Concertos, Concerts, and Websites–Oh, My!

Onstage at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall following a performance of the Brahms double concerto, 3rd movement. (Photo Credit: Eric Enskat)

I’ve been keeping busy. Over the past ten days, I launched a website, rehearsed and performed two separate chamber music programs, and played a concerto with an orchestra in Chicago’s Symphony Center. It’s been a grueling couple of weeks, but now my schedule has finally leveled off, and I at last have a chance to reflect on the craziness that has characterized my life for the latter half of June. As it turns out, this is my week to blog, so I thought it appropriate to share the details of these experiences, as each of them turned out to be uniquely rewarding and ultimately educational.

Probably the most challenging of my various endeavors was the creation and subsequent publication of a new online enterprise, Musicovation.com. As its name suggests, Musicovation is a website dedicated to promoting the innovative developments in the music world, ultimately representing a counterpoint to the pervasive negativity that seems to frequently dominate the mainstream musical media. The idea for the site was not actually mine; a former colleague from my undergraduate years conceived of it back in the Fall and called me out of the blue on Thanksgiving weekend to ask if I might be interested in co-founding it with her. I loved the idea instantly, and enthusiastically agreed to partner with her. Thus began six months of lengthy conference calls, meticulous planning, and a sort of boot-camp education in all things website-related for the two of us. Every aspect of the site had to be thoroughly discussed–it took us about four months just to decide on the name–and I almost felt as though I were hanging out in Silicon Valley as we learned the ins and outs of managing the site (you would be surprised how complicated it can be just to set up something like a custom email address). Then, of course, there was the matter of obtaining content. The site’s home page features videos of various musical individuals, ensembles, and organizations who represent positivity and innovation, and our blog features content of a similar nature composed by a wide variety of contributors (our writers thus far have included a fellow in the League of American Orchestras, the President of the New England Conservatory, and a cross-genre freelance musician in Boston). It was definitely a tough process to get everything together–I even took the Amtrak from Rochester to Boston to visit my colleague for a “Musicovation retreat” in April–and there were a couple times where the word “s98w7rhqkshfak11!!!” was used in our emails as an expression of frustration, but after seven months filled with domains, CNAMES, and several calls to the Squarespace helpline, we were finally ready to launch our site on June 20th. It’s now up and running, so at the risk of indulging in shameless self-promotion (which I suppose I pretty much already have in the above novella), I adamantly encourage you to check it out!!

As it turned out, June 20th also happened to be the date of my first performance up here in Door County, Wisconsin. For those of you unfamiliar with Wisconsin geography, or my previous posts, Door County is that little strip of land that juts out into Lake Michigan, making it an ideal vacation destination and a fantastic place for a summer festival. My parents, who are also musicians, have performed on this festival,  Midsummer’s Music, since I was a young child, and in recent years I’ve stepped in as second cellist when needed (my Dad is the other cellist). This year, three string sextets were programmed, so I’ve been a bit busier than usual. In fact, the first thing I did after celebrating the launch of Musicovation was head straight to a rehearsal of the Strauss “Capriccio” sextet. We performed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, all in different venues (given that Midsummer’s doesn’t have a home concert hall, we tour the county and present concerts in art galleries, churches, resorts, and even private homes). Monday should have been a day to relax, but instead, I packed my bags and headed south to Chicago for my biggest gig of the summer: soloing in Orchestra Hall.

2014 marks the 25th anniversary season of the Schaumburg Youth Orchestra, one of the pre-eminent youth orchestras in the Chicago area which I participated in for several years growing up. While the orchestra normally performs in a theater close to my childhood home in Schaumburg, Illinois, they managed to pull some strings and get us into Orchestra Hall (home of the Chicago Symphony) to celebrate their 20th anniversary back in 2009, and since it was such a big hit, they endeavored to do it again for 25. Like many youth orchestra programs, Schaumburg has multiple orchestras to accommodate different playing levels, and so this concert featured the current top-level orchestra as well as a myriad of alumni. Given that I had gone on to pursue music professionally, I was asked to be a featured soloist (a request to which I responded with a resounding “Yes!“), and as another high-flying alum (a violinist) was also available to participate, we decided to do the last movement of the Brahms double concerto. Thus, the week of rehearsals leading up to the big event was so busy that I felt as though I was back in music school. We had three-hour rehearsals each evening, and as my collaborator on the Brahms had just flown in from New York (she’s a Juilliard student), the two of us had to meet in the mornings for individual rehearsals. Of course, after our solo we also sat in principal positions for the portion of the program where the alumni joined, so there was quite a bit of music to have under our fingers.

The day of the concert was a hurried blur. It seemed as though one moment I was warming up in my living room, and the next I was being whisked off on the bus to Chicago, watching the towering skyscrapers gleam radiantly in the baking summer sun. The dress rehearsal went by in a flash, and then came the long wait in my personal (!) dressing room, which was exceptionally fancy and made we wonder if this was the place where they put up Yo-Yo and those other guys when they came in to solo. Although the concert was a fairly big deal, I was surprised to discover I didn’t feel as pressured as I’d had in music school prior to juries and recitals. No matter what happened out there, I figured, at least I wouldn’t have to read any comments afterwards! As it turned out, everything went pretty well, and it was a really cool experience just to perform on the stage that had also been graced by so many prestigious musicians. I doubt I’ll ever be playing a solo there again, but I was immensely grateful for the opportunity, and greatly enjoyed it.

Then it was time to relax, right? Unfortunately, the answer was once again no. I was scheduled to perform the Brahms G Major String Sextet–which isn’t exactly “light music”–on Sunday night in Door County, and given the fast-paced nature of the festival, rehearsals hadn’t started until Thursday. Obviously, I had missed the first two, but the third was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, so I had to get up at 5:45 A.M. in Chicago and head back up north. I arrived around noon, and subsequently rehearsed for two and a half hours. After spending much of Saturday night studying the score, I rehearsed again Sunday morning, and Sunday night we were on! Of course, it helped that everyone in the group knew the piece cold, but I have to admit it was a bit of a change of pace for me to rehearse the piece in two days when just last year at Eastman, a group in my graduate chamber seminar spent an entire semester working on it! I know this is often the norm for professional gigs, but for me, it was definitely a new experience.

Now, July is here and I at last have the morning off. The wind’s shifted to the west here in Door County, so the damp and chilly weather caused by the Lake Michigan breeze has given way to a wonderful burst of warmth and sunshine. I still have a lot of concerts coming up, and Musicovation is always a work in progress, but thankfully, I have no more weeks on the horizon that quite compare to the one I’ve just endured. Yet in the midst of it all, somewhere between the frenetic bustling of downtown Chicago and the serene stillness of northeast Wisconsin, I learned an important lesson: nothing is ever that big of a deal when you’re performing music. One Friday night I was making music in an art gallery on a fishing dock; the next, I was doing the same in one of the world’s most renowned concert halls. Both experiences were very different in terms of the extra-musical trappings–at Orchestra Hall, the patrons were lounging in plush red velvet seats, whereas in the art gallery they were in folding chairs–but when the applause began and I walked onstage with my cello, everything was the same. A performance, no matter where and when it occurs, is just that–a performance–and it’s not about hitting everything perfectly and garnering a good review. A wise mentor once told me that art is not about finding perfection, but finding our humanity. That principle is what kept me grounded throughout the frenzy of traveling, what kept me motivated when trying to figure out all of the technological jargon necessary to make Musicovation happen, and what kept me focused when enduring yet another lengthy rehearsal. Sure, performing and promoting music can be undeniably stressful at times, and in the future I’m definitely going to try and avoid schedules like the one I just had–but now, I know that if I keep true to the ultimate mission of what I’m doing–enriching the lives of those who have come to hear me, no matter when or where–then, somehow, everything will be better.