Pianist Kenny Werner’s book Effortless Mastery has helped a lot of people who struggle with the fear of performance. He’s started a new blog, and part of the blog is a series of videos on how he practices. I’m excited to hear and watch these videos, and encourage you to check them out the first three below.
Category: Master Musicians
You Think YOU Have Stage Fright? Pianist Maria João Pires Has You Beat
Imagine you’re on stage, with an audience quietly listening, and when the conductor gives the orchestra the first downbeat, they begin to play another concerto, one you have not prepared. What would you do? You can watch what Maria João Pires did below.
The Fruits of Practice: Ring Without Words: Lorin Maazel & Berlin Philharmonic
This is what comes of good practice. The intonation, beauty of tone, and expression in this performance of Der Ring ohne Worte is absolutely stellar.
Less Talk, More Music Part Deux: Jacob Collier
Jacob Collier sings and plays all the parts in this amazing video clip. He also arranged this version of Stevie Wonder’s Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing. Apparently he also edited the video. Some serious skill. Wonder what his practice routine is like….
The 10,000-hour Red Herring
You’ve all heard it by now: all the talk and focus on the 10,000 hour “rule,” from people like Malcolm Gladwell, and the researcher who originally published the study with the finding, Anders Ericsson, whose theories are not without opposition in the academic world. If you haven’t heard of this finding by researchers Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer yet, it goes like this: it takes 10,000 hours of practice to reach expert-level performance, whether it’s in sports, music, chess, or x-ray diagnostics. But the 10,000-hour rule is a red herring for several reasons.
RIP, Laurie Frink: “Trumpet Mom” for Many Jazz Trumpeters
Ms. Frink passed away July 13 from complications of bile duct cancer. She was 62. The loss of a great teacher is most tragic.
A Blog Supreme posted a nice tribute to Ms. Frink.
Below is a video of the Maria Schneider Orchestra playing Gumba Blue in 2000. Laurie Frink is in the trumpet section along with one of her students, Ingrid Jensen.
Performance as Practice
When I asked Nicholas Barron about how he practices, he said, “I never practice.” I was intrigued, because the dude can play guitar and sing, and has clearly spent a lot of time doing it. Over the course of the next 90 minutes, he shared the details of what “I never practice” means to him. Performance-as-practice is a focus Nicholas shares with a lot of pop musicians.
Nicholas Barron is a soulful Chicago singer-songwriter who looks like Vince Vaughn (but funnier), and he sounds like the love-child of John Lee Hooker, John Hiatt, and Joni Mitchell. James Taylor called Nicholas “undeniable” at New York Times’ Emerging Artists Series in 2007. Nicholas’s songs are playful, thoughtful, and heartfelt. I’ll tell you a little about his performance-as-practice approach.
Check out the vid of one of his more popular tunes, “I’m Not Superman” below.
Duke Ellington, Cootie Williams, and the Wise Musician
I love Duke Ellington’s music. And last February, after hearing a smoking middle school septet (yes, I wrote that correctly) do a superb version of Duke’s Black and Tan Fantasy, I think it’s safe to say Duke’s music will be a long-lasting legacy.
Here’s a vid, a short bio on the man. The gem comes around 2:40. “Every musician in the world has some limitation. There is no musician in the world who has no limitation…. But, the wise players are those who play what they can master.”
Johnny Cash on Failure
“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”
Here’s another iconic image of Johnny Cash. I love this one, and like to think this is a good representation of my own attitude towards failure. The story of the image is told by Alex Selwyn-Holmes on his interesting website Iconic Photos. After the quote is a 1959 video of Johnny Cash playing Folsom Prison Blues.
On The Value of Mentors: Bootsy Collins, Mark Mothersbaugh, et al.
Some good advice about finding and working with mentors from James Brown’s funky bassist Bootsy Collins, DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh, Pro Skater Javier Nunez, rapper Anwar Carrots, young impresario Levi Maestro, and Dale Crover, drummer for the Melvins and, briefly, Nirvana. They’re chillin’ and shillin’ for Scion, but there are some good nuggets of advice in there. The reason I put this up is that every single professional musician I’ve talked to about music practice has had at least one mentor who changed their lives.
12 Rules of Practice, from Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis is a musician who knows how to practice. As a younger man, he was equally at home in front of a symphony orchestra playing the Haydn concerto, or laying down some serious jazz with Art Blakey. Check out Wynton’s discography for more evidence. For a while now, he’s turned his full attention to traditional jazz…
Learning to Practice
I’d like to share this old video with you that documents Gypsy guitarist (and fiddler! I hand no idea) Dorado Schmitt teaching his son, Samson, who looks to be around 10 in this video. They’re playing one of Django’s solos over his tune Minor Swing, no small feat. It’s a great example of teaching and learning for many reasons.
Few musicians I’ve talked to have ever been taught how to practice. We’ve all been pretty much on our own. When teachers do influence us, it’s by making reasonable and very specific demands that make it clear exactly what is to be practiced if not exactly how to go about it.
The Practice of Practice 