The Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra is back in my life! Rehearsals started last week for the symphony's 41st season, and for the first concert we are aptly performing Mozart's Symphony No. 41: "Jupiter" and the Brahms Violin Concerto. New season, new music, and best of all: new rehearsal space!
Being the community orchestra we are, we depend on the kindness and cooperation of other organizations to host us for rehearsals and performances. Last year we were happy to have a new rehearsal space in the basement of a church, which at first seemed great. It was a large, open space that didn't conflict with any other programming at the church. The lighting was poor, acoustics not so great, but we were happy.
Until it got cold.
Apparently, someone at the church forgot we and our fragile wooden instruments required a modicum of climate control and so numerous rehearsals were spent bundled up in as many layers as we could manage, even going so far as to wear gloves while playing our cellos and clarinets. In this 9th circle of hell, as our director so called it, we did our best to prepare our mid-season concerts. But thirty minutes into rehearsal the oboist's reed was too cold to produce a decent pitch, the strings sounded fuzzy and weak (because of our gloves), and the general pitch crept ever sharper as our instruments contracted in response to the chill. More than one rehearsal was cut short because one can only play so much once your fingers are blue.
I'm sure every one of us celebrated at our computers and smart phones when we got the email announcing the new rehearsal space. This year we are lucky enough to be working with a dance studio who is letting us use their top floor dance space. But this wonderful space does come with rules:
1. No rosin in the rehearsal room; only in the carpeted space right outside it.
2. No naked endpins for the cellos, lest we poke holes in the black sprung dance floor (which led to a lovely bit of laughter when our section leader came around at the second rehearsal offering "rubbers" [endpin stoppers] because "It's important to always have protection!")
3. Wind and brass players may not empty spit valves onto the floor; protect it with towels instead.
4. No shoes on the dance floor.
Because of the unique material of the dance floor we are not allowed to tread on it with our shoes, so we all took them off in the hallway before entering. I don't believe a single person was upset at the rule. Many of us probably prefer to practice without shoes and I, for one, couldn't wait to perform with an entire orchestra of barefoot musicians! Did we sound better? Was our tone richer? Were we more unified? I can't say with any certainty, but it sure felt good. I wonder what Brahms would have thought if he saw 75 musicians performing his Violin Concerto in socks. Everyone from the soloist and the director to the trumpets and trombones, playing the most beautiful melodies, toes wiggling.
After rehearsal, a number of us went to a nearby bar for a BSO Meet & Greet where we, with shoes on, milled around and got to know one another. Some members have been there for decades while others have only just arrived. I finally got into conversations with people who I saw all the time at last year's rehearsals but never really befriended. I sipped my tea while others had their beer (because that's how I roll in a bar at 10 pm) and we connected.
Needless to say, I'm very excited about this season. I already feel closer to my symphony-mates and I don't think its only because we're barefoot for rehearsals. I'm feeling more established and part of this community, and I can't wait to perform on stage with them next month.
Maybe they'll let us perform the concert barefoot, too?
Showing posts with label Musicing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musicing. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Sun spots
Every so often, I happen upon Clara sitting in the kitchen in a pool of sunlight that has sneaked through the clouds, between the tall buildings, and into our window. My first thought is always "Why is she sitting in the middle of the kitchen?" but I quickly notice the brightly lit rectangle in which she has placed herself and I dismiss my initially absurd question.
At home, my dog used to do the same thing around the house. You could often find her curled up in splashes of warm afternoon sun, oblivious to the world. I know that a lot of animals do this, and it makes sense. If the sun is shining, go sit in it! But sometimes I'm envious of the way Clara can just wander around until she finds the warmest part of the floor, hunker down, and enjoy it for as long as it lasts. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all do that just as easily?
Well, after much searching and waiting, I think I have finally found my sun spot.
My last job as a music teacher ended in June and until last week I was unemployed. Originally I had thought surely I would have a job by the beginning of the school year in September. Throughout the spring and summer I applied for a multitude of teaching positions, hoping desperately that I might be able to use my music education degree to its full extent here in New York. But the pickings were slim and, more frustrating than that, agonizingly slow to materialize. At the very end of August I was finally offered a part time after school position. Minimal hours, decent pay, challenging school environment, but teaching music nonetheless. I knew I still needed something in addition to the 8.15 hours I would be paid there, but I was at least happy to have something.
A few days later, I got a call for a general music position that I had been pursuing for months. I was ecstatic to finally have clinched that one, but I'd still have to wait nearly a month to do a demonstration lesson for the principal and the program directors. In the meantime, I calculated that I would have less than 17 hours a week of classroom teaching, and I knew I'd need a little bit more. Not even because of the money, but just to keep myself occupied.
So I sat around and twiddled my thumbs for a few weeks, waiting for one program to start and for the date of the demo lesson to arrive. I was happy I'd have some work, but I was frustrated by both the lack of positions in my field (especially since I really wanted to teach in a string program) and the astonishingly slow pace with which everything was moving forward. While I was sitting around, students had already started school and I wondered "Why aren't these music programs starting, too?" Apparently this is one of those New York things.
Then, a week before my demonstration lesson, I got a call about a school that needed a string teacher twice a week for 10 hours total. Oh my goodness, yes! I thought. This is what I want! And I could probably do this in addition to the other two programs, so long as we could organize the schedule correctly. I immediately called for an interview, we set one up for the following Monday, and it went very well. It looked like I was well on my way to having three jobs at three different schools, but doing what I love. Hard work, to be sure, but I was excited nonetheless.
Two days later was the demonstration lesson. It went swimmingly. Afterward I was shooed away so the principal and the program coordinators could talk behind my back, and later that day I got an email from one of the coordinators.
"The principal wants you to teach 16 classes."
Twice what we had first discussed.
Crap.
Somehow in the span of a week, I went from worrying that I wouldn't have enough hours to being offered an overabundance of classes to teach. I may have been pushing it thinking I could teach at three schools every week - an after school program for around 9 hours, 8 classes at one school during the day twice a week, and 10 classes at another twice a week - but add another 8 classes to that and I knew it was past my limit. Thankfully, I had a few days of Jewish Holidays to think about it before any decisions had to be made.
Throughout the holidays on Thursday and Friday, plus Shabbat, I didn't know what to do. And what's more, I felt frustrated. Why was I told something at the last minute that would force me to decline something else that I so desperately wanted to do? Why was this all happening at the same time? Why wasn't it easier?!
But when I told people about my situation, many of them noted the overwhelmingly positive aspect of my circumstances. Unlike a month prior, I had plenty to choose from! I had options, and the people offering them to me really wanted me to work for them! So shouldn't I be happy?
Well, today I talked with one of the program coordinators for the school that wanted 16 classes a week. We spoke at length about the situation and he sympathized with my circumstances. He knew what I wanted, he knows where my educational passions lie, and we figured it out. By the time I made the decision to decline the string teaching position, I was confident I was making the right choice.
Once I made the decision, I immediately felt better. I felt as if I had chosen the best option, not only for me but for the adults and students involved. I'm confident that in the next few years I'll get other opportunities to teach strings, and I'm incredibly happy to be working for this particular organization for my first year in New York. It took a while, but I think things finally settled in the way it's supposed to be. I found my own little sunspot, and I'm going to enjoy it as long as I can.
At home, my dog used to do the same thing around the house. You could often find her curled up in splashes of warm afternoon sun, oblivious to the world. I know that a lot of animals do this, and it makes sense. If the sun is shining, go sit in it! But sometimes I'm envious of the way Clara can just wander around until she finds the warmest part of the floor, hunker down, and enjoy it for as long as it lasts. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all do that just as easily?
Well, after much searching and waiting, I think I have finally found my sun spot.
My last job as a music teacher ended in June and until last week I was unemployed. Originally I had thought surely I would have a job by the beginning of the school year in September. Throughout the spring and summer I applied for a multitude of teaching positions, hoping desperately that I might be able to use my music education degree to its full extent here in New York. But the pickings were slim and, more frustrating than that, agonizingly slow to materialize. At the very end of August I was finally offered a part time after school position. Minimal hours, decent pay, challenging school environment, but teaching music nonetheless. I knew I still needed something in addition to the 8.15 hours I would be paid there, but I was at least happy to have something.
A few days later, I got a call for a general music position that I had been pursuing for months. I was ecstatic to finally have clinched that one, but I'd still have to wait nearly a month to do a demonstration lesson for the principal and the program directors. In the meantime, I calculated that I would have less than 17 hours a week of classroom teaching, and I knew I'd need a little bit more. Not even because of the money, but just to keep myself occupied.
So I sat around and twiddled my thumbs for a few weeks, waiting for one program to start and for the date of the demo lesson to arrive. I was happy I'd have some work, but I was frustrated by both the lack of positions in my field (especially since I really wanted to teach in a string program) and the astonishingly slow pace with which everything was moving forward. While I was sitting around, students had already started school and I wondered "Why aren't these music programs starting, too?" Apparently this is one of those New York things.
Then, a week before my demonstration lesson, I got a call about a school that needed a string teacher twice a week for 10 hours total. Oh my goodness, yes! I thought. This is what I want! And I could probably do this in addition to the other two programs, so long as we could organize the schedule correctly. I immediately called for an interview, we set one up for the following Monday, and it went very well. It looked like I was well on my way to having three jobs at three different schools, but doing what I love. Hard work, to be sure, but I was excited nonetheless.
Two days later was the demonstration lesson. It went swimmingly. Afterward I was shooed away so the principal and the program coordinators could talk behind my back, and later that day I got an email from one of the coordinators.
"The principal wants you to teach 16 classes."
Twice what we had first discussed.
Crap.
Somehow in the span of a week, I went from worrying that I wouldn't have enough hours to being offered an overabundance of classes to teach. I may have been pushing it thinking I could teach at three schools every week - an after school program for around 9 hours, 8 classes at one school during the day twice a week, and 10 classes at another twice a week - but add another 8 classes to that and I knew it was past my limit. Thankfully, I had a few days of Jewish Holidays to think about it before any decisions had to be made.
Throughout the holidays on Thursday and Friday, plus Shabbat, I didn't know what to do. And what's more, I felt frustrated. Why was I told something at the last minute that would force me to decline something else that I so desperately wanted to do? Why was this all happening at the same time? Why wasn't it easier?!
But when I told people about my situation, many of them noted the overwhelmingly positive aspect of my circumstances. Unlike a month prior, I had plenty to choose from! I had options, and the people offering them to me really wanted me to work for them! So shouldn't I be happy?
Well, today I talked with one of the program coordinators for the school that wanted 16 classes a week. We spoke at length about the situation and he sympathized with my circumstances. He knew what I wanted, he knows where my educational passions lie, and we figured it out. By the time I made the decision to decline the string teaching position, I was confident I was making the right choice.
Once I made the decision, I immediately felt better. I felt as if I had chosen the best option, not only for me but for the adults and students involved. I'm confident that in the next few years I'll get other opportunities to teach strings, and I'm incredibly happy to be working for this particular organization for my first year in New York. It took a while, but I think things finally settled in the way it's supposed to be. I found my own little sunspot, and I'm going to enjoy it as long as I can.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Play on!
Last Monday I had the most wonderful, life-affirming, uplifting experience I have had since arriving in New York. I attended the first rehearsal of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, a local community orchestra now celebrating its 40th anniversary. It is filled to the edges of the stage with humble musicians, some of whom use music to pay the rent and many more who don't. They aren't payed to be there; in fact, there is a membership fee to play in the orchestra. It just goes to show precisely how dedicated they are.
When I arrived, people were immediately friendly. Hi! How are you? Are you new? Welcome! People welcomed me, pulled me into their conversations, allowed me to sit in the middle instead of on the outskirts, noticed me and wanted me there.
And then the music started. Oh, what rapture! We sight-read a Brahms symphony (replete, of course, with the kinds of melodies that only a cello section can pull off with affective grace and depth of feeling), the first major symphony I had performed in two years. Through our instruments we sang, we hummed, we soared, we crawled, we lifted ourselves in rising, swelling melodies, forced ourselves through the cramped and jagged spaces of dissonance, then resolved with harmonious consonance upon the conductor's subtle cue.
Sometimes I forget I'm a musician.
In the world of music education, I have always considered myself as a teacher of music rather than a musician who teaches. It is not that I doubt or downplay my musical talents, but rather that I put more emphasis on my talents as an educator who happens to use music to teach children. Among the music education majors in college, though we started out with nearly identical musical course loads as those of the performance majors, by our senior years we had distanced ourselves from our musical peers. Once we had completed the requirement for performance with the orchestra or band, many of us devoted our energies to learning pedagogy, methodology, conducting, and the basics of other instruments. By our final semester we were rarely on campus, spending all our time instead in schools where we taught as student teachers. There were plenty of education majors who continued to perform, but once I was out of the orchestra the only performances I cared about were those of my students.
I've never wanted to be a soloist. I might have had fleeting dreams of such a life when I was younger, imagining myself sitting at a Steinway 9-foot grand on some stage, but I abandoned such flights of fancy once I realized how badly I wanted to be a teacher. It wasn't an either-or situation, mind you. It was simply a realization that a classroom is a far more exciting venue than a stage. Besides, I never would have cut it as a professional performer. When I was a young musician in a small town, I was pretty decent at my variety of instruments and didn't think much of it. But once I started comparing myself to other musicians at statewide summer music camps and at college, I realized I just couldn't quite compete. Conveniently, I had no interest in doing such a thing.
However, despite my aversion to performing a solo in the cello Master Class (the unsavory memories of which linger in the back of my mind like the smell of cigarettes in an old hotel room), I loved performing with the orchestra. Loathed the audition process, despised the sectionals where, try as I might, I would inevitably be heard, but I loved the feeling of playing with so many other musicians. I didn't care if I was last chair. I just liked the experience of making music with a group of like-minded individuals. It was like a group project that actually worked, and we all know the success rate of those in school.
The last time I played with the university's symphony orchestra, we played Tchaikovsky and I remember thinking as we neared the end of the piece I don't want this to end, because this may be my last opportunity to play such wonderful music with such talented musicians. I figured that any community orchestra wouldn't quite measure up to the caliber of music we performed regularly, because the only community orchestras I knew were good but still very amateur. That performance, in December of 2010, was the last time I performed a concert with an orchestra.
There aren't many things I can say I absolutely love about New York, but one of the things I've discovered is that not only is there a community orchestra, but there are many. And not only are they plentiful, but they're good!
But the greatest part for me? That it is somewhere I am invited to belong. Maybe it was just this particular ensemble, but I truly felt they were happy I was there. People checked their personal bubbles at the door in favor of the more inclusive embrace of the orchestra, a refreshing change of pace from what I have experienced thus far.
I can't wait to go back.
When I arrived, people were immediately friendly. Hi! How are you? Are you new? Welcome! People welcomed me, pulled me into their conversations, allowed me to sit in the middle instead of on the outskirts, noticed me and wanted me there.
And then the music started. Oh, what rapture! We sight-read a Brahms symphony (replete, of course, with the kinds of melodies that only a cello section can pull off with affective grace and depth of feeling), the first major symphony I had performed in two years. Through our instruments we sang, we hummed, we soared, we crawled, we lifted ourselves in rising, swelling melodies, forced ourselves through the cramped and jagged spaces of dissonance, then resolved with harmonious consonance upon the conductor's subtle cue.
Sometimes I forget I'm a musician.
In the world of music education, I have always considered myself as a teacher of music rather than a musician who teaches. It is not that I doubt or downplay my musical talents, but rather that I put more emphasis on my talents as an educator who happens to use music to teach children. Among the music education majors in college, though we started out with nearly identical musical course loads as those of the performance majors, by our senior years we had distanced ourselves from our musical peers. Once we had completed the requirement for performance with the orchestra or band, many of us devoted our energies to learning pedagogy, methodology, conducting, and the basics of other instruments. By our final semester we were rarely on campus, spending all our time instead in schools where we taught as student teachers. There were plenty of education majors who continued to perform, but once I was out of the orchestra the only performances I cared about were those of my students.
I've never wanted to be a soloist. I might have had fleeting dreams of such a life when I was younger, imagining myself sitting at a Steinway 9-foot grand on some stage, but I abandoned such flights of fancy once I realized how badly I wanted to be a teacher. It wasn't an either-or situation, mind you. It was simply a realization that a classroom is a far more exciting venue than a stage. Besides, I never would have cut it as a professional performer. When I was a young musician in a small town, I was pretty decent at my variety of instruments and didn't think much of it. But once I started comparing myself to other musicians at statewide summer music camps and at college, I realized I just couldn't quite compete. Conveniently, I had no interest in doing such a thing.
However, despite my aversion to performing a solo in the cello Master Class (the unsavory memories of which linger in the back of my mind like the smell of cigarettes in an old hotel room), I loved performing with the orchestra. Loathed the audition process, despised the sectionals where, try as I might, I would inevitably be heard, but I loved the feeling of playing with so many other musicians. I didn't care if I was last chair. I just liked the experience of making music with a group of like-minded individuals. It was like a group project that actually worked, and we all know the success rate of those in school.
The last time I played with the university's symphony orchestra, we played Tchaikovsky and I remember thinking as we neared the end of the piece I don't want this to end, because this may be my last opportunity to play such wonderful music with such talented musicians. I figured that any community orchestra wouldn't quite measure up to the caliber of music we performed regularly, because the only community orchestras I knew were good but still very amateur. That performance, in December of 2010, was the last time I performed a concert with an orchestra.
There aren't many things I can say I absolutely love about New York, but one of the things I've discovered is that not only is there a community orchestra, but there are many. And not only are they plentiful, but they're good!
But the greatest part for me? That it is somewhere I am invited to belong. Maybe it was just this particular ensemble, but I truly felt they were happy I was there. People checked their personal bubbles at the door in favor of the more inclusive embrace of the orchestra, a refreshing change of pace from what I have experienced thus far.
I can't wait to go back.
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