What music are you playing these days for your own enjoyment and what made you choose it?
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote “6 Suites for Violoncello Solo senza basso” which are now among the most recognizable solo pieces in classical string literature, especially the Prelude to the first Suite in the key of G major. The sixth of these Suites in D major is an outlier, because it was composed for a five-stringed instrument called the violoncello piccolo or viola pomposa which was rare even in Bach’s time.
Professional performers seem comfortable playing the sixth Suite on a regular four-stringed cello, but I’ve always steered clear of attempting it, though I’ve studied and played the other five Suites. Recently I decided to transpose the piece from the original key of D down to G, which changes its sonority but makes it vastly more accessible on my instrument. I’m having a great time. Each of the six suites has a different character. This one projects a feeling of joy and confidence, which I find particularly uplifting right now.
Who were your biggest musical influences and what did you learn from them?
My father loved to sing and he expected me and my two sisters to sing with him. We sang in the car on any trip that lasted more than five minutes. Folk tunes, show tunes, old ballads, rounds. I’m forever grateful. Thanks to New York State’s rational public education priorities, my grade school music teachers, Arlene Fisk and Ira Krupenye, got me started with choral and instrumental music. My early inspirations were Pablo Casals, Pete Seeger, Doc Watson, and Ali Akbar Khan. From each I took away a realization there is really no boundary around any kind of music and that character and culture are always in foment.
What’s your advice for busy adult students who can’t always practice regularly?
Schedule a 15-minute daily practice time on your calendar, as early in the day as possible. Even if you can’t get to it every day, you’ve demonstrated a positive intention!
Start your 15 minutes with something very basic, like a slow scale or a simple rhythmic pattern or even just long tones. If you do nothing else in that session, you’ll enjoy the resonance of your instrument or your voice and derive a sense of satisfaction.
Never beat yourself up about missing a practice time or cutting one short. In fact, don’t ever beat yourself up about anything.
Sing to yourself in the car or the shower or anywhere else you find yourself alone. If you can sing something you’re learning on your instrument, so much the better. If not, just sing!
How has your approach to teaching evolved over time?
I’m wrestling with the tension between the two primary ways of teaching music – the aural tradition and the written tradition. Learning by ear is laborious yet ultimately liberating, because it forces us to rely on not just our senses but our thoughts and feelings as well. Learning by eye is efficient but can be terribly misleading, because so much musical information is missing from the page. I have been asking my students to take the songs they can sing by ear and play them from the page in hopes of wedding these two fundamental methods. It’s too soon to say how it’s working.