The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 058 Stefan Jackiw: Overcoming Injury

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 58. 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 doing amazingly well today i bring you a very important and inspiring conversation with international soloist stefan jakiv stefan is one of america's foremost violinists he travels the world as a soloist recitalist and chamber musician and here at home he's appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York,

Starting point is 00:00:55 Philadelphia, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras. This season, he makes his debut with the Concert House Orchestra Berlin, performing Korengold's Violin Concerto, and he returns to the Bournemouth Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, and the RTE National Symphony in Dublin with Leonard Slatkin. Other highlights include performances with the San Diego, Indianapolis, and Baltimore symphonies. In recitals, Stefan continues touring the complete Ives sonatas with Jeremy Dank, and he performs alongside pianist Conrad Tao and cellist Jay Campbell as part of the Junction Trio with stops in Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., Ohio, California, Texas, New Mexico, Florida, and more. Stefan holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard

Starting point is 00:01:37 University as well as an artist diploma from the New England Conservatory, and he's the recipient of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. In this episode, Stefan talks to us about overcoming a debilitating injury. He tells us the story of what happened, how it affected him, and what he learned in the recovery process. I really appreciate him accepting to talk so openly about this because still now there's so much stigma attached to dealing with an injury as a musician. And I hope that Stefan's journey and his willingness to share it with us can help others dealing with similar issues and keep the conversation going on this topic. Let's go to the show. Stéphane Jacque, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Starting point is 00:02:31 Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Stéphane, you're a really spectacular violinist, really busy with a solo and chamber music career, traveling the world. And I want to hear a little bit about that today. We're going to talk about a little bit of a different topic, but before we plunge in it, I would love for the listeners to hear a little bit about your musical journey in your own words. Sure. I started playing the violin when I was four years old. I'm 34 now, so I've been playing for 30 years, which is kind of hard to believe. And my family is not musical. I'm an only child and my parents never learned any instruments or really had any musical training, but they love music, not just classical music,

Starting point is 00:03:16 music of all sorts. Actually, my dad has a pretty big LP collection with everything from Carlos Kleiber conducting Beethoven's symphonies to all the way to like the Beatles. So my parents like music a lot. And I would say within music, what they listen to most is classical music. And so when I was growing up, we often had classical music playing on the stereo at home, on the radio, in the car. And my parents used to go to, this was in Boston, to the Boston Symphony pretty frequently. And I don't remember when they first took me to a Boston Symphony concert, but attending the Boston Symphony was definitely a part of my childhood. And I started playing the violin sort of by chance. Some of my parents' friends gave me a small-sized violin

Starting point is 00:04:02 that their own children had outgrown for my fourth birthday. And my parents loved music and thought it would be nice since that we had this small violin now to start me on lessons. So they enrolled me in Suzuki lessons at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge. And I did that for about a year. And when I was five, my parents took a sabbatical to New York City for a year. And we moved to New York. And my parents found a violin teacher by the name of Alejandro Mendoza, who I've since lost touch with.

Starting point is 00:04:37 This was some 30 years ago. But I remember him very clearly. He was the first violinist that I heard play beautifully up close. I remember him and I remember our lessons being really fun. And I remember loving hearing him play the violin. and that I think is kind of what really sparked my interest in violin initially just hearing someone who was really great at the violin playing and sounding so beautiful and when we moved back to Boston at the end of the year my mom I don't really know how

Starting point is 00:05:09 she did this but she managed to kind of find the best violin teacher I could possibly imagine She was an elderly Russian lady who had moved from Moscow to Boston in 1985, and her name was Zinaida Gilels, and she had a very successful teaching career in Russia, and she moved to the U.S., and my mom, I think, read about her somewhere, and I guess I can't remember, but I think I auditioned for Mrs. Gilels, and she accepted me into her studio. And so I studied with her from when I was age five until I was 12. So those are very important years for any instrumentalist. When I started with her, I couldn't really play the violin. And by the time I concluded my studies with her at age 12, I think my technique, of course, wasn't completely polished, but all the fundamentals were there. And every teacher that I've gone to since then has commented that they can see that

Starting point is 00:06:09 I had a teacher early on who really taught me how to play the violin well and how to practice efficiently. And all of that is due to Mrs. Gilles. And even to this day, the way I practice is very much informed by her strategies and her methods. And after I finished studying with Mrs. Gilles, I moved to a French teacher who spent half her time in Paris and half her time at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Her name was Michelle Eau Claire. And Madame Eau Claire was, while not Russian, I think kind of had a lot of traits of Russian teachers. She admired the Russian school a lot. She admired Mrs. Gilles' work a lot. And she kind of continued very much in the same vein as Mrs. Gilles did, focusing a lot on violin playing, violin technique,

Starting point is 00:07:00 and just expanding my repertoire and sort of continuing where Mrs. Gillel's left off. And so I started studying with Madame O'Claire when I was 12 until when I was about 16, at which point she retired and moved back to Paris. And at that point, I entered the studio of Donald Weilerstein, who had just come to the New England Conservatory. And I studied with him my final year of high school and four years while I was in college. And this was something completely different from what I'd had before. Mr. Weilerstein, I think, first of all, my ability to play the violin was at a higher level at that point than it had been when I started with the previous teachers.

Starting point is 00:07:43 I think also he was much more interested in, at least with me, he didn't focus that much on the craft of violin playing, but more about what it meant to be a musician, what it meant to communicate through performance. He talked a lot about emotional vulnerability. He talked a lot about sort of the emotional worlds of different composers, sort of the struggle of Beethoven, the nostalgia of Brahms, the operatic humanism of Mozart. He talked a lot about that stuff. And I think initially it was a little bit of a difficult transition to kind of start working with a teacher who kind of focused more on broad concepts rather than nuts and bolts. but once I sort of opened my mind to what he was talking about it something really clicked and I feel that he very much changed me as a musician he certainly changed what my priorities were as a violinist I think up until I started studying with him my priorities were to be an excellent

Starting point is 00:08:44 violinist and to play the violin very well and once I started studying with him and kind of understood where he was coming from i think i started viewing the art of violin playing as being secondary to kind of bringing these composers inner lives to light to life on stage um and that's something that i still carry with me today um and i when i finished i did my undergrad at harvard um and took lessons with mr weilerstein while i was an undergrad at harvard and at Harvard I studied musicology um and played quite a bit of chamber music um on campus with other students and took a lot of fascinating classes on musicology music performance there was a really wonderful chamber music seminar taught by the great pianist and music thinker Robert Levin

Starting point is 00:09:37 which I took a bunch of times he's wonderful he's really wonderful he's one of the most just knowledgeable musicians i've ever met but um all of it is in service of kind of joyful music making there's nothing kind of dry or academic about his approach to to music and and knowledge um so i really loved taking his classes um and the day after i graduated i my parents drove me from Boston to New York. Um, I already had a studio that I rented out, um, and I moved into that studio and I've been living in New York ever since, since June of 2007. Um, so now it's coming up on, I guess, 12, uh, 12 and a half years that I've been living in New York. And, um, since then I've been performing full time. Um, most of my work is, um, soloing with orchestras. I do a lot

Starting point is 00:10:34 of recitals and chamber music at various festivals and i also have a piano trio with um two of my colleagues the pianist and composer conrad tau and the cellist jay campbell and together we're known as the junction trio and we while we're not a full-time group we play together a few times every year um and it's one of the most rewarding parts of my life as a performer that's a great journey yeah that's my life in a nutshell i was taking a look at your website you have a really wonderful 2020 what are some of the upcoming projects that you're looking forward to the most um well actually i just recently um came back from performing the complete charles ives violin sonatas with jeremy dank that's a project um our first time doing that was five years ago

Starting point is 00:11:24 in 2015 it's hard to believe that it's already been half a decade since that first performance um and since then we've recorded them the recording hasn't been released yet but it's in the editing process and we've we've toured this program now for five years a few performances every year um and all the performances so far have just been in the u.s but we'll be playing them at the wigmore hall in london next season um so i'm really excited about that and my partnership with jeremy is something i really treasure um i first played with him at a chamber music festival in seattle in 2007 right after i moved to new york um and i'd heard about jeremy but i'd never met him and the first piece we ever played together was the richard strauss

Starting point is 00:12:06 violin sonata and that piece is just sort of a joyful exuberant um extroverted um early strauss romp and it was so fun playing with jeremy he he was sort of like love at first note um and he's just i've said this before about him but i think it's the the perfect way to describe him he's one of the most emotionally generous musicians i've ever worked with just just the music just pours everything he has into every note and just seems like the music is just pouring out of him um like robert levin who i mentioned earlier jeremy has just encyclopedic knowledge of music and such a thorough rigorous understanding of how a piece is put together harmonically structurally um But when you listen to him play and when you play with him, it's just the most kind of just wild emotional ride that you can imagine.

Starting point is 00:13:06 So I really love playing that music with him. Ives is something that he's really been immersed in for many years. And I came to these Ives sonatas when Jeremy asked me to do this project together. They're four Ives sonatas. I had never done any of them. So I learned all four of them simultaneously, I guess, in the summer of 2015 or 2014. So that was really a kind of immersion project to learn nearly two hours of Ives' music in just a three-month period. And I've grown to really love Ives' music.

Starting point is 00:13:43 um I've sort of has a reputation being thorny composer who sort of writes difficult music that's difficult to make heads or tails of and while there's some truth to that I think actually Ives's music is closest in emotional content to Brahms's um it's all about memory and nostalgia and kind of clinging to these fading fleeting reminiscences of of of youth um obviously totally different musical language from Brahms, but very, like Brahms, very romantic with a capital R. And his music is, Ives' music is like deeply touching, deeply emotional, deeply nostalgic.

Starting point is 00:14:24 So this project is something that I never tire of. I love revisiting these Ives sonatas because they are so complex. With each revisit, you just sort of, it feels more and more familiar and more and more second nature. And you uncover, you kind of have to pay less attention into the surface busyness and you get more connected with sort of the core emotional

Starting point is 00:14:46 message behind these sonatas. So that's, that's a project that I do every year. Um, and I just came back from performance of that and it was really a fun, rewarding experience. I mentioned my trio with Jane Conrad. That's also, you know, as a, as a freelance violinist, um, I have very little consistency in my musical life and partnerships. You usually travel from orchestra to orchestra, different halls, different orchestras, different conductors. So it's really nice when I have these sort of long-term projects like with Jeremy or like with my trio with Jay and Conrad, because that's kind of a special way to grow together and to really be influenced in a deep way by other people who you really admire. So those are things that are very close to my

Starting point is 00:15:33 heart but i also love traveling to different cities and meeting different conductors and different orchestras and different audiences and playing sometimes the same piece with all with with these different configurations and kind of having my eyes and ears opened to new ways of thinking about the piece based on my collaborators different visions for the piece um so that's that's something that i also really treasure a piece that i'm playing a lot this season well i think a lot of people are playing beethoven a lot this season because it's a anniversary year for beethoven but i am playing the beethoven concerto a lot this season um and yeah that's a piece that as much as i've played it i as cliched as it is to say it's a piece that

Starting point is 00:16:17 always seems to be a new way of thinking about it a new layer of understanding um i mean that's really true of every piece of music you never feel like you completely understand something fully But with Beethoven, I think also as my own personal life changes and develops, I find that I respond to Beethoven in certainly differing and I think also deepening ways. It feels more personal. It feels more meaningful. um yeah whereas some music just sort of seems beautiful but sort of beautiful in the composer's world and i'm sort of looking at it from outside and appreciating the beauty with beethoven at least these few times that i've been playing it it really feels like it i i'm sort of relating

Starting point is 00:17:11 it to my life in some way it's sort of a difficult thing to express with words but it's something you feel when you listen to it and practice it and rehearse it and perform it um so i've really enjoyed playing the Beethoven a lot this season. That sounds like an amazing season. And your website is stefanjakiv.com and I'll put the links in the show notes. I know today we want to talk a little bit about a topic that I think is going to resonate strongly with a lot of my listeners. And I know because they've told me. And you have a particularly inspiring story about that, of dealing with and recovering from an injury that I think is really important for my listeners to hear. But I have to say before we jump into that, that so many things that you just said right now

Starting point is 00:17:58 resonate so strongly with me because, you know, they touch on everything that I try to do with Mind Over Finger. You were talking about keeping an open mind, studying with Professor Waller-Stein and how your priorities shifted from just being a violinist. Well, not just being a violinist, but from being maybe more multifaceted than a violinist, but maybe being a more well-rounded musician. And I can see how your background in musicology at Harvard came into that. And we can hear it when you speak, how you seem to have such a multi-layered approach to music making that I really, I really love.

Starting point is 00:18:37 Even hearing you talk about joyful music making, that really encompasses everything that I believe makes mindful practice and mindful music making. Well, you know, the more layers one kind of activates when thinking about music, the more rewarding it is. There's the surface beauty, there was the way you connect to it, there was the way the relationship you have with the composer, whether the composer is dead or alive, if dead, obviously a one-sided relationship. all of these things sort of make it more powerful when you're thinking about a piece of music listening to a piece of music so it's something that I try to embrace and you know live to the fullest I love what you were saying also about studying with Mrs. Gillil's and the things that she did and you mentioned strategies and methods would you mind sharing a few of those with us Yeah. You know, one thing that she was a big advocate for was practicing with structure. And I think she didn't talk about it that philosophically when I was, you know, eight years old, nine years old.

Starting point is 00:19:51 But she would basically, now that I think back on it and how I practice today, which is very much how she taught me to practice, I'm not sure it's the most efficient way of practicing. She wasn't about zero in on the two notes that you need work on and sort of just focus on that and then just sort of perfect those and then practice the stuff that's less difficult, practice that less. she she was kind of like don't let good practice be the enemy of perfect practice and by perfect practice i don't mean perfect in terms of execution but perfect in terms of strategy i often see people who are so focused on identifying problem spots that they just sort of like with no structure jump from this difficult passage to that difficult passage to that difficult passage and while that might work for some people for me that i i'm the sort of person that I need a plan. And my plan often involves repeating things many times in a very

Starting point is 00:20:51 structured way, knowing before I start exactly how many times I'm going to do it, at what tempos, what sections I'm going to practice today, what sections I'm going to practice tomorrow. I have this whole mental map of how I'm going to practice. And that's something I got from her. And that I do think means that sometimes I'm not doing the most efficient practice in the sense that maybe I'm practicing some easy stuff more than I actually need to. Maybe in this page that I'm repeating five times, maybe there are only three lines that actually need the five times of repetition. However, for me, not having that structure makes it very difficult for me to actually pick up the violin and get started. So I think if I didn't have this just kind of game plan,

Starting point is 00:21:32 I don't think I would really be able to do any practicing because I would just be paralyzed. What am I going to do today? There's so much difficult stuff to practice. Where do I start? Whereas this way, I know exactly when I wake up in the morning, I know exactly what I'm going to practice that day. I know exactly how many times I'm going to do everything. I know I have the whole map in my head.

Starting point is 00:21:52 And often when people hear this, they kind of think, well, that's a kind of mindless way of practicing. But I'm very focused while I do it. And it allows me to sort of just, you know, I just thought of this, but I often read like on Buzzfeed or something. I just outed myself as a Buzzfeed reader, but I often read that like about decision fatigue and how like these top CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs, they wear the same uniform every day because it's one less decision for them to make. Like they don't have to choose what color t-shirt to wear. They just wear a great t-shirt every day, no

Starting point is 00:22:29 matter what. Well, I'm, I don't think of myself as a fortune 500 CEO, but it's one less decision for me to make, Oh, what should I practice today? Oh, how should I do it? I just, I just do it. And I think the little, maybe extra unnecessary, quote unquote, unnecessary practice that I do for me is a small price to pay to get over the hump of just picking up the violin and getting myself to practice. And that's something that I, that's something that I learned from Mrs. Gillel's. She would, you know, if, when I actually look at some of the sheet music that I had from her, I would see that she would write down the tempos she wanted me to practice and how many times to practice each tempo. So it was, it was very formulaic. And I think it's not necessarily

Starting point is 00:23:14 the most efficient because as I said, maybe some stuff doesn't need five different tempos, but just having that framework, you know, it was, it just got me going. And to this day, I, I actually never have trouble getting started practicing because I never feel like, Oh, what should I practice today? I know exactly what I should practice. So, you know, there, there are things that I grapple with in this method. I think sometimes that having such a strict routine, while it gives me structure, sometimes I think maybe it kind of, it locks me into a little bit of a routine and I'm trying to, you know, in my, in my thirties now inject a little more flexibility into my practice, but that core framework has really served me well.

Starting point is 00:24:01 Um, and it gives me both, not only kind of violinistic security, but mental security, because when you're performing at a very high level in anything, your mental confidence is, plays a huge role. Um, and so there are pros and cons to that as well. You know, if, if you're so wedded to a routine, if you miss one day of that routine, it can shake your mental confidence too. Oh, I didn't do my planned practice today. Oh, what's going to happen but i also know that it's this this system serves me so well that i can afford to skip a day because i have a routine in place and and the the the groundwork has been laid so yeah that's that's one tactic from her that i that i really keep using to this day that's really

Starting point is 00:24:53 great. So I don't want to keep you here all day. Let's get to this story of yours. And it led you to have to transform and reinvent your technique. But why don't I let you tell us a little bit about what happened? Sure. So I mentioned that I moved to New York in 2007 and I was performing full time. I was playing probably close to like between 80 and 100 concerts a year. And everything was going well. I was building my career. One side passion that I have, not a side passion, it is a passion that I have and I still have to this day, is I really love running. I was one day in 2012 when I was 27. I was running in Central Park here in New York City. and I tripped and I fell and injured a nerve in my neck in the way I landed kind of in my fall

Starting point is 00:25:51 and it wasn't anything on the surface major like I you know wasn't paralyzed or anything but the next day next morning I picked up my violin for my daily practice and something was very wrong I had lost profound strength in my hands in a way that I think only I only noticed because I played the violin I didn't notice it in my day-to-day life but when I picked up the violin I in my left hand I couldn't control the order in which my fingers came down so like I would try to play a scale one two three four fingers and one two and then four would come down before three like and I just couldn't control it. All the coordination was gone. Um, and then it was also my right hand where I felt like I, like I would kind of lose control of the bow and drop

Starting point is 00:26:46 the bow. And, um, this was really scary. Um, I immediately called some friends who referred me to a neurologist in New York and I went to see the neurologist and, um, you know, they did some sort of gross motor skill tests and you know i i was able to you know move my hands and all that stuff so they couldn't really find anything wrong i had an mri and all that they couldn't really find anything wrong and they said you know this will probably clear up within two weeks two weeks came and went not no change and i was on the road playing concerts and sort of muscling my way through performances barely able to get in to get through it and in order to get through it I was having to kind of tense up in really unnatural, unhealthy ways, just sort of compounding

Starting point is 00:27:34 what, whatever was wrong. Um, and I remember kind of maybe, maybe about two weeks into it, I called my manager. Uh, I remember I was in new Orleans playing with the Louisiana Philharmonic. I had just come back to the hotel room from a performance of the broke filing concerto. And I was just so, so upset and discouraged and scared. And I told my manager, look, some, something is wrong i don't know what it is i i gotta cut this tour short and come home so i came home and um i i was supposed to have my carnegie hall recital hall debut a recital debut in wild recital hall a month later i canceled that i canceled all my concerts and just sort of hoped that it would get better and i saw a bunch of neurologists all of them you know couldn't find

Starting point is 00:28:23 anything wrong and finally i i found someone who introduced me to a physical therapist who then introduced me to another physical therapist who kind of found a tightness in my neck that was somehow triggered by my accident running in the park but now looking back on it actually had very little to do with falling while running. It was from years of playing the violin with unhealthy, um, unhealthy posture. Um, and this had created some sort of tightness constriction in my neck. And then falling was sort of the straw that broke the violinist's neck. And, um, just kind of, you know, that, that, that one physical therapist explained that like the, the glass was 99% full and then the glass overflowed when you fell.

Starting point is 00:29:22 And now you can't put the water back in the glass. And basically I canceled a year's worth of concerts and didn't play the violin at all for six months. And then took another six months to sort of get back into it. It completely put the brakes, of course, on my career because I was building a career and then I just stopped playing. And it wasn't like, oh, he stopped playing, but he's going to be back. No problem.

Starting point is 00:29:51 It was kind of touch and go. Am I ever going to be able to play again? If I am able to play again, will I be able to play at the level that I'm happy with, that I enjoy playing at? And also, I think some presenters were sort of like, you know, let's wait and see. Like, let's not invite him back immediately. Let's see how things go. So it really kind of slowed things down in terms of me building my career.

Starting point is 00:30:12 And during this time, it was, I, you know, I wasn't clinically depressed, but I was very depressed. I was very down. I was very scared. I was, you know, I was very just, just at a loss. You know, I was supposed to be touring the world doing what I love. And instead, I was just sort of like sitting at home with nothing to do, just worrying and also, you know, not making any money, of course, because I'd canceled all these concerts. um you know one silver lining to all of this is this happened in september of 2000 and i fell in 2000 september 2012 and in march of 2013 i was supposed to be on an orchestra tour of australia and i canceled it and um i was just sitting at home depressed and instead of being in australia I happened to drag myself out of my apartment and meet up with some friends at a bar here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and I met a girl who I will be marrying in two months now, seven years later. So there is a silver lining. Had I been in Australia, I might have never met her. But still, it was a very difficult process. um and i think you know now i am able to perform again and have been for many years um i still see a physical therapist every single week um but just basically to sort of like maintenance um

Starting point is 00:31:39 i think prior to that i did this whole experience i thought of myself as physically invincible you know of course i had friends and colleagues and read about people who got tendinitis all the time But somehow I thought, well, that's not going to happen to me because I play so well and I kind of stupidly in retrospect thought that that was – that injury was a byproduct of like bad technique or not being good at the violin and couldn't be further from the truth. I think part of the reason that I thought that was I sort of ignorantly bought into this sort of stigma of injury among instrumentalists. You know, for athletes, it's sort of par for the course that they get injured. People, you know, if you follow tennis, for example, people at the highest level withdraw from like the finals of Wimbledon or whatever all the time because they're injured and it's expected and then they get better and they go on to be a top-ranked player in the world. And no one thinks it's because they're a bad tennis player that they got injured. Whereas in music, there's a little bit of, well, you know, clearly they're doing something wrong if they got injured. And I was fortunate that my managers were super supportive and said, you know, take all the time that you need. But there were some people who would say to me, you should try to keep quiet that you're injured and that that's why you're canceling all these concerts because when you come back, even if you're not performing, even if your body doesn't feel 100%, you got to tell everyone it's at 100% because people don't want to hire someone who is a liability and might get injured.

Starting point is 00:33:14 So there's all this sort of like secrecy, which breeds shame and that's never a good thing. It just sort of like delays recovery and delays – prevents people from being informed and hopefully preventing injury or if they are injured, recovering from injury. If I had to sort of point a finger at my own technique and what I think caused this, I think what it was was when I was in high school, both out of my own interest and also at the counsel of a violinist who I had played a couple times for, it wasn't anyone who was my regular teacher, I decided to play without a shoulder rest. and I'm not saying whenever I tell the story people often jump and say oh but for some people playing without a shoulder rest is great and I believe that but for me it wasn't great um but I thought that it was like the quote-unquote correct or ideal way to play the violin because you know all these great violinists from earlier eras played without shoulder rest and it seemed like you know an ideal kind of way to play the violin so I forced myself to do it even though I had some pain at first. And while it didn't cause any problems immediately, I think that pain, while

Starting point is 00:34:35 it sort of faded to the background, compounded by hours and hours of daily practice and performing under pressure, I think that's what really did it. So when I came back, actually, you know, when I started playing the violin after six months of no playing, I didn't immediately change my violin playing setup because i thought well there had never been anything wrong and then i fell and then this happened so it must be from the fall and unrelated to playing the violin but then i started realizing that no the roots of this were from playing the violin and so i basically reinvented my entire setup i experimented like so many violinists with every single shoulder rest and chin rest combination under the sun. I'm still experimenting with this. I actually just

Starting point is 00:35:26 recently switched from the Wolf shoulder rest to the Korfger Perastra shoulder rest because a young violinist who I'm friends with recommended it to me and I tried it out and I found it more comfortable. So I'm always sort of retooling my setup to further eliminate tension and make it more easy for me, more relaxed. Um, I changed of course, like how I think about, you know, how I think about, um, summoning and summoning and expressing emotional tension while minimizing physical tension. That's something that I think I I've talked to a lot of people about this since I've become conscious of it. And I think a lot of people grapple with it. How do you convey? Because so much of music is about tension and release and how do you convey or how do you embody that tension without actually pushing yourself to excessive physical tension because often emotional tension and physical tension go hand in hand.

Starting point is 00:36:29 So, you know, I don't have an answer for this, but it's something that I'm conscious of. And I think being conscious of it is a big part of the battle because then you can sort of modulate it when you feel like you might be going too far in the tense direction. um and i think on a personal level i mentioned that i sort of felt invincible prior to all of this and i no longer feel invincible and i feel i think it kind of both in terms of my life as a violinist and as a person i think it humanized me a lot and may definitely increase my capacity for empathy for other people because i went through something that was for me it was really at times felt really devastating and scary. And now I just feel much more sensitive, I think, to other people's struggles and difficulties. And also, while I wasn't playing, I realized how much I

Starting point is 00:37:23 missed playing. Of course, I always liked music and always loved music. I always loved playing, but I never had it taken away from me. And when I couldn't play, I realized how much I missed playing and how much I missed music. And when I wasn't sure whether I would ever be able to play the violin again, I knew that I wanted to do something related to making music. Um, so yeah, I think it kind of recalibrated a lot of things in my mind and in my body. Um, and yeah, I wish, I wish I knew more about injury prevention before I, before I kind of went down this road of playing without a shoulder rest. And when I didn't listen to my body, when I was experiencing pain and I wish I hadn't been as stubborn even when I started playing again

Starting point is 00:38:11 thinking that well you know it has nothing to do with violin playing and this was an unrelated injury and you know I just kind of kept playing the way I had been playing which certainly delayed my recovery and I think also yeah I think there's a little bit of an arrogance to thinking you know sometimes i remember i i went to a physical therapist who specialized um with string instrumentalists because obviously there's a whole profession of physical therapists for string instrumentalists because string instrumentalists suffer so much and she asked me to bring in the violin and i was sort of like showing her how i play with my old setup and she was saying you know this is wrong that's wrong this is wrong that's wrong and i kind of felt a little bit like

Starting point is 00:38:57 hold on like i know how to play the violin really well trust me like i of course i didn't say this to her but there was there was that arrogance inside of me thinking well you know i thought of myself as an excellent violinist so clearly i know how to do violin technique and that was really wrong i didn't know and i and that's what got me into this into this pickle so i think i I think I'm much less blindly sure of my methods, both in terms of violin playing and everything in life since then. I'm much more open to other people's counsel and I am less quick to dismiss other people's advice, even if I think I know a lot about whatever I think I know a lot about. Yes. And what you're describing to me sounds so much like one of the mindful mindsets that I really tried to impress on my students, which is this concept of having a beginner's mind to staying open. And I love that you're bringing this up because I can only imagine that having this state of mindfulness and open mindedness in the practice room can really help transforming habits and creating new ones. And you were talking about experimentation. And can you describe to us a little bit that process of when you picked up the violin and were trying to, you know, I don't want to use the word rebuild your technique because there is obviously a very solid foundation there.

Starting point is 00:40:24 But what was that process a little bit like this experimentation and, and trying new things? And how do you go about because I think one of the hardest thing for students is when they try something new at first, it's not familiar. Therefore, they're uncomfortable with it. And it's hard to stick with something that's unfamiliar. How did you go about finding your comfort and integrating these new habits in your playing? Well, it's hard because especially if you do this professionally or in school, you don't have the luxury all the time of saying, well, I don't have a performance or I don't have a lesson or I don't have a jury or I don't have an audition for the next six months, so I'm just going to take that time to recalibrate my technique and reincorporate these new methods. because sometimes you have an audition the next week or your performance the next week and it's like well you know my old way kind of works even if there's a little bit of pain and i don't want to you know rock the boat too much and introduce a new facet into my playing i decided i i definitely grappled with that but then i thought to myself look we're talking about the longevity of my career here and even if if i'm going to start using a new shoulder rest right away if i think that it's more comfortable even if it means that I don't play my very best at the concert next week

Starting point is 00:41:40 because if it means eliminating tension that might mean I play for a year longer down the road and you know really I really believe that no individual concert is more important than one than the you know the health of one's career and so you know actually this reminds me I mentioned this thing about tennis players getting injured i think i mentioned that because i enjoy watching tennis and i remember i was watching the final match of some huge tournament like wimbledon or u.s open on tv and rafael nadal who's one of the three greatest tennis players alive right now he was in the finals and he ended up winning and one of the commentators was saying that nadal between the semifinal match and the final match had decided after watching footage of the of the

Starting point is 00:42:33 match the previous match with his coach had decided to change how he holds the racket and because he felt that there was uh i don't know the details either maybe a more organic or less tense or less injury prone or more powerful way of holding the racket and he decided to change it between the semifinal match and the final match and he won and just the courage to i mean he was already the highest ranked player in the world and he decided to change the way he held the rack held the racket before one of the biggest right before one of the biggest matches of his life that's like right before making your carnegie hall debut a week before deciding to change your bow grip or something like it's insane how much

Starting point is 00:43:14 courage that takes and you know if he can do that i i think i i want to feel that i can take that risk. And I'm actually not a very brave person in that regard. I'm kind of a stickler for routines. I feel comfortable in my routines, which is part of the reason why I practice the way I do. I mentioned the routines of my practice. But I think that's one thing that sort of there's a danger in that you get set in your ways. And if those ways are good, that can be great. But if those ways have a little bit of danger in them, that can be really dangerous. You know, that's a concept that's really important. And I don't think it's ever been discussed on the podcast. So I'm so glad you're mentioning it because what you're describing is really very much the concept of

Starting point is 00:43:57 surrendering. And that's totally part of mastery because we have the learning process and we all hit plateaus and there's plenty of discussion on plateaus, but we don't often talk about surrender and accepting these dips in performances that you just described. And at times to push onto So the next plateau, we have to accept maybe to surrender a little bit of the perceived skills that we have just to adjust to a new way of doing things. And that's so important because we rarely talk about that. And I think it's so important. And you said it yourself. What if maybe just letting go of what you perceive your best playing is for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, but that extends your career for a few more years?

Starting point is 00:44:46 It's very, very interesting. Yeah. And I mean, I think so much of that is also tied to our vanity and worry about what other people will think about us and our playing. And, you know, a lot of times we want to stick with what we know we can do because we want people to still think that we sound great or we want people to be impressed with our performance. And who cares what other people think?

Starting point is 00:45:08 I mean, I'm not saying I don't care. And at a professional level, we feel the responsibility of always playing our best when there's this exchange of money. And I think also, in terms of the physical toll, I have a theory, there's no way for me to test this, that if I had practiced this exact same number of hours, the exact same repertoire, the exact note for note all these years, but it was a hobby rather than my profession. So all the same time investment, but without any of the psychological stress of performance, I'm not sure I would have gotten injured because I also believe that the psychological stress compounds the physical toll immeasurably. Um, because we just tense up when

Starting point is 00:45:58 we're nervous. We tense up when we have to perform under pressure. And I sort of have this feeling that even if I played for pleasure four hours a day, but I were a doctor instead and only did this just purely for my own enjoyment and didn't have any sort of pressure performing, I'm not sure I would have injured myself. That doesn't provide a solution to anybody, but it's just something I think about, the psychological component of all of this. Absolutely. I also think I would have recovered quicker because I think just the stress of, oh my God, am I better? Am I better? Am I better? Are my fingers more coordinated? Do I have more strength in my hands? All of that just delays everything. I'm so happy that you're sharing this story with us today because you

Starting point is 00:46:37 said it there is still a stigma associated with injuries and musician and although conversations like this one really helps spreading the word and i really think that it helps in preventing it in others also it helps those who are struggling with it in their healing process because there's a feeling of not being alone the discussions bring more awareness therefore more knowledge and And so I think those are very important conversation, but also you, and you said it, it's, it's such a, it's a traumatic experience. There's so many uncertainties associated with that. And to a certain point, you know, we start when we're so young, violinists and string

Starting point is 00:47:20 players and pianists as well. And something like this, I mean, I don't know how you experience this, so I don't want to project, um, an experience onto you, but, you know, I can only imagine that it shatters this idea you have of what your identity is. Absolutely. I mean, my, I thought of myself as a violinist. I, I felt that I was seen as a violinist. I thought of myself as someone who was good at violin. I thought, I felt that I was seen as someone who was good at violin. Um, I think a lot of my self-worth in an unhealthy way was tied up in my being able to play the violin well um and when all that's kind of either disappears or there's a threat of it

Starting point is 00:48:06 disappearing that you won't be able to do it this well anymore it can kind of shake your psychological foundations but i think kind of maybe in a healthy way because it's not good to sort of base your self-worth on what the one thing that you do well um but still it's like a uh a real unmooring of some sort of identity that you've built for yourself so that's that adds another layer of of struggle to the whole to the whole whole thing and we forget how long it takes because now looking at your activities in your career things look like everything is well again but um and as you said you still see a physical therapist every week and i'm sure that your physical awareness is very different for those out there dealing with an injury at the moment

Starting point is 00:48:56 can you give us a little bit of a timeline you kind of weaved it into your story but just to to really put some light into that how long would you say was it between the time when you started really feeling the negative effects and the time when you felt like things were back into swing i started feeling negative effects the day after i fell the next morning when i picked up the violin so it was instantaneous and that was back in 2012 right september of 2012 and you know to this day sometimes still i feel a little bit oh maybe i overused my arm a little bit or you know the coordination issues are gone and the strength issues are gone but sometimes little things i noticed that it's less and less frequent thankfully because i think i'm still making progress with my

Starting point is 00:49:45 physical therapist um but and maybe sometimes these things are a little bit in my head because i think i've become a little bit of a worry wart about it maybe you know maybe it's possible that before all this happened if my neck hurt a little bit i just kind of didn't think about it and then healed on its own whereas now if my neck hurts a little bit i'm like oh my god you know is this something terrible happening so that's also i think i'm hyper aware which has its pluses and minuses i don't think i will ever go back to this sort of like blithely carefree uh nothing's ever going to go wrong with my body mentality that i had before i don't think i ever will um the innocence is lost but hopefully maybe that will make me avoid another injury for down the line

Starting point is 00:50:35 just because i'm more careful about it i'm more careful about taking a day off if i feel i need it i see a physical therapist every week as opposed to not once in my life um so it's hard for me to give a timeline from injured to 100 recovered because i i don't know when i will feel 100 recovered because part of me feels like 100 recovery means never worrying about it either and i'm not sure i'll ever be there um but that's okay you know it's it's uh i'm able to do what i love so and i'm able to enjoy playing violin so that to me feels like a recovery what would be the advice you would give to someone who's dealing with pain or injury one is don't be ashamed to talk to people about it. Don't be ashamed to seek help. I think don't try to hide the fact

Starting point is 00:51:28 that you're injured. Because for me, that causes a delay in recovery, I think. Because you play when you shouldn't really be playing because you don't want people to know. You go to the rehearsal anyway. And sometimes you have to go to the rehearsal because you have to make a living. I understand that. But I don't think any positive comes from hiding it. So I would say be open about it and recognize that it doesn't say anything bad about you or your skill on the instrument that it's just this stuff happens and um don't don't worry that it means that your career is over because you know the human body can heal itself so that's the advice i would give that and really listen to your body um i'm sometimes not concerned but i'm i notice that there can be

Starting point is 00:52:11 like a fetishization of practicing like on instagram i see people saying you know i'm gonna practice four hours a day for 100 days in a row. And in some sense, I think that's admirable. It's like me having my routine that forces me to do it, to have that time quota, maybe just get some people to pick up the violin and get good work done. But also, I know that some, especially students, have this idea of, oh, I'm going to practice four hours a day no matter what. Doesn't matter how I'm feeling. Even if it's like my arm's going to fall off, I'm going to fill up the four hours. And if I don't, I've failed or I'm lazy. And that's dangerous. So I think listening to your body is more important than anything that's very very great advice

Starting point is 00:52:52 stefan before i let you go how about a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their musical lives i think might be interesting for people to plan out on a very detailed level what they're going to practice before they even start practicing i know that doesn't work for all people some people love the flexibility of jumping from one thing to another but in talking with young musicians a lot of them say you know i've got so much repertoire i need to work on for my upcoming jury or audition i don't even know where to start and as i mentioned this idea of don't let good practicing don't let perfect practicing be the enemy of good practicing um i think just having some sort of planned routine some sort of um kind of rotation for

Starting point is 00:53:35 example if you have way too much repertoire to practice all in one day having a three-day rotation where you divide it into three groups and do it once every three days and do it thoroughly having that sort of plan i think sort of makes the whole thing seem psychologically manageable and i think getting that stress out of the way makes practice time more productive so that's something i would encourage people to at least try see if it works for them very great thank you so much for this stefan thank you so much for coming on the show thank you for having me i encourage all the listeners to visit your website see if they can catch you live for your performances I'll put links in the show notes I'll include some YouTube videos as well and you know you're

Starting point is 00:54:15 just such a wonderful wonderful musician and I am so happy that you were so open to discuss this experience with us today and really lift that veil and and break the wall of stigma that we were talking about so thank you so much for this well thank you for giving the opportunity to talk about it. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Stefan Jakiv. Stories of injuries are so common, yet there's still resistance from a lot of people to come out in the open and talk about it. So I'm grateful that Stefan is sharing his story. As I said earlier, I believe we need to encourage conversations on the topic because the more we talk about it, the more we bring awareness to the importance of seeking help and finding proper care when injuries occur, how crucial it is to really take the time to heal properly, and also the importance of preventing injuries actively with a lifestyle that supports physical health and with a mindful approach to posture and technique on our instrument. I think it's also important to hear that, yes, recovery is often difficult, but it's possible.

Starting point is 00:55:38 As I mentioned in my conversation with Sarah Whitney in episode 44, where we also talked about injuries, I myself recovered from two serious injuries, one from overuse in my freshman year and one after the birth of my son. And both times, what helped me recover, heal, and get back to normal was really listening to my body, taking the time to heal, and find health professionals that I really trusted and felt total confidence in. But that was after consulting many people. So I'll never say this enough. If you're dealing with an injury, keep looking until you feel absolute trust in your medical team. And follow your gut when you feel like it's not going in the right direction. And this also goes for our mental health and well-being. If help is needed, professional or not, go for it.

Starting point is 00:56:27 As we heard in Stefan's story, it's perfectly normal for this type of injury to have devastating effects on our mental health. And that's not negligible because it impacts everything. So I really hope that hearing Stefan's story today has brought some light and awareness on the different aspects of living with and recovering from a serious injury. and that it can be of help to some of you in either raising awareness for active prevention or give you courage if you're currently dealing with the effects of an injury. If you relate to this conversation, please let Stefan and I know by getting in touch with us and let's keep this discussion going because it needs to be in broad daylight all the time. I am mindoverfinger on both Instagram and Facebook and he's Stefan Jackie Violin.

Starting point is 00:57:14 And of course, I'll have all the information to contact us and more details about Stefan and his career in the show notes. Now, I'd like to invite you to also visit mindoverfinger.com to find more information about mindful and efficient practice and performance preparation and sign up for my newsletter to receive your free guide to a super productive practice using the metronome. And when you do that, you'll be the first to know about special trainings on practicing that are coming up soon, including one on musical mastery coming up on February 6. Also, make sure to visit my resources page at mindoverfinger.com slash resources, where I've put links to all my favorite tools and the books mentioned by my guests here on the podcast.

Starting point is 00:58:03 Finally, just a few words about the Mind Over Finger tribe. This is my private Facebook group where I try to pop in once a week to talk about mindful practice and answer your questions. These days, we're reading The Inner Game of Golf by Tim Galway. We're going to study it and apply it in our practice. So get the book and join the tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash mindoverfingertribe. And let's get in the flow together. And because I like to make things as easy as possible for you guys, I'll have all those links in the show notes.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 058 Stefan Jackiw: Overcoming Injury

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