Omar I

Man, it's been a while since I last uploaded. Sorry about all the delay, things have gotten surprisingly busy here this summer. I did something I never thought I would do after college, and joined a band. We're called Medicine Lake, and we are two parts Peabody and one part Towson. I'm playing keyboards, vibes/marimba, and singing backup vocals with them. It's really, really fun.

Anyway, more on that later. The video I just posted tonight was probably the biggest musical challenge I had to face for this recital (or, at least tied with ...And Points North). Omar, by the late Franco Donatoni, is actually a collection of two pieces for solo vibraphone. I only learned the first of the two works--my classmate and colleague Candy Chiu (who is now studying up at Yale) played the second work on her recital last year, and it must have been equally hard (if not harder) than the one I played.

When I heard Candy's performance on the second work, I can't say I was that attracted to the piece. Nothing wrong with her performance, and I'm no person to critique the writing of Franco Donatoni--his music just isn't especially easy on the ears. When my teacher told me to start learning it, I had no idea what I would be getting myself into. Learning the notes to this piece was, much like ...And Points North, akin to learning another language. Where as most tonal (or rather, conventionally harmonized) music settles in my ear fairly quickly, I found myself on the same two measures of Omar after having had the music for a week. I had to really push myself hard, and force those notes into my brain. Even still, I was not able to commit the last two sections of the work to memory, and had to do the performance with the music in front of me.

As I spent time learning this music, the personality of the piece began to show. My teacher uses the word "schizophrenic" to describe this piece, and I wholeheartedly agree. In each section, it seemed like there were two different voices speaking at once--at times, almost as if they were arguing. This made me realize my role as the performer was even more challenging than simply trying to learn notes that didn't sit well in my head--I had to take this harsh, abrasive, and largely inaccessible music, and bring it to life by making the voices have their own characters, and personalities. I don't know if it made me like the music any more (it probably did, I'm an optimist), but it certainly gave me a whole new respect for the music.

In the end, yes, I wish I had it memorized. I've played the piece better than I performed it on my recital. But, given all of the circumstances involved, I'm pretty happy with how the performance went. Maybe someday soon, I'll be posting Omar II up here as well.

And Legions Will Rise

The first time I ever heard this piece was actually at a Yale Percussion Group concert--it was being performed by Eric Beach (who now plays in So Percussion), who was joined by Wayne Lin and Romie de Guise-Langlois (neither of whom I have had the pleasure of meeting). I really enjoyed the piece when I heard it, but at the time thought it was way too hard for me to ever play. Well, in the beginning of this past semester, I got a call from my teacher telling me that he would like me to pick up the project where Hye Jin Kim, a fellow percussionist who left to pursue work in Korea, had left off. Well, the violinist and clarinetist she worked with weren't into continuing the project as it turned out, so I went ahead and asked my friends Kathryn Kilian and Gleb Kanasevich if they wanted to join me. Kate and I were from the same town in Connecticut and have always had similar musical ideals, so playing with her has always been a pleasure. Gleb is one of the only new music buffs I know in the wind program at Peabody--but he's also a fantastic player and composer, so I was excited for an opportunity to work with them both.

I only really had a month--MAYBE a bit more--to put this piece together. Every piece on my program seemed to introduce a different challenge, and this one was "how well can you learn this under a close deadline". In fact, it was so close that I pretty much find this piece to blame for my relapse of tendinitis right before my recital. The marimba part, technically, is a beast. Well, the violin and clarinet parts certainly aren't any easier, but for me it really took a lot of muscle to play. It couldn't have been more than two weeks before showtime that we were playing through the whole piece for the first time.

That being said, I can't help but be just a little disappointed with this performance. I think I did the best I could, given the circumstances. I just wish those circumstances weren't there, and that I could've had, say, all year to prepare this, and not just a month. I also wish my hands were a little more marimba friendly--this piece has made me question the reality of my current marimba grip, and I'm still thinking of changing it from Stevens grip back to Burton grip, which is the grip I began on.

The piece is a really beautiful work, and I had a great experience working with Kate and Gleb and learning this piece. Kevin Puts, the composer, was actually sitting in the audience during my performance. Maybe I've set my standards too high when I was hoping my performance could be the best performance of his piece he's ever heard. I don't think I can shake that standard, though.

...And Points North

This piece came into my life only because I happened to mention to Bob (my teacher) that I had always wanted to do a theater piece. He decided to throw me straight into that world by not only assigning me to learn the piece ...And Points North by Stuart Saunders Smith, but by also putting it into my recital. Doing a theater piece had always been an exciting idea for me--when I was in middle school, I loved participating in my school's theater program, and in high school I had a great time making stupid movies with my friends, such as this one.

No matter where my acting skill was before I began this project, I had no idea what was in store for me. Smith's compositional language can only best be described as "intuitive"--it's got an improvisatory feel to it, but it's very precisely written. Learning the notes was sort of like learning another language--except I had to be able to come up with a pretty convincing speech in that language pretty soon. I felt the same way about learning Franco Donatoni's Omar.

However, as I learned the notes, the piece began to make sense to me... maybe even become a little personal. I started to understand the story that I hoped to tell, which I couldn't begin to understand until after I had every single note learned. I also needed to acquire every "instrument" before I could do this, which was a feat in itself. I never thought finding an aluminum washtub or Christmas tree stand could be so difficult, and making the wind chimes was an absolute nightmare. I ended up using a bunch of one dollar bottles of Irish whiskey (which made for some nice parties), as well as a whole bunch of beads and decorative glassware I purchased from a nearby craft store, Beadazzled. I must have spent over two hundred dollars on this piece, at least.

Once again, it was all worth it in the end. I have to say, this piece was, for me, the most fun to perform. I got to do a lot of things I don't normally get to do when I perform, and it was nice to be more of an entertainer than a musician for a little bit. It's a very neat phenomenon when you half to walk around as much as I did, and even at one point into the audience. The stage goes wherever you go. It's a nice feeling.

Dances of Earth and Fire

I don't remember exactly when the first time I heard this piece was... I believe it was my freshman year at Peabody. Either my freshman year or my sophomore year, but I would wager on it being my freshman year. Whatever. Regardless, the first person I ever heard perform this piece was actually the person I will be studying/working with next year, Ji Hye Jung. At this time, my understanding of music outside of the scope of classical tonality was pretty limited, and this was one of the pieces that left me mostly confused. Even then, though, I understood there was something profound about the piece. I just didn't know what.

My teacher put this piece on my recital program at the end of my fourth year at Peabody, and by then I understood the language of the piece much better. To put it as simply as I can, the piece is based on the octatonic scale--that is, a scale which is constructed of alternating whole steps and half steps. It's a mode of limited transposition, meaning that you only get three different transpositions of each scale. This being said, to call the piece "atonal" is simply inaccurate, which is what I did for years. It's not "atonal", it's just different than what I was used to.

The piece, as I presented it in my recital, was incomplete. I performed the first of two movements: "Dark and Heavy", or as my teacher calls it, the earth dance. The fire dance, also referred to as "Con Brio", is much more lively and technically demanding, while the first movement is much more emotionally demanding. I had prepared, and intended, to play both movements at my recital, but the program ended up being both longer and more physically draining than both my teacher and I had originally anticipated, and we decided to omit this movement from the performance. I would have loved to play it, but when it actually came time for me to perform this piece (the second to last piece on my program, not counting the "encore", Village Burial with Fire), I was exhausted--both emotionally and physically.

My exhaustion is very present to me in watching my performance now--I had a few memory slips I normally don't make, I played faster in general than I would've liked, my accuracy wasn't at it's best and I can tell my concentration was slipping. I'm still posting this for the sake of having my complete recital available to all those who couldn't make it, and it's been posted (way) out of order because I'm having some trouble extracting the earlier video. Even though it's definitely not the best performance I've given of this piece, it was the best I could do then. Hopefully, I'll have another opportunity to perform this piece someday, and hopefully that performance will exceed this one.

Finished.

Well, this past Thursday was my recital. The few weeks leading up to it were brutal. I've never dealt with so much stress. I remember feeling... well, rather, I remember not feeling anything during those last two weeks or so. It was like I just didn't have room in my schedule to have emotions! All I had time to do was focus and practice.

Unfortunately, this past Monday (three days before my recital), my tendinitis flared up again in my right hand. It's still bothering me, although the massage and day off I enjoyed yesterday has helped a lot. If it had happened a month earlier, I would've had to stop playing... but my recital was so soon, I knew it would stay in the acute stage if I just barreled through it and went to therapy as soon as possible. Which is what I did.

But despite all of the negative energy prior to my performance, I really feel my recital was a huge success. It was a little scary in the beginning, though! My program was as follows:

Electric Counterpoint

Steve Reich

And Legions Will Rise

Kevin Puts

...And Points North

Stuart Saunders Smith

Omar I

Franco Donatoni

Dances of Earth and Fire

(Movement 1: Con Brio)

Peter Klatzow

Improvisation for Solo Vibraphone

Doug Perry!

Encore: Village Burial with Fire

James Wood

Those of you familiar with the canon of contemporary percussion music might be thinking "wait, Village Burial was an encore? Are you kidding?" I will say, that was similar to what went through my head when my teacher suggested it. For an encore piece, it was by far the largest and most difficult setup we had to do.

Vic is following orders from behind a tremendous Village Burial setup.

While Village Burial took up pretty much the entire stage, I was setting up the actual bulk of my recital program on the floor. The marimba and vibraphone (as well as the electronics rig) was positioned stage left on the floor, which is where I played Electric Counterpoint, And Legions Will Rise, Omar I, and Dances of Earth and Fire. The rest of the floor was occupied by ...And Points North.

About 1/3rd of my ...And Points North setup.

...And Points North had quite a few technical difficulties, to say the least... Aside from my wind chime tree deciding it didn't want to stand anymore, the wind chimes got all tangled up in the process of transporting them to Peabody. I actually had a team that was dedicated to just untangling as many of them as possible while everyone else was setting up.

Kate (my violinist for And Legions Will Rise) and mom do their best to make these guys work.

Eventually, everything fell into place, and we were able to begin my recital at 8:40 pm, as opposed to 8:00 pm. While backstage, Bob (my teacher) and I decided to scratch the second movement of Dances of Earth and Fire from my program. As much as I wanted to play it, not only would I have been super exhausted by that point, but my recital would have gone on for way too long. We also removed the path of leaves from my ...And Points North setup for the same reason. It would've been really cool, but the cleanup would've added about 20 minutes to my program. I was very lucky to have not only a good sized audience, but a large audience that was willing to wait for all of this to get put together!

Overall, I was very pleased with how everything went! I was especially happy with Electric Counterpoint and ...And Points North. With both of these, I really felt I was completely attached to the music. ...And Points North was an experience I've never felt before--I felt like I had total control over the audience, and that they were just as involved with the piece as I was. I wish I had played parts of And Legions Will Rise better, especially considering the composer, Kevin Puts, was sitting in the audience. However, it was definitely the most emotionally satisfying performance we've had thus far. I'm really fortunate to have had the opportunity to play with the musicians who accompanied me (Kathryn Kilian on violin, Gleb Kanasevich on clarinet)--they are both super gifted and super dedicated.

I had a bit of a mallet mix-up before Omar I--I had put some of my mallets that I needed for it in my Village Burial setup. I let the audience know what was wrong, got my proper mallets, and played the piece fine. By this point I was beginning to get exhausted, so I was glad I was honest with the audience. If I had tried to play that piece with the wrong mallets, bad things would have happened, I'm sure.

I do wish my first movement of Dances of Earth and Fire had gone better. I was very glad I didn't play the second movement, though--if I was making as many mistakes as I was playing the first movement, the second would've been a nightmare. By this point, my brain was almost as taxed as my arms were. If I hadn't had a tendinitis flare-up, I might have been able to play the second movement. I was so mentally exhausted, however, I tend to believe it wouldn't have made much of a difference.

I ended my program with a free-form improvisation on vibraphone (in C minor-ish, of course) which, according to my cousin (and extraordinary camera man) Nick Piegari, sounded like a summary of my experience at Peabody. This is what I was hoping would happen, but I wasn't thinking about it at the time so it's pretty cool that it did for somebody.

Finally, Village Burial happened. And that's about all I'll say about it... it happened. It was a pretty casual performance--Bob invited the audience up to the stage to stand around it and watch it up close, and it was good practice for us before we have to play it for the Peabody Percussion Group concert tomorrow. A lot of things went wrong...but it was good that we got to have a "practice performance" of sorts.

And after that was done, I did this:

and then I did this:

My parents threw a pretty sweet reception for my at my apartment afterwards. They got me an awesome cake!

Artwork done years ago by the ever-talented Doug B. Horak.

And now, I'm done. Well, technically I'm not done... I have the Peabody Percussion Group concert tomorrow at 4 pm, I have a Peabody Concert Orchestra concert on April 30th, I have to play on Crystal's recital on May 3rd... but as far as I'm concerned, I'm done. The PPG concert is the only thing I really need to use my arms a lot for (I'm playing on the Lou Harrison Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra, as well as playing And Legions will Rise and Village Burial with Fire again). After that, I just need to rest, do the little bit of playing I need to do, and try to see my wonderful physical therapist David Schulman as much as I can (who is extra awesome for coming to my recital).

Oh yeah, this post has been long enough, but I'll close by letting you all know: I'm not going to Yale next year. I'm going to the University of Kansas to study with Ji Hye Jung, as well as work for both her and jazz department director Dan Gailey as a graduate teaching assistant. Not only is it full scholarship and teaching experience, but I'll be getting paid by the school too. This literally came out of nowhere, and was too good of a deal for me to pass up. Getting paid to go to grad school... that's pretty cool. At least, until I audition for Yale again.

Results

Well, I got an email this morning titled "Yale Audition".

The bad news: I didn't get the spot.

The good news: Adam Rosenblatt did.

The other good news: I'm first on the wait list.

I knew from the beginning that if the audition was just between me and Adam, Adam would easily win. I would still do it anyway, and still hope for the best, but I knew that he had the advantage. It was the other seven people I was worried about.

There is still a chance for me to go to Yale. A few of the current returning Yale students are in the job circuit right now. If one of them wins a job, that means I'm going! Also, if my teacher is somehow able to convince the dean of Yale to take seven students for next year, I may also be able to join. The economy sucks, so therefore the endowment at Yale is pretty tight, and it would be fairly difficult to convince the dean to do something like that.

Regardless, I am unbelievably proud of Adam, and I'm also proud of myself for getting as far as I did. I'm keeping my fingers crossed--I've gotten pretty far, but it's not over yet!

Yale is done.

At 10:45 am yesterday morning, the Yale percussion students helped me move all of my gear into the percussion studio to play what was definitely the most important audition of my life thus far. At around 8:30 pm yesterday, I was back in Baltimore, in the apartment I left looking exactly how I left it. Surreal to say the least.

All in all, I suppose I'm pretty happy about the way I played. I started with the first movement of Dances of Earth and Fire (so, just the earth), followed by Omar I, followed by a three minute free vibraphone improvisation, followed by sight-reading (which ended up being the preludes to the second and fifth Bach cello suites), followed by timpani: Carter's March, Mozart Symphony No. 39, Symphonic Metamorphosis, Burleske. From Timpani I moved to snare drum and played my Delécluse etude (No. 1) and just the first excerpt from Scheherazade, which was followed by my two keyboard excerpts (La Mer on glockenspiel and Exotic Birds on xylophone), and ended with (barely enough time for) about half of my theater/set-up piece, ...And Points North.

There were definitely things that I wish I had played better, but there were also things that I played much better than I was expecting. Of course, nerves played a huge factor in my audition, but I knew they would and did my best to prepare for it. I still wish that I could figure out a way to play snare drum without getting the shakes--snare drum is an instrument that I've worked very hard on improving, especially in the past year. It's very frustrating to work on something that hard, but lose about 50% of the work to shaking hands. Most of the practicing I did for this audition (as well as in general this year) was on snare drum.

There were nine total in the finals. I got the opportunity to meet and talk to most of them. Obviously, I already knew my Peabody comrade, Adam Rosenblatt--but other than us, people were coming from anywhere from Texas and Cleveland to China and Singapore. Everybody was really nice, and everybody was really good. When we were all sitting in the studio, taking our written exam/group interview, it sort of dawned on me: of the sixty-plus applicants who sent in tapes, Adam and I were invited to sit with seven of the best percussionists coming out of undergraduate school. For a few minutes, I literally could not believe I was sitting there with them.

As happy as I was with my audition, I really have no idea what's going to happen. Bob told us in our group interview that YSM is only looking to accept one, maybe two applicants. I had known this before, but being there with everybody really put it in perspective. There is literally a 1 in 9 chance that I will get in--maybe a 2 in 9 chance if I'm lucky. Everybody there was a different kind of musician, and everyone had something different to say.

I feel like, more than anything else, I wanted to show them that I was a musician before I was a percussionist. I didn't want them to think "what a good timpanist" or "what a good marimba player", or even "wow he's good at improvising" (which was a portion of the audition I think I was the only one to include). I wanted them to hear that more than anything else, in the core of all of my playing, I value making music over everything else. It doesn't matter what instrument I'm doing it on, or what setting I'm doing it in--making music was something that I was both fluent and fully invested in.

I find out before March 19th. While I was practicing at Yale, I felt strangely at ease. I felt really comfortable there, practicing fervently with all of my competition all around me, in their dirty basement studio. That place just reeked of real, down to earth hard work. I really felt like I could belong there.

I hope they felt the same way about me.