Good Times in Florida

My 200th blog post!



I started the day with the discovery of this creature moping around our screened-in porch. He's the creepiest frog I've come across.




His body looks pretty much like the head of a snake, which leaves you wondering where the rest of the snake is.


He's mean-looking, too.
(Click on the photos to see up close, if you dare.)


This afternoon, I rehearsed my beginning band piece with the beginning band. I learned several things from the process:

Harmonic 4ths, 5ths, and octaves chosen from a minor pentatonic collection that I thought would sound austere and bluesy by turns are much more dissonant and complex-sounding due to the tuning difficulties of beginners.

True accelerandi require too much coordination with the conductor to really work at this level.

On the positive side, I think my piece is a good teaching tool that invites awareness of some jazz traditions as well as allowing for a little culture to be built up around studying the piece. It's a rhapsody that begins with a fanfare, has a 12-bars blues progression, a stop-time in which the low brass get to stand up and play Glenn Miller-style, and a call-and-response build-up at the end.


Back at home, we had fresh tangelo juice squeezed from the crop of our own tree. Very sweet juice.

After supper, I took a cool jog to Lake Hunter.

Spice of Life

A varied day in music here in sunny Lakeland:

five minutes reminding my hands how Chopin First Scherzo goes

attended faculty prayer

a little intro to Dalcroze Eurythmics with a student doing an informal independent-study version of Keyboard Skills for Music Educators

a piano lesson drilling letter names and rhythms with an adult beginner

Ceasar salad for lunch

gave a theory test on chromatic mediants, various pitch collections, tritone substitutions, and jazz harmonization

post-test orange juice sitting on a bench

put new horn obliggato for Malotte's Lord's Prayer into Finale

played for choral rehearsal of the dance from Honneger's King David

coached "Super Boy and the Invisible Girl" and "Little Shop" for Night on Broadway event

listened to some of Mahler 7 first movement on the way home - wondrous fanfares, nature sounds, and sweeping lines that feel like syrup poured on my soul

Imagination

Those of you that know me well know that exploring the intersection of music and faith is my passion. That pursuit has led me to the more general recognition that we human beings need help with re-integrating our faith into the various compartments into which we've separated our lives. The end result is hopefully a more joyful, peaceful, and connected existence.

To put this in another way, I find myself working for a fuller expression of God's image in us. To me, that means that we exist as a cooperative and loving community of creators, which is what I think the Trinity is.

I remember writing in cover letters for job applications seven or eight years ago that I was interested in teaching imagination. At that time, that mostly meant getting my students to think and feel more personally about the music they perform. I'm now realizing that those words about teaching imagination were prophetic. It recently dawned on me that, as I help students recognize God's image expressed through creativity, I am teaching imagination. The word "image" is right there in the word "imagination" but I've been missing the deep connection to God's image in us.

I don't think this realization will necessarily radically change the way I teach, but it does allow me to see how my various musical and pedagogical activities serve a single spiritual goal. When I help my students organize their thinking about music, when I show them how to develop proficiency at the keyboard, when we experiment with ways to communicate in performance, I am nurturing their creativity, their God-image-ness. When I am patient with them, when I challenge them to live in community, when I'm honest about myself, I model wholesome productivity in my relationships with them.

I am grateful for the distinct opportunity of working in an environment in which I can realize these truths about my calling. The culture of faith integration at Southeastern was a providential surprise for me, and it affirms my faith that the Holy Spirit coordinates our lives in very specific ways.

Years ago, I introduced myself to new acquaintances as a classical pianist. Frequently, that led to the response "But what do you do for a living?" or something to that effect. Once I had a full-time college job, I started introducing myself with "I teach in the music department at such-and-such university." That sounded more conventional and sometimes led to more substantive conversations about music.

Now, I think I'm going to start telling people that I teach imagination. That will be unusual, but I think it will lead to the most meaningful conversations and connections yet - a type of witnessing that is rooted in what I do everyday and that focuses on what I believe to be the beauty of God's will as expressed from the very first chapter of the Bible.

Gesture

Four hours of rehearsal yesterday - Broadway, folk tunes, sacred anthems . . . and private piano teaching today . . .

From my current perspective, it seems that the root compelling thing in a performance of a piece of music is the grasp of gesture. If a performance conveys shape and movement, it acts upon me and I am moved. Tired and out-of-tune voices might be okay if the way they move through the music has purpose. I might experiment with having students focus on conveying the gestures of a work before thinking of the dynamics and tempi written in the score. Those markings can be used to refine the students' understanding of the gestures after they have really engaged with the basic gestures.