Mark Evans
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Just wanted to let folks in the Boston Area know that Speakeasy will be performing at Framingham State College on April 11th, 2005 as part of our Spring Performance Series. Free and open to the public, our little concerts are at 1:30 in a beautiful turn of the century stone chapel turned Cultural Center.
Anyone interested, just let me know and I'll see that you get directions and a place to park!
Mark
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Hello Geoff!
I run a performance series at Framingham State College (just outside Boston). As luck would have it, I'm booking for my Spring Semester and the faculty member who presents the Jazz program announced he'll be on Sabatical. I'm now looking.
Would love to see your stuff and hear the mp3...soon.
Regards,
Mark
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Then Jim, you have reached Nirvana. If however you re-read Alan's remarks...the wall ain't quite workin' out fer him is it. Far be it from me to turn against the tide and offer a word of warning in contradistinction to the voice teacher's mindless mantra chanted to doe-eyed adherents.
The ultimate safe thing to do...singing? Bravo! I'll keep your words in mind the next time I sing a gig that should canceled when I'm suffering a bronchial infection or pharyngitis because the mortgage needs payin'. As I take the steroid injection and the tiny blue pills and ansicipate the frightening rush and monsterous bounce-back infection after it's all over, (at 50 that bill's harder for my body to pay) your words "ultimate safe thing to do" will give me succor.
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More beer? By all means! Lisa I'm saddened to know you stopped singing. The only thing more frightening than playing an instrument in front of people is singing in front of them. There is nothing to hide behind (amazing how comforting a little button box or 'tina can be to deflect our fears). I hope this is not an irrevocable decision.
Alan, that looking at the back wall thing is tricky. Everyone tells you to do it, but it can really bring on isolation even in a crowd of folks. In an instrumental situation I prefer to keep eye contact with the cats on stage with me and look at the audience. I mean, I don't wink at anybody, mostly (that could start something maybe unwanted) but let them know you appreciate them being there. I can't do otherwise because I am a grade A ham.
I do use the back wall when singing to someone (subject of a song). But I visualize the someone so my eyes can invite the audience to come along for the ride. I just did a lovely little set of Tosti songs that are all about love's misfortune (ain't they all). I was singing right to a visualization of my lovely Dominique with everything I had in me, the audience went right along. Eyes, the windows to the soul.
I make it a point to embrace the audience and thank them for being there right from the get-go. By taking the time to come they have already given you permission to share your gift and passion. It is expected.
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Ah Jim, it is that simple. You have simply to choose. Don't think about it for heaven's sake! Your body will follow. A phrase that is used a lot by singers and instrumentalist I have most enjoyed working with is "living within the moment." Take it any way you want, but an analitical approach will not get you there. "I will make it so, all the other distraction around me will not divert my purpose." The body knows what to do (much better than you or I). Give it the permission to do what it longs to do anyway. If you want a little starter exercise, breeth deeply for about 5 minutes in a quite place before going on stage. It'll bring your heart rate down and help your get to that place where the rush of stepping out under those lights dosen't blow you out of the water.
I struggled with many techniques and resultant spotty success with concentration and projection of my voice until I took my teacher Elena Nikolaidi's advice to heart. "Sing for the cheap set boy, they always come back. Stop all the (word not printable here) American analization and just do it now!" She had to make me angry to do it for the first time, but I remembered. Dosen't feel good at first because you don't feel in control. You then realize you don't have to "control" anymore than you Jim would have to think twice about transposing say "Off To California" from G to D. In fact if you thought about it, there might even be a problem. Don't ask why you would do it just try it. Instrumentalist or singer it's the same process. I know you've experienced having your 'tina seem like it was playing itself.
Staying focused on your colleagues on the stage comes from the same place. When it's good, you can do anything even with folks you've just picked up a gig with. The magic is created, if only for a moment. Is it not why you need to play music, for that magic fix?
Sorry for going on.
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Alan, I too can become distracted on stage. It can be someone in the audience or something different by one of my colleagues, the lighting, the change in the sound of a hall now filled with people, and boy howdy did I talk to myself! In the past I've waited with grim anticipation of that first moment of distraction and for me the subsiquent mistake(s) it always caused. Then I would think about the mistake and make another!
In the last few years I've come up with a remedy that works for me...focus. I focus on being a part of the ensemble I'm creating with. Never allowing myself to loose emotional contact with them and together us with the audience. Sounds very granola, but it works. The audience knows your are there with them, and they react to it. Dosen't matter what instrument or part you play in any given ensemble, that focus pays off.
That focus also takes away the feeling for me that I am alone. I can feel very isolated playing or singing. Allowing that thought stream to continue can cut me off from my colleagues and diminsih what is projected to the audience. Performing can bring out the fight or flight reflex in all of us. This is just my little cheat to go around it.
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Congradulations on this wonderful blessing!
Keep playing and hold your concertina close to your tummy.
My wife sang the role of Gilda in "Rigoletto" here in Boston while 6 months along with our daughter Camille.
We were on our way to Quebec to visit the in-laws and I was wanting to share with my wife a CD of Maria Callas in the role of Gilda. I go over to the track with the big aria, Callas starts singing and my 8 month old daughter starts kicking like a wild person from her car seat. Wow!
Get your little one indoctrinated early!
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I found myself bobbing my head up and down as I read Robin's last two sentances.
The songs and tunes I've learned by ear have been memorized in the process of learning them. They mostly remain intact and very free feeling.
Songs or tunes I've learned from a score are a different matter. I can find myself stuck, worried about making mistakes even in a genre were improvisation and ornamentation are the norm. A little talk with myself, and I let go, mostly.
I've been away from any contact with the concertina and it's related music for 20 years and now that I'm playing again there's been a continuous flood of long forgotten tunes jumping back in my fingers. Can't remember but a fraction of the titles, but there they are. It almost seems as if they're laughing at me saying "where have you been?"
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Not peripheral at all Stephen! I visited your website last night and was duely impressed. Now I more than a bit astounded. You've got your chops together.
A clear look at the whole process may have saved me years of self-doubt and agony. Where were you then?
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I can only guess what might have happened to you and can certainly relate.
I sing with music in hand quite often (Oratorio). By the time a performance of even a work new to me comes along, I've "internalized it." The music is now a part of me and my focus is on expressing it outward with my colleagues and audience. The score in my hand is simply a dramatic prop and of course convention. I avoid looking down at the music because it can break my concentration. I've actually had panic attacks when my eyes have strayed upon the score long enough to get caught up in what measure and beat I'm in and on. It steals the momentary magic we all long to find in free music making.
Maybe something like this happened to you?
Learning music, sight reading, or reworking a familiar tune comes from a part of my brain that doesn't communicate very well with the part that performs.
I'm affraid the busking has turned it up a notch for you. Congradultations!
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You won't be sorry Sean. Not being a Anglo player myself it was like I had oven mitts on when I tried out a Tedrow, but lord have mercy, they are well made and eazy on the eye...and the tone!
Tractor-Trailer driver are ya? Very good. Friend of mine here who plays banjo and stand-up bass drives a long-nose Pete and has limited his hauls to our 3 state area only so he could have more time to fool around with local gigs.
Bluegrass Joke:
How do you make a million dollars playin' Bluegrass music?
Start out with two million!
Enjoy your 30 button Sean. It is a joy to sense your joy and enthusiasm for music makin'.
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Robin,
Brass bands are playing their music as I write (Canadian Brass)! Bluegrass bands (one of my other secret transgressions off the path of musical purity) feel compelled to have a least one Beatles offering.
Transcriptions of Mozart's Opera "Don Giovanni" for wind ensemble were popular and playing in the streets of Prague while the first performances of the work were being presented (Mozart loved it).
I hope that in future I'll not need a visa or Papal Dispensation to play "the Musical Priest" at a session where some other free reeder may feel ownership precludes my participation.
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Paul, I would never wish to ask a traditionalist (of whatever tradition he or she has chosen as their tradition) to change their ways, and if I offend with me poor little English, there's me low and high D whistles and me banjo (which I'm still gettin' over that bein' exceptable ya know).
Reminds me of a sign that used to hang here in Boston during the last century from just about every shop window, "NO IRISH NEED APPLY". What perverse, perhaps poetic justice that it should read in the hearts of some of those loving the rich culture of Irish Music "NO ENGLISH NEED APPLY.
I have held good humor when ribbed about me little English abomination lately (I give as good as I get). The laughing stops when we start singin' and playin' a few and the grinnin' begins. The music is the music and it is honored by the love we all bring to it. But tradition...don't scrape the bark of that tree too deep my fellow free reeder. All of us are Johnny- Come -Latelys on that ledge (beware the harp players, they hope we'll kill each other off).
Thank you, that got my blood going! That's why I got back into this music...Passion! Odd, twenty-five years ago, I only knew of three concertina players in Chapel Hill N.C.(my home) In my travels, I was most always the only one. How it has changed...Wonderful, healthy and vibrant. This backwoods Cracker must now go to one of these squeeze-ins!
Food for thought...I've never run into a musician that had a problem with the English sad to say but another free reeder (and a Bluegrass mandolinist or two).
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Amen! And again, I say Amen Brother Jim! It's the MUSIC ladies and gentlemen.
Free Reeders unite! Throw off the bonds of musical bigotry (I ain't jokin' folks)!
Sorry, it's late and I've yet to have my supper.
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Tradition...a dangerous word. I've personally rejected any such constraints. However, an explanation was was given to me many years ago and it seems at the bottom of the pile of conjecture (from my viewpoint) to be serendipitous:
English were developed for (I hate this incorrect term) "Classical" music. Transcriptions of Baroque and Classical instrumental works were churned out with great enthusiasm as was music of the period written for the English. Of course it was very popular and affordable to the upper middle and upper classes in Victorian Society. Children were tutored in the instrument, parlor concerts by amatures were common, virtuosi gave concerts in evening attire, etc (a cool very upper crusty thing goin' on here). Protestant Missionarys often carried them to accompany hymn singing. These instruments did not (not my phrase here) "filter down to the lower classes" until after WWI. By this time the button box and anglo are predominant in Irish folk music. The conjecture is that we are not just dealing with an application issue here.
Irish music has always been much like Ireland...contradictory. It's a mine field. Some folks will scream that the music can only be presented with heterophony (everybody on the melody line only), raging against any suggestion of homophony (any instrument or group attempting chordal accompanyment). Other folks on the opposite side will hurl back their dogma. Whatever floats yer boat I guess. What would O'Carolyn say? The Cat was very fond of Vivaldi ya' know ( I knew an Italian would figger' in there somewhere!).
Just let me play the cursed thing. It's what works in my hands with my head and lets my heart soar.
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Bill,
My first English was a used Bastari (Stagi) and I have had a chance to play a Jackie. The Bastari's bellows were on the way out by the time I owned it, so I can't speak as to one or the other in that department. The action and tone are far superior on the Jackie I played. The buttons were always sticking on that Bastari (again used Bastari vs. new Jackie). I understand the Jackie has some sort of riveted action which should hold you in better stead until you upgrade.
Consider your pocket. If English is going to be your thing, you'll be looking and coveting elsewhere soon enough.
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Sean, you've got the fever. I would like to support Alan's sage advise here. Save yer nickels man! If the anglo system is what scratches your itch, consider two makers right in the United States. Both Mr. Tedrow and Mr. Morse make fine crafted instruments, I mean F-I-N-E! You'll end up paying less than you would for a new Gibson RB 250 and have something that will last you for years.
I sold all my instruments for graduate school twenty years ago (foolish young cracker that I was) and now at 50 (declaring my freedom from convention and rules) have started replacing them. The banjo wasn't so hard to replace, but the Wheatsone...impossible. However, after a bit of research, I took the plunge and ordered an Albion (English system and my addiction) from Mr. Morse. Wonderful instrument, beautiful tone, lighting fast action. "I was lost but now am found!"
Friend of mine came over last night. He plays a mean melodic banjo. Banjo and concertina duets for hours and we flew like the wind. Heaven!
Learn everything you can on that Stagi. Just wait and save.
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"I'm inclined to take Paul's comments one step further. In my opinion, if the concertina can't be heard in the session, then the session isn't earning its way."
I agree also with Jim and Paul. When in the midst of a room full of folks beating themselves and their instrument so hard that you can't hear your lovely little Wheatstone, my advice would be to politely pack away your treasured instrument and get thee hense! On the way out the door observe a bit. See who in the room you might like to make some music with. Get a name and a number (buy em' a pint or a mineral water). Give em' a call and arrange a meet so you can let that Wheatstone sing!
I go to "sessions" frequently. Sometimes it's good, magical even. Those evenings I go home inspired and alive. It takes hours to calm down enough for sleep to catch me. On the evenings when a "session" has decended into Bedlam, I say hello to friends, perhaps quaff a pint and withdraw.
A Dipper or Suttner? Lovely, but I'd wager it will be years before one might be in your hands and there's much music making to be had between now and then.
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Gonna wade in here and hope to survive. I have heard tell of a concerto for English Concertina by none other than Sir Edward Elgar. A young conductor who approached me now some 20 years ago about the possibility of performing it said the work was scored for English treble and string ensemble. I would like to think it in fact exists. However, I have not found it in a catalog of Elgar's published works. Love his concerto for Cello. Fun to dream huh?
Just to muddy the waters a bit more, concertino refers to the larger ensembe that is juxtaposed with the solo instrument (Solo Concerto) or small ensemble (Concerto Grosso). Length is not prescribed, only form (two musical forces contending with one another from the Latin verb concertare).
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Sean, I've just finished with a biography on Bill Monroe "Can't You Hear Me Calling". It's the author's contention that Bill developed that off the strong beat mandolin chop in effort to inject a bit more texture into the string band sound. Maybe if you'd caught him on a good day, he'd have even gone for bones! Who am I foolin'.
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No bodhrans have been sighted by me Jim. Would be cool though. Any percussion other than the mandolin or banjo "chop" may not be well received.
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Well, family has to love you anyway. Others...they will too. My BG friends were puzzled with the little box. They new I did this "other thing". "Blackberry Blossom" and "Raggtime Annie" won them over. I always take along my English Concertina to Bluegrass jam sessions. If they squint at me funny, I leave it beside my chair and tell them it's just my box of 45 rpm records. Sooner or later it comes out and the fun begins.
As far as your banjo's reaction...just keep the 'tina on a high shelf!
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Oh my! Bluegrass banjo and now concertina (I am similarly afflicted)! The sticking buttons are not your fault. As you become more familiar with this intrument's quirks the sticking button "thing" will decrease but not stop altogether. Pop it back out with your pen knife or jeweler's screwdriver (I have one of the latter in my banjo and concertina case) an' just keep a' goin'! A sparkling version of "Blackberry Blossom" may be just over the horizon.
Question: How have your Bluegrass folks reacted to the introduction of a concertina into your life?
Welcome, welcome, welcome!
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Ah, you have hit a nerve here. Being an English player, I've been asked that question a number of times. Comes down to this for me: It's all how your mind works. The English system fits the way I think. As a kid I played anglo (even took lessons, go figure). It wasn't until an English dropped my hands that it worked. Like a duck to water?
I'm wacky for Irish tunes. One simply has to articulate them with a little extra bounce that an Anglo gives naturally. It also behooves an English player to employ the bellows as it would be presented with the voice (breath). Over the years I've only run into a couple of folks who had a major problem with the "English Scourge" being pulled out of it's case. After a couple a tunes, an abundance of "English Concertina jokes and a pint or to (my treat) everyone was all smiles.
English Concertina Joke:
How do you know when the stage is level?
The fella playin' English has drool comin' out both sides a his mouth!
Usa Gig Tour /speakeasy
in General Concertina Discussion
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Yes, the date is definite David. Chris' comments were spot on and a sad commentary on the current state of affairs. Perhaps it is the intervention of St. Cecilia or the fact that I have a new purchasing director wise in these murky, twisted ways, but Speakeasy will perform at Framingham State College on our Spring Performance Series on April 11, 2005 at 1:30 p.m.
I'm looking into a relaxed club date for them in the Boston Area for that evening since our little concert will be mid day and Geoff expressed an interest in letting hair down and free-reed talk. Update soon to follow. Any folks with suggestions? My contacts are here in the "burbs". Perhaps someone from the Cambridge area might chime in.
Wendy, I'll send you directions and arrange parking. Bring your Albion.