Bravery

Tags

lyrics, music

In honor of my students who spent their Saturday afternoon learning about songwriting for their a cappella groups, here are some  lyrics.

Bravery

I think it’s funny that you of all people think I’m brave

Like I’ve got some sort of wisdom to impart.

I talk a good game, but my backbone tends to fail me.

This calm façade hides such an unbrave heart.

 

So you tell me that you think I am courageous.

I must admit it comes as a surprise.

I never would have said that I have valor.

I must have pulled the wool over your eyes.

 

CHORUS: I have no fear of changing.

I’ll keep my cool and do the things I have to do.

I can handle the ebb and flow of ever-shifting tides

But I’m a coward ‘cause I’m scared of losing you.

 

Convictions don’t mean much when they are silenced.

Resolutions only show what you intend.

To step with purpose is a very different story.

I tend to question what the fates portend.

 

I try to trust my instincts, they’re all that I have left,

But I fear the things my heart would have me do.

I take no pride in the path that I would choose.

My faulty moral compass keeps pointing back at you.

CHORUS

I’m afraid to show you the unpolished parts of me.

My secret jealousy …

Vulnerability …

Please don’t scrutinize me.

 

Is it daring to declare your heart’s desire?

Or braver still to love chaste from afar?

Am I strong if I accept that you may never know the secrets

That I whisper to myself and my guitar?

 

Or could it be that am passive and unworthy

Of the quiet admiration you bestow?

Could you know me better than I know myself?

Am I the fearless girl you think you know?

CHORUS

 

Changed For Good

Tags

change, gnp, music, UMass, UMMB

Tonight’s sunset was particularly beautiful.

It was not the kind of dramatic, fiery descent that typically grabs my attention, but rather a wash of pastel that seeped across the firmament and slowly faded to a deep indigo. I sat on my deck and watched its gradual progression, grateful for this unexpected moment of quiet calm.

Sunsets always make me think of my college band director Mr. Parks. Every weekday we used to gather at 4:40 on the athletic fields. We removed our instruments from their cases, tuned, and assembled in formation to rehearse our halftime show. He called out commands from atop a rickety scaffold tower, his voice amplified by tinny long-range speakers. He ran rehearsals with a unique blend of military precision and devilish humor. He demanded nothing less than our best every day, but he never missed an opportunity to witness and appreciate life’s little moments of beauty. Once in a while he would stop what he was doing and bark out a command: “Sunset appreciation, hut!” We would tuck our horns under our arms and applaud wildly for the spectacle. Band sunsets were always the best sunsets.

I think of him every time I see the sun go down. Even more so, I think of him when I see the sun rise, for this typically happens when I am driving to work for a before-school rehearsal. I am not a morning person by nature, so although I am the one who schedules the early morning rehearsals, I don’t particularly enjoy getting up for them. Once in a while my effort is rewarded by brilliant orange sunrise as I round the corner into the town where I work. I am always reminded of Mr. Parks, both because of his gratitude for life’s beauty and because he’s the one who taught me that some things in life are worth getting up early for.

Mr. Parks died quite unexpectedly in September 2010. It was a tremendous shock to all of us who had marched under him. He had directed the band for thirty-three years, which was longer than some of us had been alive. Irrational though it may have been, I think there was some part of each of us that believed he would always be there. I used to imagine that some day my children would march with him. If I thought it through – my present lack of children, my time frame for the production of said children, his age – I always came to the conclusion that the fantasy was unlikely at best. And yet I still sort of believed it would happen.

After a long and intense grieving period, I’m at a point now where the mention of his name nearly always makes me smile instead of cry. Still, it’s terribly hard to accept that the campus, my musical home, will never look quite the way I remember it. It is at once familiar and oddly foreign.

Transitions, I am learning, are rarely easy. Whether brought about by catastrophe or by choice, it is so very hard to witness the change of a cherished institution.

When I find out that one of my music students is going to UMass, my knee-jerk reaction is still to exclaim “Awesome! Are you going to join the band?” It is followed by a pang as I remember that my hero no longer teaches there, and neither my students nor my hypothetical children will ever meet him.

Then I remember that the band is still there. It is conducted by a new professor who is, by all accounts, wonderful. They still play the same fight song and wear the same uniforms that I wore. I don’t know if they still cheer for sunsets, but they certainly do look like they have fun together.

I think of all these things, and I decide that this student will never know the band that I loved – but he might just discover one that he loves. That is when I ask again: “Seriously … you’re going to join the band, right?”

Chance

Tags

chance, choices, luck, music, teaching

Yesterday on her blog A Big Life, Australian writer Olivia Hambrett described a pivotal moment in her history. Staring out the window – her window – at the beauty of a German spring day, she reflected on how a single choice, made in her early twenties, had set in motion a chain of events leading to this moment. She marveled at how unrecognizable her life might be had she made a different choice five years ago.

Lately I too have been thinking about the life that I have built, and how the complex structures of my adult existence sprung from one precarious moment in my early twenties.

Two months away from my college graduation, I attended a professional conference. I had applied for twenty-two music teaching jobs from Maine to Virginia and was waiting to be called for interviews.

Hopefully, readers, you will agree that I am a reasonably intelligent woman. I’m also, if I may say so, a pretty thorough planner. So I can’t even attempt to explain why I went to this conference, just shy of graduation, with a suitcase full of blue jeans and zero copies of my resume. It was a moment of spectacularly poor planning that, thanks to my pluck and a little dumb luck, didn’t seem to matter.

I walked into a session on classroom management and recognized the clinician as the director of fine arts for a wealthy community just west of Boston. I had sent her my resume three days earlier. She was hiring a high school choral director.

I knew that if I wanted the job – and I was pretty sure I did – I had to introduce myself. Although I was loath to draw attention to my undergraduate attire at a Big Boys and Girls conference, I knew that there was only one choice. So when the session ended I strode to the front of the room, extended my hand to the clinician, and introduced myself as a candidate for her choral job.

Much to my surprise, she invited me to join her for an interview in the hotel coffee shop. And although I had not even a business card to offer her when it was over, one week later I found myself in her office – in a suit – for my second interview.

I didn’t get the job. She was ultimately looking for someone with choral conducting experience, of which I had little. But as I was walking out the door she told me that a small seaside community north of Boston was looking for a music teacher, and that I should apply.

I mentally composed my cover letter on the two-hour drive home. I assembled my application materials and dropped them in the mailbox that afternoon. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang, and I had my first conversation with the woman who would mentor and inspire me for the next ten years. She had received my name from a colleague – the same one who tipped me off about the job opening just hours before.

For ten years I have taught music in that seaside town, weaving its faces and voices into the fabric of my being. I have often wondered what my life would look like today had I decided not to shake the hand of that fine arts director. It’s hard to imagine.

ICHSA: A Review

Tags

a cappella, high school, ICHSA, music, varsity vocals

The following is a review of the ICHSA Finals that I wrote for CASA.

***

Last Friday I had the great pleasure of judging at the final round of the International Championship of High School A Cappella. The show, produced by Varsity Vocals at the Hunter College Kaye Playhouse, featured ten of the nation’s best high school a cappella groups. As a high school teacher I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to witness firsthand the great work that is happening at schools around the country. These young singers are simply inspiring.

One of the things that I look for as a judge is consistent delivery of an emotional message from all members of a group. It is so common for young singers to rock their faces off on a solo but fall into an emotional coma when relegated to jen ja doh’s. I was delighted to find that this was very rarely an issue from the ten groups that competed on Friday night. From the goofy antics of Enharmonic Fusion’s “Hollywood” to the raw emotion of Take 7’s “Rolling in the Deep,” these kids were fully engaged in their performances.

WitchPitch? grabbed the audience’s attention with a  humorous introduction based on themes from the Wizard of Oz, and Highlands Voices performed a dazzling homage to Gloria Estefan with choreography that would surely dazzle even the Latina legend herself. Mezzo Devotion closed their set with an electric finale that literally burst off of the stage, eliciting screams of excitement from the audience.

No less exciting were the subtle dynamics and sensitive phrasing shown by the surprisingly mature singers. Limited Edition wowed us with their tight harmonies and sincere delivery of the Sara Bareilles tune “Kaleidoscope Heart.” Likewise, OneVoice delivered an emotional and nuanced rendition of “Freebird.”

The champion group Vocal Rush stood apart from their competitors, delivering an unforgettable performance that I am still thinking about days later. What distinguished them from the rest was their surprisingly understated delivery. Their choreography was minimal, but they sang with swagger and poise.

Again and again I was impressed by the focus and professionalism of these groups. When a cell phone rang (endlessly) as the first pitch was blown, the students of Forte did not bat an eye. When a PFC member’s hair got stuck to her face, she never once touched it. It was clear that these students had carefully thought through the smallest details of their performance, resulting in polished performances from the moment they set foot on the stage.

Repeatedly we judges exclaimed in surprise: “these are high school kids?!?” Those seated around us expressed relief that they were not in the position to select a winner, for the quality of competing groups was consistently high. There is no doubt that the caliber of high school a cappella has skyrocketed in recent years, and the 2012 ICHSA finalists proved that these teens are ready to rock their respective college campuses. Friday night’s show was awesome. Not high school awesome. Just awesome. If the college groups are paying attention, they are no doubt chomping at the bit to attract the experienced new crop of high school graduates heading their way.

Somebody That I Used to Know

Tags

breakups, gotye, music, teaching

My friend Eileen picked me up on the way to dinner tonight and immediately asked me if I have heard “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye. I enthusiastically exclaimed that I have, and that I love the song. What made this moment so remarkable is that I had been humming the song on my way down the stairs and out to her car, and that I had just watched the video three times on YouTube.

For a music teacher – in particular, for a music teacher whose career is so heavily focused on contemporary a cappella – I am woefully out of touch with the popular music scene. I have not listened recreationally to a trendy song since I was my students’ age. My music collection is mostly made up of obscure singer songwriters and forties jazz musicians. So it is unusual for me to ride the popular music wave as I am doing now, with a song that is peaking ten months after its release.

In fact, it was my students who introduced me to this uniquely compelling song. I heard it for the first time last week when one of my a cappella groups began rehearsing it. Five students had collaborated on an arrangement and came back from vacation ready to teach it to the rest of their group. For the first time in my career, I sat at my desk while my group learned a new song entirely on their own – a moment that I would have found moving regardless of the song choice.

Their arrangement is nothing like the original, but it made me hold my breath the first time I heard it put together. It is marked by grinding dissonance, a brooding bass line, and soaring three-part harmony in the chorus. It struck me as unusual that the group moved so quickly from the learning of notes to a discussion about expression. Even in their first rehearsal, they transitioned seamlessly from drawn-out dissonant harmonies (reminiscent of paralyzing depression) to a wailing, melodramatic chorus that perfectly suits teenage voices. It is unusual for them to connect so viscerally with a song – at least, not before extensive rehearsal and lyrical analysis.

Two days later, a student in my online American Popular Music class wrote a beautifully-crafted essay about Gotye’s music video, prompting me to look it up on YouTube.  I found the video, with its stop motion animation and highly expressive facial close-ups, to be the perfect compliment to a song that already thumped in my chest. I’ve watched the video every day since then, contributing to its more than 190 million views.

That my students introduced me to the song in the same week that I suffered a painful falling out with a close friend has no doubt intensified its magnetic appeal for me. I had forgotten about the unique devastation of a polite nod from a former loved one.

Now that the song is on my radar, I notice it all over Facebook (along with a number of covers and parodies.) Clearly my students and I are not the only people moved by Gotye’s song, which gives voice to feelings that are hard to talk about.

A Community of Song

Tags

Buck, dog, mother, music, Peter Yarrow

I awoke long before I intended to this morning. A fire engine was careening down our street, its siren slowly wailing up and down. Buck immediately joined in. He always does. It starts as a guttural growl and crescendos into a mournful crying. As the siren’s pitch rises and falls, so too does Buck’s cry. He doesn’t do this with police sirens – only with the uniquely mournful sound of the fire engine. He emits a howl that is in near perfect unison with the truck.

I know that howling is not a desirable habit for a dog, particularly when it interrupts one’s sleep – but I find Buck’s response to fire engines incredibly endearing. I wonder if he realizes that he’s responding to a mechanically produced sound, or does he think he is joining a chorus of howling canines? Whatever the reason, clearly his instinct is to tune in to his environment. When he senses unrest, he responds.

I know that very little thought goes into this decision. It is driven purely by an unconscious animal urge. But I still find it heartwarming and strangely admirable. We humans are driven by the same instinct, but we are sometimes disinclined to listen to it.

My mother surprised me tonight with two tickets to hear Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary at the Iron Horse Music Hall. My mother began listening to the famous folk trio when she was in high school, and their music was the soundtrack to my childhood. From infancy I fell asleep each night to my mother strumming her guitar and singing such songs as “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “If I Had a Hammer.”

Tonight was not the first time she surprised me with concert tickets. When I was four years old my parents took me to hear Peter, Paul, and Mary at Springfield Symphony Hall. When they buckled me into the car they did not tell me where we were going. Having heard advertisements all week for an upcoming flower show, I was convinced that it was our destination. Not until the legendary singers walked on stage did I realize where we were. It was a moment that neither my mother nor I will ever forget.

I have not listened to their music in years. I tend to be drawn to songs that are somewhat more complex – I love the unexpected melodic turns of jazz, the rich texture of classical music, and even the linguistic gymnastics of rap. Peter, Paul, and Mary’s music sounds simple and almost quaint to my ears. But it may as well be encoded in my DNA, for it is just as woven into my being.

Clearly my mother and I are not the only people who feel such a connection to the music, for Peter played to a sold out house. The audience was mostly older than my mother – in fact, by my estimate I was the fifth youngest person in the club tonight – but the vibrant energy was palpable. The audience sang along with every song – Peter even invited several people on stage to close out the first set with the whimsical “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

It has been a long time since I’ve experienced communal music like this. It’s not unusual for an audience to sing along at concerts – particularly when asked to do so – but it rarely feels this organic. Peter’s songs demanded to be sung not just by the legend on the stage but by all of us. The very simplicity that made me overlook them for years is what makes them so inclusive and stirring.

Peter fostered a sense of community through his music. It was not possible to sit back and listen, for it stirred a deep sense of belonging and ownership in all who were present. It was not unlike Buck’s instinctive reaction to the siren that awoke us both this morning. We were both moved by what we heard today, and our instincts told us to sing along.

Looking Back

Tags

MMEA, music, news, teaching, writing

Today I wrote a column that will run in the June issue of Mass Music News. Yes, that’s right – I wrote a “news” column that will run two months from now. If that’s not creative writing, I don’t know what is.

—

The summer months are upon us! I’m sure I’m not alone when I tell you that last March’s unseasonably warm spell jump-started my summer musings. My thoughts turned to travel, beach days, and barbecues, but also to next fall’s musical, ensemble auditions, and new repertoire. This is the life of a teacher – we are always planning ahead.

It is important, though, to reflect as much as we plan – like Janus, the Roman two-faced god of transitions, a good teacher looks forward and back simultaneously. As we wind down for summer, we are at an opportune moment to do exactly that.

Last fall, in my first chairperson’s letter for Mass Music News, I told you of the extreme measures that I had taken to rejuvenate after a tough school year. For the first time in my life I took a true summer vacation – I wrote no curriculum, arranged no songs, and answered no emails.  It was my attempt to press the reset button, and it served as a reminder that before I can inspire young minds, I need to inspire my own. Reciting (and living by) this mantra over the following school year gave me the necessary energy to embark on new projects and adventures with my students.

It has been a year of exciting developments in the Northeastern District. We adopted an online scoring system that streamlined our audition procedures and allowed our dedicated volunteers to work more efficiently. At our board meetings we began a discussion of how we can go beyond the festivals to better serve our membership. We were excited to co-sponsor the SGMM General Music Festival last spring and are discussing professional development opportunities for next year.

Now we are turning our attention to our festival procedures. We are gathering data on what is working well and what needs attention. One of my projects this summer will be to edit our choral audition mp3s. I will also be collecting recommendations for new additions to our adjudicator list for the senior and junior festivals. Please send me your suggestions!

As you reflect on your year and look ahead to the next one, I hope you will take a few minutes to give me some feedback. I’d like to hear your thoughts on the work that we are doing in the Northeastern District – what are our areas for growth? Please take our online survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FN66P6K.

Happy summer!

Amanda Roeder

Restless

Tags

college, insomnia, music, restless, travel, yoga

As I stared into a black hole of insomnia at 2:00 this morning, it occurred to me that my habits of mind are both a blessing and a curse.

As a college musician I learned to refine my technique by the diligent repetition of challenging patterns. When my fingers tripped over a difficult flourish of notes I would isolate the problem spot and play it, again and again, until it sounded smooth and effortless. I would play patterns backwards and forwards. I would play them in triplets, dotted eighths, and sixteenths. I would play them slowly and then speed up the metronome one click at a time. I could sometimes spend an hour on one measure. Then I would put my flute away and emerge from the practice room, but the work continued. Over dining hall dinners and late night reading, my brain was still polishing the rough edges of the music. My fingers silently moved over absent keys. I would hear the notes in my head as I drifted off to sleep.

I came to appreciate the tremendous benefit of such mental practice – involuntary though it was, it was an important extension of the work that I did in the practice room. When I returned to my flute the next day, my improvement was measurable. Now when I talk to my students about this process I call it “percolating” – the semi-conscious process by which new information filters and seeps its way into our brains.

My ability to sustain focus on a task, to carefully and methodically work through problematic moments (and to let them simmer on the back burner,) has produced great results. It is one of the habits of mind that has contributed to my success in life. But there are times when it can be a tremendous burden. Because when I can’t identify the appropriate outlet for my mental energy, I will go around in endless circles looking for it.

As I walked out of Saturday’s TESOL class I told myself “Okay … time to relax.” I envisioned a perfect leisurely Sunday with extra sleep, extra foam on my latte, and extra time to do whatever I damn well please. All of these things happened, and yet somehow the leisure part eluded me. I was dogged by an understated but persistent sense of restlessness for the entire weekend. Something – I couldn’t tell what – was not right. And because my brain is hard-wired to polish all of the rough edges it encounters, I turned this thought over and over in my brain all weekend.

One of my favorite yoga teachers calls this state of mind “monkey brain.” The inability to quiet one’s mental chatter is detrimental to the practice of yoga, and to a peaceful life in general. My inner primate was out of control this weekend.

I tried baking and writing and walking and reading and cleaning and nothing worked. I made a to do list of all of my outstanding obligations. I studied my calendar. I checked all of my bank statements. Everything seemed to be more or less in order, but something was still not right.

Unsure of where to focus my monkey brain, I turned my attention to my upcoming summer travel. This proved to be a happy distraction for several hours. But as I lay awake with language classes, train timetables, and dress codes churning in my brain, I realized that all I had managed to do was refocus – not dispel – my restless energy.

Today I am paying the price. And I still don’t know why.

Cracking the Gate

Tags

gnp, music, politics, teaching

In today’s piano lesson, my student and I spent half an hour practicing the same three-measure segment of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. She was struggling with a passage that involved quarter note triplets against a steady, staccato accompaniment. (To further complicate matters, the passage called for her to cross one hand over the other while playing.) She knew that she was not playing the rhythm correctly but could not identify when it was right and when it was wrong. She was, understandably, terribly frustrated by this.

The piano can be an incredibly isolating instrument. Whereas my formative years of flute playing were spent in bands and chamber ensembles, I practiced piano in solitude. This sometimes led to the development of sloppy habits and misconceptions that my teacher would gently correct at each weekly lesson.

My college band director Mr. Parks always used to tell us that the old adage “practice makes perfect” was a fallacy. “Practice makes permanent,” he told us. “Only perfect practice makes perfect.” He had it so right. Flawed practice habits, I learned, are worse than not practicing at all, because they only serve to reinforce mistakes.

I explained to my student that she was finding it difficult to distinguish between correct and incorrect patterns because she had practiced the incorrect rhythm so diligently. I told her that her it’s perfectly normal to get hung up on tricky rhythms like this one, and that this is precisely why musicians take lessons. When we rely too heavily on our own powers of self-assessment, we tend to get stuck in our ways. We simply do not recognize our own errors.

Recently my local NPR station ran a story about Americans’ increasing disability to empathize with the perspectives of others. In an interview with Here and Now host Robin Young, psychologist Jonathan Haidt spoke of our deepening social divisions:

We’ve moved into gated moral communities in which many people on the left never meet or socialize with people on the right, or vice versa …

It’s so true. My close friends and I are nearly in lock step on social issues. We vary only slightly in our opinions on fiscal matters and foreign policy. My family is somewhat more diverse in our politics, but we are all basically good people who prefer to keep the peace, so we generally avoid the subject altogether. I have a few Facebook friends who are outspoken in their religious or political convictions. I must confess that I have unsubscribed to most of them. Social networking makes it easy not only to connect with like-minded individuals but also to shut out those who think differently from us.

I once dated someone for about a month whose passionately held political convictions were diametrically opposed to mine. He belonged to a movement that, at the time, was the butt of many late-night talk show jokes. The relationship was short-lived. I tried – I really did. I wanted to look past his politics. I told myself that his values were more closely aligned with the men in my family than my own, and if I love them, maybe I could love someone like him.

The ultimate deal breaker was that when we went out, he never let me pick the restaurant. I thought it spoke volumes about his character. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

I like my moral community. I respect my fellow residents. They tend to have good ideas that make sense to me. So I don’t think I’ll be leaving any time soon. But I am willing to leave the gate open on occasion.

Both my student and the NPR story offer a valuable reminder of the importance of seeking other perspectives. The cultivation of musical skill and human understanding takes practice – practice that cannot be executed in a vacuum, lest our habits and perspectives become permanent.

Noisy

Tags

music, teaching

I’m finding it rather difficult to focus on my writing tonight. Myriad thoughts are clamoring for attention in my tired head. This is so often the case after a performance.

I have just returned from an equally exhilarating and exhausting concert featuring all of my school district’s singers in grades 7 through 12. My groups performed a variety of challenging works – many of them new since our last concert, which means that the last few weeks of rehearsals have been intense.

The concert fell on the second night of The Wizard of Oz (I had to hire a sub for tonight’s show) and the night before I begin a five-week series of classes in Boston.

And at the moment I am nearly brain dead.

I can remember a time when this was my average speed. I’m not entirely sure how I did that.

I knew that tonight would be a huge “check” off of my year’s list. I’m happy to report that it was also greatly satisfying. I love to watch young musicians when they set aside their insecurities and give themselves up to a performance.

A friend recently reminded me of a quote by a favorite college conductor of mine. Before concerts he used to tell us “I want you to play with a fire in your belly and your brain on ice.” What he meant is that he wanted us to play with passion but still maintain the presence of mind to recall all that we had rehearsed. I am still learning how to find that balance. Teaching it to teenagers is an even greater challenge. Tonight we came closer than ever before.

The moments after the concert were a blur of excited kids and proud parents. I received praise and congratulations from a few. One grabbed my left hand and informed me that “now we just have to get you married.”

I … didn’t exactly know what to say to that.

This odd encounter still lingers in my mind at quarter of twelve, along with the electric energy of the evening, my pride in my students, one condescending email from a parent (can’t please them all, I guess), tomorrow’s obligations, and the house key that Esteban left when he checked out of my spare bedroom this evening.

The only sounds in my home tonight are the steady tick of the wall clock and my fingers tapping on the keyboard. In my head, however, I can barely hear myself think.