The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 039 The Fischoff Experience: Winning Fischoff

Episode Date: May 23, 2019

Experience the 2019 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition from the perspective of the Grand Prize-winning group of the competition – the Aruna Saxophone Quartet.  Member Will Pyle talks about how they prepared for Fischoff and what it's been like for them!   Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition: https://www.fischoff.org/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fischoffchambermusic/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheFischoff/                   FIND THE ARUNA SAXOPHONE QUARTET ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM!     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 39, the fourth 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. Rene Paul Gaultier. Hi everyone. Happy morning, afternoon, or evening. I hope this podcast finds you doing well. Yesterday you heard from four of the judges from this 46th edition of the Fish Off competition talking to us about their experience at Fish Off. And today I speak with Will Pyle,

saxophone player with the grand prize winner of the 2019 edition the aruna saxophone quartet he tells us about how they prepared for fish off and what it's been like for them this episode is filled with inspiration and great tips and i hope you enjoy i'm with will pile from the aruna saxophone quartet who just won the grand prize at the fish off competition Thanks so much for speaking with me today. Thank you. This is very exciting. I think we all got back home probably yesterday, so we're still kind of in the emotion of it all.

Will, can you tell us a little bit about your group, first of all, how you guys met and came together and where you're from? so um we first came together in the fall of 2015 at texas tech university i was a freshman at the time so i was very green and the other two guys ryan and tony who play tenor and alto respectively they were a little bit older and then we had a berry player tristan at the time And our current Berry player, Andrew, joined a couple of years later. So the current configuration of the quartet has been in existence for two years. But when we first started up, the Mirasol Quartet from Texas Tech had just won the gold medal at Fischhoff. So we were very much in the shadow of that great success and looking up to them and aspiring to do anything close to that.

and mirasol means looking into the sun so we named aruna which is like a sunrise as which means like a sunrise as kind of aspiring to be somewhat of like the next generation of anything close to that and it's kind of an amazing full circle to see it all come to fruition just a few years later i love that meaning behind the name this is really great and um how do you guys feel today i don't think it's fully even set in yet um it's been a full 24 hours but um it's it's just been a whirlwind of you know texts and facebook messages and emails and like already just so many opportunities opening for us that we never even dreamed of a week ago um and so it's really amazing. And podcasters harassing you. Yeah, that too. Um, I'd love to talk to you a little

bit about your preparation for this competition. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Right. So this is our third time competing in the fish off. Um, and, uh, there's a few things that I think that we did, especially this year that I think allowed us to be really successful. the first one is really experimenting with our musical interpretation even like leading right up to the competition because a lot of this music we've been working on for a really long time now and with that comes you know a lot of refinement but it can also get stale and i i think that you know, through our feedback from our professor, Professor David Dees, and some other guest professors, Kyle Horch, Dr. Connie Frigo, and just getting a little bit of feedback and being able to

try to still play the music differently, like every day and kind of try to reimagine it every time we play it, is really kind of opened our ears and our eyes to the possibilities with this set of music and I think that that helped us perform more in the moment and it was more enjoyable how often would you guys get together to rehearse um we generally would rehearse probably about four days a week our usual goal for a week is about eight to ten hours of rehearsal a week which is a lot um like a part-time job yeah it's it's it's a big commitment but um And it's one of those things where as long as we could keep finding things to do and things to refine, we didn't feel like it was too much. And there were there were days, of course, we were like, you know what, we don't need to rehearse today.

Like we can just take the day off and relax a little bit. But I think all of us in the group have a similar work ethic and kind of voracious attitude of just going after it. and one thing that i thought was fascinating as a string player is the memorization aspect a lot of these i didn't see all of the performances from the wind ensembles but a lot of the saxophone quartets were playing by memory including yours um how does that happen um some of it is a labor of love and then some of it is a labor of hate a labor of hate exactly and so the memorization we've been memorizing music for a couple years now but this year we really decided to make that a priority in our performance and kind of how we did that is we

just set deadlines so we set really try to set really hard deadlines of okay this piece we're gonna play it we're gonna run through it from memory by this day so we could do the work on our own and really try to like be particularly prepared for that rehearsal so and the thing about memorization is I never really bought into it until I started doing it and I think we all kind of felt that way because as a young quartet we were kind of wary of the value of memorization we thought, you know, how much value does this really add to the music? But once we started doing it, we found that it really opened up our ears and allowed us to especially create space and start to hear the music more organically. And it really, it kind of, I think, transformed the

way we approached and performed this set of repertoire. And I feel like sometimes memorizing is a big challenge, especially for maybe young musicians entering college or at the level of starting to take music more seriously. Can you give us a few tips? What are some practical steps to memorize music? I think the first thing is to listen to it a lot. If there are reference recordings, to have it in your ear, to be able to sing it almost. Some music is more singable than others. But if you can, if you have an auditory image in your head of what's about to happen, that will aid in the memorization. And something that I think goes along with that is some pieces lay very well with the fingers and in the ear and others really don't. So having

things that are more than just muscle memory to help you memorize and have touchstones in the piece so with chamber music knowing everybody else's part just as well as yours is particularly good because even if you have a moment in performance where you're like oh I just like missed a rhythm or missed a small thing if you know what's happening around you you're not alone and it's I find memorizing chamber music to be actually a little bit easier than solo repertoire just because everyone kind of has your back in that way another thing that I think helped me is to sometimes I would memorize by ear like knowing that and sometimes I'd memorize by muscle memory but other times just actually knowing okay this next interval is a minor third or this note like

this after this long series of rests i start on this note that little thing can kind of help you as like just uh having less fear of coming out of a series of rests just knowing okay i know what note name this is about to be it's like i tell students oftentimes it's like having different sets of keys so if you have the intellectual knowledge and you can hear it in your head and you also have the muscle memory if one of these three fails then you have you know you have a spare key hidden somewhere that you can just pull out and still keep going absolutely like even on the fish off stage there's parts in the program especially in some of the more contemporary repertoire where i'm like okay this series of notes goes d c a flat b flat

and that's okay you know it doesn't all have to be the most uh artistic uh expression of memory sometimes it's okay to have something very grounded for a section of a piece like that another thing i loved about your performances was you guys seem to have a very what i would call a very polished and choreographed stage presence i'm curious about what the process to establish this is was it choreographed um to an extent yes um there is there is enough um element of improvisation like i'm not thinking i'm gonna look at tony or ryan or andrew at this part i might be just looking at them in the moment like kind of vibing off what they're playing but But I think that it's funny that you mentioned that

because a full year ago at the Fish Off, we got a comment from one of the judges that we had played for memory and they thought that it just came off kind of flat and a little bit uncomfortable, actually. And at the time, I think that we were really kind of... this criticism like was we took it really to heart and we to an extent we didn't agree with it and we thought like oh whatever but we we really brewed on that idea of what it means to

be on stage and visually what it the presentation and how can we interact with the audience and with each other and we tried to videotape ourselves in rehearsal and we tried to like think really consciously at all times about like what's like how is what we're doing visually as a group contributing to the music and I it really transformed the way we approached our role as a chamber ensemble and it's it's kind of amazing because that idea at first I think we pushed back so much but we began to embrace it more as we did it more and I think it's a fine line for us because to an extent the choreography aspect of it we don't want it to ever become distracting you know or take away from what's happening musically but just a little bit of

like the presence of the stage or just a little bit of movement can sometimes contribute a lot I think it makes it very engaging from the audience and I remember the piece that you played for at the final, I was also listening in the semi-final round. And it was, you know, I love that little choreography that you had there with the stomping. Was that part of the score? Yes. So the stomping in that piece is part of the score. But it's funny because we had to refine our stomping a lot because turns out like I'm not a very good stomper. And if we would watch ourselves on video and we would we would be just blown away by how awkward we looked you know and it's it's it's like it's just weird because as musicians so often we are so honed in on okay

these are the notes and the intonation and things like that that we can forget that sometimes on stage we might just be looking really awkward um and that can take away from a performance and it's it's interesting that the more i kind of try to stand up straight and present myself in a more confident way it starts to feel better to perform in that way that's very interesting very interesting um one more thing about repertoire what goes into repertoire choice for something like the fish off competition so if i were to peg one thing as maybe the most important step i would think repertoire selection would be it and um like as a group if there's anything that we mull over most it's probably programming for something like this because it's so it's so

difficult and um we've we've made good choices before and i think this year we we really felt like we kind of nailed our programming this year but in previous years we haven't and we've made some missteps um so i think there's a couple keys the first one is playing music that you want to play and especially for a competition like the fish off or really any chamber competition or solo competition you don't want to pick a piece that you're going to get tired of a month in Very good point. And you want to also pick a piece that is going to continue to challenge you, that has multiple levels of depth, to where even once you can play all the notes and play all the rhythms correctly, that there's still more to do and there's still more to refine and more to interpret. And picking music like that is kind of difficult when you haven't played it yet.

um but i think really as a group listening to pieces like sitting down as a as a group just listening to music together it can be like in the car ride or whatever but really discussing like okay well we like this about this piece but maybe this isn't so great or maybe we want to play this but we want to look at the music first um but overall just playing things that you all can agree you want to play. Um, the second thing is playing to our, your strengths as a group. Um, and those are hard to determine at first, but, um, we found this year that we really thought that we could play to our strengths, um, with some of the contemporary choices we made. Um, we felt we could really bring out the character in some of those pieces. And, um, we found that we were

really successful in doing that. And that's something that you can get from the experience of, you mentioned earlier that you had already competed at Fischhoff. And from what you said, it seems like you really took at heart what you learned from those other experiences. Yes. The greatest thing about the Fischhoff competition, in my opinion, is that time after they announced finalists to go talk to the judges and actually get their take one-on-one with what you picked, what you programmed, how you played. And that is so valuable. And taking feedback is hard, especially when we were a young group. Taking critique can be hard because we spend so much time as musicians obsessing over everything we do. And when someone tells

you something, that wasn't a good choice. It can be difficult at first, but as much as we can, And I think we have to take that into account and really think, okay, how can we grow from this? And what parts of this can we take and get better and pick music that plays to our strengths better? And the one thing I would caution against even, and this is something that we did at first, and I'll admit that we were very guilty of this when we first started out, is, okay, we're going to enter the fish off. I'm going to open the fish off program from last year and I'm going to look at what the group that one played, you know, and because sometimes those are great pieces that there's no denying that at a competition like the fish off or anything, usually great music wins. But just because a piece was great for that group doesn't necessarily mean it's great for your group. Um, and I think we found that out somewhat the hard way because we were picking, we were like, oh, this piece has done so well in the past, so we're going to play it. And we found that maybe

that piece just didn't really fit us or fit what we were going for. Um, and that was kind of a harder lesson to learn. But I think once we wrapped our head around that, we started thinking less about, okay, this piece won last year, or this piece won two years ago, and more about, okay, do we think that we could perform this piece really well at an absolutely world-class level? And that kind of changed our perspective on programming. That's a really, really good point. One question that I kind of refrain asking any groups over there because i didn't want them to overthink it is what about choice of repertoire for specific rounds how do you select those um so this is something that it's another thing that

we mull over a lot um and in the quarterfinal round as you know the judges select the repertoire are so that in itself is very important and we took that into account with our entire program we wanted to program because we you bring an hour plus we wanted to pick a program that no matter what they picked on that list it would show range and it would show off our strengths and they couldn't we tried to make it so they couldn't pick a bad program you know they couldn't pick a program without variety um that's very without us showing off different things um and that that i think was really important to us advancing um in the semi-final round we were picking pieces that we thought showed range and um that is something that

is kind of obvious but also it's hard when you when you're looking at an hour of repertoire and you need less than 20 minutes to try to show the full scope of what you can do um so we opened with the to kelly back burner which is kind of a flashy aggressive technical piece um and that was just we wanted to start off very big you know start off with a statement and then following that we went to the lago which is much more reflective and sensitive so instead of just trying to pick pieces that should range we were really trying to show an order that was kind of complementary to what you might hear in an actual concert um try to take a little bit of the contest act out of it so we we slowed it down a little bit

a little bit more sensitive and then the to the tonata which is um much more contemporary um very um in a french contemporary music style very textural um and that is kind of a complete another complete shift, and then back to the Albright, the bagpiping movement, which is still a contemporary piece, but a shift away from Tanada, something that is much more programmatic and I think almost like tone poem-esque in its construction, on very short episodes of different ideas and in picking that semi-final repertoire we didn't want it to sound like we were just picking four pieces that didn't go together in some way we wanted to give the judges and the audience kind of a taste of like a full program

and like something that was somewhat cohesive um and i i think that that helped um we were told by a couple of the judges that we made smart programming decisions which was a great compliment to us and i think um even in the the grand final round we kind of went a little bit more i don't want to say tonal but we went a little bit more uh palatable and a little bit more like just let's just show off what we can do you know i think that that probably factored in i have no idea but um in picking each round it's it's so important to i think just overall show range and then pick pieces that don't sound like you're playing a snippet of things try to make it somewhat cohesive and i think it's a little bit more easy to listen to and it takes it probably

takes you out of the the idea of oh we're at a contest we're performing it's a little bit easier to let go of that it indeed sounds like it was very smart and a very mindful approach to choosing the repertoire and would you please talk to us a little bit about the experience at fish off so you've been there before how maybe would you please give us an idea of like the overall experience throughout these several attendances but also if something was special about it this year right um so what i admire and respect about the fish off is when you are there it does feel important and it feels special. It feels like everybody is there to really make this experience all it can be, regardless of result, regardless of anything. It feels like a very unique and

special place to perform. And it's felt like that every single year we went. This year, i think the biggest difference is we made a very um concerted effort to have fun this year um we were we this was our last year doing it no matter what happened for various reasons um but this fish off we tried to go in and every round we tried to like right before we walk on stage we would like tell jokes to each other or something or just try to make each other laugh so we get a little bit out of our own heads about it. And of course, it's a little bit nerve-wracking. It's always a little bit nerve-wracking.

Like the first few seconds of performing on a stage like that, I think the nerves are inevitable. But when you know to expect them and when you go in with a smile on your face and just trying to have more fun, it really, like it was just so much more of a wonderful experience.

And that's regardless of any kind of result that we got. Every round felt just a little bit more fun and a little bit more comfortable. We had inside jokes that we would be trying to tell each other before we walked out to like smile and stop thinking about the fact of what we're going to do, you know? Yes. Yes. What do you think is going to come out of this when, what are you guys taking home from the experience? I think that already, I mean, being here is crazy and talking to you is crazy. And some of the things that we're already have been approached about doing and some of the performance opportunities and educational opportunities that are going to open up for us in the next year is going to be just amazing. And I think we're all really excited and blown away. And I think all of us are kind of leaving with an appreciation for this moment that we are having and the moment of somewhat of triumph, but also just of a culmination of a lot of years of

just working hard um there's nothing about this result that was guaranteed there's nothing about this result that necessarily says that we are the best group at that competition of all time we just happen to win that day and um i think there's a lot of times that it's easy to get discouraged in this whole business of competition and competition in music especially but um it's it's tom rosenberg's said it best you just have to get a little bit lucky and i think we're trying to just savor in the fact that we got lucky and um but it does feel good to have a lot of the work that we've put in pay off this is really well put will do you have any advice for the young musicians who are thinking of maybe entering the

next year or in the future i would encourage everybody to enter because ultimately with many of these things getting into the fish off or any competition is a huge achievement but it is the process of preparing for and recording and um really diving into the music as a group that is the valuable part of this whole thing um regardless of result regardless of outcome or medals or whatever the way that you spend time together with music and really listen critically to each other and yourselves that is the valuable part of competition it's the process of just doing that over and over again that will make you a better musician like regardless of anything and then the second the second thing i would say for anybody who's

thinking about entering the fish off especially if you are forming a group if it's your first year in a chamber group, perhaps your first time in a chamber group, is that you have got to be friends and you have to spend time with each other outside of rehearsal. And that is just so important because rehearsal is a time where everybody is there with a singular goal and has to make the music better. And sometimes that can result in people butting heads and that can result and people having different opinions but you have to get away from that and just hang out with each other because it's there's no way that myself uh tony ryan and andrew could have done any of this if we weren't like best friends away from the aruna quartet and away from music um it's just

so important and it makes everything so much easier this is great thank you so much and congratulations to you will and as well to tony and ryan and andrew and i very much look forward to see what's in the future for the aruna quartet and for all of you four as individual thank you so much for speaking with me today and thank you i'm so glad i had the chance to speak with will and I hope you enjoyed our chat. Tomorrow, I'm wrapping up this series about the fish-off experience with a summary of some of my favorite takeaways,

tips, and advice, and with a conversation with my fellow podcaster friend, Nathan Cole, on what it was like for us to be there. I'd love to hear from you, so get in touch to share your thoughts about the fish-off or about competitions in general, and please share this episode

with whomever you think might find it of value and benefit from it. As always, you can find me at mindoverfinger.com and on both Facebook and Instagram by searching for Mind Over Finger. À bientôt!