Pittsburgh Classical Guitar Society, and a Los Romeros workshop (part 1)

I'm planning to visit my family in Pittsburgh, PA over Thanksgiving this year. I was wondering if there might be any classical guitar concerts to attend while I'm there, and while searching for that, I discovered that Pittsburgh now has a classical guitar society. I'm surprised it didn't already have one, but I'm pleased to see that it does now.

Several years ago, when I was living in California, I flew to Pittsburgh to attend a Los Romeros concert with my dad (who has been a fan of them for as long as I can remember) and to go to a workshop that they were giving the next day. I thought it was to be a masterclass, but it was really more of a lecture/demonstration. I was surprised by how many guitarists attended, but when Pepe asked if anyone would like to play something, nobody volunteered at first. So, nervous novice that I was, I volunteered and played the first movement of La Catedral. I'd planned to play the whole thing, figuring that nobody else wanted to play, but near the end of the prelude, Pepe's cell phone rang. He was embarrassed that it happened, and I wasn't really upset, but my playing kind of fell apart and I ended with the prelude.

I'm glad I played, though, because one by one after that, others decided to play something, until nearly everyone in the room had played. I distinctly remember a 10 or 11 year old boy playing Brouwer's etude #1 with great gusto. It hadn't occurred to him that he should be nervous like the rest of us, I suppose.

I had forgotten about this workshop until recently. I didn't take notes, unfortunately, but I think I remember some of the highlights. I'll write up what I can remember for my next blog post.

I want to thank my readers that have stuck with me even though I haven't been posting as often recently. I appreciate it.

Why you should perform

But actually, doing what other people expect you to is what’s overrated. The external rewards for pursuing a dream may or may not arrive, but regardless, you should feel proud of doing so. The first steps are more important than the later ones, because they’ll provide inspiration and security for everything that comes later. Just keep walking!

Never despise small beginnings, and don’t belittle your own accomplishments. Remember them and use them as inspiration as you go on to the next thing. When you venture outside your comfort zone, wherever the starting point may be, it’s kind of a big deal.

- Chris Guillebeau, in "Kind of a big deal"

I recently commented on Chris Davis's post "The missing ingredient no one likes to talk about" that of all the musicians I've known, we classical guitarists seem like the least likely to get out and perform. We also complain about lack of public interest, diminishing ticket sales, etc. I bet these things are related.

If you love classical guitar and you play classical guitar, you should get out there and perform.

Don't feel like it's not worth it if you can't sell out an auditorium. Don't feel like nobody will want to see you if you don't have a degree or haven't won a competition. Don't worry about trying to impress people.

Just have fun and do your best. You don't have to blow everyone's mind, just make someone smile.

Easy and simple aren't the same thing

This past weekend I went to the Sean Nós Northwest festival at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, and played an awful lot of irish flute. This festival is a great celebration of Irish language, song, and dance, and so there were few instrumentalists there but we were treated with especially great respect and gratitude by the dancers.

It was especially fascinating to me to watch how a room full of 20-30 dancers could lock into rhythm with each other and with the music. I got the feeling that one could learn this kind of dance more easily by listening than by watching or thinking.

At the festival, we also watched a film called "Come West Along the Road," which consists of archival footage of musicians, singers, dancers, etc. I was really struck by a segment which, conveniently, is also on YouTube:



I was kind of amused at first by his one-finger-per-hand style of guitar playing. How much easier and more straightforward could it get?

But then I realized that I have no idea how much work this guy put into the guitar part, because he seems so unconcerned with it that you can't even call it an afterthought. But it's just there for him, perfectly steady, as natural as walking.

What he's playing is really simple, but I really admire the conviction with which he plays it and the complete effortlessness of it. There's really nowhere to hide in something like that.

One more thing; not to turn this into a giant group hug but there's more than meets the eye in any performance and even a failed one is probably the result of an honest effort. Let's be sure to give credit where credit is due.

Trust yourself

Peter Mitchell commented on my "You have to really listen" post:

I think this is related to the discussion around "multitasking". I think the idea that you can passively listen, which implies focusing on other things, and still fully experience the music is definitely not the case. Multitasking is somewhat of a myth when you look at how our brains actually function. Something always has to take priority when it comes to assigning attention. So in this case, it needs to be the music. Otherwise, I think you are missing out on a lot that you don't even realize. 

I agree, and I think that what I encountered in my previous post was that sometimes putting a lot of effort into 'focusing' can be a distraction from what you're actually doing.

You have to listen to what you're playing, and you have to know how to actually play it, but my experience has been that conscious control, especially in performance, can lead to the opposite effect.

In other words, I play my best when I can just let go and trust myself. It's not always an easy thing to do; at least not yet.

How do you learn to trust yourself?

Prepare thoroughly

Learn the music correctly from the beginning. Understand it before you play it. Practice it regularly and efficiently. Don't practice mistakes; focus on solutions before repetitions.

Don't get too far ahead of yourself

Plan to perform mostly music that is within your reach. It's good to push yourself a bit so you can grow, but if your whole program consists of music you can only occasionally perform well, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

Play with your eyes closed

Playing with your eyes closed will tell you how well you really know a piece, but if you've been playing for a while and you haven't tried it before, you might find that you can do it better than you expected. I think it helps cultivate a better physical understanding of the instrument as well as an aural experience of the music.

Take a leap of faith

Sometimes, in spite of your best efforts, you may end up in a situation where performance day is nearly upon you and things haven't all come together the way you wanted. At that point, the best thing you can do for yourself is decide to just have fun and do your best.

That's harder than it sounds, but it is absolutely possible. You have to make the choice and commit to it. You have to make that same choice at some point even when you're well-prepared, because performing in front of people is a different skill than preparing in private, and it's a different skill than practicing performing or performing for a recording.

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PS: My recent bunch of gigs were really fun! I had a duo gig with Jason on Thursday, solo recital Saturday afternoon, fundraiser solo/duo recital with my wife Angeline Saturday evening, and then a house concert in Seattle on Tuesday night. At the last one, I got to play in front of a roomful of guitarists, which is usually the hardest thing but it felt great.

It's a real privilege to play for an audience that understands the music and the effort that went into preparing it!

What do you focus on?

I managed to smash my left middle finger in the bathroom door on Monday night. I'm not sure how it happened, but I came out of it with a small cut and a numb fingertip. Yuck!

So I decided to take it easy on practicing the next day and just play through my Bach Cello suite for fun. I sat down to play and got into my "I'm concentrating!" mode, and soon enough things were going ... well, not great.

Frustrated, I decided to put the guitar away and do something else for a while. But I got bored and came back to the guitar to work on one of the movements that didn't go right. I started by playing through it again, and a funny thing happened.

I got distracted somehow and found myself thinking I should start working on my taxes. Suddenly, I noticed that I was playing great. Huh? I played a few whole of the suite as well as I'd like to play them in concert.

Thinking about my taxes is probably not the magic recipe for success, but I'm pretty sure that lightening up and letting go is part of it.

What do you focus on when you perform? Listening to the sound? Visualizing what's ahead?

Recent gig post-mortem

I gave a couple of solo performances this past weekend, for the first time in a few years. They went great! The first was as background music for a reception at my local library. It sort of fell out of the sky for me, was a nice warm-up opportunity for me as it happened to be on the night before my scheduled recital. Aside from the incredible hospitality of my hosts, I had some nice comments from the attendees, and found that many of them gathered around me rather than away from me. Always a good sign! Background music gigs are sometimes a bit awkward but I was made to feel very welcome.

The following day, I played at the Burlington, WA public library's concert series. I had seen Noteworthy Duo there a few months ago, and felt like it was a surprisingly great place to perform. It has a very welcoming atmosphere and great acoustics. I am a big believer in the intimacy of live performances and would generally prefer a house concert over a large hall any day, and this place has a living room -like feel to it with acoustics that allow you to hear the music clearly anywhere in the large room.

I played the following program:

• J. S. Bach: Cello Suite 3 BWV1009
• Heitor Villa-Lobos: Etude 1
• Heitor Villa-Lobos: Prelude 3
• Agustin Barrios Mangore: La Catedral
• Leo Brouwer: Dos Aires Populares Cubanos
• Joaquin Rodrigo: En Los Trigales

Aside from the Barrios and Rodrigo, these were all pieces that are new to me as of this year. How did they go? Well, I really like the Brouwer pieces but they didn't seem to fit, somehow. Perhaps they would have been better before La Catedral, to break up the mood a bit, but I have to admit, they just don't feel like "my" pieces. I no longer plan to keep them in my concert repertoire. Brouwer is one of my favorite composers, though, and very influential to my approach to the guitar, so his music will continue to play a role in my repertoire.

I had actually prepared Rodrigo's Sonata a la Espanola, as well, and I wish now that I had played it. The main reason that I didn't was that somehow I managed to go well over-time before I got to it, which is odd because with it, I had clocked my rehearsal performances at 61 minutes. It means that a bit of tuning and a few brief words in between pieces and perhaps a some slower than intended tempi filled up more time than I would have guessed. On the other hand, I still felt a little uneasy about the last movement of the Sonata, and everything that I did play I was able to play with total conviction.

I suppose that is one of the big differences between these performances and the ones I did several years ago; I haven't necessarily studied this music for as long, but I have done so more thoroughly and confidently than before. Part of that comes from the experience I have amassed in the years since, but a lot of it is a change in approach, too.

I have come to understand and appreciate in a deep way, the importance of one's frame of mind while studying, practicing, listening, and performing. This is a direct influence of Kevin Gallagher on me and he writes about it quite a bit on his blog. I think that for me it boils down to the fact that I can have an understanding and intention in mind before I play, and I can look back critically on what I played, but when I play I need to just trust myself to do what I have trained to do. In essence, I played these two performances the same way I play irish flute in social situations ((non-jam) sessions), which is that I listened and enjoyed the music while my body did the work for me.

I think that this is what all accomplished performers do, and is kind of a prerequisite to real musical communication, which I believe I was able to achieve at least some of the time. Everything I have read or heard about performing well can be rephrased or interpreted in this way. For me, it's something new; I have been working on it all year and started finally breaking through the inner-critic and other barriers I've set up over the years and I'm happy to say that these were the best solo-guitar performances I've ever given because I was able to listen to and enjoy every note I played as clearly as if someone it was someone else playing it for me.