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!
I played my first concert with the Niagara Symphony Orchestra last over the weekend. Here’s some local news coverage of the show: http://youtu.be/QnWJrB93auw
As well as going to school for bassoon, I am also doing a minor in the Music Education program at McGill. Due to extremely poor course planning on my own part, I only officially added the minor to my program this year. However, I had taken music education courses in the past, played in shows conducted by an excellent conductor in the education program who recruited mostly education students for his pit orchestras (well, no bassoonists in the education program anyway), attended workshops hosted by the music education council (there was an awesome one last year where some drumline guys came in and taught a bunch of us simple drumline patterns, an activity which due to the sheer amount of noise involved I suspect is probably better suited to a football field than a classroom) and went to the parties and events hosted by the music ed council. However, now that its actually on my transcript I have quite a few music ed classes to finish up this year before I graduate. Among them are two conducting classes: Basic conducting this semester, which is exactly as the name would suggest, and Instrumental conducting next semester, which is where you get to conduct the “lab band” made up of the students learning secondary instruments in the wind, brass and percussion techniques classes. (I played french horn in the lab band last year while I was taking Brass tech! :P ) I’m preparing for the first practical test in Basic conducting this week, and I have to say it’s kind of kicking my ass. The simplest thing, such as making it clear in advance that the next beat will be legato and not marcato like the previous beats, looks awkward and completely unfollowable when I conduct the test material in front of a mirror. Even the beat patterns, which I hardly had to think about when we did conduct + sing assignments in musicianship/aural skills class, just don’t look quite good enough when I have a baton in my hand. (Also, I already broke my baton. Oops. I was very disappointed to find that there was in fact no unicorn hair inside of it, or indeed any other magical object appropriate to a wand core. That’s what you get for $10 I suppose. It is now sporting some classy yellow electrical tape.) I’m trying to approach the 5-10 bar fragments that we have to conduct for our test like I would prepare an excerpt. First I need to think of the tempo that’s indicated based on a melody I know I can call to mind in the correct tempo. I’m using the opening of the Mozart concerto for the two fragments that are around 60, the opening of the Poulenc sextet for the one that’s around 132, and Beethoven 4 for the one that’s at 80. None of these are entirely satisfactory since the tempi are all a tiny (hopefully unnoticeably) bit off from the indicated tempi and none of the moods or time signatures match up to what I have to then conduct based on their tempo. However, I would rather use slightly less accurate pieces of which I’m used to having to remember the tempo than pieces that match exactly in metronome marking, character and meter but that I have to search for and call to mind with more difficulty. Then I have to remember to breathe! When I played in lab band, it always seemed like the silliest thing that none of the student conductors could ever remember to breathe with the ensemble. Now I understand that it’s actually hard to get used to breathing as if with the intention of making sound, and then… not producing any sound with the air you’ve taken in. After that, what I find most difficult about the actual conducting is being able to prepare character the next beat without taking over the character of the previous one. Fortunately, since I’m taking this class later in my degree than I would have if I had planned to do the minor from the start, I know lots of other students who have finished that class and gone on to more conducting classes. I’m meeting with a friend tomorrow night to conduct for her. Hopefully I’ll feel comfortable with the basics soon! In other news, this weekend was the first MGSO concert of the year. The program was Verdi’s Forza del Destino, the Ginastera Harp Concerto, and Dvorak 8. My only part for that concert was principal in the harp concerto, which was awesome since it was a unique piece to get to play and the schedule gave me lots of free time. However, today we had out first rehearsal for the next concert, including an initial run through of Daphnis and Chloe Suite #2. This concert I’m playing principal on that and on a piece by Kaija Saariaho which involves quite a lot of spoken German in the wind parts, and third on the overture to the third act of Lohengrin. So I have more work in orchestra this semester, but that’s okay since this concert will be at Maison Symphonique! Okay… now back to trying to figure out how to conduct fermatas.
Oops… I haven’t written here in a while. In that time, things have happened! First, the last week of the summer I went to camp! The Interprovincial Music Camp is a terrific camp outside of Parry Sound which I attended as a student in high school. Fraser Jackson, the contrabassoonist of the Toronto Symphony, was on faculty there, and after my first year at the camp I became his student and stayed in his studio until I left for university. Then, last year, Fraser emailed me and asked if I would like to come back to camp as his Faculty Assistant. Every faculty member is allowed to choose an assistant, usually a university-aged student of theirs or a young professional player, to teach with them at camp. So this was my second year doing that and it was awesome! As well as being a great experience teaching, it’s also lots of fun because all of the faculty assistants, many of us who know each other from school or summer festivals, live together in two big cabins near the entrance to the camp, with our own fire pit and easy access to the lake. Unlike the camp councillors, who are usually similar in age, the faculty assistants have no responsibilities to deal with the campers other than in strictly musical contexts, whereas the councillors have to take care of a cabin full of kids and– having been a camper, I can imagine how difficult and frustrating this must be– keep them quiet at night. Because there aren’t usually too many bassoon students, I also get lots of time to practice at camp, which is awesome since the camp takes place the week before the return to school and thus the auditions for the university ensembles. One of my favourite things to do at camp is practice outside, which you sure can’t do in Montreal for most of the year! I was happy with how the audition at school went, and although this concert I’m only playing one piece (principal on the Ginastera Harp concerto) next concert I get to play principal on Daphnis and Chloe Suite #2– and at Maison Symphonnique, instead of McGill’s Pollack Hall where the McGill Symphony Orchestra usually plays! Then, two days ago, I did another audition, for the Niagara Symphony Orchestra in St. Catherine’s, for whom I’m happy to say I am now principal bassoon! The audition day was a doubleheader in which they hired for both principal oboe and bassoon, and I’m really excited to play my first concert with them in almost exactly a month (they had already hired a bassoon and oboe for the first concert, so myself and the winner of the oboe audition are playing our first show on the second concert of the season.) However, I don’t have a contract or a detailed rehearsal schedule yet, so it remains to be seen how much I’m going to have to wiggle out of McGill obligations for Niagara stuff! Now I can finally take a break from practicing excerpts (except for Rite of Spring– since the MGSO is playing it on the last concert of the first semester, the McGill bassoon studio is holding a separate audition for the principal part that will take place some time later in the semester) and focus on Bach’s 2nd cello suite, which I will play in a masterclass for Nadina Mackie Jackson next week. She is coming to perform the bassoon sequenza in an enormous Berio extravaganza concert next Friday. I actually love Berio, so I’m really excited to hear it! (Check out my colleague from this summer, Sam Fraser, performing a hilarious comedy act entitled “The Lost Berio Sequenza” at the NYO talent show this summer: http://youtu.be/DMUoqpLzqJU )