This past weekend, I had some fun opportunities to step in as a pianist/organist for our ward. While nine times out of ten, musical experiences move along without a hitch, it's that one time out of ten that nearly gives me a heart attack and sticks in my mind for years to come.
I remember once playing up on stage with a string trio or quartet, and when I went to turn my page, all of my music went flying off of the piano and onto the floor. I quickly got up, picked up the music, sat back down and continued playing as if nothing had happened. I remember seeing the faces of my fellow musicians, all trying to keep from busting out laughing.
Soon after learning to play the organ at age 15, my mind decided that a THIRD verse of "Called To Serve" existed and I continued playing into that imaginary verse during sacrament meeting. The chorister at the time had no idea what to do and so just kept conducting as if there WAS a verse. When I realized something was wrong, I just skipped to the end of the verse and played a final chord. She looked as if she wanted to vomit when she sat down.
A couple of years ago, I was playing for an entire studio of violin students. One student hadn't come to rehearsal, and as it turns out, she was rather unrehearsed with her memorization. So we started playing for the performance, and she just blanked. Having done this several times in my life, I couldn't blame her. However, while she continued to play, I tried to make up chords for what she was playing while scanning the music for the notes I should have actually been playing with her. My heart was in my throat until I finally found where she was.
Just recently, I was up playing the organ and I thought I was playing the correct hymn. However,
Baby Glo was a newbie conductor and just didn't know the hymns very well. So, she kept conducting the hymn on the opposite page (the correct hymn) while I was playing the wrong hymn. It took me about halfway through the first verse to realize that something was wrong. I then tried to make eye contact with Glo, but true to what I had taught her, she was leading and had no need to look at me. So I kept playing that first verse incorrectly while looking out in the congregation. I distinctly remember seeing Brother Leavitt slyly smiling while watching both me and Glo, surely wondering exactly how this was going to work itself out. I've seriously never been so relieved to get to the end of a sacrament hymn verse! For the rest of the hymn, I just started playing the correct hymn.
A crazy incident that my boys were privy to happened a few years back when Craig Jessop, one of the conductors of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, came to give a master class to the State High Master Singers. Mack Wilberg usually accompanied Craig Jessop when touring, but for some reason, he wasn't coming. Mr. Drafall contacted me six days before the master class, asking me if I would be willing to be the rehearsal pianist. Sure! How could I possibly pass up that experience? I mean, if I was a professional in the true sense of the word, I could list "played with Craig Jessop" on my professional resume. Mr. Drafall told me that he would send the music home with the boys.
I could hardly believe the heft in my hands as I held a FORTY PAGE choral work, written for ORGAN, by Leonard BERNSTEIN. Forty pages of music in six days? Condensing the organ music into piano language? Playing anything by modern composer Leonard Bernstein who doesn't write normal chord progressions which my brain can comprehend easily and quickly? I've never pulled the piano bench out so fast to dig in. I seriously marked up that music with survival notes--anything to help me get through it quickly.
The day approached. I wore my nicest but don't-look-like-I'm-trying-too-hard sweater set. I took a seat on the stage at the grand piano with the 60-member choir seated in a circle around me and Craig Jessop using the piano as his music stand. There were several music professionals also up on stage, hoping to merely be associated with Craig Jessop. I was just feet away from greatness. I was so incredibly nervous.
The Chicester Psalms begins fairly easily, but just measures in, there's a five measure piano solo that transitions into a different time signature and key signature, and does it with a crazy run and chords. I missed it the first time. And the second time. And the third time. Finally, Craig Jessop says to the choir, "If you all would please slap your legs with the beat, maybe the pianist can get through this." I wanted the earth to open and swallow me whole at that moment.
I got through it the next time, but it had nothing to do with the choir. It was sheer will.
And as if that wasn't enough....
I spent hours up there. I was so tired when it was over. My sweater set was seriously soaked through. However, Mr. Drafall said to me as I exited the stage, "Why don't you stick around? Craig might need you for the next song." I already wanted to slice and dice him for ever putting me in this crazy position, but I put on my nicest smile and said, "Okay."
Sure enough, when Mr. Jessop took the stage again, he looked out into the audience (where I happened to have collapsed), and said, "Do we still have the pianist?" Why I hadn't made a break for it when possible, I don't know. My feet felt like lead bricks as I walked back up, because now here came the SIGHT READING portion of my failure.
Every musicians dreads sight reading. It can be the make or break moment in any audition because it can be the only thing that separates the best from the second chair. As a musician, I'm pretty dang good at it, having had a teacher who really emphasized being able to do it well (thank you, Mr. Murphy), but after the day already, I could only imagine.
No worries when I saw the music. Two pages of seventeenth century, four-part choral harmonies. And in a lovely turn of events, the voices were written in piano chords for rehearsal purposes (so I didn't need to read the individual lines together, especially with the always-tricky tenor part written in treble clef but played an octave lower). I really thought I was set.
Once through, I made it. I relaxed my shoulders and breathed a sigh of relief until...
...Craig Jessop asked me to transpose the entire thing to another key.
Now listen vocalists. It's no worry for you to just move everything up and down based on where your voice feels comfortable, but for us pianists (especially us classically trained pianists who are taught to perfectly read the notes on the page...and play no others!) it's a brain feat. Like, if our brain was asked to go out and run a marathon, it would transpose music. It is near impossible, and to be honest, I hadn't transposed anything since twenty years earlier in my college theory classes....banking on the thought that I was learning to transpose theoretically. Those crazy-brained people called jazz pianists are the ones that you ask to transpose on the spot.
I looked at Craig Jessop and with a complete I'm-a-loser-and-I-know-it look on my face, I told him that I couldn't do it. That I could play some of the notes along the way, but I couldn't hit them all. And goodness, I tried my hardest, but with all of the mistakes, I turned that renaissance choral piece into a modern-sounding nightmare composed by John Cage.
My sweet boys were so good to me that night as I considered taking up drinking.
The most horrific musical mishap (I know, you didn't think it could get any worse, did you?) came during my performance of the Saint Saens Second Piano Concerto. I won't deny--I shouldn't have been performing at all that night, because I was off-the-charts sick. My physician mother had casually diagnosed me with mononucleosis, but knowing what I know now, I'm sure that I was suffering from a slew of recurrent sinus infections. I had been missing two out of three days of school, and I was lucky to be showered and dressed for the performance that night. I remember I was running a high fever, and while drying my hair, I had to keep laying down on the cool tile floor of my bathroom. Another ingredient to the problem was that the conductor hadn't rehearsed me much with the orchestra. She saw the orchestral accompaniment as not difficult and didn't think we needed much rehearsal. Again, with some knowledge of myself now, I know that multiple rehearsals is key to me feeling comfortable performing. So there I was, playing, and I was doing really well, but the most difficult part of the concerto is smack dab in the middle of the movement (and not during the cadenza), and it was quickly approaching. It's a two page series of moving, parallel sixths in both hands--it's supposed to be more of an accompaniment to the orchestra and in true impressionist form, it should sound ethereal. I'd probably spent 75% of my practicing on just those two pages, and my lessons were always focused on figuring that part out. I might have made it through unscathed (despite the illness and the lack of rehearsal) if I hadn't started playing the mental game with myself. A conversation began in my mind that went something like this: "Oh boy, here come the sixths. Will you remember them? What if you forget the transition? You already biffed that one section a couple of pages back." I was essentially doomed. And yes, about a page into the section, I just blanked.
I had no idea where I was in the piece.
I just lifted my hands from the piano and took a deep breath.
Thankfully, I had memorized the piece in sections for this sole reason (and it's actually the only time I've used that survival tactic). I knew where the next section began (just a measure or two later), so I quickly moved to that section and started playing.
Problem was, the conductor had no idea where I was, and it took her a few seconds to find me in the music. She then had to try and get a high school orchestra to look up at her to see that something that happened and that adjustments needed to be made.
Looking back now, it was such a hot mess. People praised my name up and down because the concerto itself is something really beautiful, amazing, and very different as far as concerti go. However, I will never be able to look back on that performance with satisfaction.
And in all honesty, I think expecting musicians to perform by memory is sadistic. Yes, there are musicians who are very good at it and who really embrace the idea of not being tied to their music, but there are those of us who are completely overcome with performance anxiety and taking away our music only compounds the problem. In fact, I would say for us, it lessens the performance because of the negative conversations that are happening in our minds.
Needless to say, through the years, I just trust that anything and everything will happen. Again, nine times out of ten, everything works fine. I've performed with the kids a million times, and I can almost play any hymn by kinetic memory because I've played them so many times, always without a mishap. But when things go wrong, they can go really wrong.
One final example. This past weekend.
I've been called to be organist in our new ward, and I was so happy when I was just casually asked to do it. I love playing organ for sacrament meeting, quite simply because I get incredibly frustrated with most every other "organist" who, bless their heart, tries unsuccessfully to do it. There's a certain tempo that works with congregations, along with a tried and true set of stops. I've learned never to vary from it, and the music will work well.
I played organ last week for sacrament meeting, and I discovered a very large problem with our organ: it was built for a chapel that was a least half the size it is now. We have a building that has been added to and expanded over time, but unfortunately the organ hasn't expanded with it. It's a tiny console organ with no pipes or sound in the walls. With 280 regularly attending members each Sunday, it's difficult to get the sound to the back of the chapel even with all stops open and pedals turned up. There is a definite disconnect as the voices of the congregation come back to me, always slower than what I'm playing, and it's no wonder since they can't hear the organ.
Compound this problem with a teenage conductor who has no idea what she's doing. She looks at me at the beginning of each verse, I guess wondering if I'll be sticking around, or if I've left for a matinee of Rogue One. And she sure as heck isn't going to give anyone a breath between verses--we just march on without a break...and without the first three or four words to the next verse while everyone inhales. And her long sweeping arms. She has no idea what she's doing with actual conducting. Her conducting is more like interpretive dance--it's all just left up to what she thinks goes with the music.
So, I knew I was leading the Primary kids for the special music program for the creche display, but I didn't know the specific logistics. So, I went up to our Metropolitan Opera star who doubles as a member of the stake presidency and asked him. He happened to ask me if I could also play organ. Sure! Anything for a star like him, right? (Again, think resume builder.) Little did I know that he would also tell his studio pianist (who would be accompanying him) that she could also play along with the congregational singing.
So, cue "Joy to the World". I being playing, not sure how anyone is going to hear me. And the conductor is performing Swan Lake, or something. But a couple of measures in, I hear something distinctly wrong. It's almost like feedback from the microphone. It sounded like it was recording what I was playing and then playing it back, but late. And there were runs, and octaves. And then I think that someone has an actual recording that they began to play when I started playing. And I wonder how they think they're going to coordinate that with all of us, seeing as our tempos aren't constant. I'm checking the organ's stops, wondering if there's some "recording" stop.
And as if this isn't enough, the congregation gets behind. Like way behind. So I just start adding in beats. "And saints and nature -ture sing," kind of adding in beats.
And our conductor was ... get this .... LAUGHING while conducting. She was looking at friends or family in the front row, and laughing while conducting. Nothing inspires confidence in my conductor as much as her laughing.
Again, I've never been so happy to be done with some music. I sit down for the solo performances and John texts me, "Was the piano supposed to be playing over you?" Not knowing yet what had just happened, I responded, "It's a FREAK SHOW up here!"
Yep, turns out the studio pianist was doing her studio pianist thing and just improvising a part on the spot for congregational singing. Because, you know, as we all know, congregations are cool cats like that and can just swing with anything. And she was doing it incredibly loud and proud.
Where was she when Craig Jessop was around, I ask you?
Yep, all in the life of a professional musician. And this Tuesday, I'm accompanying a local junior high choir (yep, back in the land of junior highs, and not middle schools, thank goodness). I don't have the music yet, and I have only one rehearsal on Monday. I can't imagine what's going to happen THIS time.
I remember once playing up on stage with a string trio or quartet, and when I went to turn my page, all of my music went flying off of the piano and onto the floor. I quickly got up, picked up the music, sat back down and continued playing as if nothing had happened. I remember seeing the faces of my fellow musicians, all trying to keep from busting out laughing.
Soon after learning to play the organ at age 15, my mind decided that a THIRD verse of "Called To Serve" existed and I continued playing into that imaginary verse during sacrament meeting. The chorister at the time had no idea what to do and so just kept conducting as if there WAS a verse. When I realized something was wrong, I just skipped to the end of the verse and played a final chord. She looked as if she wanted to vomit when she sat down.
A couple of years ago, I was playing for an entire studio of violin students. One student hadn't come to rehearsal, and as it turns out, she was rather unrehearsed with her memorization. So we started playing for the performance, and she just blanked. Having done this several times in my life, I couldn't blame her. However, while she continued to play, I tried to make up chords for what she was playing while scanning the music for the notes I should have actually been playing with her. My heart was in my throat until I finally found where she was.
Just recently, I was up playing the organ and I thought I was playing the correct hymn. However,
Baby Glo was a newbie conductor and just didn't know the hymns very well. So, she kept conducting the hymn on the opposite page (the correct hymn) while I was playing the wrong hymn. It took me about halfway through the first verse to realize that something was wrong. I then tried to make eye contact with Glo, but true to what I had taught her, she was leading and had no need to look at me. So I kept playing that first verse incorrectly while looking out in the congregation. I distinctly remember seeing Brother Leavitt slyly smiling while watching both me and Glo, surely wondering exactly how this was going to work itself out. I've seriously never been so relieved to get to the end of a sacrament hymn verse! For the rest of the hymn, I just started playing the correct hymn.
A crazy incident that my boys were privy to happened a few years back when Craig Jessop, one of the conductors of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, came to give a master class to the State High Master Singers. Mack Wilberg usually accompanied Craig Jessop when touring, but for some reason, he wasn't coming. Mr. Drafall contacted me six days before the master class, asking me if I would be willing to be the rehearsal pianist. Sure! How could I possibly pass up that experience? I mean, if I was a professional in the true sense of the word, I could list "played with Craig Jessop" on my professional resume. Mr. Drafall told me that he would send the music home with the boys.
I could hardly believe the heft in my hands as I held a FORTY PAGE choral work, written for ORGAN, by Leonard BERNSTEIN. Forty pages of music in six days? Condensing the organ music into piano language? Playing anything by modern composer Leonard Bernstein who doesn't write normal chord progressions which my brain can comprehend easily and quickly? I've never pulled the piano bench out so fast to dig in. I seriously marked up that music with survival notes--anything to help me get through it quickly.
The day approached. I wore my nicest but don't-look-like-I'm-trying-too-hard sweater set. I took a seat on the stage at the grand piano with the 60-member choir seated in a circle around me and Craig Jessop using the piano as his music stand. There were several music professionals also up on stage, hoping to merely be associated with Craig Jessop. I was just feet away from greatness. I was so incredibly nervous.
The Chicester Psalms begins fairly easily, but just measures in, there's a five measure piano solo that transitions into a different time signature and key signature, and does it with a crazy run and chords. I missed it the first time. And the second time. And the third time. Finally, Craig Jessop says to the choir, "If you all would please slap your legs with the beat, maybe the pianist can get through this." I wanted the earth to open and swallow me whole at that moment.
I got through it the next time, but it had nothing to do with the choir. It was sheer will.
And as if that wasn't enough....
I spent hours up there. I was so tired when it was over. My sweater set was seriously soaked through. However, Mr. Drafall said to me as I exited the stage, "Why don't you stick around? Craig might need you for the next song." I already wanted to slice and dice him for ever putting me in this crazy position, but I put on my nicest smile and said, "Okay."
Sure enough, when Mr. Jessop took the stage again, he looked out into the audience (where I happened to have collapsed), and said, "Do we still have the pianist?" Why I hadn't made a break for it when possible, I don't know. My feet felt like lead bricks as I walked back up, because now here came the SIGHT READING portion of my failure.
Every musicians dreads sight reading. It can be the make or break moment in any audition because it can be the only thing that separates the best from the second chair. As a musician, I'm pretty dang good at it, having had a teacher who really emphasized being able to do it well (thank you, Mr. Murphy), but after the day already, I could only imagine.
No worries when I saw the music. Two pages of seventeenth century, four-part choral harmonies. And in a lovely turn of events, the voices were written in piano chords for rehearsal purposes (so I didn't need to read the individual lines together, especially with the always-tricky tenor part written in treble clef but played an octave lower). I really thought I was set.
Once through, I made it. I relaxed my shoulders and breathed a sigh of relief until...
...Craig Jessop asked me to transpose the entire thing to another key.
Now listen vocalists. It's no worry for you to just move everything up and down based on where your voice feels comfortable, but for us pianists (especially us classically trained pianists who are taught to perfectly read the notes on the page...and play no others!) it's a brain feat. Like, if our brain was asked to go out and run a marathon, it would transpose music. It is near impossible, and to be honest, I hadn't transposed anything since twenty years earlier in my college theory classes....banking on the thought that I was learning to transpose theoretically. Those crazy-brained people called jazz pianists are the ones that you ask to transpose on the spot.
I looked at Craig Jessop and with a complete I'm-a-loser-and-I-know-it look on my face, I told him that I couldn't do it. That I could play some of the notes along the way, but I couldn't hit them all. And goodness, I tried my hardest, but with all of the mistakes, I turned that renaissance choral piece into a modern-sounding nightmare composed by John Cage.
My sweet boys were so good to me that night as I considered taking up drinking.
The most horrific musical mishap (I know, you didn't think it could get any worse, did you?) came during my performance of the Saint Saens Second Piano Concerto. I won't deny--I shouldn't have been performing at all that night, because I was off-the-charts sick. My physician mother had casually diagnosed me with mononucleosis, but knowing what I know now, I'm sure that I was suffering from a slew of recurrent sinus infections. I had been missing two out of three days of school, and I was lucky to be showered and dressed for the performance that night. I remember I was running a high fever, and while drying my hair, I had to keep laying down on the cool tile floor of my bathroom. Another ingredient to the problem was that the conductor hadn't rehearsed me much with the orchestra. She saw the orchestral accompaniment as not difficult and didn't think we needed much rehearsal. Again, with some knowledge of myself now, I know that multiple rehearsals is key to me feeling comfortable performing. So there I was, playing, and I was doing really well, but the most difficult part of the concerto is smack dab in the middle of the movement (and not during the cadenza), and it was quickly approaching. It's a two page series of moving, parallel sixths in both hands--it's supposed to be more of an accompaniment to the orchestra and in true impressionist form, it should sound ethereal. I'd probably spent 75% of my practicing on just those two pages, and my lessons were always focused on figuring that part out. I might have made it through unscathed (despite the illness and the lack of rehearsal) if I hadn't started playing the mental game with myself. A conversation began in my mind that went something like this: "Oh boy, here come the sixths. Will you remember them? What if you forget the transition? You already biffed that one section a couple of pages back." I was essentially doomed. And yes, about a page into the section, I just blanked.
I had no idea where I was in the piece.
I just lifted my hands from the piano and took a deep breath.
Thankfully, I had memorized the piece in sections for this sole reason (and it's actually the only time I've used that survival tactic). I knew where the next section began (just a measure or two later), so I quickly moved to that section and started playing.
Problem was, the conductor had no idea where I was, and it took her a few seconds to find me in the music. She then had to try and get a high school orchestra to look up at her to see that something that happened and that adjustments needed to be made.
Looking back now, it was such a hot mess. People praised my name up and down because the concerto itself is something really beautiful, amazing, and very different as far as concerti go. However, I will never be able to look back on that performance with satisfaction.
And in all honesty, I think expecting musicians to perform by memory is sadistic. Yes, there are musicians who are very good at it and who really embrace the idea of not being tied to their music, but there are those of us who are completely overcome with performance anxiety and taking away our music only compounds the problem. In fact, I would say for us, it lessens the performance because of the negative conversations that are happening in our minds.
Needless to say, through the years, I just trust that anything and everything will happen. Again, nine times out of ten, everything works fine. I've performed with the kids a million times, and I can almost play any hymn by kinetic memory because I've played them so many times, always without a mishap. But when things go wrong, they can go really wrong.
One final example. This past weekend.
I've been called to be organist in our new ward, and I was so happy when I was just casually asked to do it. I love playing organ for sacrament meeting, quite simply because I get incredibly frustrated with most every other "organist" who, bless their heart, tries unsuccessfully to do it. There's a certain tempo that works with congregations, along with a tried and true set of stops. I've learned never to vary from it, and the music will work well.
I played organ last week for sacrament meeting, and I discovered a very large problem with our organ: it was built for a chapel that was a least half the size it is now. We have a building that has been added to and expanded over time, but unfortunately the organ hasn't expanded with it. It's a tiny console organ with no pipes or sound in the walls. With 280 regularly attending members each Sunday, it's difficult to get the sound to the back of the chapel even with all stops open and pedals turned up. There is a definite disconnect as the voices of the congregation come back to me, always slower than what I'm playing, and it's no wonder since they can't hear the organ.
Compound this problem with a teenage conductor who has no idea what she's doing. She looks at me at the beginning of each verse, I guess wondering if I'll be sticking around, or if I've left for a matinee of Rogue One. And she sure as heck isn't going to give anyone a breath between verses--we just march on without a break...and without the first three or four words to the next verse while everyone inhales. And her long sweeping arms. She has no idea what she's doing with actual conducting. Her conducting is more like interpretive dance--it's all just left up to what she thinks goes with the music.
So, I knew I was leading the Primary kids for the special music program for the creche display, but I didn't know the specific logistics. So, I went up to our Metropolitan Opera star who doubles as a member of the stake presidency and asked him. He happened to ask me if I could also play organ. Sure! Anything for a star like him, right? (Again, think resume builder.) Little did I know that he would also tell his studio pianist (who would be accompanying him) that she could also play along with the congregational singing.
So, cue "Joy to the World". I being playing, not sure how anyone is going to hear me. And the conductor is performing Swan Lake, or something. But a couple of measures in, I hear something distinctly wrong. It's almost like feedback from the microphone. It sounded like it was recording what I was playing and then playing it back, but late. And there were runs, and octaves. And then I think that someone has an actual recording that they began to play when I started playing. And I wonder how they think they're going to coordinate that with all of us, seeing as our tempos aren't constant. I'm checking the organ's stops, wondering if there's some "recording" stop.
And as if this isn't enough, the congregation gets behind. Like way behind. So I just start adding in beats. "And saints and nature -ture sing," kind of adding in beats.
And our conductor was ... get this .... LAUGHING while conducting. She was looking at friends or family in the front row, and laughing while conducting. Nothing inspires confidence in my conductor as much as her laughing.
Again, I've never been so happy to be done with some music. I sit down for the solo performances and John texts me, "Was the piano supposed to be playing over you?" Not knowing yet what had just happened, I responded, "It's a FREAK SHOW up here!"
Yep, turns out the studio pianist was doing her studio pianist thing and just improvising a part on the spot for congregational singing. Because, you know, as we all know, congregations are cool cats like that and can just swing with anything. And she was doing it incredibly loud and proud.
Where was she when Craig Jessop was around, I ask you?
Yep, all in the life of a professional musician. And this Tuesday, I'm accompanying a local junior high choir (yep, back in the land of junior highs, and not middle schools, thank goodness). I don't have the music yet, and I have only one rehearsal on Monday. I can't imagine what's going to happen THIS time.
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