"Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares you to keep yourself entertained."

- Roger EBERT

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?"

Why Do Choral Directors Program So Much Lame Music?

A question that continues to confound me.

(Water Night. From back when he was worth liking.)

Dearest Eric Whitacre,

The more successful you get, the more your music seems lame. When you were the new kid on the block seven or eight years ago, those eleven chords sounded cool. I guess they were the next evolutionary step from Morton Lauridsen's nine chords. But Lauridsen got old quickly when people realized that he had only one idea, now it seems that you're headed for the same dustbin. Now that you're Mister Big Shot, you're looking more and more like just another Lauridsen/Rutter hack whose music is way too enjoyable for the kind of singer directors dread working with to be any fun. Water Night is still a beautiful piece: elegant, erotic and full of dread. But success let all those beautiful sounds coagulate into diabetic shock. Every time I hear another piece by you, I think you need to be punched in the face that much more badly.

I really know how to market myself.

Love,

Evan


(I Thank You God, For This Most Amazing Day. I don't doubt some people would like this. They're just people whose company would make me sad.)

Mick on Keith

It is said of me that I act above the rest of the band and prefer the company of society swells. Would you rather have had a conversation with Warren Beatty, Andy Warhol, and Ahmet Ertegun … or Keith, his drug mule Tony, and the other surly nonverbal members of his merry junkie entourage? Keith actually seems not to understand why I would want my dressing room as far away as possible from that of someone who travels with a loaded gun. And for heaven's sake. No sooner did Keith kick heroin than Charlie took it up. In the book Keith blames me for not touring during the 1980s. I was quoted, unfortunately, saying words to the effect of "the Rolling Stones are a millstone around my neck." This hurt Keith's feelings. He thinks it was a canard flung from a fleeting position of advantage in my solo career, the failing of which he delights in. He's not appreciating the cause and effect. Can you imagine going on tour with an alcoholic, a junkie, and a crackhead? Millstone wasn't even the word. I spent much of the 1980s looking for a new career, and it didn't work. If I had it to do over again I would only try harder.

Profoundly, hilariously BITCHY.

I was very surprised when I found out at about ten years of age that Israelis were no good at skiing. I know what you're thinking, how can a desert country have any skiers? But I acquired this false notion because I thought that Slalom Skiing was in fact spelled Shalom Skiing. It made sense that my Israel-born friend and I would play Shalom Skiing on an Apple IIGS in the computer room of a Jewish Day School.

I was a very smart kid.

Quote of the Day:

Dad: (Watching Wheel of Fortune at the dinner table) Y'know your grandmother went to school with Vanna White.