Where to Balance the Flute
   Several flute methods suggest having the flute touch on the side of the left index finger. Alan H. D. Watson writes in The Biology of Musical Performance and Performance-Related Injury (p. 85): “The main nerve branches that supply the fingers and the thumb run up their sides (note line on left index finger in photo) where they may be vulnerable to compression in some instruments. For example, in the left hand of flutists the instrument rests partly on the side of the first segment (phalanx) of the index finger, just below the PIP joint, where it may rest on the digital nerve.” If a flute rests on a nerve, it is not if the nerve gets compressed, but when. I prefer balancing the flute just above the knuckle. (X marks the spot.)

The Left Thumb
   Traditionally the position of the left thumb is not addressed in flute pedagogy, but it should be. The left thumb should be straight when playing.

If the thumb is bent, then there may be tension in the arm.

 Playing with the thumb bent, means the tip of the thumb is touching the thumb key. In this position, the left wrist is compromised.

However, if the left thumb is straight and touches the thumb key lower down the thumb, the left wrist is in a more neutral position. I think of having the bottom of the thumb key touching at the crease of my left thumb.

The Right Thumb
   For many years violin pedagogy has used a soda can test to discover where to place the right thumb on the bow. This works well for flutists too. Pick up a soda or soup can with your right hand and look at how you hold it. After many years of experiments, I have found that 1/3 of flutists are most comfortable with the thumb directly under the index finger, 1/3 with the thumb placed between the index finger and middle finger, and 1/3 with the thumb directly under the middle finger. Look on the following page for photographs that show hand placement on the soda can and how it relates to the positioning of the right hand thumb on the flute. Take the soda can test several times for accuracy.

   Thumb directly under the index finger

  
   Thumb between index finger and middle finger

   Thumb directly under middle finger

    Susan Fain, DMA and Physical Therapist, suggests positioning the thumb slightly down the flute toward the little finger when playing footjoint note passages. After the low note passage is completed, move the thumb back to your most comfortable position.

Right-Hand Knuckle Height
   If you want to play fast, keep the right knuckle height the same as the keys.

The position allows gravity to help the fingers come down again after they are lifted. If the knuckles are too low, then the player does all the work of lifting and lowering the fingers.

Setting the Right Hand
   Many flutists complain about covering the holes, especially the D key, with the fingertips. Rather than placing the F finger on the flute first and then positioning the other fingers, try placing the E finger first and then setting the fingers. You may find a better balance position.

What about the Wrists
   Turn your hands over with the palms facing the ceiling. This is the position your hand should be in to perform tasks like playing the flute or picking up an apple.

   Several pedagogical methods suggest playing with straight wrists. The following photo shows a straight wrist. Note in this position you will not be able to perform such tasks as picking up an apple.

   If you put your hand back in the first position, notice what happens to the wrist. This is the preferred position for the wrists when playing the flute.

Get Your Money’s Worth
   Flutists often pay thousands of dollars for a flute of their dreams. The angle at which the flutist positions the flute when playing will determine whether he gets his money’s worth. To determine the proper playing angle, gently push the flute forward and then back as if the embouchure plate is rocking to the left and then to the right on the chin. Listen for any change of sound. There will be one spot where the sound is best. This is called the sweet spot. It is where you should position the flute. Most flutes seem to sound best when the end of the flute is in front of the player’s nose.

However, most flutists position the flute too far back as shown below.

In this position the right shoulder may eventually hurt, and the flute will sound several thousand dollars less good than what you paid for it.
   The goal is to play as well as possible as well as pain free and ergonomically. Video tape yourself to see how you actually play. You may be surprised at what you discover.

The post A Picture Is Worth 10,000 Words appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

The Choice of School
   There are many excellent choices, but look for the best fit with your goals. The National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) is the accrediting agency for music schools. Founded in 1923, it has accredited 630 institutions in the United State to ensure a uniform method of granting music credits and developing and maintaining a basic standard for granting music degrees.
   Luke Shultz: “I made the decision to attend The Ohio State University after months of tests, auditions, and research. There are so many things to consider when searching through the nearly 1,400 public universities in America. I can’t honestly say I looked at more than fifteen or twenty of those 1,400 universities, but I think I used just about that many standards before deciding where to go. Distance from home, distance from shopping venues, eating and housing options, recreational opportunities, the price, and of course by far the most important criteria, the quality of the music program were things I considered in making my decision. Music programs at most schools are highly competitive and much more personal than the other core programs such as science and math. When I researched schools, I wanted to be sure that I could achieve my fullest potential under the direction of the private teacher there. I also looked into the band directors, theory teachers and history professors; many classes are quite intimate with only about fifteen or twenty students. Look into every facet and detail that concerns you. After all, this is an investment in your future.”
   Shannon Moore: “I chose Middle Tennessee State University because I met flute professor Deanna Little at the Tennessee Governors School for the Arts two summers ago. I absolutely admired her teaching abilities and techniques.”

The Audition Process
   Emily Theobald: “Like every student who makes the decision to pursue music as a career, my undergraduate journey officially began with auditions in the winter of my senior year. After visiting numerous conservatories and universities, I had my list narrowed down to about ten schools. The hardest part was the actual application, especially the many required essays. Like most universities, the University of Southern California requires applicants to apply to both the university and the music school. The application requests SAT scores, essays, transcripts, and recommendations. The audition process at USC is quite comparable to the audition process at other schools to which I applied. The repertoire for the prescreen DVD is specific, but the live audition leaves some room in repertoire choice. The DVD must include exposition of the first two movements of Mozart Concerto No. 1 in G, K. 314, either the first movement of the Ibert Concerto or the first five pages of the Nielsen Concerto, the Joachim Anderson, 24 Exercises, Opus 33, No. 1 (q = 120), and A-flat major and C-sharp harmonic scales in two octaves, first slurred, then double-tongued. Once you pass the prescreen audition, you are scheduled for a live audition during an audition weekend, where you perform two contrasting sonata or concerto movements, two standard orchestra excerpts, and possibly all of the major and minor scales. I found the audition weekend to be both welcoming and organized, and flute professor James Walker was  very friendly during the audition. When I auditioned, there was no theory placement test; instead this took place in the first week of classes. Thornton now administers a theory test on audition days as many other schools do.
   “Once admitted to USC, the audition process is not quite over. Ensemble placement auditions occur during the first week of classes. During the summer, Mr. Walker sent out a list of excerpts to prepare for the seating audition. The audition is performed behind a screen for the flute professors. This year, the professors made DVDs of each person’s audition. Both teachers filled out comment sheets for each student, which were really helpful when reflecting on one’s performance afterwards. The placement results are usually posted the next day. While not required, the students of the flute studio decided it would be beneficial to hold a second round of seating auditions at the beginning of second semester, directly following winter break. These auditions are extremely good tools, as they allow us to become more comfortable in audition settings, especially with the impersonal setting of performing behind a screen.”
   Moore: “The audition for ensemble assignments at Middle Tennessee State University was the very first day of classes. The required piece was an excerpt from the third movement of the Ibert Concerto. Before the audition, I listened and practiced it to the point where my roommate, who is a psychology major, would randomly hum the excerpt. I felt prepared as I walked into the building for my audition. I walked to the practice rooms and started to play a few long tones when I heard flute players all around me ripping up and down scales faster than I had ever heard before. I was too shy to run through my piece and let the other flutists in the studio hear me, so I fingered through the excerpt and headed down to the audition room. When I arrived, there was a flute player already auditioning. She sounded so amazing; I had never heard anyone other than a professional flutist sound so good and play so accurately. It was at this moment that I knew I was no longer at the top and would have to work hard. After her audition, it was my turn to play. I walked into the room and stood behind a screen with my new flute teacher and two of the band directors on the other side. When I started playing, I could only think of the other flute players that I had heard earlier. I grew really nervous, and my mind went blank. I had no idea what I was playing. It sounded nothing like I had ever played before. I did not stop, and I got through it. The results came back and I was third chair in the second band. I realized that day that being shy and nervous would not get me anywhere. I had to become a confident player. I was more focused and determined for the next audition at the end of the semester. I went into the room with the attitude that I was going to play the best I knew how to play and not get discouraged by flutists that I heard warming up or auditioning before me. I did just that; I went in and had a great time playing beautiful music. When the results came back, I made the top band. I was so excited. Being in the top band is probably one of the hardest and most rewarding things I have ever done.”

College Life
    Shultz: “The first year of college is one of the most unexpected, eye-opening, immersive experiences adolescents go through. When I got to OSU, I quickly realized how important planning is. Gone are the days when I could just run home and grab that English spiral I had forgotten or call up my dad to have him bring my flash drive that was still in the monitor of my home computer. Every time I close the door of my dorm room, I have to think about what I might need from now until I get back. There are no more training wheels. You are on your own. Some people embrace this and excel, while others fall, and it is a hard, grueling fall when your parents are shelling out around twenty thousand dollars a year. Set high expectations for yourself; you are responsible for your own achievement.
   “Another tough adjustment I had to make was practice time. In high school I thought I was ahead of the game with about two hours of practice five times a week. I would just take a break from my calculus homework and go practice for a few hours in the basement. Easily done, no travel, and at the end I always got a compliment from my parents. In college I not only have to practice three to four hours a day, but I am expected to practice smartly for this time. This means careful planning so that I play scales, etudes, orchestral excerpts, solo repertoire, band music, and other miscellaneous exercises assigned by flute professor Kathy Borst Jones every day. I am not perfect at this and still sometimes find myself spending an hour and a half in a practice room and not accomplishing anything, but it certainly doesn’t compare to the time I wasted in high school. Practice techniques are vital to a successful, developing musician. When you take twenty-three credit hours, maintain a healthy lifestyle, and still have some time for fun, there is not much time left to waste on inefficient practice. I also have some days when I have very little motivation to keep playing perhaps because I am focused on a midterm. Whether I like it or not, I have to prepare for a lesson, a recital, or an upcoming band concert. The hardest part about motivation is remaining efficient when all you want is to do something else. 
   “The transition from being a senior in high school to a freshman in college is really the first radical step towards independence and maturity. As a first-year music student, however, there is a studio full of people who share a common interest and passion for music and a mentor eager to listen and help in any way possible.”
   Moore: “My first semester of college not only taught me great lessons about music but also about life. I have learned to live on my own, which means doing everything from setting up appointments to cooking. I had always considered myself a decent cook and could pretty much make anything for which I had a recipe. One day I tried to make my grandmother’s cornbread recipe. I started mixing up the batter and placed the iron skillet on the stove to begin warming. My grandmother had told me the hotter the skillet, the crispier the cornbread. I turned the stove on high and left the skillet to heat up. I finished mixing the batter and returned to the scorching skillet and started pouring the oil in it. Apparently it was a tad too hot, and flames shot from the skillet. About this time the fire alarm began to blare. I remembered that baking soda would extinguish grease fires, so I grabbed the tiny box of baking soda out of the refrigerator, ripped open the box and dumped it onto the fire. Thankfully, it worked. I haven’t cooked much since then.”
    Theobald: “One of the most frequent questions I am asked about my freshman experience at USC is ‘how is the food?’ It is important to remember that no matter how good the food is, you will certainly grow bored of it in time. We have two residential dining cafeterias at which meal plans allow unlimited visits. Some meal plans also include Dining Dollars, money that can be used at on-campus restaurants. The combination of residential dining and Dining Dollars offer enough variety for students to avoid falling victim to culinary monotony. Students also have the option of living in apartment-style dorms, most of which have full kitchens, though these are mainly preferred by upperclassmen.”
   Kelly Saroff: “Do laundry on Friday afternoons. Most dorms have multiple numbers of washers and dryers, so you can wash several loads at one time. Be sure to learn the ins and outs of doing laundry before reaching college.” 

Lessons and Masterclasses
    Saroff: “The teaching policy for the flute studio at Northwestern is for freshmen and sophomores to study with Kujala and juniors and seniors with Graef. This means every student has the opportunity to benefit from both teachers and their different styles. Mr. Kujala is a demanding teacher, who points out technical errors in my playing which helped me immensely improve this first year. He expects a certain caliber of playing at every lesson, and if I don’t perform as well as I should, he will drill me until I finally get a particular detail right. Mr. Kujala records each lesson on a CD so the student has the opportunity to listen to how he played and how suggestions affected the performance. He shares anecdotes at each lesson about his experiences which are always interesting and relevant to what we are performing. 
   “The flute studio has a masterclass once a week. During the fall and winter quarters, it was mostly a solo class, where four students performed a solo with piano accompaniment for the studio. After the performances, Mr. Kujala gave critiques and offered ideas for improvement. He would often have the flutist execute his suggestions with the pianist. In the spring quarter, the flute studio formed a flute choir. We worked on several pieces and gave a concert. At the end of each quarter some time was spent on the excerpts that would be required for the coming ensemble audition.”
   Theobald: “The most important part of my musical education at USC is studying with Mr. Walker. Each week, I have a one-hour private lesson with him as well as a Thursday evening studio class. Mr. Walker tailors each student’s course of study to his individual needs and areas of strength. During the first lesson, we watched the DVD of my ensemble placement audition. He commented on what went well and offered suggestions on what I should work on improving throughout the coming year. Each week, he assigns new skills and etudes, as well as pieces – often things that stretch my comfort zone. While I was nervous at first, this has  helped me to become a more confident and well-rounded musician. In addition, he certainly understands the rigors of pursuing an undergraduate degree at USC. While he expects solidity in technique and a feeling of effortless musicality, he sympathizes if the previous week was a midterm week, or if your life was consumed by your other classes. 
   “There were numerous guest artists and lecturers who came to the Thursday night studio classes. Playing in studio class is a great way to test one’s nerves, as well as to perform works before a recital or audition. Several times we had mock auditions.”

Academic Curriculum
    Theobald: “Piano, on the other hand, was probably the most difficult class I have ever taken in my 13 years of education. At USC music majors are put into the second year of piano proficiency, even though many of us could not do much more than find an A on the keyboard. The class moved extremely fast, and I probably spent hundreds of hours throughout the year practicing for piano exams, when I could have been practicing the flute. There were so many times throughout the year when I regretted not studying piano  as a child. If you can take piano lessons before freshman year or are already proficient on piano, your life will be much easier when you get to college.”
   The academic curriculum varies from one institution to the next. Most colleges and universities have a set of classes (Core Curriculum, General Education Credits, or General Goals) that every student must complete in addition to courses in the major area. Conservatories dispense with these courses but require additional credit hours in the music curriculum. Most freshman music majors curriculum will include: applied music, music theory (written), aural skills, piano proficiency, music appreciation/history, ensemble, chamber music and if applicable an elective.
   As you narrow your choices of colleges, check out the catalog for a sample course of study plan. If the courses that are required are not of interest to you, you may want to consider another major.

   Shannon Moore is a sophomore flute performance Major at Middle Tennessee State University. She has studied with Sarah Beth Hanson, Deanna Little, and Patricia George and is originally from Trenton, Tennessee.

   Emily Theobald, a native of Massachusetts, is currently a sophomore at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, where she studies with Jim Walker. Prior to attending USC, Emily studied with Judy Grant at the Boston Flute Academy and was a member of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra’s senior orchestra. She was a finalist in the 2008 National Flute Association’s High School Soloist competition and performed live at the convention in Kansas City. She has attended the Brevard Music Institute, as well as the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute.

The post Advice for Future Flute Majors appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

What were your first experiences as a professional musician?
   When I was 18, I decided to postpone college after graduation from Interlochen Arts Academy and move to San Francisco. At that time there was an explosion of street musicians in San Francisco, and I made a pretty good living playing in a variety of ensembles including a Baroque music trio, a flute and harp duo, a flute duo, a street orchestra full of Juilliard dropouts, jazz with saxophonist John Handy’s ensemble, and a rock band. I also studied privately with the great Merrill Jordan, and after two years enrolled in San Francisco State University to study with Lloyd Gowen, piccolo player in the San Francisco Symphony. Gowen had studied with Merrill Jordan himself and also at the Curtis Institute with William Kincaid.
   For a while I was a dance major because I had played mandolin and piccolo in a Russian dance band and was fascinated by the complex movements of ethnic dance styles. The legacy of this training was that movement and rhythm became key to my understanding of music. During this period I also learned to avoid over-rehearsing, so I would not lose the spontaneity of the unexpected.

Where did you go next?
   I did not want to be just pretty good; I wanted to play at the highest level I could achieve. I was accepted at the New England Conservatory and began studies with James Pappoutsakis, second flutist of the Boston Symphony. Pappoutsakis was not a soloist but rather an impeccable and introspective artist. From him I learned to create the colors and nuance of playing the flute in the French style. I worked very hard to master technique. After a year I received a full scholarship to perform in the first New England Conservatory scholarship woodwind quintet. I went on to earn my master’s degree under the guidance of a very different soloistic player, Paula Robison. After graduation I completed my education by traveling to Vermont for one year to work with the Marcel Moyse.
   After graduating with my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, I moved to New York, where I free-lanced and discovered a love of opera. As I listened from the vantage of the orchestra pit, I learned to play more like a singer. (Marcel Moyse liked to compare opera divas during lessons.) On the spur of the moment I took a job playing principal flute for the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Living in Hong Kong for a year was a fabulous experience. (They served warm soy milk at intermission, and we traveled all over Asia with the London Ballet.) I found I missed New York, however and returned to a life of recitals, orchestra and chamber music. I was also interested in new music and the jazz scene and soon married a bassist who played in the Bill Evans Trio. Evans loved playing classical music, especially the J.S. Bach sonatas, so we played together for fun at home. Evans played Bach beautifully, and his phrasing and voicing of the chords gave me a new understanding of Bach’s harmonic and rhythmic language. I went on to have two children, write a one-woman theatrical show, which was called Private Lessons, work as the production coordinator for Nonesuch Records for one year, and start the Blue Ridge Music Festival.

How did you end up in Wisconsin?
   While at a performance of my one-woman show in Ohio, I ran into Les Thimmig, a well-known jazz and classical player/composer. He mentioned that the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music had an opening for flute professor and suggested I apply. I was not optimistic because I had no previous college teaching experience, but I soon received a phone call from him with an invitation to come to Madison for an audition. I had two days to get ready. My little boy was only a few months old, but somehow I pulled together a performance that they liked and became a professor at UW-Madison. At the time I had only been through Madison on a New York City Opera tour, and thought that Wisconsin was west of Minnesota.
   I love working with my students. They are endlessly interesting and incredibly alert, genuine seekers of knowledge. I try to impart the fire and passion of playing music and help them realize the importance of having a great fervor in everything they do, as well as a true understanding of style and tradition.

How are students today different from when you were a student?
   I find that students who come to a state university and have not been part of an elite training program are often less prepared than they should be for advanced flute studies. Because there is less musical training available in public schools today, there is an unfortunate divide between those who can afford additional music lessons and those who cannot. I try to spot raw ability at auditions and will teach any talented student who is willing to work. Sometimes it takes three years to train a student to play with the proper technique, embouchure, and knowledge of style that I believe I had as a first-year college student.

What do you focus on with students? 
   I believe that you have to look at where the student is and start with the basics, including what the arms, shoulders, neck, and head feel and look like, and whether there is tension in the throat. Other areas include breathing, articulation, fluidity in the fingers, vibrato, and rhythm. I look at phrasing, and whether a student is conscious of style, history, character, and harmonic movement. Most importantly, I determine whether the student is self-motivated and curious about the world. Teachers of all subjects have ‘taught to the test’ over the last twenty years, and often it robs students of their natural curiosity. I absolutely love Bartók, for example, so I listen to everything he ever wrote, the orchestral works, the string quartets, and so forth. Today students only want to know, if they will be tested on something or what they need to do to get an A in a course. I blame an educational system that takes every creative bone in a child and turns it into a test score. It is really criminal. I encourage students to explore and love music the way I do, while still holding their noses to the grindstone and making them learn technique at a pretty relentless pace.

What is your approach to programming chamber music concerts?
   I think our attitude is summed up in our motto, Serious Fun. We play all types of music from lighthearted, fluffy pieces to the most serious and profound, but our habit of keeping a light touch on it all has served us well. There is nothing about classical music that says players have to be serious or stodgy. We want to make concerts fun and challenging for the audience. Listeners should be on the edge of their seats, emotionally, and musically. We want to share what the music means to us.
   As audience members, we often have a museum mentality about classical music. Concert programs are filled with a line-up of masterpieces, and the audience is expected to approach them in awestruck silence. The museum mentality is a perfect formula for self-seriousness. A great part of the problem is that musicians tend to play the same old standards over and over, and newly written music is relegated to special concerts. We should always remember that the great masterpieces were new themselves once. Concert presenters of those days took a chance on Beethoven, Brahms, and Debussy, and many people did not like what they heard, at least at first.
   Modern concert presenters are too often afraid to take a chance on a piece that maybe people will not like. People should decide what they do not like before they can know what they do enjoy. New music should breathe the same air as old music. They should be heard side-by-side, given equally committed performances, and compared directly to one another. Sometimes new pieces are terrible, but sometimes they can express an emotion or mood better than any piece has yet done. That is thrilling when it happens. Would you prefer to go to a museum that features just one type of art, or one where there are many styles side by side? I definitely prefer the latter, and I prefer a concert with Brahms next to Ranjbaran, and Rebecca Clarke as well as Felix Mendelssohn. I find a succession of masterpieces can easily dull the palatte to what is special and particular to each one. I am not saying don’t program masterpieces, just mix it up a little.

Why should people attend chamber music concerts?
   The chamber music repertoire has much of the greatest music ever written, and there is absolutely nothing in the world like sitting four feet away from a great musician in a small ensemble. The audience is part of an intimate musical conversation; it is an utterly different experience to hear music live. As an intrepid concert goer, I can tell you how much I love Bela Fleck on a recording, but it is a hundred times better live. Chamber music, or really all classical music, is truly on the endangered list. It is not taught in many schools anymore as instrumental programs are cut. Most people do not listen to it on the radio either, so it is tough to encourage people to buy a ticket. They simply do not know what they are missing. Once we get people in the door, they tend to love it and come back again and again.
   With our chamber festival we talk about the music to explain the language of the composer and context of the works. We make the publicity as inviting as possible and offer plenty of variety. There is always fun stuff at our concerts; we give away humorous, themed door prizes, invite mystery guests to perform, and write crazy novelty pieces. This creates a relaxed atmosphere. When people feel free to laugh, they are more open to the emotional possibilities of the music. In the great Shakespeare plays, the comedies have tragic moments, and the tragedies comic moments. What would Hamlet be without Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?
   Over twenty years we have learned that if we set up a piece of music correctly, the audience will go just about anywhere with us. One of the latest catch phrases is engagement before information. If we stand in front of an audience and blab on about Bach’s use of double counterpoint and the intricate sonata form of a Beethoven trio, the audience will listen intellectually, but it is the emotional and spiritual power of music that makes people want to listen. All of the crazy things we do, and we have had some really crazy ideas in twenty seasons, are designed to foster that kind of listening. Over the years, we have gotten more sophisticated in how we do this.
   This past summer our season title was Bach to the Future. While we played traditional repertoire from Bach, the concerts also had a focus on the future. Each program also has a separate concert title. The first was The Empire Strikes Bach. Pianist, Jeffrey Sykes and I wore Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia costumes and light sabers. At the beginning of the concert I ran out onstage in my costume (complete with gigantic Princess Leia hair buns), looking terrified, and said, “Help me Obi-wan, you’re my only hope!” Jeffrey appeared at the back of the hall in his Luke Skywalker getup and ran onstage, yelling, “Never fear, Princess Stephaleia, I’m coming to rescue you!” I replied enthusiastically, “Oh, Luke Sykeswalker, the Forte is strong within you!” Everyone laughed at that.
   Another season, we created an all-French concert called Monet’s Garden with a depiction of Monet’s garden that was created by a local florist and baker, complete with a running stream and beautiful dragonflies made from cookie dough. The audience could walk through the garden and eat the flowers and the dragonflies. The whole concert hall had a heavenly fragrance from the thousands of arranged flowers.

How do you come up with themes for your chamber music festivals?
   The Bach to the Future theme came about because we wanted to feature Bach (he is part of our name), and we thought we would indulge ourselves in a bounty of Baroque playing. Our audience loves Bach and is always asking for more, so we featured an significant piece by a member of the Bach family on each concert this year. We also include important composer anniversaries in the programming.
   Last year we chose the theme Novel Obsessions and named every concert title after a famous novel. We designed the programming around that theme, and actors read specially chosen monologues from each book during the concert. Sometimes we really have to stretch, like when we created the repertoire for Voodoo Love Mint. We love to daydream and let ideas bubble up, and then put them into motion.
   In our second season we performed the Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time. It is a long and challenging work for a general audience, so we had readings between the movements of short poems and stories that related to the content of the movement. It added about five minutes to an already long piece. One reviewer commented that Messiaen’s music did not need this help, and we should dispense with the readings in future performances. He went on to say that it was an outstanding performance and that rarely in his career had he been at a performance of such a challenging piece in which the audience paid such close attention. The quality of the silence and the listening was striking, he mentioned, and went on to say: ‘quality commands attention, and this event proved it.’ Looking back on that performance, I think it is possible that the readings between the movements contributed to the quality of the listening. The audience may have paid such close attention because they were set up to have a powerful experience with this challenging music. When I listen to the performance today, the playing was not our best, but I find that the readings put the listener immediately into the frame of mind to hear what Messiaen had to say.

What is the theme for 2012?  
   The theme for next year is: Mixology. Mixologists are usually bartenders who make up new cocktails with very creative ingredients. For a 21st coming-of-age season, we thought that would be perfect. I am very interested in technology and would like to continue using jumbo-trons, film and set design, as well as collaborations with dance, theater and visual artists. Developing these themes is the most seriously fun thing in the world.

What is the instrumentation for the chamber festivals?
   Every week is different; we have anywhere from three to fifteen players. It all depends on the repertoire that we choose, which of course depends on the budget as much as anything else. If there is a small budget, we save money by playing small ensemble pieces and splurge with one week of large ensemble pieces. This year, we presented J.S. Bach’s hilarious “Coffee Cantata.” Other big performances have included Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and double string quartets plus bass to perform Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.

Who are your favorite composers? 
   I heard a quote from Gunther Schuller once: “There are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music.” If it is good music, I love all kinds and do not discriminate between styles, eras, genres, or instrumentation. Without a doubt I love the great Romantic composers, Brahms, Schubert and the like. I have played many of their works in transcriptions and created a new set of Brahms transcriptions of both of the two clarinet sonatas and the A Major violin sonata.
   In the Bach Dancing and Dynamite festivals, we try to mix up the old and the new, the popular and the obscure. Two of my favorite obscure composers are the French composer Melanie Bonis (1858-1937) and the Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942). Melanie Bonis was not well known simply because she was a woman composer in a very cloistered bourgeois society. Erwin Schulhoff lived in the mid-twentieth century and much of his music was lost for a long time because he was a Czech Jew who died in a concentration camp. Thankfully, there is a resurgence of interest in his music, and we have performed much of it. Other favorite kinds of music include everything from Lady Gaga to Radiohead to Portuguese Fado singer Mariza and Tupac Shakur. And of course, I am a great fan of my daughter, Francesca Esmé, a great young jazz singer in Brooklyn.
   If someone asks me what my favorite music is, it is almost always the piece I just played. Musicians tend to stay in the moment and throw themselves into the job at hand. I simply love being a musician and feel incredibly lucky to have a life in music. It has been creative and a bit offbeat, and I have been able to play music at a very high level for a long time. Although I would have loved to play in the Boston Symphony, we all have an important contribution to make wherever our music takes us.

How to play chamber music
1.  Listen, listen, listen. Listen from three perspectives – to yourself, from the center of the ensemble, and from the audience’s perspective. Pay attention to all three roles.
2.  Learn all the other parts. Study the score, and find the major transitions and awkward moments that you will have to finesse through cueing and communication.
3.  Learn to look up over your stand at other players without losing your place. Practice this at home before working with others. This is important so that you are able to communicate effectively and watch cues.
4.  Learn how to conduct with your flute.  The flutist often has to act as conductor and help start and stop an ensemble, among many other things. Learn to make clear, efficient cues with your flute.
5.  Learn the intonation tendencies of your instrument and of the other instruments in the ensemble. For example, clarinets tend to be sharp in the lowest register, while flutes tend to be flat. Correct your intonation problems first and then work on the intonation of the ensemble. Use drones to help if you are not yet adept at hearing the problems.

How to start a music festival
1.  Performers: Pick people you enjoy playing with or find the most accomplished players in your area.
2.  Venue: Look for a donated concert space that has a good-quality tuned piano.
3.  Timing: When planning events, look at what else will occur at the same time. Think about whether there is a niche you can fill.
4.  The Hook: Come up with something new or different that will bring in audiences. An exciting idea may create interest and free publicity from local media.
5.  The Audience: This important point affects the others, including where you perform and the marketing plan. Think about how you can contribute to the community, and don’t forget such groups as hospices, prisons, hospitals, boys and girls clubs, and retirement homes.
6.  Divide the Work: Know your strengths (publicity, programming, grant writing, etc) and find partners who have different skills.

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