Spring Vacation 1/2

Spring is here and we wish you Happy Easter and Happy Passover.

Here is the first movement from Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. A live performance of the Jerusalem Academy Chamber Orchestra conducted by Michael Klinghoffer.

Separation

In Memoriam Mark Kopytman

A few months ago, Mark Kopytman passed away. Prof. Kopytman was one of Israel’s most important composers and composition teachers. Many of today’s composers in Israel have studied with him. Mark was a wonderful person and he would teach anybody who wanted to learn. He was my first composition teacher. I was not even a music student at that time; I was studying Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The Musicology department advertised a course called “Composition for Amateurs”, or something similar.
I still remember the first lesson.
Prof. Kopytman said: ‘Once you have a musical idea, there are only five things you can do with it, only five procedures:

Imagine

Musiclearninglive 2012 conference in London was a great experience. It was wonderful to meet all these people who really care about music and about education. It was enlightening to learn what happens in other countries and it was also comforting, in a way, to see that there are similar problems in other places as well. We all agree that music and arts education are important, at least for the well-being of the child, if not more than that. The question raised by the authorities is how much time and money should be invested in arts without taking away too much from the “really important things” such as math, languages and sciences.
To me, there is a more important question: where are the teachers in all of this?

Meditation

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it FLOW, and I have already mentioned in an earlier post that in Tai Chi we call it relaxed concentration. Sometimes I tell a student not to try that hard. “I concentrate hard on what I need to play” he tells me. “Are these the results you want”, I ask? “If not, maybe we should try another kind of concentration. A kind of concentration that is not associated with tension.” How do we learn relaxed concentration? Can we practice it?

Carnegie Hall

They say that anyone can do anything. It is only a question of how hard they work. But is it a matter of practice? What about talent? Can I learn to do something I have no talent for? I always wanted to learn how to draw. People tried to teach me, I bought many books, but nothing seemed to help. I became desperate, until one day I found a book called “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”.

Juggling

I have received a few questions about career and about making professional choices. These questions bother our university students as well as our high school students and their parents. Many parents are worried when their children show serious interest in music or any other field that requires devotion at a young age and may take the child’s attention away from pure academics.
My first answer to these questions is that the job market is so difficult nowadays that people have better chances to succeed if they do something they are really passionate about. In the introduction to my book Mr. Karr Would You Teach Me How to Drive a Double Bass, I talk about the first time I heard Maestro Karr “sing” on his bass. I knew right away, I wanted exactly that.

The Garden

Many times, when we use the term music education, I feel embarrassed. I know what music is, but what is education? I read once in one of my Zen books that a teacher is like a good bonfire: while it is burning, everyone enjoys its heat and light, but when it is done, only the ashes are left to be carried away in the wind. Some people told me that this is a cruel metaphor. Another metaphor I once heard was a story comparing some teachers to builders and others to gardeners. I like the gardener metaphor better.

Open Rehearsal

For those who have enjoyed reading “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” and “Pareto“.

Here is a short video that summarizes those events.

There Is No Second Time

To Lasse Lagercrantz and the wonderful bass students at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki.

“It was better” I said to the student. “It was the second time” said he, trying not to give me all the credit for the improvement. We laughed about it a few times in our lessons and I kept using it again and again during the three days at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Just as I was packing to go home my mind was going through all the lovely experiences I had.

Guest Teaching

To Sjur Bjærke and Dan Styffe and their wonderful students in Oslo.

I prefer to call it guest teaching: teaching away from home. One of the reasons I like to do guest teaching is that I can say the same things I say to my students over and over again yet for my new audiences those things sound fresh and new. I have often asked myself what I like about this situation of guest teaching and what about it is so different from the regular teaching at The Jerusalem Academy. Basically the same types of students exist everywhere, don’t they? I have just done the same thing I hated when my teachers did to me: I categorized the students. Some teachers categorized the students by how talented they seemed to be. Other teachers categorized us by how hard we worked and some valued us according to our manners and discipline. I, for example, was categorized as a troublemaker, although a fairly smart guy and I also had the honor of being under the category of: “He is a could do more-er”.