Last week I spent four days remote examining for The Royal Conservatory. These were my first examining days since January, and were a welcome break from my usual full schedule of online and distanced in-person teaching. Through the week I heard young pianists from all over North America via Zoom, and a typical day might find me starting off examining someone in Tampa Bay, then hearing candidates in New Jersey, Alberta, BC, and all over the Toronto area. Hearing remote performances from such a wide geographical area in only one day is not something I ever expected myself to be doing just over a year ago, but is rapidly becoming the norm for piano exams. Once we're all vaccinated and go back to in-person performances, these online exams will still continue for those who want them. But until that happens, all the RCM's exams will be online - I'm scheduled to be remote examining for over 10 weeks this summer.
This change of scenery (albeit online scenery) was pleasant, but one of the challenges of this year is overcoming sameness. Because of our geographical limitation, developing a routine in a smaller geographical area is the way that most of us operate now. The same take-out restaurants, same walks, same workout routines, the same landscape. I find that I'm missing many of the random encounters that characterized the normal course of events in the Before Times - meeting new people, going to new restaurants, experiencing new places, and always encountering the unexpected through the course of the day.
Here are articles that I published in the last week:
- Piercing the Singer/Pianist Dynamic - My thoughts on a very perceptive article by Robert Thies about the incredible amount of effort that goes on behind the scenes for collaborative pianists to become perceived as equal partners. It's an ongoing battle, and one that will be made more difficult by the near-complete hiatus of performing life during the pandemic.
- HBD!Project MATCH Celebrates Composers' Birthdays in (you guessed it) March - This is a project spearheaded by Toronto-based singers Natalya Gennadi and Catherin Carew that features performances of solo, chamber, and vocal works in the spirit of a light-hearted birthday celebration.
Timely articles worth your attention and thought:
- Freelancers on the Edge: How They're Making It During the Shutdown - Stories of how freelance musicians are eking out a living, upgrading their skills, and dealing with the temporary loss of their traditional livelihood.
- 9 Non-Musical Ways Musicians Damage Their Careers - More required reading from Rhonda Rizzo's No Dead Guys. I'm continually astonished at how many musicians lack these basic skills.
- 7 questions that no one asked me about 1 bad year - Austin Kleon uses the NYT's 7 Questions article as writing prompts and writes the answers in his notebook.
- Everything makes sense in the rearview mirror: what systems theory can teach us about human behavior in 2020 - A quick introduction by Rika Sukenik to Systems Theory and how we can better react to change by thinking about not just how elements relate within a system, but by building learning into the cycle.
- what demoralization does to teachers - Public school teachers are having an awful time during the pandemic, mostly because the system no longer allows them to live out the values that brought them to teaching in the first place. Anne Helen Peterson's background on the subject sets the stage for some very unsettling accounts by individual teachers.
- against narratives - A long read by Ava Huang on whether we should think of our lives as having an overarching narrative structure or a more unordered series of episodes.
How have you been able to create new experiences during the pandemic? Hit reply and tell me about the cool stuff you've been thinking up.
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Wendy just finished "Rainbow Forest 2: The Woodlands" a few days ago. You can find this painting and many more at the Foley Music and Arts website.