Ye Olde Christmas Spirit(te)

As my days of holiday vacation are waning, now is probably an appropriate time to discuss the age-old blessing/curse of a question for most musicians-Vacation Practice: Fight or Flight?  As dutiful readers of this blog (meaning my mom and sister, let's be real) can probably surmise, I've been a Vacation Practice Fighter.  I lug my horn with me wherever I go and insist on not only practicing daily, but tackling big musical pieces and being super-humanly productive as Christmas carols waft down from other rooms of my childhood home.
Now, it's about even odds whether I actually accomplish any of my end-of-year practice goals, but there is one absolute given- I will whine about it.  While the rest of the year, I accept that practicing is just a part of my daily life and hell, it's way better than almost any other job I can think of except celebrity cake decorator, around the holidays, I turn into a petulant 9-year-old version of myself.

If I could choose between playing a note-perfect Mahler 3 or making this cake...I would hesitate.

"Woe is me that I have to practice the same damn orchestral excerpts while there's a Gilmore Girls marathon on TV! And no one else in my family has to work, I have to sit here by myself, not playing with my dog, not eating the obscene amount of salty snacks that always appear in my parent's pantry, not utilizing HBO OnDemand...what a terrible cross to bear."  So, yeah.  Holiday spirit in da house.

Did I mention we like tall trees?

But this year was different.  *Cue angelic choir*  This vacation, though my sisters were just as fun and though the holiday cookie situation was at an all-time high, I went down to the basement, practiced and actually enjoyed it.  I've been thinking a lot about what changed this year because I was like 68% less obnoxious than usual, and that should be investigated.  And I think what changed is that now practicing is actually my job.  Well, ok performing is actually my job, but still...horn bringing paychecks is what is different.  And, here's the cheesy holiday bringaround, I am beyond grateful that I get to play Mozart, Brahms, and Messiaen all day every day for a LIVING.  (A very meager living, but nonetheless).  So many of my musician friends don't get to perform on a regular basis, but I do.  Ergo, I should just shut up about having to practice on Christmas morning cuz actually my life is amazing right now and I have one clear, really-not-that-difficult daily task.  So happy holidays to everyone, and to my wonderful supportive family that probably didn't even notice I had a much better attitude this year because I compensated by being annoying elsewhere--you're welcome. 

O2 to CO2

I feel anxious just looking at this...

Today I feel compelled to muse on a subject that is of universal appeal, though perhaps not interest: oxygenating blood.  Or, for musicians and pretty much everyone who has a phobia of the circulatory system (don't ask me why): breathing.  Breathing is at the heart (or lungs, rather?) of everything I do on the horn.  It is the foundation of my musicianship, of my expression, of my physicality, and obviously, it's pretty easy.  I mean, everyone breathes a million times every year and hardly thinks about it.  But breathing is this amazingly powerful gift that we all have so I'd like to share my brief thoughts about it.

I've been thinking about breathing in the context of horn-playing for many years now.  I've done it wrong a lot; you can in fact breathe "backwards" as I did for upwards of 5 years of my life, and tension can creep in everywhere if you're not aware of your breathing.  I've also done it right on occasion too, and a good breath is one of the most transformative actions anyone can undertake.  I work at a public high school in NYC with not-so-advanced students who can barely get consistent sounds out of their instruments.  They have played for several years, in some cases, without ever getting a truly good breath of air into their instrument.  Showing a 16-year-old girl with body image issues and low self-esteem the power of her own lungs is, hands down, one of the most rewarding things I have ever achieved as a teacher or musician.  The difference in the sound of their instruments, in their posture, in their self-awareness when they take a truly deep breath is astounding.

In my own daily practice, I've found my breathing to be inconsistent lately.  It's funny how something so basic can be derailed so quickly.  Any kind of mental anxiety, physical tension or laziness, or lack of focus is captured in the quality of my breath.  Conversely, I can overcome almost any kind of technical or musical struggles with relaxed, deep, happy breaths.

Ahhhhhh.

A fringe benefit of my concentrating on breathing lately has been these unexpected periods of almost meditative-like selflessness.  I try to focus on the image of a mill wheel turning constantly and slowly, with my air flowing over it like water.  It's a beautiful, calming image and makes me fearless on the horn, if I can actually get into that zone.  It's no surprise that most mindfulness techniques begin and end on the breath.  Our breathing is our constant companion in our lives, but it's also a window into our state of mind, our power to concentrate, and our capacity for optimism.  So happy breathing, may your blood be rich with oxygen...*shudder.

Missions and Mantras

I started my new job last week!!  

And there was much rejoicing!

 Not only did this give me a reason to put on mascara and actually speak aloud before 3 pm (ah, the joys of living alone in a new city), but it's going to be a really really cool job.  Filled with inspiring colleagues, daunting challenges, and some serious street-cred.  In our busy week of orientations, meetings, and team-building activities, they managed to carve out some time for us to think about our Personal Mission Statements.  This fellowship is definitely one where they Capitalize Meaningful Things because we are the Future of Classical Music and we are going to Carry the Torch, etc, etc.  I've crafted mission statements, vision statements, even weird abstract metaphor statements before.  My best being, "I am the hiking trail that celebrates the journey."  Yah.

Surprised you didn't recognize me.  Geez.

So I was right there ready to go with my big ol' vision statement to Save the Human Race by helping people learn to pay attention to beautiful things (like classical music!) for long stretches of time.  And I believe in this vision, truly I do, it's why I practice my horn, it's why I perform and interact with people, it's why I get up in the morning.  It "resonates" with me, as pretentious arts consultants like to say.

But I must say, my mind was awakened this week by a fellow colleague's mission statement.  When asked to share in our small groups, this colleague admitted their big dream was not to be uber-successful, uber-effective, or even uber-artistic (random aside: Does anyone else feel Uber without umlaut would be a good name for a cow?), but their personal mission was in fact to be "happy, relaxed, and productive."  Those last two words really struck me.  Relaxed?  Yep, I like that.  Productive?  Totally what I aim for every minute of every day, it seems like.  But the combination of the two?  Whoa.

I seriously have never considered relaxed and productive to be anything but mutually exclusive.  And this whole week, I've been thinking about how little relaxation I bring into my productivity.  My whole day is divided into times for cutting loose (like now, when I'm drinking a beer and listening to my Broncos get beat) or working hard (like my 6 mile run this afternoon).  And of course, relaxation occasionally creeps into productivity, but I don't conciously aim to unite these two states.  But why in the hell not?  I totally should.  And not because it'll make me more productive (which I'm pretty sure is true), but because Quality of Life counts for something.  And at a certain point, you gotta ignore the sands slipping through the hourglass and just...enjoy.

And bust a move.  Did I mention that?

So thanks, wiser-colleague-than-I.  I'm off on my two-year mission to save humanity.  And chill.

Getting back on the horse

In all my recent nomadic years where every nine months seems to bring a new set of challenges, acquaintances, and Craigslist furniture, this has been the most difficult transition yet.  You'd think finishing graduate school, saving up some money, and moving to the most populous city in the country would be straightforward.  Hell, lots of poorer, stupider people move to New York in their mid-20s, I told myself, I will definitely do better than them.

Breaded eggplant pizza-my true friend.

But for reasons I'd rather not go into in this less-private-than-it-feels-like forum, I've had a rough summer.  Aspects of my life that felt stable aren't so stable at the moment, and I've eaten far more greasy slices of pizza in the last three weeks than I would care to admit.  It's also been, significantly, the worst practice summer of my recent memory.  Some of that is to be expected.  Graduating school, finishing regular lessons (possibly forever), crashing on a different couch or mattress every 10 days, not the recipe for my daily three-hour dose of problem solving with my favorite hunk of metal.  But then I wonder, is my whirlwind of a summer the cause of my practice hiatus, or is it the reverse?

It may sound superstitious, petty, or just over the top, but practicing my horn on a regular basis is my method of survival.  We all have things in this world that keep us waking, working, and smiling.  The cheesy word for that is a calling, but since I don't believe in the guy behind the megaphone, I just call it passion.  For a brief period of time every day, I get in touch with something outside of myself, outside of my head, outside of sheer necessity.  I work for no one but myself and my future dreams.  I've been out of touch with that deeper, stronger person, with my inner musician, and I'll be damned but my emotional life turns to shit when she's MIA.

It'll be just like this, except for a horn instead of baby Simba.

But she's back now.  At least I think.  I'm starting a job in a few weeks as a professional musician.  My profession is playing my instrument.  I still can't wrap my head around it, and simultaneously fretting about all the hours lost this summer isn't helping.  But slowly, gradually, and as always, I will get back into shape.  I will re-train my lips, my lungs, my ears, and annoy the hell out of my new roommates.  The fog will lift, the sun will shine, the birds will sing if I can just...practice.

After all, to paraphrase a wise Post-It note from my most recent sublet, "Practicing is hard.  Coal mining is harder."

(Nerdy) Dream Deferred

It's been a big week for me.  Or rather, for the 8th grade horn super-nerd that lies just below the surface of my supposedly professional demeanor.  Sometimes music is just awesome!

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to (prepare for gushing) meet my French horn hero.  Well, one of my French horn heroes.  This person has had an amazing orchestral career, masterclasses all over the world, and has blazed the trail for a lot of female horn players overseas.  If you don't know much about the elite French horn world (what, have you been living under a rock?), that person is Sarah Willis. 

...nbd.

But here's the great thing about classical music-- even the world's top musicians will sit down with you in a lesson, answer virtually any question you throw at them, give you honest professional advice, and invite you salsa dancing afterward.  This is why hero worship in my field is awfully silly.  Here I am stalking Sarah Willis on the Berlin Phil Facebook page, but in real life, she's very nice and humble and not unlike someone who'd be my friend in real life. 

The other big exciting blast-from-my-junior-high-past is an upcoming performance of Benjamin Britten's "Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings" with my buddies at Classical Revolution.  Guys, this piece is THE BEST.  No, but really.  It's the best piece written for the horn and I've loved it since I first learned to play more than like 8 notes on my instrument.  I loved it so much I was even interviewed about it on the local public radio station when I was 13.  (Don't be too impressed- the poor classical music host had to feed me lines so I'd stop simply saying, "I like it when the horn plays!")  I was a helluva precocious kid and most of the time I shudder at the things I fell in love with in my early musical years, but this piece has really stuck with me as I've grown up.  I've never gotten a chance to perform it, so this concert feels rather momentous in the arc of my horn-playing life.  But I'm trying not to make too big a deal out of it.  Cuz making big deals out of things is so 11 years ago.

(But confidential to the awkward, brainy adolescent who spent her allowance on CDs entitled "The Magic of the French Horn": HIGH FIVE!!!)

Now what, Tom?

Also, I'm a big fan of his three-chord ukulele tabs.

Though I profess to have somewhat sophisticated music tastes, I have a soft spot for Tom Petty.  He reminds me of backpacking trips and impromptu karaoke and the simpler times in life.  And whenever I'm in a period of anticipation, I always ALWAYS get his song stuck in my head: "The Waiting is the Hardest Part."  It's just so true, Tom!  It's the hardest part!

And it is, mostly.  Those days when every time you open your email inbox you feel your stomach lurch are tense, to say the least.  Over the past 6 weeks, I've been waiting to hear back from about 8 different auditions for various things, some just for fun, some related to My Future (dum da da duuum!)  And it's all over now.  I've heard back from everything, and in the spirit of full disclosure, got rejected from 6.5 (the half being a waitlist-type thing).  But the one I got accepted to is a big deal.  Like, change my life big deal.  Like, I'm moving to New York in the fall to be part of the coolest music program in the country big deal.

I'm really proud of myself, and really honored that the-people-behind-the-one-way-mirror picked me.  Me!  That almost never happens.  Music is just so freaking competitive, being the last one standing is rare and almost uncomfortable.  Because now comes the actual hardest part...acceptance.  Over the past 5 days since I heard the good news, I've been swatting away the voice in my head that says, "You, yes you!  Are you excited?  Are you ready?  Are you sure?  Are you going to wear that?"

Now comes the wash of emotions under the umbrella of entitlement.  Do I deserve this?  Am I really good enough?  How can I prove that to myself and to others?

La casa del Insecurities.

I don't like being rejected, but this is like some sort of reverse-psychology rejection.  And it sucks.  I have a feeling that it will retreat back into the dark cave where it lives, like all my other disappointment-related feelings. 
The fact is, I'm exactly the same person/horn player/musician that I was 6 days ago.  And I don't have to be anything other than me. With maybe a slightly cooler haircut.  I am moving to NYC after all.

  

Black and White and Heard Nowhere

Ahoy!  Unemployment ahead!

For all of the wonderfully poetic rhetoric about the arts being the most flexible and transformative discipline one can study, the road to professional success just sucks.  Not that anyone's road to success is particularly yellow and bricked in our given economy (womp, womp...), but the method of becoming a professional musician, visual artist, dancer, etc. is just strange.

There I was last weekend playing a, yeah I'll say it, pretty kick-ass recital.  I played beautifully, not perfectly, but with a lot of heart.  I was proud of myself and people enjoyed the concert and connected with my choice of music.  And that's what it means to be a musician and an artist and a person, really.

Fast forward four days when I was playing an audition for...well, for a summer program that shall remain nameless.  I warmed up, sounded good, walked onstage, played fairly well, but cracked a note in Ein Heldenleben.  Heldenleben is one megolomaniac's attempt to confine every orchestral instrumentalist to the practice room for the rest of our lives, trying to learn this stupid grandiose tone poem.  (JK, I loves it, but I mean really Strauss...fewer notes could've been just as heroic.)  And as a result of that, I probably won't get in to this program.  And that means I don't get a chance to perform for four weeks with awesome people for free while drinking a lot.  So big deal, I can't go to band camp this summer, my life is so hard.  But the point is, I still had/have a lot to offer.  As a performer, as an artist, as a horn player.  But because of the orchestral audition process, the standard by which my instrument's success is judged, the only thing that counts is the lack.  Lack of detail, lack of perfection, lack of playing it the way the conductor expects.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be auditions in life.  Of course there should.  People need to be weeded out, the most talented and hard-working should be the ones we hear.  I just think there should be a bit of a gray area between "professionals" and everyone else.  It's the difference of a couple notes in almost every winning audition, yet losers sometimes slip into this oblivion where they can't play with anyone and no one gets to hear them.  It's the story of the sprinter who nearly made the Olympics.  Except different because music is meant to be heard and needs an audience to work its magic.

This is why I truly believe there need to be alternative venues for classical music besides the concert hall.  Sure, it's nice to go to the symphony; I go often, mostly because I can be guaranteed a certain level of artistry by the musicians.  Presumably, they all had to win auditions to get to where they are, so we can be free to be moved by what they do, and talk about the symphony like an old pretentious uncle.  But what about the others?  What about people like me?  Sure, I haven't won that big audition yet, but I bet most listeners can't really tell the difference between pros and near-pros.  Except on our resumes.

Beautiful playing happens all around us, we're just too scared (myself and other "trained" musicians included) to endorse it without some other large arts structure backing us up.  There are all different degrees of musicianship; let's open the window a little wider, shall we?  Fresh air could do us some good!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming, for one semester

Holy wow, it's been a very long time since I've posted anything.  If I could, I would scan pictures of my calendar these last few months just to prove how busy I've been, but that would be pretty whiny and I'm sure I'm not the busiest person in the world.  Probably not even the busiest person in the UW School of Music.  Possibly not even the busiest person in my immediate family.  But this isn't helping things.

This set designer fooled me!

So life in school is winding down, and frankly I couldn't be happier about that.  You know that scene at the end of "The Truman Show" when Jim Carrey runs into the edge of the sky with his boat while trying to sail away, and just sits there looking at the edge of his opaque snow globe world?  That's kind of how I'm feeling now.  While school feels safe and warm and filled with books, it's also started to feel a bit confined and unvarying.  (10 points if you know what movie I just referenced!)  I just want to get out in the world and get my ass kicked.  6 months from now, I'll probably be saying just the opposite.  Curse this economy.  But for now, moving away from the occasional T-ball-like musical world of school ("it doesn't matter who won, what matters is everyone's improving!"), sounds pretty darn good.

Imagine this but silk with a flowy skirt and scoop neckline.

But before I can flip that tassel and throw my hat (as if I'm going to attend a commencement ceremony at a school of 40,000), I have to play my master's recital in just a few short weeks.  I've been practicing like a...like a...there should be some sort of hard-working but intellectual animal metaphor here, and I feel good about my upcoming performance.  The thing about recitals is, they're friendly, peaceful ventures.  You pick music you love and sound good playing, you wear a pretty dress (mine's floor-length and eggplant-colored, squeeee!), your parents fly out and buy snacks for your reception, and people cheer for you and give you hugs at the end.  Unlike auditions which are firing squads designed to make you crack, recitals give you a chance to play beautiful and look beautiful and feel adored.

Barring any unforeseen chop injuries, memory slips, or wardrobe malfunctions, I fully expect to have a great time at mine.  And maybe the audience will too.  Though actually, most of the people there are bored about 25 minutes in and already imagining what flavor of hummus I bought for my reception and whether my mom is from the Midwest (baked goooooods!...and she's isn't).