Category: Community

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Community Workshops

Amateur Music Network AT HOME

 


What a crazy time. Even while some segments of our society are able to restore their equilibrium and restart their activities, music is really taking it on the chin. How can we even imagine concerts in a world where people can’t gather? It’s going to be a long time before we get back to normal.

We have to create our own normal, a musical world we can inhabit in the meantime. Hooray for the new tools that allow us to play “together” even though we’re apart. And AMN is not going to stop doing workshops; we just have to do them from a distance. We invite you to join us in a virtual world of music connection.

We still want to connect you with amazing mentors. Our “At Home” series will allow these wonderful artists to welcome you into their worlds. Mentors will still share their passions with you, whether it’s a technique to share and learn, or a conversation about a personal interest that drives a musical life we usually only experience from the stage in performance. And now, with the advantage of online technology, every participant will have the best view in the house. You’ll be able to ask questions and enjoy a flow of information and interaction. It’s not less, it’s different.

We’ve presented two of these workshops so far and we are planning many more. We’re looking forward to some skills-focused sessions with great mentors including Scott Pingel, Evan Price, Nick Platoff, and Sandy Cressman. In June there will be a technical series to help you get up to speed with music recording at home. We’re working on a series of period-instrument workshops. And there will be wonderful conversations with musical luminaries.Take our survey to tell us if there’s a topic you’re particularly interested in exploring! 

We intend to continue offering these workshops as long as we’re forced to stay apart. If they prove valuable enough to stand on their own even when we can return to in-person workshops, they’ll become a permanent part of our AMN offerings.

Amateur Music Network is here for you, and we won’t stop supporting the community in music-making. We continue to look for ways to keep our passion for music alive in a tough time, and hopefully we’ll find them together. So please, as always, stay safe, stay healthy, and stay musical!

Lolly Lewis is a recording producer, amateur singer, and the founder of Amateur Music Network.

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Chamber Music Community Talking about Music

(Take me out to the) music game

photo by Lolly Lewis

They’re renovating the park across from my house. It’s a two-square-block area that includes a playground, a soccer field, and two softball diamonds. I was worried, when they really tore it all out, that they’d use the space for something else, but today it’s almost done and the softball fields, one whole square block, are getting green again. Of course, they don’t seed the field these days; they just roll out huge swaths of lawn. Well, I hope it’s lawn, not plastic, but anyway, from here looking out my window it’s green and it makes me pretty happy. And it reminds me of baseball.

And baseball reminds me of music. No–really. Hear me out.

There was a time, seems like another lifetime now, but I used to be a baseball fan. For several seasons I went to a lot of games, and I have the score books to prove it. 

I love the rhythm of baseball. I love that it simply takes three hours (well, with some pitchers, four), a stretch of time staring at that green expanse of the field that feels like a vacation. Exactly enough time to have the world go away – ahhhhh! – and feel refreshed and ready to dive back into life. And other than your scorebook and pencil, you don’t even have to pack.

I love how the sudden blossoms of action erupt out of nowhere. You take your eyes off the field at your peril. It seems like nothing’s happening, but then, wham! it’s over the fence. And of course, I like a good home run as much as the next guy, as long as the next guy is rooting for my team and it’s my team that hit it. But my favorite thing, by a long stretch, is a double play. There’s something about the way a team moves in the infield, they simply become one thing. They shift together before the pitch, they react together to the hit, partners in this dance, knowing as the ball comes off the bat exactly who will catch, where he’ll throw, where to be and exactly when to be there. Even though, yes they’ve practiced all the permutations a thousand times, still, this time is different, it’s particular, unique. The ball is just the connection between the players, it’s incidental: the infield play is communal, an understanding, a shared breath.

That’s how it’s so much like music. Yes, we all know the notes, and we know what to do, in theory – but when the time comes and you pitch that note, it might be slightly offline and I have to shift without even realizing to catch and pass it on. It’s those instantaneous adjustments that have to happen before you can even know they’re happening, you’re just playing and constantly adjusting to the ball in flight before it even gets hit, you somehow know where it’s going to be and you just be there on time to catch it. 

One time it struck me, watching a string quartet, that they were playing each other’s instruments. Something about the trust between them, and how the musical gestures were passed among them, it really was like the bows were extending across the space between and touching their partners’ strings. Complete mind-sharing. I’ve heard and seen the same thing in jazz, too; it’s the unanimity of impulse and reaction, whether or not every note is written down. 

That’s where the music is: in the rhythm and flow of our minds in complete sync without any possible thought getting in the way. And he’s OUT! Pass me the peanuts and Cracker Jack.

Lolly Lewis is a recording producer, amateur singer, and the founder of Amateur Music Network.

Categories
Community Talking about Music

Kathy Angus: singing like a big girl

This is a guest post by Kathy Angus, a retired SFUSD teacher and former arts administrator.  She is currently on the board of AMN and the Chrysalis Foundation.

I recently retired from teaching in the SFUSD public schools. When I first thought about writing a blog post for AMN, I thought I’d focus on the importance of music as a creative force in kids’ lives. For five years, I worked with a music educator from the SF Opera to create (write, compose, stage) a 15-minute opera, based on a social justice topic my 4th and 5th graders had studied all year. The topics ranged from Immigration to civil rights to the environment. It was one of the most transformative experiences some of my students had during their elementary years. But then I realized it transformed me as well, and actually set me up to pursue something I loved, but dreaded sharing, after I retired.

I realized that I am a recently declared amateur musician who grew confidence to participate in community singing groups because of the musical projects and collaborations in my classroom. It’s so much more relaxing to act and sing with 10-year-olds than with adults, where my voice would dry up. Those notes that were so beautiful in the shower stuck somewhere behind my tongue when in the company of others.

I love music down to my toes. I’ve danced since the day I could walk, so I’m one of those people you hate to sit behind at the Symphony because I’m incessantly bobbing my head to the beat, or tapping my knee, or shaking my shoulders — you know what I mean. What it means to me is that music is in my body, and, over the years, I shared my art with audiences in concerts and musicals. The musicals were a mixed bag, however, since the usual instruction was, “It’s ok, you’re a great dancer, but you don’t need to sing.” After a few of those comments, I was too embarrassed to even try to learn. (And, of course, my kids pleading with me not to sing in the car didn’t help.)

Then one year while I was teaching — by then I was into my 60s — the SF Opera Aria program came into my life. We practiced vocalizing through exercises and songs, and then created our own songs, which years later are still stuck in my brain. With a musician coming into my classroom every week all year, and then practicing with the students in between, I found the miracle of repeated practice that gave me the confidence to join a Community Choir, and then another, and then to start taking voice lessons.

I love AMN for their efforts to spread the joy of amateur music making through their workshops and network tools. Someday, I may be ready for Ragnar Bohlin’s brilliant choral workshops, but for now, I’m happy just singing however I can and appreciating the work and practice it takes to improve.

When I worked for Milton Salkind at the Conservatory of Music, he used to frequently stress that “everyone loves to sing.” How right he was! Let’s sing our way through these difficult times and find the joy that lies inside of us.

Categories
Community

Music resources for when you’re stuck at home

Now that the Corona Pandemic has disrupted our music life we’re reminded how dramatically music plays a part in keeping people’s spirits up. Let’s collect “stay-at-home” music resources here.

Our local (SF Bay Area) musicians are playing and broadcasting their music. Here are some wonderful streams to continue to connect with local artists. Please post ideas below or send via our contact page and we’ll add them to the list.

SF Symphony’s principal oboe Eugene Izotov plays Bach for you:

SFJazz has a great YouTube channel, and so does Voices of Music.

SF Symphony is streaming its great Keeping Score series for free.

Please send us links of your own or to your favorite local artists!

Check out this terrific NPR site that updates worldwide livestreams.

And there are some active learning resources online, too, here’s a violin practice tips blog sent out by CMNC (Chamber Musicians of Northern CA).

If you have any other ideas please post here or send via our contact page to share with your fellow musicians. Or write about your experiences as a stay-at-home musician – we’d love to publish your blog entries. Let’s all stay active while we’re stuck at home.

Steve Schaefer, Amateur Music Network guest blogger
Categories
Community Strings: Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass

Midlife crisis: how bass playing changed my life


A Guest Blog by Steve Schaefer

I started playing the bass at the age of 50, and it has become a very important part of my life. Sometimes it just takes a while to be ready.

I got my first guitar in 1967. I fell in love with it and played for fun alone and with friends for several years.

My bass story, though, begins in 1972. I’d been playing the guitar for five years and picked up an acoustic one to go with my first, but I decided I wanted to play the bass. I was 18 and out of school now. I don’t remember why, but something about that deep sound really attracted me. And I loved Paul’s bass parts in Beatles songs.

Having few liquid assets, I decided to take my beloved coin collection to a pawn shop in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district to see if they’d take it for a bass guitar. I brought home what I believe was a green Fender Precision bass. I have no photographs of it. I plunked on it a little while, but before long someone broke into my ground-floor apartment and stole it. Looking back, I’m not sure if it had anything to do with coming from a pawnshop.

Disheartened, I decided to start college and move on. I met a woman, graduated college, got married, and had a kid. I worked a series of jobs. I got divorced and remarried and had another child. We started taking our son to music lessons and I was around musical instruments again. My memories of the bass came back, and I decided I wanted one again. I mentioned it to my wife and she said, “why don’t you go get one?” Now that was music to my ears. And this time, I had the means to walk into a nice music store and select one I liked.

I picked out a Fender Precision Bass special (with the Jazz Bass neck), with a sunburst finish. It was a lot like my first one. I took it home with a small amplifier and started taking lessons at the same store where my son was learning the guitar.

I found a book about basses and bass players. In the back, an appendix featured 30 albums with great bass parts that you MUST listen to. That was the source of my first intentional bass-focused listening, and led me to explore more Jazz, Folk, and Bluegrass.

I never intended to play the upright bass. But those jazz albums started to affect me – Scott LaFaro with Bill Evans’ trio at the Village Vanguard I played over and over. I found numerous albums with Paul Chambers covering the low end. But it was one special song that really motivated me to try the big acoustic bass. My wife had an album by Irish folksinger Mary Black, and on it was a track called Columbus. I credit that bass part, and short solo, with helping me decide to investigate the upright bass. So, a little over a year after I began electric bass guitar, I started taking bass lessons on upright bass, instead.

I found my teacher through a sheet posted on a music store bulletin board with the little tear-off tabs. After a satisfactory first lesson, my new teacher and I went to A&G Music in Oakland to rent a bass. I took my lessons and improved, and after eight months of renting, A&G let me apply the entire amount I’d already spent towards my own Chinese made, hand-carved upright bass. (Photo: with my bass before a concert with the Castro Valley Orchestra, 2014)

Meanwhile, I still played my electric Fender, with a band, Red Paint, from late 2006 until early 2013. We rehearsed weekly and played a few local gigs. Then, I helped form a five-member blues band, which evolved into a four-person group, Fault Line Blues Band. I play mostly electric with them, but I have started adding in the upright part of the time. I’ve also started playing a five-string bass guitar—it was my 64th birthday present.

As my upright abilities improved, I wondered what to do. My local adult school sent a flyer that listed an orchestra class. I had some classical background from my childhood clarinet playing and my mom’s participation in community orchestras on the cello. So, in the first week of January 2007, I went to my first class meeting.

It was scary at first, but I took to the music quickly. In the 10 years I spent with the orchestra, we rehearsed weekly and performed about 100 pieces, including three Beethoven symphonies, Mozart, Dvorak, Shostakovich, and many more, including a couple of original debuts by local, living composers.

During that time, I also discovered chamber music workshops, including weekends with the Chamber Musicians of Northern California (CMNC) and the wonderful week-long sessions at Humboldt State University. The local workshops were great for improving my skills and meeting lots of like-minded players. The week-long sessions at Humboldt are a joy – summer camp for grownups! I attended in 2010 and 2012, and I’m going back this year for a third time.

Today, I play two or three paid gigs a month with my band and take occasional chamber music workshops. I also participate in music events with my local Odd Fellows lodge, which puts on a summer concert series that benefits school music programs. And I’ve started bringing the upright into the Blues band—a new and exciting synergy.

I made a fateful decision 15 years ago to take on the bass, and it opened a world of enjoyment and friendship. It shows that when you love something, it’s never too late to start.

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