The Space Between the Notes

The third week of amazing master classes at the Toronto Summer Music Academy includes classes by stellar Academy faculty James Anagnoson, Ian Swensen, Patrick Gallois, Antonio Lysy, and Marietta Orlov.

Orlov talks to one of her piano students playing a piece from operatic repertoire and reminds him to "visualize orchestral sonorities". She then moves on to discuss building "finger memory" to alleviate performance anxiety.

"The space between the notes is when music happens" she says.

"There are millions of people who can play very well the piano, but to make music on it, there are very few."

James Anagnoson tells his piano students "All the good pianists know how to practice." "If I practiced with the animation and intensity that you do, I'd be exhausted in 20 minutes!"

He talks about the importance of yoga/breathing for piano playing. (I take the opportunity to remind about the free yoga classes Toronto Summer Music has organized for the Academy students.)

Using a metronome helps you develop a strong internal pulse, says Anagnoson. He stresses the importance of practicing slowly with the metronome. "It will be your policeman."

Fingering, he says, is a huge issue, and very personal: finding the logic of what one's hands will do, and applying that to the piece. The litmus test is playing in front of people. "Sometimes it takes me four or five years to find the right fingering (for me), and when I get it, it's like 'Eureka'!"

Master flutist Patrick Gallois is the quintessential Parisian gentleman, suave and charming. At 17 he started studying with Rampal, and at 21 was appointed 1st flute of the Orchestre National de France. He plays a one of a kind wooden flute because he says its sound is better than gold.

One of the students asks if he can teach circular breathing. He tells a story about how he once locked the door to his class, put the key on the table, and told his students no one could leave until they had all learned circular breathing. In the end they all did it. Later the dean told him he should not do that -- they could get in trouble.

In my experience the best teachers are the ones who are gutsy and bold enough to make an impression. My father as a young teacher once lit a dollar bill on fire in front of a classroom full of high school students to make the point that if they wasted his time they were also wasting money. They never forgot that lesson.

Some of Gallois' comments on a student playing CPE Bach:

"Play this like you're spreading jam on bread."

For another phrase: "Play like you're sitting back with your cigar and whiskey." (I'm surprised he says whiskey and not cognac)

"The Germans took the Italian and French styles, brought them together, and made them better. Like with cars."

For one phrase: "It's like you've shot a bullet and then the smoke is rising up."

Another music/yoga parallel: "Music is breathing -- tension (inhale) and release (exhale)."

Violinst Ian Swensen is a very physical teacher. He gets "in the face" of his students, often adjusting physically, and using big physical gestures to illustrate his point. He can also get metaphysical, making reference to the big bang theory and the expanding universe to coax a performance out of a student playing a Brahms piece. "You see that blue sky out there? There are stars inside that sky!"

He, like almost all the other teachers I've visited, stresses visualization in music. He has a visual image for practically every phrase.

"Brahms is all about good and evil" he says.

"Imagine you have 100,000 people around you, humming."

"Hear the sound spin."

"It's important to hear the sense of the music, and not worry about the notes. This is hard to do, because if you think too hard about it, it doesn't work." (Makes me think of practicing handstand -- as soon as I'm aware I'm in it I fall out.)

Later, chatting with Swensen I find out he is very into yoga. Living in the Bay Area, turns out his next door neighbor for many years and best friend is the great yoga master Rodney Yee. At one point he and Rodney would practice 4 hours a day! I tell him I'm a yoga teacher and he says we should practice together. So I suggest we do one of the Academy classes and he agrees. The yoga classes offered to the Academy students are donated by the studio where I teach, the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center and are held at 8am twice weekly throughout the Festival. Sure enough, Ian shows up to join me, as does cello master Antonio Lysy and one of our Academy students. With just the four of us plus the teacher there is a special intimate quality to the class. Afterwards we are all completely relaxed, loose, yet energized, and ready for another wonderful day of Toronto Summer Music.

Music for a fragmented society

For the second year in a row, Toronto Summer Music offered a string quartet workshop for emerging composers. Last year the workshop was led by R. Murray Schafer, and this year it was multiple Juno award winner Christos Hatzis, hailed as one of the most important composers writing today. Four lucky young composers were selected out of a field of fifteen to workshop their compositions with Hatzis and the Penderecki String Quartet. At the end of the week long workshop, all the works were performed at a public concert by the Penderecki.

Hatzis' composition workshop was less a class than a forum, in which philosophy, politics, and of course, music, were discussed with equal passion. He started by telling the students that rather than approaching string quartet writing in terms of a spectrum of sound (satb or sstb), one should approach it as "a play with four characters" (once again, the music-as-story metaphor).

"Composition is always a mirror that reflects it's times", Hatzis tells his students. "Because we are fragmented as a society, composition is also fragmented."

When discussing higher education he points out that "Academia always teaches the culture of at least one generation behind."

Afternoons were spent workshopping the student compositions with the Penderecki String Quartet. Some of the students, after getting feedback in this forum, opted to rewrite some of their works before the Friday recital.

Sitting in on the dress rehearsal for the Friday recital, I watched the amazing Penderecki quartet work through the student compositions, and then they moved on to rehearse Hatzis' second string quartet, "The Gathering", which was also to be performed at the recital. Hatzis asked if I'd like to follow along with a score. The Gathering is a very complex piece, especially the third movement, "Nadir", which gallops along at a frantic pace employing micro-rhythms and utilizing advanced compositional techniques like metric modulation. I'm just happy I could flip the pages at the right time!

I spoke with several of the students afterwards and without exception they felt this was an extremely worthwhile and valuable program. I could not agree more. I only wish that more people were there to hear these wonderful new works performed by an exceptional ensemble.