I am looking for scores of piano music not yet commercially released on recording. I would like to perform your music and release it on my independent label, Steel Wig Records. For details, check out the announcement.
Call for Scores 2014
Jai Jeffryes, Pianist - NYC |
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Composers!
I am looking for scores of piano music not yet commercially released on recording. I would like to perform your music and release it on my independent label, Steel Wig Records. For details, check out the announcement. Call for Scores 2014
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If you are looking for the best way to destroy your piano technique, look no further than key bedding. This flaw will harm your facility and musicality more than any other mistake you can come up with.
The key bed is the frame underneath the piano keyboard. When you depress a key you move its hammer towards the strings. You want to complete the key movement all the way to the bottom so that you can control the swing of the hammer to the strings, but once you reach the bottom you want to quit! The problems start if you keep pressing the key after it has stopped going down. If you continue to press, you are delivering power into the key bed. However, the key isn't moving anymore! The hammer has already hit the string, and you aren't having any effect on your sound. Worse, you are inhibiting your ability to have a positive effect on the sound you wish to produce next. Pressing into the key bed takes time, releasing that pressure takes time, and you don't have that much time if you are playing passage work in even a modest tempo. That is one way key bedding destroys your mobility. Pressing into the key bed connects your arm to it. That connection is still active while your next finger moves the next key, so it robs your playing movement of the arm connection it could have had if your last note wasn't still key bedding. Your tone production therefore has no arm leverage to help it. That is another way key bedding destroys your facility and that weakness of tone production also destroys your musicality. Here is how to key bed in slow motion. Play a B major scale silently. Depress the first B slowly without producing a tone. Now dig into the bottom of the key. What do you hear? Nothing! The work at the bottom extreme of the key's descent does not help you. Keep digging. While maintaining the pressure on B, silently depress C-sharp. Now press hard on C-sharp and release your B. You still haven't produced a sound, but you're working like the Devil! Continue in this fashion up the scale, pressing into the key bed of the last note while silently depressing the next one. Transfer the pressure to the next silent note. If you do this right, you will be sore and exhausted after completing your scale, and you will never have made a sound. Congratulations, you have mastered the ruination of your piano technique! Are you playing this way more or less all the time? That would be alarming, wouldn't it? I hope this doesn't apply to you. Let's check. Ask yourself these questions. Do you get frustrated with pianos with "heavy" actions? Are they difficult to play? Do you work harder and harder and it doesn't seem ever to be quite enough? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have been outed! You're a key bedder. There are no heavy piano actions. There are some pianos that are a little different from what you expect, but they just are never really all that heavy. You are a little surprised by the unaccustomed sensation, and then you compensate by working a little harder. That's when you get into trouble. Once you dig into the keys just a little you have fallen into a trap. Your effort into the key bed can't help your sound, which is frustrating. Your instinct is to try harder, but no matter how hard you press, it doesn't help. That's the trap of key bedding. If you are struggling with a recalcitrant piano action, try flopping unsupported, mushy fingers onto the keys. Don't play anything correctly. Just mash some keys with a completely inert hand. The keys go down fine, don't they? News flash: it is never any harder to play than that! The piano doesn't magically resist you when it detects you are doing something difficult. There is only one place a piano can resist you and be hard to overcome, and that's at the key bed. If playing seems like hard work to you, you're key bedding. A great way to get out of the habit of key bedding is to play slowly and allow your knuckles to rebound upwards at the conclusion of each attack. You don't want to block your arm into the bottom of the key. You don't want to "stand" on the key with your fingers braced rigidly. Instead, while moving to the bottom of the key for each attack, upon reaching the limit of the key's motion your knuckles should follow through upwards a bit. It prevents you from continuing to drive pressure into the key. This approach preserves a soft state for the hand. It remains pliable and unstrained, buying you mobility. In fact, while holding any sustained tones you must always be able to move your hands and fingers up and down and around a bit. Relaxation can be an elusive ideal. If you habitually key bed, you are working too hard and impeding your mobility. In other words, you are tense. Simply trying to relax may not help you. An understanding of key bedding and how to cure it will. Then relaxation will come to you spontaneously as a side effect of correct application of effective technique. Grand Piano, I have to see this movie. Recently, I was comparing recurring nightmares with friends on Twitter. One friend dreams that she has prepared the wrong piece for the performance. My nightmare is that I'm still practicing and the performance is about to start. (True story, although these nightmares have subsided in the last few years.) The campy hyperbole of Grand Piano will surely cure my nightmares once and for all. The trailer bears no resemblance to professional music making. Maybe I will just be able to laugh at the whole thing and lighten up when it's time to play. I think one should attend Grand Piano as if one were seeing Rocky Horror, in other words dressed up in character. White tie, black tails, slicked hair. Make it a party and go in a stretch limo. I can't wait til this comes to town. Elijah Wood plays Tom Selznick, the most talented pianist of his generation, who has stopped performing in public because of his stage fright. Years after a catastrophic performance, he reappears in public for a long awaited concert in Chicago. In a packed theater, in front of an expectant audience, Tom finds a message written on the score: “Play one wrong note and you die.” In the sights of an anonymous sniper (Cusack), Tom must get through the most difficult performance of his life and look for help without being detected. Thayer's Life of Beethoven has been sitting on my shelf of books to read since college. I finally pulled it out all these years later and dove in. It isn't easy. It's a scholarly research work. It reads like geneology research, which it is. There is no narrative or dramatic thrust. As dry as the reading is, a picture forms and musical insights emerge. When he was a youth, Beethoven was an organist. In today's terms you would say that was his gig. He worked a lot as an organist to support his livelihood. That bears keeping in mind as his musical thinking develops. At 17 he made a trip to Vienna and met and played for Mozart. His studies were soon interrupted by his mother's illness, but at some point he heard Mozart play. Czerny later recounts Beethoven's impressions of Mozart at the piano: "he had a fine but choppy way of playing, no ligato." Czerny adds that Beethoven played this way at first, treating the pianoforte like an organ. (Thayer, p. 88) So here we see a road to one of Beethoven's musical priorities. Formative years as an organist, a pianist role model, and the synthesis of his view of how piano tones should connect.
When you go to Amazon and search for a title (say, Hayner Resounding by Jai Jeffryes!) and they say they're temporarily out of stock, there might actually be plenty of CDs, even hundreds. It could be just that the CDs are still all sitting in boxes in the hallway outside the publisher's apartment.
Okay, now for extra credit write a 20-word essay explaining how I know this. ;-) Second only to my very home, my favorite place to be in Manhattan is the Live Room at L. Brown Recording. Here is a link to an article in Pro Sound Network about Louis's studio.
Piano Is Key To Brown’s Studio By Christopher Walsh: 8/9/2011 Excerpt: There are few experiences more pleasing than to sit at an ornately carved 1881 Steinway D Centennial concert grand piano as its unimaginably honeyed tones fill the room. Add a brilliant, sunlit view of the Hudson River, and you just may transcend to the astral plane. “The piano is extremely special,” agrees Louis Brown, principal of L. Brown Recording, located in New York’s historic Film Center Building. “They only made around 400 of these, between 1876 and 1884, for the Centennial of the United States. Doing classical music, I have to have something unique, and a Steinway D was a must.” Arts pundits who conclude classical music is dying based on the decline of classical music radio are just ignorant. We all have easy access to all the music we want. We don't have to bother tuning in to radio stations anymore. Those have been hopelessly eclipsed by other distribution media. What's moribund with respect to classical music radio is the business model of using radio waves to sell audiences to advertisers. Those of us who have some serious listening to do have abundant sources that don't necessarily involve you Station Owners, you Program Directors, you Account Sales Managers, and you Advertisers.
So while we music lovers listen to more music than ever before, you guys might have to look for other work. Sorry about that. I will appear in recital on the series "Live at St. Stephen's" at the Church of St. Stephen in June 2012 in New York City. Concerts at the church are warm and uplifting events. I hope to see you there! This performance will feature music of Schubert, Debussy, and Chopin. Thursday June 7, 2012 7:00 PM Suggested donation: $10 Church of St. Stephen 151 E. 28th St. New York, NY Series website: Live at St. Stephen's Here is video of me at St. Stephen's playing a selection from my upcoming recital there. In 1990, I sought new employment as a musician. I had obtained a master's degree from Texas Christian University and resided in Fort Worth, Texas. I was keen to cultivate work rather than continue with more schooling. I had a lot of experience as an accompanist and expected to be able to continue to support myself with that. I wanted to take my career further.
My former accompanying teacher from Arizona State, Doris McLeod, alerted me to an opening for corepetiteur with Zurich Opera. I leapt at the chance to audition. I had to go to New York to do that. My travel agent booked my flight and found an inexpensive hotel room near Herald Square. I found someone to substitute for me at my gig playing piano in a restaurant at a hotel at Dallas Fort Worth airport. On the day of my departure, I left my car in long-term parking at the airport and set off for New York for a long weekend. New York did not appeal to me at all. It was ugly and I felt sure I would be mugged if stepped out of the hotel for 30 seconds to buy a slice of pizza at 10:00 PM. (Those fears appear hilarious to me now, but after all, my hotel did have bullet proof glass in front of the receptionist at check in.) I didn't expect to be in town very long. I was excited about going to Switzerland. I always wanted to master a foreign language. On the day of the audition, I went to the Wellington Hotel. A queue of singers, also auditioning for Zurich Opera, wound through the hallway. I appeared to be the only pianist auditioning for the corepetiteur position. When it was my turn, I entered and met Marc Belfort, the director of the International Opera Center at Zurich Opera. I told Mr. Belfort what I was there for. He opened a piano/vocal score on the piano and asked me to play from it. I did. I felt fine after that. My reading has been the basis for all of my employed work as a pianist. Mr. Belfort said, "Okay, so you can read. Tell me, who is the composer?" I said, "Mozart." "Identify the opera, role, and vocal type." I didn't know the opera or role. I said, "Well, I can tell you this aria is for a mezzo." Then Mr. Belfort asked, "Would you please translate the German?" I knew a few words in German, so I could tell him what the aria was about (kind of), but that was all. Mr. Belfort indicated that he wouldn't be able to hire me for this job. He asked me, "Do you know what a corepetiteur is?" I didn't. I said I figured it amounted to vocal accompanying. Mr. Belfort explained that the position had much more responsibility than that, training and preparing singers. For example, since the performers came from many countries and the Zurich audiences wanted to understand the words, this job would include coaching non-native speakers in their German diction. My answers to his questions were getting shorter and shorter. By this time all I was saying was, "Oh." He didn't throw me out yet. He went on, asking me about my experience. Now I described my performing degrees and all of my accompanying experience, the opera and choral accompanying, the voice studios, the string recitals, etc. He asked what I was doing now. I said, "I play ballet classes and accompany singing waiters in a spaghetti restaurant in Fort Worth." He exclaimed, "What are you doing here in New York then?" I said, "Auditioning for you." He said, "That's the only reason you came here? How much did that cost you?" I said, "Between the travel, the hotel, and the work I'm missing, about $700." He sat back and then said to me, "So why don't you move to New York? Then it would only cost you $2.50 to get turned down for a job." (Subways were a buck twenty-five then.) I said I imagined it must really be hard to get jobs here in New York. I wasn't having such an easy time today, was I? He thought a moment and said, "Listen, all I said was you can't have MY job, I didn't say you couldn't have A job. Obviously, you can play, and you can read. You just need to be somewhere where something is happening. Once here, you would find your level. Then, if you wanted to, you could learn the other things I was testing you on if that's where your career takes you. In a few years, you probably would be able to work for me if you wanted to, but by that time I doubt you would want to. You would already be too busy right here." I thanked him for his time and left. I was stunned. That evening I bought a ticket from a scalper and heard Alfred Brendel perform my favorite concerto, the Brahms B-flat. I went home. I quit all my jobs. I rented a U-Haul trailer and packed up my things. I moved to New York. I had a job playing opera rehearsals on day two. I'm not making that up. I was never without work again. That was over twenty years ago. The pay wasn't always princely, but there was always something worthwhile to do. I got into musical theater, and was on the road for the better part of 10 years. I conducted shows in Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo. I got off the road and now I focus on my solo classical playing. I'm recording my first CD. At that audition for Zurich Opera, failure transformed into opportunity through the kindness of Marc Belfort. Much later, I tried to look him up again. Sadly, he passed away in 1998, the nicest man who never gave me a job. I just received in the mail the second edition of Alan Fraser's book, The Craft of Piano Playing. This is an unsolicited endorsement of Alan Fraser's approach based on my study of his companion DVD to this book and private sessions with Alan.
I first discovered Alan Fraser on YouTube where I viewed a demo of his DVD, The Craft of Piano Playing. I thought the demo alone was rich with insight, so I turned right around and bought the DVD. I worked with that for quite some time before having the pleasure of meeting Alan, and now that his first book is available in a revised edition, I look forward to continuing my exploration of Alan's approach. Alan has an engaging talent for separating mysticism and mumbo jumbo from the practical requirements of getting your hands to behave in the ways necessary to make a piano produce the musical effects your heart desires. No-nonsense objectivity and cheerful optimism. Is there anything that frustrates you about your playing? Craft is the antidote! Alan Fraser's approach has inspired me and helped me with my own playing in more ways than I can describe. Check it out on the web. |