Tag: piano

Introverted

Timid, haughty, withdrawn, aloof, arrogant…those are some of the words people use to describe introverts. Our celebrity culture looks with some suspicion on that quality of being which finds energy in solitary pursuits. It doesn’t mean introverts fear social occasions, but there can be a sense of acting a part when faced with the small talk and jostling for attention prized by an extroverted society. Certainly, it seems like a mistake to confuse shyness (and its associated anxiety) with introversion. I say this with some authority because I identify as an introvert, and the Meyers-Briggs test I took several years ago agrees. Many of us introverts grew up thinking that something was wrong because the stuff of daily interactions seemed to be harder for us than our extroverted friends.  We thought we were socially deficient, rather than simply socially different.  Of course, my much older and wiser self knows that it’s always a mistake to compare my inner self to your outer self.

Popular psychology and TED Talks have some good things to say about introverts these days.  Reflective, non-reactive, observant…those are some of the positive attributes studies confer on introverts. They are people who crave authentic interactions and not ones built on networking and party banter. They are eager to dive into philosophical discussions, and though not very quick to share opinions,  you can be certain that there is a constant inner-dialogue going on that is weighing the voices of past experiences with current knowledge, emotions and intuition.

But in reality, most of us are probably ambiverts – a convenient balance between extroversion and introversion that allows us to behave in ways we find comfortable, depending on our individual reaction to a particular set of circumstances.  Living on the edges of behavior can be exciting or cautious to an extreme, but finding comfort in the middle just might be something to value more, especially in this world of loudly voiced opinions and shrilly proclaimed fake news and unconsidered  reactions.

Goldberg Variation 2 – Introverted

Peace,

Sonya

 *   *   *   *   *

I’ve lived with Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” for a long time now. More than half my lifetime. I would pull them out periodically, feeling that I was revisiting an old friend, but a friend who always has something new to share. I began thinking about Bach and mindfulness last year in a way that meant something to me. Each variation became linked in my mind with a word and that word became something like the “intention” that yoga students are sometimes asked to set for their practice. A word to mediate on and to help draw more from within. For the next 32 weeks I will post one of the variations and write about the word I associated with the music. Sometimes a connection will seem obvious, but more often it will be unexplainable. It became apparent as I worked on this project that I thought about things which I wanted to cultivate in myself, ways of being in the world that were positive. All of the recordings are to be made in my living room, playing the 9 foot Steinway that was gifted to me on January 5, 2016.

 

 

 

Fearlessness

“Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

 

To me, fearlessness means anything except a state of being without fear.  It reminds me of the word “restive,” which also seems to contradict itself with its unrestful meaning. To be fearless surely means being full of fear, but finding ways to overcome and work with your fears, even when that means on some days simply putting one foot in front of another, or looking someone in the eyes and saying something true. It seems wise to me to be fearful, as long as you’re willing to do the work of being fearless.

I know the times I’ve been most afraid are often the times that I’ve felt most called to be fearless enough to take those leaps of faith that moved my life forward in hopeful and unexpected ways. I certainly have my cowardly moments, and surely fall short of Mahatma Gandhi’s words above, but I do know what it feels like to break free of fear’s bonds. And I know it’s something you choose to do, with your eyes wide open.

Goldberg Variation 1 – Fearlessness

Peace,

Sonya

*   *   *   *   *

I’ve lived with Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” for a long time now. More than half my lifetime. I would pull them out periodically, feeling that I was revisiting an old friend, but a friend who always has something new to share. I began thinking about Bach and mindfulness last year in a way that meant something to me. Each variation became linked in my mind with a word and that word became something like the “intention” that yoga students are sometimes asked to set for their practice. A word to mediate on and to help draw more from within. For the next 32 weeks I will post one of the variations and write about the word I associated with the music. Sometimes a connection will seem obvious, but more often it will be unexplainable. It became apparent as I worked on this project that I thought about things which I wanted to cultivate in myself, ways of being in the world that were positive. All of the recordings are to be made in my living room, playing the 9 foot Steinway that was gifted to me on January 5, 2016.

 

Innocence

I’ve lived with Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” for a long time now. More than half my lifetime. I would pull them out periodically, feeling that I was revisiting an old friend, but a friend who always has something new to share. I began thinking about Bach and mindfulness last year in a way that meant something to me. Each variation became linked in my mind with a word and that word became something like the “intention” that yoga students are sometimes asked to set for their practice. A word to mediate on and to help draw more from within. For the next 32 weeks I will post one of the variations and write about the word I associated with the music. Sometimes a connection will seem obvious, but more often it will be unexplainable. It became apparent as I worked on this project that I thought about things which I wanted to cultivate in myself, ways of being in the world that were positive. All of the recordings are to be made in my living room, playing the 9 foot Steinway that was gifted to me on January 5, 2016.

Aria (Innocence)

J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations are a journey of sorts, and all journeys begin in innocence. We can’t know where any journey will actually take us after all, or what we’ll learn along the way. Innocence is a word with many meanings, but I choose a definition that holds a lack of guile at its core, and one that implies the optimism that hope’s triumph over experience expresses. The innocence of children shouldn’t be carried into adulthood, because it would become a refusal to acknowledge some of the hard truths all adults face. Without burying our heads in the sand then, perhaps innocence in adults doesn’t first assume cunning in the actions of others, and looks like the open-heartedness that tries to see good in the people and experiences we encounter every day. The more I think about cultivating innocence in myself, the more I wonder if it will lead to wisdom.  Journey with me.

Peace,

Sonya

Improvise

My plan for this week was to record one of Francis Poulenc’s Improvisations for piano, and write about the study of improvisation’s effects on the brain. There was quite a splash a few years ago around this topic, and indeed there is a TED talk and several articles available online that describe the effect on certain parts of the brain when someone is musically improvising. All kinds of music can involve improvisation, including jazz, of course, as well as the world’s folk traditions. Some of the most involved improvisations are created by organists, where that instrument’s vast array of tonal possibilities are thrown into the mix.

As you must realize, musical improvisation involves the use of musical building blocks in spontaneous ways, and those building blocks of scales, chord progressions, rhythms and melodic lines are practiced by a musician for years, to the point that they become second nature. These building blocks are then called up as needed during the process of improvising, as skill is transformed into art.

It’s not a big stretch of the imagination to realize that we all improvise on a daily basis. Every verbal exchange is an improvised reaction to someone or something and we use the building blocks of vocabulary and grammar and tone to improvise our comments and conversations.  Some are better than others at being able to speak “off the cuff,” but there is no doubt that practicing builds skill, and in some, even art.

______________________

My plan for this week was also to avoid writing about anything connected to the recent Presidential election, but I simply can’t sweep that under the carpet. In the last few days I have twice been brought to tears by fallout from this election. A friend from Delaware visiting me over the weekend told me about his friends, an older gay couple who have lived in a wealthy Wilmington suburb for years. They came home this past week to a note on their door. “Dear Homos…” it began, and from there became even more hateful, with threats of what a Trump presidency means for all of the LGBTQ community.

In another incident, a woman working at the church where I have been playing this fall shared something with the staff. Her son works at Towson University in Maryland and was walking with three other young African-Americans when they were accosted and taunted by a group of young white men with the words “Hey n…go back to Africa.”  His cooler head kept violence at bay, but what those tormenters didn’t know is that this woman’s son had emigrated from Africa with his parents in 2008, and he is an African-American in the most literal sense.  He and his family were thrilled to have voted for the first time in their new country just last week, and this incident shook them up in ways that are heartbreaking to think about.

The perpetrators of those incidents were improvising, using the building blocks that came most naturally to them I guess – hate, fear, divisiveness, cruelty, ignorance.  We’ve read and heard about many of these kinds of anecdotes recently, but these particular incidents were just two degrees of separation from me, which seems so very close.

I heard another story from a different staff member at this same church.  She was shopping a few days ago in a part of Washington, D.C. that I would have thought to be the epicenter of liberal elitism, in a high-end grocery store near Washington National Cathedral. A group behind a young Muslim woman wearing a headscarf quietly repeated, “go back to where you came from.” The person telling this story said she went over and stood next to the Muslim woman, putting herself in between the ugliness and its intended victim. Without saying anything, she improvised her own response, and it spoke plainly of solidarity.

We have a choice of building blocks with which to improvise, just as musicians can decide what harmonies and rhythms to use in their improvisations. Mean-spiritedness or an acceptance of differences? Ignorance or a desire to understand? Walls or reconciliation? The cowardice of hate or the courage to love?

No one just sits down and starts improvising on an instrument without practicing the various elements of music’s language. In the same way, we all need to practice the building blocks of civil discourse right now, because we don’t know when we’ll be called upon to improvise a response to incivility.

I did make a recording of Poulenc’s lovely little Improvisation No. 7 after all, because music will always be the right response to any situation. (Poulenc, Improvisation No. 7)

Peace,
Sonya

* * * * *

Where I’ll be:

September 4 through November 20 – organist/choir director at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church (1 Chevy Chase Circle, Washington, D.C.) while their Music Director is on sabbatical. (www.chevychasepc.org)

November 27-January 1– organist/choir director at Christ Episcopal Church, Rockville, Maryland, while their Music Director is recuperating. (www.christchurchrockville.org)

December 14, 7:30 p.m. – concert with Zemer Chai, The Mansion at Strathmore. (http://www.zemerchai.org/upcoming-performances-cr3j)

December 12, 15, 16 – World Bank/IMF Chorus concerts, Magnificats by John Rutter and Johann Pachelbel for choir and orchestra. 1:00 p.m.  (www.wbimfchorus.org/news)

December 17, 10:00 – Washington National Cathedral, Bethlehem Prayer Service, simulcast (https://cathedral.org/event/bethlehem-prayer-service)

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

 

 

 

1941

This past summer brought quite a lot of music with ties to World War II Europe into my life I noticed. This week, two pieces that I am preparing for a concert tomorrow –Variations on a theme of Paganini by Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski and a piece written by British composer Benjamin Britten in memory of Polish pianist and statesman Ignacy Paderewski, Mazurka elegiaca.

Two musical works with stories loosely connected emerged from the spring of 1941 as signs of art’s triumph over the hopelessness of war.  Lutoslawski wrote hundreds of arrangements for two pianos, which he and fellow Pole Andrez Panufnik played in the cafes of wartime Warsaw between 1940 and 1944. All of these compositions, except one, were destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising and are lost forever.  But Lutoslawski’s 1941 work, based on Paganini’s malleable tune from his 24th Caprice and used by so many other composers (including Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Liszt and even Andrew Lloyd Webber) found its way out of Poland and is much loved by piano duos.

Britten had an entirely different wartime experience.  He chose to leave England in 1939 and was harshly criticized for doing so.  He spent some of that time in California, where his publisher telegrammed him early in 1941 and asked for two piano pieces that would celebrate Paderewski’s long, multi-faceted career.  But Britten misunderstand his publisher’s request and wrote one two-piano piece, which, following Paderewski’s death in June of 1941, became a memorial work built on rhythms of the traditional Polish dance, the mazurka.  In its middle section, the confusion and turbulence of war seem to play out in music, causing one reviewer to describe the work as “a lament for Poland’s predicament: it’s tenderness is tinged with violence, and in the middle the piece seems to hang by a thread.”  But then, peace always hangs by a thread.

There were other bits of artistic news during that year of war.  The National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C.  The film “Citizen Kane’ was released. And Billie Holliday recorded her song God Bless the Child.  With Holliday’s description of its obscure text as a song that came to her after fighting with her mother about money, there can only be speculation that the words are related to Luke 8:11-18 and the parable of the sower, as many have suggested.  God, so this story from the Gospels seems to imply, has sowed the seeds of divinity in each of us and our lives will be increasingly fruitful as we become increasingly aware of that holiness within ourselves.

Holliday’s own sad life serves to remind us that fame and fortune can’t possibly satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts.  Real happiness comes when our seeds of divinity bear the fruit of peace and quiet strength.  The biggest lesson of 1941 would come on December 7,  though, when this country learned it couldn’t turn its back on evil any longer.  Peace would have to wait.  Neither the quest for fame and fortune, nor the manipulations of power and domination could make anyone happy.

But if that’s just a bit too serious of an ending for this September day 75 years later, 1941 also brought us the first Curious George book.  God bless the child, and the magic of children’s books!

Peace,
Sonya

* * * * *

Where I’ll be:

September 4 through November 20 – organist/choir director at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church (1 Chevy Chase Circle, Washington, D.C.) while their Music Director is on sabbatical. www.chevychasepc.org

Friday, September 9 at 7:30 p.m., Let’s Dance! Music for Two Pianos (no actual dancing is involved). Sophia Vastek and Sonya Sutton play music of Manual Infante, Witold Lutoslawski, Benjamin Britten and Sergei Rachmaninoff. We are raising money for The House of Ruth, an organization that helps women and children coming out of domestic violence and homelessness. We will match any gifts made at the concert to support their good work. Contact me directly if you would like to receive an invitation.

October 5 – Millennium Stage, Kennedy Center, 6:00 p.m., I will be playing on a program with Furia Flamenco and Guillermo Christie

Also in October, I will be playing for the High Holy Days (a first for me) for the Bethesda Jewish Congregation.

* * * * *

This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of new connections between old and new.

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone who might be interested. You can simply subscribe (look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the post) to get a reminder of new posts, or you can register with a user name and password in order to comment. If a community conversation comes out of this, all the better. We have so much to share and so much to be grateful for.

Getting Off the Ground

More love and kindness.  I just heard a presidential candidate say those words, and I’m not often so completely in agreement with any politician.  After getting knocked down, a little love and kindness go a long way in someone’s life. Having been knocked down myself recently, it meant a great deal to me to have people show so much kindness in their support of my effort to get this new blog off the ground and I thank those who read last week’s inaugural Notes for New Day.

This is not really a Notes for a New Day posting.  I’ll be writing every other week, with a piece called Seven Divided by Three coming out on March 10.  Meanwhile, I’m continuing to reach out to anyone who might be interested in reading my musings on the ways that the arts, spirituality and life intersect.

Interestingly, I played last weekend for the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Intersections Festival 2016,  which was described as the place “where the art world and the real world intersect.”  That’s the place where I want to live and hope you’ll join me there.

This Sunday, March 6, I’ll be at St. Columba Episcopal Church with my friend, French harpist Isabelle Frouvelle.  We’ll be playing a beautiful piece for organ and harp by Marcel Grandjany as the prelude to their 11:15 service, and then, adding a Handel concerto, we’ll play as part of a program there at 2:00 (OrganPlusConcert2016). On March 13 I’ll be playing the 4:30-5:00 time slot during the annual Bach Marathon at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church (Bach Marathon).

Love and kindness are running themes throughout Michael Moore’s new film, Where to Invade Next.  He looks abroad for ways that we, as Americans, can better respect the dignity of every human being.  Even if you’re not a fan of Moore, it’s difficult to argue with that need in this world.  He asks us to be better people.  Ones who use the tools of love and kindness to help everyone get up off the ground.

Somehow, this turned into a regular Notes for a New Day posting after all…

Peace,

Sonya