Wordcount

For reference, the total wordcount of this blog is 3,110 words.

Blog “wrap-up”

As I come to the end of this “Professional Performance Project” unit, and the end of this blog, here are some reflections on what I have learnt this year, and what I predict I will need to work on in the coming year:

1. Balancing practice and performance as a freelance musician. This year I have been gradually making the transition from student life to the life of a freelance musician. I have had fewer lessons, less practice time and more performance opportunities than ever before. One of the things I have found the most difficult, and that I anticipate will be difficult in the coming months, is fitting in enough quality practice. When you have lots of orchestral/chamber music repertoire to learn, and no external, personal performance goals, it can be hard to direct the little practice time you have. I anticipate that what I will need to do is isolate all aspects of flute technique and find out ways to maintain/improve them in short sessions. These can then be applied to any repertoire I encounter along the way.
2. Proactivity in finding work. What I have learnt a lot of this year is how proactive one needs to be in finding gigs/auditions – no one else is going to go out there and find them for you. Something I have learnt, especially from competition experience, and through my woodwind quintet activities, is the importance in this day and age of marketing yourself, and also forming genuine relationships with your audience and with your colleagues.
3. Preparing well for every performance – who knows who might be there! Something I have not done particularly well this year is preparing in the same professional manner for every performance. Instead, I have prioritised my preparation based on the perceived value of the gig in question. What I have learnt through this is firstly that it feels terrible to not play to standard in any context, and also that preparing/performing well is a habit, and not something that you can turn on and off at will. I would therefore like to be much more consistent in this regard.

South Coast Music Camp: Conducting

The first week of the tour involved tutoring at the South Coast Music Camp in Bega, NSW. In addition to instructing the wind students, we gave lessons and conducted various ensembles. I, along with Lloyd (the clarinettist in my quintet), were given the “Camel Rock” wind band to conduct. The Camel Rock band was an intermediate wind symphony, with students ranging from seven to sixty! This was my first proper experience of conducting, and I learned a lot from it.

On a practical level, I learned a lot about managing the people in a large ensemble. Our rehearsals were scheduled for an hour and a half. That is a long time for a young child to concentrate, and during the first rehearsal I found it difficult to control the ensemble. The younger members would talk constantly and not pay attention, and the older members would get frustrated about this. I made a number of mistakes as a conductor, which I endeavoured to correct over the next few days:

1. Firstly, I discovered that it is important to let the ensemble members know what will be covered during rehearsal. This avoids constant questions about what is happening, gives the rehearsal a structure and cuts out any unnecessary time wastage.
2. Secondly, I learned many things about holding students’ attention. In the first rehearsal I spent a lot of time unintentionally ignoring the ensemble, focussing on figuring out what I wanted to work on and also allowing for logistical things to be worked out. I very quickly learned that it gets increasingly difficult to gain young students’ attention once you have lost it. It is better to always keep everybody doing something, and focussing on you and your directions. Another solution to losing control of the ensemble is judicious, stern criticism. In the rehearsal before the concert, several of the younger kids were mucking around and refusing to pay attention. Lloyd, my fellow conductor, stopped the rehearsal and made a polite but strongly worded criticism about good behaviour and respect, and it made a huge difference. The kids were so surprised and embarrassed about being called out about their bad behaviour that they quietened down immediately, and behaved very well for the rest of the day.
3. Thirdly, I learned to balance fun and imagination with technical work. I found that the kids were much more ready to apply themselves to things like rhythm, articulation and intonation if we talked about what the music was saying beforehand. For example, on of the pieces we played was called “Clowning Around”, and it was about the antics about various members of a circus. I found the kids much more willing to work on technical aspects once we had talked about what characters the different instruments represented, and how we were going to paint the audience a musical picture.

Arcadia on Tour

Over the past two weeks I toured to regional NSW with my wind quintet, the Arcadia Quintet. In the following series of blog entries I will discuss aspects of the tour I found enlightening.

ABC Young Performers Awards Part 4: Recital

My performance at YPA was, from my perspective, mediocre. I did not make it to the second round, however I was lucky enough to pick up a prize for the “Best Performance of an Australian Work” for my rendition of Brett Dean’s Demons for solo flute. After listening back to the recording, and receiving feedback from various listeners, I can make the following reflections:

1.  I did not “do enough”. Comparing my performance to that of the other competitors, I think that I did not say enough musically. At that level of performance, you have to be constantly engaging and exaggerate everything you are trying to say in order to make a spectacular impression. I think I did this well in my performance of Demons. I had many comments that it was immensely engaging, and that I seemed committed to what I was playing 100% of the time. This level of commitment needed to be apparent in my other pieces.
2. My phrasing needs a lot of work. One of the main comments, and one of my main observations, is that my phrasing is much too choppy. I never seem to follow a phrase through to its highest point; rather I back off or clip things that do not need to be clipped. This element of phrasing and legato is something I will make a main focus in my practice over the coming weeks.
3. Bach can be a very controversial competition choice. The worst feedback I got from my YPA recital concerned my performance of the Partita in A minor by J.S. Bach. The main comment I got was that it was “too Romantic”. This comment mainly concerned my rhythm. I made the decision to pull the rhythm around quite a lot in order to communicate different emotions I wanted to express, however the feedback I got was that this made for a rather seasick effect, rather of Baroque clarity, and stable rhythmic drive, which is what they were looking for. Although I think my interpretation was valid, I have to acknowledge that the way I played it was not what a lot of people, and especially adjudicators, look for in Bach.

ABC Young Performers Awards Part 3: Image and Publicity

During YPA I also learned a lot more about image and publicity. These are not things I had considered in much detail before, preferring to focus on mostly musical aspects, but from the YPA experience I gradually realised that understanding and utilising them better may be very beneficial to my career.

In a training session with Trudy Johnston, the director of “Vim and Zest Communications”, I learned that, first of all, print or electronic media is very unlikely to pick up a story without an interesting, high quality image to go with it. We were lucky to have a professional photoshoot before the session, in which we learned about the importance of being confident and portraying our personality in photos, and how things like lighting and colour contrast play an important role in the end result. Trudy relayed many experiences of media editors not considering stories because they did not have an interesting image to go with them, and conversely, media editors picking stories purely based on what kind of image went with them.

When looking to get a story published by independent media (as opposed to advertising), I also learned that the first step is to send out a media release to possible outlets. In Trudy’s words, “A media release is like a short newspaper article, a clear and sharply focused presentation of the main attributes of your event or news item, with a ‘news hook’, used to gain coverage in the media.” Hearing this emphasised to me the importance of having a specific angle or selling point when trying to gain media coverage, and I can understand how editors are less likely to be attracted to stories if they are more general and nebulous.

ABC Young Performers Awards Part 2: Media and Interviews

As part of the YPA experience, I had the opportunity to give interviews on ABC Classic FM and ABC TV, and to participate in a media training session. I really enjoyed all of these, and they opened my eyes to some other aspects of being a modern classical musician that I had not previously experienced. My initial interview experience however, was not a good one. This was mostly caused by lack of preparation on my part. After flying into Adelaide last Friday, I travelled immediately to the ABC studios in Collinswood for a radio interview. Although I enjoyed it, I was unable to provide the kind of answers I wanted. This was due to three factors – confidence, preparation and technique. Confidence is something that will come with experience, but preparation is something I can do a lot better in the future. As I learned, for radio interviews, it is essential to thoroughly brainstorm both possible questions, and possible answers. If I had simply taken the time to do this beforehand, I think that my experience would have been quite different.

I got an insight into interview technique in the media training session. In it, I learned many interview techniques that will help me in the future. The first one sounds obvious and clichéd, but I think it is very important: be yourself. This means being friendly, relaxed and confident in who you are and what you are passionate about – that is what a potential audience will enjoy listening to.

The second technique is to address the question in a concise and interesting way. This means responding directly to what you are asked – breaking down the question into its component parts (even including words and phrases from the question in order to do this). This also means not assuming any expert knowledge from an audience, and explaining, in an easily understandable way, your statements and arguments. This is a really good way to answer a question – to make a statement, and then explain it in an entertaining and informative way.

This leads onto a third technique, which is being specific rather than general. It is much easier to focus on specific concepts or stories, than to talk about broad, general themes.Fourthly, I learned that it can be a very good thing to try to make the interview about things that are bigger that yourself. This means concentrating on explaining the value of the things that you are passionate about.

The fifth element I have already mentioned above: preparation. This can take the form of doing a mock interview with a friend, or recording your answers, listening back and evaluating your efforts. Lastly, from a practical point of view, it is important not to be put off by everything else that happens in a radio or TV studio. The producer, or even presenter, may need to be doing a myriad of things as well as talk to you, but that does not mean that they are not listening. In my first radio interview, I was definitely thrown by this at first, which contributed to making the interview one that I wasn’t happy with.

ABC Young Performers Awards Part 1: Introduction

Over the past week I took part in the finals of the ABC Young Performers Awards in Adelaide. The first round of the finals was a recital round, in which the eleven finalists each played a 45-minute recital live on ABC classic FM. Unfortunately, I was not chosen to go on past the recital stage; however I was lucky enough to win the prize for the “Best Performance of an Australian Work” for my performance of Brett Dean’s Demons for solo flute. Over the coming days I will blog about many different aspects of what I learned from my experience. These aspects include what I learned from preparing for the competition, performing in the competition, listening to the other participants, and from a media and publicity point of view.

First PSI Reflection

On my Performance Skills Profile, from dongreene.com, one of my weakest areas is “Preparation”. I only scored a total of 51% when it came to the ability to learn, practice habits, and memorizing music. On reflection, I am often quite inefficient in the practice room, throwing myself at a piece or passage without giving it a lot of thought. I therefore decided today to really concentrate on being mindful in my practice: establish a “clear intention”, as Don Greene says, and then assess whether I had achieved it.

I applied this process in my practice of the Boehm Grand Polonaise, and I immediately saw results. I had a lot of trouble with the opening run of the piece. After throwing myself mindlessly at the passage a couple of times, I stopped and tried to analyse what was wrong. I determined that it was the transition between the upper register E and F#s. So, I composed and played a few exercises based on this combination. This, however, was not enough to fix it. After stopping and playing those two notes very slowly, I realised that the problem was that the middle finger on my left hand wasn’t coming down fast enough – the fingers on my right hand were “beating it to it”. So I played the passage again, concentrating on this particular finger, and the problem was fixed! Thus, a problem that has dogged me all year was solved but just stopping, analysing the problem and devising a solution.

Concerto!

On Wednesday the 30th of July I was lucky enough to perform the Mozart Concerto in G Major, and the Chaminade Concertino, with Orchestra Victoria, as part of their “Mostly Mozart” concert series at the Melbourne Recital Centre. It was a wonderful experience, and I learned a lot from both the rehearsals and performance. The concert was broadcast on ABC Classic FM the next night. Listening back to the performance on the radio, I was pleased with a number of things. My sound was clear and varied in colour; my musical ideas carried fairly well; and my technique was solid. However, I was also surprised at a number of flawed aspects of my playing that I had not noticed in performance. These aspects are analysed below:

1. Sound: The concert took place in Elizabeth Murdoch Hall in the Melbourne Recital Centre. Murdoch Hall is quite large, and during both rehearsals and performance I was quite concerned with the fact that I didn’t seem to be projecting my sound as much as I would have liked. This was exacerbated by the fact that I was playing with quite a large symphony orchestra. However, listening back, I was surprised to hear that I sounded loud and clear above the orchestra, and that the main issue was not projection, but quality of sound. Whenever I produced a pure, focused sound, it seemed to carry quite well over the orchestra; when I was anxious and forced the sound, it seemed to be squeezed under the orchestra. “Quality not quantity” of sound has been something I have been told many times by many teachers. This experience has really taught me the wisdom of that mantra.
2. Intonation: On the recording of the performance, my intonation constantly tended sharp. This is something I had not picked up on in performance. I suspect that, in my concern for projection, I had unconsciously started playing a little sharp in order to make sure I was heard above the orchestra. Although the amount was fairly small, I still found it uncomfortable to listen to.
3. Legato: The recording revealed a lack of legato in my playing of which I had been aware, but not realised the extent. Although this could have been exacerbated on the recording due to the difference between the resonance and echo of the hall, and the close microphones, it is still an area I was not happy with. Especially in the slow movements, supposedly sustained notes disappeared quickly off into the ether, and sometimes sounded quite clipped and over-phrased. James Galway talks about what he calls “concerto notes”, which are notes, especially at the ends of phrases, that need to be over-sustained in order to make a good impression in the audience. My performance certainly needed many more of these.
4. Rhythm: I was surprised to hear myself playing very fast and rushing on the recording. Playing so fast meant that the clarity of the individual notes was lost. The rushing itself wasn’t building, long term rushing; rather it was internal rushing – rushing within beats, and within bar structures, which meant I was often ahead of the orchestra.

An analysis of these aspects reveals a number of things I can now work on in my personal practice:

1. Focusing on quality, not quantity, of sound. Practically, this means using less air, supporting more, and creating more resonance in my body, throat and face.
2. Adjusting my intonation to play in the centre of the sound, rather than above it.
3. Working on sustaining the ends of notes, connecting phrases, and connecting the notes within the phrases.
4. Practicing with a metronome, and really concentrating on the internal rhythm in anything I am playing. This means considering the rhythmic relationship of each individual note to the next, and bar and beat structure. Additionally, making sure that I play slowly enough for the individual notes to be clearly heard.