The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 032 The Fischoff Effect: Dorival Puccini – Axiom Brass

Episode Date: April 30, 2019

Today's guest in this second episode of the Fischoff Effect series is Dorival Puccini, trumpet player and founding member of Axiom Brass. In this series, I bring you five former winners of the competition to talk about their experience preparing for and competing at Fischoff, and about the wonderful adventures and opportunities that have followed their win! My guests this week are Blaise Magniere from the Avalon String Quartet, Dorival Puccini from Axiom Brass, Matt Landry from the Akropolis Reed Quintet , Christopher Whitley from the Thalea String Quartet, and Lydia Reah from the former Kairos String Quartet!  Whether you are a musician about to compete at the competition, or a music lover looking for a fresh approach to practicing and preparing for a concert, make sure to subscribe and tune in everyday, because those conversations are bursting with inspiration and EXTREMELY useful information!  Each group has a unique and motivating story and my guests are so generous with their insightful tips and advice!    About Fischoff Founded in 1973 in South Bend, Indiana, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition has grown to become the largest chamber music competition in the world, attracting the finest and most talented young musicians from around the globe. and is one of the most prestigious classical music prizes attainable today. Since its founding, more than 6,000 musicians have participated, many of whom have gone on to distinguished careers in music performance and education.  The Fischoff is also deeply committed to music education and partners with competition alumni to bring free, innovative Arts-in-Education programs directly to children in their own schools and community centers. Since 1995, nearly 50,000 children, youth and adults have received free educational programming of the highest order. Website: http://www.fischoff.org/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheFischoff Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fischoffchambermusic/     Meet Axiom Brass – 2010 Senior Wind Division Bronze Medal & 2011 Fischoff Educator Award Dorival Puccini, Jr. , Michael Hawes | Matthew Bronstein, horn | Corey Sansolo, trombone |           Kevin Harrison, tuba   http://www.axiombrass.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/axiombrass/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/axiom_brass/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/AxiomBrass5   Praised for their "high level of musicality and technical ability" and for their "clean, clear and precise sound," the award-winning Axiom Brass Quintet has quickly established itself as "one of the major art music groups in brass chamber music." As the only Brass Quintet in 27 years to ever win the prestigious Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition (2012), and the only American ensemble to ever win the Preis der Europa-Stadt Passau in Germany (2012), Axiom has also been named winners of the 2008 International Chamber Brass Competition and prize-winners of the 2016 M-Prize,  2010 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, the Plowman Chamber Music Competition, and the Jeju City International Brass Quintet Competition in South Korea. Axiom Brass is dedicated to enhancing the musical life of communities across the globe and educating the next generation of musicians. Axiom's commitment to education and their blend of virtuosic performances and dynamic teaching have inspired young audiences around the nation, earning the ensemble the 2011 Fischoff Educator Award.  Their educational concert "Let's Make Music" has captivated thousands of elementary and middle school students in the U.S.  Since 2011 the ensemble has been featured as brass quintet-in-residence for the National Brass Symposium, sharing the stage with principal brass players from the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Atlanta Symphony. Internationally recognized for their groundbreaking programming, their repertoire ranges from jazz and Latin music to string quartet transcriptions, as well as original compositions for brass quintet.  Axiom Brass' performances have captured the hearts and imaginations of their audiences, leading the ensemble to national radio and television appearances as well as concerts in Asia, Europe and across the U.S. Axiom's dedication to brass repertoire has led the ensemble to commission and premiere several new works, including Avian Capriccio by Augusta Read Thomas, Axiom by Liduino Pitombeira, A Martyred Village by David Faleris, Celestial Suite by James Stephenson and For Then and Now by Laurence Bitensky. For Celestial Suite, Axiom Brass partnered with the New York Philharmonic Brass Quintet, the Chicago Symphony Brass Quintet, the Chicago Chamber Musicians and the Fischoff Chamber Music Society, as well as with the Digital Visualization Theater of the University of Notre Dame and Professor Keith Davis. Highlights of Axiom's past seasons have included concerts in the Dominican Republic, Germany, Portugal, Spain, China, South Korea and Japan; a four-week residency at the Grand Tetons Music Festival; the release of their début album New Standards, clinics and performances at the 2010, 2012 and 2015 Midwest Clinic, their New York debuts at Symphony Space and Merkin Hall, masterclasses at The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music, as well as recitals, masterclasses and solo appearances with orchestras and bands around the U.S. In October of 2013, Axiom gave the American premiere of Fantasia Flamenca and the world premiere of Raimundo Penaforte's Concertice for brass quintet and orchestra under the baton of David Lockington and the Modesto Symphony, followed by the 2015 midwest premieres of Bernard Rands' Adieu for quintet and strings, and the Midwest premiere of Fantasia Flamenca with the Grand Rapids Symphony. During the 2016/17 season Axiom commissioned and premiered ten new works as a celebration of the ensemble's 10th anniversary. Axiom Brass performs exclusively with the Blackbinder automatic scroll app for iPads. Axiom Brass performs exclusively on Mutec Mutes.   If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review on iTunes!  I truly appreciate your support! Visit www.mindoverfinger.com for information about past and future podcasts, and for more resources on mindful practice. THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme!  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson. Also a huge thank you to my producer, Bella Kelly!   MIND OVER FINGER: www.mindoverfinger.com https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/   Join the Mind Over Finger Tribe here!  https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfingertribe/

You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 32, the second of our five bonus episodes discussing the fish-off effect. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're having a great day whenever and wherever you're listening to this episode. I'm going to be on site at University of Notre Dame as one of the official podcasters covering

the 46th annual Fish Off competition from May 10 to 12. And this week, I'm bringing you five former winners of the competition to talk about their experience preparing for the performances and competing at Fischhoff, and about the wonderful adventures and opportunities that have followed their win. In this series, you will hear all about the Fischhoff effect with my guests Blaise Magnier from the Avalon String Quartet, Doreval Puccini from Axiom Brass, Matt Landry from the Acropolis Reed Quintet, Christopher Whitley from the Talia String Quartet and Lydia Ray from the former Cairo String Quartet. Whether you're a musician about to compete at the competition or a music lover looking for a fresh approach to practicing

and preparing for a concert, make sure to subscribe and tune in every day because those conversations are bursting with inspiration and extremely useful information. Each group has a unique and motivating story and my guests are so generous with their insightful tips and advice and without further delay here is today's guest Doreval Puccini from Axiom Brass let's go to the show. Dorival Puccini, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Would you please tell us a little bit about the name of your group and which year you attended Fischhoff and which prize did you win? Yes, absolutely. I'm with Axiom Brass. It's a brass quintet based in Chicago, Illinois. And we were the bronze medal winners of the 2010 Fischhoff competition, as well as the

recipients of the Educators Award, the very first Educators Award from Fischhoff in 2011. and could you give us a brief history of your group how did you guys come together how did you come into existence yeah absolutely it was kind of a afterthought uh from school you know when i was at in school in new york we were very fortunate to have an opportunity to form a brass quintet and go out into the community to perform several uh performances for say retirement homes, rehab centers, or middle schools. And it was actually quite a significant number of performances. I think throughout the school year, we would do something like 20, 20-something performances like that. And we really enjoyed working together.

Then we all graduated and went very different ways, different places all over the country. But we kind of stayed in touch and we missed it. So eventually we decided to try to get it back together it was very it was very challenging at first because um we would have to travel to a certain city to meet up to a ton of rehearsals and then go play in concerts so it had some limitations that way but little by little as people kind of um had to go in different directions in their lives whether it was uh you know some people decided to grow a family didn't want to travel. Some people went to different jobs. The group started changing a little bit. And so I kind of morphed the group into Chicago since Chicago has such a magnificent tradition of

brass playing. And since I was kind of living here anyways, I decided, well, might as well find musicians right around Chicago that will make things considerably easier and won't compromise the level at all because of this tradition of breast playing here so that's how the group became a chicago band eventually um i think by about 2008 it was an all chicago based group so that's that's kind of how we got started it was just that you know we got that taste from uh from our grad school years and then we wanted to keep doing that and eventually formed now i'm the only founding member left but um but the group has done great things in the past decade and we're very happy with it speaking of great things of the past how about things of the present and

future i took a look at your website and of course being myself chicago-based i see a lot of things happening with axiom brass so what is going on with axiom brass these days oh axiom is uh well we got some really exciting things going on uh we've been developing for a couple years now uh a program that mixes astrophysics and chamber music uh specifically uh the music of living composers which is uh what we mostly perform um our repertoire as a mix of living composers for the most significant part of it, original music for brass, which hasn't really been written since the late 1800s anyway, so it's fairly recent music,

and then a selective amount of transcriptions of early music, Renaissance and Baroque music, especially like madrigals and things like that that sit so well for brass as a translation of whatever original it was. And a little bit of, we also like to play a little bit of transcriptions from Latin music. Most recently, we've been doing a lot of Piazzolla transcriptions. So this summer, we're recording a new album

of all compositions that were commissioned for us in the past couple of years. mostly of them were commissioned for our 10th anniversary two years ago in which we got 10 new commissions to premiere and now we're going to get to record most of them in an album

and then in the beginning of the season we go to the studio again to record an Al Piazzolla Al Piazzolla album and then we go back to the touring season this year besides going around the country like we go every year

We also got to go for the first time, oddly enough, to Canada and Mexico as well. We've been to several different countries, and yet the very neighbors of ours, we haven't visited yet. So it's fun for us that we get to do that next season. That sounds like a really wonderful schedule and projects. Yeah. Dorival, can you please tell us about how your group prepared for Fischhoff? Absolutely. I think that was some of the most, well, the biggest learning process we went through was not just Fischhoff, but the whole competition round.

So what we learned very quickly is that not only preparing for a competition obviously improves how we perform at a competition, but it had a permanent impact on how we prepare for everything else after that. So a couple of things that we learned that had a great influence in how we perform for the competition was to constantly record and listen back. You know, it's great to have coachings. It's really helpful to have a mentor or something like that. And I would encourage everyone to continue to do that. But nothing substitutes for you listening to your own voice and deciding, is this the message that I was trying to convey or not? And, you know, that puts the art in your hands instead of relying on someone to create an artistic product for you. And I think that's the key to be successful in a competition, because a competition at the level of fish off is going to be overcrowded with incredibly well-prepared groups.

so it really it's not a matter of oh this group is good and this group is not good therefore they win a prize or they don't win a prize it's really a matter of standing out by having your own voice by having a convincing voice that presents a valid artistic vision so the recording not just sound recording but even uh video recording was incredibly helpful because it allowed us to to see uh the truth for our own you know with our own eyes and ears um we got to see what the product that we were presenting was like and that was the biggest learning curve to to realize that what we were saying was not exactly what the audience would be hearing at that point so it allows us to figure out that a lot of things needed to be much more exaggerated

uh much cleaner than at first so things like that uh i think were the things that we benefited the most by doing the whole recording process and analyzing it again it was still helpful to have coaches though and we one thing we did is we tried to get coaches that were not familiar with our repertoire and were not familiar with our instruments so we kind of stuck to conductors and string players most of the time uh the reason for so that we wouldn't have like a bias view of so they wouldn't give excuses for things that we didn't do well you know what i mean like we didn't want anybody to go oh yeah that's really hard on the trumpet well that doesn't matter we just we need a musical product and and that's beyond the trumpet limitations or the tuba limitations

and it's to be what music is calling for so we just need to figure out how to do it And that's something that we got by having coachings with non-brass players. I love this idea. And it really ties in well with what you were saying about recording and listening back, because I'm guessing that through listening and discussing together as a group, you can really start to grow this unified and unique vision that you were talking about and you talked about so well. um and having a coach that does not have a strong personal opinion on the specific

interpretation of a piece really allows you guys to develop your own this is great yeah absolutely yeah it was a great experience and how far in advance did you start your preparation process uh wow i think uh eventually i think the first competition we probably got in a little late on the game but after that i think uh as early as we decided to apply for the competition which was you know probably a couple months before an application form was even due because obviously those application forms require recordings and things like that so it had to be you know several months in advance so i would say probably a full competition cycle lasted 9 to 12 months mm-hmm that's a lot of dedication right there yeah it's it's a long time but you know it's not

i think one thing that uh oftentimes is ignored on the competition process that people measure uh competition success or lack of by did you win or did you lose and i think that's unfortunately a very narrow-minded way to look at competitions i think competitions like auditions as well it's a learning experience you know it's totally different to prepare for so long and then go out there and you're not really performing a full recital you're not really doing the concert the way you do in your own concerts like we go out and we talk to the audience there's a lot of things that can break a little bit of that tension when you're doing your own concerts but when you're doing competitions that you know you walk on there and you have a very limited amount of

time it's a different it's a very high pressure fast moving process so preparing for that and experiencing that at the competition helped us figure out how to walk on stage and immediately be on you know not not having to ease into being on it's like you walk and you're on that's it you're playing your best from the first note instead of trying to get into your groove and eventually uh reaching your peak so it really helped us to find a way where we could start at the peak and keep that going all the way through our performances um so that and and what we did is that as we got close to the competition we would put like all the pieces we break them out some of them in movements and things like that put it in a little bag and every day we would run

you know two or three different rounds of the competition uh just picking out of the the little bag what what we would be playing in that round and and just running rounds and recording and listening back and putting all the possible combinations because there are rounds that you choose your repertoire so that we knew what we would choose when we got to that round we knew what we would start with you know you want to start with a piece that you're confident you can play incredibly well and that is going to come across to the audience and to the judge really well and keep that attention. It's going to grab them in the first 30, 45 seconds that you're going to play so that

you have their attention for the rest of the whole performance, which can be anywhere, you know, 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the round. That's really great. It's this idea of planning ahead to be prepared for all the things that you have control of and also train yourself to know how to manage the things that you won't have control over. This is great. And like you said so well, the real reward is the journey itself.

Yes, absolutely. I think to this day, we still prepare for concerts now the way we prepare for competitions, which allows us to, in rehearsal, be performing instead of rehearsing. And that was something that we did for the competition. You know, as you're doing rounds, you're performing them. You're not just practicing. If there is such a thing as just practicing, I don't think there is such a thing. I think we're always performing. But I think in the view of ensembles, I know, you know, we go do clinics at schools, universities and colleges and high schools and middle schools. and i think the students are always talking about how how do you not get nervous in performance like well if every rehearsal you have is a performance you're going to get really used to it

and you're not going to be nervous at all so that that idea of performing in your rehearsal space helps a lot so we even go as far as like we put on we put on something to record us because somehow every time you put on something to record it puts a little more pressure on you i guess so we put on something to record and then we even walk off stage walk on stage bow play the rounds you know there's no talking there's like or even if it's a concert like if we're running through a concert now we do it the same way and then someone gets up and does their their talk to the audience and then we go and play the next piece we just keep the whole thing as it would be in a performance setting or in a competition round this is really great and

this is great information for all the listeners to hear can we talk a little bit about the fish off experience itself how was that for you guys oh my goodness i think fish off is one of the most well put together competitions i mean we've done a lot of competitions uh at least i don't know something like probably around 20 competitions throughout our our competition years which was about two or three years and uh i mean fish off just got it down you know the from the beginning with the application process how clear it is it's very easy to find a competition where the guidelines are not very clear um and you know with fish off to have such such a great experience doing this that everything is so clear it's so simple uh the whole process to apply and submit

your recordings and uh to the point to the time you get there you know when you when you step foot on campus uh and you're welcomed by a bunch of volunteers and administrators that are just so pleasant to work with and uh from the from the second you get there like you can tell their their goal their mission is for you to find an environment where you're gonna perform your very best at the very highest level um they put you with host families sometimes i think for for the for the decaders award when we came back we were with a host family and that was fantastic um i mean every everything was just so friendly everybody was there to help you to make you feel comfortable and to make you feel like they wanted to hear you play and they wanted

to hear you play your best i mean it's it's just a wonderful experience and after that we stayed in touch uh with people that were involved at fish off and with fish off as well we've came back to do a gala for them uh a gala event one year i mean we're we're so happy to support fish off anywhere we want we can because we we know that um that is one of the the best competitions in the in the world and an incredible opportunity for young ensembles that are trying to find their voice and to build something in the chamber music business you were talking earlier about how now you don't get really nervous when you perform but back then oh boy were you guys a little bit nervous and if so how did you guys have kind of a strategy to handle stress as a group

um well we have like little things we do that i think kind of break the ice a little bit but um i think first of all everybody with time figured out their own pace um so for instance before we go out uh some of us meditate some of us likes to get pumped up so like you know there's like opposites uh some of us are like trying to center down some of us trying to center up um but then as a group we do little little things like we always perform our warm-up together um there's like we we wrote a quintet warm-up that we do it's just just a few scales and a few uh back chorales that we play it's kind of like feel good stuff to play it's um you know we're so used to it we can just kind of go through the flow and and be comfortable so that's part of it

um we always get to a hall pretty early um to sound check and to feel comfortable never to you know we try to make sure that we're never hurried onto anything that helps a lot and then right before we go on stage we always uh bump feast you know our fists uh looking at each other's eyes and wishing each other a great time and you know saying let's go have fun the idea is you know always to go have fun um because you know it's it's an incredible opportunity to go out and share what you have to say artistically with an audience that wants to listen to what you have to say. So I think instead of, we learned to look at it as a privilege and as an opportunity instead of a frightening situation, which it really isn't. You know, people go to a concert

or even people that go to the competition to listen to you. And even the judges having now being able to be on the judging side you know we're all just rooting for the performers so i think once we realized that that helped a lot do you have a favorite memory from fish off favorite memory from fish off we got to go do concert for kids uh i think it was one of the stories that they did we got to go to a school and do a concert for kids and just you know we play a repertoire that some adults sometimes can uh without knowing the music kind of be worried that oh it's you know it's music of living composers so i'm not gonna like it or something like that and it was this we

went and played the story and it was uh i want to say it was middle school i'm pretty sure it was middle school and just to for the first time to understand how open those minds are to whatever you're presenting and if you're presenting it passionately they're gonna receive it that same way so I remember playing a little overture that's quite funky by Witold Ludoslawski and you know a piece that in a concert setting in a regular concert series some presenters might be like oh maybe let's not program that but those kids just went crazy with it they were on their feet clapping at the end like that was the coolest thing they had heard um and then later on the concert we changed gears a little bit and we played a Bach contrapuntus and like this always

happens when we play for kids like three four bars to the end kids were already clapping I don't know. There's something about Bach, Contrapuntas. It doesn't matter which one we play. It gets like two or three bars to the end, and kids are already clapping. So it was really cool to see that we can shape, you know, we can help minds, young minds, to see music, to hear music that way, where there's no preconceived barriers to musical style or genre.

I love those memories. This is great. How about the aftermath? how how did fish off change your life well i mean it's you know you come with a a fish off stamp uh presenters know it's a serious group it's it's a it's something that people want to listen to so i think that right off the bat that you know just gives credibility to the group um you know it's it's not especially like when you talk brass quintet i mean you can count in one hand probably brass quintets that have won awards in the past 20 years so it's it's a it was a big deal to be

in that class and then the educators awards as well i mean because now you know we're incredibly dedicated to the educational part of our mission so that as well comes with a huge stamp of hey this is qualified you know this is quality product um so that i think is a big deal and And the network, the Fischhoff network, I mean, everybody's so helpful. Years after we had done the competition, we stayed in touch with Anne. We stayed in touch with Anna Thompson, who used to work at the Bartlow as well. And, you know, we've even come back to University of Notre Dame to do residencies that were not directly related to Fischhoff, but it was definitely an aftermath. So there's a lot of good that comes from it.

but also you know we prepare we we learn repertoire we focus on rep on things in the repertoire differently now it's not just the concerts that come after it but also uh how we how we continue to kind of center in on our voice and how how that voice continues to evolve it's all an aftermath of how we worked to get to that point for fish off Hmm. How about some advice for the musicians who are about to perform for the competition in the coming days? Well, there's still time to record yourself. It's amazing how one day of recording and listening improves so much in your playing. Uh, just, you know, it's, it will, it will help you just tune in like minor details, just little balance things, uh, little color things that,

that might not quite be coming across the way you have in your mind so there's still plenty of time to record yourself uh to do run-throughs and to imagine like visualize a lot of how you want to feel on stage how you want to play on stage because like you said you know we only have control over the things we have control there's so many variables that we don't control but just to imagining the feeling just to imagining uh how you want things to feel and go and sound um give you a ground where you know when those things that we don't have control happen like someone coughing in the audience or a door you know squeaking while while you're playing a really quiet passage um that stays out of your mind you know it's it you learn to just focus and stay on

your zone with the things that actually matter for the moment so there's still plenty of time to record yourself and go over it and how about advice on what they can do once they're on site well don't be too excited all the time have a lot of downtime a lot of relaxing it's easy to have that adrenaline pumping all day long especially like I felt like I was so nervous after I played like i i felt good playing and then after i was so nervous just that weight can be very uh you know it's just i don't know it can can can take a toll agonizing yeah so we just went out as a group to a movie just watch a movie and then you know we go out to get a meal in a very chilled, relaxed environment, a lot of downtime.

And when you practice, when you're at the site, you're just playing, you're just performing every time, even in the practice room. Don't get your ears to what someone else is playing and let that influence you. If you listen to other people, listen as an audience member, not as a competitor. You know, just listen to enjoy how beautifully they play. and then once you go back to your own playing it's all right now it's about how beautiful my own playing is um you know there's no now it's about doing what you prepare for so just present yourself don't don't worry about what others are presenting dorival thank you so much for all of

this incredible advice is there anything else you'd like to share with us before we go just have so much fun it was a fun time for us and i look back now and i wish we we could still have opportunities like that um it was just a great time to meet people to meet all the musicians to uh network and to get to play to a a very uh respectful and devoted audience and to some incredible judges that really uh gave us some comments and some insight into our own playing that has stayed with us to this day. Thank you so much. Thank you.

And good luck to everyone. Thank you for listening. I hope this conversation brought you inspiration and great value. As always, you can visit mindoverfinger.com for the show notes, which have more information about the competition and today's guest and i'd love to hear from you so take a screenshot of the episode share on

instagram and tag me at mind over finger axiom brass at axiom underscore brass fish off at fish off chamber music and use the hashtag fish off 2019 so we can see that you're listening share it on our stories and give you some love to join in the experience and follow the competition visit www.fischhoff.org and their Facebook page at facebook.com slash thefischhoff to get more information

on the live streaming of the performances and of course the results thank you for tuning in and I'll be back tomorrow for more Fischhoff Insights Thank you.