The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 040 The Fischoff Experience: In Conclusion

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 40, the fifth and last episode of the series 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. Welcome to this last episode about the Fish Off Chamber Music Competition. Over the last few weeks, I had the chance to talk to so many incredible people before, during and after the Fish Off Competition. And I hope you enjoyed our conversations and found

Starting point is 00:00:54 value and inspiration in these nine episodes that have been released already. The Fish Off competition, in the words of the organization, was originally intended to encourage emerging instrumental chamber musicians and provide a national forum for their talents. And as you saw, it does this very thing in such a masterful way. The event is prestigious, yes, and it's also very special. It's not only a chamber music competition, it positively influences the lives of everyone involved, the participants, the organizations that provide education for those participants, their families, the fish off staff, and it also impacts thousands of local school children who get to experience these dynamic chamber music presentations that are given by ensembles from

Starting point is 00:01:45 current or past competitions. Playing chamber music really develops so many important aspects of being a well-rounded musician. It sharpens how we listen and how we respond and therefore it refines our playing. Also, working with each other, negotiating personal conflicts and professional differences can profoundly shape us as human beings. In these nine episodes about Fish Off,

Starting point is 00:02:12 you got a lot of wonderful tips and really wise advice on practicing, rehearsing, and on competition preparation and performance from my many guests, and there's one mindset that I hope we can all walk away with from all of this information and insight. We're never just practicing or rehearsing one thing. Everything that we practice or rehearse or work on builds our skills. Therefore, everything we participate in, every passage we work on for our youth orchestra concert or our next gig every shift we improve or every breathing exercise we do all of those things help strengthen us it elevates us and

Starting point is 00:02:57 enhances our playing so for example the knowledge and experience you get from that quartet that you rehearse one day will stay with you when you step in the rehearsal room to practice with your pianist the next day and influence how you play in your next orchestra concert. It all comes together. On a personal level, I was really excited when I was approached to cover the event, and that's for many reasons. First of all, Fish Off is such a widely recognized event. It was a great honor, and I was very excited to have this opportunity to observe everything that's happening there, and to listen to all the amazing performers. Also, as someone who was on the competition circuit, I know what entering them brought to me as a young musician, and that made

Starting point is 00:03:48 being there so much more meaningful. For me, in my development, competitions brought, yes, let's face it, stress, and they required a lot of difficult sacrifices. But they also gave me something precious that in French we call dépassement de soi, going beyond your own limits, pushing past your current state. For me, preparing for solo competitions required a lot of dedication, serious work, consistency, and a lot of support and help from my family and my teachers. It taught me to set goals and figure out ways to get there. I learned how to work efficiently and with focus, how to face my fears, and it helped me develop grit. My playing improved through preparing for competitions, I made lifelong friends at competitions, and I got to experience

Starting point is 00:04:44 so many exhilarating moments and was exposed to so much artistic beauty. Fischhoff also brought back a lot of vivid memories of my own chamber music experience with the various groups that I had in schools and summer camps, and also with a much more serious ensemble that ended up participating in the 2000 Banff International String Quartet Competition. We were called the Diabelli Quartet, and the other members were Annie Trepanier on the violin, Steve Larson on the viola, and cellist Brian Snow. And at Fish Off, all the memories of working really hard, playing awesome repertoire came back rushing. The long hours of rehearsing, discussing interpretation, studying scores, traveling all over the place, going on rehearsal retreats to Quaker farms, going to

Starting point is 00:05:32 summer festivals to get coachings, and studying with the members of the Emerson Quartet as part of the residency we were in at the time. This was a huge time of growth for me, both musically and humanly. And I think that this is the recurring theme that we've heard from everyone here at fish off. Fish off is not just a musical event. It's a rich human experience in which the music itself becomes the instrument that brings people together. It's all about the people. Also, I think it's important to realize and remember that everyone leaves as a winner. Everyone is going home richer and wiser and more experienced and hopefully completely inspired. And speaking of going home, before we left, my fellow podcaster friend Nathan Cole and I

Starting point is 00:06:30 treated ourselves to our own musings on our experience at Fish Off. Nathan covered the event with his podcast, Stand Partners for Life, and I hope you listen to those episodes as well. here's our conversation how's the experience for you oh this has been great i i was just saying it brings back a lot of memories even though i didn't do this competition um yeah chamber music and specifically quartets were such a big part of my experience in school and just beyond there you know there was a time that i sort of teased the idea of doing this for for a living really and And eventually, I just didn't really have the courage to follow through with it and move to a strange city and just kind of see what happened. I wanted that job. I wanted to, you know, punch in and out of work every day and kind of know where I was going to be.

Starting point is 00:07:29 So, you know, being around these guys from, what, age 10, I guess, in this competition all the way up to 30. you know those were well not 10 but starting maybe at 16 those were the years that i really thought of myself as a quartet player chamber musician and i just love seeing the energy the enthusiasm and the maturity yeah i'm really i'm really impressed with the level here i think that what you just said the level of maturity i hear in the playing is really i would say almost breathtaking. Yeah. And I started out thinking, oh, well, thinking that I would know how the young groups would play and how the older groups would play. And it hasn't quite worked out like that. I mean, in general, sure. I think when you're older and you've just done this a lot

Starting point is 00:08:23 longer, there's a patience, maybe a repose that comes with it in general. But so many of the younger groups I find to have that too you know I think that's partly they get a lot more experience performing than I did at that age and partly great coaching too you know people just letting them know here's what you think is coming out but here's what's really coming out right and as we speak now what's in the background I'm sure the microphones are picking it up is is the junior division and someone would walk by and think maybe it's a senior division oh absolutely and um i know talking to the director tom rosenberg he was saying that yeah in the in the old days the the junior division clearly sounded like the junior division but that's that's been a big

Starting point is 00:09:16 change up to today you know i've never been at fish off of course i'm canadian as you know and um so i've never attended and didn't know much about the competition other than the fact that it was very recognized sorry i'm just waiting at the group i'm rooting for only because there's someone from my hometown there but you know i have to say i really love speaking from all the parents and the coaches and the students this atmosphere that i see here where everybody is so supportive of each other and parents become friends and you know coaches so supportive of their groups you know yeah really and it's it's a reminder how much parental involvement these groups need to really succeed i mean not only getting here which means driving or

Starting point is 00:10:10 paying for a plane ticket or something but i mean the parents come with them too and uh yeah they're so so invested they are and then hearing stories of parents driving from ann arbor michigan to chicago actually the north of the city weekly or kids flying from one city to another every weekend for coachings and lessons it um i've said it before but it takes a village Yeah, definitely. And I mean, you've noticed, right, I had no idea before that there were these sort of super centers of junior chamber music, you know, these schools or institutes that consistently coach great groups. and it seems like it has to be a combination of judging personalities to put the kids together in the right groups and then just sort of seeing which ones catch fire, you know,

Starting point is 00:11:08 which combinations really work and which kids have a blast doing it. And then, of course, the great coaching, you know, week in, week out. and one of my other favorite thing about being here is we get to hang out a little bit in person i know because i always listen to your show and hear your voice uh you know over the waves yeah but um i haven't seen you in so long in person so yeah this has been fun although for a lot a lot of this uh these three days we've been sitting across from each other like those swaving across the table i know i once the one time that i visited bordeaux there were these two famous Bordeaux chateaux that sit right across this very narrow lane from each other

Starting point is 00:11:50 and yeah the guidebook I read said that they were you know making these great wines but the chateau were just staring at each other across this narrow lane so I feel friendlier than that but it's true we've been we're putting out these shows with just these little 20 feet separating us I think for me it's so inspiring that listening to all this really awesome music and watching these young musicians with their enthusiasm and dedication is so refreshing and I feel like I go back home after this weekend completely inspired and rejuvenated and ready to practice some scales I know yeah definitely definitely me I have actually a bunch of videos to make on scales so yeah we you know we've been talking about uh this group and that group and some some criticisms

Starting point is 00:12:45 here and there along with the compliments and then yeah every criticism i make i'm like i gotta go back and practice that's for sure i finally got to go in the hall this morning i'm embarrassed to say of you know in uh all the excitement of interviewing and trying to capture all the action you know i'm not really in their recording performances or anything and finally this morning i got to go in and listen to the senior strings and piano division and uh yeah really what what a level yeah i mean and even yesterday i was talking to a wind group the catharsis and they were talking about how they rehearsed every day oh wow are they is that a senior yes okay and so i imagine they're obviously all in school together. And it's just tremendously inspiring and very

Starting point is 00:13:40 impressive. What was your quartet experience like in school or chamber music? Well, as all young musicians, I wanted to play the Schubert Quintet at the age of 14. Oh, wow. I didn't even know that that piece existed until I got to school. I was so, so sheltered. I went to conservatory, which is a very wonderful school system in canada and so we started chamber music kind of young and so i had some experience with actually the first quartet i played we didn't play the whole thing but it was part of the seven last words of christ and i think we were 12 years old and just fell in love and it was it was such a fun experience and of course we thought we were terrific you know truth is we probably were terrible but um had such a great time so we

Starting point is 00:14:34 had this chance to play chamber music and some piano trios here and there and then you know you enter college and then the chamber music experience becomes more part of of the requirements and i remember my freshman year being thrown in the bartok contrasts and that was kind of an awakening yeah i've got one note in that piece that i whistle i don't know if you remember there's a double stop with like a solid note and a harmonic and oh yeah someone gave me the tip once and ever since they told me i couldn't i can't not do it now no okay so we're gonna need to talk because i need that tip because i love i love playing this piece but i know exactly what you're talking about and i would very much appreciate a tip well some people can whistle

Starting point is 00:15:17 in some camp but i can at least find that one note and then i don't have to play the harmonic and it sounds much better than actually trying to play those two notes at the same time well depending depending on how high it is i can whistle something but we'll see it's such a great piece i love this combination of the clarinet and the piano but yeah and then of course you know chamber um summer festivals there's always a fun place to do right that's where i played my first string quartet I remember clearly it was the uh the Mendelssohn D major of his 44 number one and um so that was the summer I was 14 and it was a dedicated chamber music camp actually and it was a nice gentle introduction even though back then I didn't know how great the coaches were

Starting point is 00:16:08 that we had um I mean names that I still know and people that I see and I'm like oh they were my coach when I was 14 you know I just I kind of looked at them like oh it's it's this old guy coming in to you know bother us for two hours right and yeah it was like some major concert master and somebody in a major quartet and um but yeah though for me I would play a little bit of quartet in the summer or something and so it wasn't until I got to Curtis when I was 18 that I got to do any more than that and then I just fell in love with it I just feel like it for me it brought so much and everything that I hear from the participants here is also part of what I think and probably what you think too in terms of learning to work together as a team and listening

Starting point is 00:16:56 and matching colors matching vibrato I think that if you've never done chamber music these are not things you think about I know I mean that that drives us crazy in the orchestra a lot of the time me and kiko and you know we'll find ourselves guilty of it from time to time too but when sometimes there will be questions that could be from a newer member for example like well you know what's the what's the stroke here or you know what part of the bow is it and it's like you know didn't you ever play chamber music just look up and see what you know see what the concert master is doing or the your principal and you know you know how to match if you have eyes and ears but if you really didn't play chamber music then that might not be your instinct um or you know

Starting point is 00:17:48 or it takes an effort rather than being something that just happens naturally you really develop that sensitivity that you're talking about it's almost as if uh it's a sixth sense yeah and you you know you get yelled at a lot too if you're like me I mean so that fear or not wanting to disappoint people it's a powerful motivator but you know first time sitting down in quartet to play I mean just the the balance was killer I was always mostly too quiet playing second violin and then the times that I thought oh well let me assert myself here was like what are you doing you're in octaves with the cello you gotta be under the cello and um intonation you know yeah suddenly what i thought was in tune that wasn't the last word anymore yep those things happen

Starting point is 00:18:39 well the and the coachings were the same too i mean then i always had the feeling like oh well okay my you know these slightly older kids are beating up on me in rehearsal but but when the coach comes you know he's gonna save me because he's gonna say oh this is sounding great you know you're doing a great job and no then it would be even worse like didn't these guys tell you how then you know that they're more experienced didn't they tell you not to do that didn't they tell you to play louder here and yeah then I'd never hear the end of it you know after a year of playing with more experienced people at school then I finally something started to become more automatic like if you're second violin you're all the time playing the third of

Starting point is 00:19:19 chord or the fifth or something and so you don't you're not relying on muscle memory or something anymore you're automatically listening for the note that you have to be locked in with one of my greatest lesson i think was shortly after i graduated and entered the world as a professional musician um i was playing in the summer festival and was matched with a very very prominent musician someone that you know when I when I got my assignment I was you know kind of caught had to catch my breath for a little bit and um someone older very well established and throughout the entire rehearsal process where we played you know I think the entire Brahms piano quartet the third one and with only two rehearsals before the concert and he was so

Starting point is 00:20:12 gracious and so supportive and with this very limited time there's only so much you can fix and only so much that you can change and you have to you know feel and read each other very quickly but throughout the entire process he was so as I said gracious patient supportive and at all times I felt as if he was regarding me as a colleague that's great and it really allowed me to play at my best and it taught me that how you treat your colleagues is very important and it really affects how they play because I think we've all had experiences where maybe a colleague is not supportive or you feel judgment from them and then that really is not helping the overall product yeah definitely I mean everybody plays better when they feel like the rest of the group's on

Starting point is 00:21:06 her side and they think you're doing well that kind of thing I mean criticism is great as far as long-term building but especially when you're talking about being put into a group where you have to play in just a few rehearsals you're not really time to change someone's playing I mean you've got to work with what you have and for the more experienced person to to really take that attitude and bring the best out of you i mean not to assume that they were actually a better player than you just because they were older um yeah i'd really try to remember those positive experiences anytime that i'm working with younger musicians because i never want you know because i've had the opposite experience too as i'm sure

Starting point is 00:21:53 you have with older more established players that treat you like the kid you are right yes i was actually one of the jurors here denny phillips is um someone that i distinctly remember being the the first kind the good kind that you're talking about but that that kind of situation where i expected because of his reputation and his gorgeous playing i expected that you know make me feel like a kid even without trying to and I always remember him as someone who like you said treated me like a colleague it's like hey we're playing together you're my colleague and that meant so much to me at age 20 21 you know same age as these guys competing here well it's been such a fun experience being here and as I said I'm so glad we had this chance to catch up a little

Starting point is 00:22:43 bit I know yeah thanks for thanks for coming across the across the room occasionally no it's been great thank you so much and there you have it of course I can't leave you before giving you the names of the 2019 recipients of the fish off competition so here they are as you know the grand Prize went to the Aruna Quartet of Texas Tech University. For the Senior Division Strings and Piano, the gold medal went to the Mertz Trio from New York City. Silver medal winners were the Abeo Quartet from the Juilliard School, and the bronze medal winners were the Dior Quartet from Indiana University's Jacobs School. The Senior Division Winds and Brass saw the Aruna Quartet as gold medal winners, as we know. The silver medal went to the Chroma Quartet from the University of

Starting point is 00:23:39 Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and our friends from Catharsis Winds of the Cleveland Institute took home the bronze medal. For the junior division of strings and piano, gold medal winners were the Fervida Trio from the Young Chamber Musicians from Burlingame, California. Silver medal winners, the Eclatant String Quartet, that you will remember from the Starling Preparatory String Project in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the bronze medal winners were the Meraki Quartet from Croton Music Center in Berkeley, California. Junior division winds and brass gold medal winners were the Golden Melody Saxophone Quartet from the Middle School of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China. Silver medal winners were the Quantum Quartet

Starting point is 00:24:26 from the Hebron High School in Carrollton, Texas. And finally, the bronze medal winners for the Junior Division Winds and Brass were the Bone Rangers from the Merritt School of Music in Chicago. Congratulations to all of you. A huge thank you to Carmen Creel and everyone at Fish Off

Starting point is 00:24:44 for inviting me to be part of this wonderful adventure. That's it for today and actually also for this season of the Mind Over Finger podcast. I truly hope you enjoyed the episodes and I will be back with more incredible guests in the fall talking about mindful and efficient practice and building meaningful musical careers. In the meantime, make sure to subscribe to automatically get the first episode of season two when it lands on Friday, September 6. You can listen to episode 30 for some information on the guests you can expect to hear from in season two. thank you so much for being an awesome audience stay in touch on facebook instagram or at

Starting point is 00:25:28 mindoverfinger.com and join me in the tribe for more content about mindful practice over the summer and that's at facebook.com slash groups slash mind over finger tribe thanks again and Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 040 The Fischoff Experience: In Conclusion

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.