Music from Salem: Cellos and QtP

Today is a very exciting day! I'm writing from the Amtrak Ethan Allen Express on my way to Salem, NY! This begins my first week at MUSIC FROM SALEM this year! I adore this time not only because of the wonderful people that I get to perform with, but also because of the relaxing and musically stimulating environment of the Brown Farm in Salem.

It will - as always - be wonderful to see Rhonda Rider, my dear mentor, Judy Gordon, one of the most thought-provoking  and inspirational musicians I know, and the awesome David Russell, one of my cellistic heroes, for his wild and crazy career! We'll be missing JENNIFER BEWERSE this year, but she has some exciting things happening (check her website for all of the informations)!

This won't be a long blog. Just a quick post. I'm excited to have MEREDITH MECUM join us on the farm this Thursday to present a performance of our Queering the Pitch: music for soprano and cello program. In addition to QtPII, I'll also be performing Laura Kaminsky's work, The Great Unconformity, for unaccompanied cello. Laura wrote this piece for Rhonda in 2010, and I can't wait to dive in head first with Rhonda looking over my shoulder!

Anyway, more words and photos in a week when I'm back in Georgia!

Until then...

Getting the gig: marketing, marketing, marketing

I am of the belief that young classical musicians do not need management to launch their careers. After all, the world is so hyper-connected these days with so much information available at the push of a button. From the comfort of my couch, the skytrain in ATL, or an airport shuttle in Portland, I can find out much of the information that I need to publicize myself to the appropriate organizations, in hopes that they will hire me in the future. We are also lucky enough to have the ability to promote our wares via the internet or in print.

I posted a bit of a BRAGGY BLOG the other day listing my accomplishments from this past performance season. I am immensely proud of each and every concert that I've played this year, but it's been quite difficult at times in the 'extra-musical' aspects of my career management. I will explain. Before I do: after writing this blog and re-reading it, I feel like much of it comes off as downplaying the artistic aspects of a career in music. Please do not misunderstand: I would play every concert for free if that were financially feasible. Unfortunately it is not, and the business side of music is a necessary evil. I am not hard-headed in contract negotiations and often work on a "sliding-scale" for pay. It's just hard to live in the United States (with student loans, rent, and, ya know, food) without an income! But anyway, on to the actual blog!

In my last blog my dear friend JENNIFER BEWERSE asked how I was able to afford all of the concerts that I played last year (I assume she means travel, hotels, cars, and other expenses related to performing). So I thought I'd talk about gigs that I booked myself: this will be a stream of consciousness blog about booking gigs, the negotiating process, remuneration (though I won't be talking specific dollar amounts), travel arrangements, etc. 

My personality has transformed over the past few years from a somewhat uncertain and confused music student to a confident and business-minded professional. This is not the easiest thing for musicians to do. We all have weaknesses and we've been trained to focus on these areas so as to fix these problems. Unfortunately, when we focus on these areas of weakness, we tend to obsess. Eventually the obsession can become a major detriment! It's hard to come off as a confident musician who should be hired when we are killing ourselves in our practice rooms! Looking past that which we stress about in practice rooms is the only way to come off as a self-assured performer. Sometimes confidence comes off in a negative light, as being a cocky jerk. I operate under the "you can't please everybody" principle, but I try to learn from each situation. (sometimes it's a rough road, and try as you might, there seem to always be people who dislike you!)

Website screenshot

Confidence itself can't - and won't - result in performance gigs though. A performer has to promote him/herself. I feel very comfortable in my abilities in this area. About one year ago, I established my WEBSITE, my little home on the web. The site features comprehensive information about me, including my full-length BIO, concert DATES, AUDIO clips, and social networking pages, such as FACEBOOK and TWITTER. You can even find a link to this blog! 

The website is my home base. Everything I do, all conversations that I have, all materials I hand out, will somehow mention my website. Audience members who attend my performances will find a program, program notes, and publicity postcards, each with a link to my website listed at least one time. I hand out business cards like they're candy. Again: website is listed.

Concert audiences are a wonderful thing. We need them to come for a few reasons, not the least of which are ticket sales and someone to perform for! I strongly believe in audience engagement - before, during, and after a concert:

Before: people buy tickets to an event because they are interested in something about it. In the case of a concert, an audience member may know the performer, be interested in the music being performed, love the instrument that the performer will play, or any number of things. Getting a ticket holder really excited about the concert is difficult before the fact. It's why I write this blog. I like to talk about what is going on in my head while I'm practicing. I enjoy discussing musical and non-musical aspects of my life. Sometimes, I post things that about my work that I wouldn't write in a program note. Any of these things helps an audience member to personally connect with a performer. Jennifer, mentioned above, once told me that audience members came up to her after concerts and talked about her blog, which they had read before coming to the concert. I've experienced this as well. Sometimes it's a bit surreal to hear someone you've never met talk about how awesome your PRACTICE ROOM is.

During: I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a fan of talking to the audience during concerts. I write program notes so that I don't have to stumble through a prepared speech. When I get nervous, I talk quickly, I forget things, and I generally confuse everyone. If I don't have a speech memorized, I mess it up. If I do have the speech memorized, it sounds like I'm giving a recitation. Therefore, I try not to do it. That said, I enjoy opening up a bit, tearing down the fourth wall and letting the audience in to my own little performance space. This is also the reason why I really love performing in more intimate and unusual spaces (bookstores, bars, etc.). When an audience member purchased a ticket because they love the cello, I expect that they were hoping to hear solo Bach. When I play works by DOMINICK DIORIO, STEVEN KNELL, Ned Rorem, and even Benjamin Briten, I feel the need to connect and explain why this (often crazy and new) music is just as awesome as that of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

After: TALK TO YOUR AUDIENCES! Pack up your instrument, change your shoes, get a drink of water, do whatever you must do immediately after walking off stage, as quickly as possible and run - RUN - to the lobby or common area and talk to each and every one of those who purchased tickets to see you. Hug your mother, shake your uncle's hand, and chat with every person who will talk to you! Explain why you love what you do, why the music you just played is the best-est stuff ever! And hand out business cards. To everyone. Be memorable, be personable, and you will be hired back. Yo-Yo Ma played a concert at the University of Georgia this past season. On the second half he put on and played in a UGA logo t-shirt and the audience loved it. They also loved that he's Yo-Yo Ma, but that's beside the point. In the case of us mere mortals, they might not necessarily remember how you play, but they will absolutely remember how much fun it was to talk to you after the performance!

Press kit cover

When you engage an audience, they come to see you again. When a person in the audience is a promoter, they hire you. When you get hired, you make money and play more concerts. And the cycle repeats itself. The hard part is getting hired in the first place.

Over the past two concert seasons, 2010-11 and 2011-12, I have performed 68 concerts and recitals all over the place. Of these, 47 were in 2011-12. I played - best guess, I'm not checking records - about 20 concerts in which I received no pay. To be frank, it sucks when that happens. In these cases, I had to foot the bill for travel and lodging, food and transportation in the city I was in, and other menial expenses. That said, these 20 pro-bono, publicity concerts garnered 48 more in which I was paid. And those 48 have led to other ventures that will hopefully be just as wonderful. Sometimes, as young artists, it pays to play for free. (and when you have these expenses, everything you do is a business-related tax write off...a different blog all together)

So how to get hired? Marketing, marketing, marketing. Everything I've mentioned thus far - the website, business cards, chatting with audiences/promoters - certainly help. But what else?! Create a press kit. Tell the people you want to be hired by exactly why they should hire you. Explain your purpose, what sets you apart, and what you can do for them. My own press kit is a simple thing (the cover page is shown above, but you can find and download it HERE under "Informational Materials") that explains who I am (on the "bio" page, that is nothing if not confident…), what I do (explained on the "sample programs" and "activities" pages) and what I've done in the past (via the same "sample programs" and "bio" pages, as well as my "selected repertoire" list). Put all of this information in to a folder (don't staple it!) with a CD sample of your playing and a business card. Ship it!

But who to send it to? For me, this is the difficult part. Who wants to hire Justin Dougherty? (no more third-person narrative, I promise) It's difficult to say. Over the past two years, I've played more unaccompanied recitals than I have quartet recitals and significantly more chamber music than concerto performances (some information: I've played no concerto concerts, as I have little interest in the genre). Therefore, my concerto repertoire is rather small, my solo repertoire - including cello/piano repertoire - quite large and my chamber music - specifically quartet - rep is somewhere in the middle.

Dear musicians: play for free!

I have found that the organizations that are interested in me are non-profits, small concert series, new music consortiums, and universities. I have decided to focus on these areas for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 concert seasons. Getting paid to play after being hired can sometimes be more difficult. The photo over to the right explains it all quite well (from both sides). Sometimes people just don't think they should pay for music and musicians. It's a "hobby" after all. If you rely on performances to pay the bills, it's hard to let a gig go, but if the venue is not willing to pay for your services, you have to weigh the value of a free concert versus one that will give you a paycheck. 

A poster of mine

There are many ways to make money on a concert that you may not expect: charge for tickets at the door (a cover charge, if you will), ask for a cut of ticket sales, merchandise/food revenue, or take donations as you perform. None of these are nearly as secure as having a fee set in your contract. This is an area that I am still figuring out on my own, and I'm not much help in that regard.

Portion of a press release

If you choose to leave it to fate - collecting dollars at the door or via donations - for performance fees, then publicity is key. It's so easy to publicize for concerts! Posters at the venue and around town (left), press releases (right) to area news organizations such as daily or weekly newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations are an absolute necessity (check with the specific organization, most have deadlines for publishing that are well in advance of an event). 

The website ZVENTS is an online calendar for events in specific areas, organized much like Craigslist. Often, when publishing to a specific Zvents page - say, San Francisco - the website will automatically publish your listing on other appropriate websites - in the case of San Francisco, calendars for Marin County, San Jose, Oakland, etc. will also show your event. These calendars are frequented by a wide variety of people who may find your concert worth coming to! Newspapers tend to have their own online calendars as well. Publish your concert there as well!

Finally, I have to say that music, besides being an inspirational artistic venture, is a business as well. Sometimes it's not always how good you are, but how relevant and hire-able you are as a musician. To step on to my soapbox: not everyone wants to listen to the above mentioned composers Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Sometimes new music is the most relevant and interesting to today's listener and concert-goer. Finding a niche market within music is important and can separate one performer from the clones around him/her. A performer doesn't need to be Lang Lang, Yo-Yo, or Itzhak to make a living in the world of performers. The performer just needs to be an intelligent marketer. /soapbox

That's "all" for now. Hope this was enjoyable, helpful, and not-too-boring!

And visit my WEBSITE! (#marketing)

Until next time,

JD

Year in Review? Why not...

It feels super cheesy to write a "year-in-review" blog post, but I can't help it! This year has been wonderful for so many reasons!

In March of 2011, in the midst of doctoral degree work and other performances, I decided to finally commence with my performance project that I titled, 'Queering the Pitch'. When I first developed the idea for the series, I thought that it would be a great way to insert myself in to the world of performing musicians. Though it has certainly done just that, it's also forced me to think about prejudices and hatred that so many people - gay, straight; black, white; men, women; liberal, conservative - face everyday. There were some venues that were willing to host me, performing the music that I had chosen, but were not willing to advertise the concert with the title.

Despite a few minor setbacks, I performed the first iteration of 'Queering the Pitch: music for solo cello' twenty-three times in less than twelve months, the first 15 performances happened over a span of three months last summer. The project is now in it's third part (another solo recital with two commissions, featuring a 1993 work by Robert Maggio titled, "Winter Toccata"). MEREDITH MECUM and I are still performing the second part, 'Queering the Pitch: music for soprano and cello', around the country. With three performances down - in State College, PA, Houston, TX, and Athens, GA - we've booked a few more over the next month. When Meredith is back from her European audition/performing adventure in the fall, we will embark on even more concerts with some residencies at different colleges/universities thrown in.

This year was also an incredible year for new-music in my life. I commissioned twelve works from ten composers and have thus far premiered ten of those. 

Instead of writing pages about all of the super-fun things I've been doing since September 2011, I thought I'd make a list (just for funzies, and maybe to brag a little bit, too!):

In the 2011-2012 concert season I…

-Traveled 33,745 cello-related airline miles.

-Flew on different 6 airlines.

-Drove 22 rental cars.

-Slept in 7 different hotel chains/hostels.

-Gave 47 performances…

…44 outside of Athens (my current home).

-Of those, 25 were solo recitals…

…18 quartet concerts…

…4 mixed-instrumentation chamber music concerts (2 more just days away).

-Commissioned 12 new works…

…by 10 different composers

-Gave 10 world premieres.

-Presented 2 collegiate residencies.

-Performed 7 different concert programs made up of 19 different works ranging from Haydn to DIORIO (and everything in between).

-Made my professional debuts in Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, OR, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, and fifteen other cities/towns.

It's been a tremendously busy season, and I'm happy with all that I've accomplished this year. I feel good about my career path, I am pleased with all of the progress I've made (only one more year 'till the DMA!), and I've been lucky enough to make a living playing my cello and collaborating with some really awesome musicians!

When I decided to become a performer so many years ago, I always hoped to be able to set my own course, and thus far I have been able to do that. I hope to continue what I've started and that I can continue to play the music that I like with awesome people. I am so lucky to have the job that I do; I'm able to wake up every morning and create awesome music!

Next year has some exciting developments and concerts. I'll be sure to share them with you as they are confirmed! (HINT: Rococo...ha!)

Till next time…

JD

QtP I/II in Houston, TX!

What a weekend! At this moment I'm sitting in Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport awaiting my flight back to Atlanta. On Friday Meredith and I performed our duo recital in Houston as guests of LONE STAR COLLEGE-MONTGOMERY (where one of our composers, DOMINICK DIORIO is Associate Professor of music) and last evening I played my solo recital at Avant Garden, a funky Houston bar with a penchant for artistic weirdness.

Lone Star College Music Hall

The weekend has cemented my desire to perform like this at a high level. I just love traveling, seeing a new place, and playing for lots of awesome people! I left Athens on Friday morning around 4:00 AM to catch my 7:30 AM flight from ATL to IAH. MEREDITH had flown in to Houston the night before, so she and Dominick fetched me from the airport and we scampered off to Lone Star College. Once there we played a teaser performance for a class and had some time to ourselves in the recital hall (which, at only fifteen months old, is a stunning place to perform).

So much food!

After our work was completed for the morning/afternoon, Dominick treated us to a late lunch of amazing Tex-Mex food in a palatial, Texas-sized, restaurant. With a performance only hours away, I look back and think that I never should have finished the massive dish (spinach enchiladas). The bottomless chips and salsa didn't help either! But, alas, I not only licked my plate clean, but finished long before my companions. *Gold Star for Justin*

Nap time!!

Following lunch, we returned to the music hall to prepare for our performance. I took a brief nap while Meredith prettied herself and we helped each other find our way in to our respective concert clothes (note to future contractors: Meredith and I must have separate dressing rooms - we simply cannot be in such close proximity to each other ::wink:: Nothing gets done in a decent amount of time without a ridiculous amount of laughter!!).

The Queering the Pitch: music for soprano and cello performance was just wonderful. The fantastic audience held on to every beautiful note that our astounding composers provided. There was an audible gasp from the room when Meredith hit her first high C-sharp in STEVE KNELL's Anthemoessa and a little laughter in the fourth movement of the DiOrio piece thanks to Meredith's wonderful dramatic acting! Of course, Dominick's work received a rousing ovation from the home town crowd.

After the performance, Meredith and I were privileged to meet with some of the audience members and students at Lone Star College. It is so great to meet students who are early  in their music education and who are so motivated and in love with what they're doing! They adore their professors (shout out to D!) and teachers. I promised that I wouldn't mention the bugs flying around the lobby of the recital hall, but I must say: I've never seen such large mosquitos!!! (except in Charleston, SC)

MORE delicious food!

Saturday, after shoving Meredith out the door for her super early flight back to NYC, I was able to see much of the city and fun things of Houston. We had a wonderful lunch at a restaurant on Westheimer, BRASIL, before the tour began. After another much-needed nap, Dominick and I had a great dinner at Monica Pope's restaurant T'AFIA. I had some fantastic food, including a delicious dish of brussel sprouts in a caramel miso. Just incredible! The vegetarian in me didn't know what 'SPECK' was when ordering, and ended up with a plate full of pasta and meat. I ate it anyway!  Ooops.

Saturday evening, as I mentioned, was another performance of a different program at AVANT GARDEN. This time it was my ongoing Queering the Pitch: music for solo cello recital program. It was incredibly exciting to play in a new type of venue. Classical musicians don't often get outside the bubble of the concert hall, so this was a new experience for me. I maintain that some compositions belong in a concert hall, and Britten's Third Suite for Cello is one of them. The other works that I played, Rorem's After Reading Shakespeare, Muczynski's Gallery, Julie-O, and a little Bach, seemed to fit fine, but the emotion of the Britten and the nuance that is necessary throughout didn't come through for me. Alas, it was an enjoyable performance with a number of very interested and awesome audience members.

So many boarding passes!

All-in-all, this was a really thrilling weekend. I've been gone from Georgia for about 48 hours and I'm only mildly ready to be back. It was really great to - again - fly to a city the day of a performance, perform two different recitals of two different programs on two different days in two different venues. It's such a thrill to be able to bounce around the country and make a living playing the cello. It's enough of the "freelancer" lifestyle to keep things interesting but not so much that I worry about eating. 

Of course, it's always great to meet new people at concerts. Hopefully we'll get to keep in touch with some of those we met this weekend! Meredith and I were so happy to be staying with Dominick for two nights and to see Houston. I was certainly pleasantly surprised with the city and the state of Texas! In another happy coincidence the flight crew for my flight to Atlanta was full of attendants who I've had on numerous flights before! It's always nice to see some friendly faces! Their kindness (and the fact that they recognized me!) is why I fly DELTA almost exclusively! All this flying is catching up with me, though. I'm getting a bit sick, I think! (EDIT: As I post this, I'm sick as a dog!)

The next round of recitals for my 2011-12 season will be the last weekend of April in Georgia (Athens and Atlanta). After that, I have an entire summer to learn some brand new works! The next Queering the Pitch: music for solo cello recital will be in September and will include a world premiere by EMILY COOLEY, and works by MARCOS BALTER, Dominick DiOrio, and Robert Maggio (perhaps one other short piece, if I can find something I like). Also - more details soon - I'll be re-learning Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme for performance with a few orchestras next year as well as Tavener's 'Svyati' and perhaps a concerto for cello and wind instruments! Details forthcoming!

Until then…

JD

Queering the Pitch: music for soprano and cello

Penn State School of Music

This has been quite the exciting week!  From March 12-16 MEREDITH MECUM and I were in residence at the PENN STATE SCHOOL OF MUSIC where, on March 16, we premiered our program of four commissions for soprano and cello. This concert is the first in a line of performances of these pieces that we will give over the next year and we were terribly excited to make the premieres at the school where we began our musical education!

Rehearsal break

For those dedicated readers of my little blog, you know that Meredith and I began performing together a number of years ago and had our duo debut at The Boston Conservatory in 2010. This soprano and cello iteration of my Queering the Pitch recital project began to take shape last year and became official in August of 2011 when we commissioned four awesome composers (read about them HERE) to write for us.

Over the past few months, Meredith and I have received the four works that we commissioned, put in some dedicated work on our individual parts (while learning the other part as best we could - I'm no singer, after all!), and came together this week for nearly thirty hours of concentrated and intense rehearsals and miniature performances.

With Dominick DiOrio

In the midst of the week we were joined by DOMINICK DIORIO who composed the massive song cycle And the barriers had vanished, the centerpiece of our concert.

On Dominick's first day in State College we put him to work! After  an early-morning flight from Houston, he arrived at Penn State just in time for lunch with the always wonderful LYNN DRAFALL. From there we went in to rehearsal and spent two hours going over And the barriers had vanished before dashing downtown for dinner with BENJAMIN BLOOMFIELD. Dinner didn't mean the end of the day for us, though! Immediately after finishing our meals we were back at the School of Music presenting an open forum for Penn State students where we discussed the things we have learned (both successfully and through failure) about life in the music world! When the forum finally ended around 8:45 PM, Dominick had been awake for nearly seventeen hours!! Needless to say, it was an early bedtime!

Thursday was a bit quieter, but began early with a lecture to students in Penn State's 'music as a business' class at 9:00 am. The only other work for the day was our dress rehearsal in Esber Recital Hall. After running and recording our entire program and tweaking some small things, Meredith/Ben and Dominick/me parted ways for relaxing evenings.

Veggie green curry

It's been a while since I've been in State College, PA, so it was exciting to head out to dinner. Dominick and I decided on COZY THAI in downtown State College. We BYOB'd with a nice bottle of Zin and enjoyed a delicious (spicy!!) dinner! We stopped at THE TAVERN for dessert and drinks before heading back to our comfy hotel room for a good night's rest!

Trying to take some photos together

Friday was the big day for all of us with the evening's main event! But before we could get in front of a concert audience we had to drum up some interest in our recital amongst the students and faculty! We began with a Common Hour performance for School of Music students. Common Hour is a mandatory weekly concert from 2:30-3:20 PM on Friday. We used this short concert to excerpt some movements from our evening recital, including two movements from Dominick's piece, one movement from STEVE KNELL's Athemoessa, and one from BRUCE TRINKLEY's Marsden Hartley Songs. Additionally, I performed Dominick's Tarantella for solo cello and Meredith and I played Akhmatova Songs by John Tavener, which we've performed a number of times before. Again we put Dominick to work to talk about his works and encourage folks to join us that evening. After Common Hour, we spent 5 minutes each in the School of Music voice forum and cello seminar classes to continue our publicity push.

Dominick and I had dinner at another Asian restaurant, this time a Korean place across from our hotel before heading off to prepare for the concert.

Performing And the barriers had
vanished

The evening concert was well attended with many folks who we weren't expecting to see in the audience! All of the pieces received a warm reception from the audience and Meredith gave a stunning performance of each. The first, Anthemoessa, is an attacca work which includes some trickiness throughout. Meredith describes it as "half-steppy", and she's correct: often I'm sustaining a note and she sings the pitches one half-step on either side of my pitch. It's a very effective style but incredibly difficult to work out (which we had lots of fun doing)!

The second piece on our program is Trinkley's Marsden Hartley Songs which has been a thrill to work on. Bruce was a composition/conducting professor at Penn State during our first year in school before retiring. His setting of poetry by Marsden Hartley was really very beautiful and the home town audience enjoyed hearing a work by a familiar musical voice.  We hope that Bruce will be able to join us for an upcoming concert in Houston if he gets some time off from his current residency and work in Taos, NM.

Penultimate note of
Brian D. Kelly's Futility

After intermission was Brian D. Kelly's Futility. The piece begins with some awesome and affectual harmonics across the range of the cello. I love the way this piece begins, and not only because it's all by my lonesome without a voice to sing over top of me! (kidding!) In the midst of the piece is a rather cacophonous section with a raucous cello part and sustained ascending pitches in the voice. The setting is text by Wilfred Owen. Coincidentally, Benjamin Britten (himself a gay composer) set this text in his masterwork War Requiem. The piece ends as it began, with a beautiful harmonic.

The final piece on the program is Dominick's And the barriers had vanished. I can't say enough about this work and I'm certain that it will be heard for many years to come! The piece clocks in at twenty-five minutes in length over seven movements with two solo movements (the opening prelude is solo cello, the sixth movement, Alexis, is solo voice). Having Dominick in residence with us at Penn State this week was a joy. His insights in to not only his own composition but our interpretations of the other three works was incredibly helpful in a time when we were packing two months of work in to one week.

With Dominick and Meredith
after performing And the barriers
had vanished

And I can't even begin to say how much fun it is to play this wonderful piece! It's also an incredible workout. Each movement is distinct and each fits beautifully in to this piece. I would be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite movement, the fifth, titled Clifton and a lad's love. Perhaps it's selfish, but it's my favzies because Dominick has completely lifted a movement from Britten's Second Suite for Cello and layered it with the voice, singing a beautiful triad with each verse.

All-in-all, this has been an outstanding week. As I sit and type this on Sunday, I'm feeling that bit of emptiness that usually follows such a successful performance. Often, these performances are a once-and-done event. This time, Meredith and I will be taking the show on the road and performing in many different places! We hope to book some other performances next year in addition to the five or so performances we'll do before June!

Up next, Houston! If you know anyone in Houston, let them know that we'll be in town March 30 at LONE STAR COLLEGE-MONTGOMERY! I'm also performing my original Queering the Pitch: music for solo cello recital in Houston at AVANT GARDEN on March 31, 8:00 PM!

Until then...!

My grandmother, Anna Jean Hershey Myers (1926-2012)

I sat down to write this blog and I can't help but find myself drawn to a personal event that recently occurred in my life.  I meant to write about my upcoming concerts with Meredith Mecum and the practice that is going in to learning four new pieces in a short amount of time, but I'm drawn back to this recent event. I had trouble typing the first sentence without spontaneously bursting in to tears.

On February 15, 2012, my grandmother, Anna Jean Hershey Myers, died. She was 85 years old.  Anna Jean was an incredible woman. She was born in western Pennsylvania, grew up in York Springs, PA where her father, Moses Samuel Hershey, began a chain of stores, Hershey 5-10¢ (five and dime), which eventually grew to cover a large portion of northeastern states.

After graduating from Penn State with a degree in Home Economics (she could butcher a cow and sew a dress, probably at the same time) she married my grandfather, whom she grew up with and who was, himself, a Penn State grad (and one of the first Penn State tailgaters -- so there ya' go) and who became an executive in the Howard Johnson hotel/restaurant chain. They raised their four children (two sets of two, ten years apart), Cindy, Rick, Candra (my dear mommy), and Mark in cities all over the east coast: Philadelphia, Syracuse, Atlanta, Mechanicsburg, to name a few.

Anna Jean with her ten grandchildren.

She had ten grandchildren, Alysia, Allyson, Allan, Ben, Kate, Brennan, Cullen, Hannah, Mia, and me. Just before she died, Ben and his wife Beth had a daughter, Claire, which finally put a stop to her incessant, "I sure would like a great-grandchild soon," talk.

My grandmother loved to sew, knit, and make all of the things. For one, each grandchild received a knitted Christmas stocking. Sometimes Anna Jean was a bit slow getting these things done.  You see, she had a lot on her plate, what with her crossword puzzles, Jeopardy watching, newspaper reading, and…nope, that's it.  I'm not sure that Hannah and Mia (the youngest of the grandchildren) ever received their own stockings from grandmother. Or maybe they were half-finished? When I needed to make a small pad that protects the back of my cello, Grandmother helped me pick the fabric, make a pattern, and sew it together.  I use that small, maroon, velvet pad when I play the cello today. My mother and Cindy like to joke that she never vacuumed because she was "allergic" to the dust (really, she was just allergic to vacuuming) and when Cindy came to visit, the vacuum cleaner was sitting in the foyer, plugged in, ready to go, so that Cindy could vacuum her way in to the house.

In my own mind, Anna Jean is the reason that I'm a musician. Before I began playing the cello, I played the violin, and I tried desperately to fit my tiny little arms and fingers around my grandfather's full size instrument. That didn't work so well, and I eventually switched to the cello. In fourth grade, I picked up the saxophone to play in the band. My grandmother thought this was just wonderful as she had played the saxophone in the York Springs elementary school band, sometime around 1930. Somewhere in my apartment is a photo of this band, with both my grandmother and grandfather clutching their instruments.

The thought of Anna Jean honking away on a saxophone is one of the more hilarious images of her that I have in my mind. The other (which demonstrates how sheltered and protected she was as a child) is of her roller skating: Grandma Hershey, Anna Jean's mother, would only allow her to skate with one skate on, afraid that she'd fall and hurt herself if she wore both.  For those who know my mother, aunt, and uncles, it's clear that Anna Jean "protected" the first set of children (Cindy and Rick) in this same way, and left it up to fate with the second set (my mother and Mark), figuring, "hey, we got it right with the first two, the second two should turn out fine...?" For those who don't know my mother, aunt, and uncles: the first set are responsible and thoughtful, and the second set are wild and CUH-RAAAZY!  (and mildly responsible, harharhar)

All of that said, Anna Jean wasn't always wild about the music I was playing.  My youngest brother, Cullen, has been telling a story all weekend about a recital that I gave at Penn State that Grandmother came to. First, I should give some back story: Grandmother was never rude, she was always the perfect guest.  Usually, when she was out visiting with friends or family, she was was dependent on someone else to drive her home. When she was tired and ready to leave, she simply picked up her purse and held it on her lap. That was the signal.  Grandma was ready to go. Though I don't remember this, Cullen claims that I walked out on stage, sat down, and began to play my first piece (I know that this would have been the Hindemith Solo Sonata, which wasn't the easiest piece for my dear Grandmother to listen to).  About ten seconds in, Grandmother reached down, picked up her purse, and set it on her lap. She was ready to go.  Cullen claims that I saw this, and there was a noticeable sigh from the stage while I was playing.

She's a pirate!

Anna Jean was never unsupportive of any of her grandchildren.  She was always thrilled with our many accomplishments and eager to brag about us.  She was always so incredibly happy to see us when we stopped by.  Because the ten of us are spread out across the country, we didn't always make it to Mechanicsburg to visit.  A few years ago, we organized a Myers family reunion on Seabrook Island near Charleston, SC.  For the first time in a long while, Grandmother, her four children, and her ten grandchildren were visiting together at the same time.  As was usually the case, Grandmother was dressed up in some embarrassing outfit, a hula skirt or a pirate's garb.  She smiled the whole way, and only worried that her hair was mussed.

Anna Jean's entire family.

At her funeral, my uncle Mark said that in her last few months, when she was feeling worse and worse, she would still get her hair done, and when you came to visit and compliment her new hair-do, she would smile, strike a pose and just beam with delight.  One week before she died, Cullen and his girlfriend, Taryn, stopped in while home from Penn State.  Though she was exhausted and weak, she managed to gather all of her strength to smile and say hello, tell them how happy she was to see them, and ask them to come back soon.

My grandmother was an extraordinarily calm, patient, and kind person. I will miss her tremendously.

The Fifth Floor Collective and Queering the Pitch

What an exciting few weeks and months I’ve had! I haven’t updated this blog since Thanksgiving and life has been a roller coaster!  This post won’t be so “instructive” or hypothetical as my last few posts. Instead, I want to share what I’ve been up to and what I’ve been working on for the last two and a half months!

My first concert of the new year, 2012, was in Boston performing a special engagement concert on The Fifth Floor Collective’s second season. The program was a mixture of works that will be presented on my next Queering the Pitch (solo cello) program and two premieres for solo cello by Joseph M. Colombo and Andrew Paul Jackson, both members of The Collective.

Preparing these works was fascinating as these were the first pieces that I explicitly commissioned to be premiered as the part of a pre-determined concert. The two premiere pieces, Not I by Mr. Colombo and You are missing here. by Mr. Jackson, are starkly different in character and compositional style. Take a listen to both pieces on my SoundCloud page.

Joseph Colombo’s Not I is a work that I believe is very affectual, different for each person!  About the piece, Joe writes:

Not I plays with and is consumed by small melodic fragments that build up to larger structures of varying degrees and contours. Its primarily quiet dynamic plays against the intense and obsessive character of the music while momentarily giving way to shouts of hysteria. Instead of conveying a narrative, Not I expounds upon a single manic affect throughout its roughly ten minute duration.

From a cello standpoint, the piece is ridiculously difficult to both practice and perform. Though the composer notes call for the piece to be performed from memory with some small theatrics, I chose to perform the work with the score displayed on my computer screen with page turns made by the click of a foot-controlled pedal. This always seems like a fine idea, but never seems to work out perfectly in the end.

A quick aside: When I perform from my computer screen, I first learn the music from a paper score, so that it’s easier to make notes, add fingerings and bowings, and generally remind myself of the paper-ness and the organic nature of the score. Once I’ve learned the piece, I create a PDF of the marked-up document and read that document from my computer. Unfortunately, the timelines for many of the performances that I’ll be playing this winter/spring are quite short, and I never have more than a week to learn to play a piece from the computer. Tapping a pedal to turn a page is surprisingly difficult - it’s a motor skill that I didn’t learn in school!  Many things are bound to go wrong!

excerpt from J.M. Colombo's Not I

Back to Joe’s Not I: the piece moves consistently. It is obsessive and manic (which Joe marks in his instructions) and doesn’t let up more than a handful of times during the entire piece!  This makes it doubly difficult!  Not only is the piece extraordinarily difficult to perform from a right- and left-hand perspective, one must be extremely focused for the entire length of the performance. And this brings me back to the computer!  Pedal clicks which are too early or too late, unintended page skips (turning more than one page at a time and needing to quickly turn backward!), or a computer skipping to screen saver are all potential obstacles. I had to deal with some of these issues at multiple points during the Colombo work. That said, the piece was incredibly well received and was a mental joy to work on. I am a more focused performer having played this great piece. 

Andrew Paul Jackson’s piece, You are missing here., is quite different. The piece utilizes different sound worlds that split from the Colombo work (which is exactly what I wanted commissioning the guys to write these pieces)!  You are missing here. is a personal piece for Mr. Jackson:

Like most pieces I write, You are missing here, is not simply drawn from a single impetus, but is a confluence of strands as the piece was conceived during a long period of time in which the person most dear to me, my wife, was absent for long stretches of time due to her own exciting artistic pursuits.  In her absence, I found myself dusting off my cello and re-familiarizing myself with the instrument. After brushing up on solo works that I had once played, works by Hindemith, Rachmaninov, and of course, Bach, I began to view my time playing on the instrument from a creative guise. I started to communicated not just a feeling of solitary melancholy in her absence, but also capturing moments of joy and exhilaration that I wished to capture and share after the fact, like my trip to St. Petersburg that she unfortunately couldn’t join.

In effect, the piece became a deeply personal journal in which I was conveying a myriad of emotional states through the more visceral vantage of performer, rather than my more typically cerebral role of composer. In the absence of one partner, I became reacquainted with another and wrote a piece about - what else?...the absence of my other.

Practicing Andrew’s piece was not as “straightforward” in practice principles as the Colombo. There are many different techniques and tricky spots that one must execute - strings of false harmonics, strummed pizzicato in perfect fifths and extended positions, driving rhythmic sections that include tricky (but not nearly impossible) string crossings, fast finger changes and replacements, and strong chords which can’t be over-played, but still must be extremely present.  Breaking down sections in to smaller bits, and doing very little “full-piece” work makes learning a piece much faster and makes the learning more permanent. 

The two concerts that I played in Boston for The Fifth Floor Collective were a wonderful experience. I was able to be back at The Boston Conservatory for a performance in one of my favorite places, The Concert Room. The next night, I played a salon style concert at Carroll & Sons Art Gallery. This kind of concert is something that I’d like to do more of. In fact, I’ll be playing in another alternative venue in March, at Avant Garden in Houston, this time, my Queering the Pitch recital program.

My cello is happy to be in
Florida!

And what a wonderful transition (and shameless self-promotion)! This week I was a guest artist at the University of South Florida (USF) School of Music in Tampa, FL.  I arrived mid-week for a Queering the Pitch concert which featured the typical program that I’ve performed around the country over the past year, plus a new addition, the fantastic Tarantella for solo cello by the awesome composer, Dominick DiOrio (and played an encore by Marcos Balter)!

USF School of Music - yes, that's
my finger in the upper left

USF has just built brand-new facilities and their concert spaces are outstanding! I performed in Barness Recital Hall, a small recital space which has the best acoustics of any hall that I’ve had the opportunity to perform Queering the Pitch in! I was able to spend time with the cellists in Scott Kluksdahl’s studio after the performance and hear a number of them play the next day (I probably shouldn’t mention the beer garden they took me to after my performance)!

These young musicians were amazing to work with and talk to. Part of my time at USF was a lecture, something that terrified me to no end!  While I’m good at talking about myself (har har har!), who I’ve performed with, and what I’ve been doingI wasn’t sure if students who didn’t know me would be interested in hearing all of that talk!  They had some fantastic questions about commissioning new works, establishing a concert series locally and nationally, and how one promotes oneself in a world that is saturated with talented musicians. I was also privileged to hear a number of students in masterclass and individual lessons. Their responsiveness and musical maturity were astounding and I will be looking for a number of them to show up on my cellistic radar in the near future. To put it simply, the students at USF were a joy to work with and I look forward to returning next year!

With Scott and USF cellists

The past few weeks have been stressful and, simply, terrifying for me as a performer. I have jumped a few hurdles in a few short weeks that were daunting and unprecedented in my own young performance career.  I was able to reconnect with a dear friend at USF, get to know a few colleagues better, and meet new friends and colleagues in the cello studio!

OMG - That's my face!

Up next is the second round of Queering the Pitch recitals, this time with Meredith Mecum. We will be permiering new works by Dominick DiOrio, Brian Kelly, Steven Knell, and Bruce Trinkley. All of the works are in, all of them fantastic, and I am tremendously excited to begin practice this week. But not before a few days of well-deserved (if I do say so myself) relaxation - and classwork that I need to catch up on...doctorate, be damned!!

Some Yogi tea wisdom of the day: Be kind and compassionate and the whole world will be your friend.

Until next time, y'all!

Justin