It’s been a crazy-busy season for me, and unfortunately my blog postings have reflected this! But I thought it would be fun to include an excerpt from my soon-to-be-released book on overcoming performance anxiety and attaining peak performance. Enjoy!

As a flutist who learns and performs a lot of new music every year, often in situations that aren’t the most conducive to effective practice and effortless performance, I’ve been on many different points in the learning curve right before concerts. As a teacher, I’ve certainly witnessed this in my students before competitions or auditions. And as a workshop presenter on the topic of overcoming performance anxiety, I’ve heard numerous stories of fatal memory slips, technical back-firings and other musical crashes while on stage.

As musicians, we all want to perform our “best” on stage – the point at which we sound like we know we can sound and are able to share our music confidently and comfortably with our audiences. The first step in this process is so obvious but is so often overlooked: Know the Music. If you can’t play a piece of music cleanly in the comfort of your own home, chances are there won’t be a miraculous occurrence when you’re on stage and you’ll suddenly sail through the difficult passages.

By knowing the music, I mean learning it much more in-depth than being able to “read” it. When I was a young flute student, I got really good at zipping through music without a whole lot of thought or comprehension behind what I was reading. I see this in my own students: I’ll ask students to take away the music and play a passage by heart, and they’re completely unable to do it. Or I’ll ask them what key the piece is in, or what key they’re in now, or what the piano accompaniment is doing while they are resting, and they have no idea. Some of my students who are good at playing by ear will adopt what I call the “hunt and peck” method: they’ll be cruising along on a scale or piece of music until they hear a mistake, at which point they will musically poke around at random pitches until they hear the right one. Not really great ways to learn!

There are five ways of learning/memorizing music:

* Kinesthetic – get all the fingerings into muscle memory.

* Visual – have a picture reproduction of the sheet music in your mind

* Aural – be able to “play it by ear”

* Theory/structure – what are the main themes and where are they throughout the piece? What are the harmonic relationships throughout the piece? What key is it in? Does it change keys? What scales and arpeggios are used at specific points? How does your part relate with the piano or orchestra part – do you know what the other parts are doing at all times?

* Solfège – be able to sing what you play

There is no “best” method of these five. You need to figure out which way or ways you learn best, rely on those, and supplement that with the other methods. I don’t think it is wise to rely solely on one particular method, because there is always the danger that a lapse in concentration or a distraction will occur during a performance, and you don’t want to put all your performing eggs into one basket, so to speak. For example, many musicians who have a superb kinesthetic sense and rely solely on that may be able to fly through difficult technical passages but flounder when performing a slower melodic line.

To develop your visual recollection, try closing your eyes and recalling the music on the printed page. Follow along with your part while imagining yourself playing, and check for any blank spots in the music. Another trick is to write out your part on some staff paper. It’s interesting to discover the parts that come readily as you write and the parts that you have to finger first on an imaginary flute in order to recollect what the notes are!

Knowing the ins and outs of a piece and how it’s put together structurally is invaluable. As a teenager, I was lucky to have some music theory classes taught in my high school, and I also studied some advanced theory at summer music camps. Even if you don’t have formal courses available to you, there are plenty of online resources and books. One of my adult students came into his lesson once with “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Theory,” which I discovered, once I got over chuckling over the title, was a really wonderful, informative book.

Solfège is probably the most underutilized way to learn music (unless, of course, you are a singer!). When I was a student at Eastman, we had to take sight-singing classes. We sang assigned tunes on scale degrees, so that we also understood the relation of each pitch to the whole of the piece. This was a source of no small amount of dread in some of us instrumentalists – if we could sing, we wouldn’t be playing an instrument, right? – and invariably our turn would come after a really fantastic voice major that would make our own vocal mumblings seem that much more dejected.

When I began teaching, I unintentionally and inadvertently started singing a lot in lessons. Many times it was just too time-consuming to pick up my flute constantly and demonstrate for students, so I would sing out notes or passages. I discovered that not only did my ear and sense of pitch and intonation improve, so did my ability to really internalize phrasing and musical ideas: it was as if singing “anchored” the music in my body on a deeper level than just playing it on my instrument.

So while I do acknowledge students’ qualms about singing in front of people, I encourage them to sing their music, even if it’s only in the comfort and privacy of their shower! Fast passages can be sung slowly to really focus on placing the notes correctly in your vocal cords.

I think most musicians who perform a lot by memory use a synthesis of these of these five methods. Personally, I find that when on stage, my primary method is to just trust in my kinesthetic sense and the habits I’ve formed from consistent practice, but if there’s a really tricky technical passage coming up, I’ll briefly focus on a technical element to “ground” the passage so that I don’t lose control but at the same time don’t give up the feeling of spontaneity. I also always have a visual “back-up copy” of the music in my head; in addition, I know how the piece is put together theoretically, and how all the parts work together.

]]> http://www.lindachatterton.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=28 http://www.lindachatterton.com/blog/?p=22 http://www.lindachatterton.com/blog/?p=22#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:54:20 +0000 lindachatterton http://www.lindachatterton.com/blog/?p=22

While summers in Minnesota are completely gorgeous, winters in Minnesota are good for either a trip to Florida or for doing indoor activities that you hadn’t gotten around to in the previous months because the weather was so nice. In my case, this winter I am busy working on my book, “It Sounded Better at Home!” which is an extension of my popular presentations on overcoming performance anxiety. So my thoughts lately have been geared toward various aspects of what makes us unable, unwilling or unhappy about performing, and how to change that.

Competitions and auditions are a great way to gain performing experience, career advancement, and to push yourself to a higher level of excellence. And I have yet to hear of a musician who’s never had a bad experience with one! I have numerous, humorous recollections of my angst-filled competition days as a high school and college student. (My very favorite one was when I was a junior in high school. I placed third. Out of three people. Never mind that the other two were older and more experienced players, or that I waited until the last minute to prepare and so had massive memorization crashes in the Chaminade “Concertino.” I was completely mortified.) I very much viewed the judges as being “out to get me,” ready to pounce on every little mistake I made. Naturally, my playing very often reflected this.

My opinion of judges changed dramatically when I became a competition judge myself. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, I realized a couple important points. One: Judges are actually pulling for you. We all want you to do your best, we all have been in your shoes and we understand that it is difficult to play under pressure. And it’s so fun to hear someone who rises to the occasion and gives a stellar performance! But, point number two: we are all human. Sometimes our comments might be terse or not as specific or informative as you would like. After listening to three hours of musicians, we might get fatigued and lose concentration, despite our best intentions. And most important, each of us has our own bias about what the “best” playing is.

This last item was made very evident to me a number of years ago, when I first started judging. I was a judge for a high school flute competition. There were two students in the finals for their age group, and our panel of three judges was to assign a first place and a second place. The first student, in my opinion, was better: although her tone lacked focus, she was much more musically expressive. The second student had a beautiful sound but not much in the way of musical expression. I figured it was a slam dunk: of course we should award the most musical performance.

But one of the judges was very adamant about awarding first place to the student with the beautiful tone: she thought the foundation for flute playing was a gorgeous sound, and if you didn’t have that, what do you have? After much debate (and still to my chagrin), we awarded first place to the beautiful flute tone student.

Fast forward a few years later. I am chatting with a college flute professor, and we are discussing various former students, under the “where are they now?” category. She recalled one student who was quite frustrating to teach: while she had a beautiful sound and had gotten much praise over the years for her sound, it was incredibly difficult to elicit much musical expression from her, and it was like that through all four of her college years as a music major.

That former college student happened to be the judge on that high school flute competition panel.

Not that that judge was incompetent, clueless, or evil, of course: she was rewarding an aspect of playing that she herself had gotten praise for and viewed through her own experience as being the most important to being a successful flutist. And while most competition judges may not be that overt, none of us can be purely unbiased in a medium that is subjective in so many facets. So, view judges’ comments accordingly.

The common-sense flip side, of course, is that if every judge is making the same types of comments to you, you might want to heed their collective advice!

Some highlights from early 2009 are a trip to Florida to play Roberto Sierra’s Sonata and give my “It Sounded Better at Home!” presentation at the Florida Flute Fair. A side benefit to that trek was that I made some time to swing down to West Palm Beach and visit my wonderful flute teacher from when I was in high school. He has since retired, and he and his lovely wife now enjoy winters in Florida. Bob Webb (I always still think of him primarily as “Dr. Webb,” even though he signs his Christmas cards “Bob” and would be very amused if I called him anything else but “Bob”….similar to my childhood best friend’s folks, who will never, ever be anything but “Mr. and Mrs. Olsen” - it just seems to go against every fiber of my childhood “respect your elders” upbringing…and it’s probably a nice little subconscious method I use for my own personal sense of nostalgia, as well) was the flute professor at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, near where I grew up, and I had lessons with him all through high school.

He was a wonderful teacher - he gave me tons of recordings to listen to and dumped so many pieces of flute music and books about the flute into my lap, and I just ate them up. He had a marvelous sound (and still does!), and we would warm up at every lesson with harmonics or maybe some Moyse long tones. We’d end every lesson with a duet - usually Kuhlau, and so I think I’d covered every single Kuhlau duet in existence by the time I was 16. When I visited him in January, we did some of the same Kuhlau duets I played in high school, which was really fun. He was (and is) such a wonderful inspiration to me, and I owe a lot of my teaching methods to him. Thanks, Bob!

Dr Webb (I mean, Bob) and me - January 2009

Alison Young, superb host at Minnesota Public Radio, did an interview with me a couple months ago for MPR. Here it is, along with some bits of John Jensen and me playing.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/11/20/classical_chatterton/

Enjoy!

My new CD cover! This is what I look like after an hour in the hair and makeup chair, and with the fantastic Ann Marsden as photographer.

As everyone can tell, I am not the most up-to-the-minute blogger…perhaps I should be doing more blog entries when insomnia strikes at 3 a.m. instead of trying to get back to sleep!

I just got back from a fabulous vacation - my first real vacation in about fifteen years, meaning the first time in fifteen years I haven’t had a concert somewhere fun and then tacked on a little sightseeing; also the first time in fifteen years I’ve been somewhere and haven’t even brought my flute. Very weird - I felt pretty naked! Margot and Dave Chatterton celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with the family down in Mexico at the fabulous Barcelo Maya Palace, which is south of Cancun and near the Mayan ruins of Tulum, on the Caribbean Sea. Great week, perfect weather (spoiled me to the point where I found myself forgetting what month this actually was, and then got a really rude snap back to reality when our plane landed back in crisp, windy, 30 degree Minneapolis), and wonderful family times. The only downside is that I didn’t practice in eight days, and so now get to spend the week whipping myself back into shape to present my CD release concert.

My concert, celebrating the release of my “Diverse Voices - American Music for Flute” CD, is going to be held on Friday, November 21st, at 7:30 p.m.  I’m presenting it at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd at 4801 France Avenue South in Minneapolis. John Jensen, my intrepid pianist on the CD, will again be playing with me, and we will be performing music from the CD (obviously): music by Aaron Copland, Lowell Liebermann, Paul Schoenfield, Roberto Sierra and Edie Hill. It’s free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.

For those of you in the greater Twin Cities who would like to attend, here are some restaurant suggestions in the neighborhood of the church, should you want to do dinner beforehand:

Tejas - great southwestern food; I love their made-at-the-table guacamole and the chicken nachos

Edina Grill - I usually go there for breakfast, but they have yummy dinners, too, and I think you can even order from the breakfast menu for dinner. Get the banana waffles for total ooey gooey banana sugar rush heaven!

Salut - good food, and they have a couple of my favorite martinis here, including one infused with pineapple and ginger, mmmm…hm, maybe I’ll have to go there there after the show….

Arezzo Ristorante - this Italian restaurant is very lovely; Arezzo has a special place in my heart because my sweetie and I had our very first date here!

And for those of you who don’t live close enough to catch my concert, you can still hear snippets of the CD on my website here, and it also should be available on amazon, cdbaby, iTunes, etc shortly.

Many, many thanks to the stellar folks I worked with: John Jensen, my pianist; Jeff Lambert, my session producer and editor; and Matthew Zimmerman at Wild Sound for his wonderful recording talent and expertise.

Here are John, me, Matthew and Jeff on our final day of recording - notice how happy we all look!

I was invited to perform a couple pieces and also present an abbreviated version of my performance anxiety talk, “It Sounded Better at Home!” On Thursday, I played Paul Schoenfield’s “Achat Sha’alti” and “Ufaratsta,”  and on Friday, I performed Reza Najfar’s “La Persienne.” Susan Snyder-Nunn was my pianist for these pieces, and we pulled everything off admirably with a bare minimum of rehearsal time.  These convention recitals end up being whipped together at the last minute with a pianist you usually first meet right before you rehearse together, which is usually right before you perform together…obviously not the best arrangement, but you do what you have to do….and Susan was more than up for it, so it all worked out in the end.

“La Persienne” is a very cool piece: while its structure is “classical,” the music itself is very Middle Eastern sounding (for lack of a better description). The first movement uses intervals of the fourth and fifth in the melodic themes, and the second movement is a Persian “avaz,” or song. It’s very mesmerizing and haunting. The third movement is a rhythmic and technical tour de force based on the Persian instrumental “charmezrab.” After you get done playing this complete flurry of notes for five minutes, the piece ends on a high F, which is always very satisfying to crank out successfully at the end! I listened to a lot of chramezrab performances on YouTube (what did we ever do before YouTube?), as I wasn’t particularly up on my Persian music before this, and that was incredibly helpful (and interesting). The title of the piece, “La Persienne,” does not translate to “The Persian,” as I originally thought, but describes traditional Persian bamboo curtains, called “persiennes” in French. Reza Najfar was inspired by a painting of bamboo curtains his brother did, and “La Persienne” has a quote from 12th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam at the top of the first page, which translates to: “When the curtain falls, neither you nor I remain.”

Aside from my performances and presentation, I had a great time chatting with a lot of folks I hadn’t seen for at least a year. The highlight, though,  was eating at my favorite KC restaurant, Le Fou Frog, while catching up with John Wittmann, Yamaha Artist Relations manager and all-around great guy, and then stumbling upon this extraordinary bar called The Cashew. This place is fantastic: the second floor has a room off the main bar area that resembles someone’s 19th century living room - oriental rug, wood paneled walls, comfy leather furniture, fireplace, crystal chandelier - except that the walls are decorated with completely bizarro paintings that give off a demented Alice-in-Wonderland vibe, and one of the walls is completely knocked out with a huge garage door is in its place…so when it’s open, you feel like you’re in a giant doll house looking out over the Kansas City skyline. Too cool!

I’ve been teaching at Lutheran Summer Music Academy, which is a month-long camp for high school musicians. I have to say I had the best time teaching there! My students were absolutely wonderful, and I’ve had a lot of fun teaching students who were bright, creative, interesting, and very amenable to new ideas. This has been the final week of LSM, and I spent the last couple days at Gustavus listening to student recitals; my students performed quite difficult music (Mozart concerti and some of the French conservatory pieces) in a very short amount of preparation time, so I’m very proud of all their hard work! The only thing I’m not sorry about leaving behind is the obnoxious 75 mile commute from Minneapolis, although I did rediscover my love for the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan en route.

I’ve often thought about “true, kind and necessary” words with my own students. I love teaching - the times in my life that I have a good balance between performing and teaching are when I’m happiest - and I strive to be helpful and supportive while giving honest feedback. And every student, of course, is different, so wording something so that a student really hears what you’re saying is sometimes a challenge…but, I think the “true, kind and necessary” standard is a good standard to live by - as a teacher, and also simply as a person.

This prize, which is for $25,000, is administered by the MacPhail Center for Music and is awarded based on performance excellence. From 120 applications, nine musicians were selected to perform in a live final audition (no pressure there!), and of those nine, four were chosen to receive awards. Besides me, the winners were: Gao Hong, an internationally known Chinese pipa soloist; Sarah Kwak, First Associate Concertmaster, Minnesota Orchestra; and Arek Tesarczyk, Cellist, Minnesota Orchestra.

Since everyone’s been asking me how I will use my windfall, first, I’ll be finishing up and promoting my CD of American music (John Jensen, my stellar accompanist in the final round, is my pianist on the CD). I hope to have a fun and free CD release party sometime in the fall in the Twin Cities.  I’ve been really fortunate to receive a number of grants to help with the production and promotion of my CD: I’ve also received funding from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the American Composers Forum.

I’m really excited about my CD, even while in the midst of the tedious work of editing the thing; the pieces on it are really wonderful works written for flute. The CD includes Lowell Liebermann’s sonata, Edie Hill’s “This Floating World” for solo flute, Aaron Copland’s “Duo for Flute and Piano,” Roberto Sierra’s new sonata (I believe this is also the recording premiere, which is very cool), and two lovely pieces by Paul Schoenfield: “Achat Sha’alti” and “Ufaratsta.” “Achat Sha’alti” is one of my favorite pieces, and it was great to record it. (I’m also looking forward to playing it at the National Flute Association Convention in August down in Kansas City.)

The only thing I’m really stuck on with the CD is a good title - it’s hard to come up with a good title! “American Flute Music” sounds a bit run-of-the-mill, if accurately descriptive, as does “Linda Chatterton - Flute” - so if anyone has any clever suggestions, please send ‘em my way!

Maybe I’ll write a future post about all the interesting things that flit through your mind in the week before you have thirty minutes to convince a panel of judges that you are indeed deserving of a enormous sum of money. (I do these presentations on performance anxiety called “It Sounded Better at Home!” and find it’s very interesting to check out my own thoughts while going through the same issues I sympathize with in everybody else.) But when all is said and done, I had a great time playing in the final round, was extraordinarily pleased that I won, and had a fantastic time celebrating with my very supportive sweetie that night by indulging in the nine-course Chef’s Tasting Menu (complete with matching wine flight) at the exquisite La Belle Vie.