nocturnes and stuff

In spite of a suddenly worsening cough, I dragged myself to four lessons on Saturday morning, and was very glad I did.

The first was with a 12-year-old boy from Korea.  It was only our second lesson together, and at the first one he brought one piece he had learned before, and I had nitpicked with him about pedal changes and fixed a few things like rolled chords.  All while wondering how I ended up with him as a student.  Because I am a younger, less experienced teacher, I tend to get the beginners and intermediate level students.  But this fellow is definitely what I would call advanced.  I think there may be some gaps in his musical education, but his playing is solid.  He’s very eager.  Yesterday, when I put a Bach prelude and fugue on the stand, he looked at it for a moment and said excitedly, "May I learn this?"  So we got to work.  He has a physical enjoyment of playing that I must be careful not to teach out of him.  At the first lesson I wondered aloud if he might be ready for a Chopin Nocturne, and yesterday almost his first words were, "Do you have the nocturne?"  I had to confess that I hadn’t brought a copy, but I would go look in the library and see if I could make him one.  I asked if he had heard Chopin Nocturnes before.  He nodded.  "We have a CD," he said.  I think I would like to see him play the very first one.  (That’s the one I played for Marek Jablonski years ago.)  But Bach first.  From what he has told and shown me, I suspect that his baroque exposure has been minimal.

My second lesson of the day was with a new girl, a 5-year-old with a sweet disposition, whose mother remembers me from when I used to assist in Orff class two years ago.  It’s strange what happens.  I had no idea, when I helped Ms. Spur out with some of her Orff classes for 3-year-olds, that I was meeting a future a student.  I like things like this.  It keeps that feeling of POSSIBILITIES! floating around.  Anyhoo, I taught her all of Twinkle and the beginning of Lightly Row in one lesson, and she seemed happy.

The third lesson was a make-up lesson with a student I usually have on Wednesdays, but this week her mother had had to rearrange the time.  This particular student is a preteen girl whose mother asked me to come visit before lessons began, to convince the girl to continue doing piano, and discuss how we would approach it.  She had been doing Suzuki for the last four? years, and been sort of thrown from teacher to teacher every September.  Also, her father, who has musical talent, tends to sit in on her practicing sessions and apparently this can be a source of frustration for both of them.  When I went to visit the family, I tried to say as diplomatically as possible that the girl was now at an age when practicing alone should be an option.  I also said I was open to getting her out of the Suzuki method, and I asked her about the music she likes.  By the end of that meeting, I had witnessed the girl and her parents making a pact about their new approach to her practicing sessions (her alone unless she specifically occasionally asks her father for help).  My first lesson with this girl was good, because when I asked her to do something, and she hesitated, I blurted out, "You can do it Otto!  That will be our motto!" – before realizing that maybe she wasn’t a Simpsons fan and wouldn’t get the reference.  But her eyes went wide and she grinned.  "You like the Simpsons too?"  "Absobloominglutely!"  And later, when she did something right, I tapped my fingers together and said, "Ehxcellent … "  Anyhoo, at yesterday’s lesson, because she had memorized her new piece, I worked on details with her – things like being able to jump to far away chords in time – and we started practicing the jumps with eyes closed.  She was amazed that she could do it after a few tries.  Then we reviewed another piece that she had known before, and she said, half-defiantly, "What if I played the left hand alone at the beginning for a few bars before bringing the right hand in, like an introduction?" and she showed me.  I noted that her mother was looking at me intently.  I said, "I like it.  It’s not how Linda Niamath wrote it, but I really don’t think she’s going to chase us down and get the police to arrest us.  Keep your intro!"  I noted her mother’s face relaxing.  Then at the end of the lesson, I said casually, "I notice you brought your Suzuki book with you today.  Did you want to look at it?"  She said just as casually, "Yeah, sure."  So she flipped it open and I realized that she was almost done Book 2.  "Hey," I said, "Just a few more pieces and you would be done!  I didn’t know that before."  "Yeah, … " she said, "But I don’t want to learn the next one.  Can we skip ahead to this one?" and she pointed.  I agreed.  She doesn’t know yet that I am biding my time and will probably try to convince her to finish all the pieces just for completion’s sake, and so that she can get her certificate.

After the lesson, the mother sent her daughter downstairs ahead of her, and turned back to talk with me.  She said, "Thank you for being so flexible about the scheduling.  Her brother is having some medical difficulties and we have to go to a lot of appointments for him."

"I’m sorry to hear that," I said.  "I hope it’s not serious."

"We don’t really know yet," she said in a smaller voice.

"Crap," I said.  "Not knowing is hard."

"Yeah, well … anyway, so it makes her practicing a little sporadic too, and our work schedules are nuts, and … so we really appreciate being able to reschedule with you.  I really like your approach in the lessons too,  by the way."

My final lesson of the day was the first one with my so-far oldest student this year, a 14-year-old whose teacher used to be Gemutlichkeit Woman!  Does that ever give me big shoes to fill!  This girl had forgotten her books, so while we waited for her mother to bring them, I tortured her with some sight-reading.  Then, a question about a mordant got me talking about the difference between ornamentation in the baroque and classical eras, which led to me explaining the major time periods of music history.  She seemed to be giving rapt attention to my lecture, so I really got carried away.  Then her mother came with her books, and I asked her to show me a piece that she had studied last year with GW.  She brought out something by Handel, and lo, above his name, GW had written "Baroque" in her distinctively beautiful hand.  "Aha!" I said, pointing.  We laughed.

I went to the office to fill in my attendance sheets, and Boss was there, looking at the inserts I had made the night before to stick in the programs for Sunday’s concert at the school.  I had folded/inserted 100 programs but there were 150 to go, which I hadn’t had time for the previous night.  Boss asked with unusual care, "How are you, Music Shivers?"  (That’s funny.  Last night when I was working in the office, Mr. Lovely English Man came by and asked with visible concern, "How are you, Music Shivers?"  What’s going on?  Do I look that awful?  I do have bigger circles around my eyes than normal, because I haven’t been getting good sleep, with all this coughing.)  After saying I was okay, if a little bit sick, Boss asked if I was done for the day.  I said yep.  She said, "I don’t suppose you have any time today to do the rest of these programs?"  So basically I ended up stuffing them in my backpack and taking them home with me to fold.

After some lunch and relaxing, I continued my project of making Ms. Spur’s apartment as clean as possible.  The mission of the day was to spiffify the kitchen.  This included taking the recycling crate downstairs and sorting it into the bins.  In the process, I discovered a lot of stuff that Ms. Spur had put in there just before leaving for her month of rest.  It seems that in the stress of the moment, she chucked out a lot of things I think she will regret not having later.  Perhaps this is meddling on my part, but I saved these things.  They included photos of children from her music classes, and unopened envelopes that looked like bills.  This does worry me somewhat.

I preened a little, donned a coat, packed cough syrup and cough candies and busfare into a purse, and went downtown to see the first VSO concert of the season.

When Bramwell Tovey turned around to conduct the audience in "O Canada," the woman on my right asked me, "Were you expecting that?"  I said, "No, I had forgotten that they start each season this way."
I had pre-ordered an intermission drink, so after the pianist gave an encore (a Chopin nocturne, interestingly enough), I slipped downstairs, picked up my white wine, and bumped into five music school colleagues pretty much simultaneously.  While we all yakked, Mr. Faith suddenly appeared.  He waved shyly.  Then he said, "Happy birthday."  Aw, he remembered … He invited me to sit with him right up at the front under the stage.  This was the exact opposite of where I had been sitting for the first half.  I liked watching the musicians close up.

Afterwards, Mr. Faith offered to walk me to the SkyTrain station, but we were having so much fun talking that I suggested we pop into a Starbucks for a moment.  I got a pumpkin spice latte (AUTUMN!), he didn’t want anything, and we sat on stools by the window and did a concert post-mortem.  Then we talked about how our work was going, and for some reason I remember us laughing a lot.  I finished my coffee, he walked me the rest of the way, I rode home suddenly limp like a rag doll.

Voila.  Saturday.