All Good Music is Chamber Music

or "What would Janey and Ken do?"



After dinner with some family friends and an old elementary school friend, I turned on the radio and out came the Schubert Quintet, probably my favorite chamber work in the world (everybody else's too). I didn't come to singing until much later in my life, but I grew up playing chamber music with the same kids from the time I was six until the time I was sixteen. I've lost touch with everyone from that group, and I have no idea if any of them are still musicians. But it was in Janey and Ken's Instruction Room that I learned most of whatever little I know about music-making. Not just the fundamentals of making good music (though we were drilled on those plenty), but also how to take enjoyment in it. It's the atmosphere that I try to recapture in every rehearsal - an atmosphere that's profoundly serious but also profoundly silly. My violin teachers, (Janey and Ken, I <3 you wherever you are), ensured that everybody approached the music with total seriousness, yet nobody took themselves too seriously. We were all there to have a wonderful time, and there are legions of great stories that came out of those years. But the most important part of the fun was the enjoyment we got out of playing with one another. God knows, not every rehearsal was a picnic. It was a small room that contained enormous personalities. But it was a family atmosphere of people who lived together (it was our summer camp too, sleepaway for the girls), laughed together, fought together, and made music together. I don't think we were quite capable of realizing how fortunate we were to have been through all this with one another. We grew up together, and by the end of that period we had learned everything about one another's playing. From B----'s extremely luxuriant tone and vibrato to E----'s raw attacks, to L----'s technical impeccability to G------'s enormous sound, to T--'s meticulous attention to detail to my appetite for fast tempos and huge dynamic contrasts. I still remember each of them's exact sound when they played. We were taught not only how to express ourselves through our instruments, and not only how to play as an ensemble, but also how to adapt ourselves musically to one another. It was the soundest instruction a kid could possibly have in how to listen to other people. And it took me far too long to realize this, but to this day the lessons with Janey and the ensemble sessions with Ken may be the deepest musical experiences my life will ever have. There isn't a time I go into the rehearsal room where I don't think to myself "How would Janey and Ken do it?"