Three hours after my recital ended, I had my first post-school rehearsal :P That week I was playing fourth on the Verdi Requiem with the orchestra of the Société Philharmonique de Montréal. That concert was on Good Friday, and the bassoon section was Marty– my first teacher at McGill– playing principal and two other students from McGill besides me. The next day I took the Montreal-Toronto Megabus hopefully for the last time, and crammed in an Easter party before going to Kitchener to do some school shows with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony the first half of last week. The latter half of the week was Niagara, who had the Sultans of String in, and we performed both a childrens’ show with them and a full pops program. All of the music on those programs was written by the Sultans, and it was really good! Some in the orchestra even went up to the lobby to buy their CDs and get them signed (as band leader Chris McKhool said, “buying our CDs is definitely the safest way to take us home with you tonight!”) So, between travel Montreal-Toronto-Kitchener-Toronto-St. Catherine’s and all the rehearsals and concerts, this is actually the first day I’ve had off after my recital. On Thursday I’m flying to Thunder Bay for their audition, and then have another concert cycle with the NSO (Cosi Fan Tutte overture, Brahms Piano Concerto #1, and Beethoven 7!) while simultaneously chaperoning at the Ontario Student Classics Conference (http://www.classicsconference.org/), which I attended as a high school student and just happens to be 1) the exact same dates as NSO masterworks 5 2) at Brock University, 3) hosted this year by my former high school, and thus 4) provides me with a free room at the Brock residences for this concert cycle. Sweeeet. Then I have to get all my belongings from my soon-to-be-former place in Montreal, find a place in Hamilton and move into it, because I’m going to be playing in the National Academy Orchestra for the summer! I only auditioned for two summer festivals this year (oops!), NAO and the NAC’s Young Artist’s Program, and although I got into both and was hoping to be able to go to both, they ended up conflicting in such a way that I wasn’t able to get a sub for NAO as I was hoping. So, I reluctantly had to pass up the YAP for this year, since NAO is a 9-week orchestral program that pays a minimum of $430 a week to each apprentice. However I’m very happy to be able to participate in that, especially with both Rite of Spring and The Firebird on the program! Happy summer!
Two weeks ago I was away teaching the bassoon students of a private French high school in Saint- Jacques, at the school’s annual band retreat. The retreat takes place at the Abestos Music Camp, which is not a thing I would have ever guessed existed in Asbestos (yes, Asbestos: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/as-asbestos-industry-collapses-a-towns-fibre-is-torn/article4560402/") However, air quality issues aside, it’s a very nice site, although the “camp” atmosphere was diminished slightly by the fact that there were a few too many feet of snow for, say, marshmallow roasting.
I was there for two camp session, the first being Secondaire 1 and 2 (equivalent to grades 7 and 8) and the second being secondaire 5 (equivalent to grade 11, the last year of high school in Quebec before CEGEP.) Sec 3 and 4 also had a camp, which was the very first camp which I wasn’t teaching at. At both of the camps I only had one student, as bassoon tends to not be a very popular instrument for high schoolers. It doesn’t take a huge amount of thought to figure out why. Even in high schools with a large music program, there aren’t often very many actual instruments, which means that whatever kid chooses to play the bassoon probably won’t be able to play in a section with their best friend, unlike the “let’s play clarinet together!” kids. The bassoon looks large and intimidating and, frankly, uncool. Band teachers generally know more about the more common band instruments (as they should!) so the bassoon doesn’t get as much attention as the others.
My sec 1 student was an example of an excellent instrument assignment decision on the part of her teacher (a McGill grad that I worked on oprettas in the McGill Savoy Society with!) She was tall and looked natural holding the instrument, and at her first lesson gave me a long list of instruments that she had played before the bassoon. She had picked up the bassoon because she wanted a challenge, and wanted to prove herself equal to this “next level” instrument. She had only been playing the bassoon for eight months but was playing in both the sec 1 and sec 2 bands. The first lesson I introduced her to the concept of flicking, and the next morning in band rehearsal, although she hadn’t quite absorbed which key was for which note, I saw her thumb moving around with definite intent to flick! No matter what she sounded like– probably worse than before, since she was distracted with trying to integrate a new concept into her playing– the fact that she immediately starts working on integrating a new habit into her playing, even if it makes things harder at first, makes me believe that she will have an excellent prospects with any instrument– and indeed any pursuit of any kind– that she wants to get good at.
All of the teachers at the camp said that sec 5 is generally more difficult to teach than sec 1, which makes sense. Beginners have no established habits and will try new ways of doing things, and are enjoying the rewarding learning curve that comes from the first year of playing an instrument. It’s thrilling to go from not being able to make a sound to being able to play music together with other people, and the sec 1 players are still in the middle of that exhilarating feeling. By sec 5 they’ve discovered that music takes just as much work to get good at as anything else, and are getting ready to move on to CEGEP so it may not be foremost in their minds any more. My sec 5 student had been playing for 5 years, since sec 1, which I realized was only a year less than I’ve been playing. The first lesson was more or less the same in that I introduced her to flicking. “Yeah,” she said, “someone told me about that before, but I’ve been doing it this way for a long time so I didn’t change it.” I couldn’t really blame her. If I had been playing an instrument for five years and was suddenly told that there was a whole other category of keys on my instrument that I had to start using on notes I thought I already knew how to play (even if they usually weren’t in the right octave)– I wouldn’t want to change, either! Over the course of the sec 5 session I got used to reminding her to flick whenever she was struggling to put her tenor notes in the right octave, and to her credit she did seem to be trying. However, the music she was playing in band was quite demanding, so there were a lot of things for her to be thinking about at once.
Her rhythm also seemed to be a little off– not surprising since she seemed quite confused about the purpose and function of a metronome when I took mine out– so at one point I asked her to simply clap her rhythm with the metronome. After several unsuccessful attempts, I put the metronome on 60 to the quarter note and asked her to simply clap eighth notes. She couldn’t do it. The division of the beat simply refused to settle in. The next day, I asked her to sing her line. “Oh, I can’t sing.” she pronounced decisively. “Sure you can,” I said, “Let’s just find that first F.” I played the F, sang it, and asked her to sing it too. But even when I tried to direct her to it – “a little higher! Not quite that high!” she couldn’t find it, and seemed to have no idea when she was even getting closer.
So, I had been spending my time trying to adjust her embouchure, increase her air support, improve her tuning and bothering her about flicking all when she basically had no concept of rhythm or pitch! It simply hadn’t occurred to me at first that these elements might be missing, but thinking about it it makes sense. This student had an excellent band teacher who set the kids up very well and concentrated on scales, good rhythm and tuning in class. However, I think it has to do with the nature of teaching the bassoon in these settings that she had been left behind on essential elements of musicianship. I’m sure simple rhythms were drilled a lot when she was in sec 1, however, it seems like once she was given a bassoon to try to figure out, the sheer mechanical challenge and confusion of the instrument pushed all other thoughts out of her mind. Rhythm became someone else’s problem, and pitch was a toss-up determined by whether she happened to put down the right fingers or not.
I felt sorry for her, because I can’t imagine she was having very much fun in band class. For me, at least, it would be incredibly stressful to be trying to play complex music, and being surrounded by people who seem to know what they’re doing, while lacking the fundamental skills to even really understand what’s going on rhythmically, melodically or harmonically, and having to just follow along blindly and hope it works out. I believe that all humans are fundamentally capable of learning music, and I think if she had been placed on another instrument maybe she would have fared better. However, of course I also think it’s wonderful that the school is teaching bassoon in the first place! I would never want a school to stop teaching bassoon just because it’s difficult for band students to learn.
So, I think what I learned about teaching bassoon is this:
1. Potential bassoonists need a strong base of general musicianship skills before picking up the bassoon– probably stronger than would be needed for other woodwind instruments, where the initial technical demands on the student would be reasonable enough for them to be able to keep filling in the gaps in their skills while learning the instrument. In my case, I had played violin for ten years as a kid, and had experimented with plenty of other instruments before settling on the bassoon. Obviously that’s not the path that every new band student will be coming from, but spending a lot of time listening too classical music, singing, clapping rhythms and using methods such as Orff and Kodaly before touching a bassoon would make sure that the fundamentals are set down. Another alternative in a band context would be to simply assign future bassoonists to a different instrument for a year or two. (Flute seems like a good option since it would teach them good breathing habits without giving them any preconceived notions of reed embouchure.)
2. Bassoonists need private teachers. All players do better with private teachers, of course, but with most other woodwinds it’s easy for the band teacher to notice how they’re doing and direct them appropriately. Bassoonists tend to get ignored, firstly because the teacher probably isn’t as knowledgeable about the instrument and also because the teacher doesn’t want to put too much pressure on a kid who’s taken on a complicated challenge. This particular school actually has private teachers for the rest of the instruments who visit the school every so often to give lessons, which is probably part of the reasons their bands are so good! However unfortunately they’re the only school in that area that teaches bassoon, and since the school is quite remote they’ve been having trouble finding a bassoon teacher able to drive out there.
I think this can be applied in private teaching, as well. Of course, it doesn’t make sense to turn away a student who wants to learn bassoon just because they don’t have another instrument under their belt already. However, a heightened focus on listening, singing and speaking/tapping rhythm could be useful to set students up on the instrument. Of course, this isn’t as exciting for the students themselves– they want to play! But hey– I started in Suzuki and spent my first lessons on the violin playing on a souped-up cereal box. (It’s a good idea: http://teachsuzuki.blogspot.ca/2011/04/why-use-box-violin.html) They can handle it.
It’s been a while since bassoon day, but I didn’t write about it at the time and I’m on a wifi-enabled bus right now, so why not!
I admit I wasn’t actually there for the whole thing. I ended up working that morning– teaching music classes to small children, in the classroom right beside the one being used as a vendor’s room/general hang-out room for Bassoon Day. So, lots of “Mommy, can we go see the clarinets?” before and after the classes. They haven’t gotten to bassoon yet in the Little Musicians curriculum… I’ll be coming around to the classrooms some time soon to introduce them to it. (Last year, I walked into one class and the teacher said, “Wow! Boys and girls, how do you think you make a sound on THIS instrument?” One perceptive kid raised his hand and shouted “I know! You don’t!”)
So, I only caught the tail end of the masterclass with Mathieu Harel in the morning. However, I have played in his masterclasses in previous years, and he is a very perceptive teacher and entertaining speaker. In the afternoon was the masterclass with Ole Kristian Dahl: Nadia played the 2nd movement of the Mozart, Daniel Weber’s Andante and Hungarian Rondo, I the Prelude from the 2nd Cello Suite, and Mary the Berwald Konzertstuck. None of us actually got very far into our pieces; he didn’t need to hear the whole thing before deciding on a facet of technique that we wanted to work on. He suggested trying to hold pieces of paper against the keys even when the keys are up (“And in my studio, every time it falls, a euro in the jar!”), compared playing your first note slightly out of tune to getting on a train to the wrong city, and demonstrated how he could play the entire Scheherezade solo in one breath (“I won a crate of wine from my colleagues for that.”) somehow he managed to keep the audience actually laughing (with us, not at us!) the whole time.
Later in the afternoon, there was a concert where Ole along with pianist Pamela Reimer and Stephane, Marty, Mathieu, and Michael (Principal, 2nd, Associate, and Contrabassoon of the OSM, respectively) played all sorts of bassoon things in various configurations including the premiere of a new trio for bassoon, contra and piano by Mathieu Lussier, who was also in attendance. Finally, the traditional forest of bassoons where every single person in the audience who has a bassoon (which is most of hem, obviously) gets up on stage for bassoon ensemble works. Kaitlin, a former McGill student who now studies with Ole, was even there via Skype on a music stand in the back row.
If you’d like to be updated about future McGill bassoon days, Stephane usually posts an announcement on the IDRS forum, or join the bassoon newsletter that Pascal Veraquin’s woodwind shop sends out and an announcement will probably be made there.
Happy bassooning!
As I’ve mentioned in the past, for the past three summers I’ve been playing with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada in the summers. NYOC is a great program but I decided that it was time for me to do something new, so for the first time since entering McGill I didn’t audition this summer. Instead, this June I’ll be in Ottawa participating in the senior division of the National Arts Centre’s Young Artists Program. Whereas NYOC is an orchestra program with chamber music at the beginning of the session, the description of the YAP program states: “5 exceptional wind musicians will be selected for a unique one-on-one mentorship experience with their respective NAC Orchestra Wind Principal on orchestral & solo repertoire and together as a wind quintet coached by all Principals of the NAC Orchestra Wind Quintet.” So, that’s what I’ll be doing in June! I’m really excited to have a different kind of summer experience, and to study with the great players on faculty there.
I’m playing in the master class with Ole Kristian Dahl at 2 PM, and there’s another masterclass in the morning, a concert in the evening and people will be hanging out in the vendor’s room for the rest of the day. Given the photo, I’m going to be really disappointed if there is not actually a transparent bassoon in attendance… I don’t know where the picture is from, but the only one that I know of is that of Lionel Bord, bassoonist in L’Orchestre de Paris, who demonstrates its many excellent qualities in this video, among others:
http://youtu.be/tpKW82ZdCrs
Lest semester I wrote a little bit about a conducting class I was taking. In that class, all we got to conduct was a recording. However, this semester I’m in the next class, in which we get to conduct actual people! We get to conduct two different groups: he lab Band and the Wind Symphony. The Lab band is made up of the combined Wind Techniques, Brass Techniques and Percussion Techniques classes– the music education classes where you learn to play every instrument in a family. So, the lab band is made up of very competent musicians, all of whom are playing instruments they don’t know how to play! (Last year I took Brass tech and played French Horn in lab band.) That combination of musical expertise and technical uselessness makes for kind of a unique group, which by the end of the semester usually progresses to the point that it could pass as a reasonably advanced high school band. On Tuesday I conducted the Lab band for the first time, which was my very first experience conducting people! Of course it was rather different from conducting the recordings we’ve been doing in class… for instance, I felt kind of silly even bothering to indicate dynamics at all, since I knew that they knew that their dynamic range consisted of “on” or “off”, and even the “on” option was still a little beyond a few sections. However, there’s no point in just standing there beating time when the experience is supposed to help me improve as a conductor! Later in the semester, we get to try conducting the Wind Symphony, and the members of that group get to vote on which members of the conducting class they would like to conduct a movement each from the Candide Suite in their concert! (The movement I’m preparing is Glitter and be Gay, which was a terrible choice because it’s been stuck in my head for the past month and it’s starting to get irritating.) The Wind Symphony, along with the Contemporary Music Ensemble and the McGill Symphony Orchestra, is one of the credited large ensembles at McGill, and I played in it for the first two years of my degree so I remember this process from the other side! The Wind Symphony conductor, Alain Cazes, is also the conducting teacher, so he prepares the piece with the ensemble before the student conductors get to have a go at it. Although of course I can’t know if I’ll be voted to conduct in the concert, everyone gets to go through their movement with the group at least once, so it’ll be interesting to see the differences between how the lab Band responds to movement and how the Wind Symphony responds. Although we have lots of classes in the undergraduate program that are supposed to somehow improve you as a general musician, and even a series of required classes entitled “musicianship” (it’s solfege, okay, the class is about learning fixed-do solfege) Alain’s conducting classes are the first non-performance classes I’ve taken that I really feel fulfill that purpose. Learning about the intricate connection of movement to sound and expression to technique isn’t something we really spend time on other academic classes. With Alain we watch a lot of videos of great conductors and great orchestras, and he is always telling us stories about the conductors he’s worked with as a tuba player in L’Orchestre Metropolitain and elsewhere. Even though the class is technically supposed to be to train high school band teachers, he makes it relevant and important to all musicians. I’ve found that of a lot of my Music Education classes, actually; although they’re not required or even often allowed for students in the Performance program, they’ve been some of the most worthwhile classes of my degree.
Check out the pictures from the NSO’s holiday pops and family concerts on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbabij/sets/72157638763933986/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbabij/sets/72157638765859823/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbabij/sets/72157638765363575/ I especially like the angle on the tinsel and light-up icicles that Cathi brought as decorations for our bells. :P And the maestro’s spiffy guitar and guitar-playing jacket. A few days ago my family also played a concert/sing-along at the Runnymede hospital. My dad played piano, my mom flute, my brother viola and obviously I played bassoon. (Perhaps not so obviously… my mom suggested that I go play Christmas carols at my brother’s school on violin… an instrument I haven’t practiced for about five years.) It seemed like the patients enjoyed it, although my dad’s jazz-inspired improvisational wanderings based on popular Christmas carols certainly confused a few who were expecting a simple sing-along! Now that (most of) the crazy travelling is done I can finally focus just on the Toronto Symphony audition, which is coming up in less than a month! Also learning my parts for the next MGSO concert– principal on Bruckner’s 2nd symphony and Janacek’s From The House of the Dead overture. My recital is also coming up next semester, which will be my last semester at McGill! Aaa! (Yesssssssssss…..) I have the program mostly planned, and have already performed half of the repertoire and started working on some of the rest. Still– at McGill you only have one official recital during your degree (as well as two juries performed just for a panel of professors) so this will be my first time doing an entire recital all by myself. So I’m sure I’ll be writing more about that as the time approaches…
I just got my copy of the CD that the NYOC recorded this summer, and am very excited to listen to it! We spent two days recording in the Multi-Media Room at McGill, and the CD includes Mahler’s Ninth symphony and the commissioned work for this year, which was written by McGill student James O’Callaghan. It doesn’t seem to be up on iTunes yet bu you can buy a physical copy here !
Yesterday, the musicians of the McGill Symphony orchestra (well over a hundred of us!) played to a nearly full house at Maison Symphonique, the home of the OSM in Montreal’s place Des Arts. Here is some media coverage of the event– Claude Gingras says it best in his last paragraph: Année après année, Hauser anime avec la même passion cet orchestre constamment renouvelé. Les effectifs changent, forcément, mais le résultat demeure toujours du plus haut niveau. On ne voit vraiment pas qui pourrait remplacer Alexis Hauser à McGill! (Year after year, Hauser animates the constantly renewed orchestra with the same passion. The players change, but the result is always at the highest level. It is difficult to see who could ever replace Alexis Hauser at McGill!) I feel incredibly grateful to have been able to play in Hauser’s orchestra for the last two years of my time at McGill. His energy, musical intelligence and kindness are inspirational to all the students he conducts, and I look forward to another semester-and-one-third of music-making at McGill!
Recently, I got a new toy! It’s an MD Reeds profiler, which I ordered at the end of last school year after a period of some, although by no means exhaustive, research of the profiler market. I admit I was partly lured in my the shiny price tag– at $600, it’s less than half the price of a lot of the other models I was looking at. Since it seems to be getting generally good reviews from the bassoon community and some people are even saying the design is an improvement on existing models, I decided to give it a go. I’m only just in the process of finishing my first batch of reeds with the new profiler, and since I’ve only ever used two profilers before (the Ben Bell profiler we have at school and a borrowed Popkin to top off my cane supply this summer) I’m probably not in the best position go give a comprehensive review. However, it seems top be working great for me so far. Since I had never set up a profiler on my own before, I definitely appreciated how easy the MD model is to adjust– for instance, I didn’t know where I would want the ramp to be, so I just made a bunch of cane of a few different settings, changing them quickly and easily using the click-wheel underneath the ramp. Now I just need to buy a shaper and then I can make reeds completely independently of the school’s equipment, which will be nice since they have pretty strict rules about when you can sign it out and bring it back. Yay!