The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 067 Lara St. John: Creativity & Ease in Practice

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

In this episode, famed violinist Lara St. John discusses several aspects of practicing and performance preparation, including the importance of working on the fundamentals, fostering curiosity and creativity in our work, developing our listening skills, and practicing performing.  Lara also expands on: How she learned to "speak" violin How curiosity and listening skills are at the core of developing freedom to improvise on the instrument and to improve our versatility as performers Her process to prepare a work for a performance The importance of practicing in a relaxed state How she always maximizes time when she practices The awesome story of how she came to rethink how she approached Bach Her advice on managing expectations in performance Her "social distancing" artistic plans, including learning 2 concerti that were written for her, an upcoming home recital for The Violin Channel, her new cd coming out April 17, 2020, and the documentary she's working on, which covers a topic that is really close to her heart And so much more!   Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to get your free guide to a super productive practice using the metronome!  This guide is the perfect entry point to help you bring more mindfulness and efficiency into your practice and it's filled with tips and tricks on how to use that wonderful tool to take your practicing and your playing to new heights! TURN THE METRONOME ON AND START PRACTICING BETTER AND LEARNING FASTER RIGHT NOW!  GET YOUR FREE METRONOME GUIDE TODAY AT www.mindoverfinger.com!!!!     More about Lara: Website: https://www.larastjohn.com/ Ancalagon Records: https://www.larastjohn.com/ancalagon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stjohnlara/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AncalagonRecords/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/stjohnlara?lang=en YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ancalagon33 Lara's tips on relaxation in playing as found in the Strings Magazine: https://stringsmagazine.com/shutdown-skills-series-relaxation-tips-from-lara-st-john/     Canadian-born violinist Lara St. John has been described as "something of a phenomenon" by The Strad and a "high-powered soloist" by the New York Times. She has performed as soloist with the orchestras of Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, the Boston Pops, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, NDR Symphony, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Strasbourg Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, Camerata Ireland, Belgrade Symphony, Amsterdam Symphony, and the Akbank Chamber Orchestra in Turkey, among others. Lara has also performed with the Queensland Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony, ACO², Auckland Philharmonia, Tokyo Symphony, Kyoto Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, China Philharmonic, Hangzhou Symphony and the Shanghai Symphony. She has traveled to Latin America for appearances with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, the Sao Paulo Symphony, Rio de Janeiro's Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira, Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Ecuador, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, the SODRE in Montevideo and the Sociedad Filarmónica de Lima in Peru. Recitals in major concert halls have included New York, Boston, San Francisco, Ravinia, Wolf Trap, Washington DC, Prague, Berlin, Toronto, Montreal, Bogotá, Lima, and in the Forbidden City. The Los Angeles Times wrote "Lara St. John happens to be a volcanic violinist with a huge, fabulous tone that pours out of her like molten lava. She has technique to burn and plays at a constant high heat." Lara owns and runs her own label, Ancalagon, which she founded in 1999.  Bach: The Six Sonatas & Partitas for Violin Solo was the best-selling double album on iTunes in 2007.  Her 2008 world premiere recording of Matthew Hindson's Violin Concerto prompted Gramophone to write: "It's the sort of work that should get audiences running, not walking, back to concert halls on new-music nights." In 2009, American Record Guide said of her Vivaldi/Piazzolla disc with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela: "I can imagine no suaver, more atmospheric performance."  Her Mozart recording won a Juno Award in 2011. In 2014, her Schubert album with Berlin Philharmonic harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet, cellist Ludwig Quandt and soprano Anna Prohaska was chosen as one of 'The Best CDs of Spring' by Der Tagsesspiegel and MDR Figaro recommended it for its "boundless enchantment." Her 2016 release of re-imagined folk music with pianist Matt Herskowitz got a five-star review from All About Jazz: "Music like this is beyond imagination and talent. It exists only in the loosely-held molecules found on the razor's edge of Creation." She has been featured in People, US News and World Report, on CNN's Showbiz Today, NPR's All Things Considered, CBC, BBC, a Bravo! Special: Live at the Rehearsal Hall and on the cover of Strings. Lara began playing the violin when she was two years old. She made her first appearance as soloist with orchestra at age four, and her European debut with the Gulbenkian Orchestra when she was 10. She toured Spain, France, Portugal and Hungary at ages 12 and 13 and entered the Curtis Institute at 13. Her teachers have included Felix Galimir and Joey Corpus. She performs on the 1779 "Salabue" Guadagnini.     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. Join the Mind Over Finger Tribe here!  https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfingertribe/   And… Don't forget to visit the Mind Over Finger Resources' page to check out amazing books recommended by my podcast guests, as well as my favorite websites, cds, the podcasts I like to listen to, and the practice and podcasting tools I use everyday!  Find it here: www.mindoverfinger.com/resources!   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 fantastic producer, Bella Kelly!   MIND OVER FINGER: www.mindoverfinger.com https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/

You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 67. 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 well. Today on the show, I have a very special guest, violinist Lara St. John. Lara's been described as something of a phenomenon by the Strad Magazine and as a high-powered soloist by the New York Times. She's performed throughout the world as soloists with orchestras such as the Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Montreal, Queensland,

Tokyo, Shanghai, and Kyoto Symphony Orchestras, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and the Royal, Strasbourg, Hong Kong, and China Philharmonic Orchestras. Recitals in major concert halls have included New York, Boston, San Francisco, Ravinia, Washington, D.C., Prague, Berlin, Toronto, Montreal, Bogota, Lima, and the Forbidden City. Lara also owns and runs her own label and Callaghan Records, and her recordings have been received with several awards and accolades throughout the years. In this episode, Lara discusses several aspects of practicing and performance preparation, including the importance of working on the fundamentals, fostering curiosity and creativity in our work, developing our listening skills, and practicing performing. Lara gives tons of

great insight and information, so have a pen and paper ready to take some notes. Also, for those of you who told me you enjoy listening to the show with your children, I want to let you know that Lara and I approach some sensitive topics in our conversation. Let's go to the show. Lara St. John, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me. lara is i'm so excited that you're here because i've known you or i've known of you my whole life for i've known you personally for many years but i feel like i feel like we met like i'd say

20 years ago does that sound about right yeah like in montreal with el castillo francophonie or is that that must have been about 20 years ago i think so yes oh my god and then again in Calgary and we just keep running into each other that's true yeah and you're just someone that I've always been so impressed with because you have this creative fire in you I mean first of all you're as a violinist someone who to me whenever I watch you play you seem to have such effortlessness and just a complete mastery of the instrument but you are never confined to the role of classical musician and you have so much art history and every time you know I read something about an upcoming project that you have it's just I just feel like you're oozing creativity all the time

so I'm just so happy that we get to talk sweet um yeah well thank you that's that's very I'm blushing over here and I'd love to start with maybe hearing your story in your own words for the listeners who are not familiar with you there's uh many instrumentalists who are not you know in the string world and so I'd love to hear how your musical path has unfolded well I mean to to be fair I've had one of the strangest careers I I know of in the music world um uh when you say effortlessness I mean I I guess I have to kind of agree because to me playing the violin and music is kind of like a language like you know I don't really think about about how I do it necessarily because the main reason is because it ridiculously enough I started

when I was two and a half years old part of you I mean probably sounded like a mouse but but anyway it became the medium through which I could express myself I mean it's i could list a bunch of ridiculous things that happened i played my first concerto when i was four um my european debut when i was nine you know i mean i went to a well-known school in philadelphia at 13 and you know all of these things like happened so so young and it all had to do with music and so i think like for i'm not sure because i know a lot of people who are they're incredibly natural musicians and they started when they were seven eight nine and you just you just never know how it works but i think for for me and also for my brother that that young

incredibly like i think we could even say ridiculously young time of starting um has been in certain ways an advantage to just being able to sort of take time off pick it back up you know i mean there's no sort of daily routine that's needed somehow which is actually kind of really nice because i can go and do other things for weeks at a time and not have to worry about it but um yeah like i was saying i mean again very very strange career i suppose just having done all these things so young and then at 17 i took off and i went to the soviet union for a year so basically kind of left behind everything in the states and canada and then i wasn't ready to come back yet so i spent a couple years in england and then ended up in new york city and

here i am still here but uh you know with every every year more and more canadian as i'm sure you can imagine why oh yes i love what you're saying about how you learned to speak violin because it's really kind of assimilating those skills from such a young age the way you describe it is really great um yeah I mean it's like for example I think that's why I'm not I certainly can't teach beginners and I'm not very good at teaching unadvanced students I guess one might say um I mean one thing I am really good at doing is putting finishing touches on like almost ready for performance stuff because I've done it so many times and also instilling confidence I think but the reason I can't teach um less advanced folks is I just I have no idea why they can't do

stuff you know I'm just kind of like I don't know why you can't do this and that's not really very encouraging and it's because you know if you've ever well you know you're bilingual I'm bilingual and and when you're learning another language you know other people speak it without even thinking about how they're putting a sentence together or whatever but for you you have to think like imagine you know just i i really really suck at german but you know just the whole idea of having to know that this goes at the end and this goes here here we are like constructing it sort of like like a building blocks in our mind and of course people that grew up speaking it are just just saying it so it's kind of the same idea somehow with uh with music and and with various aspects

of the technique of violin playing I don't know I just do it I think it's a great analogy what you brought up with the languages because it's so true that we all often describe this state of flow as when you're not really thinking about things as they're happening and it's exactly the same thing I can feel if I'm thinking in French too much speaking English becomes difficult yeah I love that analogy. I'd love to be able to really kind of experience what happens in your head, because one of the things I also love about you is when you post videos of all of your different cadenzas that you do in, you know, the different contexts, I think it's so brilliant. Can you talk to us a little bit about, well, first of all, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you practice,

your practice process i'm very curious about that well i think there was a time where i used to practice i i really put in the hours um at one point and that was basically from my mid-teens to my mid-20s and i was very very conscientious and added a lot of repertoire and did a lot of you know the the drill scales and arpeggios and shifts and dunas and i didn't want to get too uh violin happy here for uh for other instrumentalists but you guys know what i'm talking about but um but for me it it just seems like there is so much to be said for quality over quantity um when i have taught people occasionally you know i have these um parents coming up to me like boasting that their kid practices eight hours a day and and i just look at them like they're

completely mad. Like that's, that's not good for anyone. That's not good for, it's art for God's sakes. You know, your kid has to go out and learn about life as well as not injure themselves. I mean, eight hours a day is way too much for absolutely anything, any of the time. I tend to be kind of a three hour a day kind of person. I mean, not anymore, but that's like the ideal, i think that um that you know you sort of spend some time on on base stuff you know some skills arpeggios and stuff and then applied technique and then performing and one thing people often forget is they don't practice performing and that is one great big tip of mine it's like you know i've i've seen a lot of of people just sort of expect that they're going to walk out on stage

and be able to do it without having done it before and that's kind of my mantra is when I walk out on stage I always think well I've done it before I can do it again and if you haven't done it before I mean I would be you know like a quivering mass of jello if if I haven't performed something before going on stage at least for for myself or for my iguana or for you know people can't do it for their grandparents or just even for a even for a tape but you have to make sure that you know how it feels in actual performance and not just like practicing it and and i i actually also encourage people to you know if you're learning a piece just take two lines or a page or something and and and perform that part from beginning to end you know without stopping

without going back and fixing stuff just just get through it if you can't do it slow it down slow performance practice is also very valid I think and today I do a lot of that and what happens when you reach that stage where you seem to be right now where you have such freedom on the instrument I just I love watching you perform actually right before we got on the call I was watching your tiny desk concert and I hope everybody watches it I'm going to put the link in the show notes because i think it's fabulous but um where where does all of this come from all of these ideas and i don't think my question is very articulated but i think you understand what i'm trying to say it's just yeah this um this freedom to come up with cadenzas like this

and i'm just curious about that process as well well you keep bringing up cadenzas um i i mean generally I if if there is a cadenza written then I mostly do that but I always try to stick in something from the place where I am you know it's a little tribute to wherever it is I'm performing so I think I think one of my most popular was uh in Tennessee where you know Tennessee Waltz is traditionally an A major and I was doing the Mozart five and so I stuck that in And I had, I don't know, maybe like 200 people come up to me afterwards and say, I didn't know Mozart wrote the Tessie Waltz. It was so cute.

And what was really adorable was like the reaction of the audience. Like, you know, the first four notes, they're like, huh, what, what? This is really familiar. And then all of a sudden they like realize what they're hearing. And you hear this huge buzz, like just go through the audience. And it's just, it's just really fun. um I've also I I did a at Zigan in Argentina and and stuck in a little bit of Piazzolla you know like just as a as a as a tribute I guess but um yeah generally I mean Tchaikovsky's cadenzas are

nice but you know one one can always kind of add a couple of things and I tend to sort of plesmer up the second movement and you know so it's always different every time that's so great And how does that start for a violinist? You're an extremely well-trained classical violinist. How does one go down this path slowly? How did you start incorporating this improvisation in your playing? Well, I guess I've always been listening to other kinds of music, like, throughout my life. Although at various schools I've been at, that is not encouraged, which I think is a huge mistake.

but um you know as a kid we did old time fiddle uh you know Ottawa Valley Celtic fiddling stuff like that so I was familiar with that kind of thing and then um when I first went to Hungary I think I was maybe 10 or 11 and I thought oh my gosh you know this is this is where I belong um I feel like I've been like kidnapped by a Canadian family and I'm actually from here um because you know just going out to the restaurants and hearing those bands play the gypsy bands and everything I was like oh this is where I need to be and so I guess because of that I've had like a lifelong interest in eastern European gypsy Jewish folk music um from that area which is you know kind of what most well actually all of the tiny desk concert was about

um was bringing some of those tunes to the concert stage and a lot of that has to do with improv I I mean, you can't just play a Bulgarian or gypsy piece without some knowledge of improvisation. So there's a bit of that to it. And I don't know. I think if you have an ear and you have curiosity, that's just something that comes to you. It comes with training and trying.

And also it takes a little bit of courage because so many of us, I think, are tempted to try, but are lacking a little bit of this uh this courage to make our voice heard well i mean yeah it does take courage it's kind of like diving into a lake with a little bit of ice on top of it you know you either swim wildly or or you you sink so i've actually put myself in some of the weirdest situations where even i'm going like oh my god i can't believe you're about to do this like um i don't know i just sort of volunteered to do a couple of felonious monk shows at one point i was like well because i'm a big monk fan so i was like well i'm sure i can do this and

you know i i did but it it was a steep learning curve that's for sure you know because it's it's uh even if you know the tune so well like monks always got something around the corner that that you don't necessarily remember so uh but i i also and this might be an interesting thing i'm a i'm a terribly bad sight reader I mean it's it's pathetic especially considering how much I've been through like years at Marlborough and in other places and it was just like I just never really learned to sight read very well and I think because of that like my ears always working and I have a not quite photographic but a really good memory um I feel like I'm blowing my own horn here but it's just i think it's something that that's natural somehow is that some people

are able to like visually look at stuff and just like be able to then play it and i just can't do that i mean i i'll read like even a mozart cell or something just in in 4-4 with the wrong key signature if it's in 3-4 and another case i mean it's just it's really incredible like people are always like oh you're just like that's false modesty i'm sure you're fine and then they hear me try to sight read and they just like back out of the room it's not like i'm bad and i've never actually really tried to improve because the memory is all i need in my profession really so and you know how like i don't know if you ever had this but people like my brother who sight reads in alto and and treble clef like a concert i'm like why do you even bother practicing

why don't you just sight read on stage you know um I mean these people are always having like oh let's have a chamber music sight reading party and I'm like oh my god I'd rather sit on broken glass like that's just like the epitome of something horrible to me like so scary and so awful and well I mean like anything is if you're bad at it and people are watching you be bad at something you know especially if it's not particularly funny because everybody else is good at it so you're holding them back and you know so for me it's just it's it's like nightmarish so always has been i don't know why i guess it's like a right brain left brain thing you know like you're you're good at one you're bad at the other and and doesn't really matter if it works for your

life i'm not sure but it's great what you're saying about how your ear is always working and do you think this might have something to do with why you're so versatile and so able to adopt different styles well i guess so and also i think it's just plain old curiosity i just i'm i'm always eager to hear new things i mean i remember 10 years ago somebody did a concert in lafayette louisiana and you know went to hear an acadian band and we're still sort of friends to this day and i went to their gig they came to my gig and i learned a couple tunes and you know it's it's something that's familiar kind of because of quebec but it's at the same time it's different and to me it was fascinating and i once went to the south side of chicago when there

were still like great blues bars there um just to hear this this incredible music in the place where where it began and stuff like that i'm always trying to find i was recently in sweden i was like where can i hear some swedish fiddle music because there's some really great swedish fiddle music and um and actually they all looked at me like i was crazy it's like not something that they do on a friday night but um but anyway no it's just i don't know i'm just really interested in in stuff like that and of course for my instrument it's crazy how much stuff is actually made for it and those the the sort of tunes that tend to be violinistic um also tend to be from people who had to be peripatetic because you can't carry around a grand piano but you can carry

around a violin you know like the academia and stuff like they actually accompanied themselves with their feet because there wasn't anything else so you had to have a drum beat um you know jewish folks in europe and and roma gypsy people they had to be able to just pick up and leave very quickly and so the violin became a huge part of of their culture and we have that massive tradition behind us and so for me it's very interesting but also so is so is songs so our songs rather because we're only a like a imitation of the human voice really so to me like listening to some of these great you know soul singers gypsy singers um just any any kind of a non-classically trained singer but somebody who does it because of the tradition that they

come from I mean just listening to to vibrato and how they go from note to note and and sort of imitating that I mean to me that's I that's like a really fun and and and very educating pastime is listening to vibrato of singers i'm a nerd i sound like a nerd i am a nerd well no i think it makes sense and you are using two of my favorite words which are curiosity and being interested and i think that those are traits that definitely help deepening an artist's approach to their instrument but also to music in general well and also just you know even if you think about it today like you know well there's so many different categories now but let's just call it pop music for for now even even that like the incredible variation in just a

snare sound is you know and and the way people will kind of fine to that to the nth degree you know for for me that's just it's I know a couple of sound engineers and I just love being a backseat driver and watching what they do lara i'm gonna do a pivot back to kind of a more practice oriented question because there's sorry i got yeah i got a little off the subject i'm sorry no totally i love the direction we're going to but there was something i got really curious from what you were saying uh when we were talking about practicing and sight reading and we've just been talking a little bit about fiddle and and you know music from the diaspora and all that stuff but you are a classical soloist who travels the world and plays as a soloist with orchestras

across all the continents and I'm just curious about this process from picking up the score of a new concerto because I know that you perform also some contemporary concertos in addition to the standard repertoire and we talked earlier about performance practicing performance so I was curious about that process from picking up the score for the first time to perform it on stage what that looks like a little bit for you because that's a question I get a lot from listeners is how do soloists prepare for performances well I'm not sure how soloists do um I only know what I do which is probably different from I don't know somebody like James Ennis who probably sits down and like reads on the piano like the entire orchestral score but uh yeah I don't do that

um uh for me it's really important to have um a piano reduction because that's how I learn what's what's behind it because as I as I mentioned before uh I can't read oh well not can't but I can't I mean can you look at an orchestral score and know in your head how that sounds I just can't do that no um and and i wish i could but uh but i can't so i i work a lot with uh with piano beforehand and then um you know obviously i do stuff like i know which theme is in the oboe which theme is in the clarinet and all this sort of stuff before ever going uh towards working but right now i'm actually learning uh i'm using this time to learn a new concerto by martin kennedy actually written for me it's a commission and I also have another one in the in the wings by

Matthew Heinsohn an Australian composer and so yeah for me that's just you know and I I learn it's really weird I learn very very slowly at the beginning but then it's kind of exponential like because my ear gets used to it and so then it just like by the end it's really fast if you know what i mean so the first week of working on something is going to be you know i'll sound like kind of like it takes me a minute to put two notes together well i'm exaggerating but and then you know a week later it's just it's it's in my head it's in my ear and uh and off we go so yeah it's it's strange and i don't think anybody else is like that i mean i think mostly people can they can look at music and and understand it better than I can by looking for

me it has to be intrinsic and that doesn't happen until it's it's in my head all the way another question I get a lot and I was very curious to ask you is about focus in the practice room and the big thing with me especially as I grow older is really finding a way to make practice enjoyable and by that I don't mean it's all fun and games because we all know that it's not but really finding a way to make practicing meaningful and I don't want to say satisfying I'm not finding the right word right now but I think you know what I'm trying to say here is what are some ways that you nurture focus and interest while you practice well what i don't like is is repetition for no reason so every time i repeat something i'll do

it in a different way to make it harder like if it's a technical passage for example i'm a big believer in rhythms and different boeings and you know you know the drill um and that actually can be kind of fun i think at least you know like i said before i'm a nerd but i find it it's kind of fun to sort of like solve a problem and then figure out how to make your fingers go like 200 times faster than anyone should and i find that kind of um i don't know it's therapeutic in a way to go through all the rhythms and and stuff like that i uh also if i can't focus if i'm just like off dreaming of something else then i just put the fiddle down and stop for a while and go back to it i mean i think that's another i think it's a bit of a problem i know that in

many schools it's encouraged to do like an hour at a time or something and i i don't have a brain that goes for an hour i mean maybe maybe 25 minutes maximum you know put the thing down take a break um go eat a cucumber and then come back you know just anything stretch your legs go look out the window um clear your head i think and my biggest one actually is um i think people often don't practice how to be relaxed and at least for me and again i know this isn't the same for for other people but if if i'm not relaxed i can't play so i have to be completely relaxed all the time and if you if i start tightening up in a performance then you know everything just goes wrong so a long time ago i realized like i said before you have to practice

performing but you also have to practice performing relaxedly you can't just tighten up or else you're going to do that on stage and everything's going to go wrong so and sometimes i see students in master classes and they're just you know i'm a big sweetie i'm hardly one of these you know overbearing six foot nine uh russian teachers or something and and yet i still see them as as these little pretzels like they're so tense and they're shaking and i mean i feel so terrible for those people i mean that can't be fun at all that's like totally not enjoyable but it's so true what you're saying we so rarely practice being relaxed while practicing i mean i I just I can see it in everybody it's so much harder than it sounds like oh you know okay I

just made this shift but okay can you do it like shoulders down you know slouch if you have to can you do it that way and once you can then I think it's like you know then then you're good to go and then put two more measures with it and then put a line and then put a page and just just make sure you're never tight because not not only does tightness and well at least for me it creates an inability to actually hit notes but it also um in in many people i mean i've been lucky in my life but it creates injury yes yeah um i mean we do so much repetitive motion that how how could it not unless unless you're really relaxed and that's something i've been thinking a lot more recently especially the more i teach the many realizations i come to right this i think

perlman said the the more you teach the more you learn and i definitely find that to be true for myself but i feel that sometimes right i've been a student myself i've been there we wait for the answers we want to do what someone else tells us to do and we skip the part where we explore and we figure things out and playing relaxed you can't do it the way someone else tells you you have to explore you have to search and experiment and it really is a labor of love and patience and just not everybody puts in the time to do that well i i do i mean i don't i don't teach like you do obviously but i do a lot of master classes and my sort of most hated thing is when i ask somebody why they're doing something and they're like well my teacher told me to

and that i say what do you think about that and their silence and obviously you know i i don't i don't want to say bad things about teachers obviously um but the encouragement for for for musicians to think for themselves is not it's not all that i would like it to be let's put it that way and um so i mean i encourage people to to in master classes to to follow what what they think and you know the idea that there there is no wrong idea the only wrong idea is no idea yeah so but you know it's easier to just do what someone tells you I guess that's why you know you fall into this little kind of ditch and you just keep on going along it because you know it's just it's just easy someone says oh do this do that here all my dynamics and all my thing rings

and then you know you never get a chance to really spread your wings yeah i mean it's easier at first and then all the challenges come like i always say all the we think we're we think we're taking a shortcut but all shortcuts at least in music making i find you know we you end up in a dead end the best teacher teaches you how to teach yourself i think which is i'm not saying i'm i'm at all a good teacher but at least i hope in master classes i get people to start thinking you know about what they really want to do with this phrase or this bit or why they're having trouble with this one and you know just sit down and think about it yeah yeah yeah that's a very powerful concept and definitely something i wish can and i agree with what you were saying that it really needs to be

more widespread. Ideally, yeah, be great. Lara, we're in the middle of the social distancing measures. So how about a round of rapid fire questions to stay entertained? Okay. For a career that resemble yours, can you tell us a little bit about what your life looks like in in normal times okay well normal times um basically until a couple weeks ago with social distancing i used to spend i would say about half the time traveling so you know a good solid half of the year maybe a little bit more uh which is great because i love going new places and meeting new people um but the the travel itself is of course as everyone knows not a whole lot of fun but the being there is great the getting there is kind of crap

what's a habit that you have that you think is contributed to your success i don't know i don't think i really have any good habits i mean well i mentioned earlier um using time for quality rather than quantity and and i think that now especially you know as we get older time seems to go faster and it becomes more and more precious and so i don't waste even 10 seconds when i'm practicing anymore everything is for a purpose never mindless well that's a really excellent habit right there i would say i i guess so yeah what skills do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instruments well certainly creating one's own music even if it's just a little bit here and there just uh

doing a cadenza and learning how to how to play on the spot meaning improvise how to follow chords I think, I think that's a really, first of all, it's a great skill. And it's just really fun to instill instead of always playing like the notes on the page or the notes that somebody else wrote for you, do your own. Well, when, when it's appropriate, obviously. How about a performance that stayed with you throughout the years? hmm i had a kind of awesome moment once in in moscow it's a bit of a story is it okay if i tell it or is it yes absolutely well because i was canadian and the only canadian in the

conservatory residence there um i was 19 i actually was 17 and it was still the soviet union and there was this rumor about the glengold um recital that had happened there i think in 56 57 which is that he was like this unknown canadian pianist or whatever and there were like 10 people in the audience and you know russians exaggerate all the time but um everybody went to the phones and that in the intermission in the second half people were like hanging off the rafters or whatever as i said they exaggerate and i'm not sure where these phones were but um in 1956 so you know but we we had always heard about this recital like you know glenn gould live in moscow and that there was some bootleg recording of it somewhere and at one

point somebody found it and i don't know how it was like on some old battered cassette tape and i had a player and there we were in like 1988 like sitting in a room like eight of us like crowded around an old battered tape player and we heard him start the art of the fugue and somebody was like there's no way you can keep that up he can't keep that up and and he did like at this unbelievably slow tempo live and you heard every voice and i think that right there was how i realized that i had been playing um all of the fugues very vertically and not horizontally and that I also had to learn to carry the themes by themselves as they as they went along and to stop like chord smashing like every violinist does and I mean not every but it's hard not to

because it's how they're written and and whatever but even with your mind to just follow the tenor the soprano the alto you know and make it into a real chorale and and that was a huge turning point for me. Glenn Gould, live from Moscow or Concert de Moscou. I think it was a, it's like some sort of weird French bootleg, but his, his opening art of the fugue was it's, it's seared into my mind. It's so fantastic. What a powerful story. I love it. It took a while. I almost feel like I want to have a moment of silence right there. I feel bad continuing with the next question i'll send it to you it's it's incredible and if you can imagine like so this would be an 80 88 right and like just like still the soviet union and like nobody's nobody's got

anything and just for us to have this moment i mean it was it was so poignant so anyways anyway now for a more down-to-earth experience yeah you have a favorite tool in the practice room i don't even have a practice room i don't even have a music i mean i i don't think i i have a tool no no no tool it's well i mean it's just me the fiddle and the bow and and like that's it that's like sorry sorry i didn't i didn't answer that one very well no no tools no but that that's excellent because i feel that sometimes we're we're so eager to have the metronome the tuner the pencil the zoom h4n the memo app the you know i mean you can't see me gesturing but i'm pointing right and left and the notepad and the you know practice

chart it's very freeing to think that there's nothing more needed than the violin and the bow and and patience and focus well it's it's definitely i remember when when the hurricane sandy happened and i wasn't really concerned i was like well hey i can do this anywhere i don't need electricity um i was however concerned because of my my eggy but then again but it is it is kind of funny to think of like what what it is we do has been being done for for 400 years so you know it's it's like writing on a piece of paper you can still do it yeah yes but you know if you allow me a little comment here I feel that what I really love about about your playing is that when I hear you play I know it's you because even if it's been done for

centuries I feel like your voice is very unique and your playing is so beautiful so that's why I'm so excited that we have this chance to talk today well you're very sweet well thanks I've definitely had a very unique life so maybe that's why we were just talking a little bit before the interview and you were telling me that you like to read so i was wondering if you have a favorite book that you'd like to recommend to the listeners well i since i was a kid i've been a lord of the rings girl so much so that i never even saw the movies because i figured nothing's better than my imagination but um i i still like even though i do have you know an ipad and stuff i still like the tactile turning of the page and everything and i don't know netflix has kind of cut into my

reading i have to admit but it's still awesome to to just sit down and and and read a book and turn the page and then turn another page and if it's a great book then you just don't want to stop yes lara what's the what's a piece of advice that was given to you and that you would like to pass on to the listeners oh my god the first one that just bumped into my head was kind of funny um you know how in in the practice room we're always trying to be perfect perfect this perfect that and on stage you know it's never actually going to be that way because things are different life and things are different with i don't know even 10 100 a thousand people sitting there expecting you to do something and so there's two ways of saying this first is like you know

strive for perfection in the practice room and strive for for inspiration on stage and not perfection and as someone else once put it to me well when all else fails just lower your standards that's awesome and and somehow in a way although that that sounds kind of defeatist that's actually what we do have to do when we go on stage like you know if something squeaks it's like don't dwell on it you know just move on nobody's gonna notice you know it's just like this whole perfection thing it's like that's not what music is about and yes you should strive for it but it's never gonna happen yeah so don't expect it to happen and get all upset on stage I mean I've seen so many young folks like just you know something goes wrong and then they get angry

and you know start bashing or you know stomping or you know things like that and I've done that too I've I've gotten really frustrated I've gotten angry at myself during a performance I mean it's been a while obviously but I remember it and and that's just you know your expectations are too high or or your striving was too low perhaps anyway there is a happy medium somehow there is a happy medium and I really love that answer also because there's been several times where right people want to know how do you get in flow and well I'm starting to understand how I get in flow and it's kind of related to what you were just talking about it and it's not so much that I lower my standards but is that I know that's such a bad way of putting it

it's but it's true in a way because that's we yes we need to strive for excellence when we practice but striving too much at the performance and really uh wanting so fiercely to play great and impress everybody for me only causes tension so if I allow myself to ease into it and I tell myself you know what I give you permission I have my own permission to play the first page okay just okay and there's so many occasions where I would tell myself that and when it's okay right if you've practiced properly just playing it okay is still at a really high level but because the the the eagerness is gone the tension is gone i can feel a moment and it's i don't know how else to describe it but i feel a moment where i slip into comfort on stage and then i'm free and and

it's really this giving myself permission to just be okay for the first page well and also you've probably practiced performing like you've played this through in its entirety at some other point oh yes yes and maybe it didn't go exactly as you wanted but you know every i try to tell because so many people don't practice performing so i try to do that like an hour performance is worth a thousand hours of practice which is not entirely true but i would say like 10 you know they say a picture is worth a thousand words it's like yeah probably not a thousand hours of practice but it's it's definitely worth more than six yes yes because it teaches you something you can't learn yeah while you're trying to work in and you know and it teaches you how you

how you're gonna feel i mean you know this isn't it's it's it's not getting a chemical compound in a lab together you know where nobody's looking at you and you're just doing your thing it's it's you're doing this in front of people and you're doing it to make people happy and basically or to give people some experience that they wouldn't have had otherwise so if you're nervous and if you're tense and shaking you know that people aren't happy either nobody ever wants to see that in a musician or an artist or a dancer or any or an acrobat for example I mean it's not it's not really that far off with what we do that's so true is dancing and acrobatics I mean yeah we don't do incredible flips on a beam or something but it's still a physical situation and

and the the the physical tension from from our brains and our hearts can impede what it is we want to get out there very well put very well put larry you've already given us so much great insight and advice but how about a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today either in their practice room or in their musical lives i think i already said it just just make sure that you practice relaxed that you never tense up um even if it's a high shift even if it's a whole bunch of octaves um for me when i find myself tensing in either arm either the left hand or the right arm i think weight not pressure weight not pressure um i didn't have to say that twice but generally when i see myself doing it i have to say at least five times to

myself so and if you know what i mean it's like instead of pushing the bow through the first finger just just allow that arm to to to give its own natural weight and you know the same thing with um i i've seen people do like octaves i know i'm being very shop talky here but do one four octaves and their hands look like little like frightened spiders i can picture it very vividly in my head and you know that's it's not going to help you it's not going to be like tensing up never helps you i guess and i suppose that's kind of a life hack too you know like everyone's always like stay calm stay calm it's like well

yeah because if you don't bad things happen that's so true almost every situation if you think about it oh this is great lara once we're done with social distancing what are some upcoming projects that you have uh yeah actually very very soon and even during social distancing um i i have a new cd coming out actually um on april april 17th of all things oh that's wonderful yeah i mean obviously the concerts around it probably will not happen but um we called it key of a um because it's the beethoven quartet sonata and the frank sonata with um with me and matt herskowitz and we talked earlier a little bit about improvisation um which both matt and i think is a bit of a lost art and

so um in the in the variation movement of the beethoven we actually do do variations on the variations as they would have done in beethoven's time so wow that's one thing that kind of sets it a little bit apart from from other quite serious sonatas and um yeah so that's coming out and otherwise um you know i also do filmmaking and i'm i'm uh doing a documentary about um abuse in music schools because that's something that's quite close to me since that happened to me when I was 14 at the Curtis Institute and after a big article came out last summer about that in the Inquirer in Philadelphia a lot of people wrote to me and I spent actually quite a few months going around and and and sitting down and and talking to these to these women on film

and so I have a lot of footage and I just have to sit down and make that into a film although it's um you know most filmmakers are not directly associated with what it is they're filming so for me it was um you know it was hard to tell well my story firstly and then also um to hear all these other stories and to realize that it's a terrible problem in music education. So every once in a while, I just have to kind of take a break for a couple of weeks. And at the moment I'm in a little break, but that's another thing that I will be doing and I hope to have it finished by

the end of the year. And also just, you know, i've got two violin concertos written for me that i commissioned that that i should learn and also i mean it's really hard to plan right now because we don't know when this may or may not be over so um on april 15th which is also my birthday i'm gonna be doing a a little tiny solo violin recital for the violin channel just from my living room with my own little camera um you know some i'm planning to learn a few new pieces by various composers uh melissa dunphy and gabrielle lena franck and of course a little bach and you know just just your your your average kind of uh

solo recital from a quarantine living room yes yes there is such a thing i'm going to put the links in the show notes for all of this and i mean i think a cd first of all is a perfect you know quarantine uh tool every house in america should have that cd i believe oh and yeah i'll give you all those links obviously but and we'll be tuning in for the concert for sure and also please let us know about the documentary because I feel like the door is opening for everyone's story to come out you know and I think that people need to come forward with their stories we you're correct I mean we live in an industry where there's a lot of one-on-one interactions there are some very strong bonds being formed between pupils and

teachers and you know it's i think it's a very important story and i really admire your courage in coming forward and sharing it with the world and really helping advance the cause of women who are suffering everywhere well hopefully i actually i i basically ran home from brussels when I heard that the States was closing to Europe. I was actually there working on all of this. So there are some things that I still have to achieve somehow. I'm not sure quite how, but people I still need to talk to. But I have the gist of the whole thing.

And, yeah, it's endemic and it's worldwide. And it's a situation of power given to people over their very vulnerable young students. And sometimes it's done by brainwashing. Sometimes for me it was under threat, the threat that I and my brother would get kicked out of Curtis. so i i didn't at the time see any any way out of of having to do what this guy wanted me to do he was my major teacher and when i went to the dean um finally with two friends um the dean laughed at me and said well what do you expect me to do like who who who's anyone going to believe like some kid or some teacher that's been here for decades so that was the attitude back then

and I find it to still be the attitude today in a lot of places and I'd like to change that yes and I think that the more people really have the courage to come forward the way that you did the more the conversation is kept open and and I'm hoping that it gives courage to other people to come forward and well it's a difficult thing to share but at the same time it really like you were saying you don't know what to do and when the conversation exists out there young women to whom it's happening now are aware that they're not alone and there are solutions well hopefully i mean and as as anyone who's followed the whole thing could tell um even though i had a lot in place when when i spoke to the inquirer um it's it's not easy i mean even for for somebody like

me who basically i guess i just kind of had to know that i even if i never played at a concert all be okay and so many people don't know that because they're younger because they're you know they haven't had a career for 40 years and and and they're just depending on various people in power to be able to help them and and those people take advantage of it and then they don't know what to do it's everywhere though i mean it's at fox news it's in wall street it's it's everywhere but the problem is in classical music it tends to be much younger girls i was 14 when i was raped and it doesn't make it better if you're older but somehow it does make it worse if if it's younger and i i feel like it might be actually encouraging

people who are naturally predatory into into that business so you see why people don't necessarily come forward because nothing's going to happen that's what they feel like and that's kind of what it looks like sometimes you know anyway that's just all this stuff is so heavy that i you know i hope it'll be somewhere done by the end of the year, but it takes a lot out of me to do this stuff. And I'm, I know very well that if I go under, then I'm not going to help any of these girls. So, you know, I got to, it's like the airplane theory, like put your mask on before putting on your child's mask. Because if you're dead, then you'll both be dead. So. Thank you so much for sharing this. We're definitely

going to be on the lookout for this when it comes out. And once again, I have to say that I really admire uh the strength your strength of character in uh for with your story well yeah let's hope it uh it does something laris thank you so much again for being with me today and uh i can't wait till the next time we hang out in person i know hopefully it'll be like really soon Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this chat with Lara St. John. I hope you walk away as inspired as I am to infuse even more thoughtfulness and creativity in my work. Lara and I would love to know what your favorite takeaways from today's conversation are.

So please get in touch with us on social media or on the web. She's Lara St. John everywhere, and I am Mind Over Finger. Of course, I'm going to put all the links to find everything about Lara in the show notes, including links to her brand new album coming out in a couple of weeks. And I have some exciting things coming up for you guys very soon, including some free trainings on April 20th through the 22nd. So I invite you to visit mindoverfinger.com and sign up for my newsletter to get all the details.

and when you do that, you'll also receive my free guide to a super productive practice using the metronome. Of course, that link is also in the show notes. This week, I did something I hadn't done in a long time, which is read my podcast reviews on Apple Podcasts and the other varied sources where you guys are listening to the episodes. And I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kind words. It makes me so happy to read that the episodes and the conversations are bringing you inspiration and value. It really gives a meaning to everything that I do. And I'm so grateful that you're here, that you're listening, and that you took the time to write down a few kind words. I deeply appreciate it. So that's it for today. Again, thank you.

Thank you.