In recent years, I have developed a significant fear of singing in a recital setting. This fear grew out of a comment made to me in 2005 that described my physical posture as stiff. Since then, I have been battling with this affliction, stiffness, and have felt it hinder my performance in recitals. My breath ceases to be efficient, my legs tighten, and over the course of a recital program, my voice tires. In a constant effort to improve my ability as an artist, naturally I am driven to seek assistance from specialists who can help me face my challenges. In one afternoon session with Patsy Rodenburg, I not only learned the simple tools necessary to alter my bad habits, but also gained the confidence to overcome my fears.

I have to admit, I had no idea what to expect from our session. I was surprised to learn weeks before that we would not be working with a pianist, nor that I needed to have any music with me. What could we possibly be doing? All I could do was proceed with an open mind, conscious of the fact that I was willing to learn, grow and improve. Our session began with a discussion, where Patsy started to get an idea of who I was and on what we might need to work. Almost immediately, we were up on our feet and getting physical; Patsy wanted to see for herself how I would enter a recital hall and prepare to sing. Ladies and gentlemen, this is CRUCIAL to beginning any recital or performance. For me (and I’m sure other performers share this moment) there is an indescribable rush of adrenaline mixed with terrifying expectation that happens in the silence between entering the performance space with applause, and actually beginning the performance. To the audience it is only mere seconds, but to the performer, that silent pause can feel like the longest minutes of their life. So what is it that we do in those precious few ounces of time before we make music? Ideally, this is a time in which we need to help ourselves be ready for the first note of music that we play or sing. As it turns out, I was hindering my performance by habit, things I had been told to do early in my training.

I have an unfortunate tendency to take suggestions and criticism too far in many situations, and those ideas (some good, some not helpful) can stick to me like glue. That is how bad habits can form instantly; having my instrument within my body, it is often difficult to identify what I might be doing wrong to disrupt its alignment. The following is how I used to walk onto the stage for a recital. I enter the room with a big smile, cross to the infamous crook of the piano, nod my head slightly to acknowledge the audience, and as the applause dies down, turn my head to the pianist to focus. It is during this time, the time to “prepare” to sing, that moment of expectation during which I would rather be skydiving than having the audience watch me, that my body weight rocks back on the heels, my knees slightly lock and I brace for impact. One may wonder how it is even possible to openly communicate when positioned in such a posture.

What Patsy did was to immediately identify this problem and to offer helpful suggestions to fix it. The most important idea was to shift my weight onto the balls of my feet and feel my energy moving outward towards the audience. Instantly my body felt free, my knees unlocked, my shoulders weren’t as tight and I wasn’t “planting” my energy. If I wanted to turn to the pianist, rather than stiffly crank my head over, why not take a couple of steps to turn my entire body over to them? Patsy had me walk around the room with this approach, keeping my weight forward and with a purpose.

Her next suggestion dealt with my mental focus before walking on the stage. Rather than enter with a big, false smile as a defensive front (again, the smile something I had been told to do) she suggested a single thought to have clearly focused in my mind, “What a great story I’ve got to tell you; this story is worth telling.” My entrance into the room then became genuine, and brought a slight smile to my face, which projected honesty. It is true that an audience can detect the difference between a performer who is honest and open, and a performer who is worried about how the audience feels about them. If I focus on giving the audience energy, rather than worrying about my own limitations, then it will put the audience at ease. As I continue working in this business called show, I slowly come to understand the hard lesson that it is impossible to please everyone in the audience. There will always be a certain percentage of an audience that does not care for what I do, and I have to accept this. I am learning that part of being an artist is to not have reservations about what an audience might think, but to believe in what I have to offer creatively. As long as I have an opinion, thought, motivation or emotion behind my artistic choices, they will be justified. This is not to say that they can never change or be flexible to other interpretation, but I can have pride knowing that I have taken the time to devote my personal thought into the work.

Bit of a digression there, but worthwhile, I think. Our next topic dealt with breath and how best to free it. Every day I discover how important it is to be generous with air when singing. It sounds so simple, almost stupid, but the freest, most honest sound will be the one produced with the freest breath flow. Also, the lower the depth of breath in my body, the more natural, sonorous and rich the sound will be. Patsy had me sing the first phrase of a song after entering the room and keeping my weight over the balls of my feet. The sound was rich, I didn’t feel stiff and the breath flowed like a waterfall over my tongue. Then I tried the entrance again, but reverted back to “planting” my heels to feel the difference. Patsy noticed that there was a slight strain on my throat and the sound wasn’t as rich, and I certainly felt more constriction. This lead to a discussion concerning the tension I hold in my stomach muscles. I will admit that throughout most of an average day, I am either tensing my stomach or holding it in, especially if I am in public. Since I was teased to no end for being a chubby child, I got into the habit of holding in my stomach to appear thinner. Now that I am fit and living a healthy lifestyle, I can certainly give myself permission to let those issues go. Holding in my stomach has been affecting the freedom of my breath and communication. When I enter onto a stage for a recital, I hold my stomach in consistently because I am in front of people. Patsy suggested that before I enter, I take one hand and push against a wall to feel the pressure it puts on my core muscles. Following this, I should focus attention on my belly and consciously release the tension held there. When I released my stomach and took a breath to sing much lower in my body, my voice was even freer.

Although I learned a great many more techniques and ideas from Patsy in our session, most importantly she gave me permission to trust in myself. I have studied singing for 10 years now and I must trust that the work I’ve done is respectable, and have the freedom to release what it is I know how to do. I like to call it “unleashing the fury”. Even though I am constantly searching for improvement in what I do, when it comes time for the performance, I must feel as though I am a master of my abilities. I felt an immediate correction in physical posture and mindset when entering and standing in a recital space, and can honestly say I have a fresh, positive outlook on performing my next recital.

Links:

Joshua Hopkins

Patsy Rodenburg

May 2008

After intensive preparations four lucky former BBT winners including myself head off together with Mitsuko Uchida to celebrate the Trust’s 5^th Anniversary with three concerts in the US. Needless to write that the chance of working on Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps with Mitsuko and my wonderful BBT colleagues stands out as a true highlight. Mitsuko just couldn`t be nicer to us! I am about to enjoy an ideal way of making music with somebody as wonderful and superior in experience as Mitsuko. She is a real musical teamplayer while being a constant, subtle inspiration, without ever being intimidating… Something to remember and learn from for the rest of my musical life! I am looking forward already not only to meet up with the same ensemble of friends this coming autumn for further concerts (this time in Europe), but also to musically continue where we stopped after our last concert in New York.

June 2008

About one year ago the City of London Festival had asked me to think of two programmes that would match one of the themes of their 2008 edition: Swiss music. What I could suggest was strongly linked to the BBT: my BBT supported CD of the cello concerto, the cello sonata and song transcriptions by the very(!) late romantic Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck made the COLF director curious. As a result and to my great pleasure I got together again with Julius Drake (who had been my piano partner already for the mentioned recording) and played a recital presenting Schoeck pieces between sonatas by Mendelssohn and Schubert.

Three nights later I was joined by the Festival Strings Lucerne to give perhaps the London premiere of a cello concerto written in 1949! The orchestra and their conductor have fallen in love with the Schoeck concerto and want to present it on tour in South America in 2011. There continues the “BBT effect”…

Christian Poltéra has recorded three CDs with the support of BBT, each featuring an unsung cello concerto (one each by Schoeck, Honegger and Martin) combined with works for cello and piano. Each of the CDs is recorded on BIS.

Listen to an excerpt from Schoeck: Cello Concerto

Christian Poltéra plays Othmar Schoeck

Christian Poltéra plays Arthur Honegger

The BBT tour group meet up at Detroit Airport. Susan Rivers, Llŷr Williams and Christian Poltéra fly in from London, Mitsuko Uchida and Soovin Kim arrive from New York.  I fly in from Stockholm via New York and find the others waiting for me in Detroit.  We are driven the 2 hour journey from the Airport to the town of Kalamazoo where the first concert of the tour is to take place as part of the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival.

Sunday, 11th May

Contemplating a lovely week ahead with Mitsuko and the boys. It already feels as if it is flying by. We are like a school class or a kindergarten. Mitsuko is our big sister and Susan our very organised mother. Everyone totally trusts her and gives up their normal control to her.

In rehearsal with “Big Sister” Mitsuko, Christian and Soovin

Monday, 12th May

The coffee shop girl at the hotel in Kalamazoo is totally in love with Christian and keeps giving him complements about this hair…

Tuesday, 13th May

First concert at the Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University

Wednesday, 14th May

We had a wonderful experience at the concert yesterday. The hall was packed with the audience on the stage as well. A group of 15 young and gifted clarinet players came all the way from Interlaken, Michigan to the concert. Lovely people. Lots of talking and loads of photos taken.

We had been joking about having a stretch limo to ferry us around and finally we got one to take us back to Detroit airport to travel on to Philadelphia. It looked great from the outside but when we got in we could hardly fit us all in and some of the luggage and instruments ended up on our laps.

I am longing for my one-year-old little daughter, Matilda. Matilda and I speak via Skype every day…She shows me her new dance moves: she is very gifted.

Thursday, 15th May

Lots of joy during the concert in Philly, in its wonderful chamber music hall at the Kimmel Center.  Also we found a great seafood restaurant just around the corner from the hotel.

Performing Bartok “Contrasts” with Soovin Kim and Llŷr Williams

Friday, 16th May

This morning we are taking the train from Philly to New York.

Saturday, 17th May

The concert in Carnegie, Zankel Hall was for me the most spiritual and focused. Another wonderful audience. What an extraordinary piece the Quartet for the End of Time is. You never get used to the experience. It is as if you are totally reborn each time you perform it. When the last high note from the violin has gone to heaven you become a new person. I think that is the feeling for the listener too. The listening part is also very special for the players in the movements in which you are not participating. And of course if you do this piece with a totally magical musician as Mitsuko every single movement has another dimension. The touch, the colours and the dynamic that she brings out of the piano is so extraordinarily subtle and unique. I wonder what it is going to be like to play this piece with another pianist now.

At the reception after the concert I met Ilaria Borletti. She is an amazing woman and seemed to be really happy with the concert.

“Mama” Susan Rivers, Mitsuko Uchida and Ilaria Borletti-Buitoni

Happy performers: Christian Poltéra, Martin Fröst, Mitsuko Uchida, Llŷr Williams, Soovin Kim

The BBT family: Susan, Christian, Martin, Mitsuko, Ilaria, Llŷr and Soovin

Sunday, 18th May

Christian and I are hanging out a lot in the wonderful Apple Store waiting for the new iPod touch phone to arrive. In the meantime Christian bought an iPod touch. The Store is open 24 hours so I went there for the last time at 7am just to be alone in the shop – or at least this is what I thought. It was crowded. Unbelievable – 7am on Sunday!!!

So at the end of the tour almost the whole BBT family is together. A great week has gone by and it is a pity that it is over but it is not the ‘end of time’ as we will all meet again for our tour in Europe in November.

Quite unlike any piece of music I know, the new Simon Holt percussion concerto “A Table of Noises” exuberantly tears up the manual on how to approach the medium and I am thrilled with the idiosyncratic, adventurous results. The title draws on some initial research Simon made into percussion instruments, and the discovery of a Peruvian instrument named Una Mesa de Ruidos (A Table of Noises). This led, laterally, to the vivid recollection of an altogether different kind of table, namely that at the centre of the life of Simon’s late Great Uncle Ash. Severely disabled (and part-time taxidermist) Ash had a table adorned with a variety of possessions central to his life.  This other table had fascinated the adoring young nephew, and along with a variety of other childhood memories, informed the character of the new concerto. In six titled movements, the work recalls various protagonists from that era, often with appropriate Lancastrian wit and eccentricity. Those characters include the dog “Fly”(a blistering scherzo featuring xylophone insanity) and the boisterous “Skennin’ Mary” with her maverick glass-eye and fabulous temper. Haunting these images are a variety of (unidentified) ghosts, who manifest themselves as interludes throughout the work. 

The concerto crackles with energy, and its unconventional percussion inventory adds to the pep in its step. The soloist’s own Ash-inspired “Table Top”(movement 9) forms an entire solo-movement where a variety of intimate, jewel-like sounds are laid out, and investigated in a variety of quirky combinations. Worth a mention also is the skewed orchestral set-up, including two antiphonal percussionists and piccolo players, alongside a complete dearth of violins. Rising out of these angularities are some of the most arresting textures yet to be penned, and the originality is both confident and not in the slightest self-conscious. Brittle woodwinds, thick brass-chords, the hoot of a car-horn, high double-bass harmonics, all jostling for position!

The final movement entitled “Under Glass” represents a kind of finality; the finishing touch of the taxidermist’s art and the inexorable demise of the characters alluded to within the concerto. Extremely powerful, this final, grave gesture spoke viscerally at the premiere, and for those brave enough to listen, eerie personal resonances were evoked. Music can have this rare power, and it has found a wonderful new vessel in Simon Holt’s “A Table of Noises”. 

I look forward to playing the work on many more occasions, and sharing a landmark work with as wide an audience as possible.

Best wishes, Colin Currie. 

To be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on June 6 and available to listen again online for a week after that.

Read  The Guardian review of the premiere

More about Simon Holt

www.colincurrie.net

I’m just on my way out of the door to return a hire car and as I leave the flat I pick up today’s post. In amongst the trash is a CD from the BBC of our premiere of Detlev’s Concerto. Listening to this is the first time I fully appreciate what the BBT project has really achieved. Not the performance especially, which went well, but the possibility of giving life to a new piece.

The process of commissioning works wasn’t really a new one for us, but when Phil and I approached Detlev I don’t think either of us anticipated the scope and breadth that the Concerto would have. In a sense it reminds me a lot of having a baby: months and months of gestation and then (as was the case with us) when the day before the concert arrives and you get to hear the piece for the first time, in its entirety, it’s an overwhelming experience. But although it’s extraordinarily exciting it feels very much like this is the start of something rather than the end.

The real beginning was a long time ago now. A cup of coffee in a meeting room at Booseys’ and it was all done. Detlev, much to our surprise and delight, already seemed to have a clear idea of using some NASA images as the starting point for the piece. Then it was a further 18 months until we met again in Hanover and things weren’t quite so chirpy on the health front. Phil and I were giving a recital for broadcast by the WDR, which would have been fine if Phil’s stomach hadn’t decided to retaliate!! Still, despite the green face it was a great evening and the next day we played some Glanert to Glanert. This was a serious luxury, to have the chance of working with Detlev and knowing that we still had a month before the premiere. A few tiny changes, but mainly it gave us a chance to start “playing” the piece and bringing the notes off the page.

Something which really caught my ear was Detlev’s obsession with and sensitivity to structure. The relationship of the big building-blocks of a piece and the smaller blocks within them and the phrases within them etc. seemed very important to him. This clear basic structure is always there in great music because within this is the space to be free. For me it’s the possibility of freedom that gives the music a soul and hopefully a longevity. If it can be different every time, and cohesive, then you’ve got something.

As I race through the pages of Bill Bryson’s best-seller ‘A short history of nearly everything’ which deals with the creation of the universe and more (not bad for 500 pages), I keep thinking of the parallels between music and nature – not just because the Concerto is based on images from space, but also with relation to ideas of gravity and time. The piece opens with a simple five-note cell, a tiny bundle of molecular musical matter, vibrating, unstable and rich in its ability to combine, expand, contract and evolve in almost any dimension… and that’s what Detlev does. Of course, this is a classical compositional approach, but his is one which embraces sound and harmony in a very compelling way. These five notes have their own gravitational field too, which pulls and repels the other musical ideas that spring up from the silence. And in the quiet heart of the piece these same five notes are blown apart and time stops.

To work through a piece and discover these things is half the joy of the music for me. As a performer we can see the notes on the page, so it’s our job to reveal the secrets and the mysteries that lie behind. Perhaps some of them remain with the composer, but hopefully with each performance we solve a few more riddles and the music is clearer, simpler and more expressive for it. That’s why we need a tour now please!…

The premiere was a great thrill for us. Martyn Brabbins and BBCSSO were the ideal comrades for such an adventure into the unknown. When you’ve only got 2½ hours to rehearse a 25-minute concerto that nobody has heard before, Martyn’s unflappable professionalism is seriously reassuring. In fact the dress-rehearsal of the other pieces over-ran as well, so we ended up in the unenviable position of never having played the cadenza in the context of the piece! But adrenalin is a wonderful drug for focusing as well as distracting, and happily it was working with us in this case.

It was a strange feeling after the concert and the dinner and the whiskies to find myself on a plane the next morning at an unfeasibly early hour heading towards a performance of Ravel’s Piano Trio that same day. But amongst the bleary-eyed thoughts I did reflect on what it must have been like to hear the opening phrase of Ravel’s piece for the first time and how special that must have been! Ravel’s Trio is considered one of the masterpieces of its genre and we hope that Detlev’s foray into music for 176 piano keys is soon appreciated in the same way.

Anyway, the piece is now out there. The moment of its birth has past but is definitely not forgotten and now we just need to play it again…

A 7-minute film, documenting the final three months in preparation for the premiere is available to view now at www.bbtartistslive.com

6th May 2008

In the beginning of 2007, I made a concert tour with this music with the early music group Combattimento Consort Amsterdam. We got along very well and the music was so great that we all thought we should record it. Miraculously we found a week in October last year in which the ensemble, the record label, myself and a beautiful church in Amsterdam were available, so with the help of the BBT we decided to make the recording then. I am extremely happy I had the opportunity to make this CD with this fantastic ensemble. They are not only great players, but also very positive and pleasant to work with, with a very fresh, musical approach to early music. A lot of the music on this CD is rather unknown, even though the baroque was a great period for the trombone. In that time the trombone was the only brass instrument that could play chromatically all the notes. Trumpets and horns could only play overtones in one key. That made the trombone the ideal brass instrument to combine with violins and others in these baroque sonatas. Hopefully more people will recognise the possibilities of the trombone and the great music written for it through this recording.

The past few weeks were quite busy, because we had to finish the CD. Jared Sacks and Hein Dekker of my record label Channel Classics, made a first version to start with. After that I listened to it as well as Jan Willem de Vriend, the leader of Combattimento Consort. The first impression was very positive, although as a musician it is always difficult to listen to yourself, you always hear small things you would have preferred differently. A lot of these small things could be changed and improved and after a few sessions of listening and editing, the master tape was ready. Then we had to make the booklet. I could never imagine how difficult it could be to find out the exact original titles and details of all the pieces. After a few days of puzzling and googling, I managed to make the track list with all the details. Music journalist Katje Reichenfeld wrote the liner notes and after that the booklet could be made. After a few rounds of corrections, everything went to the factory last week. All of this had to be done in a period that I was constantly on tour, first in Switzerland and after that in Spain and Ukraine. In every hotel I received another mail with the latest version of the text or with mp3’s of the latest edits to check it and to send my comments back. This made things extra complicated, but finally everything is done and now I am very curious for the first box of cd’s that will arrive in a few days!

There will be another CD later this year, called ‘I was like wow’, with totally different repertoire. Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis wrote the piece ‘I was like wow’ for me. When I first saw the piece and the title, I thought it would be a happy piece, but it is the opposite. It is a piece for trombone and tape based on a television documentary about the war in Iraq. During the piece you hear American soldiers from the documentary explaining how they got injured during the war and what they experienced in Iraq. At some point one of them says: ‘When I realised I just got blew up by about 20 mines, I was like wow.’

Filmmaker Jan Willem Looze, who is a good friend of the composer, made a film with the piece, like a video clip, with shots of the original television documentary, combined with shots of our recording session. This film will be on the CD as well as a video file.

For the rest of the cd, I took ‘I was like wow’ literally: I chose pieces that I think are in one way or the other ‘wow’. This varies from an unknown Mozart aria, original for trombone, to some pieces with piano accompaniment and some new solo pieces written for me. Except the Mozart aria, I play this entire recording on my modern instrument. I chose an extreme mixture of styles. Trombone is still quite unknown as a solo instrument and in this way I hope people can hear as many different sides of the beautiful instrument trombone and hopefully find the trombone ‘wow’ as well.

All pieces for this CD have been recorded now. We will need the coming few months to finish the editing and the booklet and probably after the summer it will be released. The film for the piece ‘I was like wow’ will be ready next week and a shorter version of it will be released on youtube soon, as a preview for the cd.

The last part of my BBT Award budget will be used for the commission of a new trombone concerto. It is really fantastic to have the opportunity to work on this kind of projects and I really want to thank the BBT for its support, not only financially, but in every possible way. Without the BBT it would be much more difficult to realise these kind of things!!!!

Jörgen van Rijen
Amsterdam, 22 April 2008

‘I was like wow’ preview on YouTube

BBT film about Jörgen van Rijen