An Unfortunate Fork in the Road

Picture yourself walking down a path with a friend when you come to a fork in the road. You go one way and she goes the other. Not necessarily bad unless you are playing a duet. That’s exactly what happened in yesterday’s recital when we came to the end of the middle section of our piece. I somehow forgot and took the repeat as I listened to Deborah launch into the second ending.

We stopped and managed to regroup to play the rest of the piece, but by that time the smile of enjoyment on my face had turned to a mask of terror. And taking the wrong ending was just the worst of quite a few mistakes. It was not an experience that I want to remember, but one I will have a hard time forgetting.

I was happy that Deborah at least had pieces to play with another group, but I was frustrated at having put so much time into practicing this piece that had so many problems in performance. I wished I had taken fuller advantage of the lecture series that centered on medical ethics instead of hanging out so much in cabin #59.

I’ve always prided myself on coming through in the crunch, so what happened yesterday? It was probably a combination of things. Most of my practice time had been by myself since Deborah was playing with another group as well; it’s of much greater advantage to be rehearsing together once both people have learned the notes. Had I learned the notes? I can truthfully say I could play every part of the piece flawlessly; I just couldn’t count on doing it every time.

Probably the most unnerving thing was trying out the piano in the auditorium where the recital was held a few hours before the performance. It was unbelievably stiff and the pedal didn’t seem to do much at all. I really was counting on that pedal for a lot of big runs. I know that is just a convenient excuse since none of the other pianists had any great complaints about the piano.

So now what? I seem to have to keep revisiting the question of how to make sure music is an enjoyable and healthy part of my life. Maybe that means not playing such difficult pieces. Maybe it means getting a good teacher who can work with me on performance skills as well as how to play the piano.

Maybe it means experiencing the many other offerings at Chautauqua next year and just taking a year off from musical immersion. Being a Type-A person is such a burden sometimes!

A Different Take

I just had a fascinating talk with one of those young piano students who was in yesterday’s masters class, although he was not on the schedule to play. Edo is from Israel and is currently studying at the University of Illinois.

His take on the severity of the coaching is that Rebecca Pennys is not all that tough on the students. He said they are all well aware of their mistakes and their shortcomings before she ever gives her critique. He seemed to think she was hardest on her students from Eastman who are here for the summer.

I asked whether the students naturally had sized each other up and determined a ranking of their colleagues. He tends to put people in two groups: those who strive for perfection and become somewhat robotic in their performance and those who play to make music. He obviously aspires to be in the latter group.

We talked about my week of amateur chamber music. He invited me to hear his group play chamber music this afternoon at 2 pm, which is when my next practice time is scheduled. There are way too many things to do in any hour of the day here.

I always find it so interesting to get the insight of a young person who is in this for the long haul. I expect to be seeing these students playing as guest artists with the NSO and other big symphony orchestras in years to come.

I learned to inside story on the sudden appearance of air-conditioners (and of course working windows) in the practice cabins this year. Apparently Steinway chose 3 sites to outfit with beautiful pianos at a minimal cost, Chautauqua being one of them. The stipulation was that the spaces where the pianos were housed would be air-conditioned and the rooms with the grand pianos would be locked.

Thank you, Steinway, for making cabin #59 so pleasant this year!

(Later) I went to the student concert and gave up some practice time. It was a good lesson in performance skills. My new friend Edo is on the left in this picture. He and the other young pianist from Brazil played a very modern piece: Celestial Mechanics by George Crumb, during which they spent a lot of time plucking and plonking the piano. The music is so far back so they can reach the strings more easily. These young artists put on quite a show!

Musical Immersion

This week at Chautauqua finds me immersed in music. It’s usually a good feeling, but at around 1:00 today I felt like I was about to drown. After an hour of personal practice time, an hour playing with Deborah, and 2 1-hour coaching sessions I was mentally and physically exhausted.

The best piece of advice today came from this morning’s coach Arie, a soft-spoken Israeli who is a professional cellist and who heads up the music program here. When I explained why I was playing one section of our Brahms sonata tentatively for fear of making a mistake, he said, “It’s a dance, a minuet, so you must smile and just play through the mistake. It will never matter.”

And later Bill talked about the difference between practice mentality and performance mentality. To stay focused and engaged, you must have the same discipline you have in meditation where you focus only on the present note, not the one you just played incorrectly or the one you are worried about in the next measure.

The best news of the day is that practice cabin #59 is now air-conditioned. I signed up to practice there because it had the best piano, recognizing that it was the only cabin that remained un-air-conditioned. You can see the beautiful new windows and the space in the wall reserved for the air-conditioner. As it warms up here, it will be nice to be able to stay cool.

My afternoon’s music consisted of attending a master class given by Rebecca Pennys, a renowned pianist. She tends to be somewhat brutal but entertaining in her comments to the young students, who all come in knowing what to expect. They played unbelievably difficult pieces, all from memory. After each performance she offered her critique, ranging from an admonishment not to bounce on the piano bench, a reminder to use posture that holds your body upright and not slouched over the keyboard, advice on using the pedal or not, and on and on and on.

At one point she was actually sitting on the floor and playing the piece on the second Steinway (and had the student doing the same) to demonstrate how much better he could hear with his head above the keyboard.

It was interesting to note that the class of about 20 students was over half Asian and predominantly female. They seems bonded to each other and receptive but somewhat impervious to the stinging comments. They graciously accepted the occasional words of praise.

The biggest surprise of the trip was the fact that our next-door neighbor here is the son of my high-school principal. He is 70 years old and has a vineyard in Westminster, Maryland. His mother of 98 still looks forward each year to her trip to Chautauqua.

I remembered that his mother had been a very strict piano teacher. In fact my friend Kay used to get dropped off for her lesson and hide in the front shrubbery instead of going in to take her lesson. Of course she was the same person who was sneaking out her bedroom window just a few years later.

Anyway, we have been invited to a Labor Day wine-tasting at this guy’s farm, complete with the music of Bruckner in the background. What a small world.

Tonight’s entertainment is a troupe of Chinese acrobats who will be performing in the amphitheater. Then it’s home to bed so we can begin another day here at Chautauqua.

Synergy = Energy

This afternoon we were reminded that music can and should be fun. We were entertained by Synergy, a brass quintet of 20-30-somethings.

They started by throwing all of our musical etiquette assumptions out the window. We were told to clap, shout, or whistle whenever the music moved us to do so.

I quickly learned that synergy equated to energy. They played a variety of music -- from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Procession of the Nobles to Tommy Dorsey’s I’m Getting Sentimental Over You to selections from Porgy and Bess.

All 5 of these musicians were conservatory-trained. They use sophisticated techniques like breathing through their nose while they are playing. But their main objective today was to involve the audience in a variety of music.

It was a timely lesson for me, as I struggle with my yearly anxieties over making mistakes and realize it’s really all about having fun.

Playing with the Champs

With some expert coaching my husband and I played the Scrabble game of our lifetime. We had important Scrabble people for dinner tonight and after dessert, we got to see how the pros do it.

Joe Edley is the guy who writes the Scrabblegram that is syndicated in the Washington Post and in other major newspapers throughout the country. One of his best friends is Jerry Lerman, the guy we just happened to meet on the 4th of July. They are both here this week with their families, Joe as an instructor and Jerry as just another Chautauqua guest.

We made piles of BBQ chicken, lots of potato salad, steamed broccoli, and a recipe of lemon bars. It was a nice night to eat out on our large deck.

After dinner some people peeled off to go to the evening concert put on by the music school, that included excerpts from Carmen. The rest of us hunkered down to watch a Scrabble game between Joe and Jerry.

Joe’s first play was a Bingo, a play that used all 7 of his tiles. I had never even heard of more than half the words they played. In many cases, they knew the words were allowed, but could not define them. They used a clock to record how much time each person took. Joe was ready to play almost immediately each time it was his turn. He had the better letters and ended up winning 482 - 358. For someone who has seldom topped 200, these scores are phenomenal!

My husband and I offered ourselves up to be “coached” by Joe and Jerry. The idea was that we should come up with the words ourselves, but they could advise on strategy and weird 2-letter words. We both got just a little more help. I managed 3 Bingos and had the best letters I have ever drawn. I edged out my husband at 412 - 386. Here is the resulting board.

I can’t wait to see how Joe and Jerry do in the upcoming national championships. What a treat to see Scrabble in a new light.

Music Camp Begins Again

Being at Chautauqua once again reminds me there is still a place where you don’t have to lock your bike, where children can run free of their parents and not be in danger, and where beauty constantly stimulates all one’s senses.


We are staying in a different house this year. It is literally beside the stage door of the opera house, so we can follow the Little Vixens as the opera rehearsals and performances unfold.

It’s a strange house with things in odd places and dishes for an army but no shelves for food. The best bathroom is downstairs while all bedrooms are upstairs. We have a room intended for an 8-year-old girl with miniature chairs and a dresser mirror that would require you to sit on the floor.

The practice cabins seem to have multiplied and virtually all of them have been renovated. The windows no longer have to be held open with sticks. Some even have air conditioners. The only problem with #59 was the piano was either too high the bench was too low. Nothing a couple of phone books couldn’t fix.

The advertised Internet connection of our house did not materialize. So I’m sitting outside the lovely Smith Library soaking up their free Wi-Fi.

We’re soon off to hear a poetry reading, followed by a cookout at an old friend’s house on a lake.

Chautauqua in the sunshine is indeed an idyllic life.

Homes and Families

I knew it was a real gamble. How would children in a homeless shelter for victims of domestic violence deal with a read-aloud theme of “Darfur”? Even if we managed not to mention the rape, burned bodies, or other atrocities, focusing instead on the resulting homelessness and loss of parents, would these children who have experienced their own atrocities freak out or would they identify with the plight of children halfway around the world?

I must say the children in this shelter have a mixed track record for their participation and their attentiveness during the Thursday night read-alouds. Sometimes I feel good if I have engaged even one small mind for 10 minutes. They range from 3-year-olds who are mostly content to sit on your lap and play with your hair to a precocious 7-year-old girl who was recently suspended from school for beating another girl up to 8-year-old boys who are heavily into basketball and video games.

After we had done the usual introductions and read over the rules (raise your hand, don’t hit anyone else, have fun, and (my rule) treat the books lovingly), a 5-year-old boy gave me the perfect entree for the evening’s topic when he said, “In school we’re talking about houses around the world.” So I began, “Halfway around the world in Africa, in a country called Sudan, one group of people are being very mean to another group, including making them leave their homes.”

And then we began reading Mary Williams’ book “Brothers in Hope,” which is the story told by a Sudanese boy, whose village is burned and who loses his family. It begins,

I was far from home attending my animals when my village was attacked. I could hear bangs like thunder and see flashing lights in the distance. Suddenly an airplane was circling above. Clouds of dust rose from the ground and bullets began to rain down on my herd. Many of the animals were killed. Others ran away in fear. I ran back to my village to find my family, but everyone was gone. The houses were burning and everything was destroyed.

At this point the 9 little faces in my audience were mesmerized in a way I had never before seen. They stayed totally engaged through the next 20 minutes as we learned how the young boy had banded with other such boys and they had walked first to Ethiopia and then to Kenya in search of safety and shelter and food. It talks of what the boy learns along the way and how he always carries the words of his father with him on his journey, “Garang, be brave. Your heart and mind are strong. There is nothing you cannot do.” And Garang is very brave as he becomes a surrogate parent to 5-year-old Chuti. There is no fairy-tale ending with families reunited and safely back in their homes, but it does reflect the love and dedication of those trying to help boys like Garang and Chuti and the small successes they learn to treasure.
The next book focused on the problem of drought experienced by much of Africa. “Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain” by Verna Aardema is a lilting folktale which begins,

But one year when rains
were so very belated,
That all of the big wild
creatures migrated.
Then Ki-pat helped to end
that horrible drought –
And this story tells
how it all came about!

This is Ki-pat,
who watched his herd
As he stood on one leg,
like the big stork bird;

The children couldn’t wait to find out how Ki-pat had made it rain on the Kapiti Plain.

Their activity for the night took them back to the lost boys of Sudan. Each child was given a canvas square and fabric markers. I asked them to draw something that might make a child in a refugee camp feel happy. Their canvas squares will be sent to a camp in neighboring Chad where children from Darfur will decorate the other side. Then the squares will be joined together to help make a tent to give shelter to people who have lost their homes.

It turns out homes and families are just as important here as they are in far-away Africa. It was a sobering read-aloud, but one that caused each of us to think about homes and families, here and there.

Retiring a Wardrobe

I recently came to realize that I wasn’t the only one who retired. My wardrobe retired a year ago as well.

Those cute little skirts and those suits I used to wear to work are just languishing on their hangers. Even much of my jewelry is way too fancy to wear biking or meeting friends for lunch.

My normal attire is shorts and a tee shirt. Or maybe if I’m getting a little more dressed up, capris and a nicer shirt. I’ve worn the same pair of sandals for the past 3 weeks.

So the real question is what to do with the 90% of my wardrobe that is no longer being worn. Do I save those little skirts for the opportunity that just might present itself? Do I hold onto the nice suit for the occasional wedding?

It seems unfair to horde all these unworn clothes while there are people out there who can’t afford to buy something to wear to work.

I just need to turn this revelation into action and start cleaning out. It will be interesting to see what I choose to keep.