Big Deal

It is my distinct pleasure to introduce to you tonight Big Deal Of The Month. Mr. Month won first prize in the local-national-but-really-regional competition and is a senior at Hotshot Conservatory, where he sort of studies with Dr. Comen Studywithme, who is rarely around because he's always traveling to play recitals.

Would you please make welcome Big Deal Of The Month! [Applause.]

Wait a minute, the janitor is walking out on stage. What could be wrong? Microphone? Air conditioner? Organ not turned on? Oh, wait, actually it is the organist, excuse me, the performer, excuse me, the artist. Nice shirt; perhaps you might iron it next time. And tuck it in this time. And where is your coat? Stand up straight. Walk straight. Don’t fall into your bow. Feet together when bowing, you stork. And oh no, no, NOOOOOO, please do not speak before you play. Oh, dang it, you spoke before you played. And you’re still talking. And I’m still sitting here, having been promised a recital. Oh, great, now I’m hearing recited aloud the program notes I already have printed in my hands. And take your hands out of your pockets, for heaven’s sake.

Okay, we’re finally underway now. But your feet are hanging on the bench as if you were fishing off a pier. Don’t your feet have somewhere else to be -- some notes, perhaps? And lower your wrists. And sit up straight. And keep your elbows still. And slow down and hit the right notes. You're a senior, you know. Have you not learned this stuff by now?

Thank goodness this is only entertainment. If it were important, our future would be in trouble.

**********************

Oh, wait. It is important. Well, I’m doing the best I can in my little corner of the world. I’m doing everything I can to remind my students that playing well is only about 40% of the battle. Beyond that, the personality eventually becomes a deal breaker, and gracious hosts won’t put up forever with only 40%. Organ recitals are public events, and a knowledge of public behavior is still necessary for sustained success. When the day comes that I stop being a gentleman or lose command of spoken and written English or lose my interest in the audience's enjoyment or lose interest in thanking my gracious host or lose interest in looking and sounding good, then it will be time for retirement. Set your clocks, and hold me to it.

Joby's rules of subbing

Playing short-term at another church requires you to do things their way. You don’t want people shaking their heads because they couldn’t figure out what you were doing. Here are the things I recommend taking care of beforehand:

1. Find out who is in charge. Pastor or music director?

2. Check that the hymn numbers in the bulletin are correct. Point out any wrong numbers to whoever is in charge, and let them deal with alerting the congregation.

3. Synchronize your watch with whoever is in charge.

4. Ask what should happen at the service start time. If the service is at 11:00, exactly what do they want to occur at the stroke of 11? Prelude starts then? Prelude concludes by then? Announcements? Striking the hour? Once you have your answer, honor that time at all costs. Honoring time makes you look very good, especially if the church is used to an organist who is always late.

5. Ask if hymns are announced or if you’re just supposed to jump in when it's time for each.

6. Ask if hymns are conducted. And hope they are not. If they are, follow the conductor carefully. Unless s/he has no idea what s/he is doing.

7. Ask about tricky rhythmic spots, such as the fermata in Lasst uns erfreuen or that infernal rhythmic kick in Hymn to joy.

8. Ask if Amens are used, whether printed or not.

9. Offertory and Doxology issues: a) if the Doxology is the Old 100th tune, ask which rhythm they use; b) ask about an Amen; c) ask if you should extend the Doxology introduction so that the ushers can get back down to the front; d) ask what you should do if the offertory is over but the collection is not.

10. Ask if there are any unprinted sung responses in the service. Ask if there are any spots where you need to provide pitches for the choir. Ask if those pitches should be blocked or spelled out.

11. If you’re playing the anthem, ask how many people are in the choir. This will help with organ registration.

12. Ask if there is any music they’d like played on the other instrument. Sometimes churches are shy about asking an organist to play the piano or vice-versa, so offer them that flexibility up front. It only makes you look good, and it gives them a better service.

13. Ask if there are any non-musical tasks you should perform, such as dimming lights, rolling a tape recorder, moving something, etc.

14. Plan where you will sit during the sermon. Try to stay out of sight so that you are not distracting to others. If you end up being on full display or in the line of sight of a camera, sit still, and don't text or play games on your smartphone. But if you're completely out of sight (and I was in one church for 7 years), then bring your smartphone and your laptop and a good book. If you're playing three services, you'll want the distraction. I wrote my dissertation during sermons for months. And I composed a lovely piano four-hand arrangement of [title withheld, because I never got permission to do it] during FOUR Easter sermons one year.

It's official

Two things are official this week: 1) Yesterday, I arrived for my third stay at a certain hotel, a record for me for number of stays in the same hotel. 2) I have never worked so hard to register a recital on a two-manual organ.

The hotel in question is the Comfort Suites, Kilgore, Tex., headquarters for the third annual East Texas Pipe Organ Festival, a yearly celebration of the perfect storm which occurred in northeast Texas and northwest Louisiana, courtesy the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, its President and Tonal Director G. Donald Harrison, and regional rep/designer/tonal finisher/local boy Roy Perry. The Festival, the brainchild of Lorenz Maycher, is truly an exciting event. Last year, it welcomed its first students (mine). This year, it is welcoming a record number of attendees, plus students from at least three institutions, courtesy scholarships from a benevolent source and from the Festival itself. The Festival continues to grow, and these landmark organs are gaining a wider audience among the people in a position to keep these instruments healthy for generations.

Now, for the aforementioned two-manual organ. It is Aeolian-Skinner Op. 1175 at St. Luke's United Methodist Church, Kilgore. Even if you don't crank up the blower, you can just look at the console and see that it is a "masterpiece in miniature" (a term I frequently steal from Scott Davis of Austin, Tex.). The organ is a large 2-manual, rather than a small 3-manual. But the possibilities are still endless as of Day 2 of practicing. And because those possibilities are endless, I'm burning through even more pistons on this baby than I would on a larger instrument. This organ can do anything, but it has to be configured to do so, piston after piston. I'm having to re-write my entire brain hard drive to accommodate the extra workload in performance, but oh, how rewarding. I'm looking forward to this recital on Wednesday!

Well, that's just the specification of the organ. Let's move on to its voicing. That won't take long, because only an in-person hearing can get the job done with understanding any organ's tonal disposition. I'll just say that this organ had to be perhaps more carefully thought out tonally than others because it is in a low-ceiling room with lots of carpet. That explains the big ol' Contrebasse in the Pedal, the en chamade, and the delicious plethora of 8-foot stops. If I had to complain, I would wish that the 16' Bassoon in the Swell were extended to 8', and that the 8' Gedeckt in the Swell were extended to 16', as duplexed to the Pedal. But who's counting? The organ is a triumph.

You can read more about this organ and the others in the Festival here. My name is Joby Bell, and I approve the message from these organs.

Memorization, Part 4: Crashing and burning

If you’re not used to playing from memory, then a major memory slip can be disastrous to the performance and/or to your willingness to get up off the mat. But if you’re a seasoned traveler down memory lane, then crashing and burning in performance is nearly always salvageable. In any event, it’s how life goes. It happens because we’re human. And yes, I have heard hotshots in the profession nearly derail in performance. They, too, are human. But the rewards from playing from memory outweigh the task of cleaning up a train wreck on the spot when things derail.

I think I get more unnerved listening to someone else get lost than I do when I get lost. I grunt and sweat and fidget along with them, willing them back on track. But that applies only to people I don’t know, oddly enough. I wasn’t concerned when I was listening to a mentor perform the Franck Pièce héroïque. Somewhere in the middle, it turned into what a dear friend of mine later called “Pièce chromatique et traumatique.” But the performer’s extended “save” was fascinating (if a little long). I have heard another mentor pretty much improvise the entire Bach Passacaglia. Not sure what that was about, but it was interesting to listen to. Too bad the program didn’t say “Improvisation on BWV 582.” (I have also heard people sound like they were improvising that piece, with the score on the rack! But that’s for another post.) Finally, when classmates and I would listen to each other perform in studio class, the crashing and burning was expected, but it was also mighty entertaining. We took solace in the fact that it was only studio class, thank goodness.

Well, on to my own crash experiences. They don’t happen very often. Not because I’m a genius but because the way I memorize is so detailed that there is always a familiar safe house not far beyond a crash site. But every now and then, I do have one of those moments where I can’t see ANY refuge ahead, and I just keep going, carrying my guts in my hands and looking for an escape hatch. Three such moments come to mind:

1. In 2002, I improvised the entire transition passage just before the variations of the Duruflé Veni Creator. That passage is notorious anyway, and I was hopelessly lost for at least a page.

2. In 2004, I reduced the fugue of BWV 541 (G major) from four pages to one. One pedal note sent the whole thing spiraling. One hand was ready to follow the pedal, and the other knew better. That was the worst crash of my career to date. And I had been playing that piece from memory for seven years!

3. Just yesterday, November 3, 2013, I nearly crashed and burned in BWV 550 (the other G major). I had allowed myself to be distracted by a sore finger and by the fact that I had forgotten to take the Wind Stabilizer off. Crash, bang, boom. But I kept going and eventually found the station.

There are several morals to this story: 1) Always respect Bach’s ability to derail you, apparently. 2) Don’t play Bach in G major (apparently). 3) Let go of little things like wind stabilizers. 4) Tell organ builders to make wind stabilizers settable on pistons. 5) Get BWV 550 cleaned up before next week’s recital.

Help Yourself IX: Advent 2013

Here are two Advent-ish offerings for you. If you find either or both at all useful, then click, print, and use freely, with my compliments for a joyous upcoming season of wonder, 2013!

HELMSLEY descant only

Let all mortal flesh soprano solo and organ

Memorization, Part 3: You’ve got it backwards

Everyone has his tricks for practicing, memorizing, maximizing practice time, and what/how to think/feel about it all. Much of the written literature on the subject is backed up by research, experience, fieldwork, and brain study. And much more of it is home remedies. If you read it all and try to follow it, you’d never get to the practice room. And you’d go crazy with conflicting opinions playing in your head. Nevertheless, here’s my home remedy for you: memorizing in the cognitive manner, but with a twist: doing it backwards.

First, let’s take care of “cognitive.” It’s the attention paid to every note, taking notice of patterns in melody, patterns in rhythm, disruptions of patterns (very important), fugue subject entries and alterations, harmonic analysis and direction, active comparison of similar-yet-dissimilar passages throughout the piece, fingerings and subsequent alterations to them in similar-yet-dissimilar passages. The list goes on. Cognitive memory is a deliberate attempt to memorize every note and leave nothing to chance. It is much more solid than kinesthetic (motor) memory. I don’t have to ask anyone if they have experienced crashing and burning in performance because the motor memory hiccupped. They have. And we have all witnessed it, too.

So, memorizing every note is the way to go. The twist in my approach is to memorize from the end and work my way to the beginning. I select the final few notes, just enough to make one “bite” to chew on, and I memorize it. Then I back up and selected a similarly-sized or similarly-difficult bite, chew it, then glue it together to the previous one. I do this from end to beginning, bite by bite.

Benefits of working backwards with memorizing:

1. It eliminates the temptation to “perform” for yourself in the practice room. It actually gets work done, rather than feeding the fantasy of playing the piece in public. It makes that fantasy a reality sooner.

2. Most people practice from the beginning each day, which gives the middle and end less practice time, thereby making the piece sound less solid as it goes in performance. My process reverses that. If people are wowed by the beginning, just wait ’til I show ’em the end!

3. It eliminates the coma that ensues when you start at the beginning, try to memorize, and just end up playing through to the end, fumbling along the way and getting nothing done.

4. It eliminates the panic from looking at the whole piece and saying, “O my God, I have to memorize all these notes.”

5. It makes the piece shorter. You focus on a small part better, rather than continuing to look ahead and see all that music you have to memorize.

6. It eliminates the need to continue playing to the end, because you constantly keep finding yourself in familiar territory. No need to go on to the end! Go backwards and bite off another bite.

7. It forces you to look at every detail and select a bite to chew on. Not too big.

8. As with anything I try to do professionally, it makes the piece sound better, which is the whole point of music, isn't it? Hellooooo!

A new day

The crash on I-40 in eastern Tennessee on October 2 involved the bus from my childhood church, Front Street Baptist in Statesville, N.C. My aunt and uncle were on that bus, as were 16 other friends I have known for many years. Six of them died that day; my family survived. Truly the most tragic day I have ever known.

Of course, the humanity that ensues after something like that is as encouraging as the event is tragic. The Red Cross, donations, hospital staff, first responders, EVERYONE has been a gift from God with their presence and their help. Just as the horror is unspeakable, so was the kindness of thousands. I have no more words for any of it.

I attended the special service the following Sunday morning at Front Street. This is where Joby-the-grieving-for-his-childhood-church collided with Joby-the-professional-musician. I felt the sincerity among the congregation; I felt their pain, and I felt their support and their unwillingness to allow this horror to slow them down in their mission. But their MUSIC has changed from what I once knew. Out of respect for the congregation's grief, I'll not go further into that right now. But when a person like me enters into such a space for the first time in a while, he acknowledges ALL his thoughts and emotions, not just the ones everyone else has at the time. It was an enlightening moment.

But no matter. It's a new day, and for the first time since the unexpected death of my father in 2003, I have a renewed zeal for living life before I die. Some things are important, and others are not.

Nunc dimittis:

Barbara Morrison

Randy Morrison

Cloyce Matheny

Marsha McLelland

Brenda Smith

John Wright

Weddings! Part 5: Jill and Kevin

We're talking about weddings in my church music class this semester. And since I'm such a huge fan of weddings (not), we have plenty to talk about. I'll be brief here.

One of the most viral YouTube videos ever is of a wedding party dancing down the aisle to a canned version of "Forever" by Chris Brown. I don't need to describe the music nor the event. You NEED to watch it here. And you have been warned. Don't say I didn't warn you. I warned you.

I will always maintain that a wedding held in a church is a service of worship, and not of the bride nor groom. But if you watch, you'll see that the bride and groom, particularly the bride, were worshipped in a big way that day. And so it goes. I'm troubled by it only because I'm not comfortable doing certain things in a church. I still don't walk into one without wearing a coat and tie. And I vividly recall some rather physical punishment I received as a kid, after I was running among the pews during a service. I have a learned respect for the inside of a church building. Nothing wrong with a little respect for where one is.

Ancient weddings included processional dances, but I doubt they included canned songs about sleeping together tonight. And they were done outside. While I would never deny a couple the joy that comes with getting married, if you're getting married in a church, then it's no longer just about you and your joy. On the other hand, I know that lightning did not strike our video wedding that day. God did not rain fire and brimstone upon the heathen. The building is still standing; the church still has a contributing congregation; no one got fired.

Well, mankind has pushed the envelope for centuries on what is appropriate in a church. Even murder has been committed in them, so what's a wedding dance down the aisle to a song about sleeping together tonight? So, just as I instruct my students this semester, I'll just say that since we don't know what God really thinks about it, we all have to make our own decisions, in consultation with our congregations, on what we'll allow and disallow in our church buildings. Had that wedding taken place outside, or had that dance occurred at the reception or the rehearsal dinner, we wouldn't have had a blog post today, for it would have been a non-starter. But there are some places on earth where we should still maintain some decorum. And when I'm the last old fart standing on that front, I'll graciously retire, give up the fight, and get out of the way.

I can hear you over there, you know

Practicing over someone else’s noise has not gotten easier for me. In fact, it has become one of those most dreaded tasks I have. Chalk it up to any number of things:

My Type-B personality and its attending allergy to confrontation to ask someone to quiet down so I can work.

Or to the echoes of my childhood and adolescence, when people would insist I play something for them, then they would start chatting with each other from the very first notes, instantly turning me into muzak.

Then there was the wedding coordinator, who would bring engaged couples into the church during the week to show them around and explain how weddings go in the space. I would usually stop practicing, lean over around the console, and say sarcastically, “Uh, don’t let me interrupt!”

Then there was the clergy, who would walk the guest clergy through the chancel during the prelude (of all times) to show them the ropes.

Then there was (still is) the cleaning and maintenance crews, who come in and vacuum, hammer nails, paint, or change light bulbs with cherry pickers. Then their two-way radios squawk, or they start chatting amongst themselves.

And I would never survive in Europe, trying to practice in some church that is practically Tourist Central!

But wouldn’t all this set you off on some level, too? Consider it: I bring someone into your office while you’re working there, and I start up a conversation with them that neither applies to nor includes you. We don’t even acknowledge you. It’s the same thing. The only difference lies in the size of the room.

I’m not looking for a solution here yet. I’m still looking for a diagnosis. Is it that a church or concert hall is considered a public space and that someone practicing is considered to be using only a small part of it? Is it an over-assumed myth that a person playing the organ can’t hear "quiet” conversation in the back row? Yes, it’s a large room, and it is apparently a foreign concept for one person to need the entire space, undisturbed. But it is true. I do need the whole room, for I am listening to the whole room as I work, which means that I can hear you back there, especially your sibilants.

Now, about the solution to this: as it is when entering any room where someone is already working, you either remain absolutely quiet, or you apologize for interrupting and ask if you can stay to __________ . For the record, I will always say yes to such a polite request. It doesn’t bother me at all to take a break and a short walk until you’re finished. But you will acknowledge my presence and existence beforehand! It's more about respect than entitlement to the room.

Two Twofers

I’m about to go play a recital at Houston Baptist University, where I have been asked to play for no more than 70 minutes and to play tuneful if not entirely familiar music. The tuneful bit I can handle, and the 70 minutes I can handle. That then leaves the issue of just what to program. In an hour, I could get through Reubke (20 minutes) plus a Reger Fantasy of some sort (another 20 minutes) or a Widor Symphony. All that is plenty tuneful, but it eats up a lot of my allotted hour. I prefer variety, and so I have chosen to play a program of shortish but pithy works (Franck A Major Fantaisie, Sowerby Pageant, selected pieces by Jongen and Gawthrop, BWV 550, etc.). Problem solved.

The “twofer” special comes into play later on in November, when I’ll be performing for the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival in Kilgore, Tex. That audience will be composed of Aeolian-Skinner buffs, all of whom could handle 70 minutes of Schoenberg but would prefer Lemare, Whitlock, and the pieces named above. The organ I’ll be playing on is two-manual (albeit with a generous spec), in a perfectly lousy acoustic. I have heard big pieces played on that organ before, and they just chew through so much time on a program, while I would rather exploit the instrument’s micro-capabilities.  Therefore, I have chosen to play much the same program described above – shortish pieces that travel well anywhere.

There is a second “twofer” special going on: the Widor Symphonie romane. I played it last April for the very first time, at Christ Methodist in Greensboro. I thought it would be the perfect piece for that organ and for that organ-savvy audience. And it was a perfect programming coup (not played entirely perfectly, but who’s counting?). As I pondered where else I might perform that piece, an invitation came in to play an Evensong recital at St. Philip’s Cathedral in Atlanta. Bingo. So, two days after the Houston recital described above, I’ll be playing the Widor again. It’s not often I need to keep two completely different programs under my fingers, but it feels so good to customize a program for a specific need, audience, organ, or event. I have discussed that before, and I still practice what I preach there.

So that’s two recitals in Texas and two perfect places to perform the Widor Romane. One Widor opportunity has already passed, folks. Hurry in today while supplies last!