Maui College Chorus: Earth Songs

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.

Watch short video clip: Celia Canty rehearses Maui College Chorus on harp

Maui College Chorus, Spring 2012. Photo: Lloyd Canty

Performances (all free):

• 13 April 2012 @2:45 pm Preview for Academic Senate Meeting, UHMC
• 19 April 2012 @3:45 pm Roselani Place, Kahului
• 27 April 2012 @7 pm Iao Congregational Church, Wailuku
• 3 May 2012 @4 pm Kalama Heights, Kihei

Maui College Chorus Concert Program, Spring 2012

Concerts for free or nearly free

Search for “classical concert etiquette” and you will get guides like this one and numerous others. These articles are well-written. It would be superfluous to write more about this subject. In thinking about advice for first-time concert goers, I recall how I became an avid concert goer. It began with the word FREE.

When I lived in London and learned of the free concerts at the local music college, I was curious if I could or should attend. I would show up for a lunch concert. Sometimes there were more people on stage than in the audience. I would make eye contact and feel somewhat uncomfortable because I had seen them before. Perhaps elsewhere in town or at a previous concert, I was not sure. The discomfort could also be described as a kind of guilt. It was a free concert. What did I do to deserve a free concert? It was sheer indulgence for me —- I had the time and interest and desire. The discomfort could also be described as a kind of trespass. I was neither a student nor an employee. I merely lived in the neighbourhood.

After I became a “regular,” someone from the college introduced himself to me and talked to me.  I gasped. I was not invisible after all. Somebody noticed that I had been faithfully attending these free concerts. Was it time to cough up and pay? [It's so English not to say anything unless you are introduced. Self-introductions are an American phenomenon.]

It wasn’t until I enrolled as a full-time conservatory student in the Netherlands, that I saw the concerts from the other side. The concerts were always free. There was no budget to administer tickets. There was hardly a budget for publicity. The free concerts were never full unless it was someone’s final exam, opera, orchestra, or composition concert.  There could easily be more people on stage than in the audience. There were regulars from the community. I would give them a nod and sometimes a grin. We acknowledged each other as conspiring in the same indulgence of classical music.

As a composer and performer, I wanted to see more people in the audience. Yet as a student, it was not for me to change the policy of the school. The doors were wide open for anyone to come to concerts. But the concerts were not actively promoted. The shops around the school did not have posters of the concerts. The shop keepers and assistants didn’t know about the concerts. The conservatory once welcomed Mozart, Schumann, and Brahms. That was history. The teachers were busy teaching. The students were busy studying.

And that’s how I clocked up thousands of free concerts. Every conservatory and music school seemed to have the same policy or lack of a policy when it came to concerts. Free.

Audience at final exam concert in Utrecht Conservatory, 2008. Photo: F. vd Meer

University of Hawaii Maui College (UHMC) is situated directly across from Maui’s equivalent of Carnegie Hall (New York) and Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) and the Royal Albert Hall (London). Its largest concert hall seats 1,200. The smaller hall seats 250. There’s also an outdoor stage. When I first arrived on the island, I assumed there was a connection between the two. Just as Amsterdam Conservatory gets to use the Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ  and the Royal College of Music has access to the Royal Albert Hall, I thought UHMC had access to the Maui Arts and Cultural Center (MACC).

Well, it doesn’t work that way. UHMC is not a conservatory. Yet the MACC is very much a world-class facility with state-of-the-art acoustics and instruments. Perhaps the association is not about sending students to perform on stage but to fill the seats with last-minute discount tickets, as is offered elsewhere. While students cannot afford higher priced tickets, they can tolerate the uncertainty of not having a ticket well in advance.

In England, there are always last-minute standby tickets (lowest price for whatever is available) about 30 minutes to 1 hour before the show. These are offered to students, unwaged, low-income, and pensioners. One of the perks of studying in London was attending concerts at the South Bank, Wigmore Hall, Royal Albert Hall, and countless other venues, on a last-minute standby student discount. Could such a perk be offered to the 4,000 students at Maui College? If they know of this discount, they can look out for it.

** From the point of economics, one could argue that those that can afford to pay for a ticket will not necessarily buy the most expensive ticket. Thus the best seats risk being unsold. To avoid such front-row seats being empty, offer these to those who are flexible with time and tolerant of uncertainty yet can’t afford the high prices. The rationale is that these seats would otherwise not get sold at all.

Teaching piano, teaching music

I described what I’m doing in my evening piano class to the husband of a colleague, both music aficionados.

“I teach my students to play the chromatic scale one hand at a time. The right hand goes up using the thumb and third finger. The left hand goes down. At the next lecture, I demonstrate the application with Flight of the Bumble Bee.”

“I tell them about pentatonic scales and exotic scales. I give them the formula for major scales: whole step, whole step, half-step, whole, whole, whole, half-step. I also have them listen to major vs non-major scales as I play them on the piano. I play the last movement of Vivaldi’s Summer from the Four Seasons and I ask them to count the scales.”

“I plan to teach them the Circle of Fifths with respect to Pachelbel’s Canon in D. That’s also useful to demonstrate descending bass line. “

My colleague’s husband responded with awe. “And you say this is a beginning piano class? Seems to me you are teaching them music!”

I replied, “Yes, I guess you are right. By the end of the semester, they will have not only learned how to play piano but how to look at music differently. I want them to overcome stage fright, build self-confidence, learn to conduct, learn to play and work with each other, appreciate different kinds of music, listen, analyse as in identifying patterns before they start to read the music to play, and so much more.”

Piano orchestra

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?

1. Let them take turns at the piano, one at a time. Give a lecture to the rest of the class. Swap.
2. Put two students on each keyboard and have them play duets.
3. 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:

1. Most students of piano learn to play solo piano works. They advance to become soloists.
2. Some learn to accompany choir or other instruments or voice.
3. Others move on to become organists.
4. Whether you’re an accompanist or organist, you serve the choir or congregation. You’re not equal.
5. But when you play in an orchestra, ensemble, or chamber music group, it’s totally different.
6. String players know this. Wind players, too. Brass players. Singers in choirs.
7. But pianists in a piano orchestra? That’s nearly unheard of.

It’s hard to find pianos you can play in one place. It’s hard to move pianos into one place. It’s hard to find pieces written for many pianos.

But ah! such joy to play together! The full polyphonic sound of a piano orchestra!

[Note: this is my first blog post on an iPad!}

Piano and guitar amplified

“You’re the third accountant I know who has become a full-time professional musician,” I said to singer/guitarist Jimi Canha over lunch this afternoon.

To his gig partner, Gilbert Emata who started taking lessons on the organ and piano from age 6 and who grew up in the Filipino equivalent of the Jackson Five, I said, “I took piano lessons from a music academy run by Filipino teachers on Okinawa. They’re the best musicians in Singapore I later discovered when I worked there.”

But I had more things in common than the accountant and Filipino teacher connection. Gilbert Emata and Jimi Canha are a duo — a keyboard and guitar/voice duo who plays regularly on Maui. On Thursday evenings, they play at the Grand Wailea. More recently they were flown to the island of Kauai to play for a Google convention.

Gilbert Emata and Jimi Canha at UHMC, Maui, 9 November 2011

Today they appeared in three consecutive music classes at the University of Hawaii Maui College as professional musicians and guest lecturers. I walked into the second class (a piano class) around 10:50 am. The performance was in full swing. It was as if they had brought their gig from a five star hotel into a class room. The front was set up with two amplified speakers and cables connecting keyboards, synthesizers, microphone, and other equipment.

In between their songs, Karyn Sarring, who teaches the piano and voice classes at the college, interviewed the musicians.

Jimi Canha told the story of how he learned music by ear and very quickly too. If a guest requested a song he didn’t know, he’d learn it overnight to play it the next day. At college he took a slack key guitar class but otherwise he was mostly self-taught — on the guitar, trumpet, drums, and keyboards. He worked as an accountant for some 20 years before turning his part-time hobby into a full-time profession.

Between his guitar and his microphone sat a small and nearly invisible iPad on a small stand. Jimi Canha showed the class that the iPad stored just the lyrics of songs he sang. No chords. No notes. Just lyrics. When asked which key he sang in, he replied, “It depends on the mood. I choose a low key if I want to be mellow. For a full band sound, I choose a higher key. This morning I started in A. After I’ve warmed up, I might move to B.”

Gilbert Emata elaborated. “By the time we finish our gig at the Grand Wailea, it’s 9 pm. We pack up and drive home. It’s 10 or 10:30 pm. I shower and eat, and it’s already 11:30.” Jimi Canha added, “This is the earliest we’ve had to get up to perform. We were here at, what? – 9 am?”

Once the original keyboard player for Ekolu, Gilbert brought the synthesizer to the group. When he left, Ekolu replaced him with two horn players. Since then he has played with various groups. His recording credits include Uncle Willie K’s red Christmas CD and also a forthcoming blues CD. As he introduced his bass keyboard, main keyboard, synthesizer, drum kit, and speakers that altogether gave him a full band sound, he played riffs that I recognised immediately: the Hammond organ and a familiar rock and roll sound. The grand piano and a nostalgic melody. The bass and drum kit producing a rhythm that made you dance. Here was a musician with an obviously huge repertoire and an ability to follow and accompany anything and everything.

An exchange student asked,”How do you get gigs?”

It’s the typical and most asked question of any musician who wants to perform. Jimi replied,”You start by playing for free. Play for your church. Play at family gatherings.” In other words, don’t expect to be paid when you first start out.

Gilbert added,”We had a guy from the Big Island come to our gigs. He watched us. Then he asked if he could sit in with us. We heard him. Now he plays four nights a week.” In other words, you have to be heard. Show up. This was an informal audition.

In a nutshell, the music scene is small on Maui. Everybody knows everybody (who is a musician). Jimi describes good musicians as those you can “see their heart through their music.” He played the Tahitian drums with a fire knife dancer during Uncle Willie K’s 15-minute performance in the Oakland Raiders football game. It was a great opportunity to share the aloha spirit — the essence of Hawaiian music.

It was 3 pm. Lunch was over. Gilbert and Jimi had given most of their Wednesday to eager students and two teachers. Karyn had another class to get back to. I was grateful to be invited to hear two local musicians share a sample of their vast repertoire, from reggae to jazz, from pop to rock. Until my own piano guitar duo returns, I am rejuvenated by the musicianship in theirs.

Piano duets of Loren Jones

For my Call for Scores of Multi-hand piano duets, I received three piano duets from Loren Jones, a composer based in San Francisco. Unfortunately we didn’t get to try them at the Piano Soiree cum Sightreading Workshop in San Francisco in May 2011.

“The Man with Four Hands” (2005) was his first piano 4 hands piece, written for his CD “Woodward’s Gardens.”

“The Secret Door” (2007) originally written for someone else but not performed until 2010 by the piano duet ZOFO.

“The Mt Eyhan Gabriel Caves” is Loren Jones’ newest duet, recently premiered by two teenage brothers in The San Francisco Composers Orchestra in June 2011.

When Karyn Sarring and I sightread “The Mt Eyhan Gabriel Caves” in April 2011 on electric pianos at the University of Hawaii Maui College, we thought it would fit well as a good first piece in the second half of a concert to welcome the audience back. We loved the nice colours, kind of jazzy.

We found “Man with 4 Hands” satisfying, steady, and well-written. The small 32nd notes in upwards arpeggiated motion seemed hard at first, kind of like being the first to swim on a cloudy day. Once you dive into the cold water, it acclimatises to your body temperature and you realise it’s not that bad. Perhaps a larger font would make it easier to read. Readability helps playability. In bar 23, we assumed that the sixteenth notes in 6/8 time equaled the sixteenth notes in the previous bars in 4/4 time.

Initially we were intimidated by the 358 bars of “The Secret Door” which spanned 25 pages and lasted over 7 minutes. Nevertheless I was so curious that I had to try it with Brendan Kinsella in my home in Utrecht, Netherlands. It was not exactly sightreading for we had to figure out the pattern of the 16th notes beforehand.

The Secret Door piano duet by Loren Jones

We managed to record the first 50 measures. The rest, we concluded, we had to study to give it the sound it deserved.

Extract from The Secret Door piano duet by Loren Jones, sightread by Brendan Kinsella & Anne Ku

It’s exhilarating to play passages that are pianistically fun. Look at the way the left and right hands follow each other, and the way the primo and secundo dance around each other, as if the sequences are nested within each other. The right hand (RH) follows the left (LH). The primo follows the secundo. This is “Ocean” tempo marked fast with quarter note = 152.

The next section is a waltz “Flying with the birds” — very programmatic — as our curiosity begs the question, “when will we get to the secret door?”

Indeed these three duets lead me to look for an opportunity to study and record them in Maui (where I’m destined next) and meet the composer in San Francisco (before I land in Maui).

Audience experience of live performance

Live performance is real-time. A video recording of a live performance is not the same as the event itself.

Similarly, your experience of being present in a live performance depends largely on where the event takes place and factors such as other members of the audience, their behavior, lighting, and acoustics of the room, besides the performers themselves of course.

I write this because I noticed a clear difference in the way I experienced Kealoha’s delivery of his poetry in two locations at Maui College on Monday 18th April 2011.

In the classroom in a standalone building (a bungalow), with the air conditioning switched off, all eyes and ears on the young Hawaii poet from Honolulu, I experienced Kealoha’s performance in its rawest, purest form. I felt the impact. I was also aware of his effect on others. Everyone sat immobile, staring at the young poet until the performance was over.

In contrast, the large multi-purpose room with loud air conditioning noise and people walking around, getting their lunches, finding their seats, talking, movement, was not optimal for receiving Kealoha’s final performance. I sat in the back row and witnessed the chaos of people trying to get settled. Even with a microphone, standing on stage, Kealoha’s delivery did not reach those audiences in the back because of the movement and noise.

These two experiences show how important it is to set the right environment for a performance to take place.

I am sure it was harder to perform in the big room than in the smaller classroom. Getting everyone’s attention requires getting rid of all ambient noise and movement.

The inspiration of Kealoha, the slam poet of Hawaii

In late March 2011, I read an announcement that began like this:

National slam legend — Kealoha from Oahu — will be on the UHMC campus this Thursday, March 31st at 4pm in Pilina (Student Lounge) to present a free slam poetry performance!

It was followed immediately by an e-mail from Dr Bob, the head of music department at Maui College:

Yes!! Kealoha is one of the great poets of our time and is endowed with the ability to reach even the most unenlightened, sleeping person. Zombies may eat your brains, killer clowns may suck your soul but YOU can go to this slam. Fail to attend and you will simply remain stuck in the wonderful world you have stuffed yourself into. Are you okay with you? With that? Find anyone wanting to be you lately? Oh. Well, go. And find yourself sailing, flying, soaring. Unstuck. You. Unstuffed. Free. Go!

Curiosity got the better of me. Who is this nuclear physicist from MIT who scored a perfect 800 in his SAT and worked as a consultant in San Francisco, quit and then returned to his native Hawaii to do performance poetry? His website is filled with photos, videos, and newspaper mentions. Why would he give up a career that would bring financial security for one which is paved with uncertainty?

Unable to attend the 31st March event, I mentally registered to look out for another opportunity. I had to see him perform his works live. I had to meet him in person. Something told me this was very important.

This morning 18th April 2011, I showed up at a reading event at 8:30 am in anticipation of seeing him perform. I watched him waiting for the event to start. His long straight hair flowed as he moved. His bright red T-shirt singled him out. I resisted the urge to go up and introduce myself. The clock was ticking. There was no sign of the event starting on time.

By sheer coincidence I struck up a conversation with an English writing lecturer who also had to leave by 9 am. She invited me to her class at 10:30 am for he was going to be there. I thanked my lucky stars.

If I were to bring something back from Hawaii to share with my friends and contacts in the Netherlands, I would definitely include Kealoha. He embodies the Hawaiian spirit of a person deeply connected to his roots and to nature. He moves with ease. He is at peace and at ease with himself. He is dynamic, lithe, supple, slender, and most of all, he is authentic. He makes eye contact. He looks at you without blinking. It’s as if there is no barrier between you, the audience, and him, the performer.

In the bungalow of the writing class, with the air conditioning switched off and the windows open, I and two dozen others experienced what I would later describe as the equivalent of a house concert. It was intimate, personal, and engaging. Kealoha began with a poem called “Recess.” He caught our attention and imagination for 6 whole minutes. We regressed to our 7-year old selves when we looked forward to playtime without a worry in the world.

Can music do this? Take us somewhere else, if only for a moment? I see many parallels between music and poetry: the way it’s delivered, the way the performer engages the audiences, the way the audience receives the performance.

Kealoha says that slam poetry is opposite of poetry reading, which has become one of writing poems to read for each other. This statement echoes of something I’ve heard before — that contemporary music has become so intellectual that only composers can appreciate it. If slam poetry is an attempt to bring the product back to the audience, what is the equivalent movement in classical music? I play new works of living composers — how can I deliver them to my audiences to increase the frequency of performance? How can I improve the way I perform my own compositions?

Audience engagement is the key. Kealoha does not merely perform but actively interacts with the audience in ways that are not immediately obvious. When he senses confusion, he slows down. When he senses distraction, he turns to focus his attention. He converts blank stares into looks of admiration. You feel his passion, his energy, and his dedication.

As a performer, I confess that I am not always aware of how I influence my audiences. I see tears in their eyes. I see smiles of appreciation. I go away thinking that they will sleep better at night. Today, as a member of the audience, I can genuinely say this:

I was touched, moved, and inspired. I felt what it was like to be a 7 year old again. I felt what it was like to be a Hawaiian in the 21st century. I got the messages he sent through his slam poetry performances. Most of all, I saw that he represented all that we want to be:

to find our passion and pursue it with conviction and without doubt or compromise.

Kealoha, slam poet of Hawaii at Maui College, 18th April 2011

Count down to guitar solo concert tour

Five hours before Dutch guitarist Robert Bekkers boards the airplane for his trans-Pacific and coast-to-coast red-eye (overnight) flight from Maui to Boston, he finishes a hearty meal at the cafeteria of Maui College famous for its award-winning Culinary Academy. Every Monday to Thursday between 11 am and 1 pm, Paina Meals at $5 a plate are served. Today he chose the more expensive $7.90 swordfish with purple potato as a send-off meal. He knows that there will be NO complimentary meals served on Hawaiian Airlines and Delta Airlines for the long journey.

Guitarist Robert Bekkers at Maui College in Hawaii

An e-mail from the concert host in Wells, Maine brings a reality check:

“As the day draws near, I’m praying for NO MORE SNOW! We’ve had so much with more expected, and I’m concerned about parking. There is just no more room to push the mountains of snow that have accumulated around the driveway.”

That concert of “Guitar meets Piano” will take place on Sunday 13th February, a day of travel for Robert Bekkers on the Boston T-line and the Amtrak. Before then, he will have given two house concerts in Boston. Valentine’s Day on Monday 14th February will be another day of travel, by Amtrak from Wells, Maine to Boston and then the Peter Pan coach to Manhattan.

What he brings to these concert hosts and their guests are three new CDs he produced in Maui: a solo guitar album and two live recordings of his Bekkers Piano Guitar Duo concerts in Maui and at Duke University. He hopes and expects the sale of these CDs to support this 3 week tour of Boston, Wells, Pelham, Houston, and Phoenix.