'Don’t play the butter notes.'
Herbie Hancock relating advice given to him by Miles Davis:
[via americanroutes]I felt like I was getting in a rut, and I was playing the same thing over and over again, and he noticed that. So he suggested that I not play the butter notes … I started eliminating certain notes from my chords - some of the notes that clearly define what the chord is – and it actually changed my style of playing forever.
'German pre-Romantic philosopher, Johann Georg Hamman, held that music was given to man to make it possible to measure time: We do not measure time regularly, like clocks do, but with many differing rates of speed.'
At the onset of another year of regularly measured time Charles Rosen reminds us of the much more varied and elastic sense of time inherent in music. This is the technical element of conducting I ponder most as I develop interpretations, and an aspect of the art form which fascinates me endlessly.
[via Bobulate]
A stroboscopic image of the hands and baton of conductor Efram Kurtz, shot by legendary music and arts photographer Gjon Mili in 1945.
The photo headlines New York music columnist Justin Davidson’s recent report on learning to conduct, which perhaps unsurprisingly deals exclusively with technique. For American orchestras to thrive in the twenty-first century we will have to see much more media coverage – not to mention standard conservatory curricula – focused on other critical skill sets for conductors, particularly prorgamming, community engagement and leadership.
'I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.'
Ernest Hemingway, elucidating an idea by which every musician should live.
[via vineetkaur]
This is where I’ve been spending large chunks of my time the past few weeks, preparing for Saturday’s Bach-fest at the WCFSO. I’ll be leading the concert from this lovely harpsichord, built by North Carolina maker Richard Kingston and graciously loaned to us by the UNI School of Music. Among the many gems featured on the program is the piece I was working on over the weekend – Bach’s festive Cantata BWV 63, composed for Christmas 1714. [We are performing the duet ‘Ruft und fleht den Himmel an’ with Iowa vocalists Jeff Brich and Elisabeth Bieber.]
Stay tuned for more posts related to this concert; in the meantime hear the complete repertoire on Spotify.
'Technical perfection is a ridiculous and unfortunate expectation, one created by a century of increasingly polished [and manipulated] recorded music. To an extent, I do expect ‘perfect’ performances out of the Chicago Symphony, Berlin Phil, or New York Phil – I’ve heard them do it before, and I’m confident they can do it again. But from soloists or chamber groups, I want to hear something new, something interesting, something daring, rather than something technically flawless.'
Will Robin is right on. As recorded musical media sheds the inflated monetary value it accrued during the twentieth century we’ll continue to see fresh performance practices – informed by the daring, interesting approaches Will seeks – develop in the twenty-first.
[via my colleague Hunter Capoccioni]
'Musicians come and go and they’re stewards of the music for a brief period of time. But once the music plays – it’s really between Beethoven and the listener at that point. The musicians are there to get their goddamn hands off of it. All that training! Thousands of hours! Sight-reading every day! All so they can get the hell out of the way because nobody gives a crap about them at all. The less you notice them, the better it sounds. I mean, it was the highest level of art in music that I’d ever seen, and it was performed by people who had spent countless hours of work just to be invisible.'
Guitarist and composer Trey Anastasio, reflecting on his recent collaboration with the New York Philharmonic in an interview for The Believer’s annual music issue. Interesting that an individual so firmly outside the art music camp could intuit our purpose as art music ensemble performers so lucidly. His observation should be the central tenet of every training program for aspiring orchestral musicians and conductors.
[via Marco.org]
