchestra to join him in a mesmerizing passage, he stopped at a beautiful chord. I opened my eyes to another unison sigh from the audience — an “Ah!”
The free lunch rehearsal concert ended 15 minutes earlier than I had expected. Yet we all felt satisfied — as though we’ve had our lunch.
That was a live trailer of the concert that evening.
All in all, I’d say that rehearsals, work in progress, behind the scenes and pre-production all lead us to anticipate. When we anticipate, we expect. It makes us look forward to the real thing.
Over the years, I’ve collected quite a portfolio of music to suit all occasions. Music from movies, in particular, fits well as background and foreground music. I’ve used several in my most recent concert on Valentine’s Day, for love songs proliferate radio, TV, and cinema.
To precede tomorrow’s Academy Awards ceremony, I decided to put together a concert of movie themes.
At first, I selected works I have and love. These include classical pieces that existed well before their being chosen for the movies. Chopin’s famous posthumous nocturne in C-sharp minor was used in “The Pianist” and Rachmaninoff’s piano solo from the “18th Variation on a Theme of Paganini” was played many times in the movie “Somewhere in Time.” More recently, Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” was strategically placed in “Twilight.” There are countless classical works that preceded the movies and whose composers, long dead, never saw the light of day to receive royalties or recognition. Yet somehow these movies revive those classical works, bringing them new context and new audiences.
That was my initial idea — to introduce instrumental music that inherit new meaning as a result of their selection and placement in movies. After hearing Bach’s harpsichord concerto in “Hannah and Her Sisters” one may associate that piece only with that movie, for instance.
To counter pre-existent music chosen for film, I intended to also play music written specifically for movies which take on a life of their own. For instance, Whitney Houston made Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” more famous than the original version and the movie it was used in — “The Body Guard.” It stands separately as a song in its own right. Other songs written for film have gone to hit the charts as singles the world over.
Then there is the specific genre of so-called “film music.” You’d recognise it when you hear it. Some of my fellow composition classmates at the KMT (Kunst Media Technologie in Hilversum, Netherlands) wrote such music and aspired to continue doing so after they graduated. I was impressed how they, after only a few years of study, managed to score orchestral music that echoed a familiarity not distant from James Horner and John Williams. For many composers, film music is the breeding ground for new compositions.
When I sat down to put together my one hour programme for tomorrow afternoon’s concert, I discovered that I had enough music to cover just the Oscar winners of best original score and song. There was no need to include the nominees that did not win or works that did not get nominated or works of movies that did not get nominated at all.
I wanted to play Dan Coates’ wonderful piano solo arrangement of “Miss Celie’s Blues” from the movie “The Color Purple.” But that 1985 nomination lost to “Say You, Say Me” from “White Knights.” In the end, I decided that I really should propose another concert — Music from Movies for Mother’s Day — to include all those works I had prepared but discarded for tomorrow’s Oscars.
The programme for the Academy Awards Concert at Roselani Place in Maui goes as follows:
70th Academy Awards Winner of Best Original Score – 1997 – “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic
65th Winner – 1992 – “A Whole New World” from Aladdin
54th Winner – 1981 – “Arthur’s Theme: Best That You Can Do” from Arthur
49th Winner – 1976 – “Evergreen” from A Star is Born
46th Winner – 1973 – “The Way We Were” from The Way We Were
43rd Winner – 1970 – “Love Story” from Love Story
42nd Winner – 1969 – “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
38th Winner – 1965 – “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago
38th Winner – 1965 – (Scoring of Music – adaptation or treatment) The Sound of Music
29th Winner – 1956 – “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)” from The Man Who Knew Too Much
12th Winner – 1939 – “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz
I have several arrangements of “Over the Rainbow” – from Dan Coates’ arpeggiated piano solo to a jazzy soul version, one by Keith Jarrett, and ultimately, the ukelele version by Iz which stayed at number 1 in Germany for 12 non-consecutive weeks in 2010. It’s a nice way to end an afternoon in central Maui.
This time four years ago, in the historic city of Utrecht, Netherlands, I was contemplating “how am I to do it.”
The task of recruiting musicians to study my music and perform (or rather, premiere) it for the first time and only once — without compensation — was a daunting one.
It would have been easiest to have just one performer play my music. And that performer could be me. After all, I know my own music. I wouldn’t need to find other musicians, convince them to rehearse, and take the risk of playing music that’s never been performed or heard before. And to play it just once? After all that studying?
Next easiest would be to write music for a duo or a limited number of players. Why did I challenge myself with producing a half-hour-long opera with a sizable ensemble, choir, and soloists? There had to be separate rehearsals with the choir. This was not the path of least resistance.
Where could I find these musicians? Ask their teachers? Approach them one at a time?
How would I get musicians to do it? I asked other composition students. How did they do it? Nobody had written a chamber opera with so many performers before. Orchestra yes. But not opera.
Conductor Henk Alkema greets first violinist and soloists, June 2008. Photo: Fokke van der Meer
What I learned from those months from February to June 2008 was how to produce a concert with no budget. What was involved? It was a collaborative effort.
recruiting musicians
scheduling rehearsals
getting the musicians to arrive on time
getting the musicians to show up
getting the musicians to commit
organizing the music (making the part scores)
changing and editing the music
preparing the programming notes
preparing the slides for the overhead projector
setting put the stage
getting the event photographed and recorded
doing the publicity
getting help (stage manager, stagehands, usher)
ordering flowers to thank the musicians and selecting wine to thank the conductors
arranging post-concert refreshments for the audience
arranging dinner for the musicians
getting sponsors to pay for printing programs (PDF) and posters and the rest
getting the posters and programs printed
Thinking back, these skills are transferrable, for now I am managing an expanding team of volunteers. I am not paying them. They are not paying me. But we all work to the same goal.
The audience at the final exam concert of 2 June 2008. Photo: Fokke v.d. Meer
What do you do with 22 students in a classroom of just 15 electric pianos (2 of which do not sound) and one portable synthesizer for 3 hours?
Let them take turns at the piano, one at a time. Give a lecture to the rest of the class. Swap.
Put two students on each keyboard and have them play duets.
Put two students on each keyboard and conduct them like an orchestra.
When I googled “piano orchestra” I found a variety of piano concertos and questions about the role of piano in the orchestra.
Truth is, it is rare to see so many pianos in one room, unless they are all for sale, in which case you can’t play on them as you wish.
On day one, I asked my students to play just the black keys. I split them into several section. One section played successive quarter notes. Another joined with half notes. The third joined with whole notes. I then improvised on high treble.
My father used to play Chinese songs just on black keys. Pentatonic music (using just the 5 notes of the 5 black keys) blend well in any order in any octave.
Now is my chance to deconstruct my favourite works, be they classical concertos or pop songs. Assign the parts to the various pianists. This way, everyone gets to play. Doubling up is fine. The string section does it all the time.
What I want to get across is simple:
Most students of piano learn to play solo piano works. They advance to become soloists.
Some learn to accompany choir or other instruments or voice.
Others move on to become organists.
Whether you’re an accompanist or organist, you serve the choir or congregation. You’re not equal.
But when you play in an orchestra, ensemble, or chamber music group, it’s totally different.
John Carollo, composer, and Anne Ku, blogger, Honolulu, 3 April 2011
On Sunday 3rd April 2011, while sightreading 81 short piano pieces entitled “80th Birthday Jingles” by the Honolulu-based composer John Carollo, I came across an old work of his from 1986. John, whom I first met in Cortona, Italy in July 2006, walked out of his kitchen and came towards me.
“I haven’t heard that in awhile.” He seemed caught off guard. Later, I learned that he had forgotten about this piece.
It was tonal music from his pre-serial days.
“Play it again,” he mused.
John had written this Satie-like waltz for his friend Bill whose surprise birthday party I had attended two nights earlier in a million dollar home in Hanepepe Loop. On Sunday in a penthouse in central Honolulu, we were just eating the leftovers from that executive chef-catered dinner when my playing of his Waltz evoked even earlier memories of his journey as a composer.
I liked it so much that I took it to Utrecht, Netherlands and recorded it on my grand piano on 4th August 2011.
Just yesterday afternoon I found the three of John’s CDs: the award-winning Ampersand, Starry Night for String Orchestra, and Transcendence in the Age of War. Now that I have time in Maui, I will listen to his works, although I have already heard one performed in my house on 1st July 2011. Pianist Nathanael May played his Prelude as the last piece of a set of five by the composers Antheil, Chopin, Gershwin, and Debussy as the opening to a house concert. (Programme 2-page PDF) It was well chosen before John Cage’s dream-like “In a Landscape.”
Immediately after I left Honolulu, John began composing a 9-movement work for my piano guitar duo. While we have not yet had time to rehearse the piece, I have already requested John to extend the second movement which is so addictive!
Born in Torino, Italy, John Carollo was brought to the U.S. by his adoptive parents. John took piano lessons and began composing his first piano works while at San Diego State University where he graduated with a Masters Degree in Psychology. Shortly thereafter, John moved to Honolulu, began a full-time mental health career for the State of Hawaii and started private composition lessons with Dr. Robert Wehrman. So great was his passion for composing that he quit his day job to compose full-time. Since then his works have been performed in Italy, Netherlands, and elsewhere. Website: http://www.johncarollocomposer.com
The positive reaction to our premiere of Mark Francis’ new work in Amsterdam led me to revisit the score.
Piano part from 1st movement of 2nd Guitar Concerto by Mark Francis
Subtitled “In Somnis Verita” which means “in dreams there is truth,” the 2nd guitar concerto contains three movements albeit the composer had originally conceived of five. He wrote in the programme notes for the orchestral premiere in Jackson, Mississippi, “It is my belief that many people refuse to acknowledge what is true when they are conscious, but can’t escape from what they know to be true in their subconscious when sleeping. These things manifest themselves in dreams. Our subconscious will cobble things together in all kinds of strange scenarios. The music tries to depict these cobblings.”
A few days after the concert, I listened to the live recording of the orchestral premiere. I saw the piece come to life —- what the piano could not fully muster.
Guitar Concerto No. 2 by Mark Francis
We had performed the first movement faster than the composer had intended (quarter note = 72). After the concert, we read Mark Francis’ programme notes, “The tempo of the first movement is slow, which sets the stage as our ‘dreamer’ drifts off to sleep and begins to dream. The opening triplet motif represents breathing. These are gentle dreams filled with longing and nostalgia. This movement is set in a kind of arch form.”
Guitar part to 1st movement of 2nd Guitar Concerto by Mark Francis
Who is the composer, Mark Francis? He is a guitarist. He knows how to write music that guitarists like to play. That is very important. He wrote the second concerto specifically for guitarist Jimmy Turner, music director Wayne Linehan and the Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra in Jackson, Mississippi.
How did we discover Mark Francis? None other than my Call for Scores for multi-hand piano duets! He submitted two pieces which I will mention in a future blog post. Noticing that I had a piano guitar duo, he asked if we’d be interested to see his new concerto — reduced for piano and guitar. That’s how it started. Now I am even more curious about his first concerto and other works.
Bekkers Piano Guitar Duo, birthday concert in Amsterdam. Photo: FCAP
Dutch guitarist Robert Bekkers and Brunei-born overseas Chinese pianist Anne Ku share their love of music and the behind-the-scenes stories of their quest for sheet music, composers, performers, concert venues, house concerts, audience development, sponsorship, fundraising, and adventures.
Since they met in 2001, they have given concerts in various locations, including Europe: London, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, the Hague, Famagusta (North Cyprus), Madrid, La Coruna, Ferrol, Cortona, Brugge. Capetown, SA. Taipei, Taiwan. USA: Boston, Houston, Durham NC, San Francisco, and Maui (Hawaii). They now divide their time between Utrecht, Netherlands where they founded the Monument House Concert Series and the USA (Boston & Maui).
