Conversations – Bulletproof Musician: Recent Episodes
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Cellist Yumi Kendall (Philadelphia Orchestra, Curtis) shares insights on how she balances practicing with other career and life demands, plus the importance of self-compassion and developing positive mental habits.Source
Sport and forensic psychologist Mitch Abrams shares insights on how trauma shows up in high-level performance domains, and how we can begin to move past it.Source
Flutist Linda Chesis (MSM) shares insights on how to develop a more beautiful sound, expose blind spots and pinpoint practice priorities, and organize your practice time when time is short.Source
Flutist Carolyn Christie (Montreal Symphony, McGill University) shares her mid-career struggle with "terrifying" performance anxiety, how she overcame this challenge, and the mental skills she now shares with her students.Source
Pianist Orli Shaham shares a revealing early-career failure, and the important lessons she learned from the experience that helped her get to where she is today. She also describes key elements of her process for learning new music and how this ensures that she’s both mentally and physically prepared for performances, plus how practice-room focus and on-stage focus are different, and much more.Source
Laurie Scott (Texas) and Cornelia Watkins (Northwestern) explain the synergy between performing and teaching, and how to be more effective teachers.Source
Whether it’s auditioning for orchestra jobs, securing a residency for your string quartet, or building up your teaching studio, have you ever had one of those moments where you begin to question whether things are ever going to work out?Source
When you think of classical music, what instruments come to mind? An orchestral instrument of some kind, like strings, woodwinds, brass, or percussion? Maybe piano? Voice? Or guitar?Would accordion make your list?Source
You know that famous quote attributed to Debussy? The one that goes something like "Music is the space between the notes."?I don't know about you, but I was certainly guilty of compress things and rushing through these spaces on many an occasion...And of course, there's an awful lot of music within each note as well. Which I also tended to rush through and pay too little attention to. (And where was I in such a rush to get to? No idea. Maybe the end of the piece so I could get off stage? 🤣)This might seem like a really abstract concept at first. So it's the sort of thing that can be easy to push to the back burner, because there are always so many notes to learn on your music stand. But paying more attention to the life within each note can make practicing and performing a much more engaging and gratifying experience. And improve your sense of rhythm and phrasing as well.In other words, it's worth keeping on the front burner, even if just at a simmer.Umm...ok, but what does this mean or look like exactly? In today's episode, violist Steven Tenenbom (Orion Quartet, Curtis, Juilliard, Mannes, Bard) explains, and illustrates what this means using concrete musical examples.Source
In this month’s conversation, I’m joined by Jason Shafer, who is principal clarinetist of the Colorado Symphony and on the faculty of the University of Northern Colorado and the International Festival-Institute at Round Top. Jason is also nearing completion of a master’s degree in performance psychology, and so we explore the many ways in which his performance psychology studies have influenced his approach to practicing, performing, and teaching.Source
I once heard somewhere, years ago, that if you want your kid to eat a new vegetable or unusual food, you have to put it in front of them an average of 16 times before they’ll touch it.Source
Whether you’re trying to play the clarinet, hit a backhand slice, pull off an omaplata sweep, or flip a pan-sized pancake without a spatula, you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “practice makes perfect.” Source
Whether you’re scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, or Youtube, you’ve probably seen musicians of all ages and levels posting videos of themselves practicing, offering tips and advice on how to overcome common challenges, and sharing clips of performances or stories and behind-the-scenes looks at what it means to be a music student or professional musician. Source
Whether you’re scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, or Youtube, you’ve probably seen musicians of all ages and levels posting videos of themselves practicing, offering tips and advice on how to overcome common challenges, and sharing clips of performances or stories and behind-the-scenes looks at what it means to be a music student or professional musician. Source
Tournaments and competition are a natural part of sports, and can be a lot of fun to watch, whether it’s your kid’s high school volleyball tournament or the NCAA basketball playoffs. Similarly, music competitions ranging from American Idol to the Van Cliburn competition to smaller local or regional competitions, can be pretty engaging experiences for an audience too.Source
E.E. Cummings once said “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”For many years, I didn’t understand what that meant. But it’s starting to make more sense. After all, it’s easy to follow a well-worn path, to do the safe thing, or to take others’ advice when it comes to figuring out what we should do with our lives.But artists seem to find their own way. Artists learn to listen to that inner voice, and have the courage to follow – even if they have no idea where it will take them.And whether we fall in love with their art or not, we respect the artist within them. Because we see their courage, and that resonates with the artist within us – which wants only to do the same. To follow our own path.Pianist Menahem Pressler has had a remarkable career spanning more than seven decades. As founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, he has recorded pretty much the entire piano chamber music repertoire over the trio's 50+ years.And in his 60+ years of teaching at Indiana University, he has guided students to prestigious teaching positions around the world and prizes in all of the major international piano competitions.In this inspiring 30-min chat, you’ll hear the wisdom and insight he has gained from a lifetime of performing and teaching – and what it takes (and means) to truly be an artist.In addition, we'll explore:-How he prepares for performances, and identifies the potential problem areas in advance.-The importance of finding your own voice-How he has, for himself anyway, figured out how to connect to an audience-What he is thinking about during a performance on his best days…and on bad days-On dealing with critics and bad reviews -He acknowledges that awards are nice, but identifies something more profound that he finds more deeply rewarding -I ask him if there’s anything he wishes he would have known when he was starting out in his career; he responds with what I think is the best possible answerSource
When it comes to buying a bathmat, convection oven, or sugar free gummy bears, online reviews can be a real life saver (tip: do not get these gummy bears, aka “Satan bears”).But when it comes to buying violin/viola/cello/bass strings, it’s not quite so straightforward.The right set of strings can make a big difference in how your instrument sounds and plays – but the process of experimenting with various strings to find the right match can be discouraging and costly.Source
I don’t know if this is normal or not, but I’ve always really enjoyed reading consumer reviews.Whether I’m searching for the right bathmat, garbage bags, or sugar free gummy bears (and if this is the first you’re hearing of this internet phenomenon, read that review 🤣), I like having some data before taking action.Source
Eavesdropping without permission is not cool, of course, but if you were to sit on the practice floor of most music schools and just listen, what’s the one thing you probably would NOT hear very much of?Silence. 🤫Source
Growing up in the pre-YouTube VHS vs Betamax days, I remember watching videos of Oistrakh or Heifetz performing the concerto that I was working on, to see what bowings or fingerings my favorite musicians were using. Or I’d listen to recordings to see what sort of musical and expressive decisions other musicians had made.Source
When I was going through the music world as a kid in the 80’s and 90’s, nobody really talked about performance anxiety.I mean, I’m pretty sure it was something we all felt, but it was so rare to hear anyone acknowledge it any way, that I still remember the one time another student brought it up before a concert.Source
Today I’ll be chatting with bassoonist Kim Laskowski, who is currently on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard school, and has been associate principal bassoon in the NY Philharmonic for nearly 20 years - a position she won at age 48.
Whether it was reading non-treble clefs, the circle of fifths, chord inversions, or the day my mom tried to explain time signatures to me with fractional apple slices, music theory is something I always struggled to grasp.
Something about it just never quite clicked. And it always felt like something to be endured, whether as a pre-college student, or eventually, as a music major in college. Because no matter where I went, theory class was always a required part of the curriculum. Which always made me wonder…WHY???? 🤬
It was my 5th grade year, and the elementary school I attended was having its annual let’s-get-the-kids-outside-and-make-them-compete-at-random-not-real-sporting-events extravaganza. There was tug-of-war, water balloon tosses, running laps while balancing an egg on a spoon, potato sack races, etc.
Even as a young child, I remember my very thoughtful and forward-thinking violin teacher encouraging me to learn as much from singers as I could.
I think she meant for me to listen and watch recordings, but for a time, I did take voice lessons. That said, my only aspiration vocally was to be able to sing The Chipmunks Christmas song, so my enthusiasm waned pretty quickly once I found out that I wasn't going to be learning how to sing like The Chipmunks…
My parents also tried to get me interested in opera, but that did not spark much joy in 12-year-old me. All I remember is how long they felt, and how desperately I wanted to stretch my legs throughout. Especially the ones where there were no subtitles (yeah, I’m guessing that’s not the correct term for the translations that were projected above the stage, but I assume you know what I’m talking about. 😅)
I think the idea was to learn from singers’ breathing and phrasing. But I don’t think I really grasped what I should be listening for, or how to incorporate any of this into my playing.
Because anytime I thought about breathing, my breathing would become forced and unnatural. And if I tried to think about breathing while playing, not only would I suddenly forget how to breathe like a normal person, but my arms and fingers would start to get all jumbled up and forget how to do their job too.
I have a vivid childhood memory of a time when my mom played me a recording of Itzhak Perlman and suggested that I try to imitate what I heard him doing. The stubborn little kid I was, I refused, because that would be “cheating” and I argued that I shouldn’t be a clone of my favorite musicians. To which my mom said that I needn’t worry - there was no way I was going to sound exactly like Perlman, even if I tried. 😳
I think we all instinctively have an aversion to copying or imitating someone else. But in hindsight, I suspect my mom was right. Because while I couldn’t sound anything like Perlman, I do think I sounded better when I had a clearer, and more aspirational target to aim for.
Plus, there’s that quote often attributed to Picasso which goes something like “bad artists copy, great artists steal.” Which seems to suggest that we all have to start somewhere - and maybe imitation is the first step on the path to finding our own voice?
Whether it’s a particular quality of sound, the way notes are connected together, or even the exact number of wiggles of vibrato per note, what might happen if we try to imitate, borrow, and perhaps even steal, some of the elements that we love most about our favorite artists?
It turns out that imitation/stealing is kind of an art of its own, and not only a fascinating challenge, but a fun one as well. Which may not only make you want to spend more time in the practice room, but record yourself - and listen back too!
How so?
I was never a very diligent practicer, so I often went into performances with a pretty reasonable amount of doubt and uncertainty about how things were going to go. I wasn’t happy about this, of course, but recognized that this was probably how I ought to feel, given my level of preparation.
So one year, I decided to get serious about practicing, and doubled my practice time.
I’ve always enjoyed a good all-you-can-eat buffet. Not so much for the all-you-can-eat part, but for the opportunity to sample lots of different things.
In a similar way, one of the things I enjoyed most about the summer festival I attended for many of my formative years, was the wide range of repertoire that the orchestras would play over the course of a summer. In nine weeks, we’d have nine concerts, with nine different programs, nine different soloists, and nearly always a different conductor.
Happy New Year! Yep…it’s once again that time of year when we are supposed to think about New Years resolutions and what habits we’d like to change. But with everything we’ve experienced the last couple years, I don’t know if I have the same level of energy as in years past, to make any massive […]
I have to confess that when I was in school, ear training classes were always a bit of a mystery to me. Something I grudgingly tolerated (or tried to get out of!), rather than embraced.
I mean, sure, I got that the sight-singing, dictation, and rhythm exercises we did were all intended to help develop my musicianship in some way. But I wasn’t really sure what “musicianship” meant exactly. And I didn’t quite see how any of this was going to help me produce a better sound in my Beethoven sonata or take my Paganini Caprice to the next level either.
In preparing for this week’s post, I conducted an extremely scientific poll to see if I could find out where the piano ranked in popularity relative to all other instruments (i.e. I asked Google, Siri, and Alexa “what is the most popular musical instrument?”).
I could be misremembering, but I feel like I have this hazy recollection of my teacher asking me if I'd like to play in a quartet, and my being a little less than enthusiastic at the idea. I mean, I was probably 10, I don’t think I'd ever really listened to any chamber music at that point, and my part definitely didn’t seem nearly as cool or exciting as whatever concerto I had my eye on.
I spent most of the first 20-some years of my life hanging out with more of my fellow string players than wind or brass players or singers. So I never really picked up on a lot of the lingo and day-to-day challenges that are part of their world.
But in the last 10-15 years, as I’ve had more conversations with wind and brass musicians and singers, there’s a particular phrase that has often come up which I don’t remember hearing quite as often amongst my string friends (though memory is of course a very unreliable thing, and this could very well have just been a personal blind spot in those days).
And what phrase is that exactly?
“Concept of sound.”
The idea, I think, is a bit like the classic Yogi Berra line - “You’ve got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.” In that it’s hard to have a really awesome and compelling sound, if you don’t know what you’re aiming for, or have a clear concept of that sound in your head in the first place.
I think this is a point that’s completely relevant to all musicians, and not just wind/brass/vocal musicians, of course. But cultivating a concept of sound can be much easier said than done.
So…how does one do it? And why, exactly, is it so totally worth the time and effort to do so?
As many kids do, my two little ones started asking for a dog when they were 5 and 3 years old.
At the time, our answer was a hard no. I mean, managing two kids already felt like a lot. We couldn’t imagine adding a high-maintenance ball of fur to the equation.
So as many parents do (or so I’m assuming), we kicked the problem down the road for future us to deal with, saying that while we didn’t think they were old enough to take on the responsibility of dog ownership, maybe in five years, when they were 10 and 8, we might reconsider.
We assumed that they’d forget about it. But of course they didn’t. And to convince us that they were responsible enough to have a dog, for 30 days, the older one woke up every morning, dragged himself out of bed, down the hall, out the door, down the elevator, out of the building, and took a selfie of himself on the street “walking” his non-existent dog.
So we got a dog.
And the first thing we learned, is that we had no idea how to train a dog. How to get it to sit, stay, pee outside instead of inside…the little furball didn’t come pre-trained with any particular commands, so we were kind of at a loss.
A bit of Googling led us to discover clicker training, which basically is a way of positively reinforcing or highlighting desired behaviors and providing feedback to the dog, so it knows when it has done something good. Which is a contrast to the more aversive approach to training that involves using pain or fear to get a dog to repeat a desired behavior.
This more positive approach resonated with us, so we gave it a try we delegated all of the training to our daughter, and it all seemed to work out pretty well.
So I was intrigued, when a few years later, I was listening to a Hidden Brain podcast episode and an orthopedic surgeon named Martin Levy described how he was using clicker training with – wait for it – his surgical residents. That’s right – clicker training for humans.
The gist, is that this way of teaching helped to take negativity and judgment and anxiety and fear out of the learning process, and seemed to improve skill acquisition as well. And there was even an organization named TAGteach which had a whole system developed specifically for humans. Which made me wonder…might this approach to teaching also work with musicians?
Umm…so does it?
Have you ever thought about your process for learning a new piece, and wondered if there might be a more optimal way to do this? To not only learn faster perhaps, but also minimize bad habits that have to be unlearned later?
Like, should you listen to a recording first, to create an auditory model of some kind? Or maybe look at the score and try to create a model of it in your head in this way? Or simply play through it to get a feel for it?
Is it ok to emphasize technical details more in the early stages, and prioritize musical details later? Or is it important to do enough research about the piece in the early going, that the musical details can be baked into your practice even from the very start?
Surveys of musicians do suggest that there are some commonalities in how they approach learning new music. A series of interviews published in 1950 (Wicinkski) with ten well-known Russian pianists found, for instance, that the majority went through three distinct stages of learning. An initial phase where they developed an artistic image of the piece, a middle phase where they focused on solving technical issues, and a final phase where they tried to focus more on the bigger whole, and emphasized performance practice.
But there does seem to be a good bit of individual variation, and no one-size-fits all approach that’s exactly the same or “best” for all musicians. Although there do seem to be some important key principles that are probably a good idea to follow.
And what might these principles be?
To learn more about this, I thought it might be fun to reach out to two terrific musicians and teachers, and ask them this question at the same time, to see how similar or different their answers might be…
Having to suddenly transition to teaching online in March 2020 was quite a challenge for many (if not all!) of us. It's looking like we may be able to return to live instruction soon, but this seemed like a good time to reflect on what we've learned, and how we've grown in the months since.
To that end, here's Alexander Technique teacher Lori Schiff's story of how she went from believing that Zoom was not a viable medium for teaching Alexander Technique, to finding ways to adapt and grow as a teacher, discovering that she could indeed make online Alexander Technique lessons a meaningful experience for students.
I imagine there are probably some kids out there who love to practice, but I was definitely not one of them when I was growing up. There was a lot of nagging on my mom’s side, a lot of passive aggressive behavior on my part, and days when I thought running away might be a […]