2015

There is such a feeling of anticipation on New Year's Eve in Japan.  Something is coming.  The minutes seem to be counting down from the middle of the afternoon, the seconds begin somewhere in mid-evening.  It's coming.  And it came.  Towards the end of a perfectly timed concert of arias from all the past years of HPAC, after a song featuring Sado-san playing pianoca, the New Year fell upon us with shiny streamers and balloons which threatened to attack us during Pomp and Circumstance.  We concluded with Radetzky March with the Tiger's theme song in the middle of it.  And now it's 2015.

Happy New Year's from Japan!

Listening Past Loneliness

Today was a step forward in playing with one another.  It is a terribly preoccupying thing for a musician; to play together means to be truly listening and understanding.  In some ways, it is a measure of overcoming that impossible reality in life, loneliness.  Is there someone who understands me, is there someone I can trust?  And to what extent can that be true?  To the degree that each of us is truly unique, it is difficult to find an understanding of one another.  But if two people can find an understanding of time and pitch and all the characters and colors that come from it, something has been overcome, some unity in the face of nature's diversity.  It is a sense of comfort to come so close to others.  One must allow a certain degree of vulnerability to share such a space; to be willing to be understood and to understand at the same time.  There is no end to searching for it.  It can feel as simple and as good as tapping one's foot in time to a recording, or singing with others; and can become as complicated as coordinating oneself to perform the fine motor skills required to play an orchestral instrument expressively and sensitively with seventy other people.

And that such a thing can be taught and refined seems a miracle.  Today, in my desire to understand the components of yesterday's wanting, I discovered a new focus, that of the concertmaster's sense of time.  Each person has a unique way of anticipating and reacting to events in time, and one can observe another and become better at assessing how they do so.  Our concertmaster plays very close to his own cues, but quite late to the conductor's.  This is a unique expression of time that isn't shared by everyone, but can be learned if one is willing to see it and accept it.  But in order to make use of the information, it is also important to know one's own sense of anticipation and reaction, something that would seem inherent, but isn't necessarily so.  How does my sense of time fit with another's?  How does my sense of perception and reaction work with another's?  Coming to know oneself, coming to know another, practicing respect of both so that one can clearly see what is there and approach it and play with it.  Is it possible to overcome the barrier of self?  I think there are moments.

Learning Timing

It was nice to play my cello again, today.  And it was good to be back in the orchestra.  We're preparing a program of arias for the New Year's concert, and these can require a bit of coordination and sense of timing that we haven't quite yet achieved.  Some moments today were a little perplexing and it once again reminded me of what a highly trained skill orchestral playing is.  And what a gift it is to be able to learn another's sense of timing and to work with that.  But with an orchestra, there are so many people, and all of these subjective ways of perceiving the beat and the character and the direction of a phrase can lead to a lot of confusion and ambiguity.  It's difficult to get 15 or 30 people to play a series of slow pizzicato together as the music slows even further; it's a question of trust, of hearing and understanding the phrase in exactly the same way, and any uncertainty can ruin that, any one person can be the one to unsettle it.  Added to this is the (sometimes) tradition of playing behind the conductor.  In most cases we follow the concertmaster, but each concertmaster can interpret a conductor differently.  Because our orchestra gets to work with many different conductors and concertmasters, it means that these variables change a lot and we have the challenge of learning how to communicate for every project.  There's a lot of learning going on, and it's great to be able to see how much development it takes to do it.  I hope the experience can help me when I teach again; and perhaps for my future students and for myself, I might just make more clear the variables that are at work and hope that it can clarify the process.  But as with any at of creation, performance included, there will always be elements of mystery.  May there always be.

Return to Japan (and the internet)

The internet left my parents' home in the middle of Christmas morning.  The excitement of the youtube fireplace my brothers had put on the tv was suddenly disrupted.  We carried on, but for the past few days of my time in America, I haven't been able to write, or check email.  It's been a time purely of family. 

And now I'm in the Tokyo airport, waiting for my final connecting flight to Osaka.  The time with family is fading and I'm preparing to put on my Japan lifestyle again.  It's a more solitary one, one that gives me the space to focus on myself, one in which I have control over my personal schedule.  In many ways, being alone is more simple, more efficient.  But somehow it doesn't seem as sustainable.  Regardless, it will be good to get back into the swing of things in Japan, and it will be good, so good to see my family again, when the time comes.  

Christmas Eve

It's the first Christmas Eve in two years that I have been home.  Two years ago I was in Japan, and last year I was with extended family in San Francisco.  I'd forgotten the preparation involved before Christmas; the wrapping, the care in wrapping, the care in selecting gifts and balancing the amount given to various members of the family.  There is a lot of work that goes into a Christmas.  And a lot of food that goes into people.  But it is really cool to be able to have a day of nothing, a true holiday of rest and family.  And our stockings are empty tonight, waiting for a visitor that comes every year.  

Holidays Begin

After several days of recitals and travel, tomorrow is a relative day of rest.  Finally to begin the holiday season for two days before the return to Japan.

Concert in Lexington, Kentucky

Today was our final official concert in Lexington, Kentucky.   I wonder what it does to one's memories and sense of self to return to a place time and again after having lived and created memories there for three years.  It was a different time in life, a certain group of friends, a certain shade of living and discovering.  It was a part of bringing me to where I am today, who I am, how I live.  To revisit it is to remember a part of the path a little more specifically.  

And in the audience was one of my former professors and two former students.  And I realized how intimidating it is to perform for one's students.  I thought of all that I might hope for them, and looked into myself to see if it was there, if I could demonstrate what I might teach.  It is very difficult to hold oneself to one's ideals.  And intimidating to face it.  And so I focused on making mistakes, on making them as gracefully and with as little disruption as possible.  Imperfection is a part of every performance, and perhaps this is the best place to teach the acceptance of that, at that time.  Of course we always strive for perfection, but there must be a point when we forget it and remember the larger goal which it must ultimately serve.  

So there was more to learn in this place.  Wonderful to step back into another time, to be in touch with it and all it continues to give.