Adam Tendler's Blog, page 23

june 18, 2017 | 1:41am, 7m |

preparing my audition for music school nearly two decades ago, i noticed that the requirement for “classical sonata” invited beethoven, but with the exception of the op. 14 and op. 49 sonatas; each opus has a set of two sonatas. (as i write this i wonder if they also forbid the two-movement sonata op. 54?) these smaller sonatas apparently fail to demonstrate an aspiring pianist’s technical or interpretational skill or potential.
at the time, i didn’t really think  I much of it, cramming the op.31 no. 2 tempest" sonata, really by chance; my teacher had given me the first movement at one point and i adopted it into my audition program once I decided to pursue music school.

later, though, as i read more and more music, i discovered op. 14 no. 1 and decided to play it on my first recital at IU. after all, the school only denied access to the piece in an audition, but not later in a recital. i had recently studied op. 7, beethoven’s fourth sonata after the three in op. 2, and the longest next to the late Hammerklavier, and Op. 14 no. 1 felt like a beautiful answer. unassuming, surprising, deceptively simple but full of shadows and technical traps. so indeed i played it in my first student recital, sophomore year, alongside other unusual works: the Mozart fantasy and fugue in C Major, the brahms variations on a theme of schumann (which I’d still like to play again), and the ginastera doce preludios americanos.

i did, without a doubt, enjoy presenting a forbidden sonata in a concert setting. and went on to ruffle my teacher’s feathers with future challenges to show-off culture—like the time i programmed the complete liszt consolations.
now again i find myself preparing a blacklisted sonata, op. 49, no. 1, and again i find it beguilingly tricky to play and to understand. once more, but also, ago i delight in practicing this forbidden thing, this ‘easy’ thing
(falling asleep at the kitchen table, and thinking crazy thoughts. sort of dreaming….)

june 17, 2017 | 12:17am, 6m | hotbed

looking through crumb’s five pieces tonight on the couch, marking beats and notes and hints and thinking of the process of putting it together in the next month, really from nothing. that blank page, have-to-start-somewhere, first step of learning a piece never gets easier. where do you start? well, anywhere. but you have to. meanwhile, i tend to tell myself, ‘okay, so you’ll start that piece today, but since doing that will take so much mental energy, you should start with everything else—don’t worry, you’ll hit everything. trust me, it’ll feel better, and also it’ll warm you up!“ smash-cut to a week later and i’ve still not touched the goddamn thing, let alone looked at it. always obsessing over something—currently i think my dick doesn’t work, but of course it does. well, i assume it does. tonight, after two beers at nowhere i went to lush and bought 6 or more bath bombs, including one for father’s day. my card, not sent yet, will arrive days late. but i really like the card. and then i bought flowers—a giant bouquet for $20, the most i’ve ever spent. "but it’s worth it,” the cashier at fairway assured me. body sore from the cage performances and who knows what else, so i scurried home with the flowers and took a bath, reading carolyn brown’s book about her life with cunningham, brown (earle) and cage. i think of paris in the teens and twenties as a hotbed for the arts, a time and place where, at least in my imagination, you could scarsely walk ten steps without running into a towering artist. but i think of new york in the fifties the same way. 

june 16, 2017 | 12:40am, 5m | ego

after tonight’s performance, a woman said she loved the work, but wished the music had ended with the dance. now, literally the sound stopped the *instant* the lights went black. so, shall we have a philosophical debate about when a work actually ends? the stillness on the stage? or lights out?   
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producer asks me if i have any messages for the tuner, and i launch into a detailed narrative about how my method of numbering the notes inside the piano differs from that of piano technicians, and that i know this, and that even though the technician might think i don’t know this, i actually do, and–

“i think,” the producer interrupts, “that the technician is more interested in my message to him about the piano, not the pianist." 

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saw mom off this morning. jealous of her return to a land of heady topper and mountains. another friend visits vermont for the first time, sending dispatches from his hikes and meals and beers, much of which i’ve demanded to micromanage. i like coaching people through vermont. 

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a guy said to me today, and i’ll never forget it: “i’ve never actually tasted a condom.” i told him, “well, you’d have no reason to.” this was my polite way of saying that i actually have. 

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the show received a not-great review from the times. well, maybe the show did, but the reviewer singled out its artistic director as the “one thing” wrong. can you imagine reading that? your company is fine, but not great, and that’s because of one thing: “you.” also no mention of the musicians. not the string quartet. not me. not our music. not a word. you’d think we didn’t play. you’d think we didn’t bow at the end. virgil thompson apparently told people to measure their reviews—like, literally with a ruler, and that it didn’t matter what the review said, but rather how much space the reviewer took up. in that regard, the company should feel quite proud. and we, the musicians, i suppose could feel quite worse. because like i said, in all that space, not a word.

june 15, 2017 | 12:25am, 7m | luggage

i tend to nit-pick and fidget before a performance, so imagine my panic when today, in a union theatre, a tech person required me to make a commitment about my stand placement about six hours before showtime; before the dress rehearsal even. in these hours after tonight’s show, i volley between a couple things. one, realizing that little difference lies between one of my students whining after a recital that they “messed up” and me doing pretty much the same thing after i step offstage. i might wax poetic about it, or frame it within the context of my feelings, but really it must appear exactly the same way—annoying. i have to drop it. the changes, the improvements, the tweaks for next time—i can leave that to my journal and personal laboratory. no one’s business but mine. after the performance, people (including ushers) crowded the piano with their questions about cage, cunningham and the scores. all this after a half hour of non-linear, non-narrative, fiercely abstract music with dance, all uncoordinated. in our particular point in history, with so many heels dug in the proverbial sand of our own opinions and stories, and as each of us navigates the low-level trauma of a new crisis each day—people may value art as a kind of clearing; art that requires only to watch and listen rather than to determine and apply a meaning, and then put it somewhere. 

june 14, 2017 | 12:37am, 5m | tape measure

watching footage of cage, tudor and cunningham in the fifties tonight, it seems that the piano has amplification, or some kind of distortion, even with the simple mic-ing. the piano sounds spacious and serene, and my immediate thoughts go, of course, to how i play the pieces, and if perhaps the producers for la dance project expect a certain sound, a certain beautiful blend of sonorities, a certain serenity, that perhaps i won’t provide. then again, i don’t really know how it all sounds or looks, functioning as i do from the inside-out. rehearsed terry riley’s in c with kids tonight. exhilarating but exhausting. mom visiting, both to attend yesterday’s student recital and also the dance production tomorrow. probably the most tireless person. i write this from bed as f measures the apartment with a tape, getting dimensions. mom helps.  

june 13, 2017 | 12:25am, 2m | euphoric pressure-release

at tonight’s student recital, my youngest student ever (3 years old) played first. too young to know that people typically get nervous for these affairs, he joined me at the piano. it went well and, when it ended, he sort of stood before the piano taking in the warmth and cheers. he began even to dance. “he’s hooked!” i announced. helping the next student, i heard sobs coming from the back of the room. i thought they came from this kid’s (even) younger sister, but learned after the concert that he himself had begun to cry. the whole family left within minutes. his mother wrote and apologized for the emotions. he said he felt “happy and sad at the same time,” she wrote. 

june 12, 2017 | 12:08am, 6m | traps

sleepy. considered not writing here. also feeling dirty. like, physically dirty. sweaty. tense. itchy. claustrophobic. anxious. irritable. summer in the city! tomorrow, presenting a second student recital. had a lovely day today with mom. we traveled through bed-stuy and looked at the apartment where f and i will likely move within the year. sharing brooklyn with her made me feel more excited about moving there than ever before. later, i turned pages for a loft concert in soho; music by lejaren hiller. what if bartok lived another 30 years? it might have sounded like this. whenever i hear other pianists play, particularly when they play chamber music, i feel like i don’t know to play the piano. really, the whole act seems altogether magical and astonishing, and the process of learning or practicing the work seems remote and foggy—actually impossbile. you wouldn’t think i’ve played for thirty years myself, and that i do this every day. sometimes even when i play, i’ll catch myself trying to figure it all out—how really does this all work?—but that part of the brain, the part that wants to lay traps for the truth, typically traps only me. 

too sleepy to shape this into anything meaningful. 

june 11, 2017 | 1:27am, 5m | raga

i used to come from indiana to new york city during my music school days, and i can’t remember why. it started after 9/11, when i really thought i might turn my attention toward composition. during these times i consumed the music and writing of la monte young, who i’d known about since high school but whose work i only really encountered at college. growing up in vermont, one couldn’t just pull up the ‘well-tuned piano’ on the internet, or amazon ‘sound and light.’ but at IU, i sort of could; they had a great library. young’s creative outlook pointed me forward in a particularly confusing period, just after the passing of my grandfather, the musical patriarch of our family, whose funeral happened the morning of 9/11. (i should have flown that day). young’s conviction, openness, and somehow comforting dispassionateness toward tradition gave me a sense of purpose and direction during a moment in history where studying music in a conservatory felt, at least to me, impossibly superficial and self-serving. i wanted to participate in, and indeed create, art that barreled through tradition like a bullet train. art that demanded. i sent him fan mail, unsolicited scores (that i also dedicated to him), and eventually emails and proposals to study his work under him—all into the void. still, i visited young’s dream house on church street a number of times through the years, and would bring anyone i truly cared about into its walls to feel the deep generator vibrations and see how they’d react—a kind of litmus test, i suppose. do you feel that? when i finally saw young perform a couple years ago in that space, i think i expected him to somehow know all this backstory and sweep me away, to carve out a moment where i could confess that i’d sent him love letters and souvenirs, and so would begin our creative love affair. but instead, like a yogi, he appeared, performed, and left. the evening indeed had nothing to do with me but i’d gone in hoping for it to scratch a million itches. in essence, i wanted for it to be all about me. i left feeling rejected and disillusioned. seeing an announcement for a series of similar concerts this month, i felt compelled to go again. so i attended tonight with managed expectations and only the desire to experience the evening fully. the waiting. the smells. the sounds. the heat. the duration. his utter joy. his utter indifference. it was electrifying. i want to go again. leaving, i heard an usher say to an older gentleman that he was of course invited to a small get-together downstairs. the man declined. in-between flashes of jealousy, i wondered what i might even say to this hero of mine if given the chance. i realize now, i’ve never actually heard him speak. 

june 10, 2017 | 12:19am, 2m | scoop

this time of year, summer, i tend to think that everyone i know has embarked on something far more interesting than me. i had a good summer last year though. today i rushed out of school for an ice cream. i finally got the strawberry one-scoop cone with about a minute to travel 4 blocks back for my student. on the way, i guess i gripped the cone so tightly that it shattered in my hand. the ice cream exploded onto my beard and across my black shirt, and i literally juggled the scoop itself in midair before catching it with my left paw. faced with a decision—should i keep eating it or not?—i began gnawing at the thing as i walked, dipping my face into my hand for bite after bite. even for the east village, this attracted stares, but at least i felt anonymous. then i heard a woman’s voice behind me, calling my name. “adam! adam!” it came from the mother of a new student. “hello!” she also wanted me to meet her friend. so there i stood, next to veselka, late to teach, introducing myself to a new student’s mother’s friend with a scoop of strawberry ice cream melting in my hand. “how are you?” the mother asked. 

june 9, 2017 | 12:12am, 9m | shelf life

a day defined by a moment when i let go of another student. very young. i introduced the idea during a text exchange, which i regret, mostly because the parent called me out on it later when we talked on the phone. i’d suggested the idea, however, for about a year (in person). but today, for a million reasons, the idea stuck. i have, in truth, at least four students i’d like to release. part of me feels too old to run around town in the subway, showing up on doorsteps. i also find that the students whom i teach in the home simply progress much more slowly than those who i teach in school settings. my turnover happens in home lessons. i should make a log sometimes of all the students i’ve taught and then not-taught. it feels like such an event when someone disappears from the studio, and yet if i really put my mind to it, i’ve lost handfuls of students over the course of several years here. home students might have a shelf life. well, the next installment of the cage pieces (Music for Piano 21-36, 37-52) arrived. they look a million times more difficult than 4-19, and transcribing them feels majorly taxing too. after tonight’s practice (of all my current deadline-rep), followed by a transcription of one of the new cage arrivals, my brain felt like mush. it took a good fifteen minutes for me to figure out 11 minus 3 plus 6. even right now i won’t attempt to re-find the answer. my approach with this onesie will rely on immersion. perhaps if f has to see it every day for a month, he’ll cease to threaten to destroy it. my mind devoured by politics and the seething, unabashed corruption in washington. somewhere along the line, people learned that they can act corruptly and even say they acted corruptly, and nothing will happen. sort of like what would happen if we all suddenly agreed that money, like actual cash, doesn’t actually equal anything . even if i know i’ve done the right thing, and even if i think i did it properly, someone need only just tell me i hurt their feelings and everything else drops away.