Welcome to the Flute Doctors blog. These every day anecdotes and musings casually weave in classical music references to whet the appetites of the culturally curious amongst you. Feel free to click on any of the red highlighted sound files or video links to see what gets you jazzed.
September 2010:
Gaga's no Yo-Yo but she gives Lang-lang a run for his money
Christoper Guest, eat your heart out. If he thought an arena full of dog lovers (Best in Show), a washed up rock band (Spinal Tap), a small town theatre company (Waiting for Guffman), or a middle-aged folk singers’ reunion (Mighty Wind) were enough fodder for a film, imagine what he would make of an international flute convention! Yes, every year, more than 4,000 tooters come together to see who can play higher, faster, louder; whose concert gown boasts the most cleavage; whose dissertation about an obscure Macedonian composer has the most pages; or whose flute costs more than a Ferrari. In my head, I resist these gatherings like the plague, but in my heart, I have to admit what a great time I have, every five years, when I manage to drag myself to one. (.....) In addition to catching up with lots of old friends, we heard a host of inspiring performances and we managed to discover a few new works for two flutes that we can’t wait to program in the future. But the musical treat that we least anticipated came as the result of a surprise text message that Liesa received just after landing at LAX. Do you want to see Lady Gaga with Paris Hilton tonight at the Staples Center? Read More
August 2010:
Losing the Fairy for the Trees
Today, I burst a gut with a colleague as she regaled me with stories about her gig as a mermaid. This world-class harpist spent many a sweltering summer night poised inside a clam, playing schmultz for stiff shirts with Ariel fantasies. To add insult to injury, she had to be carried by a Nordic God to her shell, since the costume’s tail had no feet,. And though he came back during each break to give her some water, she’d always refuse, since she couldn’t move to get to the little girl’s room anyway. The humor in such situations is certainly not lost on me, but it did make me question why a musician with a successful international recording career still needs to do such work to make a viable living. I made the leap from a cushy, tenure-tracked music professorship to a career as an independent artist at the ripe old age of 40. I did so with grand aspirations to focus only on satisfying artistic projects that offered me the creative freedom to select my own collaborators, venues and repertoire. As my previous entry explained (Life Beyond Facebook), I did so with a strong faith in the power of music to move people to truly meaningful experiences. And I intended to infuse all of my work with the spirit of advocacy that I described in Yes, We Canada. I still wholeheartedly believe that I can best advocate for the arts as a producer and performer whose work is in the service of building new audiences for classical music. But I also recognize that this requires cultivating people’s deep listening skills in an ADD world where everyone has so many competing demands, from work and family, sports and television, to facebook and twitter.Read More
July 2010:
Yes We Canada - Taking arts advocacy lessons from the Obama campaign
My story about attending Obama’s Inauguration, as a dual citizen of Canada and the States, ostensibly, may seem unrelated to issues of classical music. But today it’s relevance became abundantly clear. So, I begin. As an American-born activist, I was horrified, during the Gulf War, to hear my university colleagues chanting “Whack Iraq” at a pro-war rally in 1991. This experience and others made me vow to flee the land of George Bush Sr. for grassier patches. Strangely, when I was 12 years old, I had received a fortune cookie that prophesized “You will one day win a trip to Canada”…no lie. From that time forward, my northern neighbor always intrigued me and I finally made the leap, in 1993, to pursue a doctorate at McGill. My attraction to the progressive values of Canada led me to plant my roots here and I proudly swore in as a citizen in 2001. Read More
June 2010:
No Snobs Allowed
As I sit in the café that I least often frequent in Vancouver, I am reminded why I don’t usually choose to do my daily writing here. I hate snobs! I mean, if I prefer weak, coffee-flavored milk for my daily fix, why can’t I just order a large, decaf, single-shot latte without getting a sermon about the purity of some roaster’s beans and the fact they will dilute their precious brand if they serve a latte to me “my way”? I think consumers should have the freedom to experience any product of their desire on their own terms. This is why I am so committed to finding alternative ways to present classical music to people who feel that the prevailing concert hall format has too many barriers to entry. Read More
May 2010:
Life Beyond Facebook
I’ve endured years of razzing from friends who resent my insistence on living cell phone-free. And as far as registering for facebook, I only caved last month because too many friends would no longer send vacation or baby photos by email. But, suffice it to say, I am a proud member of Luddites with Blogs. Don’t get me wrong. My insatiable curiosity has been well satisfied by the at-your-fingertips answers that the internet provides for so many of my burning questions. And I find several social media tools incredibly useful in my quest to attract new listeners to classical music. Plus, I am a voracious emailer. But I think that cell phones and facebook prove to be nagging distractions that don’t allow people to be fully engaged in the present moment. Read More
April 2010:
Classical Music Doesn’t Have to be the Kid No One Plays With at Recess
My life long affair with classical music did not exactly start with love at first sight. It was a passion that grew on me. Since fourth grade, I practiced Bach Sonatas and Mozart Concertos, hours a day, purely because I loved the sound of the flute, I got a kick out of performing, it was fun to be good at something, and I happened to find a great teacher from the Symphony, through my Dad’s colleague. Until high school, my weekends were still spent like other New England kids in the 70’s, at basketball practices or Star Wars movies, playing Atari, and sometimes taking road trips to ski, where I would listen to Eagles and Billy Joel 8-tracks endlessly. Then, at age 13, I joined the Boston Youth Orchestra and everything changed. I gradually began quitting sports teams and skipping school trips to spend my Saturdays and Sundays hashing through the challenges and wonders of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring with the only teenagers I knew who “got” me. We were rebels, and nerds, and bohemians, all united by our zeal for making music. We loved knowing that this turn-of-the-century Russian masterpiece, which we all found extremely cool, had the audience throwing tomatoes at the stage in it’s 1913 Paris premiere, because it made us feel radical. But ironically, once I got my driver’s license, on the two-hour commute to rehearsals, I’d still whisk past any classical station on the dial, in favor of alt rockers like Violent Femmes or the Cure. Read More
