037 The Fischoff Experience: The Team
00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 37, the second of five shows covering the fish-off experience. 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 wherever this podcast finds you. Yesterday we got to meet some of the musicians participating in this year's Fish Off competition and today you'll get to meet the team of incredibly supportive, loving and dedicated
00:51 people that are essential in making all of this magic happen. There are a lot of elements that need to come together to help young musicians be successful in the competition. It's a long, thoughtful, and serious process that the groups go through to prepare for Fischhoff, and I was so happy to see fellow Chicago friend Rodolfo Vieira on my first day at Fischhoff. Rodolfo teaches at the Music Institute of Chicago's Academy, and he's guided many groups through this process, and many of his students are winners here at Fischhoff. This year, he brought the Zina and Fiero quartets with him, and here's what he shared with me. Rodolfo Vieira, I'm so happy to speak with you today because, first of all, we had one of our past guests on the podcast
01:40 who was mentioning that you were her coach when she came here at Fischhoff, so it's not your first experience here at Fischhoff. And I also know from several of your past students how much they appreciate working with you and how well they do in competition, So it's really great to speak with you today. Yeah, it's a pleasure to talk to you. I've known you for quite some time, and I'm very glad. This is one of the first times we get to go in-depth into some of these things. So, yes, I've been very lucky to have extremely talented students over the past few years. They all are super hardworking.
02:13 And I think it shows off when they go to competitions. We have been super lucky for the last few years that they do really well. So, yeah. You just said hardworking. what in your mind is uh maybe there's no perfect recipe for success in competition but what are some key ingredients that you think students should have that's a really good question if you really think about it say arts competition is really almost a ridiculous concept because you're trying to get to the point where you can showcase something and hopefully someone will
02:42 really like it so it goes really down to understanding what are the mechanics or things that people react to and by reacting to like your audience your judges everything else so getting a knack for what are the things that you want to bet on early on and understanding how to bring that out from every single context that you have be a group your piece etc is a really key thing so in a way putting it together figuring out what you want to deliver early on is super important for this then hard work comes as the next step you do need to work extremely hard and all these students that they're you know
03:18 doing very well at competitions it all comes at a huge price they know how to practice they know a lot of tricks and techniques to not have to go through the linear process of just practicing an improvement of a time in a more linear way but actually do these jumps so every time there is a new concept or a new idea that you can do something much faster right away instead of having to slave away for two to three weeks, this is what I try to impart on their side. This is great advice. So what do you see happening in the group when you start with them at the beginning
03:51 of the year? Maybe they don't know each other really well. What kind of things do you see in this process of getting to know each other both as people and as musicians? This is an amazing process. I mean, any teacher knows the process. You start with some raw material. You have broad talent, you have group dynamics that sometimes work in favor of the group,
04:12 and other times there is a lot of tension. And that's not always a bad thing. That turns out to be one of the best things in a group. If you have tension, it means you have different personalities, you have different energy levels. And if you can manage and make them flow towards what you really want them to do with that, that turns out to be super exciting. But it's kind of an interesting idea, too. Yeah, so in other words, getting a group of students from the beginning,
04:35 they come in with very raw material. They are very good players, very talented, they've been working really hard together at this point. Props to all of these teachers, they have been doing a phenomenal work. So I get to do a little bit of this amazing work in this space which is take all that talent, combine that, try to align one of the most unique things we can do which is deliver outstanding performances and figuring out how can we get to that with the talent we have. Each user has their own talent profile and you have to understand how to connect this with other students in a group and get group dynamics to
05:07 really work well and by dynamics this is not musical dynamics this is actually personality dynamics because this will encourage a lot of great things to come out if you do this right so when you put this all together you start seeing this evolution almost you see a lot of work that happens because you just learned a new concept to start doing that and sometimes students don't really know how to do something so you're gonna impart this knowledge on them and show them how it's done what it's really awesome is when they take that and they make it their own and they start really delivering with that they take it to
05:42 town they make all this amazing like creative work on top of that once the group starts doing that we can layer more complex concepts and after a certain number of cycles doing this you get to the point where the group comes back with amazing material another point all you gotta do is just highlight the areas that they need to think about because I already have engine to process all that information and then they can feed into the creative sides and come up with really awesome solutions it's very specific to the people you're working with it's not a one fit so one size fits all process no
06:16 no every year I have a do like a basically a whole new group or multiple groups of students and it's always a different challenge and you never know who you're gonna get at a time. What I learned to do in a way was to everyone wants to do well and you know what are the drivers for most people. Being able to understand the talent profile is kind of the key because if you know what drives someone you can use that and make them connect and basically leverage each other in a way that you wouldn't do otherwise. At that point you can start learning things in a way that you see a fit for that and then you can start
06:52 pushing students towards outside of their comfort zone sometimes and once they see the value for that they will jump on that so that's kind of a nice thing when you see that whole process working it's very rewarding for them and I think the key thing is once you see them they have like this light bulb moment something goes up in your mind like oh I know how to do this this is my new thing I'm gonna explore this whole thing as a group and they come back with something new that's super rewarding for them first of all then for me too because it's a good sign that they're sounding really good.
07:24 Thank you so much. Thank you. Next, I spoke with Scott Tagge, coach of the Fab Five Brass Quintet from the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra. He talked to me about the experience of witnessing his groups evolve together throughout the year, what he encourages them to develop throughout the process,
07:43 and the new opportunities that come with young winds and brass players with having separate categories in the junior division. Would you please introduce yourself? Hi, my name is Scott Tegge. I'm the tubist with Gaudete Brass, amongst the coach for the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra Brass Groups. You were also someone that was active in doing the preliminary rounds for the competition. Yeah, I was one of the judges for the senior winds and brass division of Fish Off to watch the tapes to pick the 12 finalists to come here today. How does it feel to come here and listen to the group that you've coached?
08:18 Well, I'm really excited. I've competed at Fish Off before, and I've had other groups, so I think I'm actually more nervous as a coach than I was when I was a performer, just to, you know, and also really excited for these kids to have this opportunity to play in a great space and to be able to share music at a, you know, sort of more competitive level to see what they have for, you know, their future lives in music, you know, to sort of set that tone early that this is what this is about, at least on the level of music making, so. How does it feel as a coach to see these kids start the beginning of the year, see how they evolve throughout the year? I think what's most incredible for me, actually, is to see the friendships made throughout the year. You know, they started off, they kind of knew each other, but now they're all like five best friends in Chicago from different parts of the city or the suburbs come together and make music every Sunday. And see them hanging out outside of brass quintet rehearsal and the camaraderie it forms, I think is really incredible. Also, they sound a lot better now than they did in October. What kind of things do you work with groups when you coach a chamber ensemble through a process to prepare for a competition like Fish Off?
09:27 You know, for me, the biggest thing is always to be saying something when they're playing. You know, no one's going to play flawlessly this weekend, but the people who walk out on the stage and have something to offer, something to say is most important, and to make sure that they're actually communicating their ideas versus thinking these ideas and then not actually saying them through the instrument. So we spend most of our time, you know, really sort of cultivating that idea and knowing as a group what they want to say.
09:54 One more question. So you're telling me that this is the first year that the junior division is split between the brass and the strings. So what does that do for the participants? So in the years past, the junior division was always one big category. So young brass groups were competing against young string groups. And, you know, it was always at a disadvantage for the brass groups because they had been starting their instrument maybe five, six years ago where string players have been playing since they were little small children. And so this year, having this opportunity for these students to be, in a sense, a fair competition amongst their equal peers of the winds and brass kind of, I think, plants the seed for future growth in chamber music to have a reason to come here and to enter and to compete, knowing that they can walk out with a chance to win. Because when they were competing against a string quartet, let's say a brass quintet,
10:43 you know, the string quartet has wonderful music, like Shostakovich string quartets and Brahms string quartets, and the brass quintet has Ewald and maybe stops there. You know, we were just at such a disadvantage. And so with the new Carmen, the new executive director, to split the junior division like the senior division is, I think it's such a wonderful opportunity that kids can come and compete amongst their peers and peer repertoire and have the opportunity to walk out uh feeling you know excited about themselves or instead of knowing that well we're not going to make the finals because we're not a string quartet this is great thank you so much thank you
11:19 i met with joseph mailey from the san francisco conservatory pre-college and coach of the bach trio competitors in the junior division joseph was himself a winner here at Fischhoff. His quartet, the Telegraph Quartet, won the 2014 Grand Prize, and here he elaborates on effective rehearsal techniques and mindsets. I'm with Joseph Maley from the San Francisco Conservatory, and you're a coach for one of the groups? Yeah, yeah, one of the groups, the Bach Trio from San Francisco Pre-College. And I heard them play, and they played beautifully. One thing I am curious to hear is your view on what you feel like are very effective rehearsal techniques for chamber music groups, especially these junior groups that tend to be together for no more than one or two, you know, only a few years.
12:15 So it's kind of a journey for them to get them from point zero to, you know, the level of preparation that you need for an event for Fish Off. What are some ways that you like to work with groups? Well, I mean, I'm not sure I can give much information specifically rehearsal techniques, but the way I do work with them is they're already such advanced players when they come and when they're capable of competing in fish-offs. So actually a big part of it for me is getting them to kind of really take apart the piece that they're working on and kind of dissect it and understand what makes it tick. because the one thing that I do tell my students a lot of times
12:56 is it's very easy to look at the music and think of it as an instruction booklet. But for me, that's not what it is. It's a bunch of clues. And it's their job to look within the harmony, within the phrase structure, within the shape of the phrase, and from there to kind of pull out for them what the meaning, what the emotional meaning of the music is.
13:16 And then things like forte, piano, articulations, all these things that are so important that the composer gave us, which are clues to understanding what they want to express comes from maybe a more inward place and not just oh this is what forte means it means this much louder than that so uh that's a big thing that i try to encourage in all my groups and and these guys as well so it's about yeah it's about kind of trying to to almost like think like a composer and and think of the instructions not from the instrumentalist's in, but kind of outward from the inside elements of the music. I love this point of view. This is so great.
13:55 And what are some ways that you think young musicians can go deeper into all of this knowledge that you just mentioned? Well, I mean, understanding kind of basic harmonic structures is a big part. And they get that, a lot of kids have the advantage of getting that in their pre-college classes, their what we call musicianship in San Francisco, but theory, essentially. I think, though, besides that, I mean, you don't have to have that kind of thing, that intellectual necessarily. Singing it is such a big part, I think, kind of connecting with their original instrument. Even if they don't feel confident about their voice or anything, that's not the point.
14:36 it's like being able to kind of act it out or sing it out the way that they hear it that's a big part for me because you know we're always so uh fixated and for good reason on technique and how to kind of manipulate your the kind of acrobatic um elements of our instruments and we should be interested in that but when they connect with that inner part that that more you know kind of raw natural music part and that's a big part so for me and it's so it's connected with the voice or with their own movement with how they they dramatize because if done correctly that movement will kind of you know music is physical like robert man said right yes so yeah i should tell you i i was fortunate enough in 2014 to be the grand prize winner um in the telegraph quartet
15:24 oh that's good yeah so it's really fun for me to come back here and kind of relive the experience with these kids and and while it's always a bummer to you know not advance um you know i it really was wonderful to see what fish off does for everybody all the contestants not just the people who make it through i mean the the kids got to work with jeffrey ziegler today the cellist the junior division cellist uh um coat or i sorry uh juror and uh you know one he's from fremont california and our violinist is from fremont california so they got you know it was nice for them to not only get his feedback directly um and in a very a very positive way through a master class i i think that's just such a wonderful thing about this place and it's wonderful for me to come
16:15 back and see that side of it because i was in the senior division and it was different that way but still incredibly you know welcoming it's so true what you're saying like i feel like at fish off everybody walks away a winner because there's so much to be gained just by being here and taking in all of the amazing inspiration from the jurors and the other performers but also all of the new friendships and all of this really wonderful family thank you so much for sharing that welcome yeah well it's my pleasure thanks the last coach i spoke with here well on the record that is is Tom Snydacker from the Merritt School of Music and coach of the Precipice Saxophone Quartet.
17:01 He and I spoke about what groups need to enjoy playing together and be successful in the chamber music field. I'm with Tom Snydacker from the Merritt School, and you guys just learned that you're making it to the semifinal. Can you tell us a little bit what that means for you as a coach? Well, it's just nice to see all their hard work this year rewarded. These kids are really incredible. They've been practicing their instruments diligently for years,
17:29 both as soloists and as chamber musicians. And, you know, I always tell them these things aren't so much about the results. It's about really the preparation going into the competition and the experience of the competition itself, performing on a high level, surrounded by peers from all over the country and even today the world, in fact. So, you know, it's really nice to see that, you know, all this work is paying off for them and people are recognizing their hard work. What do you feel are some qualities that young musicians need to be successful in the chamber music group?
18:05 And I don't mean successful in terms of winning a competition, but just to make the best out of the experience. Yeah, well, I think I think there's there's a number of things. I mean, I think we talk a lot about listening, and that goes in many different ways. Of course, listening within their group, but I think listening also to other people. We talk about how listening really needs to be part of their practice sessions, right? You know, for anything from style to vibrato to techniques. But I think also listening in terms of getting to know who are the other people that are around you, Who are the other people that are your age also doing what you're doing?
18:49 So I think that's maybe sometimes an undervalued quality to have or an undervalued thing to work on for young groups especially. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you so much. I was really happy to meet with Berit Teague, who's not only the parent of a participant here at Fischhoff, his son Miles plays horn in the Fab Five brass quintet you heard yesterday, but also a brilliant music educator.
19:16 He is the Fine Arts Department Chair at Downers Grove North High School near Chicago and past state president of the Illinois Music Education Association. And I was really curious to hear about his perspective. Here he tells me about negotiating the demands of preparing for an event such as the Fish Off and the growth he sees in young artists participating in musical activities of this scope. briar tiget i'm so happy to find you here because um you're not only the parent of a participant in the competition but you're also someone who's so involved in music education uh you're chair of the fine arts department at downers grove but you were also the president of ilmea for many years so
19:58 you have a lot of knowledge and what it takes to prepare as a participant for an event like this and you have the role of parent and educator so you're you're kind of a a one-stop shop it's Perfect. Can you tell us a little bit what it feels like to watch your child perform in a competition like this? Oh, yeah. You know, it's really rewarding to just see all these students feel like they're bringing all their hard work to fruition. But, yeah, you're right. I wear a couple of different hats here. I've got the music educator hat, but today I'm wearing the dad hat. And so, of course, we're really proud to see all their hard work starting to pay off in moments like this. What are the challenges that you see for, we can call them kids, I guess, kids that age negotiate the demands of maintaining such a high level of artistic depth and negotiating with classes and, you know, long commutes.
20:53 What are some of those challenges that they have to face? Well, I think you just tapped into a few of those things, the logistical challenges. I mean, all five of the kids in this particular quintet are incredibly dedicated to their music, but sometimes it's the logistics of how do we get together. We all live in disparate communities. We're all trying to come together. They're doing long commutes at weird hours of the night. In the last couple of weeks, they've been all driving into the city to meet,
21:18 sometimes at 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night when they can find the moments to come together. I think that one of the things I'm the most proud of, though, is that they're even coming together now outside the regular coachings that they would do with their main mentor in this brass quintet, Scott Tagge. But even when he's not available, they're finding time and places to come together and practice just because they love the music so much. So I think the challenges are mostly logistic. And then also, of course, a lot of these kids,
21:46 they would just love to be doing music 25 hours a day, but they've got to balance their regular schoolwork, their AP classes, all of those things that are pulling on them in a lot of different directions. And what do you see coming out of those kids after working together for a whole year? What kind of growth do you see in them? Well, I can actually, I can speak to this from my own son, who actually also happens to be a horn player at my school where I teach. So I'm his music teacher, and I'm his dad, and then I'm here, you know, watching as the parent here.
22:16 But what I see in my son, Miles, is someone who's developing confidence and leadership in his own playing and then looking for ways to give back to his own program when he comes back to his own school. And I think these kinds of experiences, I'm sure for all the players that come down here in these chamber groups, when they go back to their own communities, hopefully they become better musical leaders themselves. Thank you so much. You're welcome. While here, I had some wonderful interactions with many incredible parents, and I fell in love with the Fiero parents.
22:49 You heard from their children in yesterday's show, and you'll see that parents often form bonds just as strong as the musicians. They talk to us about how it feels to be a Fish Off parent, the transformation they see in their children through this experience, the many sacrifices parents have to make, as well as the wonderful friendships and the strong bonds that are created with other parents. And also they talk about what the young musicians learn from rehearsing so intensively and preparing for an event like Fish Off.
23:22 Could you tell us the name of your child and the group that she plays in? Isabella Brown, and she's playing in the Fiero String Quartet from the Music Institute of Chicago Academy. And how does it feel to be at Fischhoff as a mom? It's always exciting. My boys have done Fischhoff, too, in the past, and it's something that the groups work really hard at to get enough repertoire and to get it at the level they need to to be here, and they're always so excited to come and make music with their friends, And I think that that's the best part of all, is that they can come and it's like sort of a culmination of all of their hard work and a time for them to sort of celebrate their accomplishments of the year.
24:02 And sometimes in events like this, we tend to forget how much sacrifices the parents make for that. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? I know that we're happy to do those sacrifices, but it's a lot of work for the parents as well. Can you speak to that a little bit? well there's the driving the kids to lessons to academy to the um to the actual competition but it's all really a lot of fun and really exciting i can't imagine not um oh and my friend here is letting me remember that we've become the parents in this particular quartet have become really really good friends and we've had a blast together and we're actually like a little more sad than
24:43 maybe even the kids that the year is almost over we're talking about reunions already so I think we gain I guess my whole point is that we gain a lot out of this probably more than we sacrifice because it is a lot of fun to be part of the process to see your kids making music with other kids with their friends and having a great time is really so gratifying and then just the friendships that you form with the other parents and the other people in the same situation that you are in And similarly, in previous years, I've become really close with a lot of the kids my kids have played with, and it's a really nice process. A lot of enrichment for everybody.
25:21 We come from Ann Arbor, Michigan, so we drive every weekend. So it's to make the commitment and also to coordinate the schedule of the quartet to the time of when you do all the rehearsals and stuff like that. That's a lot of logistics. Yes. So I need someone, I would like for someone to talk to me a little bit about the kind of transformation they see in their child when the child is doing chamber music.
25:50 Maybe I can ask all three of you. Transformation. I mean, it's a different skill set to play chamber music rather than to be your own performer and to be on the stage alone. In some ways, it may be a little less intimidating to play in a group rather than to be out there by yourself but it's it takes different skills of like cooperating with other people and making you know sure that everybody is heard the same way and and or whenever someone needs to be heard more and someone needs to be heard less so it's a lot of
26:32 give and take this group has worked very well together to make the best sound that they can make so i think that's that's very important it's a it's a great transformation my son had been in different groups in the past and they all bring similar kind of experience this year has been the you know the peak of of his experience i think with this being with a group for so long for a full year and working very diligently on on few pieces of music and making them as best as you can make them so and can you tell us the name of your son and his instrument my my son's name is alon hayut and he plays the cello very beautifully this is fantastic we were just talking about the fact that your daughter is here for the second time and the
27:32 difference that gathering this experience from multiple performances does to a young musician can you speak to that a little bit more yes um with second year around and of course with the academy program that she is in every year they get to put into a different group and they get to play with different students and that's such a wonderful experience because regardless they have to learn how to work with different people under any circumstances and I think this is such a growing part of the process in music it really is it teaches you regardless the situation regardless of the circumstances, you learn how to subside your personal feeling
28:25 if it's not a match. But just do it for the purity of the music making. And that's so important for a youngster to learn. It's to understand what does that mean. Do it for the pure of the music making and not put into personal feeling if that situation didn't come. Great.
28:53 These are such great skills to learn that all the kids performing here will carry with them for the rest of their lives. I think so, especially I think at this age, the high school age, they are still, there's so much that they have to learn. There's so much they needed to learn besides the repertoire. And the other part is really a communication skill,
29:16 personal skill. And this is such a crucial time for them to learn. It's a process. You're not going to have it in one year. You're not going to have two years. It's a continuously process. And the more you do it, hopefully the better you will be in knowing how to deal with it. And it's that, I believe that part of the communication is just as important as the music making.
29:49 This is so great. Thank you so much. I also had the chance to sit down with the Daj dad himself, Scott Linder, who gave me a wonderful account of what it entails and what it means to watch and support your child go through an experience as wonderful as making music with friends in a dedicated way and participate in an event like Fish Off. I'm speaking with Scott Linder, who's a dash dad, I guess I can say. Dash dad. I really have established kind of a connection with that quartet because they're the first group that I met when I arrived here on Thursday evening. And it was so great to hear them perform and it's been great to see that they came with the whole team as well and the coach
30:35 both coaches and yourself you guys have pins made it's I just love seeing all of this support and it's a really you know it takes a village it takes a village and every village needs an idiot I drive a lot of the events but pretty much all of the parents go to all of the events and they go to three or four competitions per year and we just have such a great time traveling together and there's a lot of camaraderie, a lot of support where I couldn't be prouder of the family unit that we are. And what are kinds of sacrifices that you as a person have to make?
31:18 I've talked with other parents about the sacrifices that their kids have to do to come to these events in terms of working really hard and being dedicated and going to rehearsal. But for you that also, and you and all the parents, that represents a lot of sacrifices, which I know we're happy to make, but could you give us an example? Well, I think that mainly it requires being really flexible with each other's schedules.
31:45 There are, for example, more often than not, they'll plan a two-hour rehearsal, and parents will arrive at the destination to pick up a kid, but you don't know when you come. You may end up sitting in the parking lot another hour, another hour and a half, sometimes even two more hours. And if you have something else to do, you really better think, you know, you may not be able to. You may just have to chill out in the parking lot, get some work done. I always bring papers to grade or things to work on in the car because I just don't know when I'll really be getting out of there.
32:18 but it's really not much of a sacrifice and once we get used to it we just know that's the that's the way it's going to be and everyone's on board with it and sometimes it ends up being that a parent has to go and one parent takes that kid home or or something like that that happens a lot but you know everyone's willing everyone throws in yeah it's like an investment in time a huge investment in time for everyone but the kids work so hard and win or lose uh whatever happens with the season I think these skills that the kids learn setting goals working so hard and loving their work most importantly right I always tell my daughter one thing no matter what you do in life make sure that you love doing it good things will follow the money will take care of itself but if
33:07 you just love the work you do you're destined to be a happy person in all regards in your relationships and your friendships, your family, all of the above. So I think, you know, I like to think that our community, our Doge family has those values and we support each other in that regard. Thank you so much. Fish Off sees multiple organizations return year after year and strong relationships are created through this experience. These organizations provide the infrastructure that young budding musical talents need to blossom they provide rehearsal space coaches and performance opportunities and as you'll hear in this touching conversation with alan dennis from the midwest young artist conservatory they care deeply about their students alan dennis you're
34:02 with the midwest young artist conservatory in highland park yep and late and highwood yep One thing I can say with MYAC is that it has many groups that fish off, and it has produced many winners. But also from being a Chicago local, I get to see the students, I get to see what the organization does for them. So can you please tell us a little bit more about what the organization does and the kind of infrastructure it offers to really allow for all these wonderful talents to blossom? Well, our purpose, our mission is to build a home with the power of music to enrich the lives of our students and their community. So it's really not about music as an end result. It's about building a home where students feel an environment they can grow in
34:50 and they can be whatever they want to do. We've had, this is the first year ever we didn't get anybody in the semifinals. But that's okay because our focus is not to win. Yeah, we try, but our focus is to give them the support to be able to stretch themselves and try to do way more than what they think they can do because it's only in trying to reach that goal that they realize who they really are. So we try to emphasize using music to find out who you are inside yourself and find your value system of loyalty, responsibility,
35:34 being who you are that make you a special person. And what do you feel like chamber music bring to these kids? Yeah, I think they relate to all our programs because we have like nine orchestras and we have 65 chamber groups and we have five choirs and we have a whole bunch of jazz things, programs. But I think what chamber music brings in is within a small group, within a unit that you know and trust, and people you see every week one-on-one, gives you the chance to lead, to follow, or to go along with. So it gives you the skills necessary to get along in life. You're not always going to be able to say to everybody around you, here's what you're going to do.
36:20 you're never going to always hopefully never be in a situation where you always go yes sir whatever you want me to do and and hopefully you're you're going to have a lot of times when you're saying well let's work together on that so i think that having those options to learn how to do that musically gives you the confidence to do that personally it's such a great program thank you for speaking with me today well thank you and i'm going to tell you fish off has meant so much to me It's 32 years I've been coming here with my own children. Great students that I've had to see grow up and do great things. We have students that are heading up Yale's research into cancer.
37:03 We have great students that are in great orchestras. But being here helped bring us closer together and gave us a goal to work for. Thank you. I also had the chance to meet with the wonderful Debra Price, artistic director of Chamber Music Connection in Worthington, Ohio, and coach of the Dodge Quartet, which you met yesterday. Chamber Music Connection is a phenomenal program, and hearing Debra talk about it blew my mind. It's the kind of organization I wish would pop up all over America. Here's Debra telling me about the program, her wonderful students, and how she guides young artists to the highest levels. I have with me Debra Price, who runs a fantastic program out of Worthington, Ohio, and I'd love to hear a little bit about it.
37:55 Yeah, I'd love to share it. It's called the Chamber Music Connection, and we were founded in 1992. I had a friend who was the original violist of the Cavani String Quartet. And her mom was a teacher up in Delaware, Ohio, which is about 20 miles north of Columbus. And she came to do a little master class for some of my students. And she said, hey, my mom always wanted to start a chamber music program. Do you think you would do that? And I was like, sure, why not? I mean, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
38:24 I also didn't know I was pregnant. And so my very first program, I was nine months pregnant with my son, who's now a cellist and actually just got named the cellist with the Kavan Eastern Quartet. So it's gone full circle, completely full circle. And there are a few things that I wanted to do. And the main one that was different than other programs is it's all inclusive. You do not have to audition. We never audition. people just register and then I group them based on you know what maybe some of the information
38:55 they give me like their name their age their well I don't use their name but their age their their instrument their you know how long they've been studying they give a basic assessment of their abilities and and then I just group them all together and I've been doing that for 28 years in the 28 years we've literally worked with hundreds upon hundreds of students and I mean because each semester I have between 70 and 100 students, so put that times 27 years. Yeah, okay, maybe we're in the thousands by now. Wow.
39:25 I think I've only had to change four or five students in that entire time where the grouping wasn't quite as maybe balanced as it could be. And we work on the basic fundamentals of playing chambers together with teamwork and communication, and they have a team of coaches, so there's about 20 to 40 faculty and guest artists in any given semester so I'm not exclusive to being their only coach and they have so like for instance a violinist is going to have a different perspective than a cellist than the pianist than the violist than maybe a wind player or a harpist or a vocalist and so I think it's good for the group to hear it from different perspectives
40:09 and then ultimately they make the decision and they become very flexible you know very flexible at taking an idea from someone and working on it with them themselves and it's just so much fun to watch a group become more creative on their own and have this great experience with those around them and they've really gotten to a point where I feel like I'm almost just riding a wave with them like everybody's just I I'm like not I don't even know if I'm the conduit you know I think it's just Like, I actually just enjoy seeing the students encourage other students to play and share music. And students who maybe didn't know they liked the violin that much, including one of the violinists in a string quartet that he just performed in the semifinals at Fischhoff. He has come full circle and just is all in.
41:01 And wasn't even sure he wanted to keep playing the violin until he got into chair music. so it's awesome to see that kind of experience happen and i just yeah i can't even articulate how cool it is to be part of it all and what kind of transformation do you see in kids through chamber music uh just really watching first of all playing wise you know some people are like oh this kid's not maybe doesn't have the ability or something and i watch kids who some people don't think have ability develop an amazing ability and become very strong players uh strong leaders very empathetic people i i usually uh have well when we we talk about chamber music and what it means to us uh in orientation and then throughout our processes through study and you see these
41:53 seven eight-year-old kids who are really like playing basic quarter notes and and they're doing chamber music and watching them interact and and be able to talk with each other and laugh and you know say one of the kids walked out I think she's nine years old out of the first session two weeks ago and I was behind and my parents that some of the parents and some of my interns had said to me did you hear that little girl and I'm like no just they said it's the best thing ever I was like our first chamber music experience she's nine and so watching these kids realize that they have a voice and then some of these kids who maybe didn't think they had ability all of a sudden like wait a second I have ability and uh watching also those kids who uh you know love what they do
42:36 but maybe don't really understand how deeply involved they can get into the music and how you know people think sometimes oh if I play the same quarter note or you know I have 12 measures of quarter notes it's going to be boring and they're like can't be boring I've got so much to think about and this these quarter notes are directing the sound or whole notes have this color that we uh layer a foundation for i mean they just get so deeply invested in what they're doing and that's pretty impressive for you know teenager even for an adult yes and from what i hear you've brought several uh very successful groups here at fish off this year you're with the dodge quartet whom I've had the chance to hear twice already and spoke speak with a few times what do you
43:25 think are some of the elements that can really help a group reach higher levels what sort of rehearsal techniques or maybe approaches that could help a group reach the higher level of playing I do have a pretty involved step process of group development and I work with the students there's a group of fellowship students for high school students almost like a graduate assistantship program that would be in a college level or graduate level that they're working with me in that respect to learn the pedagogy because pedagogy and chamber music is it doesn't really exist very much you know and so I've spent 27 years developing a pedagogy and so we have very specific exercises and I'm actually starting a series of videos to share
44:15 these exercises like one minute to three minute videos that will be available for people to watch or share with a group that they're you know in a public school or amateurs or other teachers some of the just to give us some basic ideas we work with movement and cueing and improvisation so the way the students will develop it a sense of how to cue and how to communicate is without their music without their stance and just create a like a word of the day on their instrument or something on their instrument some kind of sound and then they cue each other and they work with that they do dynamics and they start to understand just the basics of how to breathe and show something to somebody and then from there we do learning a piece of music i'm not an advocate of
45:00 just sit down and read unless you want to have a reading party that's a totally different thing reading party is totally different thing so we have a process of deconstructing the piece and then reconstructing the piece from doing the skeleton of it maybe down beats only last beat to first beat or last note to first note of a measure do a lot of score study and telling stories we get artwork like sometimes they paint um sometimes they um do um just to write literally write stories out to go along with the piece and i'm very influenced also by uh cleveland quartet and the cavani quartet and and some of their processes and that we've grown up together doing and the cavani and i have known each other since the mid 80s and so uh share we share a lot
45:48 of our ideas and uh and the the thing with the chamber music pedagogy is just it's so important to share with others so that they can also develop those techniques whether you're going to compete or just have a great time playing with friends and i i think the other big thing besides the pedagogy and the rehearsing is the support of the families when you got high school students or middle school students or elementary school students the parents support is absolutely 100 percent necessary and I have been so lucky to have incredible parental support and beyond that teacher support because if the teacher doesn't support it it's it just it's hard and and when you've got kids who want to do something so passionately I just like I don't understand how
46:37 anybody can't support it anyway and I don't mean financially I mean just time wise or you know just that there's value in it and most people i think i that i am lucky enough to be around really understand the value of chamber music and what it does for all of us as musicians and as listeners would you please share with us also where we can find you oh okay yeah i have um the chamber music connection is cmconnection.org it's our website and then we have a facebook page it's the cm connection um there's also a page called cheer music connection alumni because we have alumni now literally all over the world and we're on instagram as well and snapchat and things like that so i can find this i encourage everyone to look you up thank you deborah i think that
47:25 this is really important the work that you're doing and please keep us posted when those videos come out because I feel like this is of tremendous value to all of us. So thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Oh, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Of course, not surprisingly, universities and conservatories are heavily represented here. And I sat down with Cian Daren Lee from the Cleveland Institute of Music to discuss competition preparation and how things work at CIM. I'm with Cian Daren Lee, who's the Chamber Music Coordinator and faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. And you guys have many groups here this year.
48:06 And I'd love to hear about the Chamber Music program at CIM, first of all. And maybe get into a little bit of the kind of qualities you feel like makes students successful in the Chamber Music program. Okay, so for CIM, we basically encourage all the students to participate in chamber music, and we have wonderful faculty. So it's worth mentioning we have two very special programs, the Advanced String Quartet Program and the Advanced Piano Trio Program. So at Fischhoff, both of our programs actually have a representative in the competition. So one is the Quartet Avanzari, that's from the ASQ we called, and also Cleveland Trio from the APTP. And for other students, we offer about a minimum of 10 hours coaching per semester. Also, we have the wonderful Young Artist Program, ICIM.
49:19 And we have, this year, two wonderful string quartets. Actually, no, it's one string quartet and one piano trio participating, and they're both in the semifinals right now. That sounds great. And what do you see going into the preparation for this competition? First of all, I mean, they need to have enthusiasm and passion, and they have to, they need to want, you know, feel like they want to do it, you know. And as a teacher, we don't force, you know, we don't force any students to enter competitions.
49:53 So the students are very enthusiastic and they express their interest at first. Then we take a look at the repertoire requirements and start planning, you know, for the whole year or the semester in order to um to be able to um enter the competition so um of course you know things like uh fish off and coltman competitions and uh there are many other competitions you know out there so we try to basically find common repertoire that you know pieces that they can use for all those competitions that you know they are doing so sometimes you know we it's very easy to find pieces that okay for example a Beethoven quartet you know could work you know for all the competitions but some other competitions might
50:50 ask for something that is very specific so then we have to learn pieces like that you know pieces written for the competitions or they just require something that um that is unusual um so we put everything together and well the kids um they work very hard you know individually and as a group so um they take their you know first you know they take their part and listen to many recordings studying the score which i think it's really important for chamber music so you know you you have to know um beyond you know the line you have so and also they write in cues and other people's part in their own part so then you know when they play together they know what to look for and things like that you know that's this you know i think that's pretty much the first step
51:46 that we do then uh then after that um they get together and rehearse and and that's when the coaching starts so like i said each group gets at least 10 hours of coaching then of course you know for competitions many of our teachers you know offer you know extra coachings and extra times you know just for to help them get ready for the competition there's so many logistics going into participating in competitions like this that you mentioned and that oftentimes we don't think about when we're considering entering a competition like this just as you said there's you know availabilities first of all and all of the requirements in terms of repertoire and um it's something that can be so easily overlooked many things to line up yeah and you
52:42 know also the thing is um in terms of like looking for repertoire you have to i think also you want to take a look at what they have done and what's needed you know what's um i think entering competitions you know it's a great thing but also you want to think about um you know their musical growth you know so what repertory is appropriate and you know what each player can get out of you know learning let's say a different piece so um yeah things like that i i definitely i think competitions when when you have the right approach a very healthy approach to competitions I think they can be really really wonderful and beneficial so I tell all my students you know this is a great performing opportunity and also you get to travel together and you make music
53:40 together and usually in a different place you know now your hometown and and also because you You know, because competition, you know, we all know the pressure, you know, it's there. And everybody, you know, wants to do their best. Everybody wants to win. So because of that, that motivation, you know, I think really inspires all the students to give their best and to work as hard as they can. So the thing is, you know, competitions, really there are just wonderful performing opportunities. And if students go there and play their heart out, give everything they have, and there's no regret whatsoever. Thank you so much.
54:25 Finally, I sat down with the one and only Tom Rosenberg, Artistic Director here at Fischhoff. He tells us about the story behind the competition, the impact it has, and he muses on competitions and the essence of what this is all about. I'm sitting with Tom Rosenberg, who's the artistic director of the Fish Off competition. Thank you so much for giving some time to speak with me. Glad to be here. Tom, I would like to know a little bit about Fish Off, its history and its mission. Okay. I'm not even sure what, where, we're 46th. Okay, so whatever year that would make it.
55:06 There is a person here in town. He ran a furniture business. His name was Joe Fish Off. he loved chamber music he was an amateur violist he was in the first graduating class of curtis whenever that was anyway he and a bunch of his friends had an you know a sight reading quartet they read chamber music every night and it was at a time when excuse me there was very little collegiate chamber music and really almost no high school chamber music going on or pre-college And they decided to start a competition. It was very small, but it was one of the only chamber music competitions around.
55:50 There was one in California called the Coleman. But anyway, they started it, and I had heard of it when I was in college, but it was so small that we decided not to go. And then shortly thereafter, I was in a quartet that won the Cleveland Quartet competition, and we were on a fast track and we got a job here in South Bend at Indiana University and the first thing that happened was he called me. And we had already been in a number of international competitions
56:22 and some of them were wonderful experiences and some of them weren't. And some of them we did great, so we had a wonderful experience, but people who didn't win had horrible experiences. So I brought a lot of experience in with me and I immediately they started asking me to help and I said well if you had a good people on your jury maybe people would come and all that kind of stuff and started coming up with ideas on how to make it happen better or different at least and it took off so now I've been doing it
57:01 for 39 years which is terrifying um all i hear from people is how well run this organization is so well it's not just me believe me i'm a disorganized mess but um there's an incredible team of people who are part of this we've been they're like family or you know very we're very close friends most of us no longer even live here we come back to to put this thing together um and have been you know i'm 39 years carrie's 24 amanda and tesser they're like 20 some years so we have a lot of experience together we all have different strengths we all have good senses of humor and we know who can do what and who can who shouldn't like they they're telling me all the time tom get out of here don't do this you know but my job is um you know to make sure we have
57:57 great jurors um all the rules and regulations are are designed around musicians to you know so my my two oh i i missed a really important part of the the deal those guys all were music educators and so they wanted it to be different in an educational event and um so that has been my main my two main focuses are to keep it with the original intent of the founders of the of the organization that it'd be a positive event its main focus is education and some people win a prize and then also to have everything that happens you know i look at it well if i was in this competition how would i feel about this and to make every effort to make it something musicians want to come back to,
58:54 that they're glad they came to. One of the testimonies of that last year's grand prize winner, this is an incredible fact, if you add up all the number of times each of them had come to Fish Off over the years, before they won the grand prize, there were 22 years of Fish Off experience between them. Since they were little kids, some of them, they had been here many times and you know that's a testimony to i think that we're doing a lot of
59:25 things right that they'd want to keep coming back and not want to not come back so this is wonderful and that's what i've been seeing as well here is everybody walks away a winner because there's so much to be absorbed and so many new friends right and um and we try to build that we try to encourage that we talk about it to them they hear about that in advance before they come here and then they hear the message again when they're here and um i mean you know if if we could i i'd love to do more social events with everybody that's one thing that happened at one of the international competitions i was at they got everybody from all over the world together to just have a dance it was fun it was crazy none of us could understand what each other were saying
01:00:13 you know but it was really incredibly positive experience and um this is a much smaller event um and it was never really originally it was designed to just you know have this little for the grand prize winner a blip the first blip on the radar screen and it's turned into something bigger than that and yet it still has relatively easy repertoire requirements so that people can be encouraged to enter this competition it's not munich it's not city of london or portsmouth where you need three recital programs to enter so it allows people to have that first experience what do you see for the future ahead i have no idea um i mean um i have certain dreams for the this event i i wish uh our prizes could be bigger i wish the winner was could have a really amazing
01:01:16 concert tour including new york because i believe our grand prize winners are it didn't used to be true but i think the people in the grand prize are ready to rock um for that matter people in the junior division are pretty much ready to rock but um that kind of growth i think would be great i i don't see it getting huge you know a one or two week festival maybe it will but then it would change the entire mission of it would change people would have to take a huge chunk of their life out time out of their life to do this it's already a challenge for the pre-college kids to take time out from school it's kind of during exam and jury time if you're in a conservatory you know we don't want to stretch
01:02:06 it out too long um so i don't know future is the future yes tell me you're an experienced cellist chamber musician pedagogue what is your advice for the musicians that are either returning and have been here before or have never been and would like to enter how can one go about preparing and rehearsing for a competition like fish off okay um you there's two things that are required i think you have to love music because the level required to get in has become very very high even in the junior division it's very difficult and the biggest mistake I think groups make is not having a really really high quality audio and video audition because that that can really you know when you get to the competition
01:03:11 everybody plays in the same concert hall and the acoustics are all even but that's so important now um when it's become very difficult to get in if you're you put yourself at a disadvantage if you don't do everything you can to have high quality video and especially audio um but um it's still easy to prepare for in terms of repertoire i mean the junior division only has uh to enter i think we still keep it minimum of 10 minutes that's nothing um two movements not necessarily even from a different piece to enter and the truth is you need more than that to really succeed but the idea is to get those groups and those students to just get going and to be stimulated to enter and so um and then in the senior division it's also it's 60 minutes it's less than a full recital
01:04:18 right you know it's not difficult in terms of having enough repertoire and that's but that goes with the fact that it's also a two-day event three-day event i mean we don't have it'd be ridiculous to ask for two or three concert programs and then have people come and play a very short amount of time at least in my opinion so we keep it that way but the cream rises to the top
01:04:51 you also have to get very very lucky which is true throughout the music industry You know, everyone who auditions for orchestras, there's so many good players, and you have to be, everyone has to play well, and then it's a couple, one or two people, or people get lucky. It depends on who's listening to you. I'm completely convinced you could have three different sets of jurors, and you would end with different results. Because taste is a huge thing. The other thing I like to tell people, and I really believe it, is that when you enter a competition, you have to agree to just allow the results to be the results. It's not a concert where everyone loves what you're doing anyway, maybe.
01:05:43 but no one's being made to choose between groups, between musicians. But at a competition, if you enter, you're basically signing a contract that says, I'm entering a competition. There's going to be a jury. The jury is the ones who are allowed to make a decision about who gets lucky and who wins a prize and who doesn't. and um it doesn't mean you aren't wonderful if you don't get lucky and have the right jury to listen to you or the right orchestra committee to listen to you or whatever it might be
01:06:23 and what is your advice in terms of uh are there any specific rehearsal techniques that you like to use with the groups that you coach um well yeah i think so i i think um for voicing for instance i teach a lot of well i do college and pre-college but to teach a group how to voice a piece if you take the bows away and have everybody play pizzicato and it takes away the sustained sounds um it helps them define what voice they want to hear the most it's sort of a quick way singing your part is another quick quick way to voice something um but learn to voice something learn that forte might mean piano for you um i talk about how a pianist has 10 fingers and two ears and one brain and they would never have the the the fourth finger obliterate
01:07:21 the melody and the you know but string quartet players can do that and orchestra players too yes that's so true you know um and so the job of a conductor let's say in a good good orchestra with a good rehearsal is to help voice the voices come out the way the conductor wants to hear it well in a quartet you have four you have eight hands you have four sets of ears you have four brains at least usually and once in a while there's only three brains in the quartet but i'm just kidding but and then everyone is hearing from a different perspective you're the violinist one with the sound right under their ears you have the cellist with their sound coming out in a different place one violinist is in front of another one you have the violist who's sort of
01:08:07 turned a little bit different and that's probably and they have to learn to have like a remote set of ears they're listening to the themselves they're listening to the group and then they have to imagine a set of ears out in the concert hall listening back you know and sending back a signal and is this sound right or not and it's very complex when you have eight ears and four brains and eight hands to really make that work and know if it's working or not so that's where a coach can come in too but you eventually learn to do that on your own but voicing it that way with pizzicato helps kids in particular i think hear what voice they want to hear that's a great technique thank you so much for everything that you're doing with fish off it's such a special
01:08:58 experience for everyone i can feel it i can see it and that's why i keep doing it too yes i feel like it's a good thing in the world at least in the competition world anyway it is thank you so much thank you that's it for today tomorrow we'll meet four of the judges of this 46th edition of the fish off competition. You'll hear about their experience. They're going to give us some insight as to what they're looking for in a group when they're judging. And they'll answer the questions that you guys sent me before I left. Hope to see you there. Get in touch with me to share your thoughts about the fish off or about competitions in general. And please share with whomever you think might benefit from or find value in this episode. As always, you can find me at mindoverfinger.com
01:09:49 and on both Facebook and Instagram by searching for Mind Over Finger. À bientôt!
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