I was a little late to the Olympics watching (I missed the opening ceremonies and first few days, including the new “team figure skating”) but I’ve been trying to catch up. I’ve seen skeleton, luge, slopestyle skiing, halfpipe snowboarding, biathlon (which you’d think Americans would have embraced more because of our evident love of guns, but I guess trying to just hit a specific target is too challenging…), and a couple of other things too. I did miss the Bob Costas pink-eye fiasco, but that’s probably for the best.

Figure skating is my favorite sport. It’s beautiful, artistic, and technically challenging all at the same time, and accompanied by instrumental music, often violin (!).

I think that playing the violin is similar to figure skating. You work for many many years to gain your technical expertise (scales, scales, and more scales!), and then when you put it all together, you don’t want the technique to be all that the audience sees. Sure, those triple and quadruple jumps are important to land, effortless (or shifts, in violin), but if that’s all you worry about, the audience isn’t moved. But, if you MISS a jump (or a shift, or a series of notes), then that’s all the audience and judges notice. And if you do mess up, then it’s all about what happens next. You have to leave it behind in your performance and just stay in the moment (or a few seconds ahead of the moment, always planning ahead, but not looking back) and continue to do your best performance.

The one thing figure skaters get that we violinists rarely do is the wide scale audience! As popular as the Olympics are, I don’t think the yearly World competitions and smaller scale competitions get nearly the coverage, so it’s similar in a way—you work so hard, for so long, and mostly people don’t appreciate what you do, or truly understand the effort and skill involved. Perhaps they even discount your hard work by constantly referring to your “talent” for the sport, rather than realizing that it is primarily the time you have put into your craft that sets you above others. (This is a major pet peeve of mine. Rarely do people say someone has a “talent” for surgery or business. Often the idea that an artist has “talent” is what keeps our pay low, rather than thinking we are driven or hard working.)

But I’m not trying to get on a soapbox here. Honestly, I just love watching the Olympics. I’ve never been much of an ice skater, and I’ve never been skiing or snowboarding, so it’s all just amazing to me to watch. And you can also tell, that despite all the hard work and training the athletes put in, they are generally having the best time of their life showing off their skills, and that’s so important. I can’t imagine flipping around in the air like so many of the athletes do, or moving so fast, but I know how it feels to really nail a challenging part of a piece for the first time, or under pressure, and it is the best feeling in the world! I also know how it feels to fail to reach your goals, no matter how hard you worked for them.

I don’t know how it feels to wear an all pink body suit though. That needs to be something I do soon, right?

What’s your favorite Olympic sport? Am I trying to make the Olympics too much about me by likening it to playing the violin? Should I step down from my fancy soap box?

My quartet, the Perseid Quartet, played to a full house last night at the Tavern of Fine Arts. It was so much fun and we were totally thrilled so many people braved the icy weather to come see us.

Today my brain is exploding with so many thoughts. I feel like we had this huge accomplishment last night and then today is just an ordinary day, and it doesn’t really matter at all, in the greater scheme of things, but I feel so great about how we all played and how hard we worked to put on a good show and I feel like we are really contributing to the local music scene by playing together. I’m also listening to a bunch of quartets brainstorming for our next program.

It all seems fairly inconsequential though: so many musicians perform chamber music, and having a concert is really not a big deal, but to me, it feels really special and I’m glad we did it, and I can’t wait for the next one. I’m tickled by how many students and friends and family came out to support out and seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves. As much as we love playing for ourselves, playing for other people and sharing our love of music with them is particularly wonderful. I also think the experience of seeing a chamber music concert in a small setting like we had last night is unique and something that not everybody has experienced, but that people SHOULD experience.

So often people say, oh, I don’t like classical music. But so many of those people really haven’t experienced classical music in a true way. So many musicians these days are playing concerts in restaurants and bars to reach more people, and honestly, it’s a lot of fun to attend. Isn’t it great being able to order drinks and food while you enjoy a live performance? Here in St Louis there are tons of people playing concerts at the Tavern every week, and other groups doing great things all other town (my former group, Chamber Project St Louis, plays at the Schlafly Tap Room a fair amount, for instance.)

As the saying goes, this isn’t your grandmother’s classical music…but yet it kind of is. Throughout history, chamber music has been performed in small areas where the audience is up close and personal with the performers. It’s a wonderful way to experience music, and the sound you will hear at a live performance is so much richer and fuller and more unique than anything on the radio…

(wait, where did that come from? a cat playing cowbell?)

I guess this is my plea and suggestion to you: step out of your comfort zone and attend a concert in your area that you wouldn’t ordinarily go to. You might be surprised by how much you enjoy it! Don’t be intimidated by feeling like you aren’t knowledgeable about the music. Trust me, even we professionals don’t know everything, and we are constantly learning more.

And I’ve been doing the same lately—trying to expose myself to more than just classical music. So it’s never too late and you’re never too young or old!