Tag Archives: violin

Deep Thoughts, Performing

It’s September, but where is the fall weather?

I’m taking a break from writing about our trip to just writing about my life right now. I’m sure you’re disappointed 😉

September is shaping up to be BUSY. I got asked to play a wide variety of concerts: several on the violin, one on the baroque violin, one on the viola! So there’s a fair amount of “I really should practice” going on, some actual practicing, and then setting up rehearsals, adjusting some students, that sort of thing. I added a chamber music coaching to my responsibilities at Wash U, and I added it on Wednesday evenings, which means that suddenly I am a night person rather than a morning person. I left the music school at 10 pm the other night and was somehow surprised by how busy it was! I also had to teach a makeup last night until 9:30 pm…and I wasn’t even that tired! My alarm didn’t go off until 8 am this morning and it was glorious.

Seriously, after teaching for 4 years in a job (which wouldn’t even have started up yet, but still) which required a 5:30 am wakeup on 4 days a week, not doing that is still a real treat. I will miss aspects of the job, but NOT the morning wakeup. I can freely add things to my evenings and nights without worrying about getting an appropriate amount of sleep, and it’s really relaxing.

The cats can never get enough of Louie. Me, they tolerate. Him, they absolutely love. For Muriel, I suspect it is partly because he does NOT play the violin, and she detests the violin. For Miles, well, they are special soul mates and that’s just how it is.

Monday we biked from St Charles to Machens on the Katy Trail, about 13 miles each way. It was probably the last long bike ride I will manage before our biking/canoing trip in mid-October, but we will get some shorter ones in. I don’t have any more days off until after that, but I do have some days with less things on them.

Sometimes I wonder if we are doing things wrong…other friends without children seem to have a lot more free time! I think often people think that if you don’t have kids that means you will have a lot of free time, and it definitely depends on what you do for your job. If you have jobs like us, which take up so much time (especially seasonally) you still end up being quite busy! I have thought maybe I should do a whole post on not having children, and perhaps I will someday soon. I wouldn’t say that my life looks exactly how I thought it would when I was a child, but whose does? I am not regretful about it in any way, and I love having so many worthwhile (to me at least) things that I do.

Sometimes I day dream what it would be like to have a “regular” 8-5 job, but I know if I did I would just fill my evenings and weekends with music activities. There’s no way for me to not be a musician! On the rare nights that I am done early, like 5 pm, which happened here and there over the summer, it was funny, because we didn’t even know what to do with ourselves! And then sometimes we would just go to bed really early, which was pretty nice anyway, because so much of the summer felt like I was just catching up on sleep and trying to get back into a more normal sleep routine…but it wasn’t like I suddenly had all these hours free, they just went away anyway. I’m sure some people have more interesting hobbies that take up their evening hours (my friend April does aerial silks and plays the flute in addition to biking, hiking, etc) but certainly many people just watch more tv.

Anyway! Louie and I have Saturday evening off together and we may go out to see some live music Saturday night, and we also need to watch The Whale for our movie group. We also have a bike ride planned, in addition to our work: for me a few rescheduled lessons, a concert tonight, a wedding tomorrow, and a church service Sunday morning and rehearsal in the evening. This is September!

Deep Thoughts

On being busy

Everybody says that they are busy, and everybody says that we shouldn’t talk about how busy we are because being busy is bad.

Of course, everybody doesn’t say both of those things, but as a freelance musician and teacher, the way the conversation goes is this:

“How are you?”

“Busy!”

“That’s good!”

I’ve had this conversation (is it a conversation if it’s just three sentences?) with many people over the years. And while it doesn’t allow for much nuance, the idea is: busy equals working, which as a musician is good.

One thing I have been struggling with is how MUCH I need to work. On the one hand, I enjoy what I do: I like playing concerts, I like teaching students (not every day, but I do enjoy working with them overall), I like seeing my colleagues at various rehearsals and working together, and I love music. So when I see a free space on my calendar and somebody asks about something, or when somebody asks about something that sounds super fun, I will make it work. At the expense of, I suppose, everything else.

Many of the podcasts and books for women are how to balance work and life, with work being work and life being family/children. What if you are trying to balance work and life, with life being friends and your partner and whatever ELSE it is that you want to do other than work, because you don’t have children? This is something that people used to talk about, when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s, but I feel like nobody talks about it anymore. It’s assumed, in our culture, that all women in their 40’s have children to balance around, and it is also assumed that any who don’t have children have this freedom to their lives to do whatever they like, whenever they like. And I do know some people who do tend towards the latter, but I’m sure there are other people out there like me?

So, what does a 40-something do when they have to work very long hours to make their career work the way they want it to, but they also want to have a good relationship with their partner, their family and friends? It’s hard to fit it all in, even without children! (And yes, I know how people with children do it: as the lower earner in my household I would be the one cutting out work.)

January and February are traditionally my less busy months, but as I’ve mentioned here, that isn’t the case for this year. It’s a variety of things, but mainly because I took on four different chamber music concerts, two candlelight concerts (a new addition) and a two week run of a show at the Fox theatre, doubling on violin and viola…doing all that with teaching is a bit busy. If you are asking, how do I make it work, the answer is, extreme calendar organization, panic, and years of experience. The good news is, two of the concerts are today which will lighten the load a little bit. And then I have three days off (well, one day off, one day doing colonoscopy prep, and one day having and recovering from the procedure.) I should get some good reading in!

Random thoughts

Frog or Toad?

I played an outdoor concert last night with the Gateway Festival Orchestra and afterwards I saw this little fellow.

I was thinking he was a frog, but Louie said he was a toad (or she, I don’t know how to tell) and I suppose I forgot about toads as an option. The toad stood very still as I walked by and took his picture.

The week went by quickly with teaching, practicing, and well, relaxing. Summer has been really refreshing for me. I’ve had plenty of work so I don’t worry, but between traveling and having more free time than normal, it’s been really wonderful. On the one hand, I wouldn’t be mad if life continued like this, but on the other hand, my monthly take home is a little lower than I want all year long. I do enjoy some of my other jobs (especially teaching at Wash U, I’ve had such wonderful students there!) but man, it is nice sometimes just teaching from home and playing some orchestra concerts and chamber music with friends.

There’s more chamber music this week, and opera as well. It’s perhaps my lightest teaching week all summer, so I have some “early” evenings (7:15 is early, I guess) and plenty of time during the day to do what needs to be done. This does not entail gardening this year: 1) too hot to do yardwork, at least for me. 2) I never did get the vegetable garden in last year.

I think what I need to do is in the fall I need to really put the garden bed away, do a lot of yard work once things die off and then make a real plan in the spring. I miss having fresh veggies, but then again, we may end up traveling a lot next summer too. Either way, we never did our fall “yard clean up” last year and we are paying the price this year with some overgrown stuff happening. (Alternately, we need to just pay somebody to come do that, plus take care of a few trees which are too big probably.)

Miles out on the catio.
Muriel pretending to nap.
Avocado toast and soup.
Brown cheese on waffles with a side of scrambled eggs.

We haven’t been doing too much cooking, but I’ve got a Purple Carrot box coming this week. I think it’ll get us out of the rut, maybe. I want to do more meal planning and make fabulous meals, but then I remember there are only 2 of us…it’s much easier to just roast some broccoli and make a frozen veggie burger, or open a can of beans.

Book wise: I haven’t mentioned much lately, so here’s what I’ve been reading:

The Inspector Brunetti Series by Donna Leon (I’ve read about 15 of these)

Glass Houses by Louise Penny, Inspector Gamache series (loved this series for the most part)

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith/JK Rowling: I like this series, even though I am upset by Rowling’s anti-trans stance. I checked it out from the library so I feel like it didn’t really help her out, but I am conflicted.

Maid by Stephanie Land. I’d watched the tv show and the book was more detailed and really made me think about how lucky I am and how we can treat workers better.

The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri. Great read, about an Iranian women and her and her family’s experience immigrating as well as other refugees as well. Reading too many books like this can be overwhelming, but it makes you consider your privilege, what you could lose, and how other people are connected to you.

The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate. Good read , recommend.

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. Also enjoyed this one, recommend. (I don’t have to write a book report, use google 🙂 )

Book Lovers by Emily Henry. Quick read, predictable but delightful.

We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza. Very good, recommend.

Ruth Galloway Mystery Series by Elly Griffiths. I’m 4 books in and really enjoying it.

TV: Barry–we finished Season 3 recently. Not as good as Seasons 1 and 2, but still enjoyable.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: currently watching. It’s entertaining but starting to feel a little bit cliche, like the characters are developed beyond being actual people and are now just the most ridiculous parts of their personalities. Or it’s always been like that but I’m just in a darker place now?

Anatomy of a Scandal: I wanted to like this, and I did for parts, but overall eh, not recommend.

Oh, and we watched the new Borgen show, I forget the name, while traveling. Loved Borgen, loved the newest season taking place in Greenland as well as Denmark.

We could probably use some television recommendations, as it feels like Netflix isn’t hitting the mark anyway and the other apps are super annoying to browse. Right now we have Netflix, Apple, Amazon and HBO (too many probably!)

Oh, and we went to see Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky with Union Avenue Opera. I thought it was well done, but I didn’t love it. The first act was slow and I wish there could have been a bigger orchestra for some of the music. It was nice to see though, I’m always glad to see new things and I was unfamiliar with the opera.

I guess that’s it for now! I have some practicing to do. Oh, and stay tuned, I am still planning to recap our trip to Austin and tell you what we did there, but I just haven’t yet.

Random thoughts

Halfway Done

By many measures summer is already halfway done. I only mention this in order to freak myself out.

I promise I will still tell you about the portion of our trip to Fayetteville and Bentonville, but life got too busy! I just got back from a trip to visit my sister and her family, and I was busy doing very little there but the time flew by. Before I left I did a very intense online conference on Paul Rolland Pedagogy while doing a normal week of teaching and life…so things were a bit slammed.

The pandemic has brought some great online educational opportunities into my life, and I’ve taken advantage of quite a few, but it means adding things onto an already somewhat busy schedule. That week was intense…livestreams or videos from the time I got up until when I went to bed with the exception of the times I was teaching or some meals. I didn’t even finish all the videos, so I’m halfheartedly playing catchup this week, because everything goes offline this Sunday. I say halfheartedly because I definitely will watch all the main track videos but my original goal of watching all the videos isn’t likely to happen, and that’s okay.

I have two more courses I’m taking this month, and I’m looking forward to them both. I’ve gotten a lot of wonderful ideas and inspiration over the past year and my brain and heart are absolutely full of ideas on how to be a better teacher. I’m working through ideas in my head about what kind of teacher I want to be going forward and how to use and incorporate some new ideas I’ve learned.

I read an article recently about “drift” (that one of my friends had posted online). The idea behind “drift” is that you end up doing things in your life by just sort of “drifting” into them, rather than making deliberate choices. Going to grad school because it was next in life, getting married/having children because all your friends are, taking a good job offer because it seemed like a good job offer and others encouraged you, etc. I sort of drifted into teaching to supplement my income and because people thought I would be good at it. I never felt like one of those teachers that was really into it or loved it or any of that, but in the past year my attitude and approach has changed.

I have been immensely grateful for my ability to teach during the pandemic, and have found such satisfaction in my ability to relate to my students and help them through this time. It has changed my idea of my career and made me feel much more satisfied with what I’m doing.

On other notes: fun stuff! LIVE MUSIC! We bought symphony tickets for next season AND jazz tickets for next season. I have a band performance this Friday, and a concert with the Metropolitian Orchestra of St Louis on Sunday night. (I think I overextended myself this weekend, but it’ll be fine.) I find myself wanting to schedule and do things, and feeling like it’s a slippery slope back into the world of being too busy, yet I am ready to LIVE again, and I think (this may sound crazy but) I’d rather be out and about doing interesting things than sitting at home. The park near our house is doing fireworks this weekend so we have an outdoor party planned, and well, there’s just good things happening.

I watch the delta variant numbers with caution, and found the study out of Israel about the Pfizer vaccine being less effective against the delta variant to be concerning…but I will hold steady and hope that my Pfizer vaccine keeps me healthy, until the CDC tells me otherwise.

We have two more weekend getaways planned before the school year, one camping in a State Park, and a weekend stay in Southern Illinois at a little cabin on a pond. Between then and now, lots of teaching, reading, music, gardening, friends, etc.

How’s your summer going?

Random thoughts

Starting to be normal again

1 Comment

I could start my post with all sorts of caveats, that I know it isn’t normal, that so many in the world are still struggling, etc. But, we are a fully vaccinated household, the vaccines are still working well against the variants, and we are doing things again and it is wonderful!

Not all of us are doing things all of the time

Louie is going to work in person most days. I have a lot of students coming to the house for lessons. It feels more like a workday when he is gone, so we both get more done.

We’ve done a few social activities, which is great! We had dinner with friends Saturday night, I had my first lunch with a friend date since the before times, and we went out to dinner last night at Louie in Demun for Louie’s stepdad’s birthday. (It was delicious, though we ate too much and then went to bed so I woke up in the night and tossed and turned a bit.)

This was on the wall behind me at Louie: it’s by Joshua Bell, a well known violinist
At the opera!

We had purchased “Young Friends” tickets to Opera St Louis for Sunday night, and enjoyed a little picnic first and then saw Highway 1 by William Grant Still.

Our seats were not very good though!

Anyway, it’s been hectic here, but after a week in Arkansas it’s been a lot easier to handle it. I needed that break, and right now, I need another break, but I know it is coming up soon so I am doing well getting through my schedule. I think I’ll teach through July then like I said and take at least one more week off in August: I’m still waiting to hear more certainly when various family members might be visiting in August and that will inform my decision on time off. I’d love to take another trip somewhere, but I think it might just be a staycation with family visiting, with maybe some day trips.

We are planning to camp this weekend, however. I have reservations for two nights at Cuivre River State Park, but currently the weather is looking…not great! We’ll see what happens with the forecast over the next two days I guess. Thunderstorms and camping are not super fun, nor fun for the hiking we hoped to do on Saturday in between our camping nights. I made reservations because things get pretty full around here on the weekends, but who knows how the weather will be, right?

We’ve had some good stuff happening from the garden. We’ve been eating peas, chard, lettuce, and raspberries!

Day Lilies under the new tree.
This lovely platter was a gift from Leslie. We enjoyed a home “happy hour” which just turned into dinner.

That’s it for now…people keep asking me do I have a lighter schedule in the summer. The answer is YES because I don’t have any 7:15 am classes, but I took a bunch of new private students, a few for probably year-round and a few for just summer lessons (keeping up between school orchestra years). I wanted to make sure to replace my graduating seniors, but many of my now-graduated seniors have not stopped lessons yet…so there are some busy teaching days! July is a bit lighter as people get more into camps and vacations, but I won’t fool myself. My schedule won’t be any lighter until I really make it so sometime. I have been fortunate during this time to have an incredibly full violin and viola studio with inquiries nearly every week for possible new students.

I have started 5 beginners in the past month and it’s been fun! I haven’t had so many beginners at once (not counting my school job) in over a decade, so it’s great to try some new strategies with old favorites. I could go on about how I teach beginners, but this isn’t a violin specific blog, so I won’t, but feel free to reach out 🙂

Keep your fingers crossed for the weather being decent this weekend! and tell me, what have you been up to this summer so far? Any interesting activities?

Performing

So you want to host a house concert…

4 Comments

 

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Do you? It will be an awesome experience for you and your guests! My friend Amy and I just played our first one and we learned a lot.

Here’s what we would want in the future.

You: Invite your friends and family. Have them bring wine/apps or provide for them, along with providing the normal party things such as glasses, plates, napkins, etc. Have chairs and space set up for the concert. You’ll want to be able to have 20-30 people (or more, depending on your space) be able to attend and see/hear the concert.

We: Show up. Bring our own stands and  stand lights. Mingle with the guests. Play a concert, interact with the audience. You’ll learn about our music and enjoy it too. We will play for around 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, with a short break. We’ll also get there beforehand and stay after and answer questions! This is a way to get up close and personal with musicians.

You: Provide a basket or jar for musician tips. We did our first one at a friend’s house for fun and to learn. The next one we will need to make some money or we can’t keep playing! If you find that gauche, talk with me. We can work it out. I’m sure your guests would be happy to chip in $10-20 each for a unique and enjoyable evening!

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Here’s how the first one went. Woke up the morning of and worried that no one was attending (we helped out with inviting more than we will in the future, because it just added too much worry and stress, and honestly, you can’t keep inviting your friends over and over, we need MORE audience members, that’s also where YOU come in!)…decide it didn’t matter. Panic that everybody would hate the concert. Decided it didn’t matter because the hostess would love it and we’d have fun playing and whatever, it didn’t matter, who likes classical music anyway? (Spoiler, YOU do, you just might not know it yet.)

The evening arrived: We got to the house. We’d told people 7 pm, and by 7:15 there were probably 25 people. People showed up! Lots of people. They loved it! We started the program around 7:30 and went until close to 9 with a short break. We had a blast playing and talking with the audience, and loved the setting and the gorgeous house and the up close and personal interaction with everybody. Chamber music the way it was meant to be! And the audience was wonderful and attentive and friendly, and of course it’s more fun to play for people like that. These were friends! New and old friends. I had so much fun performing and talking with everybody.

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I’d love to do it again! Look at how much fun we are having! Imagine having two musicians play in your living room. Impress your friends and family with your culture and connections! You can make an ordinary night extraordinary.

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I’m sure I’ll learn more if I play another house concert, but that’s where I am right now. Advice? Interest? Suggestions? Comment or contact me.