The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 082 Leila Josefowicz: The Art of Authentic Music Making

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

I'm very excited to have world-renowned violinist Leila Josefowicz on the show for you today! As you'll hear in our discussion, Leila is a profoundly passionate and dedicated musician who approaches her craft with great depth and she shares incredible wisdom with us. Among many things, Leila elaborates on: The power of memorization What the "practice of violin playing" means to her How exploring new repertoire helped her transition out of her "child prodigy" years Her advice to all musicians suffering from lack of motivation The importance of desire and dedication in the cultivation of talent How our need to feel comfortable while performing is counterproductive Vivid mindful practice This is a particularly powerful conversation, and I know you'll find inspiration and incredible value in this episode.   MORE ABOUT LEILA JOSEFOWICZ: Website: https://www.leilajosefowicz.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeilaBJo   Find all the details for Leila's World Premiere performance of 'la linea evocativa. un disegno per violino solo' by Matthias Pintscher HERE. On the occasion of 'George Condo. Internal Riot' we are honored to host classical violinist Leila Josefowicz in the gallery to perform a new piece of original music in response to 'George Condo. Internal Riot,' an exhibition of the artist's new paintings and works on paper that runs through 23 January 2021 at Hauser & Wirth New York. 'Music is such a huge part of my life, without it I don't know if I'd ever have painted anything. There are so many great pieces of music that have inspired me to paint…My favorite thing is to put on a record in the studio and to still be painting without noticing the fact that the music has stopped playing for hours and is just running through my head.'–George Condo The performance comes at an incredibly challenging time for professional musicians. Condo is deeply aware of the adversity they face, and this specially organized event signifies his support for live music and for new ways in which it can reach people. Join us on Friday 20 November 2020 11 am PST / 2 pm EST / 7 pm GMT.  Click here to register. The performance will be streaming live from New York City on hauserwirth.com     Leila's last Pre-Covid performance in Prague, Performing the Alban Berg Violin Concerto with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra:  https://prso.czechradio.eu/leila-josefowicz-and-prso-8179758   Biography Leila Josefowicz's passionate advocacy of contemporary music for the violin is reflected in her diverse programmes and enthusiasm for performing new works. In recognition of her outstanding achievement and excellence in music, she won the 2018 Avery Fisher Prize and was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2008, joining prominent scientists, writers and musicians who have made unique contributions to contemporary life. Highlights of Josefowicz's 2019/20 season include opening the London Symphony Orchestra's season with Sir Simon Rattle and returning to San Francisco Symphony with the incoming Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen to perform his Violin Concerto. Further engagements include concerts with Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, where she will be working with conductors at the highest level, including Susanna Mälkki, Matthias Pintscher and John Adams.   A favourite of living composers, Josefowicz has premiered many concertos, including those by Colin Matthews, Steven Mackey and Esa-Pekka Salonen, all written specially for her. This season, she will perform the UK premiere of Helen Grime's Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Dalia Stasevska. Other recent premieres include John Adams'Scheherazade.2 (Dramatic Symphony for Violin and Orchestra) in 2015 with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, and Luca Francesconi's Duende – The Dark Notes in 2014 with Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Susanna Mälkki. Josefowicz enjoyed a close working relationship with the late Oliver Knussen, performing various concerti, including his violin concerto, together over 30 times. Alongside pianist John Novacek, with whom she has enjoyed a close collaboration since 1985, Josefowicz has performed recitals at world-renowned venues such as New York's Zankel Hall, Washington DC's Kennedy Center and London's Wigmore Hall, as well as in Reykjavik, Chicago, San Francisco and Santa Barbara. This season, they appear together at Washington DC's Library of Congress, New York's Park Avenue Armory and Amherst College. She will also join Thomas Adès in recital to perform the world premiere of his new violin and piano work at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and the Japanese premiere at the Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation. Recent highlights include engagements with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Washington's National Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and Boston and Finnish Radio symphony orchestras. In summer 2019, Josefowicz took part in a special collaboration between Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Ballet, and Company Wayne McGregor featuring the music of composer-conductor Thomas Adès. Josefowicz has released several recordings, notably for Deutsche Grammophon, Philips/Universal and Warner Classics and was featured on Touch Press's acclaimed iPadapp, The Orchestra. Her latest recording, released in 2019, features Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Violin Concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted byHannu Lintu. She has previously received nominations for Grammy Awards for her recordings of Scheherazade.2 with the St Louis Symphony conducted by David Robertson, and Esa-Pekka Salonen's Violin Concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.     Visit www.mindoverfinger.com and sign up for my newsletter to get your free guide to an exceptionally 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. You can 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 by visiting: www.mindoverfinger.com/resources!   And click here for details on how to work with me: https://www.mindoverfinger.com/workwithdrg   And don't forget to join the Mind Over Finger Tribe for additional resources on practice and performing!   If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review on iTunes!  I truly appreciate your support!     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. Thank you to Susan Blackwell for the introduction!  You can find out more about Susan, her fantastic podcast The Spark File, and her work helping creatives of all backgrounds expand their impact by visiting https://www.susanblackwell.com/home. 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 82. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, violinist, teacher, and high-performance coach, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're already doing great as you begin this episode, and I can tell you that you're going to feel energized, inspired, and motivated after listening to today's conversation. I'm so incredibly excited to have none other than world-renowned violinist Leila Josipovic on the show. Throughout her career, Layla has performed extensively on the world's greatest stages and with the best orchestras. Recent highlights include engagements with the Berlin Philharmonic, the L.A. Phil, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Washington's National Symphony Orchestra, and Boston, Chicago, and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestras.

Her passionate advocacy of contemporary music for the violin is reflected in her diverse programs and enthusiasm for performing new works. A favorite of living composers, Leila has premiered many concertos, including those by Colin Matthews, Stephen Mackey, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, all written specially for her. Layla has released several recordings, notably for Deutsch Gramophone, Phillips Universal, and Warner Classics, and she's received nominations for several Grammy Awards. In recognition of her outstanding achievement and excellence in music, she won the 2018 Avery Fisher Prize and was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. As you'll hear in our discussion, Layla is a profoundly passionate and dedicated musician who approaches her craft with great depth. She shares incredible wisdom with us today. Among many things, she talks about the power of memorization, what the practice of violin

playing means to her, how exploring new repertoire helped her transition out of her child prodigy years, her advice to all musicians suffering from lack of motivation, the importance of desire and dedication in the cultivation of talent, how our need to feel comfortable while performing is counterproductive, and she gives one of the best descriptions of what mindful present practice feels like when you feel every movement, experience the motions fully, and engage the mind completely in the act of practicing. Also, if you listen to this episode on release day, November 20th, 2020, make sure to check Leila's world premiere performance of La Linea Evocativa by Matthias Pinscher at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in New York City, live online this afternoon at 1pm

Central and 2pm Eastern. It's an incredible project. She gives us all the details about it in the interview, and I have the info and links in the show notes for you. I think this is a particularly powerful conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Let's go to the show. Leila Yusifovic, it's such a treat for me to have you on the podcast today. Thank you. So happy to speak with you today. I've been a long time fan and I'm always so inspired by you both as an artist and as a person

I've had the chance to either play in the orchestras accompanying you or listening to you live a few times in various cities over the years and the eloquence and energy and authenticity you have in your playing I find are so electrifying that's the word that comes to my mind oh thank you so much Leila you've had a remarkable career so far and I can only guess that there's still many amazing projects and new discoveries ahead and I would love to hear about your artistic journey so far in your own words so would you please talk to us a little bit about your story how it unfolded and how you got to where you are today absolutely well it's um it's a unique story but then again I feel that everyone's career in many ways is is um unreplicatable

um if we can say it that way but um I grew up mainly I was born in Canada I grew up mainly in California um I started with the Suzuki method like many young musicians out there except that I think perhaps my teachers were not quite as by the book as some. For example, my fingers never quite curled the way they wanted my fingers to curl. And I didn't quite follow all the rules the way they wanted me to. But it was basically a good stepping stone for me to get to a certain level where things really got serious. But before we leave the Suzuki Method chapter, I think the best thing that came of it, which is something I utilize very much every day now in my playing, is memory. It enunciates, it makes memory one of the first steps of learning music and learning an instrument.

And they equate it to learning a language. how do young people learn languages how do babies how do young children learn languages they learn it by ear they don't learn it by reading so the sounds the feelings the physicality taking in the sound hearing the sound remembering the sound this is how um with this with this method in music how we began and how we started um and it it seems to be after uh decades of playing by memory um 99.999 percent of works whether they're written in the 18th or 19th or 20th century seem to be able to stick uh always knock on wood i'm very vigilant but they'd seem to stick in my memory. So I think this was a great building block

way for me to learn music in those very, very, very early years. I had 100% support from both of my parents. I was extremely lucky in that way. I was encouraged. I was told by my father that i'd be the greatest um and i think some parents do say that to their children it definitely is can be boosting um it can be misleading it can be pressureful um it can also be i suppose with the right combination of personalities in sort of um exciting and invigorating. So, um, it seemed to have that effect upon me. Um, when I was eight years old, I went, um, I switched to Robert Lipset, a teacher now at the Colburn school who teaches at the Colburn school. He actually teaches in the Yasha Heifetz studio, um, which was his actual studio

transported from his house i believe in um in brentwood or and actually lifted um physically lifted up and transported into downtown los angeles wow um where he teaches all of his students every day which is pretty wild and amazing i say to him i'm i'm i'm quite good friends with him now um after all of these years i say to him i'm glad i didn't study with you in that in that room i'm glad i didn't have to be in that room too often i i did go to visit a couple times but in any case i had five extremely intensive years with him in which he really taught me about the practice of violin playing um and i use that word very specifically the practice of violin playing because it is a full-time practice and it doesn't matter whether you've played for

a month or whether you've played for 50 years or 60 or 70 years it always remains a practice because there are always things to strengthen to improve upon there are always things to to sort of live with, to think about, to enjoy, to have patience with, to have a sense of goals. I mean, this is a, this is a practice. And the moment I think that one would stop thinking of this as a practice, then some of the energy of the art form is lost. So I always remind myself, and I do forget I think ah I've been playing the violin so long I've been playing since I'm three and now I'm 43 I should be able to do this and this and this without so much effort or I should be able to do this it should come more naturally to me this specific movement this passage this

instinctive thing that happens well this should be like something that's easier for me or no this is not the way it is um everyone has um sort of a physicality about them um they have a certain anatomical build that suits certain things more than other things and um so this is part of the practice um that i'm aware of all the time uh so anyway robert lipset um i studied with him from when I was eight until 13. When I was 13, I went to study the Curtis Institute of Music. I consider myself extremely lucky in that the majority of the teachers that I had from age 13 to when I graduated at 19, most of those teachers are no longer alive. So I was kind of the last of a certain generation of teachers to experience what they had to say.

So those teachers are Jascha Brodsky, who was in his early 80s, and I was 13. And even more, I think, influential for my playing was Felix Gallimere, who was part of the Gallimere Quartet. And it seems that you know Felix Gallimere. He really encouraged me and pointed me in the direction of going more forward with my musical choices in terms of repertoire, in terms of newer compositions. He helped me with gestural ideas in music. What is a gestural idea? What does it mean to play a phrase in a certain way with a certain feeling?

and some of this was you know studying Bartok or Albon Baird which in those years in the 90s at a very conservative school such as Curtis this was considered new music and I was one of the only ones in the school at that time that really pushed to play that music I think the school has evolved a lot since then. And I think things are very, very different now than then. But this was a school that had great reverence for tradition, understandably and rightly so. But we weren't allowed to wear sleeveless shirts in school. I mean, this was how it was. So this was an amazing, amazing experience for me. And after I graduated there, I moved to New York. And that was sort of my educational history but in terms of kind of career history when I was studying with Robert

Lipset I was often playing on tv shows because I was LA based and this is one of the great rarities I think in my story of how I came to the play and be the musician that I am with the career that I have being out on the west coast with a whole different landscape obviously than being out on the east coast and basically i got management and attention from playing these incredibly um hollywood style tv shows and um i was on one of johnny carson's last shows um i played a show in palm springs california uh called america's tribute to bob hope um i believe some of this footage is on youtube um which i was uh introduced by lucille ball of all people to play um 10 minutes on the nationwide nationwide television which was

then broadcast around the world um a senior executive at img artists the management company that um does um modeling and sports figures as well as music was a small division of img the um mark mccormick is his name called the new york office at img and said book this girl she's good you know i want her on the roster new york office saying what who is this what what are you asking us um and they they saw the show and um lo and behold um charles hamlin who is no longer with us the head of the the img at the time came down to visit me and my family in california and at age basically i had just turned 13 um assigned with management um so i had my teenage years with my bachelor degree in high school going kind of simultaneously I had management signed

to me and I was just starting with one either my mom or my dad accompanying me to play actual booked concerts during my educational years so I really can say that I did have my early stage of playing was in the prodigy in the prodigy way and that was of course incredibly influential in how I went forward and in how I kind of had to shake it off of me in order to grow and move forward and the way I did that was basically choosing newer repertoire and devoting you know a good 20 years until now and onward 20 years of really really pushing new music and going forward and commissioning and and doing many many world premieres of pieces written for me and this was sort of my answer to starting in a way a lifestyle and a career that I didn't understand in many ways

It was much, much too mature and transient of a lifestyle for me to be able to grasp in my teens and even in my early 20s. And now I have learned over, gosh, 16, 26, 36, almost, you know, 30 plus years of doing this, how to do this. there are no classes and no rule books for how to do this um we're trained and we practice and we learn to play an instrument but there are no there's no rule book for how do you survive a life on the road this is a whole different art form and this is an art form um that needs thought, it needs understanding, it needs experience. So, you know, this is something I think that people are starting to become more aware of in the schools and the institutions. I think this is something that's coming along. But it certainly has been every man for himself,

every woman for herself. Layla, this is incredible. So much information and so many different topics I'd love to unpack. I'd love to talk a little bit about practicing, of course, and you've already mentioned so many important aspects of it. But before we jumped in the interview, you were mentioning an upcoming project that's actually happening the day that this podcast is being released. And I feel like it comes at the culmination of all these things that you just talked about do you want to talk to us just a little bit about that project that's happening today if you're listening absolutely so with the stage of life and existence that we're all so painfully aware of right now with with the covid most of my season it's safe to say has been

canceled so i mean this is the thing that's um so difficult for performing arts right now it has nothing to do with esteem it has nothing to do with skill it has nothing to do with level it has nothing to do with notoriety it's just across the entire board this has happened and I'm very fortunate to have a wonderful partner who is a well-known visual artist and painter his name is George Kondo and he is part of the Hauser and Wirth gallery he has a one-man show that has just opened crazy timing but um election basically day after election november 5th through january 23rd um and part of this exhibition is working together with artists musicians um and of course me um being his partner um we joined our minds together to think of what could be a really

beautiful thing to do alongside his incredible art. And one of his dreams has been, since he was a young man, is to commission a world-class composer for a musician and have that piece born, have it performed, and let that piece live. So with the whole COVID situation and seeing my concerts one after the next get canceled. This became an obvious time for us to think of a solo program and what could be who, what composer would be the right one for me to ask to write me a solo violin work. And being solo violin is something that I have thought so much more about since all of this COVID crisis has started, because most of all of my work has been with big, massive symphony orchestras, which means a lot of people, not including the audience,

just on the stage, you have 100 people at times. Obviously, right now, this is impossible. So going back to what can you possibly do with two hands? What can you do alone? What can you do with only yourself? So the solo program became kind of a spiritual journey as well as something more practical to do. I could stand in my practice area and play something and be a hundred percent physically and spiritually, if I'm in that right mindset, complete. And that I don't need anyone else. I don't need to rehearse with anyone else. The only person I need to rehearse with and prepare with is myself. And then when that is underway, the person that accompanies me to stand in the middle of the room, in the middle of the stage, is myself. So it's me with myself only. And I think

this is extremely um existential and powerful um at a time like this especially i mean it would always be a powerful experience but now with um all of these things happening throughout the world there's so much to digest there's so much to think about there's so much to um to react to and not to react to um there's so much internal sort of thoughts and feelings to contend with and i think anyone would agree no matter what your situation is whatever your life circumstances are there's so much to feel and to think and to sort of at least for me mentally to sift through um and some paths to go down other paths not to go down mentally things like this and so this solo music to me is a is a quest it's a bit of a journey spiritually it's an outlet to get all of

this out in an artistic way so uh so george and i um discussed this and we decided to commission a very incredible composer and longtime friend matthias pincher the german composer matthias Pinscher to write a piece for me. George is a huge fan of Matthias, and Matthias also a huge fan of George's art, and so this worked out just extraordinarily well. And the gallery, Hauser and Wirth, who represents George, is going to do a live stream of this piece on November 20th at 2 p.m. from their site, so this is very, very exciting, and it's something I'm practicing for each and every day since I got the music in July. It's been a real, as it always is, to learn a brand new score. It's been an adventure, and it gets to have its birth November 20th, so

So that's the most exciting thing I can tell you that's upcoming. It's very soon. Leila, this is amazing. I'm going to have a link in the show notes for the live performance, but I will also make sure that I update the show notes with links of replays if they are available so that people can have a chance to catch the performance, even if they didn't catch the episode on Friday morning. there's so many things that you just said that I feel resonate with me but also would resonate

with everyone listening in all of these aspects of introspection that you mentioned and how COVID is putting us in those situations where we have to grieve so many different activities ways of life and it's taking us out of our comfort zones and having to think of new ways and you did that this project is a testament of this and like you say it's a it's a journey i'm seeing a lot of lack of motivation and a hard time stepping in the practice room and and finding meaning in our playing with everything canceled i understand and you were just talking about how this project makes you go to the violin every day what would you say to the people out there dealing with uh you know all of this grief and lack of motivation well i would say first of all um

do not beat yourself up for feeling lack of motivation and that is not the uh that's maybe not the first thing people would expect to hear me say but actually we're all very human and no one is being spared from this current crisis not a single person in the world is being spared everyone is influenced in one way or another um and life isn't fair some people are suffering a lot more than others and it's heartbreaking um but there i think it's safe to say that there isn't anyone that's not impacted in some way by this and for me the most important thing that we carry with ourselves every day is self-compassion that we have to be kind to ourselves and we have to be kind to people around us some people

of course we know very well some people less well but we have to be patient at a time where it's extremely extremely challenging to keep patience i say that you know in sort of like one part of my mind and the other part of my mind is um that lack of motivation feeds on itself so in the sense that um if you don't practice one day it's really easy to not practice the next day it then is really easy not practice for a week it's really easy to then not practice for a month and you see what i'm saying um if you set your own goals i think it's very important to understand the power of setting your own goals and that one day this will change one day this will improve i'm not a prophet i can't say when it will but it will um and the people that were resourceful

at least partially resourceful to a point will come out ahead and i don't mean ahead in the sense of like i don't mean even like ambitiously they'll come out ahead sure they probably will come out ahead in terms of in that mindset but i'm saying more of a feeling of self-worth self-esteem self um self-love in a certain way i made it through this because i was able to gather myself and do some things that I've been wanting to do for a long time now that I have time some people don't have extra time on their hands at all some people are more crazed than ever I have two kids who are being homeschooled me and my mom are doing homeschooling right now this week next week as we speak but I hear you I've got two upstairs right now

yeah i mean and a lot of people have to contend with that and it's the reality of life right now but in terms of compassion if we can find it in ourselves to feel that and be patient and to set goals and to take each day at a time rather than try to plan look forward with so many uncertainties to try and i know this is kind of turning into a cliche now it's like to think more simply this really does help because all we have is today all we have is this moment and things change because they have to change it's the process of life so in that way i mean that's what i would say think about your dreams and what it is that you would actually hunger to say i did what are those things and i think some people aren't sure and it's okay to not be sure but then

search search really dig deep to to think about what it is that you would really love to to explore or something that you didn't ever have the chance to do before or um you know small goals small goals are maybe more important even than the biggest goals right now and to get some kind of enjoyment out of those and when it comes to violin playing or or playing an instrument or being a musician yes our lives are on hold right now professionally but it will not remain this way forever. Creativity has been a part of existence since prehistoric times. So we have to believe in that. We can't get stuck in a negative kind of claustrophobic mind space. I love everything that you're saying. And as I hear you talk, the word that comes to mind for me

is depth and so often you know I had a long list of questions about practice tips but what I've been hearing from you since the beginning of our conversation is how from the start you seem to have approached the practice of violin playing with such depth and I would love to still hear a little bit about the the practice habits and and how they started for you and how they developed over the years and maybe transformed and changed? The practice habits are really the thing that will make a player great at the end of the day. You do need talent, but just as important as talent and probably more important than talent is desire, motivation. You have to really want what you're going after. When you look at the people who have accomplished something

extraordinary, I would say that will to do it, desire to do it, sort of a passion to do it, and the word passion is overused a lot of the time. But without those things, you can have as much talent the world ever saw, and people will not experience it because you need extreme perseverance and dedication to do anything extraordinarily well. It's like a constant religion that's being practiced daily. It's not something that you feel like doing one day and really not for the next you know couple weeks and then you revisit this is something that is a way of life that has to be sort of incorporated into your everyday existence in your life so

with practicing um being consistent is the number one key it's better to practice if you have an hour every day. It's better to practice one hour every day than for a week rather than not practice for six days and then practice six or seven hours on one day. That results in injury and it's also not a good way for your body and your mind to learn how to play. So I would say that consistency is key. I would say that planning your practice in terms of how do I warm up every day? What do I need to do to prepare my hands, my arms, my physicality to play the instrument? What do I need to do for my mind, for my ears to open, for my mind to listen? What do I need to do? Me, myself i have a regimen i do half hour of um very incrementally building um detailed scale practice

and arpeggio um practice and it's it's very very um academic this part of my practicing but i do it at least half an hour every day no matter what i would say um in all the years that i've played now which is uh 40 40 years um that i can count maybe on two hands and all the 40 years of playing that i've started playing without a warm-up that's how constant how consistent my warm-up is beginning of each day if all i have is half an hour to play i took the violin and the bow on my hand. I felt what it feels like for the bow to contact the string in a slow way. I felt what it feels like to pull the bow across the string from frog to tip and back. I felt what it feels like for my fingers to grip the strings in different positions. And it doesn't have to be

fast. You know, fast is overrated a lot of the time. There are certain reasons for pushing the tempo and playing really fast and I can talk about that but you can never play well without good form and one of the things of practicing violin is always being aware of your form staying aware of what good form feels like because this is a very physical thing to do it's like ballet gymnastics tennis you have to feel what it feels like to be doing and performing and practicing the right habits the right alignment what is good for your hand and what is good for your arms and what's good for your shoulders and neck and how do you stand when you play you know the it's can be very basic these things so always reminding yourself what

that feels like um and then you build from there then maybe you have a piece of repertoire you're preparing? How does one prepare for that? What is the piece asking you to do? These are very basic questions with any piece of repertoire. What is the piece? Who wrote the music? How many movements are there? What happens in the piece? What is the story, the gestures? What are the messages? what is the message of this piece what is it asking me to do what things do I do in my playing to get that feeling those gestures across one needs to understand the instructions and I'm saying this in sort of a more academic way and then you turn these kind of signs and a score into something that can be played with heart and becomes a a human experience but you

know if you think of a score a score is like a map people don't really use maps so much anymore but um a gps or um so you have if you look at a topographical map you have the country you have that broken down then into maybe segments of the country then those segments turn into maybe a group of cities in those cities you have towns you have roads you have little destinations you have schools you have hotels you have grocery stores you have different places that you gather you have um etc etc etc and on those roads you have directions where which leads to where what place goes where um you have also geographical keys you have mountain ranges you have you have ponds streams lakes so all these things if you were to equate it in the same way as it being a

musical score, these are signs that indicate what's going on. So we have to really take the score, we have to take this very seriously, because it's what the composer wanted. And I have yet to meet a composer that didn't think painstakingly about what to write, and how seriously they would like that those notes to be taken those instructions to be taken so I take this extremely seriously and I take it literally and then I take it and then make it my own thing I have to be convinced by what I'm doing and I have to be convinced by what the score is telling me and sometimes I'm more convinced than others either in my own playing or what the score I think is telling me. And then my sort of imagination and creativity have to kick in further. And I

have to make it so that I am convinced. I have to make it so that it feels like my own. And this is part of the way of being creative. That sometimes you have to make it happen yourself. You have to make it so that you excite your own self. You can't let it happen to you. You make it happen for yourself and this is one of the things i've learned that when you um when you perform you may not always feel like you're most energetic you may not be feeling at your most inspired that day who knows what happened to you that day uh who knows what may have occurred what events or things might have occurred to you that are out of your control what is in your control is how you deal with the present moment of the performance and then you have to kind of steer your mind

set into giving the best performance that you can and as the way I see it I'm very lucky to be able to speak to people on such an emotional and human level I see that as a privilege I'm not trying to sell someone something i'm not trying to convince someone of anything other than listen to how beautiful or how strong an artistic message this is i don't see it as selling anyone something i see it more as convincing or winning someone over or even better yet transporting them to a place that they couldn't have imagined being in even a few minutes before and distracting them from whatever they have to deal with on a daily basis and bring them to a whole different kind of magical place where they can escape their everyday lives. And I'm very

privileged in that when I'm talking to you about my solo program, that I have the ability to do that with myself and that perhaps i didn't have the best day in the whole wide world i go up to my room and close the door and get through my warm-ups which i'm very religious about get through that and maybe start playing maybe it's feeling a bit rough that day um but slowly something kind of things start to click um and you distract your own self from your problems of the day or whatever and you just start to play and you start to play more and then all of a sudden um you step back and you realize hey i'm this is great i'm getting lost in the music this is exactly what i hope to be able to do all the time and wow i just feel like i transported myself

out of my my basic reality into a whole different kind of alternate reality and that is um a very very big and important and um it's something i feel just incredible gratitude to be able to do for myself and others leila i feel like we need a moment of silence here after everything you just said every everything you say i feel like i have 10 follow-up questions with because it it really I've used that word already but it really resonates with me on all level and everything that you talk about comes from such a perspective of awareness acute awareness of listening of paying attention of being mindful and I really I mean it's at the core of everything that I teach the the deep practice model which is what I teach is all about first of all using

ongoing memorization as a catalyst for this deep learning self-compassion being a huge component of the model i'm so grateful for everything that you've just shared with us because this passion that you talked about this introspection this reflective aspect of your practice i feel is something we need to hear more about i'm so grateful about this oh you're welcome And the thing, too, is that there's like a multitude of different mental things to be aware of in the practice of great performance art, as well as any other art, you know, painting could be the same, in the sense of, first of all, self-compassion. And that what you, and especially with an extremely fine-tuned musical instrument and perfecting, which is an impossible thing to do anyways, but attempting to perfect as much as humanly possible, something that is really, really, really difficult to do, something that in one's best moments is incredibly difficult to do. So just to kind of respect that may sound kind of silly, but I think it's very important to do. There's so much emphasis on doing things well and right and to do things great or, you know, someone played extraordinarily well and all of these sorts of things that people kind of mantras that people hear and say all the time.

all fine except that this is um very very challenging something very demanding we're asking ourselves to do and to start from that mindset the next bit of that part of things is get uncomfortable it's fine to feel uncomfortable it's okay to feel in some way is sort of a strange uh word to use but it's okay to feel unsafe um you're at a difficult point in a passage you're at a difficult point in a score um you're struggling with maybe what to do with a certain gesture you're struggling technically technically you're struggling with a passage it's impossible to do something so well and yet feel confident and comfortable all the time. If one is wanting to feel those things all the time, they will be gravely

disappointed over and over and over again. Stop wanting to feel comfortable. It really does help. And then, you know, once you get to that point, then it's like, okay, you know, I cannot expect this. I now feel more comfortable being uncomfortable. Playing line in front of an audience is by nature uncomfortable of course it is it's hard to do why on earth should we not feel nervous in front of an audience it's it's like completely counterintuitive like there are times that you know you prepare mentally and because you practiced enough you know star star star star because you practiced enough you know you can feel confident in front of people it doesn't mean that you feel comfortable so this sort of feeling of like do you get nervous on stage like do you ever

have stage fright hell yeah it's just a question of how to deal with it and how to think about it and how to prepare and this is where the practice comes in prepare knowing that that's probably how you will feel not i hope i don't feel nervous i don't know i will feel nervous therefore i'm going to practice today uh so i think this is a really important mental exercise or in some ways it's a mental switch from what some people have been maybe internalizing and thinking this is not oh maybe if I get past this stage or if I get good enough I won't feel xyz not true not the case you if you care about what you do you will always feel nervous about what you do it's just part of life if you care about something you have feelings about that thing you're not just kind of all of a

sudden completely at ease it's just not the way it is and if you ended up feeling totally at ease i would say um you're not growing you're not you're not challenging yourself you're not pushing yourself you're not going to grow as an artist your challenges will not feel like challenges well clearly they already don't um you need to keep challenging yourself you need to keep feeling like there's one more thing yet i have to do and after that yet one more thing um so it's all about like this sort of thing not getting restful and to and expecting comfort and even something you mentioned earlier that's a little bit more down to earth about pushing yourself to play fast is something that i see you know several students and clients

a little bit fearful about entering that zone where they feel like they're stepping out of practicing safely into pushing themselves to practice fast and that's um like it depends on what the piece is and what the goal is but for example if you look at sports the great races the sprinters the athletes would never dream of entering a race without trying to race um they would never their training would always incorporate those moments where you have to push yourself to the limit and then do other things aside from that but you can't eliminate the actual final request of what what the mission is to do so with things like this there are moments in my practicing where I start incredibly slowly to understand what the gestures

of not gestures musical gestures but just like what the physical actions are to understand what are the physical actions and to do them at various speeds not just slow really slow and then try to play really fast because you know guess what it's not as simple as that um when you play the same passage at different speeds the requirements of what is being asked of you physically change so there may be a passage that's actually easier to play really really quickly than at sort of a medium tempo it depends on sort of how your hands are built and your physicality but and everyone's different too to ask yourself to do a passage in different speeds and in different ways then you kind of start to understand your own mechanisms and you start to understand

what needs work then you can attack that you go from sort of like the big picture into the small picture. Then you can learn how to practice certain things to improve them. It's hard to kind of go into more details without getting specific, but this is sort of my general mentality. Mayla, I have so many more questions for you. I think we need our like a special three-hour podcast episode, but I know you have children to tend to and some practicing to do. So how about a rapid fire question before I let you go. Okay. What skills do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instruments? I think sports is important. I think that understanding that using your body is extremely important in terms of

if I'm stronger, I play better. Also, if I sleep, I feel better in the morning, I can get a better practice. So there's like a physical aspect of taking care of your instrument. You're an instrument and you play an instrument. That's sort of how I see it. So I would say self-care and exercise. Very important. Is there a performance that has stayed with you throughout the years and why? I have a few, but most recently, I think the one that's very poignant is March 8th of this year because it was my last concert before everything shut down to COVID. So I feel very grateful that I was so happy with my pre-COVID performance because I think about it all the time. And it's actually on YouTube. You can see it if you want,

which is like even more amazing it's it was with the Czech radio orchestra in Prague I was playing the Alban Berg violin concerto and what a piece it's on YouTube so you can actually see it and there's something really kind of strange when you think of it in that way that I didn't know that it was the last performance I was going to give for many many many many months it's kind of eerie but i i do think that the performance itself went well so i'm happy to say that um i'm happy to also remember the show the tv show i was on that really jump-started my career i think of that i think of um my carnegie hall debut when i was 16 i think about the first time i walked into la scala in Milan and played there.

There's some pretty amazing things I'm very lucky to have experienced. This is great. And I'm going to put that link that you mentioned in the show notes so people can experience that March 8th performance. Do you have a favorite tool

in the practice room? I would say the metronome is an essential, essential tool. It's a form of, it's a rhythmic straight jacket. but then the funny thing about that is that once you break out of it then you're even more free than you were before and it also helps you keep an extremely tight sense of rhythm accurate sense of rhythm i think that's the best analogy i've ever heard about the metronome i love that

leila do you have a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their practice life i would say that if we're talking about violin playing don't think of the bow as the bow anymore think of it as breathing so if you have an up bow that's an inhale and if you have a down bow it's an exhale and you can't do one without the other so both depend on each other so if you were to think of playing in that way that the right arm and how you use the right arm is an extension in that sort of way you might have a different perspective than in how you play and you certainly would want to use all that is available to you in that way this is fantastic leila both on the professional and personal level it's been such a pleasure to

speak with you today. You're an artist of such depth and I truly appreciate the incredible insight you shared with us. A million thanks. Oh, you're so welcome. And it's nice to talk to you about this craft and see you again as well. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Leila Josefowicz. I walked away from this interview with a renewed spirit and a sense of appreciation and commitment for my craft. And I think you'll agree with me that Leila's approach to music making is incredibly inspiring in that her successful career is a testament to her dedication and depth.

I will remember this conversation for a long time. And I would love to hear about the thoughts that came to you while listening to our discussion. So please get in touch with me. I'm Mind Over Finger on both Instagram and Facebook. And speaking of Facebook, join us in the tribe every Tuesday in December for Gear Up 2021, where I will cover strategies on how to set yourself up for an amazing year of music making. From goal setting to time management via some practice tips, I'll have it all for you. And all of this happens in the tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash mindoverfingertribe. tribe. As always, I'll have all the information related to this episode in the show notes.

You can find them via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com, where you can also find more information about mindful and efficient practice, performance preparation, and how to work with me. While you're there, sign up for my newsletter and receive your free guide to an exceptionally productive practice. Finally, I hope you have a chance to catch Layla's performance this afternoon. And as mentioned in the interview, I'll make sure to update the show notes with any link that would lead to a replay if you're listening to this later on. So that's it for today. Again, thank you and à bientôt.