Journey of 100

Private performance while serving as Artist Faculty at Bennington Chamber Music Conference.  Greenwall, Auditorium, Bennington College, Vermont 10:30pm

The work is certainly changing, literally under my own hands.   Allemande, Corrente, Sarabande, Gigue, Chaccone: deep within that one continuous flow of thoughts and feelings some core element is starting to emerge, beginning to come to my awareness. Look to this page for more on this in the next months.

Bach’s 3 and 4 independent voices are starting to emerge more clearly and simply through my bow; that’s great, makes me think of being able to more easily apply that bow technique to the three Fugues.

Thank you to my friends and colleagues for sharing this late night Passage after a long day and week of work.

Tonite, 10:30 pm in Greenwall Auditorium on the campus of Bennington College.

I am very excited to be playing for one of my dear creative colleagues next Monday.  Since the last Chaconne (#25, 12/28/2014) I have been focussed on moving my residence, and have allowed the Bach to lie fallow through the deep winter.

Now it is Spring, and I am coming back to the Bach after these few months’ hiatus; I am finding a new level of understanding, particularly in terms of tempo and rhythmic organization, choosing to explore specific influence from two great Maestros with whom I have worked at the MET for many years.  More on that later!

in memory of my friend Lev Gogish.  White Plains, NY

Greene Gallery, on the Guilford Green – Guilford, Connecticut 

5 PM – $15 admission to benefit Guilford Better Chance

RSVP 29 Whitfield St, Guilford, CT 06437

(203) 453-4162

On campus in the CAPA LENS.

Tuesday night’s 10 p.m. performance of the entire D Minor Partita produced one of the most memorable results I have ever experienced as a soloist.  The audience of about 60 or so stayed sitting together in a profound, relaxed silence for a good 8-10 minutes.  Slowly, one or two students at a time would quietly put their things together and leave the room.  About six stayed for talkback and conversation that was captured by our Catamount Access cameraman.  I will put the students’ insightful comments together in an edit, and post it here as soon as I can.

One of my comments about the performance is that the emotional arc of my performance felt sloppy to me – and when I shared that, Matthew (one of the students) replied that “emotions are sloppy” and that the rawness of my musical expression (his words) was what made it so powerful. That gives one *much* to consider in terms of balancing personal expression with expressing musical understanding of Bach’s fine works.

7:00 Holiday Concert at the Jackson Heights Jewish Center, Queens

I have played this seasonal concert for many years and it is always great fun  – so many wonderful people from the neighborhood show up, and the programs are always interesting!   A really fine Tango segment (singer Chris Vasquez and pianist Cesar Vuksic), Arabic music (including Simon Shaheen’s Alhambra Trio which we commissioned a number of years ago for A Night at the Alhmabra Café), which I performed with Rex Benincasa, Tar  and Carlo Valte, Oud), Tangos, music by James Primosh (beautiful piano solo Ryan MacEvoy McCullough and singing from Judy Kellock.  

I played the Chaconne following the last movement from the Messaien Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps, it was a good pairing.  The room we were playing in had very dry sound, so I had to speed the tempos slightly. Having done three or four of these performances in the last couple of weeks, it was pretty easy to drop into a somewhat mind-less space and allow the music to flow.  

We were fortunate to have the services of a spanish translator – one of the staff at the Jewish Center – so that the spanish-speaking audience members would know clearly that I was asking the listeners to participate with me in this Journey of 100  – to come to our website here and write their experiences – I hope we get some comments.

for colleagues and friends.  This performance was a good one – I was happy with the spirit and mood I was able to create; I had to keep substituting listening deeply for thinking, for mental activity.    I worked a lot at exploring many places for playing at soft dynamic levels, leaving the higher levels for the most important emotional and spiritual moments. 

A funny thing was that in the afternoon I had to decide if I was going to cook dinner (we were hosting the evening) or practice – and I decided to cook and work on the music in my mind and body while cooking.  A good choice, so it seems.