The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 109 Brian Lewis: Empowering Pedagogy

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 109. 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 for musicians, Dr. Renée Pôle-Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope this episode finds you doing amazingly well. Today, it's a true pleasure for me to bring you one of my former teachers, violinist Brian Lewis. Described as one of the most versatile and charismatic violinists today, Brian is an exceptionally dedicated

Starting point is 00:00:50 and gifted performer whose passionate artistry has been heard and embraced around the world. He's recorded numerous CDs and has been heard on the best stage and orchestras across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. As a dynamic and engaging teacher, Brian is committed to growing the legacies of the great pedagogues Dorothy DeLay and Dr. Shinichi Suzuki for future generations. He has served as a distinguished juror for many competitions and leads clinics and masterclasses all around the world. He currently holds the David and Mary Winton Green Chair in String Performance and Pedagogy at the University of Texas at Austin and is the Artistic Director and Faculty Member of the Brian Lewis Young Artist Program in Ottawa, Kansas and for the Starling Delay Violin Symposium at the Juilliard School.

Starting point is 00:01:43 It was incredible fun speaking with Brian. In our conversation, he shares incredible insight on how keeping your mind open and having the ability to adapt will move you forward, how the secret to focus is all about refocus, the importance of kindness in teaching, ways music majors can get the most out of their college education, wisdom from his teacher Dorothy DeLay on pedagogy, He also shares thoughts on what made Ms. DeLay so effective as a teacher, and he talks about the healthy practicing habits her students developed, and so much more. I'm convinced that you're going to find a wealth of inspiration from what Brian shares with us today, and I know you will like this discussion as much as I did. Let's go to the show. Brian Lewis, it's so wonderful to have you on the show today. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure to be with you, Renee.

Starting point is 00:02:56 Brian, you're celebrated both as a performer and a pedagogue, and you're equally excellent at teaching the very young beginner and the very advanced college students. I'd love to hear about the journey that led you to the career you have today. So can you please tell us about you and how your artistic path has unfolded? Sure, I'd be happy to give you some information about that journey. It's a constant journey and it doesn't end. It's not ended. It's always interesting to see what will we all be doing?

Starting point is 00:03:31 How will we be sharing our art? How will we be motivating ourselves? Not just this year, but five years from now, 10 years from now. So this journey really has been from Twinkle to Tchaikovsky, to start from when we were all little, right, that you see many, many things that are similar between our paths. And a lot of that has to do with when we started, how we have a passion for what we're doing, and how we move forward from that. So I have been very lucky in my life that I have gotten a chance to study with some really major pedagogy, Sonichi Suzuki in Japan. That was a really an amazing experience to go and experience not just music making with him, but a whole different culture at a very young age, which, as you know, can open up many, many doors to imagination and the way that you think about ideas and things like that. So I feel very lucky to have gotten to study with Suzuki, as well as Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School, who is considered one of the great pedagogues as well, for the number

Starting point is 00:04:35 of students that she taught from everywhere, of course, from Itzhak Perlman to Sarah Chang. I mean, your listeners will know many, many of her students, as well as people who did study in the Suzuki method growing up. So my journey started because of my parents. My mom was a violin professor and a violin teacher and one of the founders of the Suzuki Method in the United States. So I actually, when I went to kindergarten, I was actually shocked to learn that I was the only person that could play the violin because I thought everybody did play an instrument.

Starting point is 00:05:07 My father was also a teacher and he was an organic chemistry professor. So education was always something that was really important in our family. We started our instruments not to become professionals, but to become better human beings. And I think that's something that your listeners can really think about is the concept of what do we do with our education? Now we have this information. How do we make it real to us? And I think that educational process and keeping your mind open to ideas, new ideas, will make you always move forward. Change is inevitable.

Starting point is 00:05:42 People talk about that all the time. But it is. We must adapt. I mean, I think one of the things musicians have really had to face during this pandemic is how do we present ourselves? How do we keep going when all of a sudden our traditional ways of playing concerts have disappeared? And I know as a performer, that was really challenging for me as all of a sudden there aren't concerts to play. I think during the pandemic, I played maybe two concerts at a place where in an orchestra, you know, where we're masked and six feet apart and all of that. But it was, we were all starved to get a chance to play. And I think it was a wonderful opportunity to get to do that and be able to make those changes in our own lives. And I think that's kind of important.

Starting point is 00:06:30 But to really get back to your question about how we get to this journey, sorry, this journey has many, many different paths to speak about. Going away to college was a real decision that this was the path that I wanted to play. And I wanted to play my violin and I wanted to teach. I didn't have a specific goal when I went to school. It wasn't that, oh, I'm going to go and I'm going to study to be a soloist or I want to go study to be a teacher. I just knew that violin had to be a part of my life. Sometimes that passion that you want to, it's not because you want to, it's because you have to. If you can, if you understand that difference, really, I'm a violinist because I have to, not because I want to, because there are days you get up and you don't want to practice, you know? And I think one of the things that I always keep in my head is the hardest thing about practicing is opening the violin case. So once you get it open, then life seems to be easier. But just getting to that moment of focus and doing that.

Starting point is 00:07:29 And that's something that has informed my concept of working with kids. So because my mother was part of the Suzuki Method growing up, I've been teaching since I was 15. So I had a group of kids when I was in high school that I was teaching that were working on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Bach Minuets. And I think it's important to look at a journey starting from that point, you know, that first note. Like I love with our students that moment when they fall in love with their sound, for example. As a teacher, there's not much better moment of when something clicks with your student. And so it started for me working with those younger kids and then going to the Juilliard School and becoming Dorothy DeLay's teaching assistant changed a lot of the ways in which the level that I was working with, not the concepts of teaching, because I think those stay true when whether we're talking about working with young kids or with older kids. I mean, there are more issues and different issues to deal with. But I have always felt that love is a great motivator. And that's something we do with young kids, right? We're not yet, we haven't ourselves beaten ourselves down yet, right? We're still open. We haven't gotten into any of our psychological issues. We haven't dealt with that because, of course, that comes with age, right?

Starting point is 00:08:46 There's a loss of innocence, I think, at a certain point, and then we become really in charge. We're not just doing it because we can do it. Our brain kind of takes over, and sometimes that brain can get in the way. So anyway, it's been a fascinating journey to start working with just a couple of kids and then going to Japan and getting to work with more and more kids. I had quite an opportunity to work at a big conference in Japan where I had, and I kid you not, a thousand students in my class at once. It was held in the Nagano City Gymnasium where the Olympics were held, you know, and I had a headset and a microphone and all this. But it's quite an interesting sound to hear a thousand kids play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. And 125 kids played the third movement of Tchaikovsky with me.

Starting point is 00:09:36 Wow, I can't imagine. It is quite a sound and quite an interesting way to teach to so many people all at once. But the Japanese professors wanted all of the students to be able to have an opportunity for us to work together. And this was the way they did that. So any group, when I have 125 kids now, it seems awfully easy. So those are some of the things, the journeys that have brought me here. And that passion, your life changes. And we were talking a little bit earlier about change. Taking and making a commitment to take an endowed chair position, say, at the University of Texas, where I teach now, was a really interesting thing. It made me move from where I was.

Starting point is 00:10:21 I moved from New York city to take this job. And of course you and I work together at the heart school of music. So it's interesting to leave your comfort zone and move to another, another place. But I feel that my performing very much informs my teaching. They're talking about that journey. So with every note that you're practicing and getting, getting into your head and into your fingers helps you in your teaching that journey, if you have taken it yourself can be helpful. Now, you don't necessarily need to have played all that repertoire. That's something that Dorothy DeLay spoke to me about. I said to her, okay, what happens when you have to teach a piece you've never played? And she said, honey, teaching those great concepts are the great

Starting point is 00:11:03 concepts, whether you're talking about Corleone Sonata or whether you're talking about Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. And of course, she said, and pretty soon you only have the first time once. I thought that's actually a really good point. So the next time the Corleone Sonata, and that was one of the first pieces I had to teach at heart that I had not studied. Now, of course, when I ever was teaching a piece that I did not know, I would go home and learn it. So I did go home and go through that process. But so it was an interesting thing to go through the process at the same time with my student. So that was informative to me as a teacher to see, we don't need to know how to play that piece, but we know how to teach great tone. We know about intonation

Starting point is 00:11:46 And that applies from Mendelssohn Concerto to Corleone Sonata, you know, to find the passion and to find the individual language that we're looking at for music. And I use Mendelssohn because it's such a beautiful language that he has. And Corleone too, we start to get into contemporary composers, living composers. And I think it's quite fascinating to see the language that they choose because there's so many by the time we get into the 20th century. There's so many paths to this type of expression for composers. And we as performers get to get into that world and figure out how to bring forth the music in a way that communicates things well to our audience. and that that can be challenging in contemporary music but it can also be challenging in Mozart Mozart for example something that we struggle with about what is that language what's too much what's not enough you know what is just right said Baby Bear you know we're looking for

Starting point is 00:12:44 just right and that that is is one of the goals that we have so anyway that this journey has led me from you know training myself as a performer and then being able to share that information and knowledge um on many levels i will go back to japan in march and we'll have the same thing and it's a a small workshop again it's about 100 125 kids and we work together for hours a day hours and hours and hours if if anything it has shown me that my concentration can be longer it can be better um but of course with concentration you must take a time to allow your brain to rest and then refocus. So being successful in teaching and performing isn't just being able to focus, it's being able to refocus. One of the interesting conversations I had once with Dorothy DeLay was

Starting point is 00:13:35 about focus because I was concerned that I couldn't practice five hours a day. I could practice four hours and 45 minutes before my brain would be thinking like, what's for dinner? Or where was I going to meet my friends? Or where were we going to see a movie? What were we going to do after we did all of our practice. And I was really concerned about it. Well, first of all, she told me, well, honey, if four hours and 45 minutes is your concentration, then that's plenty. You don't have to make it because I would make myself practice this extra 15 minutes. And it was, you know, just because I was what I was assigned and it was, but it was bad practice. It was a waste of time. And so her conversation with me, well, honey, how long can you concentrate? And I

Starting point is 00:14:18 thought five minutes that's as much as I can give you and she said you can concentrate that long and I looked at her and said what on earth do you mean five minutes isn't long I said how long can you concentrate she said one minute about one minute of true real focus one minute she said Brian it's really about being able to refocus and I thought that is a really excellent that was my lesson for the day I always and I kept copious journals so I can go back now and look at that and look at some of the conversations that we had, which is helpful by the time you get to be into my age bracket, you want to be sure that you're remembering things correctly. Right. This is fascinating. You've shared with us so many important concepts and so many things

Starting point is 00:15:05 I'd like to unpack. But since you've mentioned Dorothy DeLay, and I know you're committed to growing her legacy for future generations. I mean, she's such a legend. And I'm sure your listeners like myself are really curious to hear more about Ms. DeLay and her teaching approach. So can you please satisfy my curiosity a little bit? I would be happy to. Dorothy DeLay was a very caring person. She cared about each of her students. You didn't have to be people that already have careers, you know, Sarah Chang, Gil Shaham, all of these, Midori, all of these people that you go to school with and you're playing in a masterclass with. But when you stood up in front of her, you were the most important person in her life. And that alone really made us feel

Starting point is 00:15:51 empowered. And I think that's a word that all of my great teachers did. They empowered me to be able to move forward, to understand what I was doing, to find something greater than myself in our music. So our lessons were very positive. And even the criticism that she would give us was always couched in positivity. So if we played something out of tune where you and I might say to somebody, you know, your C sharp is a little, little higher flat. She would, she would say to us, honey, well, your C, your concept of C sharp differs from mine. She would say to us, and all of a sudden there's no judgment, right? So she's trying to take away judgment in our playing to be able to look at it and say, okay, well, we want to get C sharp in tune. Cause oftentimes people think

Starting point is 00:16:35 i have bad intonation i must be a bad person right they associate some of those mental things that we start to mess around when something's not working and so she would she would say to me also that that would encourage me very very much well honey this is how perlman thinks about it you know we're talking about uppo staccato well this is how perlman's hand is and this is how not just sonnenberg's hand is and this is how midori hand is there are many ways to do it you've got many possibilities which way would you like to do it and it was just great because it was making me make the decision not her just dictating that c-sharp is good that c-sharp isn't good your finger that finger hand isn't good and that's something that launched her actually her own

Starting point is 00:17:21 teaching career is that where she was going in school she was playing lalo symphony espanol and we have the triplets in the young bomb bomb bomb bottom bomb well her teacher said you have bad triplets and so she's like okay she goes go home and fix them and she went home and thought go home and fix them what am i supposed to fix what's wrong there you know what what how can i get better with that and she thought and she's like well the first night of my triplets too long well okay i'm using too much bow on that triplet and she thought why couldn't he have told me that why couldn't he have said that and that launched her into her thinking that we're not you know we're not just born with an ability and that's it right if you're not born quote unquote born

Starting point is 00:18:06 with whatever we were thinking that they're born with um and so her her approach always was positive always was positive and she really believed that you could learn anything it could take a while to learn something but with any approach you can learn something um and so we did there was a bunch of similarities between the suzuki method and the and dorothy delays approach to that and i should call it a suzuki approach because suzuki actually said to my mom you're not teaching the suzuki method you're teaching the alice joy lewis approach to the suzuki method that it needs to be an individual thing you know obviously when somebody lays out a specific repertoire sometimes we get stuck a little bit because this is the order that we have to play things in um and and

Starting point is 00:18:51 delay had an order for us with concertos as well you know there's an easier order to learn it there are five basic building block concertos right mendelssohn and and brook concerto lalo vinovsky number two and sasson b minor you've done those five you can actually go to so many other concerti um but probably you don't jump from there to sibelius although one could if you know how to approach something and practice it because i had asked her about tchaikovsky concerto because she had put it in my order of concertos um and i said so we're going to do that then i may ask you why we're not doing it now because I was just curious that was a wonderful thing I could always ask questions of her and she was not an insulting thing and I think that is very telling from great

Starting point is 00:19:35 teachers and people to be able to talk about things that maybe she thought that you know because some some people would tell you you know I'll go home and come I once had a teacher tell me in a lesson go home and come back when you can play this piece and I thought well I would what literally i at the same time when i left that come back and come back when you can play it in tune and i thought okay i i'm here because i need assistance i am that's why i'm in this room for this lesson not to tell me i know it's not quote unquote correct but i don't know how to move on because it was a paganini caprice and i'd never you know i'd never played any paganini Caprices. And this person thought that I should know how to do it already. And Dorothy DeLay would

Starting point is 00:20:20 never make that assumption because that's not actually the goal of what we're doing, right? Music teaches us all sorts of things about how to live our lives. And I think she was very much into that. And you could see, for example, a kid would get up and play in studio class. and that that student may or may not have played their best and you know is not feeling feeling well and her response to them would be honey that is great you've not worked on this piece very long i'm very proud of the work that you've done and then the flip side with that kid who was being rather arrogant and is getting ready to go play it with a major orchestra and things like that her response to them was honey very good playing very good playing i think you've got a very good

Starting point is 00:21:05 start to this piece and so she helped keep us in line subtly that way so that we didn't get big bigger bigger than our britches but also didn't let us wallow down into things that we were unhappy about so she was very much in the psychology of playing if there was one way i would describe her her ability is that she wasn't just interested in teaching where you put the third finger right that's that's just how to play the violin that's not how to live your life it's not how to make music um and she would have she would try things with us i remember i sometimes our our lessons would be late at night so i had a lesson that started at midnight and went till two in the morning i had a two-hour lesson on paganini caprice number five because and i'm a freshman

Starting point is 00:21:51 and i'd like ripped through this caprice and she had said said to me well honey you got she got 97 of the notes and i said to her thank you because i thought that was a pretty good percentage and she goes well honey we actually won a hundred percent I was like oh okay and she said to me you know you we haven't finished you just don't know the end of your piece as well as you know the beginning which often happens with musicians right we like to start at the beginning and she had me really think about starting at the end so she sat there while I played the last note and then the last two notes the last three notes the last four notes And we went through that way so that I, by the end, had practiced that last note so many more times than the first note. And she sat there where I did it. She could have just assigned me to do it, but she really wanted to be actively involved in the process because it was the first time that I was doing this concept for her.

Starting point is 00:22:47 And so she very happily sat there. And afterwards we went out and, you know, went to Ben and Jerry's and each got a pint of ice cream to celebrate. And I learned just as much from her as playing, as sitting around and talking. Because of that background of understanding, it's okay to ask questions. If you don't understand something, ask. You know, the worst thing anybody can ever say to you, Renee, is no. right and i think that's if you get over that concept and separate yourself out from what you're asking but ask advice and that's something mr way told us too and she would you know i was very interested at one point in in baroque playing right i wanted to know more about that and she said honey here's here's the harp score teacher at school i'd like for you to to go meet him and go and see if you can take some lessons with that person and i i love that because it wasn't like She knew where to connect. And we talked plenty about Bach and Baroque playing.

Starting point is 00:23:45 But you really want to know about it? Here's a Baroque expert. Go talk to them. Ask your questions of that person. You want to study a Beethoven sonata? Go study this with this pianist. And so I got to play and played for all sorts of people, singers and harpsichord players, pianists, cellists, violists,

Starting point is 00:24:04 you name it, and plenty and plenty violinists, of course. but to go out and get people's perspectives and then sort out and that's what I love about her sort out your path not her path not not Perlman's path you know and he's my idol but he had his own path there's no way for us and I don't want to be the next whomever violinist I want to be the first Brian Lewis and I think that's hard because we hear such great amazing playing you know you listen to somebody like Hilary Hahn, who has such impeccable cleanliness in her playing, you know, and if that's something you're working on, you're playing, then we become micromanaged to listen to that in any recordings or any live events that we get a chance to go to.

Starting point is 00:24:50 So we tend to listen very critically to people with the issues that we are bringing forth. And sometimes that makes us feel bad, like, well, they can do it. Why can't I? Well, that's their path. find out your path to the answer and to that clarity that you may be looking for in your playing. And then Mr. Lay planted plenty of seeds. One of the things that I could say about it is that love was truly a great motivator. And, you know, fear and love are equally the same motivator until you're not afraid of that person. And once you're not afraid of that person, there is no motivation. So that type of teaching where you're yelling at your student that that's not right, go home come back when you're prepared is is doesn't serve anyone well you know even for the

Starting point is 00:25:36 teacher it doesn't make them want to i don't it makes me question what what they want to be teaching to me you know is it just simply where to put that third finger or is there something greater in my music making or in the way that i approach my life and practicing and and my mental health. And I think that's something that we suffer from when we have abusive teaching is that it, it, it beats us down in so many ways, not just making us feel bad about our playing, but our whole psyche suffers from that. And I think oftentimes people are recovering from the teaching that they receive, which is a terrible, terrible sentence to say, but actually very, very true. I'm so happy to hear you say this because this is so much of

Starting point is 00:26:25 the work that I do with the clients that I have now in my coaching is that we spend a lot of time on doing the effect of trauma from past experiences. And a lot of times the trauma comes from a difficult relationship with teachers. And what you talked about with Ms. DeLay, this, how she would encourage students to be self-reliant and develop this self-trust and ask questions like you say, to be authentic, to be genuine. It is such a great gift. And I love that you use the word love because it's so true. What better motivator? Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you love that person. Like I loved my teacher. I loved Dorothy DeLay. She was such a great person She grew up in Kansas and I grew up in Kansas, so it was a little bit like studying with my grandmother at times.

Starting point is 00:27:21 I remember my first lesson, I walk in and she said, honey, would you like a clove? And I'm like, excuse me? She gave me a clove and we sucked on cloves, which is a very, very old-fashioned thing to do. But it was great. She called everybody sugarplum. I mean, there was only – she never raised her voice to me. She was unhappy with me once, but that was because I needed – it had nothing to do with my playing and everything to do with a reaction that I had to her that was, I would say, probably – like, I would be unhappy with it as a teacher as well. But even then, what she did is she looked, she said, honey, that's okay.

Starting point is 00:28:01 And she lowered her glass and said, but never let that happen again. And that was as – and it was very powerful. And then she was not cold to me, but not 100% open for about a week. And later in life, we talked about it. And she said that was an on-purpose thing to let you know that there is behavior that's good and behavior that's not. I had written down in her calendar five people for her class, and she had written down five people.

Starting point is 00:28:27 So there were 10 people in the class. Part of my job was to schedule her, which was a very challenging job, I'll tell you for sure, because of her life. her own, her own life. And so I had written, she said, how, how did this happen? And I took her calendar and said, I scheduled five people and you schedule five people and you're going to teach every damn one of them. And I threw the calendar on her desk and it flew up and hit her in the chest, you know, and I'd walked out of the room and I instantly, I was like, oh my gosh, what have you done? So I went back literally on bended knee and said, Mr. Lane, I am so sorry. I'm just

Starting point is 00:29:02 frustrated with you that I'm here to help you and you're not letting me do my job, which is to help you and that's when she said well that's okay honey but never let that happen again and I it was and I remember I think it's the only time I said to her yes ma'am because it was like as formal as we could be because teachers have that power to help adjust but you know that was in such a nice way she could have said I can't believe you did that or you know and as things go she was like you know it wasn't that big of a deal at all it was to me because of course I had a a reaction to somebody who I didn't mean to react that way I didn't want to react that way and she helped adjust my thinking like don't don't do that again okay I won't as opposed to you know a different

Starting point is 00:29:49 reaction that she easily could have had about me me being frustrated and raising my voice a little bit at her so you know I feel blessed another thing that I'm curious about is some of those habits that her successful students developed and or maybe some of the habits that she encouraged them to develop what do you think set them apart in terms of practicing habits work ethic those type of things well i think one of the the greatest things that i learned from her is how to get organized how to get organized in my practicing so if we're just talking just surely from from that that standpoint she was very specific that you had an hour that you practiced solo Bach, you had an hour that you did etudes. She wrote it down, you know, we did an hour of

Starting point is 00:30:34 scales and an hour of technique. So those were two separate issues, right? So playing your scales in the morning is going to be different than practicing your vibrato every day. And so she would even give us assignments for eight minutes for this bow stroke, eight minutes for that bow stroke. She helped keep us on task, knew what we needed to work on as a violinist, and then moved that way. So she had a five hour practice day, which was a recommendation. It wasn't a requirement that you have to do five hours a day, but the way that she divided everything up, you know, to practice a bouncy stroke, she would say, and it was interesting. She was, I'd asked her, you know, so what's the difference, you know, what's the difference between Sotier and a different bow

Starting point is 00:31:15 stroke? And she goes, well, a little bit of how you hold your hand and do this. She said, but honey, one is a bouncy stroke. One is a stopped bow stroke. One is a long bow stroke. So she got it down to its simplest form so that we're not trying to be over complicated. And I think sometimes teachers want to prove how much they know to their students. So they're not, they're not teaching them specifically where they are. And because they don't see where they're going, they're just taking that, that moment to do it. So some of the other habits that Dorothy DeLay wanted us to acquire were the ability to listen, right? Because the people I say to my students, the people with the most ability are the people with the fastest ears, not the fastest fingers, because you can

Starting point is 00:31:59 learn how to play fast with your fingers. But if you can hear something, you can change it. If you can change it, you can be a great musician. So she had us listen. She had us go to concerts. She did a lot of what I would call to my students, sound modeling. Go listen to the great violinist. Go hear Ani Sopimutra play. Okay. That's a motivator, right? It's motivating to me to go hear excellent playing, to hear playing at the absolute top of their profession. So she would have us do that. She would also have us listen to the pieces that we were working on. And that's something that's very similar between the Suzuki method. He really wanted us to do a lot of listening because that's an easy way for you to become familiar with the notes. Now you may hear

Starting point is 00:32:41 some people say, okay, you're going to copy people. Well, wouldn't it be great to be influenced by David Oysterock. I mean, I think that is so great to be influenced by these great people that have come in the past. Mr. Lay also had us do review, which is very similar to what Suzuki did. Just because you've played a piece once doesn't mean you're never going to play it again. You get it back out. I studied Mendelssohn's Concerto six times with her because I was always getting ready to go play it again somewhere. And we would study it again and go deeper and deeper into the music. so to understand that that first study that you do you're going to work real hard you're going to get as many details as possible but you're going to put it down again put it down and get it out

Starting point is 00:33:24 again and you'll have the opportunity to go even farther because we have to let ourselves absorb it our hands to absorb it our head to absorb it and then put it down and get it back out so when we would go do a competition one of the reasons lots of our kids were so successful in competitions you didn't stand up and play your new piece you stood up and played your polished piece right which means something that you have studied before and done a lot of details with so second studies were very important for her so it was a process it wasn't just one and done right it's being able to study it a couple of times or three times or four times and that allows us to get beyond some of the mental issues that we have hopefully we are working to transcend our

Starting point is 00:34:09 technique because once you do that types of of transcending you're able to in your brain think about other things and sometimes you know even myself and i i work on it as well every now and then i still get into a mental battle with myself when i'm playing you know that's that passage that's coming up and i won't i won't swear the word that actually is in my head but it says don't mess this up and you're thinking that is a terrible thing because the word that i'm leaving in my head is mess up you know it's the difference when you're speaking to a student to say if you say to a kid don't run all you're doing is telling them run you leave that that you're not making a change as opposed to saying please walk great now you we're saying the same thing but in a

Starting point is 00:34:52 different way and please walk gives you the action word with which you want to move forward not just don't do something or do do something. Such great wisdom. I love this. Brian, this month on the podcast, I'm curious about the elements that can help students on the path to a musical career have a fulfilling experience while pursuing, let's say, college education in music. Can you please elaborate on this a little bit? In your opinion as a college professor how does one get the most out of their music degree some maybe some ways to practice or experiences to seek or maybe some skills that they need to learn to ensure that they're fully prepared for a professional life although maybe we never can be fully prepared yes and i think

Starting point is 00:35:43 that you're right about that that being completely prepared life changes and music industry changes so much, particularly nowadays, right? This is not the way things were 50 years ago. So it's impossible to completely change. I think one of the things we have to educate ourselves is to be open, open to possibilities. So I once heard someone say, and I love very much, do everything. If somebody says you've got a quartet gig to go play a wedding, go do it. Just play, play an orchestra, take that audition, go out and prepare yourself. One of the things that is different for people in younger generations than mine is the ability to do so many different things to have a successful career. And that is changing me. I mean,

Starting point is 00:36:31 if you look at Heifetz, Heifetz, he taught at the end of his life, but he was a performer and that was good in the way that he was presenting that. So some of the actual things that we want to be able to present ourselves is, do you have a nice sound, right? Because that's how people relate to us is our sound so by talking to you like this in this voice you're already making an assumption about who i am whether that's right or wrong people are making that assumption and the same way with our with our voice on the violin suzuki always called it tonalization tonalizing finding your tone and he originally had in the back in the 50s had called it vocalization and we're practicing vocalizing on our violin and he had said to me when i was a little kid i'm not sure

Starting point is 00:37:16 i understood exactly when i was five but he said that tone has a living soul without form and what i understood at that age was that sound is alive and sound is so important about that because that's how we get our information information through sound to find out are we in tune we're listening to our sound to find out you know what our vibrato sounds like we're listening to our sound so sound is really really important the overtone series on the violin finding your ringtones resonant points makes your intonation better and easier just just to put it right out there that's another thing that we need to do we need to be able to play in tune that doesn't mean you can't play a wrong note right and there's a difference between playing a wrong note and playing playing a note out of tune

Starting point is 00:38:05 right those are two different processes actually learning the right notes and learning the right That's to play in tune, that intonation. Some people lump them into one category, but they're really two different things to be able to do that. So being able to be on top of your intonation is very, very important. One of the things that I find and Ms. DeLay found as well that makes people successful is imagination. And she would write about that in her letters of recommendation. She would basically write about the left hand and the right hand, you know, secure left hand technique, an expressive sound and fine imagination. imagination if she wrote that about you you knew that you had arrived in a certain way

Starting point is 00:38:45 and if she didn't mention it i i it was an interesting thing and nobody got to see those letters that was just something for me uh to to look at and to understand about what she was talking about but to find out that creativity to be as creative and that's where it's easy to say and hard to do right to approach your life with creativity um so a simple little thing that i decided to do is okay so I have a garage where I parked the car right what would happen if my my garage was artistic what would happen if I so my my garage is decorated with artwork which is a very interesting thing people come and it's like do you have masks yeah they're masks it's in there where they pull in because I wanted to see could we live our lives artistically

Starting point is 00:39:31 so being able to find out doing that helps our music making believe it or not because It keeps your brain focused in a way. So to be as creative as you can, go to concerts, listen. One of the specific things that we need to, we're talking about people having so many different facets in their career, whether it's teaching or playing in orchestra, you know, finding what their passion is. is the the ability in your own practicing is to see how to move forward but also to look at what do you need when you leave so one of the things that that i find that we work much more on now than when say you were studying with me are orchestral excerpts like i i have a whole specific group of excerpts from from you know somebody like david kim concertmaster philadelphia orchestra i've talked to these great concert masters okay if i were to teach 10 what would they be? If I were to teach five, what would they be? Just so that people get ready, because you

Starting point is 00:40:31 have auditions when you're in college, right? We just went through all of those auditions for orchestral placement. And of course, a lot of that, if we have never known how to approach an excerpt, for example, that's challenging, but that's a skill that people need to have. The ability to play, and I would say something else that is helpful, play for everyone. Go play for your friends get a group of people your teachers cannot supply every opportunity for you you know i say to my own students and so i have my under a group of undergraduates that gets together and they play for for each other and it's so great it's so great that they're taking the motivation they're taking the concept of okay we want to play and we want maybe what's not quite as polished as

Starting point is 00:41:18 what we want to do and represent themselves in studio class but they feel comfortable playing before each other and that is great because the hardest group of people you're ever going to play for is a group of violinists right so there may be 15 people sitting in that class listening to you well there may be 15 violinists in your audience but there could be 300 other people that are not musicians that are that are there specifically because they like Beethoven you know they're not there and that's something that we got to get through our heads people generally do not go to concerts because they want to see well i wonder whether they're going to vibrate their fourth finger on this passage of the brook concerto generally people go because boy that's a pretty

Starting point is 00:42:00 second move but you know it's just as simple as that people go because they want to have an artistic experience they want to be moved they want to think about something greater than themselves and i think that is something that we as musicians need to keep doing is to find out music is greater than we are um and that we are part of a history and it's so cool to look and to think about the lineage like for example renee and musically i'm one of your musical fathers right and you you have plenty of musical mothers and so dorothy delay who was my teacher is your grandmother that's fun to think about yes exactly and so galanian is your great grandfather so you can take this lineage and go all the way back and suzuki's lineage goes back so that heritage that

Starting point is 00:42:46 you have with me it goes back to Joseph Joachim because he was in Germany and studied with Carl Klingler who studied with Joseph Joachim so so many people think is this a Japanese method well some of the philosophy is but the actual playing he learned in Germany you know studying in a European tradition so one of the things that I would say when you graduate from music school you need to be flexible. You need to have played as much as you can stand up in that class, push yourself, push beyond your comfort level. Um, and that will really help prepare you play chamber music. We learned so much about voicing with playing chamber music and how to work with people. I mean, it's such a wonderful, a wonderful part of music is to see how do we, how can we work

Starting point is 00:43:35 together to make music? And you start with, you know, four people in a quartet, then that becomes easier if you turn out to be a concert master of an orchestra. Is it just you? Is it just you and your partner, your stand partner? Or is it you in the section? Or are you really a part of the orchestra and the fabric of totality of orchestral playing? So I would say go play everything that you can. Brian, this is incredible advice. I really could hear you talk all day about all of those things. And I hope we have a chance to do that in person at some point. Yes, that would be wonderful. But how about a round of rapid fire question before I let you go? Sounds great, Renee. We've talked a lot about habits and you've also mentioned that Ms. DeLay taught you how to be

Starting point is 00:44:19 organized. What is maybe another habit that you have and that you think contributed to your success? Consistency of practicing. One of the habits that we need to have is to be able to open up our case and to play every day. Even though that may be difficult, we want to do that. And for me, my motivation isn't to get up and do scales that that's not my motivation. I love repertoire. So I start I have five minutes, I just play whatever I want. And right now I'm learning Concerto Gregoriano by Respighi, two lines at a time, and then I put it away. And then I start down the path of what I need. I love that you said that because I teach something that I call the delightful 10. That's if you don't feel like practicing, you commit to opening the case and playing anything

Starting point is 00:45:02 you want for 10 minutes and then you have permission to walk away but usually what happens is once the instrument is out and you're playing something you enjoy I find that people just stick with it absolutely I completely agree I think that's a wonderful thing Renee is there a performance that has stayed with you throughout the years there are let me tell you about two performances quickly one would be playing standing up and playing in Carnegie Hall to get to play Mendelssohn concerto in such a storied place is something that will always be there in my head. And then there was another performance where I was playing in a children's hospital with kids that had cancer and I was allowed to go back to the treatment centers. I'll try not to get real emotional about

Starting point is 00:45:46 it, but to play for those kids. And you think this is more important than standing up and playing for my adult audiences. And so that was very memorable to let the kids interact with my violin. And I have a little scratch from one of the kids' nails, and I always leave it there to remind me how blessed we are. What a beautiful memory. It feels silly to keep going with another question after this beautiful moment. Sorry to bring this back down to earth, but how about a favorite tool in the practice room? Favorite tool in the practice room, believe it or not, is a timer. I have a timers because sometimes we we can't get off of what we're practicing so and turn if you're using your cell phone turn put it in airplane mode so your phone isn't ringing um but to set you know

Starting point is 00:46:35 you could say hey siri set timer for two minutes and all of a sudden you practice that in thing for two minutes and then you put it away you could do it again if you still want to do it later in your practice but i would say a timer is something that's very very helpful and of course a metronome was also a type of a timer. I love that. It's so true. Yes. I'm a huge timer person too. So I'm with you on that. How about a favorite book that you would recommend? It doesn't have to be a music book. Oh, wow. Favorite book, man. There are so many really great books. There is a great book by Dr. Don Green called fight your fear and win. That's a really excellent book. Um, yes, I think that's that's one of the books that was very very helpful and any book on on violin violinists from

Starting point is 00:47:23 past ages i think are really really great yeah and really interesting how about you've given us so many great advices already but is there one in particular that you'd like to pass on to the listeners wow i would say suzuki's idea that tone has a living form okay and i i think that what we do is music makes it to come alive. So, you know, I, I would say, and we've talked about them as well, you know, don't, don't be afraid to ask people their, their opinion. Don't be afraid to ask for help because there are a lot of people that really will help you. Absolutely. Absolutely. And finally, how about a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their musical lives? Great. Well, take your, take your piece and find that one spot that you think could

Starting point is 00:48:15 be at a higher level and figure out what you can do to get it to be at a higher level put it in brackets and do your practice before you practice that whole piece so that you're practicing it mr lay had us practice it in our scales so we would do scales and passage work so that we are looking at it from just a technical standpoint right because that's generally where people feel they they know how how they want the music to sound they just don't know how to get it get it 100% comfortable in either their left or their right hand. So being able to do that type of bracket practice will allow you to be more successful because what you're doing is really identifying just those few places. And it's not the whole page, right? It could be four notes,

Starting point is 00:48:56 but somehow or other psychologically that knocks us down. So identify that little bit and think about how you can get it to be better and let it be daily practice. Let them be your daily drills. fantastic advice brian i cannot thank you enough for sitting here with me sharing this incredible wisdom i want us to have eight more episodes like this and i'm just so grateful great well thank you renee i think it's wonderful what you're doing and we we need more positive thinking like you do thank you guys so much for listening i hope you enjoyed this chat with brian lewis there's so much i resonated with in this episode i really appreciated the reminder that focus is

Starting point is 00:49:52 not something we have to expect to last a long time and beat ourselves up when it seems to be fleeting. It's something that we recommit to every minute. In the same way that we do in meditation or the same way that we remind ourselves to be present during our practice sessions, focus is something that we consciously manage. An analogy I like to use for things like focus is the difference between a train on tracks and a car on the highway. Focus and concentration and practice are not like a train moving forward on tracks. They're not immutable and rigid. Navigating focus in our work is like steering a car on the highway. We consciously keep it between the painted lines. Yes, at times it feels effortless, but once in a while things drift and

Starting point is 00:50:47 we actively control the wheel to bring things back in line. I also love his actionable tip about bracket practice and I'd love to know what you think about it, if you've tried it, and how it worked for you. So join me on Friday, October 15th at 10 a.m. in the Mind Over Finger community for a discussion on this topic and to ask me any question you have about practicing, performing, and creating a meaningful musical experience. You can find the community at facebook.com slash groups slash mindoverfinger. And if you relate to this conversation, don't forget to share with everyone you think could benefit from Brian's wisdom. Now, if you're looking to take your practicing and performing to the next level, I have something for you. As I've shared with you

Starting point is 00:51:43 in the last episodes, Practicing for Peak Performance. My performance preparation workshop is now available for download. If you're looking for a process that works and that will allow you to enjoy more efficient practice sessions, gain confidence, and perform at your best, check out Practicing for Peak Performance at mindoverfinger.com. When you join Practicing for Peak Performance, you gain access to all the recorded content that's over seven hours jam-packed with information, guidance, and effective high-performance systems. You get detailed handouts and worksheets, access to the PPP Facebook group community for support and answers to all your questions, and for a limited time, a complimentary private 30-minute coaching

Starting point is 00:52:34 session with me. Carmen Peluso, a participant in Practicing for Peak Performance, has this to say about the program. For a long time, I've had this belief that learning an instrument is difficult and hard work or that it has to be and there's no other way. Only a few weeks after PPP, I'm starting to feel that change. My everyday practice sessions are now filled with freedom and ease. So if that sounds like the kind of results you'd like to experience, head to mindoverfinger.com right now and access all the tools that will help you transform your practice, gain confidence in your process, and start performing at your best today. 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

Starting point is 00:53:25 mindoverfinger.com. While there, you can also find more information about mindful and efficient practice, performance preparation, and how to work with me. And don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to receive your free guide to a productive mindful practice using the metronome. So that's it for today. Again, thank you and à bientôt. Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 109 Brian Lewis: Empowering Pedagogy

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