Playing in the Orchestra

Since those early days in the River Heights School orchestra, I have had wonderful experiences playing in orchestras. I have played every one of Beethoven’s symphonies. I have played Handel’s Messiah and experienced the thrill of the audience when they all stand for the much-anticipated Hallelujah Chorus. All of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, countless overtures, waltzes and marches. I’ve played in the pit for Gilbert and Sullivan high school productions and for the Nutcracker Ballet. It has been humbling to be inside the music, rehearsing music that had always been familiar to my ear and discovering the composer’s intention and the inner workings of these pieces.

The cacophony of the rehearsal space, as people are unpacking and warming up, or the sound from the stage or the pit, before the performance has begun, is one of the few sounds that promise order out of chaos. The order begins with the A from the oboe, which we in the string program did not have. But there was a piano or a pitch pipe. Something I only remember our choir teacher using. Mrs. Martin, tiny, bird- like, grey blue hair. She told me not to sing the high notes. Pussy willows, Cattails, Soft Winds and Roses. We sang at The Manitoba Music Festival, where choirs compete for the coveted first place spot. Mrs. Martin focused a lot on the emotion of the piece, coaching us to sing softly here and with a plaintive swell there. I couldn’t find all the high notes, but I sure could emote! People love the sound of children’s choirs. I get it. Every year I play for The Hamilton City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker and that part at the end of the first act when the children sing, tugs at my weak heart strings every time. If the second violin part wasn’t so murderously difficult, I might break down in weepy tears every year. But Tchaikovsky's Snowflakes won’t allow it.

In the pit for The Nutcracker.

The Kelvin High School Choir under the direction of John Standing was the choir to beat at the Music Festival. It was a known fact among students who sang in choirs. In my final year at Kelvin, myself and Shona McKenzie were tasked with learning the accompaniment for two violins for Elgar’s lovely The Snow. We practiced during our lunch break, under the tutelage of Mrs. Whyte. I think she played with the symphony. She had been brought on board to coach Shona and I on this part. It is not an easy piece, but she got us there. The choir took home top honors that year, and many said it was those violins that clinched the victory. My mother was in the audience – as she most often was, even for those tedious afternoons of sixteen performances of Pussy Willows Cattails at the Winnipeg Concert Hall. Her assessment was simply – I don’t know how you could stand there and be so calm. It was my nerve that impressed her. I was extremely nervous. It's hard not to be. I am most definitely not a soloist. My happy place is in the middle of the section.

I did sing in a few choirs. A German Children’s choir and the choir in Queenston School. There was something about singing that eluded me. During my final year of high school I tried out for the chorus of Fiddler on the Roof. Until then I had played in the pit while my friends were all stomping around on stage having a blast. I am not a strong singer. There is something too direct about having someone hear me sing. Mr. Standing knew I wanted to be with my friends in my final year. I think that’s why I got to sing in the chorus that year. And we did have a blast! On stage and off. It was the year Olivia Newton-John’s Let’s Get Physical album came out. For the final number we all turned our babushka’s into headbands and came out onto the stage to sing Tradition, Tradition!

While I was playing in the string orchestra at River Heights Junior High School, I also made my first foray into a real orchestra. The Winnipeg Junior Youth Orchestra. The rehearsals were at my school, River Heights and the conductor was none other than my music teacher, Carlisle Wilson. It was a full orchestra with winds and brass and percussion and even three double basses. Of note, on principal flute was Mr. Wilson’s daughter, Keri-Lynn. She went on to become a world-renowned conductor. Keri-Lynn, already a superior flautist had a sharp sense of humor and a spot on Carol Burnett impression. She had perfect pitch and would entertain me by guessing (always correctly) which random note I struck on the piano. Her nickname for me was Jazzy Petunia. 

Keri-Lynn Wilson - She made it to the Met!

My good friend, Jennifer Smith sat next to her on second flute. It was my aim at each rehearsal to catch her eye and to get her laughing into her flute. 

My friend Jennifer and I post performance, Winnipeg Youth Orchestra.

Also, in this orchestra were future stars, Martin Beaver, violin and Thomas Wiebe, cello. These three musicians already stood out, occupying the first seat of their sections for all the years I played in this orchestra and on into the Youth Orchestra. 

We often played from poorly photocopied parts and there was one rehearsal when my stand partner, Andy and I were playing along and then suddenly we both ground to a halt, peering at the music and looking at each other. We were lost – a not uncommon occurrence in those early days. Finally, something about the music clicked and I picked it up and turned it over. We had been reading the music upside down. It’s a testament to our great skill that we even managed to play a few measures of upside-down music before realizing something was not quite right. Andy moved on to play the viola. He probably thought if he could read his way through an upside-down score, he could probably manage the alto clef.

The repertoire included Beethoven 1^st and 3rd symphonies, Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 3,  the overture to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger and excerpts from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and of course, Sibelius Finlandia, Bizet Carmen Suite. But the piece that I remember feeling most profoundly, most moved. The piece I thought of as the most stirring music ever written was Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Having played and heard this piece hundreds of times now, it bears mentioning that every string player will at some point play it and hear it for the first time and fall in love – cello players excepted. Their part is murder by repetition. But the rest is an exposition of simple bliss. The harmonies and the spare variations passed around the string sections are breathtaking. This piece was programmed once for a summer fundraiser for one of the orchestras I’ve played with, and the conductor refused to hear our grumbles and coached us to hold back and play each phrase with delicacy and reserve and easy on the volume. To try to sit with it as though it was that magical first time and every note was new to us. Our performance of this tired, familiar, light classic left us in awe once again. The audience held their applause momentarily, bathed in the stillness the music left behind.

Soon after I joined the Winnipeg Youth Orchestra, the brochures for the International Music Camp at the Peace Garden in North Dakota were sent home with all members. This would be a one week intensive camp for young musicians from all over the world. The week would also include ballet dancers and cheerleaders. We from the factions of fine art did our best to deride the efforts of the cheerleaders masquerading among us as artists.

I attended the music camp for three consecutive summers. I loved these weeks at the camp. So different from the church camp I went to where the purpose was to make crafts and fight off home sickness with cans of Cragmont soda and bags of Whoppers. At the Peace Gardens there was an instant community and sense of purpose in rehearsing music and preparing it for a performance. We had sectional rehearsals – my first experience with this dreaded practice device. Each section finds themselves in a small room and they hack through their parts without the cover of winds and brass. This happens not just in student orchestras, I have discovered. And it still sounds the alarms and strikes fear in musicians when the conductor announces a sectional rehearsal.

I left Winnipeg for Toronto and found an orchestra there, The North York Symphony, directed by another intense conductor who took on Bruch and Sibelius Symphonies. My hours spent perfecting my faking skills paid off when performing these demanding works. The people were nice and there were cookies at break. I remember one concert where the conductor was sick with a nasty cold that resulted in uncontrollable spasmodic coughing fits. During rehearsal he just let it rip. But a coughing fit struck during the performance, and watching the poor man sweat and suffer while he choked back the urge to cough and conduct with some semblance of normality has been imprinted on my brain as the highest form of service to the music. The show must go on.

Then came a period in my life where I moved around a lot and played very little.  I have lived on all coasts, east, west and north. Eventually I ended up back in southern Ontario, living in a small apartment in Burlington. Time to pull out the violin and get practicing. One day, with the window open, I was playing Bach, the Partita in D. As I played, a strange thing happened. I could hear myself. Not just in the room, but the sound was coming from outside. I kept playing for a few bars and then stopped. The sound from outside continued. I looked out the window and there was a man in the parking lot, playing a violin, and the same Bach piece. He was looking up at my window, grinning from ear to ear.  Tom, my neighbor, played the violin. And this was his way of introducing himself. He lived next door with his wife and two kids. He played in the Burlington Symphony Orchestra and would take me to a rehearsal if I wanted to check it out.  He did say it might be best for me to sit at the back of the seconds to start with. Fine with me. James McKay was conducting and Tom introduced us. Tom sat in the first violin section. Here I was again, sitting in an orchestra while the concert master stood up and waved his bow at the oboe and then the brass. People were welcoming and effusive. I made some great friends there. Thank you, Tom.

Burlington Symphony Orchestra 

From Burlington to Oakville. I heard from my stand partner, Erin, that there was a group rehearsing Verdi’s Requiem Mass. The Masterworks of Oakville.  I asked her if she could get me in, like it was an exclusive club with a secret dress code and velvet rope. Sure, she said. Always room for violins. Snacks? Of course. Charles Demuynck, the music director, only had one question. Did I want to be paid? These orchestras hire many professional musicians. Community players fill out the ranks for free. I was elated to be invited in and to take my seat next to Erin. At no cost!

Masterworks of Oakville 

As with so much music that I love to hear, I discovered the Verdi Requiem Mass to be exceedingly difficult to play. But, by this point in my career as a not-for-profit second violinist, I had mastered the art of playing what I could and faking the rest. The key to success is to know the music. Know where your part fits in and count, count, count and never, EVER, play in a rest. Especially in a grand pause, a moment during which the entire orchestra holds its breath.

I first played in an orchestra with choir during a student recital. The students were studying conducting and had to perform a couple of pieces each. Gwen, my teacher, and I volunteered. One of the pieces was the Sanctus from Gounod’s Requiem. Often, in those early days, when sight reading music, I had no idea of what was coming. The conductor raised his arms, we played the notes and suddenly the tenor sang a sublime, melodic line. Distractingly beautiful. Then, the low hum of the choir. The sound swelled and swallowed up the trembling orchestra. I nearly fell out of my chair.

It was the most startling, gorgeous music I had heard. I started listening to Requiem Masses. I think it was my Onkel Detlef in Cologne, Germany who played the Verdi for me for the first time. When I got home, the first thing I did was buy a recording to listen to over and over. That opening scene in the movie Amadeus – that’s Verdi, Dies Irae. Day of Wrath. 

A note about Beethoven’s 9^th. If it ever comes on the radio when I am driving, I have to concentrate to from running the car off the road. I find this to be one of the most joyous, uplifting piece ever composed. I have had a chance to play it and for those of you who love the Ode to Joy, please pay attention to the forty-five minutes and three movements that the orchestra plays before the choir even stands up.

Playing in community orchestras has given me a ring side seat as to the hardest bits in the orchestral repertoire. By the time you hear a professional orchestra play Beethoven’s 7th or Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, it all sound pretty seamless.

Tear it apart, slowly, bar by bar and try to put that murderous minuet together, or that section where the orchestra plays in different time signatures, and you gain a whole new appreciation for conductors and the answer to the question, “What exactly does a conductor do?” The conductor knows how the piece fits together. They understand the arc of the story: beginning, middle and end. Their job is to pull that out of the performers and present it to the audience.

Oakville Chamber Orchestra

I now play in three orchestras: The Oakville Chamber Orchestra, The Masterworks of Oakville, both led by Charles Demuynck, and The Cricket Chamber Orchestra. This is a student orchestra run by the indefatigable couple, Maté Szigeti and his wife Anita Hiripi-Szigetiné. These people know what it takes to get the best out of their students. They rewrite music so that the parts are playable. The get professional soloists to perform with the orchestra. They have section leads who are advanced players so the students can hear the part they are playing. They understand that music does not exist in a vacuum. It is a communal experience where the musicians serve the music. Anita and Maté do an exemplary job of teaching the students how to layer musicality on top of technique. Technique alone will never result in a profound performance. These students get a world class experience under the direction of Anita and Maté . They are demanding in their teaching and effusive in their praise. It is by far one of the most rewarding orchestral experiences I have had. I take my place among the students, and I learn.

Cricket Chamber Orchestra

What does the conductor do? They do wave their arms around, sometimes a lot. The conductor interprets the piece and then coaches the orchestra. They understand the balance, the nuances, the tempos, the dynamics, the swells and quiet moments. Where the theme has to be heard and when the violins have to be quiet. How often have I heard: “Listen to the cellos here. That’s what’s important. What you are playing is not.” Sometimes the notes that are not important and accompany a melody elsewhere, are very hard and have been practiced a lot so, we want to be heard!

Now you know what the conductor does. Go and see for yourself. Support your local orchestra. Go and hear them play. They have worked hard. There will probably be snacks. You’ll love it!

I made it to Koerner Hall! (Toronto, ON.)

 

My Teachers

I have already written about my piano teacher, Alice Funk, who ushered me through Grade Eight piano. After the group lessons with Mrs. Peters, I had three violin teachers. Two of whom I adored and one who made me work too hard.

My cousin, Mark was taking violin lessons from Mary Ediger. So, naturally, Mrs. Ediger became my teacher too, because we could carpool and have our lessons back to back. After Mark stopped taking lessons, my mom would drop me off and go to Polo Park to shop. I would go in the side door of the little bungalow and straight down to the basement to wait my turn, listening to the sound of the student ahead of me. With any luck, Mrs. Ediger would be in a chatty mood and the lesson would be derailed by her stories.

Her house always smelled of freshly baked Zwiebach. Having a Mennonite music teacher had been a theme so far in my life. I loved Mrs. Ediger. She took a lot of time to talk to me. She showed me how to clean my violin and taught me a trick that to this day holds true. If you start to practice and it doesn’t sound so good, put your violin down for ten minutes and then go back to it. It will instantly sound better the second time around. This never fails. I tend to practice this way. Ten minutes on, ten minutes off. By the end of two hours, I am ready for Carnegie Hall.

Another drop of wisdom that came from Mrs. Ediger must have come from a conversation about me studying music. She said, “You don’t want something you love to become a chore.” These words have stayed with me. I love playing in orchestras. Practicing and getting the notes under my fingers and the music in my head make it more enjoyable. But I can skip a day. I have skipped many days. Every time I play the violin or the piano, I love it.

So young...

There may have been another reason Mrs. Ediger steered me away from the professional world of music. It is grueling. Musicians work all hours cobbling together an uncertain income. The classical world can be cutthroat and competitive. It would not have suited my less than intense personality and she probably saw this. The discipline and determination to succeed at a musical career were not part of my psychological profile.

I prepared for a few exams with Mrs. Ediger. I remember getting First Class Honors on one of them. Mrs. Ediger was so pleased.

Then, she started to cancel some lessons. I think my cousin Mark and his dad, my Uncle Peter knew what was up, but I was unprepared for the phone call from her. She talked to me directly and did not leave it up to my mother to tell me. Sitting on the hard chair by the phone alcove with the beige telephone receiver in my ear, I fought back tears. I could hardly speak. Mrs. Ediger told me she had Multiple Sclerosis and had to quit teaching. It took all the wind out of my sails. I cried so hard after that call. I can’t remember if I visited her or saw her again. But she remains vivid in my memory, a short, soft woman with wire rimmed glasses and light brown hair and always with the kindest words and longest stories.

The teacher I had after that was recommended to my mom. I don’t remember by whom. Maybe Mr. Wilson, my music teacher at school? It had to have come from someone with a prodigious child. Because, Mrs. G. had been a child prodigy. They lowered her to the stage in a peanut shell. She had made it to Carnegie Hall. By the time I became her student she was long past those glory years. She lived in a gorgeous home on Wildwood Crescent. Always dressed in a fine ensemble with make-up and perfume and a rigid posture. She demanded too much of me. I sight-read a piece one week and was expected to have it memorized the next. She was the first of my teachers to insist on my performing at the Manitoba Music Festival. There was no way I was cut of that cloth. Mrs. Ediger and Alice Funk both let me know of the opportunity and were willing to coach me in that direction. They both knew, I think, that I would flounder in front of a large audience. Instead, they opted to nurture and draw out whatever musicality I possessed. Which they knew was not enough to pull it off as a soloist. Bless them evermore!

And bless my mother for listening to me and agreeing that I needed to find another teacher.

Which brings me to Gwen Morrow – the absolute best person for me to meet at the time I needed it most. She came after my year of Mrs. G. My mom probably felt I should stick out the year. But, lessons with Mrs. G were not cheap and I was miserable. Gwen Morrow was recommended to me by a school friend who was taking lessons with her. I was in high school by now and playing in the Winnipeg Youth Orchestra. The violin was becoming a part of my identity.

Gwen lived on Garfield St, near Notre Dame Ave. By this time, I was driving, much to the relief of my mother. I drove myself to my lessons. I think I was paying for them too. Gwen always had her violin out and played with me. One of the first things she told me was that she had not studied music at university and so she was not a member of the Manitoba Music Teachers’ Association. She wanted to be clear that if my intention was to become professional, then she was probably not the right fit for me. I assured her that I was not interested in a career in music.

She told me she had quit playing the violin when she was busy raising her five children. Once they were old enough to do without her for an hour, she started to practice again. And then teach. Thank goodness for that!

My beloved teacher, Gwen.

I studied with Gwen through to Grade 8 Royal Conservatory exam. I had learned some of the easier Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas and the Accolaÿ Concerto. One day, after my lesson, Gwen told me she was not able to teach me anymore. Not any longer; any more. She had come to the end of her pedagogical abilities. If I wanted to go further, Grade 9 or 10 or beyond, I would need to find a new teacher.

I was already in university at this time, the second year of a Bachelor of Arts program. My response was immediate and swift. I could not imagine restarting with another teacher. I was not going to be a musician. I quit.

I needed to focus on my studies. I eventually got into the School of Medical Rehabilitation. I was working part-time job and partying much as time would allow. I moved out of my house and in with my friend Ellen.

Ellen made me a birthday cake with my portrait on it. She's the best!

My friend Kevin was organizing a Street Performers Festival and needed some classical acts. I pulled out my violin and started to practice a bunch of pieces taught to me by Gwen. Poor Ellen had to listen to me practice to The Polish Dance with its left-hand pizzicato and four string chords. It drove her to the brink. She hated that piece. Ellen was a keyboard player and vocalist in a local folk-rock band, The Crash Test Dummies. They played at the street performers festival too. Ellen became famous! I became a physiotherapist! Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm.

The Polish Dance - banished from my repertoire.

After the festival, I put my violin away again for a long time. My first physiotherapy job was part-time. Mornings at a community seniors health center. I worked for about five hours and then went home. I started practicing the violin again. I sucked. My muscles got tired and sore. My bow hand seized into a claw capable of only a crude grip. My down bow was stronger than my upbow. And crooked. My muscle memory had failed. I had forgotten how to play.

I called Gwen and asked if I could take some lessons with her again. She told me she had some health issues and had quit teaching. My heart sank. Memories of Mrs. Ediger. Gwen suggested rather than lessons that I come for lunch and we play duets for fun. My heart sang. What a perfect idea!

I went once a week on the Notre Dame bus straight from work. Gwen made lunch and then we had my lesson. I was always starving by the time I got there. Her food was simple but so good. Fresh baked bread and butter, every week. And then usually home-made soup. Pizza soup was my favorite. Then tea and some cookies. She loved talking too and always had stories about her kids and grandkids. Then we played. Duets by Beriot, Tartini, Vivaldi, Stamitz. I asked her try some Bartok duets. We played through the book I had, after which she closed the book and handed it back to me. “There, that’s done.” We stuck to the Baroque.

Me again.

She told me all about her family and her cats. She had a lot of cats. They presented themselves at her door and were usually admitted entrance. Graham – an enormous white and black cat used to sit in my open violin case while we played, his girth spilling over the sides.

They lived in a tiny house on Garfield Ave. She raised five kids in there. I never could see how. Where did they put them all? Her youngest son, Paul, still lived there. The rest were paired off and having kids. She loved and worried about them all. Her husband, George and sometimes Paul, would join us for lunch.

Gwen’s health improved for awhile and she started teaching again. It was Gwen who decided we were going to join the Mennonite Community Orchestra together. My days in the Winnipeg Youth Orchestra were long gone and as far as I knew the Mennonite Community Orchestra did not do road trips to Pinawa, MB or play in shopping malls to promote Manitoba Pork. And there were no auditions. I think Gwen probably told them I could cut it.

Another revelation. I could play in an orchestra, not as a professional musician, but as a proficient musician. This bit of intel was life-changing. It allowed me to move. To travel. To live in different places. Everywhere I went, there was a community orchestra that I could join on no merit at all. There were musicians galore who just wanted to get together and get into the music. This community is vast and should market itself more aggressively as the answer to all our problems. 

We played a lot of Beethoven under a very stressed conductor. Before him was a young man, mellow and calm. Glen Klassen. I remember his deferential demeanor, if it’s not too much to ask, could the trombones please play less loud in the section marked mezzo forte. There is a running joke among musicians that the trombones are never asked to play louder and are constantly badgered into toning it down.

Gwen and I played for a few weddings and once we played a Christmas program in a quartet at St. Peter, Dynevor Old Stone Church in Selkirk, Manitoba. The church was unheated except for a woodstove. The temperature outside was -35 C. People came to hear music and sing and hold hot drinks. The CBC filmed it and the host, Robert Enright let me wear his gloves.

On another occasion we played on the stage of the Centennial Concert Hall for a New Years' Eve event featuring a newly choreographed dance and original music. Just the two of us in the spotlight until the dancers started to move. What a thrill! 

The Mennonite College had a conductors program and Gwen and I volunteered to play for the student recital. This is where I first heard the Sanctus from Gounod’s Requiem Mass and my love of playing choral music was born. Finding Gwen to teach me violin opened many doors for me that I would not have found myself. She loved playing and brought me along into the joy of performing music.

I have had many violin hiatuses in my life. For anyone out there, after a long period of inactivity and neglect, faced with an awkward unfamiliarity with the instrument, focus on intonation. Play every note in tune and don’t worry about what your body is doing. Especially the bow. It’ll drive you nuts. Your bowing will suffer most of all, but once you have the notes in tune, you will be much encouraged and can turn your attention to your bow.

After I left Winnipeg for Toronto, Gwen and I wrote letters. Her letters were detailed and engaging. An extension of our conversations. I wrote back. I must have missed replying to one or two of her letters, for she sent a letter in which she stated in her blunt, direct manner, that she would not write again unless I replied. (Pre- internet. Only letters.) Our correspondence lasted for years. She became ill with emphysema and quit teaching. I visited her in the hospital and at home when she was trailing lengths of oxygen tubing behind her. She never lost her sense of humor or grit. When her son mailed me her obituary, I was saddened, but ever grateful. Without her, I would never have continued to play. 

Still on my music stand, Bach and Accolaÿ:

Music teachers - you make all the difference in the world! Thank you. 💖

 

 

Learning the Violin - The Early Years

 Learning the Violin - The Early Years

I started to play the violin in Grade 5 when I was about ten or eleven years old. Many kids start a lot earlier on very small, impossible to tune instruments. It looks cute and sometimes a tune can be recognized. In conversation with many music teachers, they suggest a later start. At least knowing the alphabet can help when learning to read music. I had a bit of a head start. I already knew how to play the piano and could read music pretty well by Grade 5. I don’t have a lot of memories of those first lessons. It is not easy to learn the violin and even harder on the parents who have to listen and keep the faith that it will get better. Maybe my brain has buried those memories as too painful. When I listen to kids on their instruments, I try to be encouraging. I sounded like that once, I think. Really, I don’t remember. Some days, when I haven’t played in a while, I still sound pretty bad. The instrument itself gets grumpy and has to be coaxed back to life. My muscles screech at the unnatural position I am putting them in. I tend to practice in ten-minute chunks with breaks in between and a glass of water beside me. I have always needed that glass of water. I remember my mother commenting on this from her work in the kitchen while she listened and cooked. Anyway, the sound eventually does get better.

I had a series of violin teachers. Mrs. Stella Peters was a fantastic first teacher. She taught me in Grade 5 and 6 in a group at Queenston School. She had a striking blonde, finely spun beehive and wore bright pink lipstick. She was garrulous with good humor and a light heart. Mostly, I remember her laugh and her energy. She would bluster into the room and tune every violin. What a chore! I always looked forward to the lessons because she made them fun.

The first thing you learn is how to hold the instrument and the bow. We did many exercises waving the bow in the air and using our thumb and fingers to climb up and down the stick. The cheeky thing about the violin that you quickly learn, is that bowing is way harder to master than all that fancy finger work.

Once you know how to hold the violin, you play open strings. G, D, A, E. Screech, squeak, scratch. Long bows, shorts bows. The bow bounces and stutters and slides too close to the bridge and then drifts over the fingerboard. Hell on wheels! How did she stand it? I’m pretty sure she smoked.

I progressed from Manitoba Hot Dog on open strings to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. We played everything in a group. Short individual lessons were had with Mrs. Peters at the piano. I remember standing beside her holding my violin, with the colored strips of tape for my finger placement and the fat kitchen sponge attached to the back by a rubber band that served as my shoulder rest. For two years, this was my introduction to the violin.

Playing on my first violin: A Stradivarius according to the label glued inside. These are not as rare as you'd think and they don't all sound amazing!

There are two things in music that I found hard to learn:  Playing on the offbeat or syncopation. The syncopation makes the music come to life. It is what makes the most sense in classical music. Otherwise, it would be boring. But, when in the second violin section of the Winnipeg Youth Orchestra and you are faced for the first time with a bar that starts with an eighth note and then a series of quarter notes of equal measure and ends in another eight note tied to an eight note in the next bar, your brain freezes after two notes and you cannot find your way back. Mostly because everyone else is playing on the beat. The conductor stops and tells you you are wrong because you have started playing on the beat. It happens every time, until finally it doesn’t. Your brain cannot read this music. Your brain has to hear it. When you hear it, it makes perfect sense.

Rhythms got a lot trickier than that later on (Gilbert and Sullivan!!) and I still am best off hearing it before I can play it properly.

An artist friend of mine recently recounted to me trying to teach portraiture to a group of grade five students. It surprised her to see how they struggled with the most fundamental, mathematical formula for drawing a face. I asked her to teach me, as she did the kids. With great confidence she guided me through it. You draw an upside-down U. And then you extend it beneath but slightly tapered, so you have an egg and not a perfect oval.

Then you divide this shape in half and that’s where the eyes go. In half again below and that’s the nose and half again, that’s the mouth and a half again that’s the bottom lip and the ears are not beside the eyes, but more by the mouth.

Now, make two small upside-down U’s for the eyes. Add the pupils in the middle – pupils have to be round. Know, that she is doing this while I try to follow. You’d think it would be a matter of just copying what she is doing. If it’s just math, these two faces should look identical. But her face looks like art and mine does not. This experiment clearly reveals that art is more than math. Otherwise, my portrait would not look like it has been punched in the nose. Unless I am Modigliani. I assure you, I am not.

I thought I knew where ears went: in the middle. Halfway. But no. “The top of the ear aligns with the top of the eye/lower eyebrow line and the base of the ear aligns with the bottom of the nose. The total area is larger than one thinks.”  Ears are huge!

The dotted note in music is a difficult rhythm for students to learn. They can hear it. They can clap it. But when it is written, it is hard to decipher. When I asked a group of beginner violinists how they understood the dotted half note one of them said: three plus one. A dotted note is long. It equals three. It’s longer than you think. The ear also equals three and takes up a lot of real estate on the side of your head.

There must have been some sort of a violin class recital, because again a conversation was had between Mrs. Peters and my mother about private lessons. I was about to leave my elementary school and enter French Immersion at River Heights Junior High for grades 7-9. My friend Nancy was my lifeline in this period of transition. Our life paths were thankfully in synch. Nancy has been my friend since Kindergarten. She was in the group lessons with Mrs. Peters.  Her parents signed her up for French Immersion too. Mrs. Peters was pleased to be sending both of us to River Heights Junior High because Carlisle Wilson was the music teacher there. He was a professional violinist and also conducted the Winnipeg Youth Orchestra and the Junior String Orchestra.

Playing with my Onkel Detlef in Germany at Christmastime. The violin was a gift. More on my violins in another post.

Nancy and I walked to school together and dodged snowballs pelted at us by two of our classmates (boys) from the other side of the street. We played in the second violin section of the school orchestra. The music room had violins and violas all along one wall and cellos and basses on the other. We got to borrow these instruments and take them home in their hard, black plastic cases and crumbling rosin in the hatch. I think it was Mr. Wilson who taught us how to tune our instruments. He wasn’t about to waste any time tuning each instrument.

There was one concert, where Nancy and I had progressed to the front desk of the second violins, and there in the front row was our old teacher, Mrs. Peters, beaming at us. “I remember you,” she said, moments before the concert was to start. It made her happy to see we had carried on. I think we played Wildwood Flower, a piece that can be played loud and confidently. The melody immediately comes to mind and a memory of sawing happily on my violin.

I’m not sure, thinking back, if I ever heard Mrs. Peters play the violin. Surely, she must have stood beside me, with her violin, ready to play along with me. I remember the smell of cigarettes and perfume. Without her, I never would have launched my career as an amateur musician. If anyone had told me in Grade Five that music was math I would never have asked for lessons. But one thing stands true to this day. You can never get away without counting!

End note: If I were starting on my music lessons today, there would be thousands of photos and videos of me and my violin. However, I had a hard time finding any of me in those early days.

Looks like I stuck with it! Mrs. Peters would be proud!

 

 

 

My First Piano. The Journey Begins

My first piano was a cardboard keyboard folded at the back of the Leila Fletcher Piano Course, Book One that I needed for the piano lessons I took at lunch hour at school. I was in Grade One at the time. We were meant to practice on these while each student got a turn with the teacher to play the actual piano at the front of the room.

The dining room table was the only table long enough for me to unfold the keyboard. I laid the music out, propped up against the typewriter and practiced. It might seem strange to be playing music on cardboard keys, not having the proprioceptive feedback of depressing the keys or hearing the sound, for that matter.

The typewriter was in constant use as my mother’s entire family lived in Germany. I remember the lightweight airmail paper and envelopes my mother typed her letters on. She would place a regular sheet of paper behind the air mail paper so the keys wouldn’t destroy it. The piano is just another keyboard, I thought. If you have any doubt about this, check out The Typewriter, by Leroy Anderson.

 The arrival in our home of the Heinzman Upright Grand piano was met with great excitement. A beautiful, glossy dark brown instrument, with smooth ivory keys and a quick action that made it easy to play. A matching bench for books of music. The piano had to be on an inside wall. Winnipeg winters are freezing. I used to place the soles of my bare feet up against my bedroom wall in the middle of the night to check the degree of cold. Has to be experienced to be believed!  Owning an upright grand was a point of pride. Just shy of owning a true grand piano, which would never fit in our dining room. But, equally as serious.

The piano had been played by an accompanist for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and cost my parents 220.00. Probably about the same it would fetch today, if that. There are a lot of free pianos to be had. This piano has landed on an inside wall in my sister’s home so I still get to play it every year at Christmas and it still sounds fantastic.

There were a few records in my parents’ collection featuring the piano. I remember Philippe Entremont plays Listz and of course, Van Cliburn playing the Tchaikovsky Piano concerto in B flat – his winning performance at the Tchaikovsky Piano competition in Moscow at the height of the Cold War. Apparently, this big win in Moscow came hot on the heels of Moscow’s big win with Sputnik. In chess as in piano, as in outer space, the Cold War was fought in any available arena. This album, with the twenty-three year old Van on the cover, became a household staple among record stacks. 

Apparently, the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto is the most requested piece when audiences are allowed to have a say. I had the opportunity a few years ago to play with an orchestra accompanying a pianist playing this work. For all is gorgeous lines and recognizable swells and arpeggios, it’s an unexpectedly complex and weirdly orchestrated work. The second most requested work is the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto, also performed at the same competition by Van Cliburn and also released by RCA records in the 1950’s. I doubt the popularity of these pieces a coincidence, given these two recordings were among the first classical records to sell millions of copies. Van Cliburn became a hero and a celebrity by playing classical music. Imagine that!

I did! I practiced the piano in the dining room while my mother cooked supper in the kitchen. There was only a swinging door between us, so she heard everything I was doing, as did I hear every crack of the spoon and hiss of the water boiling over onto the stovetop.

Whenever I slowed down at a tricky few bars, she would point out that I always stopped at the same spot. She was listening and my screeching to a halt every time the notes got messy, disrupted her enjoyment. She was used to hearing Entremont plays Listz, not Bettina plays Bach from the Grade Four Royal Conservatory Book. My mother had to quit piano lessons as a child. There was a war that came between her and her musical pursuits, although she admits that it did not come easily to her. She is a believer in music being a gift.  I think she delighted in the belief that I might have been bestowed this gift. How far it would go, nobody knew.

Greatness in the making, on the Heinzman Upright Grand.

There were a series of piano tuners who came to our house twice a year. One of them screwed plastic margarine tubs into the sides of the piano and filled them with water. This was meant to keep the humidity levels up (dry cold Winnipeg winters).

A subsequent tuner immediately unscrewed them, admonishing the fool who dared mar such a beautiful instrument. Instead, plastic containers were placed inside on the base of the piano. I don’t know if more sophisticated humidifiers existed, but it was my job every week to dust the piano, clean the keys and fill those containers without spilling any water into the piano. My mother liked the top of the piano for some of her plants and some white rings formed that to this day have not been erased. No plants on the piano!

For my first piano recital, on the stage of Queenston Elementary school, I proudly played a two-page piece with two hands. For anyone who remembers piano lessons, this is a great milestone. A piece that spans two pages and requires hands together playing. It was called The Train. I have no recollection of melody, but there was probably a crescendo and a decrescendo marking the passing of the train. I do remember my mother allowing me to wear jeans. There was a conversation that happened beyond my hearing where the teacher suggested to my mother that I continue on with piano lessons beyond what the group lessons could offer. Private lessons. It sounded very classy.

Across the street a family had moved in. The Funks. Alice Funk just happened to teach piano. And I happened to be on the road to piano greatness. So, it was set up. We were a great match, student and teacher.

 Alice Funk ushered me through the Western Board of Music exams and then the Toronto Conservatory. I studied with Alice up to my Grade 8 exam. A cold, rainy day, where my ride to the exam fell through at the last minute and I had to walk a block and a half to catch the bus downtown. I was freezing cold and barely made it in time. I presented myself soaking wet to the people in charge and they gave me a few minutes to try to get my hands warm.  My nerves jangled with the rush. They called out the scales to play, then the studies I had prepared, followed by my pieces. I had done this many times before. I don’t remember my mark, but it all turned out ok.

Same piano, years later...more books with fewer pictures.

For Christmas one year I received the piano music for Elton John’s Greatest Hits Volume One. I took it with me to my lesson and quickly realized that pop music was no piece of cake to learn. Complicated chords and accidentals and impossible key signatures meant to be easy to sing. But I did manage to learn some popular music. Bridge Over Troubled Water and I Don’t Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats. I used to love crashing around on the piano with that one. Piano Man was also manageable. I took lessons long enough to be able to finally enjoy it. So many people quit their lessons at about the Grade Four level. It seems so out of reach, to be able to play Your Song or The Homecoming by Hagood Hardy (1975). Musicbox Dancer (1978) was heard all over the radio in the seventies and I got the sheet music to that one as well (super easy).

In my teens, I took up the guitar and played my way through the Cat Stevens songbook and some Simon and Garfunkel hits. 59^th Street Boogie. Slow down, you move too fast. Gotta make the morning last. I sang along to fill out the accompaniment but never felt very confident with my voice. I sang in the school choir but was asked to fake it whenever there were high notes. Our teacher, Mrs. Martin, used a pitch pipe to get us to find out notes. She was a tiny, bird-like woman with gray-blue hair. We learned Pussy willows, Cattails, Soft Winds and Roses for the Winnipeg Music Festival, where choirs compete for the coveted first place spot. There is one song every choir sings and then they sing a selection of their choosing. Mrs. Martin focused a lot on the emotion of the piece, coaching us to sing softly here and with a plaintive swell there. I couldn’t find all the high notes, but I sure could emote! People love the sound of children’s choirs. But after hearing ten choirs all sing the same song, I imagine the parents who took time off work to come and listen heard enough for a lifetime.

On Saturdays, I stayed after German School and sang in a German choir. The thing I most remember about German choir was that I had to bring a lunch. My mom got me a pickle lunch case. We all sat in the choir room after being bored to death in German School. Prisoners of our heritage, we ate our Schinkenwurst sandwiches to get us through two hours of German songs. If our choir director was in a good mood we would convince her to yodel for us. We found this utterly hilarious, but she did it anyway. Memories…

What I remember of German choir:

It was in Grade Five, three years into my private piano lessons, that a notice was sent home with all the students about free violin lessons. Students would be given a violin and lessons and be allowed out of class (no staying over lunch). I simply insisted. This was clearly too good to be true, with none of the usual caveats that it may not be. I’m not sure what it was that excited me so much about playing the violin, but I knew I had to do this. This was beyond anything the piano could give me. At the age I was in grade five (ten or eleven) the feeling of potential was intangible, inexplicable to me. It presented itself as an undeniable surge. My parents relented. My mother, on the condition I did not give up the piano. When I brought my violin home, I could not put it down. Maybe it was the challenge of pulling some nice sounds from the instrument, or the way I held it under my chin, like an extension of my arms. This was my instrument.

Early days: The first known photograph of me playing the violin. I was by no means a natural, but I loved that outfit!

The journey into music is infinitely rewarding. When I hear the instruments of the orchestra all around, playing the notes written so long ago, my heart stops. To play the music of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, is a privilege beyond measure. How did I come to be here, in the violin section, creating this music? It started with that Heinzman Upright Grand. It’s not over yet.

This Journey is a Silent One – by Bettina von Kampen Available NOW!!

 A friend asked me once if I got sad when I finished a novel. An interesting question. I do, in fact, tear up every time I read to the end of one of my novels. Even if I have read it over many times, the ending always gets me.

Perhaps it’s the completion of a monumental undertaking – years, it takes me to finish a novel. Or that I have invested so much brain power and emotion in creating and getting to know the characters. I have seen them through thick and thin and with the completion of the story, I won’t see them anymore. I won’t spend all that time stressing and fussing and sorting out their lives and situations. I will be moving on to new, unformed characters that only I can coax out of their shells. It’s not easy getting to know someone, especially when you are making them up.

The idea for this book came from a story, possibly apocryphal, of a young man who had fallen onto the subway tracks and the train landed on him. The paramedics talked to him and told him as soon as they lifted the train off his chest, he would die instantly. I thought about this and wondered what would happen if a family were faced with such a situation, prepared for the death of their loved one and then the person didn’t die.

This became a short story: For Each a Space Among the Stars: Descant Magazine; 122; Fall 2003. This gives you some idea of how the germ for a novel stretches through time. In the short story it is the son who doesn’t die and the father who is dealing with this outcome. In the novel, I put the father in a wheelchair and his family have to adapt to his current, passive state, in need of total care and oblivious to their attention.

There was a program on TVO – Big Ideas that caught my attention one afternoon. Dr. Michael Persinger was discussing his research into the temporal lobe. His experiments elicited a religious experience in the subjects by stimulating the brain with magnetic waves. Dr. Persinger pointed at two sides of the brain and the interconnecting fibers – the corpus callosum. He spoke with great fervor about the presence of God that people described when they emerged from the experiment. It is essentially a sensory deprivation situation upon which magnetic fields are introduced to the temporal lobe. Subjects sit in a darkened room with a helmet on their heads. The helmet has the transmitters glued to it. It became known as the God Helmet.  

I have long been interested in neurophysiology and spent some of my university days studying this stuff. The connection between ‘God’ and the brain has always flummoxed me. For me it seems an absolute impossibility to have a god to believe in without a physiologic brain to do the believing. God is a man-made construct. Here was someone with something to say on the matter. I read through all the published papers and the idea for this story grew.

I have tried, in my own words to explain the science and its manifestation in the mind. But, this is ultimately a family story. A story of individual journeys and unavoidable intersections.

The novel is available on Kindle Direct Publishing here:

Amazon 

 

And on Rakuten Kobo here:

Kobo

 

 

 

 

Komm Lieber Mai und Mache...My First Encounter with Mozart

 When I was a child, I was gifted a picture book about the life of Mozart: Komm Lieber Mai und Mache. It referenced a popular German song about the spring and the flowers and birds. In a few colorful pages Mozart’s life was described and follows quite accurately the well-known details of his life. His father, Leopold, as teacher, his sister Nannerl, a companion and his mother, his champion.

                      

The story chronicles Mozart's talent for the piano; his early attempts at composing; the travels by horse-drawn coach across Europe, the performances for royalty.

The piano they take with them on the road;

               From the book:   

               

                         Mozart's road piano in the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest:

                                                     

                                                                                             

When he had scarlet fever:

And other well known moments: playing the piano with the keys covered, improvising variations on a theme. Professing his love for Marie Antoinette.

Then he dies. The end comes pretty fast. I remember feeling an unbearable sadness that this celebrated child, a child like I was, died at the end of the book. I was face to face with the arc that spans a life for the first time. Characters don’t usually die in children’s books.

Komm Lieber Mai und mache, die Bäume wieder Grün. Come dear May and make the trees green again.

Mozart wrote this song on January 14, 1791. His birthday would have been coming up. (January 27). The author stresses his poverty and poor health and yet he wanted to bring joy through his music. His melodies, wonderful melodies that bring us joy. He composed this piece in the winter, near the end of his life. Hear, how he longs for warmth:

Komm, lieber Mai, und mache die Bäume wieder grün, und lass mir an dem Bache die kleinen Veilchen blüh’n! Wie möcht’ ich doch so gerne ein Veilchen wieder seh’n! Ach, lieber Mai, wie gerne einmal spazieren geh’n!

Come, dear May, and make the trees green again, and by the brook, let the little violets bloom for me! How I would love to see a violet again - ah, dear May, how gladly I would take a walk!

 

For him, the spring would not come again. He, who shared his gifts with us all, died young and poor, in the ungrateful,  Emperor's City (my translation). The city was Vienna. This book was written in the DDR in 1971. Anti-western sentiments ran deep. There may well have been a rule to slip some anti-western ideas into a children’s book.

            Credit where credit is due:

Mozart died on December 5, that same year. Age 35. That would make this song, one of the last pieces of music he wrote. He would have been working on his Requiem Mass. Wrestling with all those themes of death and torment. January – we all know how that feels. It is a plea founded in a dark winter’s night in Austria. Sitting at his writing table and staring down the Requiem Mass. Everything will be better in the spring.

          The house where Mozart died:                             The view from his window:

               

I read this book over and over. I identified with this boy, born in the middle of winter in Salzburg, Austria. We were both German and winter babies. And I had recently started piano lessons. (I still despair at how difficult Mozart is to play. I thought my early connection with him would make playing his music a breeze.)

In 1971 I was seven years old. I practiced on a cardboard keyboard from the back of the Leila Fletcher Book 1 for piano. I took piano lessons at school, at lunch hour, in a group. We each had a short lesson with the teacher while the rest of the group scratched out key signatures and intervals in those tiny, multi-colored Rudiments of Music books.

The arrival in our home of the Heinzman Upright Grand piano was met with great excitement. We all took turns tapping and pecking at the keys. My father could play some melodies, his fingers rippling up and down the keyboard. No music in front of him, everything in his head.

My musical journey began at home, listening to my Uncle Peter and my father play Russian and Ukrainian folk songs on the piano and mandolin. My father did not read music, but he played both the piano and the mandolin without effort. Uncle Peter was accomplished on the piano. Uncle Peter loved a grand flourish, and my dad would strum the mandolin in equal measure. The impact of watching and listening to them play music together for the sheer joy of it was not immediately apparent to me, but it proved to be most profound.

I continued with piano and then the violin. I learned some Mozart. I’m still at it! Stay tuned...

If you want to hear German pop sensation Nena sing this song, it is here:

 

bvk writes

 I’ve been reading for a very long time. Trips to the library with the book bag sewn by my mother filled with the maximum number allowed, I walked to and from the Brock Corydon Library buzzing with anticipation. On the way there, scanning shelves in my mind and on the way back, deciding what to read first. My reading at an early age was mostly the monthly Highlights Magazine and Enid Blyton mysteries. Any mystery, really – there was Trixi Beldon, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys. These books pulled me into worlds much different from my own. I never stumbled upon a mystery to be solved, though how I longed for it.

    

The gap between my reality and those thrilling reads was bridged when I discovered Harriet the Spy. Here was a character that resonated with me so soundly, that I reread that book at least six times and      still flip through it to this day. I started playing Town and writing things in a scribbler. This book taught me that my imagination would always keep me company.

When my interests veered towards the lives of writers, reading their biographies, I found an unexpected connection there. Maybe, I could write. My first attempts were terrible. I read through my stories and couldn’t figure out what was wrong with them. I went back to reading, studied for a career and became a working adult.

But the seed had been sown. I wanted to write. At the first opportunity, I took a class. I took two classes. I started submitting short fiction to literary magazines and have an envelope filled with rejection letters to prove it. One day, the unimaginable happened. Descant Magazine (sadly no more) accepted a story of mine. Define euphoria!

I kept at it. Descant accepted two more of my submissions. I started a novel. Finished it. Rewrote it about ten times. Sent it out. Filled another envelope with rejection letters. Until one day, a publisher asked to see the whole manuscript. I zoomed through it once more, not wanting to take too long to send it. Their response was humbling but encouraging. It was not ready. The manuscript needed a lot of revision. If I was willing to work on it, they would consider publishing. I had spent so long on it already and thought I was done. However, what else would I be doing? There was no point in not working on it, so I buckled down and rewrote. Blue Becomes You went on to be nominated for a Best First Novel Award sponsored by Amazon Canada. More chills and thrills!

I wrote two more novels with Great Plains Publishing:

 

Then I wrote two more that I have been unable to place with a publisher. One of these, I made available on Kindle Direct Publishing. I pulled it and have reworked it and am about the relaunch under a new title. The other I am still waiting to hear. Those first three novels landed in bookstores and had their turn of a few weeks in the spotlight and then faded away. This happens. It is not unexpected. 

Readers’ appetites have changed, publishers bottom lines have moved. Risk is no longer worth it. Self-publishing is exploding. I am sitting on two homeless novels. No more letters to stuff into my envelope. Just unanswered queries. After a year or so, I can safely guess it’s a no.

                                                    Holding a finished draft brings great joy!

I’ll probably place the fifth novel with Kindle Direct as well. The sixth novel is underway and the seventh is percolating in my brain. Writers write. bvk writes.

 bvk reads                                                                  bvk writes