IfCM Collective Tour '13: Upstate!

I'm feeling a little less like a sleep deprived troll so here's a bit if a recap of the first part of the IfCM Collective tour to upstate New York:

Mike and I teleported Matthew up from Buenos Aires early, heading to Ithaca for all of our first performance at the Gates. We stretched out on a completely improvised night of music for the small but appreciative crowd, washing electronic manipulation with spoken word.

**Discovery of the day--Short Stop Subs***

Nick and Chris Z took an overnight bus from NYC to arrive just in time to start the first sessions of our two day residency at the Harley school. We worked with Kristy Houston's 6th grade general music class on both days on learning Radiohead's Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box  by ear--moving, singing, playing, and improvising with enthusiasm. The class created a new "what does your community sound like" piece, riffing on dog relationships, angry parents, Black Friday, and the cold of Rochester:


The Harley upper school string ensemble premiered Matthew's new piece, Southern Castellano featuring adventurous solos from Henry Smith (violin) Andrew Wang (cello) while the wind ensemble gave a strong performance of Louis Steps and a percussion-driven, poly tonal happy birthday for two of the students. Our friend and head of the Harley Lower School, Terry Fonda Smith, wrote a comprehensive overview of the week with pictures.

Wednesday put the IfCM Collective in front of what we thought would be our largest group of students with Eileen Yu's Franklin Middle School:  

The students brought Louis' Steps to life and ended the morning swinging by learning Blues by Five by ear. One of the students wasn't sure how he would remember the melody that we'd learned without sheet music but there's a very good chance that if we catch up with him in a year or two those riffs will still be under his fingers...

After a quick nap and a bucket of coffee the band reconvened for a jazz performance at Fairport High School. Bill Tiberio and the students asked some great questions about our compositions and use of electronic manipulation to expand out sonic palate. 

A full day at Rochester's School of the Arts packed an average of 80 students per period into Doug Stone's classroom, getting 100 people playing together at one point. As the name states, SOTA immerses their students to a wide range of musical styles, drama, dance, and visual art so we had the opportunity to see the impact that the arts has on students, teachers and guests . Some of the students even knew the words to sardines! We are extremely excited to involve these amazing schools in our project at the Chesonis Commons in March--more to come shortly!

 Part two of our Rochester/Buffalo tour up shortly...

Nick's Visit to Argentina - Trombonanza!

Reflections from Trombonanza 2013

Nick Finzer just got back from  Santa Fe, Argentina where he was a guest artist at the 2013 Trombonanza Festival. Many new experiences there:

"...the most unexpected part of the week occurred when during the whole group rehearsal (yes, 150 participants - trombone, bass trombone, euphonium, and tubas), Ruben handed me a score to an arrangement of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" (thanks Conrad Herwig for the arrangement!) and said "OK you're up" and I conducted the mass ensemble! WOW - now THAT is a lot of brass. Having to play over the whole ensemble, I was immediately thankful for the time I spent with Wycliffe Gordon - learning how to belt out over such a big group!"

Read the full article on Nick's site and watch him conduct the group (1:02:00 below):

 

Success Through Comfortable Failure - Come Join the Band Wrapup

Come Join the Band - 2013 Wrap up (Success through Comfortable Failure)

For the past 3 years I have had the opportunity to coach a class on starting your own band through the University of Rochester’s Pre-College summer session.  Alan Murphy and I always have a great experience working with the high school students for “Come Join the Band: Creative Music Making for Everyone.” It’s always a great learning opportunity for us as teachers and performers to revisit our own formative learning time. Looking back on how we experienced learning an instrument for the first time or interacting with new band members is a great way to check in on how comfortable we are as professional performers and educators.  Facilitating the formative process of learning instruments and working as a band (in this case with members who have never even met and may have little to no music performance experience) is really profound. This step in the learning process (failure!) is something that can be really discouraging if you’re not used to it.  I know that I’ve had plenty of good and terrible experiences evaluating my drumming, composing, and singing (either as it happens or from a recording), and I think it was helpful to the students to know that everyone else in the band was there to support them. We all got to the point where we were comfortable talking about what was awesome and what could use some improvement--a big step than not even a lot of professional groups get to!

We kicked off the first of two weeks by learning a simple tune by ear. Everyone sang the bass line, lyrical melody, and patted/tapped the basic beat and beat division in our heels and hands--all at the same time!  You can see an example of this process on Radiohead’s “Packt Like Sardines In A Crusht Tin Box” in the IfCM video here from Montana (starts around 30 seconds in):

I demonstrated how the rhythm patterns directly related to playing a basic beat on the drum set and everyone tried it out.  This is usually learning “through failure moment #1”--drums are uncomfortably foreign at first, but then they get easier. Now that all of the students have a task that they currently are unable to do (play a rock beat on the drum set with all 4 limbs) we all practice it together with one person rotating to the drum set and the rest of us patting on our legs and tapping our heels on the ground. Everyone did a fantastic job listening to the pattern that they were playing and gradually making it more steady by the time they tried it on the drum set. Getting used to practicing rhythmic coordination away from an instrument like this is really dependent on your ability to listen carefully to the weight of your limbs and adjust them to the way that your ears perceive the groove. Listening critically to rhythmic interaction without the amplified sonic bombast of drums, cymbals, or even drum sticks, is really important in the learning sequence of becoming a competent musician.  It was great to see the students improve their listening skills as an ensemble through the weeks, and I think that their willingness to practice rhythmic coordination away from the instruments contributed to that.

We followed this presentation with similar hands-on demos by Alan (piano), special guest Kyle Vock (bass), and IfCM intern Ben Fang (guitar).

 [pic of Kyle with boys] We all worked with them on singing as a group and Alan, Kyle, and I had a chance to perform music that we regularly play as the Mighty High and Dry. The students shared a song or two that we pooled together to chose what we’d like to learn based on the difficulty, instruments available, and overall familiarity with the song.  We listened to a wide range of styles and artists including the Ben Folds Five, Muse, Los Lobos, contemporary gospel, and video game soundtrack music and settled on two songs to start:  “No One” by Alicia Keys and “Crushcrushcrush” by Paramour.  Lots of workshopping about how to listen for different instruments and building parts out of what you hear. 

Here's the completed result from a field trip session to GFI Music, a great professional recording studio in Rochester:

We are looking to stay involved with the students creative lives and hopefully offering a regular class to get them together with other like-minded musicians.  Stay tuned for more exciting youth creativity around Rochester!

- Chris Teal

Music, Traditions, Culture, and Appreciation

When I was in high school, my violin teacher suggested I learn a piece by Toru Takemitsu. I’m not sure really what led him to this idea, but since I am of Japanese descent - and was, at the time, interested in learning more about my family’s culture - I thought, why not?

Although it’s arguably one of the more standard-sounding works of his violin/piano pieces, learning “Distance de Fée” was a challenge. (Perhaps at the time I was just naive and narrow-minded when it came to music. It was probably the case.) I was working with a pretty different aesthetic, a different facet of expression and representation, and feeling very far away from the more... predictable, let’s say, music that I had learned up until then. There wasn’t exactly a coherent structure - when I first heard the piece, it sounded to me more like a collection of sketches rather than one piece of music - and when learning the piece by myself without the piano, it made no sense what direction I should be moving in, where the climax of the piece was supposed to be. Not that there were no instructions - the page was littered with markings for dynamics. Perhaps because not every phrase could be shaped through intuition alone.

It’s interesting - almost because there were more instructions, I had to meet them with more creativity. There was so much meaning in each marking, so I had more to “translate,” if you will. I had to replace what was instinctive in other pieces with more calculated planning. As a result, the process of learning the piece was simultaneously very cerebral and yet entirely emotional. I had to think very carefully about what I was doing. But those thoughts had to come first from emotion or imagery - perhaps even more so than from the ink on the page - or else I would only end up mechanically trying to input ink and spit out sounds. Not convincing, not interesting. Not music.

Through learning Takemitsu, I learned the real meaning of timing. I learned what it really means to breathe and to let the music breathe. Sometimes, getting to the note is not as important as how you get there. I would wager that I’ve become, overall, a better musician for it - for having had my creativity, my sense of musicality and emotionality tested. Learning the piece also caused me to appreciate Takemitsu’s music more (which then led me to learn another one of his pieces, “Hika”), as well as sparked my interest in listening to music using traditional Japanese instruments and understanding more about Japanese aesthetics.

Music is one of the things that virtually every culture has in some shape or form, which is a pretty cool thing for mankind, if you ask me. But because there are so many different types of music, approaches to music, and conceptions about music, there is so much we can learn from moving outside our zones of familiar music and branching out into different areas. From Takemitsu, I realized that sometimes there isn’t a climax or easily plottable structure in a piece, that sometimes music sounds like water that has been scooped up from an ever-flowing river, as if one were experiencing only a mere sliver of something infinitely vast - and creating that atmosphere is something that takes both considerable thought and emotion. That the more “directionless” something may sound, the more valuable each note becomes as it passes, beautiful in its own right rather than for its role in leading us to different soundscapes.

The meaning of music to people of different cultures naturally differs. For the professional circles of Japanese nagauta shamisen players, learning music is about preserving a long tradition, like a museum for sounds - students work carefully to preserve and mimic even the precise movements of their teachers. On the other hand, those in the contemporary Finnish folk music community emphasize the importance of the creative, ever-changing, living aspect of their genre against an expectation of preserved tradition. Gambian children are immersed in a musical environment from early on and everyone can become a performer in their own right, but in our own American culture, there seems to be a pervasive idea that only those who can duke it out on American Idol are those who should become professional singers.

Because of such differences, perhaps it’s difficult - or even close to impossible - to fully understand such varied and nuanced meanings in anything but a superficial manner, as outsiders. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing to take away from learning or being exposed to music of different cultures or traditions. On the contrary, I think we can learn a lot by not only learning and listening to music from other places, but also by informing ourselves of ideas about music and the processes of music making as well. And I’m definitely not alone in this idea.

Like other occasions when we come into contact with cultures different from our own, cross-cultural collaboration in music can lead to deeper insight and creativity. It makes us see our own traditions from a different perspective, to notice things we didn’t see before because we previously took them for granted. Stepping outside of the borders can help to open up our eyes. If we learn more from each other, not only do we enrich each others’ musical lives and maybe even come to a better cultural understanding of each other, but we also eliminate so much of the need to reinvent the wheel any time we want to think of different ways to think about learning, teaching, playing, performing, and appreciating music.

Ben Fang - "Come Join the Band" 2013!

Hi, my name is Ben Fang and I am a new IfCM summer intern.

I am currently pursuing my BM in guitar performance at the Eastman School of Music, expected to graduate this coming Spring. I began my musical life on the piano and violin when I was very young, picking up the saxophone in grade school and the guitar in middle school. Initially, my training was exclusively classical, but it wasn’t long before I couldn’t help but create my own tunes. Ever since my first (and not very good) composition, creative music making has been one of my favorite activities. Many musicians, despite wanting to compose, claim to be devoid of the skill which they believe only a select few possess. I couldn’t disagree more! I think that everyone’s mind has the capacity to be create art. Often, it is not a lack of ability, but rather a lack of faith in one’s own ability that prevents us from trying new things. I would love to see this barrier torn down.

My main duties for IfCM this summer revolve around the wonderful pre-college program,Come Join the Band: Creative Music Making for Everyone. Chris Teal and Alan Murphy are teaching high school musicians the fundamentals of being a musician, band member and creative person in general. Sound like big goals to you? They are. But these kids are quick learners and Chris and Alan are amazing teachers. I am learning just as much about teaching as the students are about playing instruments! Working with the kids has been an immense pleasure. There is nothing quite like seeing the look on a student’s face when an idea clicks.

We covered a lot of ground last week. I had expected to be spending all of our time playing instruments and singing, but one day Allan had something very different planned for us. Drawing from Julia Cameron’s book,The Artist’s Way, he introduced us to a couple of exercises designed to jumpstart creativity. The first was a free-write, in which we each privately wrote whatever occurred to us in our notebooks for 15 minutes. The one rule: just keep writing. I found that by putting my thoughts on paper, one letter at a time, I was able to slow down my thought process and unscramble a mess of ideas that had been bouncing around in my brain. Whenever we write or compose, many of us are prone to creating and proofreading simultaneously. Sometimes the proofreading can get out of hand, preventing us from writing down anything at all. A daily free-write can free up one’s creative side, shutting off the inner critic for a moment.

The second exercise he presented is called “Creative Monsters and Creative Allies.” We began by each recalling a person or event that had in some way hindered our creativity, then describing how this made us feel and how we reacted. I was pleased to hear how most of the students had managed to rise above the negative influence of their experiences. The second half of the activity was to recall and describe just the opposite: a person or event that had inspired us to be more creative. Usually this came in the form of an encouraging peer or teacher. I think that by considering the things in our lives that positively or negatively impact our creativity (or anything for that matter), we can do a better job of putting ourselves in environments that foster creativity.

Today we are heading to the recording studio to record two songs that the kids have learned.  They will be playing Paramore’s “Crushcrushcrush” and Alicia Keys’ “No One.” None of them have had any recording experience so they will be learning a lot in the coming hours. I’m having a blast and I’m looking forward to hearing them perform at the end of the week!

      - Ben Fang

Towards a New Music Education

It’s essentially a truism, but the way we view and conceptualize things has a strong bearing on the way in which we approach issues surrounding them.

Through my studies in anthropology, I’ve read researchers’ accounts of cultures all over the world. These accounts tell of all sorts of customs, societal structures, and of course, conceptualizations ranging from how we define our family structure to what qualifies as music. As is often the case, coming into contact - even if only through a book - with another culture, opened up my eyes to ideas I had previously taken for granted in my own culture. My views on music were not immune to this.

This led me to pursue the question "what is music to us, anyway?" as independent work for my junior research project. Being trained almost exclusively in the classical tradition, I decided to tackle that genre in particular. Additionally, talking with musicians, non-musicians, friends, and mentors, and reading the range of comments on articles and blog posts, I realized that there are so many ideas of what “classical music” is (or should be, as the case may be) that it became clear pretty quickly that there is nothing created by humans that really has an absolute, “pure” form.

For example, there are all sorts of culturally specific connotations with the genre that are not necessarily tied to the way the music itself sounds. That it is “highbrow.” That it is elitist, esoteric, and costly, only available to those with leisure time and money, and thus an inappropriate genre to be attempting to popularize in a democratic society. That it is essentially “useless.” (I had a friend who told me that the only reason classical music would survive in the future is for use in movie soundtracks. That, of course, negates the “useless” argument, but does go against the views of those who believe music should be a stand-alone drama, not tied to any other art forms.)

Interestingly enough, these kinds of connotations were not always the norm. Earlier in the 19th century, there was no distinct division between the classical genre and more popular ones, in conceptualization by the general public or programmatic choices by performing ensembles. As the century went on, a few key players in the classical music world contributed to a change in the way the genre was perceived. Classical music came to take on that kind of pristine aura it is (in)famous for today through the process of “sacralization": Works were performed in full, with more attention paid to proper instrumentation and “authentic” reproduction; conductors of orchestras separated subscription (strictly classical) concerts from “pops” concerts; and the public understood the separation of genres accordingly. Classical music was no longer such a popular genre, in the general sense.

And this is largely the legacy that we’ve inherited, for better or worse. Some opinions I read brazenly stated that this is how things should be - that classical music’s widespread popularity has never been guaranteed, and so we shouldn’t see any sort of elitism as a liability, but rather an asset: It ensures high quality. Others almost don’t acknowledge the decline in popularity, claiming that the industry could be in better shape if only management were more sensitive to musicians’ needs. Others claimed that the public - being composed of living, breathing, feeling humans - could learn to love the music, if only they would open their ears, listen, and allow themselves to feel.

I am inclined to agree with the third opinion. Despite my deep love for music, I am not one to believe that appreciation of music is a trait we are born with, not even that of our own culture. Appreciation of certain genres is certainly an acquired trait. This is why music education is an important force for the preservation of less widely popular genres. 

“Well, why should we teach kids to appreciate or play music of a genre that no one listens to? What’s the use in that? It’s a waste of resources.” But this isn’t what music education is all about. Music education, yes, at one level, is about introducing certain kinds of music to train ears to be accustomed to them. Thereby children can learn to appreciate the art form. But maybe more than that, it’s about learning how to listen carefully - to a piece being played on the radio, or to a fellow musician. It’s about opening up your ears and understanding the meaning and emotions behind sounds. I believe this can lead to a greater enjoyment of not only music, but life through music. Music allows us to experience both rarely-felt and all-too-familiar emotions: It has the power both to rile us up and calm us down, to fill us with joy and bring us to tears. To be a little trite (but truthful, nonetheless), it feeds our souls.

But listening doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t be!) limited to just enjoyment of music - being able to listen carefully for details in everyday life is a skill that I think is useful but perhaps not encouraged enough. I speak from personal experience when I say that learning music and playing with others has taught me much in how to effectively listen to others to work together towards one common goal. Listening, through music, can also bring people together in other ways. I had the opportunity last summer to interview French pianist Guillaume Vincent while he was in Kanazawa, Japan, performing with Japanese pianist Mutsuko Tajima and the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa under conductor Marc Minkowski. Despite not speaking a common language, Guillaume and Mutsuko worked together on Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos to deliver an absolutely electrifying performance. Such circumstances created an environment in which it was essential for close and careful listening. How many activities are there in the world that can be done with people who can’t communicate in the same language?

At least in my experiences, with so much of the rest of the approach to education of children being focused on teaching the ability to speak or act rather than to really listen, I believe that balancing that with a music education that teaches one to listen is incredibly valuable for raising conscientious people who are able to lead just as much as they are to follow and work within a group. And the fact that it’s fun, personally rewarding, and allows you to become a part of and make your own mark in a long cultural tradition? All the better.

Perhaps if we could repackage “music education” into something more like this, we might stand a better chance of keeping it available for public schools and the general public. Doing our part to work towards this goal, the IfCM's teaching artists expose program participants to new ways of conceptualizing, appreciating, and creating music, as well as facilitate the development of attentive listening and teamwork skills by providing hands-on experiences in music making and creative thinking. We hope to spread and expand this approach to music education as much as possible - for the betterment of all people involved.


- Kai Shibuya

New IfCM Summer Intern!

Hello everyone!

Kai Shibuya

My name is Kai, and I am one of the interns at IfCM for this summer! I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Currently, I am a rising senior at Princeton University, majoring in Anthropology with minors in Musical Performance and East Asian Studies.

Although it is not my major field of study, music is definitely something I’m very passionate about. I’ve grown up listening to (everything from classical to electronic to heavy metal and everything in between) and playing music (violin - mostly classical) for basically my entire life. At school, I’m part of the Princeton University Orchestra and also participate in chamber music ensembles whenever I have time. I also recently completed a junior year research paper analyzing the state of classical music (through the symphony orchestra) in modern-day America, looking specifically at the way assumptions about the genre have been constructed and how those affect the way the genre is perceived by the general public today. Which is a very complicated way of saying that I looked at what we really mean when we say “classical music” and what that means for the industry.

What brought me here? Having played the violin for many many years and completed a semester abroad at the Royal College of Music in London during the fall, I was interested in continuing music-related activities over the summer to supplement my main studies in anthropology. While my adventures in music have been almost exclusively in the classical tradition, I believe that learning music of all kinds is something that everyone should be able to experience, and experience as an actual joy rather than something tedious and difficult. I have a lot of friends who have shied away from music because they see it as something that is too complicated, too esoteric. Perhaps learning an instrument does take a lot of time and dedication, which can be difficult to commit (especially for busy college students - they do say, “Studying, social life, sleep - pick two”), but it’s a form of expression that I’ve found to be worth every second of my time, every ounce of my energy. So naturally, I try to encourage everyone to at least dip their toes into some music-making.

But I understand that some people might not have had great experiences - if any - in creating music, for reasons extending beyond personal ones of time - namely reasons relating to lack of resources or opportunities. With this in mind, discovering IfCM and what the organization does seemed like an answer. IfCM’s vision of a more holistic, interactive, and fun approach to music education for a broader audience especially intrigued me. (Plus I watched some of the videos on the website and - let’s face it - IfCM is doing some pretty cool stuff!) I was hoping that I might be able to help out in expanding that vision and turning it into real projects. So here I am now!

I’m looking forward to a summer of creative thinking and of course, creative music!

Beyond "The Time"

At the beginning of May, I had the opportunity to work with high school students from three schools in the Miami, Florida area. I had a lot of fun visiting the New World School of the Arts, South Dade High School, and Michael Krop High School - I want to thank the students and faculty of these schools for opening their doors to me! It's inspiring to see such passionate young people playing music around the country!

Reflecting about the kinds of things we talked about in our sessions, I noticed a common thread (including visits to other areas, not just specific to these schools). We always talk about the importance of "the time." I don't think there's much argument about the importance of developing a good sense of rhythm and time, meaning you can play things without changing the tempo inadvertently. But this is just the beginning! Beyond that, there is the FEELING of the time. Every person's time feels different, not just rhythm section players, but everyone's!  A player's time-feel manifests differently on every instrument. The most obvious might be a drummer's ride cymbal pattern. Listen to the ride cymbal closely of Philly Joe Jones, and then Art Blakey. Regardless of which you might prefer, they FEEL different.

To take an ensemble to that next level, it isn't necessarily important that they can play a chart without veering from the metronome marking you started at (although it is surely an important skill). It is about FEELING the time together, and moving together through the music as a cohesive unit.

There are three main ways that musicians talk about the placement of the beat: "on the front," "on the back," or "in the middle". Different parts of a piece might call for different beat placements, but is everyone feeling the beat in the same way? When everyone is FEELING the music together, it sounds even better. The unification of the feeling of the time applies to the relationship between all of the instruments. The obvious one manifests itself between the drummer's ride cymbal, the bassist's quarter notes, and the band's eighth notes, whether the music is swing, Latin, funk, or anything else.

What should the time feel like? It should feel like the character of the piece. It should feel like it sounds. But most of all it should feel good! I always say, you have to put energy and character into each line and phrase, and bring  the story of the piece to life!

Posted by Co-Artistic Directer and Founder of the Institute for Creative Music, Nick Finzer

Ad Hoc! Chalkboard Concert

Our friends and collaborators Ad Hoc are presenting a concert this weekend, April 27th!  Go to there!

Here's a video of us playing together in January on Matthew Golombisky's "Louis Steps":

They'll be keeping it casual at Christ Church in Rochester with some Grainger and more.  Get some Grainger. www.adhoc-music.org