{"id":29748,"date":"2018-09-07T14:23:33","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T22:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/?p=29748"},"modified":"2018-09-10T22:13:26","modified_gmt":"2018-09-11T06:13:26","slug":"how-i-spent-my-summer-holidays-and-other-terrible-misfortunes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/how-i-spent-my-summer-holidays-and-other-terrible-misfortunes\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Spent My Summer Holidays (and other terrible misfortunes)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-29761\" src=\"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Young-Werther.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Young-Werther.jpg 600w, http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Young-Werther-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This summer, I attended a couple of music festivals State-side. The first was the Lake Placid Chamber Music Institute Seminar, a week-long string seminar with <em>yours truly<\/em> in the role of &#8220;token wind player&#8221;. The second, <em>Balkanalia<\/em>, was a celebration of music and dancing from the Balkan countries (where I also got to play my t\u00e1rogat\u00f3). Held in a summer camp by a meandering stream not far from Portland, Oregon, it was more of a stretch for me musically than the usual fare of Beethoven and Brahms. Still, most of my efforts this summer were devoted to preparing the Clarinet Quintet by Brahms, one of the paramount works of chamber music for the clarinet. This afforded me the opportunity to work it up to a performance level.<\/p>\n<p>To do that, I relied on the following tools:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Performing with a recording<\/strong> \u2013 I had several recordings (Martin Frost, Andreas Ottansammer, Karl Leister, and Yona Ettlinger). I sucked the recordings into the <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/ca\/app\/practice-pro\/id405586401?mt=8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Practice Pro app<\/a> on my phone where I could loop sections and slow them down until I was able to at least reasonably emulate some great recordings. Doing this also helped me learn the quartet parts intimately.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tuning exercises<\/strong> \u2013 Too often I\u2019ve left tuning until the end and then more or less hoped for the best, but this time I sat down with not one but two tuners. I\u2019d play long tones, intervals (particularly those found in the Quintet) and scales. Playing also with the above-mention recordings in Practice Pro allowed me to repeat sections slowly until I was absolutely sure of my tuning.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Firing up that old metronome<\/strong> &#8211; While playing with a metronome helps ensure a consistent tempo, it was more for the subdivisions that I used the metronome here. Nowadays with metronome apps, you can program all sorts of fancy sub divisions. The Quintet\u2019s <em>Adagio<\/em> movement contains figures for the clarinet that must sound almost improvised while being metronomically precise.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Alexander Technique <\/strong>\u2013 In order to play in a more relaxed many, I recently took up Alexander Technique. My biggest takeaway so far (and it\u2019s a big one) is locating my centre of gravity while I\u2019m playing lower in my body than I do. The result has been that I now support the air from the base of my spine rather than just midway down my back.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_29770\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-29770\" style=\"width: 408px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29770\" src=\"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Jason-clarinet-adirondacks.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"408\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Jason-clarinet-adirondacks.jpg 408w, http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Jason-clarinet-adirondacks-245x300.jpg 245w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 408px) 100vw, 408px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-29770\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Performing for the locals in the Adirondacks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h1>Reading<\/h1>\n<p>In addition, I found the time to do more research into the life and times of a composer (in this case, Brahms) than I\u2019d ever done before.<\/p>\n<p>I particularly enjoyed reading Johann Goethe\u2019s <em>The Sorrows of Young Werther<\/em>, the book that kicked off the Romantic Movement. I also read Jan Swafford\u2019s tome, <em>Johannes Brahms:\u00a0A Biography,<\/em> and took a crack at Frederick Nietzsche\u2019s <em>Thus Spake Zarathustra <\/em>(although it really antedates Brahms, it helped me understand the influences in Brahms\u2019s later life when he wrote the Quintet).<\/p>\n<h1>Music Listening<\/h1>\n<p>As I read the Brahms biography, I listened to key works and made many exciting discoveries, including his late piano works, the <em>Four Serious Songs<\/em>, and many other chamber and choral works I\u2019d never heard before. To give a sense of the various forks of interest I took, the list below provides audio proof of music I researched\u00a0 as I set out to understand where Brahms enigmatic Clarinet Quintet fit in the greater scheme of things.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/videoseries?list=PLiErBd--M6CnKirV0WhcbTy8JBBv39VEz\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1>What I learned<\/h1>\n<p>In retrospect, I wish I\u2019d understood better what my status would be in Lake Placid (I came expecting to play the entire Quintet with \u201cthe best string players available\u201d), but instead I played only one movement and even that was beyond the playing abilities of the players involved. While the Balkan music proved to be quite challenging (in a good way), the final performance venue proved to be quite challenging (but in a bad way) more or less guaranteeing a fiasco.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_29762\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-29762\" style=\"width: 350px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-29762 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Jason-Balkanalia-tarogato-solo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"444\" srcset=\"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Jason-Balkanalia-tarogato-solo.jpg 350w, http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Jason-Balkanalia-tarogato-solo-236x300.jpg 236w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-29762\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Morning t\u00e1rogat\u00f3 warm-up by the river.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Still, I worked hard to prepare and learned more than had I done nothing at all (a trajectory that might otherwise have occurred). It\u2019s in times like these that I&#8217;m reminded of Michel de Montaigne&#8217;s wise words, \u201cMy life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-29764\" src=\"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/scroll.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"97\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This summer, I attended a couple of music festivals State-side. The first was the Lake Placid Chamber Music Institute Seminar, a week-long string seminar with yours truly in the role of &#8220;token wind player&#8221;. The second, Balkanalia, was a celebration of music and dancing from the Balkan countries (where I also got to play my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[125,126,21,124,59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29748"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29748"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29787,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29748\/revisions\/29787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}