Soloflute?

Artistic Choice

2011-12-28T23:17:00.003-05:00

Do you watch PBS regularly enough to have seen "Arts in Cleveland... Artistic Choice"? This PBS mini-doc, made by Tom Ball, is an interesting look at the funding of the really rich arts scene in Cleveland. Featuring The Cleveland Orchestra, The Happy Dog (and our crew), Groundworks, and many others.
Watch it here.

Playing with love (and yearning) for PCMS

2011-11-27T18:20:00.001-05:00

I've put together a new recital program, "Day and Night I Call Only Love," with pianist Christina Dahl. We'll perform it Sunday, December 11 at CIM and Tuesday, December 13 for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Juliet Woods of PCMS posed some questions about the program:

JW: How did this program come together? Why did you choose these particular pieces?
JS: This program plays with love. Romanticism as a movement (with its corresponding expressions of turbulence, its manic energy, and its embrace of the awareness of the life cycle) and romance as a journey (and the corresponding life-affirmations that come from yearning, loving, hoping, resigning, and maybe eventually finding peace) are the philosophical currents that unite all of these pieces. Curating programs is one of my great joys, and these themes intersect here on so many levels that it's hard to talk about it briefly, but I'll try:

Schumann epitomized the role of the tortured lovelorn artist so completely that most all of his music seems autobiographical. While Three Romances has no specifically ascribed program, it embodies all of the above tendencies: it's tempestuous and yet calm, pushes and then pulls, feels simple but complicated. It's a soulful and spontaneous journey.

Debussy's use of Greek mythology reflected the Belle Epoque's fascination with exoticism. In Syrinx and Faun, Pan suffers the frustration of pining after elusive wood nymphs. They're intricately beautiful pieces, both connected not only to myth, but to French poetry, and both impressionistic and expressive. I've always thought of Syrinx not only as a tale of unrequited love, but as an exploration of creativity: Syrinx, the nymph, is transformed into riverside reeds, which Pan uses to create a flute, thus giving himself a way to express his love through music.

Schubert's songs explore boundaries between classicism and romanticism, using music and poetry to express love and loss. Die schöne Müllerin focuses on the unrequited love of a young man for a miller's daughter. In Trockne Blümen ("Dried Flowers"), the emotional turning point of the song cycle, the man considers suicide, equating his awareness of the seasonal cycle- that withering flowers may bloom again- with his reconciliation with death. Schubert, maybe more than anyone I can think of, played with harmony to create instantaneously shifting expressions of emotion, and the song captures psychological complexities in a very narrative way. Schubert, who had his own psychological struggles, expanded on this song's arc in his remarkably virtuosic variations for flute, so that each variation carries with it the narrator's internal struggle with yearning, his acceptance of winter/solace in death, and his vision of spring/hope for rebirth. The piece, being a set of variations, maps this psychological journey over and over, and, interestingly, manages to be more uplifting at its conclusion than the original song.

No one would think of Elliott Carter as a Romanticist, but I would, at least on the basis of Scrivo in Vento ("I Write in Air"), call him an Expressionist. The source of inspiration for Carter was Petrarch's Rime Sparse 212 ("Blessed with sleep, and content with languor.... I'm paid with tears and grief...") Again, unrequited love tortures the narrator of the poem, and the flutist/protagonist explores his manic struggles to find peace.

Carl Reinecke captures these struggles, too, in his "Undine" sonata. Undine, a water sprite, yearns for connection to the human world so that she may have a soul. Abandoning the water, she is raised by foster parents and falls in love with a knight, but must eventually choose between this love and her natural world in the sea. Water, here, paradoxically symbolizes both consciousness and rebirth as well as subliminal yearnings, again affirming life and its crazy mysteries.

JW: You have worked with pianist Christina Dahl before. Tell me a little more about what it’s like to work with her.

JS: Tina is brilliant and fun and funny. The creative process is a great adventure for us. I think she remembers anything she has ever heard, so she draws on a great wealth of anecdotes and allusions when we experiment with atmospheres and colors. She's greatly responsive, too, so even when we plan things, they don't always need to work exactly the same way twice-- there's a fantastically spontaneous feeling when we play together. And maybe the most inspiring thing I've taken from her is a sense that playing can be uncomplicated in many ways: "just get out of the way and sing" is a place that's easy to go with her.

JW: Not only are you the Principal Flute in The Cleveland Orchestra, you regularly appear as a soloist and as part of chamber ensembles. I am a violinist and the prospect of juggling that many commitments seems overwhelming to me, yet you seem to manage with such skill and ease. How do you balance all these different pursuits and still have time to practice?
JS: I try to convince myself that all of the pieces of my puzzle are not so different from one another. If I learn how to satisfy some aspect of orchestral playing, in other words, I can usually somehow apply that to chamber playing, and vice versa. And I'm pretty much always practicing, I've noticed, whether it's in front of an audience, or in my imagination when I take my dogs out. I find that all this juggling doesn't really become easier with experience (though I'm glad it appears that way!) But it does become more and more fun.

Playing Beethoven for Beer, part 3

2011-06-30T12:09:00.006-04:00

The Happy Dog hosted OMD 3 in 3D(ays) last night.

I have to say that my group of colleagues (from The Cleveland Orchestra: Amy Lee and Alica Koelz, violins, Joanna Patterson and Mark Jackobs, violas, Charles Bernard and Tanya Ell, cellos, Frank Rosenwein, oboe, and Richard Stout, trombone, and non-TCO guest pianist Tina Dahl) is a group that creates pure working and playing pleasure for me. The audience loves them all, too.

The bar is fantastic, welcoming, utterly relaxed, fun.

Rick mentioned that what we do there is just strange enough, just undefinable enough to be slightly uncomfortable for everyone involved. (One of our audience members echoed these thoughts in her blog, A Terror Musical, this morning.)

And I think that's what makes it fun. Is it a concert? Is it a bar hang? Are we socializing? Are we doing outreach? Are people there to eat? To listen? We exist in a non-category there: we're not rockers, certainly, but we're also not tuxedoed maestros. I found myself hearing our music in this context in a completely new way: Ravel rocks, and so does Bach. I love imagining someone else enjoying this thought for the first time.

Anyway, our set lists included music from:

Beethoven E-flat Major Piano Trio, op. 1, #1

Thea Musgrave Impromptu No. 1 for flute and oboe

Schumann Fantasiestücke for trombone and piano

Ravel String Quartet

Bach Double Concerto (oboe and violin)

Janacek String Quartet ("Kreutzer Sonata")

Rebecca Clarke Sonata for viola and piano

Beethoven Serenade, op. 25, for flute, violin, and viola

Delibes Flower Song from Lakmé, arranged for flute, oboe, and piano

Doppler "Souvenir de Prague" flute, oboe, and piano

Tchaikovsky "Souvenir de Florence" string sextet

Brahms B Major Piano Trio, op. 8

Elizabeth Raum Fantasy for trombone and piano

Poulenc Sonata for oboe and piano

Boismortier Duos for 2 cellos

Arthur Foote A Night Piece for flute and string quartet

It's Widmann Time!

2011-05-23T17:43:00.007-04:00

Jörg finished the piece, "Flute en suite" three weeks ago now? (I started getting it in installments two days after my last post, and haven't posted again because I've spent pretty much all my energy learning it.)

I love it. Aside from feeling a bit freaked about how the first rehearsal is going to feel tomorrow, especially with trying to assimilate the sound information that will finally be coming from all around me onstage, I'm very excited about this.

Here's The Plain Dealer's preview.

And here's ClevelandClassical.com's preview.

And here's WKSU's preview interview.

Here's the Schott preview.

Here's the Plain Dealer Review.

Here's the Concerto.net review.

Here's WCLV's Saturday night broadcast intermission interview.

Veering Towards A New Flute Concerto

2011-02-19T11:35:00.007-05:00

It's been a while. And it's not that nothing interesting has been happening. Just that life has moved along faster than I've had a chance to blog about it.

When people ask me how I'm doing lately, I have come to realize that there's a cloud hanging over the answer: fluteconcertofluteconcertofluteconcertofluteconcertofluteconcerto....

A few years ago, The Cleveland Orchestra approached me with the news that they'd commission a piece for me. Great. Fabulous, actually. I worked on listening to a lot of possible composers for a while. And I fell in love with the music of Jörg Widmann. He was commissioned. He was asked to be the orchestra's Dan Lewis Young Composer Fellow for 9/10 and 10/11. The concerto became the new work he would create during his fellowship. So, Dan Lewis, in effect, has become the major supporter of this concerto. I think that when Jörg's fellowship was announced, which was probably sometime in 2008, the date of performance was set: sometime in the 10/11 season. Officially, it's Memorial Day weekend, the last concerts of our main season. All Great. All Fabulous. All backstory.

More catching up with history: in the summer of 2008, Jörg and I crossed paths at Marlboro and Salzburg festivals. In Salzburg, we had a great sort of jam session, talking about ideas, moods, possibilities for the new piece. We saw each other next in fall, 2009, in Vienna. The orchestra played his "Chor" on tour. We had dinner with Dan Lewis and others in Vienna, we talked about how excited we were about the project.

The next time I saw him was about three weeks ago, in New York. TCO was on tour, Jörg was a guest at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. At this point, the concerto premiere date was four months away. He's still excited about the project. And the way he talks about his ideas makes me excited, too. I'm beyond excited, though: his ideas are still "in his head."

That means not down on paper yet.

Almost a month later, I haven't heard anything from him. I hope he's feeling better- he was pretty sick in New York, which set back his composing schedule. He's one of those rare guys who doesn't have email, so getting in touch with him to check in is complicated.

I don't think I'm complaining yet. I'm beyond excited, though, like I said earlier. (Read: "pretty freaked".) Of course, I want adequate time to learn the piece before an audience hears it. Usually, for me, that means longer than I now have for this one. It's not like I have nothing else to do in the meantime but learn a concerto, either. Concerts will keep coming and going as usual, all the way up until the Widmann finish line.

I can only imagine what he's going through, too. He knows there's a deadline. How would it be to have to create a piece, with all the pressure for it to be astonishingly successful and well-regarded by performers and audiences (and most importantly, by yourself) and know that you were running out of time to do that?

So I'm blogging about it. Don't know why, really. Maybe it'll end up being interesting to someone out there. The process between now and then, if the piece doesn't end up being postponed or canceled, will be, like Widmann's rep at Schott, Norman Ryan, said, "a roller coaster ride." Maybe I'll keep you posted on the ups and downs, if I can catch my breath on the way.

Beethoven for Beer: Orchestral Manoeuvres at the Dog

2010-10-22T15:19:00.013-04:00

A few months ago, I met Sean Watterson, co-owner of The Happy Dog, in the Gordon Square Arts District in Cleveland at a party thrown to raise awareness of the district. We chatted, and I realized that he presents musicians at the bar regularly. How about classical? He was game, and, thus, OMD was born.

I galvanized some colleagues from the orchestra: Frank Rosenwein, principal oboe, Amy Lee, associate concertmaster, Joanna Patterson, viola, and Charles Bernard, assistant principal cello to join me in an evening of chamber music at The Happy Dog. We called it an experiment. And it worked: there was a line out the door and up the block for most of our first set, there were lighters waved above heads, there was raucous cheering, there was an invitation to come back. And, there was a great article a few days later in The Plain Dealer.

On October 13, we did "The Second Mouvement." We were joined by a wonderful pianist, Christina Dahl. And this time, surprisingly, we had a preview featured dead center on The Plain Dealer's front page a couple of days before, coverage on NPR and in the New York Times, and a whole lot of classical-music-blogging. (There are a lot of these. See below for links.)

I wonder what has generated all of this excitement. As some of the writers have indicated, the idea's not really new: ClassicalRevolution chapters are popping up around the country, cellist Matt Haimovitz has been playing Bach to Penderecki in bars for a long time, and musicians used to do this sort of thing all the time in the 1800s. I'd be very interested in hearing any theories on where all this buzz is coming from...

Here's what's exciting for me: I think that people are more than ever eager to be engaged in process, not just product. Just think about the popularity of reality shows focused on behind-the-scenes, from Top Chef to Top Model. Or the ramping up of the slow food movement, which fosters an interest in where our food comes from- how it's grown, cared for, transported to us- and which, in turn, celebrates the experience of eating.

I love sharing what I do with people. And I love that I can do this in many ways. The concert hall experience is wonderful, and our orchestra is one of the best in the world. But bringing intimacy, connection, and, especially, awareness of how spontaneous and vital and alive classical music can be off the stage and into places where people least expect to engage with it might serve to draw people into the experience in a different way.

Thankfully, we've been very well received. And very well hosted. The staff at The Happy Dog is exemplary in making us (and their crowds of excited patrons) very comfortable. I'd love to do more of these. And I'd love to explore how and when and where to do others. In even more unusual places. Any ideas?

ClevelandClassical.com preview

The Plain Dealer front page preview

Blog post: Rosebrook Classical

piano moving day video

The Plain Dealer Metro section coverage

Blog post: for Chinese readers

NPR Weekend Edition coverage

New York Times Week in Review coverage

Blog post: Musicology for Everyone

Blog post: Public Relations for the Arts

Blog post: U of T Performing Arts Management

Blog post: Clue into Cleveland

Event report: ClevelandClassical.com

Blog post: KillingClassicalMusic

Blog post: Reno Philharmonic

October 13 sets included selections from:

Ernst Dohnanyi String Trio

Shostakovich Second Piano Trio

Bartok/Arma Hungarian Peasant Suite for flute and piano

van Appledorn Incantations for oboe and piano

Brahms G Minor Piano Quartet

Ravel Tzigane

Corigliano Violin Sonata

Piazzola Le Grand Tango for viola and piano

Copland Duo for flute and piano

Bolcom Old Adam Rag

Hetu Trio for oboe, violin, and piano

Villa Lobos Jet Whistle for flute and cello

Casadesus Oboe Sonata

Fauré Aprés un Reve for viola and piano

Shostakovich Cello Sonata

Debussy/Samuzlieh Afternoon of a Faun for flute and piano

Handel/Halvorsen Passacaglia for violin and viola

Plays Bach with Others: First Preview

2010-09-26T13:19:00.001-04:00

The Plain Dealer's Zachary Lewis spotlights five new recordings showcasing Cleveland that are due out in October, 2010.

Plays Bach With Others

2010-09-18T10:30:00.007-04:00

Due out on Delos October 26, 2010.

JS Bach Sonatas for Flute and Continuo, Musical Offering Trio Sonata

with Jory Vinikour, harpsichord, Ann Marie Morgan, baroque cello, Allison Guest Edberg, baroque violin.

Here's the trailer!

Notes on a Sequel

2010-09-18T09:58:00.010-04:00

I'm happy to announce that my newest Bach recording will be out on Delos on October 26, 2010.

This "sequel" includes The Flute and Continuo Sonatas and the Musical Offering Trio Sonata, with Jory Vinikour, Ann Marie Morgan and Allison Guest Edberg.

So I'm also happy to share some of our notes from the booklet:

Perspectives: The four performers comment individually on their experiences with the music of J.S. Bach, and on the making of this recording.

Joshua: All art forms have the capacity to express the human experience. And music, no matter what its style or period or usage, communicates with a power all its own.

Bach's embrace of humanity was metaphysical. His culture held deep and mystical beliefs about numbers and their universal meanings, respected classical ideals about the power of persuasive speech, and experimented with alchemy and its promise to transform everyday matter into gold (a process that carried philosophical and spiritual connotations). Each of these elements empowered Bach to create musical archetypes, clues that allowed his listeners to understand and make connections to their own lives.

Using deep symmetries of structure, expressive rhetorical gestures, and daring manipulations of tonality, Bach strove to render the human experience in sound. He did so fervently and with grace, creating an art that impresses us with its great form, rhythmic scope, gesture, and color. At the deepest level, his music speaks to us because it holds out the alchemical promise that we can transform all of these devices into inspiration in our imaginations.

Jory: Musicians could hardly find a more fertile meeting ground than Bach's music. The democratic aspect of his compositions and of baroque polyphony in general, with one musical line being the equal of the others, and various conversations taking place at any given moment, is a perfect metaphor for human relations: one or the other voice now leading, now responding, now commenting, with two of those voices (the harpsichord and cello) forming a unified front.

Joshua Smith and I met only a few years ago, but immediately found the shared musical affinities of old friends. Reading, performing, and finally recording J.S. Bach's sonatas for flute with obbligato harpsichord together brought us to a higher level of friendship. Perhaps this would have been the case regardless of repertoire. Yet Bach always summons us to the highest plane of musical dialogue, demanding our full attention to detail, and demanding all players’ full attention to each other. For this new recording, we added to our equation two of my longstanding friends, Ann Marie Morgan and Allison Guest Edberg, which was a joyous experience. I cannot imagine a happier encounter.

Ann Marie: I have always been drawn to the music of Bach. Even as a child, and especially as a teenager, I found that his music transported me to a place of peace and belonging. It made sense to me structurally and moved me emotionally. When I performed Bach for others, they told me that they had the same experience.

When Joshua, Jory, Allison, and I gathered to play Bach’s Musical Offering, we were a new combination of musicians, working together as a quartet for the first time. There were layers of connections, beginning with our own individual relationships to our musical lines and extending to our notions of how these lines might be woven together to create a connection to the piece overall. We delighted in discovering new friendships in this process, as well as rekindling older ones. And Bach’s music was at the root of it all, holding us together and towering over us, making sense to us and moving us, providing us with opportunities for connection to humanity and spirituality.

Allison: When I met Ann Marie Morgan at the Aspen Music Festival in 1981, we were traveling on the roads where young musicians find themselves: to festivals, conservatories, teachers, and coaches, all in an effort to make audible the beauty in our heads. Coincidentally and luckily, we both transferred from our respective schools to Peabody the following fall. There we met Jory Vinikour, a freshman pianist with a wicked sense of humor. In the years following our time together in Baltimore, our paths occasionally crossed, and we would always find great empathy and deep communication when we were together.

Years later enter Joshua Smith. Thanks to Jory’s recommendations and Joshua’s courage, we gathered in Cleveland and found that 30 years apart can be erased in a minute or two, and that music creates ways to connect with new friends immediately and powerfully. That is the magic of chamber music, in particular music as great as Bach’s. There could have been barriers between us: time, distance, age, even modern instruments combining with baroque ones. It could have been awful, but it worked beautifully.

My father often says, “Musicians are nicer than people.” I think it is just that focusing on a beautiful and noble project puts rose-colored glasses squarely on our heads. We are looking for goodness, and we find it. Those who fed us, those who recorded us, those who tuned and listened and drove us around were all part of the joy of this project. I am so grateful to them. And to those who let me join them on this road for a time, thank you.

Performance Today at Marlboro

2010-08-02T17:10:00.006-04:00

Performance Today visits Marlboro all this week.

(click above to hear music and interviews)

Orchestral Manoeuvres at the Dog

2010-07-11T14:28:00.002-04:00

The Plain Dealer's Zachary Lewis writes about our experiment at Happy Dog.

The making of Joshua Smith's second Bach CD, parts 1 and 2, from Cleveland Classical

2010-07-10T18:14:00.002-04:00

Part one

Part two

Spring into Summer, the final blast

2010-06-13T17:08:00.001-04:00

Spring into Summer, housed, for now, at Orchestra R/Evolution.org

Spring into Conversation, the sequel

2010-06-09T13:08:00.001-04:00

Here's the sequel, for now housed at Orchestra Revolution.

Spring into Conversation

2010-05-17T12:25:00.003-04:00

The League of American Orchestras is gearing up for its annual conference. This year, they've instituted a new concept: a blog covering any and all of any orchestra's big issues, with the goal that the blogging will help to illuminate and then to focus what will be dealt with in the conference.

I feel honored to have been asked to take part in the blog discussion. I don't know if I can offer answers, though, only lots of questions. I'm hoping that these will help to spark a discussion on a subject that I find completely fascinating.

Click here to read the questions.

Rational Alchemy

2010-04-30T12:33:00.011-04:00

"Music is the most elusive of the arts, and for that very reason its potentialities for subtlety are unsurpassed." Robert Donington, Wagner, The Ring and its Symbols

Robert Donington writes with zeal about a wide range of musical topics. Two of my favorite books about music are his, both the Ring Cycle book that includes the quote from above and Baroque Music, Style and Performance. I've had the great pleasure of poring over both of these books in the last year, as I've recently had the great pleasure of spending energy in both of these musical extremes: the continuation of my Bach sonatas recording project and a trip to Vienna to hear my first Ring Cycle.

The quote leapt out at me for several reasons. I'm trying to piece together an answer to the question, "Why does Bach's music still communicate after 250 years?" And while Donington's quote is in the context of Wagner, I think it sparks a lot of the feelings I have that surround my answer to the question. That the quote comes from someone who writes convincingly about both of these areas of interest only serves to underline for me the notion that music, no matter what its style or period or usage, carries the power to communicate.

Wagner, immersed in a culture that was beginning to embrace the psychological underpinnings of human behavior and to realize that these could be described through the archetypes of mythology, coded all sorts of universal themes and emotions in his music, and, of course, I'm sure that, subtle or not, the fact that his themes are so human plays a huge role in the translation and timelessness of his music.

Bach, from such a different time, and seemingly of such different persuasions, was immersed in a culture that, of course, was no less fascinated by human feeling. Bach's embrace of humanity was metaphysical. His culture was dominated by superstitions about numbers and their universal meanings, experimentations with alchemy and its promise of transformation of everyday matter into gold (which carried philosophical and spiritual connotations) and fascinations with classical ideals about the power of persuasive speech. All of these elements empowered Bach to write music that is no less connected to emotion than Wagner's.

Both composers relied on harmony and tonality to symbolize feeling. Both relied on the power of language and the vulnerability of the human voice to express specific thoughts. Both wrote for listeners who would immediately understand and make connections to their own culture through sound. So the music, at either time period, wasn't all that subtle, really. But music is, essentially, abstract. And yet it speaks. Still.

Happily, as a musician who has the opportunity to live inside of the sound world of both composers (and many more) on a daily basis, I sense that the clues that may now, after so many years, seem subtle, are still translatable. Bach's clues were based in philosophy and spirituality whereas Wagner's were based in psychology and mythology. But the clues are universal.

Bach used structure, linguistic gestures and manipulations of tonality to render the human experience in sound. That he did it fervently and with grace, creating art that holds not only the actuality of great form, rhythmic scope, gesture and color but also the (alchemical?) promise that we can transform all of these devices into inspiration in our imaginations is what allows his music to speak to all of us. Now.

Happy Birthday, JS Bach

2010-03-22T05:47:00.001-04:00

It's been a long time since I managed to sit down and write. Basically, I've been obsessed with Bach for the last six weeks, except when I was obsessed with Mozart, having had the thrilling opportunity to take part in a TCO production of Così fan Tutte. Jory Vinikour and Erica Brenner and I are getting back together again next month to make another JS Bach record. This time, it's the flute and continuo sonatas (BWVs 1033-35), with Ann Marie Morgan, cello, and The Musical Offering Trio Sonata (BWV 1079), adding Allison Edberg, violin.

I'm becoming excited about the project now. For a few weeks, I was crazed with the logistics of the process-- is everyone going to be able to be in town at the same time, are we going to be able to secure a space, how about securing a harpsichord?-- then, I started imagining my way through the pieces again. And again. And again. Sometimes, I'm met with inspiration, or glee, or wonder. Sometimes I'm met with doubt or surprise. But I always feel that the challenge of confronting art and thinking carefully about how it might be interpreted is awesome, both in the responsibilities it engenders and in the richness of thought and feeling it reaps. My favorite part about imagining my way through Bach is that there is so much room for choice, so many different ways of turning the kaleidoscope. I have a feeling that this may have been the case 280 years ago, when this music was new, too. But having long lost any kind of ability to know if there are "right" answers to questions of style and composer's intentions, the concept of interpretation rather than re-enactment is vital.

Essential, too, though, is some kind of ability to make decisions that aren't arbitrary. It's fascinating, then, to combine a study of the music with studies written about the music, both by artists and thinkers who were around when it was written (or nearly), and by artists who are faced with the same paradigm of looking back and wondering. I have assembled a collection of quite a few favorite quotes, and will add to it as I find some more. At some point, as I process all of this, I might find myself writing reactions to them. But for now, it's just a collection of striking thoughts that I'd like to share.

From Baroque Music Today: Music As Speech, by Nicholas Harnoncourt:

"Musicology should never become an end in itself, but rather provide us with the means to make the best rendition, since a performance is only faithful to the original when a work is allowed to come most beautifully and clearly to expression, something which happens only when knowledge and a sense of responsibility ally themselves with the deepest musical sensitivity." NH, p.17

"Music and musical practice, after all, were by no means uniform at the time... Basically, we find that a common practice, those normal, common aspects of musicianship, were never recorded in... texts." NH, pp. 32-3

"'faithfulness to the work' appears to me the worst enemy of an honest interpretation, because it attempts to make music out of what is written down-- while ignoring the underlying meaning. Notation as such cannot convey a piece of music, but only serves as a point of reference. The only person who is faithful to the work, in the true meaning of the word, is the performer who recognizes what the composer intended to convey with the notes and plays them accordingly." NH, p. 49

From Johann Georg Neidthart (1685-1739):
"The ultimate purpose of music is to excite all the emotions through the tones and their rhythm alone, in the manner of the best speaker."

From Joachim Quantz (1697-1773):
"Music is nothing other than an artificial language."
"Delivery is poor when everything is sung without warmth or played at the same level without alteration of Piano and Forte,... one contradicts the Passions that should be expressed, or executes everything in general without sensitivity, without Passion, without being moved one's self, so the impression is given that the musician is singing or playing as an agent for someone else."

From Bach and the Baroque, by Anthony Newman:

"It is evident that the principles governing... rhythmic alterations and freedoms are not exempt from gross exaggeration and misapplication. On the other hand, they must not be ignored or denied, as they were and are during this (our) century, in which such phrases as "utmost precision," and "mathematical exactitde" were used to describe the ideal performance of Bach's music. It is only when these principles (of rubato and freedom) are applied that a work of this period can, in fact, achieve and artistic unity and focus." AN, p. 74

"Proper articulation or realization of slurred groups is of utmost importance in the realization of correct stylistic--metric, signature and rhytmic--performance concepts of the 18th century. These considerations take precedence over the 19th century 'long line' concept... The 'line' is composed of many small groupings which add up to it." AN, p. 116

"Baroque music is filled with 'affect.' It is evident that the music is intended to convey this 'affect' at all times. The question is to find the proper 'affect' for each piece and to use the various devices described to bring out the primary energy and focus of the piece in the most direct way. It is, above all, a proper rubato that is necessary for the proper realization of this music that was written with various kinds of durational stresses in mind. These variations were never produced mechanically. The selection and identification of strong measures, and of strong places within measures, is one of the most important creative problems to be solved by a performer of this music." AN, pp. 249-50

From Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791):
"(The performer should play) so that one believes that the music was composed by the person who is playing it."

From Johann Mattheson (1681-1764):
"If one wants to stir others through harmonies, one must be able to express all the feelings of the heart, by skillfully combining selected sounds, without words, so that the listener is able to fully comprehend and clearly understand the thrust, the meaning, the purpose and the emphasis with all relevant segments and paragraphs as if it were an actual speech. Only then is it a pleasure!... Instrumental melody... endeavors to say as much without the help of words and voices as voices do with words... Our musical structures differ from the rhetorical devices of pure speech only in their plan, themes or objects: therefore they must observe the same six elements that are prescribed for a speaker: introduction, statement, proposition, argument, refutation and conclusion."

From "Bach and the Patterns of Invention", by Laurence Dreyfus:

"... historical propriety means avoiding explanations for a piece of music that one can assert to have been utterly inconceivable to the composer. Pragmatically, this means being suspicious of terms that collide with well-established concepts and assumptions current in Bach's day, while at the same time daring to theorize beyond what can be reconstructed form explicit statements of 18th century music writings." LD, p. 27

From Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762):
"Even in common speech a difference of tone gives the same word a different meaning."

From François Couperin (1668-1733):
"Just as there is a gulf between grammar and eloquence, there is the same infinity between notated music and music played well."

From The End of Early Music, by Bruce Haynes:

"The attributes of Period style like phrasing by gesture, dynamic nuance, inflection (individual note shaping), tempo rubato, agogic accents and note placing, pauses, and beat hierarchy all tend to run counter to the predictable, the automatic, the machine-like regularity of Modern style." BH, p. 59

"The Achilles' heel of Period performance is Modernism, whose root is fear of Romanticism... Many Period performers are so anxious to avoid Romantic style that they draw into their shells and cease to be visible at all. This is not difficult to do, because the same mechanism is normal among Modernist performers." BH, p. 61

"A practical outcome of thinking in phrases as well as gestures is that fragmentation is avoided, and gestures give the impression of leading somewhere. Phrasing also increases the options for timing. Timing is waiting or not waiting just the right amount to get the maximum of meaning from the music." BH, p. 195

"... the process of trying in all seriousness to achieve Authenticity changes us, and the familiar world around us, and generates something new, beautiful, and interesting." BH, p. 226

I welcome any reactions. And I welcome ideas about the new record cover art, too!

Sweet Beauty Hath No Name

2010-01-03T21:48:00.010-05:00

Joshua Smith, flute and Laura Perrotta, speaker

in concert January 13, 2010

Mixon Hall, The Cleveland Institute of Music

Fantasias for solo flute (TWV 40:2-13)

by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

Sonnets by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The more that I look at, dive into, and work through the solo fantasies for flute by Telemann, the more I realize how rich they are. Telemann used a creative wealth of virtually everything that was available to him to compose music that not only stands alone as a set of formally well-constructed pieces, but also as a cycle of poems, with the flutist as protagonist, reflecting the human experience in tonal imagery. These pieces capture the composer's interest in nature, his experience with the dance idioms of his time, his quirky use of the instrumentalist as singer or speaker, his manipulation of tonality to evoke mood, atmosphere and sensibility. To celebrate the cyclic nature and the poetic elements of these works, I have invited Laura Perrotta, of the Great Lakes Theater Festival, to join me in preceding each fantasy with a reading of an analogous sonnet from the folio of William Shakespeare. JS

Here's a (live) recording of the concert!

Sonnet 65

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o'ersways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O how shall summer's honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation: Where, alack,

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Fantasy 1, A Major

Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon my self and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,

For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Fantasy 2, A Minor

Sonnet 98

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud-pied April (dressed in all his trim)

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,

That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue,

Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:

Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,

As with your shadow I with these did play.

Fantasy 3, B Minor

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Fantasy 4, B-flat Major

Sonnet 102

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear:

That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming

The owner's tongue doth publish every where.

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays,

As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burthens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue,

Because I would not dull you with my song.

Fantasy 5, C Major

Sonnet 34

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,

And make me travel forth without my cloak,

To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,

Hiding thy brav'ry in their rotten smoke?

'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,

To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,

For no man well of such a salve can speak,

That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:

Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;

Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:

Th' offender's sorrow lends but weak relief

To him that bears the strong offence's cross.

Ah but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,

And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.

Fantasy 6, D Minor

Sonnet 128

How oft, when thou, my music music play'st

Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,

At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!

To be so tickled they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips

O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more blest than living lips.

Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

Fantasy 7, D Major

Sonnet 24

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled

Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;

My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,

And pérspective it is best painter's art.

For through the painter must you see his skill,

To find where your true image pictured lies,

Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,

That hath his windows glazèd with thine eyes.

Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:

Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me

Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun

Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,

They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

Fantasy 8, E Minor

Sonnet 43

When most I wink then do mine eyes best see,

For all the day they view things unrespected,

But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,

And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.

Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,

How would thy shadow's form form happy show

To the clear day with thy much clearer light,

When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!

How would (I say) mine eyes be blessèd made,

By looking on thee in the living day,

When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade

Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!

All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

Fantasy 9, E Major

Sonnets 73 and 74

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self that seals up all in rest.

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

But be contented when that fell arrest

Without all bail shall carry me away,

My life hath in this line some interest,

Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.

When thou reviewest this, thou dost review

The very part was consecrate to thee:

The earth can have but earth, which is his due;

My spirit is thine, the better part of me.

So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,

The prey of worms, my body being dead,

The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,

Too base of thee to be rememberèd:

The worth of that is that which it contains,

And that is this, and this with thee remains.

Fantasy 10, F-sharp Minor

Sonnet 15

When I consider every thing that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheerèd and checked even by the selfsame sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory:

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay

To change your day of youth to sullied night,

And all in war with Time for love of you,

As he takes from you, I ingraft you new.

Fantasy 11, G Major

Sonnet 115

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you dearer;

Yet then my judgement knew no reason why

My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.

But reckoning Time, whose millioned accidents

Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,

Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,

Divert strong minds to th’course of alt'ring things--

Alas, why, fearing of Time's tyranny,

Might I not then say “Now I love you best,”

When I was certain o'er incertainty,

Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?

Love is a babe: then might I not say so,

To give full growth to that which still doth grow.

Fantasy 12, G Minor

Bach in the Moment

2009-12-15T12:09:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, I can be clever. But I haven't thought of the best name for the new Bach teaser video.

And I don't think it can be embedded here, either. It's pretty big. It's high-def.

Here's a link (another, just in case the one three sentences ago wasn't tempting enough). Let me know what you think. And help me come up with a name.

Album's Out, Twelve Cities in 26 Days

2009-11-22T10:50:00.008-05:00

I'm glad to be home, waking up in my own bed, playing flute from my own seat in Severance Hall. The past month has been great, exhilarating, tiring, educational, luxurious. I haven't quite processed any of it enough to be writing, I think, but here I am on a Sunday morning, a week after getting home, looking at this blog, and thinking, "C'mon, Josh. You haven't updated since September 3rd."

So, a quick one. Traveling around the world to play music is one of those things that makes me think, giddily, "I get paid to do this?" Playing chamber music with musicians I adore is another one. I've been doing a lot of both for the last few weeks, in and out of the orchestra, in and out of quite a few exciting places.

...soaking up the rhythm of a new place eating walking shopping getting lost hanging out reading on park benches getting rained on listening to new halls wearing pink hair taking trains staying up far too late waking up far too late enjoying museums enjoying applause...

It's all good. Perhaps the greatest part of it all for me these days, though, is not the collection of serendipitous adventures, amazing as those can be, but the luxury that comes from knowing that I get to do only one thing: playing. I'm traveling to perform, so life (because it's not being lived at home) is condensed, as much as I want it to be, into sleeping, eating and creating. And that's luxurious.

Oh, yes, and along the way, on October 27th, Delos released the Bach Sonatas.

Speaking in Sound

2009-09-03T12:07:00.009-04:00

Within weeks, my recording of the sonatas for flute and harpsichord and the solo partita of J.S. Bach (with harpsichordist Jory Vinikour) will be out on Delos. In celebration, here's a reprint of some of my thoughts from the CD booklet.

SPEAKING IN SOUND

Musical interpretation is a captivating process about which most artists have more questions than answers. When I became serious about playing the flute, the sonatas of J.S. Bach were the first “real” music I approached. In the 25 years since, prevailing opinions on how to interpret this music have changed dramatically. From a stalwart regimen, with every note in time and in tune, through the insistence that baroque music could convincingly be performed only on period instruments, to the more relaxed understanding that historical reproduction is impossible, questions about how to interpret this increasingly distant style of music seem to multiply with time.

Baroque music is a highly personal, even improvisational style that can and should be approached with a sense of lightness and cheer. Bach’s sonatas for flute and keyboard are wonderful dialogues, equally demanding of the musicianship of both partners. Working with Jory Vinikour is a pleasure because we respond to each other in ways that transform our performances into unrestrained conversations. We have tried to capture this spontaneity in these recordings.

Bach composed his flute sonatas in the early eighteenth century, likely while he was in his thirties. I spent a large part of my own thirties thinking about and experimenting with appropriate and convincing ways to interpret these pieces. Although I don’t perform them on a period instrument, my respect for the music compels me to seek the most authentic historical perspective I can find. Picking up a baroque flute is a good way to begin, but I find the challenge of projecting historical style on my own instrument at least as rewarding. Style, after all, originates in creative thinking, not in the tools used to translate thoughts into actions.

Currently, I am most interested in the intersection of baroque music and rhetoric. Composers of the period were well versed in the classical study of the persuasive use of language, and their music reflects this training. For example, the compositional style of these works mirrors the construction of well-sculpted paragraphs or stanzas, and their intimacy invites the listener to share directly in a spectrum of feelings. The performer is like an actor who seeks to reveal the human experience inherent in the words of a great sonnet. “What does not come from the heart,” wrote J. J. Quantz in his treatise On Playing the Flute (1752), “will not easily touch the heart.”

Understanding and utilizing devices that highlight the use of rhetoric in composition has led me to an interpretation of baroque music that feels true to the period, particularly because of its obvious connection to speech. I focus on these concepts: using the human voice as a model for what an instrument can express; arranging notes into small linguistic gestures instead of large architectural phrases; cultivating a sensitivity to the implications of harmonic changes; responding to this awareness with timbral fluctuations; and adding inflection with a subtle use of rubato, vibrato, and note emphasis. Balancing all of these ideas fosters a style that is both personal and communicative. In the end, the goal, for Jory and for me, is to play Bach's glorious music in ways that feel appropriate yet inevitable: direct, fresh, and alive in the moment.

--Joshua Smith

On Teaching, Sound, and Being an Artist, 3

2009-06-26T14:39:00.018-04:00

a conversation with Joshua Smith

interview conducted by Madeline Lucas

note: Maddi Lucas, who recently earned her Bachelor of Music degree from CIM, interviewed me to satisfy her Pedagogy credit. I liked the way the interview turned out, and I'd like to share it here, in several episodes.

read Part One: Sound Development

read Part Two: Technique

Part Three: Teaching and Artistry

ML: Moving on to a new topic area. Regarding students' personalities, how can a student develop without feeling like work is a chore?

JS: That depends on the student. I hope that I can encourage students to realize that we can cultivate the idea that practicing unlocks secret parts of ourselves that are interested in how all of this works. Practicing is not about sitting and pressing buttons, and it's not a task. It's an adventure, I really believe that. Hopefully, this is encouraging, but I think the key to whether a student is ready for this approach lies in his or her personality.

ML: What sort of an attitude does a student need to become successful? When you are dealing with students, do you have a rigid philosophy or do you take it on a student-by-student basis?

JS: I definitely go by the student. I don't believe that teaching with rigidity works. I hope that what I can present is a very high standard of what my expectations are. Very few things upset me when dealing with a student. Sometimes that's a problem-- some students respond better to penalty and negative reinforcement, but providing that for them doesn't come naturally to me. Not only does everyone learn differently, everyone sounds different, so I don't expect everyone to sound like I sound. I can push, for example, in the sense of, "this is the kind of sound I have in my head, and this is how you sound different," but I do that in order for a student to develop a consciousness about how close they are coming to giving what they think they're giving. I'm pointing out a level they might attain, and a means to get there, and then trying to help them understand the difference between where they are and where they want to go.

ML: If a student isn't playing expressively, or doesn't seem to be really engaged, how do you motivate her?

JS: Well, you can't really make someone be more musical. But you can, I hope, encourage the possibility by demonstrating that it's possible to be interesting, possible to be committed, and that it's actually more fun to be so. What can irritate me the most when listening to musicians who are recognized for what they do is the realization that there is a lack of personal investment. What this whole thing is about is communication, communicating with passion and intensity, communicating creatively and beautifully. I mean beautifully in a broad sense, here, not that it always has to be pretty. That it certainly always has to be artistically driven. When I begin to sense that someone is not taking the risk to go for that kind of expression, I get frustrated. I share that with students. But, how to help them get better? Everyone is creative. Some people need to be invited to become vulnerable, encouraged to take risks, applauded when they say something in an interesting way. Sometimes, it's a matter of inviting someone to discover something he hadn't considered before, something that can open doors.

ML: How much do you play for your students in lessons?

JS: It totally varies by student. One of the things that is so challenging about teaching is that everyone needs something different, at a different time, in a different way. I try to be aware of this, but I give what I have to give, right? Knowing that each student learns in a different way encourages me to be a chameleon. I do think some learn by ear and by example, some by explanation, some by question, some by answer. I do play more, rather than less, if only to illustrate possibilities and/or expectations. Playing along with some students can help, too, for developing ear awareness and for cultivating a sense of how to phrase. I do find myself playing more now in lessons than I used to, and usually find it a pretty efficient method. But some people would rather have you explain than demonstrate.

ML: Do you recommend exercises, either warm-ups or études?

JS: I do. I think that playing anything is important, again, to cultivate awareness of how you do what you do, and études tend to throw a very particular problem at you and force you to figure out how to solve it. Always start by asking yourself, "Why was this étude written? What is it trying to teach me?" Études that are "musical" are maybe more useful than the kind of rote exercise you're going to get from scales and arpeggios anyway. Even more important than études are warm-up exercises. These can be rote, but what they need to be first and foremost is body-and-mind-awakening, so you start consciously reacting to what you sound like and adjusting things in order to sound different.

ML: What kind of warm-up exercises do you do, or recommend?

JS: I have been interested in some new ones lately; I'm always changing them around. Recently, I found a couple of really great tone-opening and body-relaxing exercises in Moyse's book How I Stayed in Shape, and also some great ones in Trevor Wye's tone development book. The Moyse exercises throw interval jumps at you that are uncomfortable, where one or both of the notes won't easily speak, in keys that are difficult to play in, so you have to figure out how to navigate your airstream so that the interval won't break. The ultimate goal, then, is to figure out how to make the phrase sound smooth and beautifully sung. The Wye exercises are similar, but involve closer intervals, with the goal of consistency and color development. These ideas are wonderful to include in the morning exercise routine. Long tones and half steps are great, too, in pairs or in longer strings of notes. Here, you're listening to how notes sound next to each other and how well they match as you go along.

I have always rotated my warm-ups. When I first realized that it was important to improve and that exercising would help me to do so, I had a need for variety. I'm the kind of person who does not like to do the same thing in the same way every day; I resist routine. I also realize that there can be some comfort in routine, but balancing this with my personality is a good trick. Most important, your exercises need to address real issues in your playing. The minute I realize I'm having a particular problem, like, "gee, my middle register doesn't sound good today," I start looking for an exercise that will help me to improve that aspect. Tailor your warm-ups to what you need in real time.

ML: Where do you begin in the flute repertoire? Once you have the basics, many teachers have a strict plan about which pieces to move through.

JS: I don't know if there's a good "should" for that; I think this will vary from student to student. Frank Bowen, my great teacher in grades 5-12, directed me towards Flute Music by French Composers early on. Chaminade, Enesco, Fauré develop an awareness of bel canto style and include passages that are about building technique. I sort of hate to say this, but I think all music is difficult on some level, if you are truly trying to get everything possible out of it... But the challenges in French salon music are not insurmountable and the pieces are fun to play. They build an openness of expression; you want to be extroverted in how you approach them, sometimes dramatic, though sometimes intimate. So there's a lot of possibility for creativity. I would steer younger students toward these types of pieces.

A little later, Frank and I dove into the Bach sonatas. I wouldn't recommend this for every student, but I do think that Bach is also a great place to start becoming aware of phrasing and musical details, just in a completely different way from the French salon pieces. It's a good thing for young students to be faced with need to adapt their basic approaches entirely to suit the specific style of each piece. Obviously, moving from Chaminade to Bach can teach this lesson clearly.

ML: Do you think it is better for a student to be playing something that is a little too difficult, or can this be discouraging?

JS: I think it is best to play something within the realm of possibility. Too easy is silly, too; having goals is important, but reaching them needs to be possible. Finding a balance here is an important element of teaching.

ML: I know from experience that you allow a lot of liberty when it comes to picking pieces and developing recital programs. Many teachers have a rigid curriculum. Why do you choose a freer approach?

JS: Simply, I think you will play a better recital if you actually picked the program. Students really need to learn what constitutes a good program, and will be a lot more motivated by and dedicated to the music if they are in charge of this process. I'll weigh in once in a while when I think that a student is having issues with something and I can think of a piece that will help him to battle these specific problems.

ML: What are some keys from your teachers that you always make sure to include in your lessons? Not just flute things, but along the lines of artistry and musicality.

JS: Frank Bowen talked a lot to me about music as art. He taught me about the strong difference between being a good flute player and being a good musician. Even if I don't tell a student what that difference is, the invitation to think about this is important. Julius Baker and Jeffrey Khaner were good for me because they were both very good at directing me towards becoming a better flute player, raising the level of what I expected from myself.

ML: Why are you an artist, and in this rapidly changing world, where is the role of the artist going?

JS: I don't know... that's a good question. I don't know. I am. I have never really tried not to be.

I think I have always allowed myself to express myself by making, by creating. That applies to everything from playing the flute to cooking, doodling, teaching... I basically do everything with some thought about how it can be better, how I can do it differently. I don't know if that answers your question. Art is important for life, creativity and beauty and poetry in the world around us foster love and peace... I know these are really broad ideas but they are timeless, and I don't see them ever disappearing. I think as long as humans are around, there will be creative output. Vehicles of expression might change and evolve, but the goal will always be the same.

ML: There seems to be a lot more input into the art world than ever before, so there is a lot more opportunity for different art.

JS: That's cool! Especially the collaborative aspect that technology allows. Working with partners to build something that hasn't been built before is ultimate progress. Change is good. Change is creativity, actually. If you allow yourself the possibility to realize that, then you are opening yourself up to many more possibilities.

ML: As an artist, how do you handle self-doubt? Or is it even a problem?

JS: I don't know if it is a problem, but it certainly is a constant. Sometimes doubt expresses itself as a problem, sometimes it doesn't. Consciously building an awareness of both self-doubt and self-confidence is helpful. Self-doubt, in a way, will never leave, so how you manage it becomes the important question. There are aspects of it that allow you to be open to change and creativity, because self-doubt forces you to look at yourself honestly. If you realize there's something that needs to change, you can choose to change it positively and constructively, and evolution can't hurt. I'm finding it really effective (though I've known this for a long time, it's a lesson that keeps coming back to me in different ways) to remind myself that I can approach difficulties with an open-minded question. Instead of the negative, "What's going to go wrong?" you can choose something more like,"What am I going to do that's cool today?"

read Part One: Sound Development

read Part Two: Technique

Poems for a summer morning

2009-06-26T09:53:00.003-04:00

ODE TO INSPIRATION

Campbell McGrath

Then the imagination withdraws, drifts across the table

to investigate the glass flowers rolled in cloth tape.

It hovers, probes the petals, some like galaxies,

some like figs or seashells. Dutiful and penitent,

it shimmers back across the gulf of air,

without a metaphor, to doze away the afternoon.

Rain.

Unreasonably hot day.

Imagination is the builder, the worker bee,

but inspiration is the queen.

And when she leaves me, where does she go

if not back to the hive to gorge on royal jelly,

back into her cave of winds, accumulating

density, growing richer and darker,

like mercury in the bloodstream,

like extravagant honey.

~Campbell McGrath

from THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD

Wallace Stevens

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

~Wallace Stevens

On Teaching, Sound, and Being an Artist, 2

2009-06-18T16:43:00.014-04:00

a conversation with Joshua Smith

interview conducted by Madeline Lucas

read Part One: Sound Development
read Part Three: Teaching and Artistry

Part Two: Technique

ML: What are the basic building blocks of a good flute technique?

JS: I think there's a lot of room for possibility in that question. As far as developing finger technique goes, it's best to work slowly and steadily over a long period of time. I know, for example, that my technique is still getting better, and that there are things that I can do easily now that I couldn't do when I was your age. Physical growth comes from exercising muscles and becoming aware of how you're using them. Part of that is psychological, becoming conscious of how you use your body; that leads to the part that is physiological. Your muscles have to grow up and get the message that you're building them by practicing.

That said, it's important to have a stable practice routine. Scales and arpeggios are great for this, especially because they build an awareness of key areas. I'm going on a tangent away from your question, I know, but key areas are the root of what makes sound, or what makes music interesting; that's the language we speak-- in varying different keys. Using scales as a way not only to develop your fingers but also to be aware of color (that one key sounds different from another) makes practicing technique interesting.

ML: How should one hold the flute? Maybe that's an elementary question.

JS: No, it's a great question. It comes naturally to me, so (maybe unfortunately) I find myself not worrying about it with students until they have a problem. I think the right hand does most of the work balancing the weight of the flute, but it shouldn't be a gripping, hard kind of work-- again, it's all about using your body efficiently and with awareness. As a general rule, the right thumb needs to be positioned so that you when you hold the instrument vertically, just with your right hand, it feels straight and well balanced. (For me, this means under the flute, just about between the keys you play with your first and second fingers.) Then you just lean the flute to your left hand and allow it to rest there. You don't want the thumb buckling, because you don't want the right wrist to bend; you want the wrist to be as straight a plane as possible from your palm to your elbow. That way, you have more flexibility in your fingers.

ML: Other than slow practice, which hopefully everyone does, what do you do when you get to a passage that you're just stuck on?

JS: A lot of the ways I fix problems are practice games that I made up when I was in high school and college. And since they worked, they became parts of my technical routine.

Slow, steady practice is great. The metronome helps by building a sense of pulse in everything that you do. Pulse runs music, so you can't let go of that. But the best reason to use a metronome for improving a technical passage is that it provides a goal: you know what tempo you need to reach, and you back off of that, building confidence and finger ability by degree.

Backing off and working slowly is also important because, when you get stuck with a problem, usually the reason lies in some sort of physical tension that you need to understand to get rid of. If you quickly just go over and over the problem spot, you're forcing your hands to do something that isn't working, and you're creating tension at the same time that you're reinforcing a bad habit. When you back off, you allow your mind time to process what is wrong, and to figure out how to fix it. Asking, "am I hearing every note cleanly, the way I want to?" is a way to build consciousness about what's happening.

While we're talking about slow practice, here's an example of a practice game for a tricky passage. Try a chain of beats, let's say A, B, and C, stopping at the downbeat of D. Work that out, then do B, C, and D, stopping at the downbeat of E. Then C, D, E, stopping at F, and so on. So you're working out segments, but always bridging the connection from one to the next. This is a very effective technique, and one I would do at any tempo, but certainly the best is gradually building it from a slow tempo towards your ultimate goal.

Doing the same thing in reverse, starting at the end of a passage and going backwards (the last beat, the last two beats, the last three beats, until you've started at the beginning and played through it) also tends to be really effective.

But always start with a question that forces you to listen and focus: "What note am I not hearing? Why? What do I need to do to fix that?" And then you're on your way.

ML: Sometimes, you mark a "retake" sign in my music. Does this have to do with your segments of beats?

JS: The "retake" concept has to do with note grouping, yes; it's a Baker exercise. Julius Baker developed a practice system that has to do with breaking up large chains of notes into smaller patterns, usually avoiding simply a beat- to- beat pattern. This can apply to notes within a measure or measures within a phrase, and when you understand where it's helpful to "retake" (which can mean "refresh support", "lift the phrase", "remind your brain to concentrate on a particular note combination", whatever) you're again fixing what you understood to be a problem. Which note isn't speaking? OK: that's the one that needs a little extra help... That's where I'd put the flag.

ML: It seems like with both sound and technique you take a sort of mental, intellectual approach. Is that a fair characterization?

JS: Definitely. And that's why I enjoy practicing, actually. I think practicing is like a retreat from daily life into something that is meditative. The idea that you can foster an awareness of what you're doing and how you're doing it, and that you can go on a little journey to make it better, is really fascinating to me. Practicing is a constant mental exercise, and that's what makes it fun. You can solve musical problems technically and technical problems musically, and the whole time, you're on an adventure.

read Part One: Sound Development

read Part Three: Teaching and Artistry

On Teaching, Sound, and Being an Artist

2009-06-16T11:27:00.014-04:00

a conversation with Joshua Smith

interview conducted by Madeline Lucas

read Part Two: Technique

read Part Three: Teaching and Artistry

Part One: Sound Development

ML: Our first topic is developing tone. What is your sound concept and how do you convey it to your students?

JS: Sound is so interesting. It's the first thing that anyone notices about your playing, so, of course, it bears a lot of thinking about. I have mixed feelings, though, about the importance of sound. On one hand, I spend a lot of time developing a particular sound, my voice, and, then, on the other hand, I try not to think about sound as a blanket concept. If you're only focused on making one particular sound, you can end up using that all the time, and then there's no flexibility built into your playing. So I think everyone should develop his or her own approach, through a process of experimentation with many different possible approaches, learning how to be flexible, learning how to develop a palette of color possibilities.

It's good to understand not only what a good sound is, but also what a bad sound can be: it's not always important to sound beautiful-- there are reasons, sometimes, to make other choices.

Overall, I think the basic concept of sound has a lot to do with what I call "resonance," the idea that sound is both focused and round. Allowing it to be that way is based on your body and how you are physically created, as well as on what kind of instrument you are using. What you allow to come through the instrument should spin in a way that the sound isn't forced and that it can always ring into the space you're in. But, again, I feel that if you only think about making a beautiful, blanket sound, maybe you're not being as interesting as possible.

ML: Are you saying, then, that sound is more of a personal choice?

JS: I think it has to be personal, yes. Anyone has a simple, sort of instinctive, knee-jerk reaction to what you sound like. So, when I am working for myself, I have quick reactions to what I like and don't like about my sound, too. I guess I'm just saying that it's really important to develop flexibility and creativity in the way you approach what you sound like.

We were just talking about Madeline Bruser's The Art of Practicing, and I think that one of the ways she talks about practicing meditatively has to do with hearing yourself and reacting to how you sound in the moment. You're listening to how you sound, striving both for consistence across registers and control over sound within a broad dynamic and color spectrum, but you're also taking it a step further, reacting to the specific context and creating a special sound for that context.

ML: What roles do breathing and support play in your sound concept and production of sound? How do you view breathing?

JS: Are we talking about inhaling or exhaling?

ML: Exhaling, to phrase.

JS: Well, how you blow, how you control your airstream has everything to do with how you sound. Learning to control the air-speed, using all parts of your body in the process, you understand how your body affects whether the air (and therefore the sound) is relaxed or constricted, big or small, resonant or forced, more or less focused. The velocity of air across the instrument has everything to do with how you sound.

ML: If a student came in and wasn't supporting well enough, how would you counsel her?

JS: My working definition of "supporting": take a nice, deep, comfortable breath and notice how your diaphragm muscles expand to let air into your lungs. "Supporting" is the ability to keep these muscles expanded, or flexed, over the course of an entire, controlled exhale. So, what you're doing is controlling the rate at which the air is coming out of your body. The goal is to have a steady, consistent, solid, usually rather fast air speed. I used to say, "Support, support." But what I think is maybe clearer and easier for students to hear is, "Try blowing steadily but faster." Actually, that often solves a lot of problems.

ML: So often in a lesson, you only get to hear a student's sound as he plays by himself. How would you counsel him about playing in a wind section, about playing with others?

JS: That's something that develops over time, and again goes back to that idea of specific contexts. You start to become aware of what is possible by hearing great orchestras and chamber musicians, and using those experiences as arbiters of what can be possible, developing personal goals for yourself. Generally speaking, in a wind section, the most important thing is to find a way towards cohesion so that all of the instruments have their own individual colors when they need to, but manage to sound blended when they're playing together, especially in octaves or unisons. Somehow, what you end up creating is a sound that is a combination of two colors-- because of the way a flute and clarinet combine, for example, you get a new color that is the result of blending both separate colors. That's something that can only be done if you really understand the qualities of the other instrument you're playing with.

ML: How does one go from just playing loudly to projecting, especially in a large ensemble?

JS: That has a lot to do with air-speed, actually, and what I talked about earlier in terms of resonance. Sound goes the wrong direction if it has an edge or is forced, because when you start forcing air, you're not actually supporting it; rather than channeling the air column so that it's coming out of you quickly and steadily, you're anchoring something in your body so that the column tightens. Yelling might sound loud, but it doesn't necessarily carry the same weight underneath it that speaking resonantly can.

From all the experience I've had, both listening to myself and my students play, hearing people both in big halls and small rooms, I know that a sound that is focused and round is what carries; again, that has a lot to do with air speed: what projects into a space from a wind instrument is sound created with round and spinning air. Just like with a voice, focusing your energy on depth and enunciation is what carries the sound forward.

Back to that book, Bruser's The Art of Practicing. As I try to explain this to you, I find myself listening carefully to my own voice, exactly in the moment, while I'm speaking. That's such a great practicing technique, becoming aware of what you sound like, because as you listen, you start to learn what is possible. Having feedback from others helps, too: "When you do that it doesn't carry into the hall as much as when you do this" is helpful, and having gotten a lot of feedback like that, I know that projecting takes a lot less effort than most people think it does. The effort is meditative more than forceful, so that you end up expressing yourself rather than yelling.

ML: How do you view your body, in light of producing your tone?

JS: I guess the best tips come from the idea of what happens when you elongate your ribcage, when you carry yourself from the center of your body, and when you flex your diaphragm muscles. What happens is that your whole upper body straightens and lengthens, and that openness allows for the sound to become deeper and more relaxed-- the muscle action allows for the air to be channeled in an efficient way. Mainly, feeling grounded to the floor and yet lifted from the core center of your body is a good way to get started.

read Part Two: Technique

read Part Three: Teaching and Artistry

Romantic America, Then and Now

2009-04-10T16:16:00.019-04:00

Janet Fish, Tanqueray Bottles, 1973.

On April 15, I'll be giving a short lecture/recital at the Pensacola Museum of Art as part of a week of residency activities that will culminate in a performance of Lowell Liebermann's flute concerto with The Pensacola Symphony. The recital will be aligned with the museum's exhibit "Light and Transparent Space," featuring the work of painter Janet Fish, and I thought I'd offer some short American gems to go along with the exhibit. Following are some of my notes for the lecture.

I love music and I love museums, and I love that the potential for different art forms to illuminate each other when experienced in tandem in even brighter ways than when considered separately is so vital and interesting. When I first considered this project, all I knew is that the special exhibit here would involve works of Janet Fish. I soon started to realize many parallels between her work and the work of Lowell Liebermann, whose concerto I'll perform with the orchestra at the Saenger on Saturday.

Just briefly, some defining characteristics for Fish are her intense use of saturated color, her mastery of the relationships of color, light, and space, her fondness of the still life form-- which affords an opportunity to create one's own way of looking at things in a very detailed way-- the obvious virtuosity of technique that goes into creating something that can be appreciated immediately in a very visceral way. Her work either draws you into it, or it doesn't, but either way, you get it right away. It's interesting to me how many of these core characteristics are so similar to Lowell Liebermann's music. He's interested, first and foremost, in melody, also in myriad moods, a range of colors, in music that is emotionally contoured and therefore emotionally engaging. So, again, his music, like her paintings, is accessible.

If I had to come up with some aesthetic label that describes the similarities in their approaches, I think romanticism would be a great one-- chief characteristics of romanticism are things I've just mentioned: interest in portraying an individual response to the world in a way that is emotionally connected, that is colorful and direct and filled with sensitivity, and, therefore, that engages the listener or viewer immediately.

I think Fish and Liebermann are what I would call neo-Romantic artists, both very much American in their sensibilities, and I used this idea as the core around which to build tonight's program. I've got four short pieces by American composers, two of which are from the turn of the last century, or the height of the Romantic movement in America (Charles Griffes and Arthur Foote) and two by living neo-Romantic composers (Lowell Liebermann and John Corigliano).

To gild the lily, or, actually, to bring yet more art into the fold, I thought it would be interesting to precede each of the pieces with readings from four American poets (Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara and Hart Crane), each of whom is contemporary to the period of the piece he precedes, and each of whom could also be considered aesthetically romantic. I tried to find poems that matched the mood or at least the intention of the piece, or that somehow managed to fall into this theme of romantic approach.

First, "A Night Piece, " by Arthur Foote, composed in 1918. I'd like to begin with "Poets to Come, " by Walt Whitman, perfect here for its impassioned plea to artists to speak up.

POETS TO COME

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;

But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than

before known,

Arouse! Arouse-- for you must justify me-- you must answer.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,

I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a

casual look upon you, and then averts his face,

Leaving it to you to probe and define it,

Expecting the main things from you.

WALT WHITMAN

Next, Allen Ginsberg's poem "A Supermarket in California" precedes Liebermann's "Soliloquy for solo flute" (1993). As Liebermann's aesthetic can be seen as an update of Foote's, I love that Ginsberg's poem seems to be a direct response to Whitman's, as if to say, "I heard you, Walt, and now I'm thinking of you as I think of this century's take on nature."

A SUPERMARKET IN CALIFORNIA

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the

streets under the trees with a headache of self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit

supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles

full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--- and you,

Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the

meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price

bananas? Are you my angel?

I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and

followed in my imagination by the store detective.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting

artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does

your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel

absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to

shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in

driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you

have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and

stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

ALLEN GINSBERG

One of my favorite contemporary American poets is Frank O'Hara, and I love the intimacy of this love poem, "Morning". It precedes "Voyage," by John Corigliano (1977), which matches its floating melancholy.

MORNING

I've got to tell you

how I love you always

I think of it on grey

mornings with death

in my mouth the tea

is never hot enough

then and the cigarette

dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you

and look out the window

at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock

the buses glow like

clouds and I am lonely

thinking of flutes

I miss you always

when I go to the beach

the sand is wet with

tears that seem mine

although I never weep

and hold you in my

heart with a very real

humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is

crowded and I stand

rattling my keys the car

is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now

where did you eat your

lunch and were there

lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think

of you without me in

the sentence you depress

me when you are alone

Last night the stars

were numerous and today

snow is their

calling card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that

distracts me music is

only a crossword puzzle

do you know how it is

when you are the only

passenger if there is a

place further from me

I beg you do not go

FRANK O' HARA

Finally, what better piece to include than Griffes's 1919 "Poem"? Hart Crane's sonnet "To Emily Dickinson" seems an appropriate partner here-- it's another example of a poet embracing his inspiration and seemed a good way to bring Whitman's earlier injunction full circle.

TO EMILY DICKINSON

You who desired so much-- in vain to ask--

Yet fed you hunger like an endless task,

Dared dignify the labor, bless the quest--

Achieved that stillness ultimately best,

Being, of all, least sought for: Emily, hear!

O sweet, dead Silencer, most suddenly clear

When singing that Eternity possessed

And plundered momently in every breast;

--Truly no flower yet withers in your hand.

The harvest you descried and understand

Needs more than wit to gather, love to bind.

Some reconcilement of remotest mind--

Leaves Ormus rubyless, and Ophir chill.

Else tears heap all within on clay-cold hill.

HART CRANE

A quick postscript, here.

Having now performed/read/spoken (all while enjoying being surrounded by Janet Fish's paintings), I feel that my little experiment paid off. I make creative links between various art forms (and from art to other random things) in my head all the time, but I hadn't done poetry readings in public before, so I wasn't sure what would happen. What did happen for me, and I think for the audience, too, was an extra flare of excitement in the moment. Once I finished the first poem and started playing the first piece (while registering the first "hmmms" I could hear in the room) I couldn't help thinking to myself, "That was really neat. I can't wait to get to the next one." At one point in the evening, it also occurred to me while playing how perfectly the Ginsberg poem seemed to fit with one of the paintings I was standing under... Thought, color, expression, sound.... all experienced together, all enriching each other.....

Ecco la marcia...

2009-03-20T01:00:00.014-04:00

When I was 7, I saw Ingmar Bergman's "The Magic Flute." I must have had fun, because a few days later, my parents had a surprise for me: Otto Klemperer's recording of the opera. I still have a vivid memory of Tamino trying to escape his monster, and I still have those 3 boxed LPs. I listened so much to the first side that when The Three Ladies sweep in to help him, I hear "Nein, nein, nein, nein, nein, nein" playing to infinity in my head. Sometimes the needle would move past that scratch, but usually, I had to move it myself.

When I was 11, I had been playing flute for 3 years, and my teacher wanted me to get the Mozart concertos. I remember poring over the music on the first day, eagerly finding a passage that seemed delicious, playing those 4 measures until I had learned them, then marching into my parents' bedroom and saying, "Listen to this! Can you guess who wrote this? (Playing it.) It's Mozart. Isn't that just so Mozart?" Did I really say this? Probably not. Something like it, though.

When I was 15, I saw "Amadeus". I was hooked at this point. A few days later, I bought the soundtrack with my allowance and listened to it a lot. Sometimes, it accompanied my algebra homework, but much more often, I was either dancing to it or doing my own version of what now might be called Conductor Hero to it.

When I was 20, I played the G Major concerto to audition for The Cleveland Orchestra.

We play Mozart a lot in the orchestra, and often, we play it very, very well. Right now, it's better than ever.

This week, I feel like I'm 7 and 11 and 15 again. That is, I feel a wide-eyed wonder at Mozart's genius. I also feel incredibly fortunate to take part in a production of "The Marriage of Figaro" that is fresh and vital and inspiring.

I think what I respond to most strongly when it comes to Mozart is his absolute humanity. Figaro is about people with real cravings and real insecurities whose characters are presented not only in what they sing to each other and to us, but, particularly, in how they react to the situations that they create for themselves. They try, haphazardly sometimes, to take care of themselves and of each other, and we see ourselves depicted onstage and feel for them. The music is human, too. I can't think of any other composer who examines universal feelings and attitudes with such clarity and dimension then translates these themes into sound in a way that manages to be both artfully sophisticated and yet confidently natural at the very same time. Isn't this irony in itself human? It's funny and it's beautiful.

I love listening to and seeing Figaro. But, even better is playing it! Connecting words to music, understanding the emotional intentions behind a phrase, managing the theatrical architecture of an aria, collaborating on these endeavors with 40 other musicians in a pit and the glorious cast of singers onstage to enable Mozart's genius to lift off the ground is... I'm struggling for words here. It's so much more than fun.

Flute=Zucchini

2009-02-15T11:33:00.010-05:00

I really like reading about how other creative people work, what turns them on, how they verbalize what they do, what inspires them. I should have a scrapbook of all the articles I've read-- about movie stars, basketball players, authors, singers, poets, gardeners, parents--that have provided me with new ways of looking at myself and my own pursuits, or, better said, that have put my own thoughts or feelings into lovely new words. I ended my last post with a question: something like, how does communication with an audience work? Just now, I read something that reminded me of that question, something that I would definitely add to the scrapbook I should have.

In a newsletter published by his fantastic restaurant, Scarpetta, New York chef Scott Conant discusses his inspiration:

"... (Conant) uses food as a means to his endgame: extracting the goodness out of every ingredient and presenting it for the diner's enjoyment. 'There is no manipulation involved,' he warns. 'The idea is to take something, like a tomato or a piece of quail, and totally focus on what will make it great. And for it to evolve to another level, from a flavor perspective, it's not a cerebral effort, but a soulful one.'"

This last quote helps me answer my question. Connecting to the audience, like to the diner, is elemental and basic. It involves honing in on exactly what is special, exactly what needs to be said, and immersing your being in saying it clearly, making yourself vulnerable and open to the moment. I'm really not talking about instrumental technique, now, and I don't think Conant is talking about how to cook. I'm talking about communication. There's a huge difference between respecting that someone can play his instrument well and being moved towards tears or goosebumps or a smile by the way he plays. On the performer's side, it's probably very true that this is a soulful effort. And like with any communication, there are two parts,the listener bringing a willingness into the equation in the same way that a diner brings an appetite to the table.

Conant goes on: "How do I create 13 different flavors with one zucchini? It depends on when I take it off the fire in the cooking process. It's a progression from a completely raw state, to adding a bit of salt and olive oil and so on, to the final step when it is completely burnt. That's how I think about everything: as an evolution to the next level."

This also reminds me of what I work to accomplish. One simple flute, one simple zucchini. On the surface, most wouldn't expect much from either thing as a vehicle for artistry. But experimenting with the different ways that simplicity can evolve, and then with different ways that these evolutions can be presented to others forms the essence of creativity in communication.

Like breathing, for example

2009-02-13T14:23:00.007-05:00

January has been a blur of intense concerts, both at home and on tour.

And flu is going around the orchestra, suddenly, now that we're all home.

I actually have spent almost all of the last 48 hours in bed wheezing and coughing, everything from my ribs to my hair follicles aching.

I'm starting to get bored, and should actually try to go back to sleep.

So this post, if it even gets posted, will end up being just a banal entry about how much we take for granted until we can't do it so easily anymore. Like breathing, for example.

Concerts were triumphant.

The orchestra sounds better than ever, as far as I can tell.

It's nice to be involved in music making at a high level.

It's really nice to walk off stage and have people thank you for moving them.

Which, by the way, is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. What allows for the emotional connection between performer and audience? A good, strong, honest connection is rare. But does the connection lie more in what the performer is giving or what the audience is receiving, or both? Is this sort of like falling in love?

With Best Wishes for 2009....

2008-12-31T18:10:00.008-05:00

If you're going to be passionate about something, be passionate about learning. If you're going to fight something, fight for those in need. If you're going to question something, question authority.

If you're going to lose something, lose your inhibitions. If you're going to gain something, gain respect and confidence. And if you're going to hate something, hate the false idea that you are not capable of your dreams.

-- Daniel Golston

The next project, a postscript

2008-12-16T15:25:00.013-05:00

"...historically- informed but heart- inspired..."

So, now it's the last project. Or, at least it's "in the can," as they say.

Working with Jory and Erica and Tom was delightful. What a fantastic way to spend a week: in a beautiful church playing Bach with someone who is sensitive and generous, facile and funny, intelligent and flexible; having the luxury of working with a producer and sound engineer who thoroughly appreciate not only the music but also the approach, and who are equally comfortable with supporting and pushing back; being able to hear playbacks and then to rationally understand either that what was coming across was what was intended (or better) or, when that didn't happen, to understand quickly what to do about it-- an intense yet rewarding challenge.

It was great finally to have the music come to life, not just for myself, but with a collaborator, and in a large space. It was exciting for Jory and me to play through some of the eternal questions about style and phrasing, happily coming up with something that I think is very rare in my experience of these sonatas: an equal partnership. This is chamber music at its vital best, based on organic discourse between musicians who eagerly respond to each other and whose experiences are augmented and richened by a volleying of phrases. I was hoping to create a perusal that would be historically informed yet of the moment, that would be intimate and subtle yet engaging or even riveting, that would be well balanced and thoughtful yet without seeming pedantic or studied. And I think we just may have succeeded. We finished the recording week with a concert, and I'm proud to share this review by classical music enthusiast Joseph Newsome.

The next project....

2008-10-26T19:52:00.006-04:00

I'm excited to announce that another recording project is currently in the works: Bach sonatas with harpsichordist Jory Vinikour. This is a step in a long process of thinking about baroque performance, and the following is an excerpt of something I wrote in the hopes of trying to drum up interest from record companies (and, of course, and more importantly, from potential listeners). If anyone's interested, I probably have a lot more to say on the subject, but here's a start....

Music interpretation is a fascinating process, about which I think great artists have more questions than answers. When I started becoming very serious about playing, the flute sonatas of JS Bach were the first "real" music I approached. And, certainly, in the 25 years that have passed since then, the tides of how to approach this music have changed dramatically. From a stalwart, serious, every note in time and in tune regimen through the insistence that baroque music can only convincingly be played on period instruments to the more relaxed understanding that historical reproduction is impossible, yet historical awareness is incredibly helpful, questions about how to interpret this more and more distant style of music are eternal.

JS Bach wrote his great flute sonatas in the early 1700's, most likely while he was in his thirties. And I have spent a good part of my thirties thinking about and experimenting with appropriate and convincing ways of interpreting these pieces. I'm not a period instrument player, yet my sensitivity lies very much in the realm of approaching baroque music from as convincing an historical perspective as I can come up with. Picking up a baroque flute might answer many questions about style, but I find the challenge of getting inside that style on my instrument to be more rewarding.

My favorite realizations about baroque music are that it is highly personal, perhaps even "improvisational" music, and that it can and should be approached with a sense of lightness and cheer. These sonatas are wonderful conversation pieces, equally demanding and demonstrative of the prowess of both partners. Working with Jory Vinikour has been a pleasure, because our collaboration allows these pieces to sparkle just by the magical way that we react to each other's energy. Almost immediately upon our first reading, we had a delightfully synchronized realization: this is special-- we need to record these. I'm using a wonderful old Boehm system flute made by Rudall-Carte with an Ardal Powell headjoint (no, this isn't a baroque flute, but it sounds great, especially paired with Jory's instrument, a Dowd/Van Nagle reproduction from Paris.)

And so, for our first volume, we have chosen the four sonatas just for flute and obbligato (which leaves room for a volume of continuo sonatas later) and are delighted to have engaged the great and award-winning production team of Erica Brenner and Thomas Knab.

"Air"

2008-10-04T15:58:00.014-04:00

On October 28, Telarc will release "Air," a disc of chamber pieces by Debussy and Takemitsu. I collaborated on this project with harpist Yolanda Kondonassis and violist Cynthia Phelps and a string group from Oberlin that was conducted by Bridget Reischl.

I have to say that I'm very excited about this release for a number of reasons, not least because it marks my first big appearance on a major label. What makes it most exciting is that I really enjoyed the process of putting it together. From my first thoughts that these two composers would make a great coupling through my joy that Yolanda was willing and able to take those thoughts and encourage Oberlin and Telarc to get behind the project to the incredible amount of fun that Yo and Cindy and I had rehearsing the trios, and to the great contentment I felt (rather surprisingly for me, I might add) about the sound quality that the Telarc team achieved, this has been a remarkably satisfying project.

In celebration, I excerpt a related article I wrote that appeared in the Cleveland Museum of Art's newsletter two seasons ago on the occasion of another fun project. I curated a series of chamber concerts at the Museum to correlate with the special exhibit "Monet in Normandy." One of the concerts involved a number of the pieces that are also on "Air," and so here are some brief words about Debussy and Takemitsu and their inter-relationships. As one of my colleagues who attended these concerts observed, "Takemitsu out-Debussys Debussy."

CAREFUL SPONTANEITY

Joshua Smith, Principal Flute, The Cleveland Orchestra

Movements in the musical world tend to echo movements in the visual arts. Historically, things have happened more slowly in the musical world, and thus so-called Impressionist music followed and was inspired by what was happening in painting. Interestingly, the choice of subject matter for painters and composers was similar. They were all very much inspired by nature, particularly the elements: light and the play of shadow (and the meditation on the passage of time through the study of changes in light), or waves and the rhythm of water. And they were fascinated by exotic cultures, the ancient past and faraway places. Composers of the era began developing newer ways of thinking of orchestral instruments as characters, each able to lend its own particular color or sensibility to new situations. The flute, for example, was readily used to depict ancient exoticism. As one of the very first instruments (next to the drum and the voice) used by ancient cultures, it served as a natural symbol of distant and ancient places.

As in visual art, Impressionist music embraces subtlety over directness and seems to emphasize mood, color, and atmosphere over structure and form. But even though the music can sound dreamy and colorful, looser than Classical music and perhaps less heavy or grounded than Romantic music, form and structure are not readily avoided-- far from it. Instead, rules are reinterpreted, both harmonically (questioning the idea that this key necessarily resolves toward that key, etc.) and architecturally (moving away from the Classical convention of the presentation of first theme, presentation of second there, development of first theme, and so on). There is much more experimentation with exotic tonal gestures, elements rooted in modal and Far Eastern scales, and rhythmic accents used to create character.

In a fascinating cross-pollination of disciplines, much of the great music of this period came about as commissions for the ballet. Composers began to make new demands on performers: the idea of creating a musical mood, or an "impression" of what the composer had in mind, might call for a creative new way of producing sound, or demand physical endurance that had not been necessary before. As performers rose to these challenges-- in many cases creating new sounds or new techniques along the way-- they, in turn, inspired composers to keep dreaming.

The series of concerts being performed in the museum's Monet in Normandy exhibition galleries also calls attention to a particular affinity that grew between France and Japan. Debussy, for example, was strongly influenced by the visual art of Hokusai and began to develop a whole new harmonic process that relied heavily on Asian scales. Takemitsu, composing nearly 80 years later, was thoroughly steeped in Debussy's style and synthesized the Eastern-inspired Western language of Debussy with what would become his own Western-inspired Eastern language. What is remarkable about the play between-- and eventual blending of-- these styles and cultures is that both composers emphasized that the "finished" work should give the impression of having been created spontaneously, organically, and-- most important-- simply. Yet the process toward that point is by no means simple or spontaneous. The absolute care that goes into honestly interpreting Debussy or Takemitsu parallels the kind of care that goes into raking a Zen garden. The impression of perfect spontaneity grows out of careful understanding and meticulous performance.

Tightrope Walking

2008-10-04T14:54:00.003-04:00

I got the CIM flute students together for our first studio class of the semester this week, and it was a pretty great event. I've always hoped that this class would be an open forum both for players to experiment with gaining performance experience and for observers to communicate constructive feedback. For reasons I'm still unsure of, this week's version was the best I've seen so far, especially on the latter front. The students were articulate, helpful, respectful, appreciative of each other. And the dialogue that ensued was good for everyone.

We had a fair amount of time left at the end of class, and I called for questions. And someone asked, "Mr. Smith, do you ever have bad days?" Now, I've had teachers who would have answered with something like, "Nope. Experience and all my hard work offers me the opportunity to sound great every time I pick up my flute." But I'm sure this isn't true for anyone. My answer was, "Of course I do, " because I think it's essential (especially for very talented, disciplined, motivated, yet easily discouraged, young artists) to know that what I do every day is Difficult.

This opened a great discussion. "So, how do you deal with it when you do have a bad day?" "Can anyone tell?" "Does it ever get easier?" "Are you ever so nervous that you feel like you're losing control?" All of these questions and more came up during this week's class. And my attempt to help was to start babbling about how what time and experience have given me is at least the ability to consciously, instinctively understand the possible causes of the rift between my concept of what "good" is and what I'm actually hearing come out of my flute. I trust myself to hone in pretty quickly on what needs to be adjusted and to do something about it. More often than not, this is a kinesthetic experience, and quite often, I'm not very good at verbalizing exactly what I'm doing. (This is another blog subject entirely, but I'm also pretty sure that I don't really want to verbalize it most of the time...)

The important thing, the fundamental issue that allows any of this to start to work, is a cultivation of the ability to hear myself objectively as much as possible. A constant dialogue about what is going on, how different it might be from what I think I'd like to have going on, how close the outcome is to my projected concept is pretty much constantly running through my creative process. I've grown accustomed to listening to this process in my head and sorting through it, hopefully with a minimal amount of judgement and criticism. Here's the rub: there's a gray area in the balance between listening objectively and listening critically. And, while a critical ear certainly helps with the development of goals and the raising of standards, it also pretty quickly kills the ability to connect with the necessary exploratory and adventurous aspects of the process. Being human is understanding that the goal can't be perfection, and that, as the below-quoted yoga article eloquently offers, the goal might not be that important anyway. Maybe one of the best ways of negotiating this balance just has to do with attitude. When I pick up my flute, I try to do so with a thought like,"I'm really curious to see what's about to happen." Which I think is far more fun than, "God, I hope this doesn't sound as bad as I think it might."

Back to class. One of my students rescued me from my babbling by telling a story he had once heard about a tightrope walker. Asked by an adoring child after the circus how he always managed to keep his balance, his answer was, "I lose my balance all the time. I'm just good at getting it back quickly." This, I thought at the time, is a perfect distillation of what I think I was trying to say.

Good words to live (play) by.

2008-10-04T13:39:00.002-04:00

I've had a few subjects for blog posts rolling around in my head for the 8 or 9 weeks since I last wrote, and, while I sort through what gets published (I definitely decided to avoid a daily diary approach), I thought I'd share the best quote I've just recently rediscovered. I remember reading this in a copy of Yoga Journal sometime in the last two years, and I eagerly scrawled it onto a piece of scrap paper that I just found in a desk drawer. Unfortunately, I didn't scrawl down the writer's name.... If any readers this time around recognize this from their own Yoga Journal perusals, and let me know, I'd be more than happy to offer credit. Anyway, here's the quote:

"... notice what it's like when you're not trying to achieve anything at all. Notice that the mind knows the world quite directly, without effort. Notice that this knowing quality is the true nature of the mind, and that it emerges most profoundly when you stop grasping-- holding on tightly to some ideal image of what the outcome should be, or judging or conceptualizing your experience. What would it be like if you undertook each task without grasping for an idealized outcome, without the usual self-conscious commentary? What if you practiced simply being present, absorbed, and profoundly involved without leaning toward the outcome-- taking delight in the task itself?"

On re-entry

2008-07-29T21:00:00.010-04:00

More than one of my Marlboro friends has asked me about my "re-entry." And it's taken a while for me to process the whole experience-- something I'm sure I'm not finished with. (I actually assumed when I got there that I'd be blogging the whole time about it, and that just wasn't going to happen.) There was very little time for introspection, and so much energy spent only in the moment, which was delicious and rare for me.

I've been home for a week now, and it's great to be back. The best thing about it is that I think I managed to bring some of Marlboro home with me. I learned there that I'm not as introverted as I sometimes think I am, that I have powerful reserves of positive energy, even when (especially when) I haven't slept, that I am intoxicated by being surrounded by people who care deeply about working intensely and carefully-- and who love talking about that, sharing ideas and, yes, geeky thoughts about how it all works. I learned that chamber music rehearsals minus ego and plus laughter are the best, and I had a whole month of those to help think about how to apply and to re-enact those concepts here, in the orchestra. I've had only one CO concert at Blossom so far, and I came to work in one of the best moods I've been in in years. My colleagues have responded with warmth, and I am still thinking about how to maintain this feeling of euphoria.

It's luxurious to be in a place where everything from meals to schedules is taken care of by someone else, so that the main focus is on having fun, musically and then socially. And where the "next" generation of musicians takes what they do as seriously as I think I do. (That part is a relief, somehow, as well as a heady experience.)

At the end of the first week was the first organized social affair: square dancing, the thought of which horrified me until I decided to try it and which turned out to be brilliant-- what a natural way to expose us all to each other in a similar-yet-different, beyond chamber music fashion.... That's when we really got to know and to appreciate each other, when we learned to laugh with each other and to become comfortable with being vulnerable around each other. I looked forward to each communal meal after that night.

Caution, Musicians at Play

2008-06-23T16:44:00.004-04:00

I've just arrived at Marlboro, something I've been eager to do for, oh, about the last 20 years.

The stars have finally aligned, and I'm very happy to be here. Aside from the first-day-of-school-jitters I had yesterday (especially that feeling when you wander through the dining hall with your tray looking around for an empty place near a familiar face) it's all good. Despite my basic tendency toward introversion, I relish the idea of being surrounded by people who are excited about creating something really special.

More will probably follow as rehearsals begin.

Having one's cake and... Well, being able to eat lots of different cakes.

2008-06-05T23:53:00.007-04:00

Today was a study in major contrasts.

I spent most of the day trying to wrap my fingers and my brain around "Humble River," a Steven Mackey piece for flute and strings that is new to me, and which is a huge project. The piece is intended to weave through a full concert presentation of the Mozart flute quartets, alternating Mackey movements with Mozart pieces. Mackey also indicates a shorter version with just single Mozart movements. But at the moment, I'm struggling with the new stuff: he's new to me, altogether. I came to the piece first of all because the concept sounded great. And when I listened to it, I was taken with the energy of it. On my first few attempts to get through it, I'm sensing minimalism, impressionism, rock, blues, folk... rolled into an atmosphere that seems both nimble and testosterone-driven. I might be way off, but that's what I'm getting from it today.

It's one of those pieces (actually, virtually every piece is like this for me) that, on first hearing, I find myself thinking, "How the hell am I going to be able to play this?" And working through it is a great exercise for the brain. The last movement, especially, is propulsive and ecstatic, and the flute never stops jamming. Jamming really is what it's about, I think, and that, in itself, should be freeing, and, yet, there are a lot of acrobatics involved in the jamming that he's suggesting. Finding a way through all these notes towards an ease that actually sounds spontaneous is going to take a lot of sweating. (Here in Cleveland, we've gone in a week from seeing our breath crystalize to not being able to breathe because of the humidity.)

Having spent the afternoon working solitarily, I spent the evening playing with others. This fact, in itself, represents the hugest contrast of my day, the biggest "other cake." The collaboration potential that opera can offer is huge, and sitting within The Cleveland Orchestra, playing Dvorak's Rusalka, is an intensely enriching and gratifying experience. This opera is gorgeous from beginning to end, filled with lush melody and lilting Slavonic dances, music that shines with the color and atmosphere of the moonstruck fairy tale it propels.

Opera playing is maybe at the very pinnacle of what good orchestral playing is all about, and, so, is a magnified version of what chamber music is all about. It's cool that the word "magnified" just now leapt into my head, I realize, because magnification makes larger, allowing details to be examined and appreciated and honed. What I've always loved about opera (and what I try to extend into my interpretations of virtually anything else) is its connection to language: there's a story, told not only by the words of the singers but especially by the sounds of the music. An awareness of what is being "said" onstage allows me to think about how to color what I do specifically to suit the situation. And then, of course, comes the awareness of others: who else is playing this phrase with me? why did the composer choose that instrument; what is the special color that comes from the union of these sounds, and how does it support the story line in this moment? what is the best and most beautiful (and, most importantly) most supportive way to accompany the singer at this moment? is it accompany or collaborate? is it appropriate to take over in this moment?... All of these questions form the basis of what a musician is always obligated to think about, anyway. Cultivating a true understanding of the context of creation is a fundamental part of interpretation, and then reaction to the context of what has been created is a fundamental part of performance. These are challenges that, in a sense, become heightened and intensified by the experience of opera, maybe even especially because the experience seems to be intrinsically less intimate than the experience of playing chamber music. Certainly less intimate than working through a new piece by myself in a hot room.

I think I started this piece as a rumination on the contrasts in my day. But, thinking about it now, I realize that the experiences aren't really all that different. It's about all the same stuff in different kinds of contexts. Being able to (and needing to) immerse myself fully into both extremes, coupled with the fact that I am offered the possibility of doing so by the range of activities that I can take part in is beautiful. And it means that I get to eat lots of cake.

Jonathan Biss pushed me over the edge today.

2008-06-03T22:50:00.002-04:00

I turned 39 a couple of weeks ago. And I've been sorting through the to blog or not to blog question for about 8 months now, probably since I read Alex Ross's New Yorker article about how the internet is affecting the classical music world.

Why am I doing it? I still feel conflicted about it, actually. Because most of the blogs I read, especially the ones by classical musicians, seem narcissistic and self-conscious. I've spent 8 months thinking, (off and on, of course) "Do I really have something to say that anyone would care about?" And yet shortly after my birthday, for some reason that escapes me at the moment, I registered for this blog. I got nervous then, though, and let a few weeks go by before I even started typing in my box. But, today, I stumbled upon Jonathan's blog. And I read a few posts. And I felt inspired.

I do think that there's a lot to talk about when it comes to music. And, obviously, I feel like talking about it, or I wouldn't be torturing myself about whether or not I should be doing this. (Tonight, when I opened up my Mac to start writing, the two NY Times articles I immediately noticed were, "Obama Claims Nomination" and, "Is Blogging Bad For Us?" Hmm.)

I'm hoping that writing this will be an extension of my teaching, and -even more importantly- an extension of what goes through my head while the flute is in my hands. Because, somehow, being able to articulate those ephemeral moments, being able to share them with others, is so aligned with the concept of what performance is all about anyway that this is just another way of sharing myself with you, of making myself vulnerable.... another way of playing.

So, right now, the question is best answered by my blogging hero (he is already an artist hero... today, he became a blogging hero), Mr. Biss: "Because you're only as interesting a musician as you are a person, so why pretend that the two can be separated? Because I think it's good for musicians to engage with the world- on every possible level. And, above all, because any method of spreading a passion for music can only be positive."

That's why I'm inspired to get started.