Category Archives: Teaching

Quarantine, Random thoughts, Teaching

Career musings

It’s tough being a freelancer. Or maybe I should say, it was tough? I have had several phases of my career, and this latest one is certainly less stressful in many ways.

I started out as a full-time orchestra player, right out of grad school. I also taught and added in extra gigs and tried to make as much money as possible to start paying off student loans and start saving. I was young and had energy, drive, and a great love of music. My job tried to take that away from me, and ultimately I made a very personal choice to leave. I haven’t regretted that choice, though I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I had stayed.

I then spent a few years being a more full-time freelancer and teaching in the Cleveland area. I played all the gigs I could, was a member of up to 5 different regional orchestras, and spent a lot of time driving to and from with small groups of friends. It felt very temporary, but it was a lot of fun and I had a large amount of satisfying and fulfilling musical experiences. I worked nearly every day and worked long hours, and it had its ups and downs.

I moved to St Louis then, and hoped to continue in  much the same way, but there weren’t the same opportunities…there weren’t 5 or more regional orchestras in driving distance, and in fact only one really, and that wasn’t even really within driving distance, so I tried to up my teaching and did what I could. I played a bunch of gigs, here and there, everywhere, trying to get my name out there, and ended up being really busy as well, but not having that many satisfying or fulfilling musical experiences. Truthfully my great love is orchestral playing, but my second great love is doing things my way, and the two are hard to reconcile.

I talked with a student yesterday who had her first full orchestra playing experience before her lesson, and she described it as overwhelming. It is! I recall my first time playing in an orchestra (with winds and percussion and all) and it is overwhelming, the sound is unlike anything you can ever experience, but it is amazing. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to terms with the fact that that just isn’t something I will do very much in my life, if at all, and that just might be okay. It’s a hard thing to come to terms with, honestly, but getting upset over a $150 gig that takes up two nights a week isn’t the same as playing a Shostakovich Symphony with a group.

I have a lot of thoughts about orchestral musicians, and what work is worth, and the music world, and they are often jumbled, every changing, and not without a little bit of bitterness but also with love and hope. I won’t share most of them here, but I will just say this: I’m tired of the stress, and I’m tired of the hustle. I have been busier teaching than I’ve ever been in my life, but it’s so much happier. I miss seeing colleagues, but I don’t miss feeling so replaceable and being belittled.

I have a group I’ve played with for years that I have debated quitting for awhile, because of how it makes me feel. Sometimes I really enjoy it, and other times I feel taken advantage of. I’ve been yelled at, I’ve had a score thrown at me by the conductor, and to add insult to injury, my position wasn’t even considered worth mentioning to a new contractor. Nothing about the group ever made me feel good as a person (or hadn’t in a long time), but I hung on because I occasionally enjoyed playing the music…that’s how my performing career has felt over the past few years, maybe since I moved here.

That’s not to say that every experience has been that way, but enough for me to say, enough. I read other musicians who say how much they miss playing together. Maybe I’ve made other musicians feel bad as well, but I don’t miss being made to feel bad. I don’t miss pouring my playing into a job only to be passed over in the future to somebody new or somebody who grew up here, or somebody who was more “connected.” Maybe people read this blog and say, well, she doesn’t want to be hired anyway, she has a bad attitude, but there have been years that I have said yes to every single job I could, showed up early and prepared, practiced for hours and hours, and that didn’t matter either. And then once I stopped working, during the pandemic, I didn’t miss it. I filled up my schedule with students and there I am.

I have thought about this because there are gigs coming back. Now, some of those are an easy no, because, well, there’s a pandemic. But how to balance it? There are people I do want to play with, and there will be jobs I do want to take, but there will also be ones I don’t want to take. I know if I say no jobs will dry up, but they also dry up when I say yes, so I’m not living in fear anymore.

I’m being honest here, because this is a tough profession, and you should all know it. I don’t want the accolades and the pressure anymore. I’m tired of it. I don’t miss the audiences. Maybe that will change, maybe I’ll want something different in a few years, I don’t know. Maybe once the pandemic is over I won’t be afraid of crowds anymore, but maybe I’m just tired. I know I play well enough to play anything I want, and I’m okay with that. I’ll always be asked first if I play in the St Louis Symphony, and unless the answer is yes people won’t ever think I’m any good, so who cares what they think anyway?

So, those are my current career musings. I added it up and I’m currently teaching about 40 hours a week, counting a little bit of driving around, but not counting grading or admin work. No wonder I feel so busy! We’ll see what I decide to do next fall (I think I need to drop something) but for now, I’ll just work and work, which is something I’ve always been good at, and I will hope that I make a positive impact on some of my students. I’m not going to pretend that music is some sacred thing, that being a music teacher or musician makes me a better person, because I think that’s rationalizing something that we are worried we are wasting our time doing. (A good friend once said, “Musicians always think they are doing the Lord’s Work” and that made me think!) I think music is worthwhile and it is fun to play the violin. I think learning to play an instrument is good thing for kids to do and helps them in their lives overall and that’s a good enough reason.

But that would be going off on another tangent, so I’ll just say…lots more students to teach today, and then a nice weekend of relaxing and trying to do something fun in the cold and during the pandemic before another long week of teaching.

What about you? Do you feel like the pandemic has made you second guess your life choices or change your trajectory or work-life balance?

Quarantine, Teaching

Recital day

I have this app on my phone called “Timehop” which shows me stuff I took pictures of or posted to instragram or whatnot 1 year ago, 2 years ago, etc. Today I saw a picture from one year ago of a studio recital. It wasn’t actually 1 year ago to the day, so the picture must have been something else, but just under one year ago was our last student recital together, in person (I usually do one the Sunday before Thanksgiving.) I miss seeing those guys in person…I haven’t been one of those teachers who is like “I miss my students so much” because I’m not that sort of teacher. But it has gotten ridiculous, and we are looking at several more months of online at least, and it’s tiring, because IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

In any case, I’m excited for the recital today on zoom. Most of the students are playing live, and a few have recorded videos ahead of time to be less stressful. I told them they had a choice. Life is stressful enough these days for those who find playing on a recital overly stressful. Hopefully the next recital…or at least the one after that, can be in person.

I’m tired of hearing violin over the internet though. I’m looking forward to seeing them all again in person, and hearing how they actually soon.

I’m tired of a lot of things…but I’m really glad to have a week off (mostly) ahead of me. I’m looking forward to catching up on a bunch of videos of this and that I need to watch, reading some more books, doing some cooking, taking some walks and hikes, and decorating a bit for Christmas. I don’t know if I’ll put up a Christmas tree this year, but I’ll definitely decorate some. I don’t know if I want to go all out with just two of us here, but I will put up some nutcrackers and a few other things to make it festive.

We got a meal box from Purple Carrot this week. It’s a vegan meal delivery service, similar to Blue Apron except the meals don’t contain any animal products. I made two of the recipes and Louie made one. I thought my two were easier to make than most of the Blue Apron meals, and especially enjoyed the one I made last night. It was Sesame Ginger Noodles with Stir-Fried Greens and Toasted Peanuts, and I forgot to take a picture. I would make it again, though I might add some tofu if I did it on my own. Louie thought the burgers he made were a little more involved, and we wished they had had a few more carrots, but they were also tasty. We decided we would order again and perhaps alternate with Blue Apron (we usually do about one box a month.)

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Those are roasted carrots, and they were delicious, but there were very few of them. I’m greedy with my roasted veggies and always want a bunch.

In any case, if you like eating plant-based meals, I would recommend Purple Carrot. I don’t have any free meals to offer you right now, but I might in the future. (I do have referrals for Blue Apron and Imperfect Foods, so just leave a comment or email me if you are interested or if you have any more questions!)

I was supposed to get my hair done on Monday, but my hairdresser had to cancel due to a COVID exposure. Now I’m worried I shouldn’t have been going anyway, and should wait a few more months…I had felt it was okay since it was just her and me and we wear masks the whole time, but I am there for almost two hours if I do a cut and color and she definitely sees more people each day than I do. Or maybe I should just do one at a time, but that seems annoying because you end up wasting more time that way. This is my vanity speaking, of course, but I spend all day looking at myself on the computer! I will wait and decide what to do. Another few weeks won’t matter in the greater scheme of things, and I know that pandemic gray is a source of pride for some women.

I am debating if we are going to get to the Garden Glow this year. On the one hand, this is an event I have thought about doing every year for years and years and never made it due to work commitments. Perhaps this is the year to go! But yet, COVID. It IS mostly outdoors yet they still require masks and from what I’ve heard, people tend to follow the rules. Also they have limited tickets from usual years. But yet, still, I don’t want to get COVID and our community spread is terrible, and perhaps future years I will continue a similar schedule of mostly teaching with a few gigs here and there.

I spent a few years trying to take on as many gigs as possible, and it seems that that approach doesn’t help at all in the long term, as each gig disappears just as quickly as it appeared. Being a freelance musician has been the most stressful and thankless part of my career. I was thinking about how wonderful the people I teach are, and instead of a one thing here, one thing there, with the new person moving back getting the job I couldn’t do the one time and then suddenly all the jobs, I have a steady stream of young people (and older) wanting to learn…it’s a more consistent and less crazy-making career path. I would however, love to play chamber music with people who inspire me, or to play a Mahler Symphony again, but I’ve also been lucky enough in my life to have done those things many times.

I taught another Creative Ability Development (CAD) Class yesterday morning and had the most fun. Teaching kids to improvise and improvising myself has been my latest favorite thing (I looked forward to the class, enjoyed it throughout, and ran overtime) and I’m so glad I fell into it. My path to becoming an improviser has been (I think) unconventional and random, and I know I have a long way to go, but like a teacher I had recently said, the best way to really learn to do something is to teach it. (My class is open to anybody who can play a string instrument a little bit, so contact me for more information as well!).

I hope you have relaxing Thanksgiving Day plans. I hope you are being safe, and that you and your families are well. Oh, and check out this recording of The Winter’s Tale with me on violin ($6 to $9). It’s in the style of an Orson Welles Radio Broadcast and is really well done, and I helped create the music.

Random thoughts, Teaching

Picture Annoyances

I wanted to write more blog posts of our trip but I’ve been struggling with how to get my photos from my phone into a format that I can use on this blog program. I normally have been emailing myself photos (yes, tedious) but the other that just stopped working. I guess I was trying to email too many photos at once, but instead of my phone saying that, it just said okay and then did absolutely nothing! I then tried another thing, uploading all my photos to google photos (they are in iCloud already, but my computer is a PC and I’ve not had any luck in the past with having that be helpful) and then I finally got that done after a few days, and then I just went to try to add one to the blog here, and nope, didn’t work. It looks like those photos are in a different format (HEIC) and I’ll have to do another workaround. I could just plug my phone into my computer directly and transfer photos that way but that would seemingly require me transferring all my photos as there are like ten different folders of photos and they don’t necessarily seem to be organized by date in any way (this is the only way I want my photos organized.)

Any suggestions, readers? I will figure this out eventually, but it is causing me to be annoyed.

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It still works to email one photo to myself! This is Louie and I on top of Bunsen Peak in Yellowstone.

It has been a busy week. I’ve had a full teaching schedule (I’ve added a few more students this fall, just squeezing people in!) and have been hard at work on a project I set myself up as well. I’ve taken so many teaching pedagogy courses and such over the years and so I am reviewing the material I’ve been given over this time (it is all organized in binders by level) in a methodical way. I’m making an outline of my personal teaching ideas and really working on it. I have decided that since this is what I’m doing, I want to do it really well…I’ve always considered myself a pretty decent teacher, but I think I can be more methodical (often an issue I have). In an online seminar I was watching this week the teacher said something about how you can give the student a lot of bricks but you have to have a plan for the house or it’ll just be a pile of bricks. I’ve been working through all my students and determining what more I need to be doing for them. This has been fun and time consuming.

Now sometimes, it’s on them. Some of them just don’t practice enough, no matter how much I cajole. But others DO and I just need to make sure they know specifically what they should be practicing. Easy as that Winking smile

So that’s where I am, busy teaching, busy reading, doing a bit of practicing, getting ready for a little band livestream this weekend. How are you doing?

Hope, Teaching

Wednesday

This is the first week in a long time that has gone by fairly slowly. As I texted to my sister last night, it’s because I finally have something to look forward to…she and her kids are visiting!

They are en route to their summer job location and are stopping by. Is it a little risky? I suppose so. But they’ve been being careful (I’m talking about the virus right now, in case you forgot there’s a pandemic) and I’ve been careful, and we are all low risk and will be careful after our visit as well. So I’m super excited to see them! What will we do? Well, nothing really. Run through the sprinkler in the backyard? Cook at home and wash a lot of dishes? Take a socially distanced walk through the neighborhood? These are all thrilling possibilities.

So that means a bit of cleaning since one of them is a crawler. Thinking of a toddler poking around your stuff really makes you see how dangerous your house is. Bottles of bleach, just sitting around. Boxes of cat poo. Stacks of books! Maybe I should just build a small toddler cage and make life easier.

I’m just kidding…to an extent. After all, I have two cats. All my valuables have either been broken by now or are on the one shelf Muriel can’t get to.

This is just a sort of mundane post. All of the anti-racism stuff will be a long haul. It’s still great everybody is talking about it. I hope this energy continues and translates into real systemic change. I’m not naive enough to think that most of the companies and institutions that posted statements last week will actually do much, but I’m just naive enough to think that change will happen, starting with all of us talking about racism. Last Tuesday I saw the thing on Instagram about putting a black box and was really touched by how many of my friends did it. Did it mean anything? I don’t know. But it told me that unlike a few years ago during the Michael Brown protests, this time people were paying attention and looking beyond what the president was saying. This time people believed that George Floyd shouldn’t have been killed by the police, and this time people are saying, enough, and what can we do to help. So the support will come from all of us, and that’s where it has to come from. I have hope, again, and that hope was lost for awhile. I am looking at everything my eyes wide open though, and definitely that includes my own behavior as a white person.

On a lighter note…CATS.

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I celebrated my birthday on Sunday. My mom sent a few old birthday pictures of me.

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It was a pretty low key birthday…not the best ever, but certainly not the worst. I had made myself a Texas Sheet Cake a few days earlier, which is just a rich chocolate cake I often had when I was younger (I think we started making it for my birthday when I was in high school). Louie and I got takeout from Peacemaker Lobster and Crab then—it’s sort of become a birthday tradition to get takeout from there and I have a lobster boil. We keep saying we’ll go another time not on my birthday to try some of the other less extravagent things on the menu but we never do! But yes, a lobster died so I could celebrate my birthday and it was delicious (also the biscuits are to die for).

So now I’ve got three more days of teaching, and then I am taking two days off teaching to enjoy the visit with family, and it’s the first break I’ve had since getting back from Atlanta which was sort of in the before times. I’m more and more hopeful that we will indeed go on our vacation at the end of July, and things are just looking up generally.

I’m still teaching online, in case you were wondering. Especially with having family visit and such, it’s important to minimize contact. I know some of my students have been traveling and I can’t trust them to be safe, so the best thing is to continue avoiding each other. I think it’s a little easier for people now that they have started doing a few more things outside of the home, and now that school is over. A few of mine are not loving being online so much, but I do still think at this time it’s the best thing. We’ll see what happens for the future.

Teaching

Having time to think about a more diverse musical canon for teaching kids to play the violin

I read that somewhere recently: that it is a privilege to have time to think, to have time to process all of the Black Lives Matter stuff happening right now.

I had a whole lesson with an adult student dedicated to discussing how we can incorporate music by non-white male students into our teaching, and how to avoid problematic pieces. It’s not easy! But that doesn’t mean it isn’t important, and that, yes, I should have been thinking about this earlier, but hey, I’m doing it now, so it’ll have to do.

I teach private violin (and a few viola) lessons, so I do something that is optional and generally accessible to higher income families. There are places in the city for lower income people to go to have lessons, but I have not worried myself about doing that in my own studio. I have always told myself I didn’t have the time to worry about how to make my studio more inclusive to lower income people..and I don’t really. But maybe I should try to find some students who need lessons anyway, and either use my time to give them lessons, or solicit donations from other more affluent people in my studio to cover the lower income students. So there’s an easy thought. How to find those students? And right now isn’t the best time just because I’m only teaching online, and it’s not a good time for beginners to start.

My other thought as far as teaching is to include more diverse composers in my teaching. It’s SO easy to just follow along in a method book (I am sort of kind of a Suzuki teacher, so I tend to follow the Suzuki books which are only dead white male composers), and that means kids don’t play anything by Black people, by women, or by anyone living if I don’t branch out. I do tend to branch out a touch, but more to add in “fun pieces” like jazz or fiddle tunes, which thankfully are often written by Black people, or even living people, but that’s not enough—plus, music by Black people shouldn’t have to be FUN, it should also be used to be educational and part of the core repertoire, it should be considered good enough for that. Oh, and there is an etude book I sometimes use by a woman, and one intermediate level piece (Yes, Josephine Trott, I’m looking at you.).

Awhile back I ordered Music by Black Composers but haven’t done anything with it: it’s got a variety of pieces by a variety of composers that would be great for young students, but I was afraid to be seen as pandering (I.e. I didn’t want to give it to my Black students for fear that they would feel singled out, but I wasn’t sure how to use the book across my studio…so I did nothing.). In any case, I am going to try to start teaching one of the pieces, and then perhaps another, and go from there. I also ordered some of the other books recommended in this article on violinist.com that has stuck in my head recently. It’s about how to incorporate more diversity into the core repertoire of your teaching and is written by Claire Allen. I already have the Music by Women Composers Series and haven’t done as much with it yet either, but will. I think my conversations with my student yesterday have lit yet another fire under me to do more with all of this. I want my students to know that music can be written (and WAS written) by anyone and everyone, and that the reason that most music we play is by white men ISN’T because that music was superior (I mean, goodness, so much of it is awful and boring, so why can’t we play awful and boring music by non-white men too, why must it always be BETTER) but because of a culture of white supremacy and patriarchy. 

Okay, another step, how to increase diversity in my studio itself? I teach in the city, and I believe firmly that living in St Louis is important because I want to live in a diverse places, surrounded by different kinds of people (though the actual neighborhood I live in isn’t that diverse…but all sorts of people walk down the sidewalk in front of my house every single day), and I believe that is a step I have chosen to take and continue to take, to stay here and to be here. So my studio should reflect more kinds of people, and yet mostly I have the students of professors, teachers, doctors, and scientists. On the other hand, I think that those adults believe more strongly in music lessons and the importance of education, and also they have more money to spend on these things. I do have Black students, and non-white students, but not many of them.

So those are some of the thoughts I have bouncing around my head, how to make my teaching more inclusive. I know many other teachers are doing the same, and yes, it’s terrible we haven’t done this before. Honestly, I’m embarrassed to be writing this, and to be saying to myself, well, it’s not like you weren’t teaching ANY Black composers, and it’s not like you were doing anything differently that the norm…that’s definitely not good enough. I’ve always wanted to do better than the average, to be better than the people around me. So I will do better, and late is always better than never. And I hope that those around me also continue to do better, and I hope that somebody with more research experience than me makes a book of core repertoire to teach from, not just Black composers, or woman composers, but a whole series of books using a truly diverse selection of songs that all students can use and look at and learn violin from (without having to purchase four books at a time and know that the Black composers, and the woman composers, are in a different book than the main book). I want the main book to be for all the composers, White, Black, from other countries, Male, Female, non-binary, etc…using pieces from them all to teach kids to play the violin. With wonderful age-appropriate history and writing about them all so that music and history are taught side by side.

Teaching

Tired

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I found myself completely exhausted all weekend. I did quite a few things too, but just wanted to lie around and read. I feel like maybe I’m fighting off a cold or maybe it’s just burnout. I think I’ve been getting enough sleep and exercise, and trying to eat well.

In any case, here we are again at a Monday. How does this happen? Like, seriously, where does the time go? It’s nearly the end of February and I feel like it just started. Even the weeks that I don’t think are that busy, are. I counted up and I’m teaching about 30 hours this spring, so that might be why things are so hectic. You may think that doesn’t sound like much but remember that’s not all I do for work, and for every student there is some outside work/planning and admin, which adds up. And then I have practicing, and rehearsals, and gigs. Three out of my five weekdays are insanely busy and the other two are very light and manageable, and I can’t decide if it’s better that way. The crazy thing is that the college semester is nearly half done already—we are on week SIX of 14 which is also crazy.

So the gist is, I feel tired and a bit like time is just flying by and I’m just barely keeping up. On the other hand, I feel totally on top of things…I just feel like all I’m really doing is working and that I am not enjoying or appreciating life as much as I could be.

Then again, I spent the weekend preserving stuff. Louie is out of town and I figured since I was on a learning curve with how to preserve and pickle thing, I should push ahead and get more practice with stuff while I had the chance. So I made cauliflower pickles, apple butter (one jar didn’t seal), coffee apple jam (my first recipe using pectin and I’m not sure how well it turned out) and a triple citrus marmalade that made my dry hands sting like the dickens while cutting the fruit but might be my favorite thing. I also preserved a jar of meyer lemons for cooking this spring/summer. I’m not sure why I’m so into preserving right now, but oh well I decided to just go for it. I suppose I’m avoiding practicing or having friends or something. There’s something about making things that not everybody knows how to that is very satisfying. It is probably the same with cross stitch—it’s neat having things around that you have made yourself. Maybe it’s a mid-life type thing and wanting to leave my mark on the world in some way.

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I am feeling guilty for not attending the Wash U orchestra concert last night. I meant to, and planned to, and then just couldn’t do it. I was too worn out and needed the night to recuperate and not work for a day. Even though attending a concert is ostensibly not working, it still is. I do like to encourage my students, and I know some teachers are like family members to their students, and I just am not that sort of teacher. Maybe if I cut my studio in half, or stopped doing playing gigs, but I am who I am, and I love playing.

I am looking forward to Spring Break and having a few days off from teaching. It takes a lot out of you, always trying to figure out the best way to relate to each student and help them learn the best they can. Sometimes my students just want to chat and avoid playing entirely! Other times they can’t wait to show off their hard work and other times they are desperate for my help to figure something out…but then often ignore my advice on how to practice because it sounds like a lot of work!

I told Louie last week I’d love to just quit working and spend my days cooking, doing stuff around the house, reading, etc. He said I’d probably start hating it, and I said sure, but not for a week or two at least! I do feel like I just had a vacation, but I need another one. Or a sabbatical. How do other musicians keep going all the time? I feel like I’m constantly being pulled in different directions and that there are always people wanting things from me, and sometimes I just need a break, but I’m not sure how to really take a break. Even on a day off I end up having to send emails, fill out paperwork, and practice (that was yesterday) and then feel guilty for not doing all the things I’d planned!

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I probably am doing just fine though. Don’t we all have too much on our plates, and yet we soldier on? I will try not to worry about whether I’m meeting every need of every student, or being the best violin teacher ever, and simply be the best I can be, meet my needs, and do the best I can for my students.