Seeing El Sistema in Venezuela: The Music!

I realize as I'm re-reading my blog posts that there's something implied but glaringly missing: the extraordinary concerts and rehearsals we watched and participated in. And what concerts! As a French horn player, the chance to play alongside passionate, curious, and musical young musicians for me was both an honor and tremendous fun. And because El Sistema is all about that go-for-it attitude, I also enjoyed jumping into new waters and singing in choir rehearsals with my Fellows Aisha, Alysia, and Stephanie. Here, a few musical highlights from the trip:

• Attending a recording of Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Simón Bolívar Orchestra in Beethoven's 3rd Symphony.
  

• In Barquisimeto, Ben, Avi, Julie, Stephanie, and I played a concert with the Youth Orchestra of Barquisimeto. This is one of the rehearsals of Prokoviev's 5th Symphony, and it was wickedly exciting to play with several kids who have worked together for years.

• Look out, Broadway. In Valle de la Pascua, I played hookie from the orchestra rehearsal one day to experience a choir session that Aisha and Alysia were leading of "New York." I joined the altos. When the other girls found out I live in New York, they literally got up to move their chairs closer to me, then asked for my autograph. (Helllooo stardom!) Have I sung in choir before? No. Was this way more fun (and absolutely hilarious) than most orchestra rehearsals I've played? You bet...

• Up in Coro, we were invited to hear a concert for orchestra and four soloist singers. Each soloist was a couple years younger than the previous. So by the time this little girl (about 9 years old) came on the stage, we just about fell over when she opened her mouth to sing. The next Miss Venezuela, anyone?

• Also in Coro, some of the Fellows wandered over to a rehearsal for the all Ave Maria program. Stephanie, Ben, Aisha, and I joined the chorus, while Alysia sang the solo.

(For the dress rehearsal of this piece with the White Hands choir, visit the El Sistema and Special Needs blog and scroll down to the end.)

• During our final week, in Caracas, we had a chance to watch Southbank Centre's Marshall Marcus rehearse members of The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra in a Baroque program (unfortunately I didn't get footage of this, but believe me, it was very cool.) And another gem: hearing a beautiful performance of Mozart's Requiem, with the Symphonic Youth Choir Simón Bolívar and the Caracas Youth Symphony, led by Robert Göstl.

Los Angeles, Venezuela, Mahler, and More

It's been a long time since I've written on this blog, mainly because I started a new blog that focuses on funding opportunities for El Sistema inspired programs, but also because, well, there's been so much going on in the Fellows program and I've been doing more experiencing and less processing/sharing. But as the Fellows approach the departure date for Venezuela, I'll begin to update this blog with a little retrospective of the Fellowship from the last few months.

Before I post those blogs, I'm excited to share some videos that my stepfather, Jack Cousin, sent me from his trip with the LA Philharmonic on their first tour to Caracas. (Jack is a bass player with the LA Philharmonic since 1974). From how Jack tells it, the trip for the musicians in the LA Phil was a moving experience. They saw music education like they'd never seen it before: thousands of children playing at the highest levels, with the most unbridled passion imaginable. The orchestra received (unsurprisingly) near-mania enthusiasm at their concerts, and if you happened to go to the live simulcast of Mahler's 8th Symphony last Saturday (with 1400 people on the stage), you'll know what I mean.

The trip was covered in newspapers such as the LA Times (on going to Caracas, on the youngest children of El Sistema, on the LA Phil musicians learning about El Sistema), and the New York Times (on the Mahler cycle), and I'd particularly recommend checking out the blog about the surprise that El Sistema had for the LA Phil.

The Fellows are traveling to Caracas next Tuesday (my first time back in 5 years!), on the heels of the monumental trip of the LA Philharmonic. While we'll be sure to have our own unique experiences (quite different with a group of ten people than with an entire orchestra), I hope these videos will be an inspiring peek into the world's greatest music program for kids. Thanks, Jack!

(These videos show a three different youth orchestras from El Sistema. The young musicians in these orchestras have been playing together since they were children.)

Found Sound Nation and the Lucerne Festival: School Project Day 1

I'm thrilled to be in Lucerne, Switzerland, where Found Sound Nation was invited by the Lucerne Festival to lead a series of projects, including a song-writing workshop for a group of teenagers in Nebikon. This iteration of the Found Sound Nation crew includes Chris, Jeremy, Elena, myself, and our newest member and videographer/musician/projectionist/all-around-awesome-guy Temujin Doran.

August 23, 2011

Accompanied by Johannes Fuchs (the Education Director at the Lucerne Festival), his girlfriend Katarina, and his assistant Melanie, we trekked over to Nebikon from Lucerne this morning at 7.30am. Saddled with musical instruments, audio production equipment, and big ideas for connecting with 17-year old Swiss boys through music, we arrived in Nebikon to the smell of cow dung and the site of marvelous green hills.

The school – which we're told is new and exclusively for students who have been held back in school due to behavioral and social challenges – stood behind the train station, and we were greeted by one of the lovely teachers, Marie-Louisa. After setting up the room (a Zoom here, two laptops there, a projector here, an XLR there), we met with the four teachers who would participate in the workshop alongside the students.

While we had planned to include teachers and staff as much as possible (we encourage everyone to be a participant in our workshops and not merely observers), we hadn't anticipated the challenge this would cause in creating a safe space for the students. We began the day in one room in a big circle: 10 boys between the ages of 15-17, 4 teachers, 3 staff members from the Lucerne Festival, and 5 Found Sound Nationers. Already, there were more adults than students.




Chris and Jeremy began with a warm-up of a game they call Toma Toma, in which one person spends one minute making and recording any sound they'd like for an audio track, and another person builds on that track by creating one minute of his own music. And so on and so forth, until we've recorded multi-layered tracks that can be considered musical vignettes developed as a group. While some of the students participated right away, others were reticent to approach the mic, and we wondered if this was a combination of fear of “performing” in front of peers (it was their 2nd day of school), inhibition to “perform” in front of their teachers, or simply discomfort with working in a setting that was being led in English with German translation (my once-fluent German going to waste in the midst of Schweizer-Deutsch dialect).

We managed to record a few short tracks during Toma Toma before breaking for lunch. Over lunch, we re-assessed our strategy and decided on another approach to invite the students to feel freer to create some meaningful material that they felt they owned.


The strategy was as follows: we'd split into four musical stations and four groups of students, accompanied by a teacher. Each group would have 30 minutes to work at each musical station to create and record music that they liked. In one room, Tem worked with the groups on a piano. The lyric-writing station was led by Elena, a teacher, and Melanie. Jeremy and I developed melodies with the groups (with two French horns, melodica, ukelele, and voices), and Chris worked with the groups on creating beats. At the end of the day, we all came back together to hear the clips that we'd created. Feedback from the day? The students loved the beat-station the best (unsurprisingly; it is exceedingly cool).


(Tem plays the Uke)

What surprised us was the variety of songs that the boys came up with. One student wrote angry lyrics about smoking drugs, envy of brand-name clothes, and wishing ill upon his enemies by explaining that when he has a house with a garden, he'll stick them in the backyard as a little garden gnome (which, although a hateful phrase, couldn't help but be slightly amusing coming out of Switzerland). Another student wrote a moving text about death. Yet another student wrote a heartbreaking love song that was easy to put a melody to, and which we all pleasantly had in our heads the rest of the day.

We look forward to another workshop tomorrow, in which the students will choose which tracks to put together for a full song. Out of nothing, appears something beautiful and bedeutungsvoll.

(Note: this blog will be re-posted to the FSN website with more photos and videos of the students.)

Found Sound Nation and the Lucerne Festival: School Project Day 2

(CONTINUED from Day 1 of Student Workshops in Nebikon)

August 24, 2011

The sessions began today at 8.30am. The students and teachers piled into the large room right on time, and ready to go. It's always fascinating to see the change that people go through once they understand this musical process. Instead of feeling tentative, they're eager to dive right in and create. Already, we noticed that some of the boys sat next to each other, put their arms around one another's shoulders, laughed and joked together like old friends (when they were strangers the day before).

We began by listening to the tracks that Chris and Jeremy had cleaned up (compressed, etc.) the night before (until 3am). For the most part, the students were happy with what they heard. I think that hearing the music they'd written gave them confidence to make more and better musical decisions, and they seemed eager to get to work, developing and combining the tracks into actual songs.

Two of the groups stayed with Chris, Elena, and Melanie, while two of the groups came with Jeremy, Tem, and me. We spent the next two hours re-recording vocals, overlaying additional instruments, adding some extra beats, until finally we had four really great tunes.

But even more remarkable than the music that emerged this morning was the feeling of camaraderie that enveloped us as we worked together. The boys cheered each other on when they heard something they liked; they respectfully listened quietly when we were recording someone; they listened to playbacks huddled together like a team. They trusted Jeremy, Tem, and I not to tell them what to do, but simply to support whatever musical decisions they wanted to make.

There were two examples that really underscore this point about the transformation of some of these young men. I should preface this by saying that we're fully aware of the complexity of using the word “transformation” when it comes to a 1.5 day workshop, and that whatever we noticed might only be a temporary uplifting of moods. Still, there were two moments that highlight what makes this work so damned rich for all of us.

The first example is of a young man, who, on the first day, was totally hyperactive and on the border of being “out of control.” He demanded to be the center of attention, and while he was basically a good kid, he overshadowed the others and made it difficult for them to participate in the music-making. By the second day, as the boys began to bond with one another and form friendships, the unruly one began to settle down. He somehow realized that his opinion wasn't going to trump the decisions of the group, and he patiently waited while others recorded and developed their tracks. He was brilliant at beat-boxing, and seemed happy to bring his skills to the table to enhance the beats of the tunes. I loved watching him soften, becoming aware that it's OK to be part of the group, and not always “on.”

The second example was in regards to the shyest boy of the bunch, and perhaps the one with the worst self-image. Before I continue, I should explain something about myself: in working with children, I am always attracted to the most difficult one, and I find myself drawn to include the kid who sits in the back of the room stewing in his misery and self-loathing. I'm not sure why, but this has always been the case. So it's no surprise that I noticed Michael* (name changed for protection) sitting deliberately further away from everyone in each of our sessions. He made no effort to participate. When we were in the small groups yesterday, I began to understand that he is deeply self-conscious and angry. In that session, I had tried to include him in multiple ways, but continually failed. However, I noticed one thing: he would mutter to himself under his breath, and somehow I understood his voice and the German to know that he was making comments on the music. Things like, “that's not the right beat for this song,” or, “that needs another melody.” He was making musical decisions to himself, without wanting to actively participate.

Today, while we were completing the tracks, we were asking everyone to give us text they'd written that we hadn't used yet. He handed me his text but insisted that he didn't want to use it. When I asked why, he said it sucked. I offered to work with him on developing it if he didn't like it, and asked him some questions about what he didn't like. He wasn't cooperating in the conversation, so I asked him to come to a corner where the rest of the group couldn't hear us. I explained that we didn't have to use his text if he didn't want to, but that we were here to help him make music that he liked. He replied with, “Es ist mir egal” (it doesn't matter to me at all), and “kann ich einfach sitzen und nicht mitteilen?” (can't I just sit and not participate?) Here, I “outed” him by saying, “I don't believe that you don't care. I've overheard you yesterday muttering your opinion about the music under your breath, and I believe you have many opinions about the music. So, what do you think? What would you do with these tunes if you could do anything?” Aha! It was here he snapped (in a good way!) and said, “well, actually, yeah, I don't like the beats you chose to use today, but I loved some of the beats from yesterday that we made. One of them was one of the coolest beats I've ever heard, and I'd like to hear that one again.” Later, Jeremy and I ended up finding the beat he was referring to and including it in a song, and while Michael continued to sit in the back of the room quietly, he smiled when we all listened to the track later and he recognized the beat that he'd chosen for it. Perhaps not the most glorious "teaching moment" on my part (although I was secretly very proud to have conducted our whole conversation in German), but a minor success with a boy who probably rarely gives himself an opportunity to feel proud of his accomplishments.

By the end of the day, we all gathered in one room to listen to what we'd created together. It was fantastic! And the best news of all: the teachers are going to arrange for the students to come to Lucerne for our party at the Buvette on Thursday night, where we'll present the boys' work and explain the project to the public.

While we may not see these boys again after Thursday (or at least for a long time), we hope that they'll walk away knowing that they created and owned something that is exclusively theirs.

January: Alba NY and John Scofield

Sunday, January 30, 2011

I took a short trip up to Albany today to hear John Scofield and Joe Lovano perform at The Egg.

The trip on GoTo Bus from 34th Street was easy (and only $20), and would have been restful had it not been for the abusive father threatening to hit his baby. Not a pleasant Sunday ride. The view, however, was gorgeous: a winter wonderland along the highway.

When I arrived in Albany, I was surprised to see virtually no one on the streets. Was this really the capital city of New York? As I walked along the empty streets, admiring the monstrous marble buildings of Capitol Hill, I began to think about other capitals. Cairo, for example, would be swarmed with hundreds of thousands of protesters trying to oust their president Mubarak. In Tunis, police were brutally attacking protesters who wanted to see the ministers of the former president leave the government. The sleepy capital city of New York began to feel oddly peaceful.

Lunch at Jack's Oyster House: my waiter was a lovely man with a strange accent, who turned out to be born in England, raised in Australia, with an English father and German mother. He was one of those people you'd expect to see as a character in a movie rather than as your waiter in Albany. He spoke to us for most of the duration of our meal about many things: his family's history, the history of New Zealand rugby, and Wales, but most interesting was his story about the very city in which we were eating.

According to him, when the Dutch surrendered to the British in the mid 1600s, King Charles II granted the territory in this region to his royal brother James. James wanted to give the town formerly known as "Beverwyck" a new name. It reminded him of Scotland, and so he decided to bestow the town with the name "Alba, NY," Alba being gaellic for "Scotland." Alba, NY... Albany. Whether or not this story is true, it certainly made for an educational lunch.

The Egg is shaped like a gigantic spaceship. It doesn't seem like there are any windows at all, and while the undulate architecture makes one feel slightly disoriented when inside, it is beautiful in an odd, futuristic way.

The show was sensational. The last time I had heard John Scofield was at Carnegie Hall a couple of years ago, and while it was a thrill to hear this legend live, it was also so loud that I needed earplugs. This time, John Scofield was playing in a smaller setting, with his old friend Joe Lovano. These guys really do play together like old, dear friends. What amazed me most about John Scofield's playing was how he comps (or accompanies) Joe during a solo. It was as if John could make his electric guitar sound like different wind instruments! At one moment, I really thought I heard another saxophone somewhere, or a warm brass instrument. At another moment, I turned my head to see if a singer had walked out on stage.

Then there are the intros. When John played the intro to Since You Asked, I felt that the whole room was breathless. He just stands there, and out comes this gorgeous melody, simple at first, but then taking the most unusual turns.

Bill Stewart and Matt Penman provided the tightest of grooves, the kind of rhythms that make you hold onto your seat so that you don't jump up and dance. The conversation taking place among the quartet was intoxicating, and the audience was electric.

During the Q&A, I was reminded of how much we can learn from the legends. Both John and Joe commented on technology today, and said that while it can be helpful to use in personal practice, it has changed the way people put out recordings. I particularly liked what Joe said about how any young person can put out a record, but perhaps before they're ready to. Back when Joe was growing up as a musician, producers would guide musicians and would release only the highest-quality recordings that best represented the musicians. Now, it's hard to know what will be good quality by young, emerging artists.

So, young musicians, take heed! While recording may be good practice, try to release only what best represents you, because it will make a lasting impression. As Joe Lovano said, "If you make a bad record, people will remember it and talk about it. And years later, they'll STILL remember it."

January: Radu Lupu and the New York Philharmonic

I'm usually a fairly discerning audience member: I've been fortunate to hear the world's greatest orchestras multiple times over, and when a concert is anything less than sublime, I leave having noticed a few inconsistencies here and there. But tonight, I was probably the best audience member a musician could wish for. All I wanted was to be played to, to be sung familiar melodies and carried along a sea of beautiful sounds. Brahms 1st Piano Concerto and Dvorak's 8th Symphony, two of my all-time favorites.

Radu Lupu looks a little like Brahms himself, portly, with bushy gray hair and a bushy gray beard. While I wasn't drawn into his every note as I have been with other pianists, I very much enjoyed the whole performance. OK, I thought the horn vibrato was weird and inappropriate for the solos, but he did it with conviction, so I went along with it. But I would have preferred to hear Radek Baborak...

Upon reflection, Radu Lupu struck me as more of a chamber musician than a soloist; he blended with the orchestra in a very organic way, and the piano and orchestra seemed to accompany each other. He isn't imposing or flashy, he is humble in front of the instrument, and as an effect, the piano blends cohesively with the orchestra. This may also be why the piano solo didn't make a particular impression on me other than, "I love this. I am so happy to be hearing Brahms right now."

Brahms was followed by Dvorak's 8th, another old-time friend. Sometimes I'll turn on the 8th or the 7th and blast the third movements on my stereo. It's that powerful brass, the punctuated rhythms, the lyrical folk dances that get me every time, that make me want to grab my horn and blow along, or the nearest person and spin around the room. And the NY Phil did it superbly. The basses sounded particularly strong, and I wanted to leap out of my seat at one point with their energy.

I do think it's unfortunate that an orchestra that can shine so brightly plays in such a dull space. Imagine how they would have sounded tonight at Carnegie Hall, or the Philharmonie. The hall really makes me sad as a musician, and even sadder as a listener, because the joy of hearing live music diminishes when you struggle to hear muffled sounds. We need exceptional spaces for live music, to make the experience of going to a concert feel infinitely better than listening to a recording at home.

Still, Brahms and Dvorak were brought to life tonight. For my first classical concert in awhile, I was delighted to just sit back and enjoy. No (or few) judgments, just music.

October Fests: Inspiring Music Events

Last week was a true inspiration of extraordinary music.

Jazz: Nightly shows at the Jazz Standard with Joshua Redman, Matt Penman, and Gregory Hutchinson. A marathon of groove.

Classical, October 2: Heard the second half of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by everyone's friend, Gustavo Dudamel. I'd never connected the word "seductive" to Ravel's Bolero ever, until that performance.

Jazz, October 3: Village Vanguard, Anat Cohen quartet. So beautiful, soulful, honest. First time I heard Jason Linder on piano and decided I'd like to be a fly on the wall of his practice room.

Wednesday, October 6: Sphinx Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. I loved the string sound of this lovely young chamber orchestra.

September in New York: New Music Bake Sale Brooklyn

September 25, 2010
Tonight is the New Music Bake Sale in Brooklyn, featuring several cutting-edge new music groups such as Newspeak and Ensemble de Sade. Should be fun, with booths and performances by many of New York's leading contemporary music ensembles.