#MusicalMondayMemories #3: Firebird Scream
/The Firebird Scream with North State Symphony may be the only video I’m ever in that has 2.5 million views, and I think it's the perfect one. Music and laughter together are such a powerful force! Was there a fun time on stage you remember where people laughed during a performance that wasn’t meant to be comedic?
You can see the back of my head in the first stand of violins here. This was the year I was Interim Assistant Concertmaster of North State Symphony, the professional orchestra I have now played with for half my life. Even though I went back into the ranks because the person I was replacing was only gone for a year, it had a big impact on me, preparing and doing a blind audition for the first time.
Sitting in what I think of as the chamber music section of the orchestra (easier to hear, you get to sometimes play solos, and body language plays a bigger role than in the back) was fun. Nerve-racking at times, but it was nice to spend a whole season in a different role with what felt like more responsibility. I’ve sat concertmaster at the front of other groups in a few small things over the past few years, but it means something different when it’s an orchestra I started with at the very back of the second violin section, often surrounded by timpani and piccolo. (In the future, I promise I’ll wear earplugs more often when I’m back there.)
I’m sure the small talk was similar when I was 13, but now at 26 I can go back and play a set with NSS, visit my family, and it’s a vacation with lots of hugs and hellos. My original audition to get in as a student player was quite a bit easier, and not blind. I don’t have a memory of what we played my first year, but I know I saved up all my student pay and bought a laptop.
I could never have imagined back then that I would play the variety and quantity of music that I have - I don’t think I knew there was quite so much, and more being written every day! It’s amazing! I’ll talk in later weeks of memories about composers I’ve worked with, and compositions of my own, but for now it’s (kind of) orchestra talk.
What I’m thinking about recently is this: I want to base my self-worth on what I’m doing inside my head, not on my output. It’s slow going to switch it up, but this recent thinking is some of the most valuable work I have ever done.
There’s a conundrum - you want to be good at what you do, but you can’t know what the limit is until you hit it, or maybe there is no limit and the value is in learning to feel the process and working hard to fulfill your artistic vision. I’m starting to land more on that end, to feel like a rigid idea isn’t even possible.
Orchestral playing is a strange beast. I don’t know if I could get to the level over the next 10 years to win a major orchestral audition (in Boston or SF or such, somewhere with full-time work), but I also don’t think I’d enjoy it being my whole life. My current orchestral dream beyond eventually winning an audition for the nearby Portland Symphony Orchestra (I made it onto the sub list in November and feel hopeful that I’m on the right path with the feedback I received, BUT I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN I’LL GET WORK) is to get a job with a seasonal opera or ballet orchestra that makes it feasible for me to work on creative projects and explore during the rest of the year. That means I have a lot of work to keep doing.
Anyways, I was always too afraid to even start preparing for auditions until the last few years, and I’ve only done a few. I was busy making a living with music, so I had a good excuse, but I probably could have used some more letdowns amongst performances. Some seemed like letdowns enough when only a few people showed up, but they almost always ended up being valuable and appreciated. However my performing and auditions evolve in the coming years, I hope I can say I did all I could to follow my dreams.
I hold onto comments like “they’d be lucky to have you” and “you’re always the most prepared person” from colleagues, which stifles the fear of failure, but I am still processing unnecessary guilt that I wasn’t conservatory-ready out of high school. Looking back, if I had been and hadn’t gone to Mills College - which opened up so many paths for enjoying music and the sounds around me - I may have come up to these fears at a much younger age and quit violin. As it is, I’ve considered quitting violin a couple times now, but after some time away from regular practice each time I have ended up keeping on.
I had a bad SF Ballet audition in the spring of 2018. Awful, really. I made it through with shaky hands that never stopped shaking, worse than any performance I’ve ever had. Then I heard from everyone else waiting to hear about the outcome - beta blockers. Everyone uses beta blockers to stop the fight-or-flight response. With them, for the other three auditions I took (Sacramento Philharmonic, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Portland Symphony Orchestra) at least I felt like I represented my playing well. Now, I’m listening back in practice all the time, working on tendencies and making phrasing more expansive. Most of all, I’m making sure I have things to look forward to all the time. It helps a lot.
There is a book I’m reading, “The Musician’s Way,” which my teacher from Mills and beyond, Gloria Justen, gave me for my senior recital. I have to admit, I didn’t feel ready to read it at the time, to get into the entirety of mental and physical preparation, so I let myself forget about it. I saw it on my bookshelf recently and gravitated towards it, and I’m glad I did. I have been working here and there to create different practice habits, but I hadn’t really known just how many definable things there were to consider, which is probably why my mind always latched onto upcoming performances and I didn’t think as much about the process. Which is why I should have read the book five years ago, but whatever. A couple of podcasts being made right now have also been inspiring, “Mind Over Finger” and “Stand Partners for Life.”
For this winter, I have chosen a few classical music pieces to work on for myself, along with writing and podcasting projects and other goals like exercise and good food and watching all of Twin Peaks. A big stress for me has always been memorizing music, since it hasn’t been a regular part of my life. It always worked out, even when performing a movement of a Mozart concerto in college where I closed my eyes during the cadenza and at the end I opened them to see the back of the stage. Since I’ve always relied on rote memorization in the past, I will be working to learn pieces differently!
I played in a community orchestra with adults for the first time when I was 7, the Paradise Symphony Orchestra in Paradise, CA, where the Camp Fire tore through last November. So many people lost their lives, and many more lost all they had. Washes of feelings came over me while the fire was happening, and after, and everything in 2018 seemed to be painful somehow. I have so much love for California and hope the years to come bring more and more people that take deep responsibility for the people around them. My childhood teacher, Ken Skersick, passed away several years back, but the home in Paradise where I took many years of lessons is gone, as are the houses of many other musical friends. The community center rehearsal space did not burn, though, and neither did the performing arts center. Paradise is rebuilding, and their orchestra is doing their weekly rehearsals (with my mom on principal bassoon, and many of the same musicians from all those years ago). The show will go on. The show must go on. I should probably go practice.