Jewels: Sculpting Tomorrow's Artists

Saturday was show day, and the premiere of Galion. I got to wear a new (skinny!) black outfit and play for three pieces, two of which were my original compositions. I felt very privileged that I get to do this. The theater was freezing, as usual, so my hands never fully got warm, and when the curtain went up an even chillier breeze blew onto the stage. I felt a bit of an adrenaline rush but it was just enough to focus me, not enough to make things start falling apart. I thought it went really well and the kids looked beautiful as always.

We weren't allowed to take pics on the theater, even during rehearsal, or the union guys would have a fit, so I took some during the dress rehearsal at the studio on Thursday afternoon. Here are the Level 2 and 3 students in their final pose:

Here are Paul and I in the accompanists' dressing room after the show. What a great evening!

Duelling Pianos

I have had a very busy week. Last Thursday, I embarked on an adventure at 6:30 am, driving halfway to Columbus to a regional dance festival. I would be accompanying classes for members of various youth ballet companies from all over Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New Hampshire, led by the cream of the crop of instructors and paying 75 bucks a class, plus mileage and free food. My first class was scheduled for 8:30 am (ugh) but I was wide-awake and excited.

I arrived at 8:05, where a staff person gave me a tote bag full of goodies (cookies, water bottle, pens, tourist info on Ashland county, etc.) and led me to my first class location. "Some of the locations had pianos but some only had keyboards," he said, adding that some of the other pianists had, shall we say, expressed dissatisfaction with the keyboards the night before.

"Oh, Diva Syndrome!" I said with amusement, adding that I am used to playing a keyboard for class (I play mine for Troy's class twice a week). I was sure I could deal with whatever was there, and I had long ago learned that crappy pianos in the dance studio are simply a fact of life.

So we get to an enormous gymnasium. On one side was a taped-down marley floor with a Yamaha Clavinova (circa 1988) in the corner. I saw Troy and waved, thinking we were going to work together. "No, your space is over there," said my guide, pointing to an identical setup on the other side of the gym.

"Two pianos in one room?! How is that going to work?" I wanted to know. He assured me that they would roll a divider down the middle of the room and that should help some. I wasn't so sure about this but figured they must have thought this through so it must be okay. I checked out my keyboard, noting the volume was set only halfway to the max. Well, I guess it won't be that loud, I thought.

The divider, a thin vinyl sheet with nothing but mesh on the top third, was rolled down. Of course, it did absolutely nothing to mute the sound from the other side of the room. I heard Troy's voice giving the first exercise to his class, and then the music from the other guy's keyboard filled the room as if its speakers were directly in front of us. Uh-oh.

My instructor, Nina Danilova, started showing her combination. I couldn't hear her at all and when I started playing, could hardly hear myself. I turned up the volume to three quarters max. I could now hear myself, but the other guy still sounded louder. Plus, the instrument, although cutting edge technology in 1988, only has 16-note polyphony. This means that with the pedal down, once you play 16 notes either as chords or as a series, the first ones you played start cutting out. It sounded disjointed and all cut up, which certainly didn't help the 50 or so students in my side of the room hear any better. They couldn't even hear me well enough to tell whether they were on the music, so they were always ahead or behind me.

Eventually a staff person came in with an extension cord and I moved away from the wall and toward the middle of the space where we could hear each other a little better. Nina and I developed a system where, when I saw that they were off, I would yell out the counts. Oh, I forgot to mention that I was going on only about 4-5 hours of sleep so my focus wasn't the greatest. But I was eventually able to focus enough to shut out the other pianist so at least it wouldn't throw me off.

It was kind of cold in there but I had the foresight to bring a long-sleeved shirt. At precisely 11:00 am, halfway through my second class, a huge, earthquake-like rumbling sound engulfed the room. Big thunderstorm outside, I thought. But no. It was followed by grinding and whooshing of gigantic industrial-strength fans directly overhead. Blowing cold air, I might add. Just what we needed, a white noise machine! Now it was even harder to hear, and also freezing. The staff person came back saying they were working on getting it turned off, which never did happen.

At lunch in the Ashland University cafeteria (which had very good food, I might add), I sat with some of the other pianists, including the one I had "duelled" with, and laughingly shared our horror story with the others. It turned out that on his side of the room, all they could hear was me! We all agreed that whoever thought this setup was a good idea was seriously lacking something upstairs.

New Arrival: Galion

Proud mama Karin Tooley is pleased to announce

the birth of her newest composition

Galion*

started onThursday, May 18, 2005

finished on Wednesday, May 24, 2005

8.5 minutes long

This is the longest piece I've ever composed. Michael didn't finish setting the choreography until last Friday. We thought it was going to be 4 minutes, maybe 5, but turned out to be twice as long! Not wanting to have a symphony's worth of material, I managed to develop just one main motif throughout the piece. At first it seemed lame and overly repetitive, but I'm very pleased at how it came out. I hardly wrote anything down--who has time?!--and have already memorized it.

It is now on endless loop in the soundtrack of my mind. Every time I hear or play it for the rest of my life, it will remind me of this week. It's nice to know I've still got it. I can compose, even though I never do it unless for a performance and a deadline.

*This is Michael's title for the choreography. Curious, I googled it and came up with nothing except a small town in Ohio. I asked him how he came up with the title, and he said he saw the signs for the town when driving recently. The piece is a sort of fairy tale and the title sounds a little otherworldly.

Idle Hands and All That...

So here it is the middle of May. My job at Case is over for the summer, so I now have all this extra time in the mornings. Most days I don't have anything scheduled until 4 pm. What a perfect opportunity to clean up my Windsong repertoire for this Saturday's performance and compose something decent for the modern piece for the Cleve. School of Dance performance the following Saturday.

Only I haven't been doing any of it. My horrible procrastination tendency has been rearing its ugly head. Until today, the weather has been crappy for a week (48 degrees and pouring all day). I'm not usually such a baby about weather, but man, this depressed my mood. I've been sleeping too much, spending way too much time on the internets, and had two very bad days foodwise (Monday and yesterday).

I know I'm not "cured" as far as the sweets go, and I don't think I ever totally will be. I have been keeping some around the house and mostly have been able to eat them in moderation. Well, moderation for me--that would be a few small pieces of hard candy+ 1 serving of Good Stuff (premium ice cream, dark chocolate, etc.) per day. It works for me--I enjoy it, I don't overdo it, and I can maintain my weight. But, oh lately, I have been reading and just snarfing the stuff down like I used to, only my gut got disturbed (to put it delicately) before I ever got near the quantities I used to eat. Bleah, that felt nasty!

At least now my body won't let me do what I used to do without penalty. At least I have still been keeping up my workouts and not letting that slide, too. At least today I gave myself a new start, and am having no problem whatsoever steering clear of self-sabotaging behavior. Two bad days isn't really much in the big picture, so I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

I'ts interesting to pay attention to my food triggers. The procrastination mindset is the worst, followed by boredom/insufficient stimulation. Periods of underemployment, which unfortunately are part of this career, are times I need to be especially vigilant. I really can't afford to feel that crappy. Next step: start on my practicing and composing. I feel my usual good self now, and the weather has cleared up. No more excuses!

Music: Connecting With the Spirit

Tomorrow's church service is about connecting to the spirit through music and art. I've volunteered to speak for a few minutes about my experience. Of course, I've spent the whole week procrastinating writing out my thoughts. So here it is, almost 1:30 in the morning the night before, but I finally finished. Here it is.

Music: Connecting With the Spirit

My earliest experiences in life, before I can even remember, had music. My parents had a very small record collection, maybe half a dozen, and played them over and over while I was in utero. My mother sang and played the autoharp and a little piano. One of my earliest memories was wildly dancing around the living room to whatever was playing on the stereo. I was maybe 3 or 4 years old, still at that pre-self-concious age when it is effortless to live fully in the moment, totally connected to the spirit. When I was upset and nothing else would calm me down, my mom would play one of our records and it always worked. There is something about rhythm (like a heartbeat) and melody (like a breath) that can take us back to the time in the womb. It is profoundly comforting and centering, and surprisingly powerful and universal.

Starting in my childhood, and to this day, if I listen to the noisiness of my brain, there is always a constant musical soundtrack. It can be anything from a simple rhythm to a song from my childhood, to a symphony I heard on the radio yesterday, to a repeating phrase caught in an endless loop. Sometimes, when I'm really paying attention, I notice what thought in my mind triggered that particular music. When the song "Somebody Done Sombody Wrong" enters the playlist, for instance, maybe I've unintentionally upset someone by something I've said or done and this is the spirit's way of calling it to my attention.

Certain pieces of music get tied to certain memories or experiences for me. Hearing a top-40 song from junior high will take me right back to 7th grade. I can practically smell the raspberry lip gloss and feel the heart palpitations as I pass by my first crush opening his locker, both hoping and fearing he'll look up and notice I'm alive. 1812 Overture? A muggy July night, fireflies twinkling, the smell of suphur as the fireworks boom. Silent Night? Echoes of every Christmas in my memory, especially singing by candlelight with my church community on Christmas Eve. These musical memories I have in common with others in my age group, culture, or religious community help me feel easily connected with them.

I've used music to get me through a hard time. Sometimes when I'm too upset to cry, a song or a sonata will open the floodgates. If I need to wallow in misery for a while, the perfect piece of music is just what I need. If I don't have the luxury of falling apart, or I need a break from the misery, another piece of music will provide me a lifeline, a much needed distraction, or a beacon of hope that things will get better. When I'm feeling apathetic or unmotivated, listening or playing some music usually helps me feel engaged and interested again.

Besides all of these things, I also use music as my main spiritual practice, much as someone else would use yoga, prayer or meditiation. When I hear certain pitches, I see certain colors associated with those pitches. I've had this my whole life, since before I knew notes had names. So when I hear music, it's like an impressionistic kaleidescope. If I'm listening or learning with the analytical part of my brain, splashes of color might be superimposed over images of notes on the page. Or my brain will come up with an architectural pattern or shape of the structure of the whole piece, with big sections, subsections, phrases, and individual notes all color-coded. This makes it really easy to memorize things--it's like having the answer book in front of you! I've had a third of a century of experience since I started learning to play the piano, so a lot of things that used to be awkward and labored are now effortless and second nature.

When you're just starting out, you're just worried about getting through what comes next without making a mistake. When you have to conciously think about every little thing, you're so preoccupied with that that there is no room for the big picture. Once you get the notes, then you can think about expression. I have been through this cycle countless times. In fact, I go through a miniature version of it to this day every time I learn a new piece. It's like a spiral of details-expression-communication, getting to an ever higher level every time I go around the circle. Technical refinement and perspective from life experience over the years has gotten me away from getting stuck in the details and closer to focusing on the pure expression and the big picture.

Sometimes I even have moments of transcendence, where nothing exists but the music and I am engrossed by all the pretty colors resolving themselves. Most days I have at least a few seconds of this. This is as close as I can get to feeling oneness with everything. For me, music is a metaphor for my life. It's full of little details. It's so easy to get bogged down in the minutae, constantly trying not to mess up. But this life has something larger. Maybe my music practice can help me see it.