The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 179 David Cooper: Passion, Purpose, and Dedication in Music as a Performer – Backstage Pass Series

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

In this Backstage Pass Series episode, I speak with LA Phil Associate Principal Horn, David Cooper. We discuss how he handles maintaining a large repertoire and the importance of practicing fundamentals, how he likes to learn music through creative interpretation, his views on passion, purpose, and dedication in music, his pre performance rituals and how he practices self-care as a high-level artist, and redefining success in music performance.   Book your free consultation with Renée HERE Download the transcript from this episode HERE   MORE ABOUT DAVID COOPER Website:  https://cooperhorn.com/about YouTube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@davidcooperhorn/videos Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidcooperfrenchhorn/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidcooperhorn/   Mind Over Finger Click www.mindoverfinger.com/coaching to book your free consultation with me. Visit MindOverFinger.com for my online courses as well as free resources on peak performance. Connect: https://www.youtube.com/@MindOverFinger https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfinger https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/     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.

You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 179. Welcome to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, where we dive into the world of mindful music making, peak performance, and crafting a purpose-driven life and career. I'm your host, violinist, certified performance and life coach for musicians, and your guide to unlocking your full potential, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. Hi everyone. As always, I hope you're doing amazingly well as you're tuning in to this episode. Today is another Backstage Pass episode for you, and I'm so, so thrilled to bring you an exceptional musician and human horn player, David Cooper. David is the Associate Principal Horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and before his LA Phil appointment,

he was principal horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and principal horn of the Dallas Symphony. He also served as principal horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, acting principal horn with the Victoria Symphony in Victoria, British Columbia, and co-associate principal horn of the Fort Worth Symphony. He's been guest principal horn with other world-class orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York and LA Phil, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. David is an avid chamber musician and performs as a soloist all over the world, and he's given masterclasses in America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. He comes from a horn playing family. Both his uncle and grandmother performed as professional horn players in the

Lansing Symphony in Michigan, and he's a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music. We had a great time covering many topics that I know you're going to find interesting. We discuss how he handles maintaining a large repertoire and the importance of practicing fundamentals, how he likes to learn music through creative interpretation, his views on passion, purpose, and dedication in music, his pre-performance rituals, and how he practices self-care as a high-level artist, and redefining success in music performance. David is such a wonderful person, and I know you're going to walk away inspired by the wisdom he shares with us today. So without further ado, for you, David Cooper, Associate Principal Horn of the LA Philharmonic, enjoy your backstage pass.

david cooper so excited that we get to chat yeah me too thank you renee we're here about paul excuse me yeah thank you the whole the whole shebang yeah exactly thank you yeah we're here sitting backstage at rovinia we're about to play a concert there's based uh beethoven's fourth piano concerto with jeremy dank okay so beethoven fourth piano concerto copeland three and then in the past few weeks you were magnificent in mahler five chag five thank you what else beethoven nine yeah so much good yeah a lot of good stuff here at remedio this year we're doing um all the fives it seems like right you're in pakofia five we're doing chag five mahler five um Shostakovich five and then uh Beethoven three but you know they can't all be fives

exactly what are you looking forward to the most for tonight's performance oh man um and there's like a fanfare part of Copland three it's uh I mean it's like the fanfare for the common man right and uh it's just so powerful and it kind of like starts with the the woodwinds and it goes to the brass and you know it's just i don't know to hear that with this brass section and um you know just kind of being a different environment than downtown it's a little um a little more free out here you know it's a little bit more connected to nature and a little bit more relaxed even though we're still like you know making sure we cover all our bases and take care of all the details and make great music you know there's just a more of a fun it's like a fun

summer camp it's fun out here and uh you know you hear the birds chirping and there's you know the trees and the winds and the trees and you hear the train occasionally in the middle of the performance you know it's real life yeah exactly yeah you were just talking about you check five for kofi five all of those big works it's week after week several programs every week what does that look like for you to maintain so much repertoire with this fast pace like this well my first couple of years was really, I don't know, you're still kind of getting used to all the repertoire and learning it and then kind of figuring out how you fit in the orchestra. And now it feels more like you just know what to do. You know, like I know when I have big pieces

coming up, I need to look at them, you know, weeks in advance and, you know, and I'm always in shape. Right. I'm always practicing a lot. So that's the main thing. But then also just making sure that like you know i refreshed in all these pieces because we're doing these pieces um downtown most of them during the season so yeah so the act of repetition is really helpful there yeah absolutely um i mean this isn't my first time playing um any of the fives you know i've like i've played check five a number of times uh this is you know i played mala five a few times and pakofu five i played a number of times just coach five i played a few times so you know um Yeah, I know they're big horn parts, but for me, it's just a matter of like, OK, I know what in this means a lot of attention and just kind of figuring out like where to put my attention and then how to, you know, practice that.

You just talked about how you are in shape. And that's one of the questions that I get a lot from listeners is the type of things professionals like yourselves include in their practice. Are there things that you always include in your practice session? Oh, my gosh, fundamentals. You know, like fundamentals are so important for me. So I start every day with like a really consistent, I mean, you could say basic warm-up routine. And it focuses on sound and tone production and air. And then later on, it focuses on mouthpiece buzzing, you know, just getting through the whole register of the horn.

um and then it goes into articulations pitch bends and on note centering you know there's just like a lot of stuff that I do that it's like it sounds really boring and you know even my my daughter who's 19 months old sings it I do this thing on the mouthpiece right about in fourths and she imitates the tone of the mouthpiece she goes you know so that's kind of funny it's good that you're teaching her the fundamentals early on yeah exactly she goes up that's uh that's what dad sounds like that's very good because that's one of the things that i think it's hard to stick to a fundamental regimen because

people are so eager to jump to the fun stuff the big rap is for but the fundamentals are just called fundamentals for a reason well i think it's um it's hard because they're so basic right you know um they're not exactly um the most interesting thing to play every day um musically speaking but i always find i learn something about myself because the routine is so basic that um i am allowed to show up however i am and wherever i'm at if i'm like feeling tight or i'm feeling tired or i'm feeling loose or i'm feeling just really good you know i show up to these warm-ups and i check in and i say where am i this is the baseline and how do i compare to this baseline so I'm really just using it as a tool to observe myself and find how I can best

come towards center you know and then with what I have that day I figure out okay this is what I have you know physically and this is what I have to do with the challenges of my job and this is how I have to make this work yeah yeah yeah you know it's just kind of navigating that yeah I love that it sounds like a way for you to tune in with yourself oh yeah pun intended oh yeah i guess right yeah that's really good yeah another question i get often is you talked about fundamentals people always wonder what it looks like for other people to take a piece from zero to performance and granted it it is very context dependent and what the performance is what the pieces but do you have an example for us of what it looks like for you to take a piece from

having never played it to stepping on stage to play it oh okay well it depends on um what the scope of the piece is and what the context is so um recently i mean it was my first time playing uh the schubert octet you know and that's you know that's a pretty big undertaking you know it's like five movements it's like um 15 minutes to an hour you know depending if you take the repeats or not and for me it was like um okay let's look at this piece as like okay um historical context first so i know schubert was um classical period uh it's smaller he's known for his leader um let's approach it and he's from vienna right let's approach it from that aspect now um what do i know about this and what can i derive from classical period smaller smaller

scale of expression um and i think back to the viennese people that i know and they're very um they're they're playful they're fun um and i would also say they're very traditional and they're also um elegant right um vienna was the capital of the um austro-hungarian empire right um so i think there's still some of that nobility to and especially in those times so taking what i know about divini's people and approaching this piece with that in mind so now i go into the the piece and i say all right um we have fortes and we have pianos but let's make that a little bit smaller and i want to figure out where's the melody like obviously this is a song right like because Schubert is known for his songs when do I have the tune when

do I not and when I have when I have the tune how can I phrase that um where do I breathe and then basically like listen to a couple recordings of the Vienna Philharmonic Chamber Players to try to get more of a Viennese flair to how I performed it and then um I really uh you know I actually play along with the recording you know i find that that's really helpful because you know when i'm playing my part i'm focused on me but when i'm playing along with others i want to focus on them and i want to hear what they're doing i want to hear their note lengths i want to hear their articulations i want to hear you know um their inflection the time they take and so with all that in mind i can really try to you know take a trip to vienna without actually going there

or you know and same thing with um orchestral works like if i'm playing a piece of czech music i want to like listen to the czech phil and i want to like hear how they um how their inflection works because i think music and language are very similar right like if um there's a composer from um the czech republic or bolivian whatever you want to say um the inflections of the language are going to come through um in the phrasing they're going to come through the timing the um you know the tone and that's all things that i think i can use as part of my information when i'm learning a piece um yeah so it's it's really um it's a wide open canvas and i think that's the fun thing is that yeah we have these constrictions these limitations like um i want to play in time

I want to play in tune and for that you know I need to work with my metronome and I need to work with my drone you know but when I really want to learn a piece like I can really imagine it too I can just think of it in a creative sense without even having to pick up the horn and think about like if I didn't have any limitations about my lips or air how would I phrase this how would I sing this how would the melody how would I inflect it like how soft would I play how loud would I play you know like to what note would I be going to how long would the phrase be what color would I have you know tone color would it be bright would it be dark you know and that those things that's the imagination and you pick up by listening and especially in a good orchestra

like this you listen around the orchestra and you get so many different ideas about like you know things you can do creatively and uh if you just listen you're usually not the first person with that idea so you can kind of steal an idea that they might have or you can bring a new flair to it or a new flavor to it you know and it kind of have some fun um so it's that give and take and that's i think what's fun about music is it's never the same twice yeah yeah Depends on the day, depends on the player. Yeah, all those things, you know. It's even with the same players and the same conductor,

it's a different piece the next night than the night before because it's a new day, new feelings. You know, we wake up and we're different people. Yeah, yeah. I love that scope, that everything you put into preparing the piece, that's beyond just playing the notes. Yeah, yeah, it's fun. it's like you know that's what wakes me up in the morning that's what you know last thing I think

about before I go to bed it's that's you know why I do this is because I'm passionate about it and I I love it otherwise it's like you know it's so much work you know like I'd be like oh my gosh it's so much work you know that I would just be like um resentful that I have to do if I didn't like it and sometimes you know you have to show up and do the work and yeah it's not necessarily always fun but you do it because it's like you know you've committed to doing it yeah yeah i love this conversation because i'm not talking about conversation in terms of the the clarity of purpose and how it infuses the work because people imagine that sometimes when you're passionate every single aspect of the work are joyful wonderful and they all feel wonderful and if

If it doesn't, it means that something went wrong when in fact, every single endeavor that human pursue in life, you know, you're passionate about it, but it all comes with its share of work and effort and trials and successes. So it's how can fulfillment be found in the work itself? and i love that clarity of purpose that you have i hope what i just said makes sense yeah of course of course yeah you're just talking about showing up even when you don't feel like it yeah exactly precisely yeah uh but how do you do that i just know that that's what i want you know it's it doesn't feel like i want this but i know what happens if i don't and if i don't show up uh for what I need to like my responsibilities that I've committed to myself um there's a part of me that feels like I'm not holding my end of the bargain and I'm not present um with other things

that I'm doing yeah right so like you know I might if I decide I want to skip practice in the morning right um I practice first thing of the day and I decide I want to do that then I'm thinking about that the whole time while I'm hanging out with my family or while I'm you know hanging out with my friends or when I'm going ah I gotta go practice I need to go practice it's like it's calling me and and if I don't put that time in I feel like I haven't held my part of the bargain that day you know um yeah there are days where you're just like man I'm tired you know but once I get in the practice room I feel better you know I don't feel tired when I'm in that chair you know it's like it's just the starting right yeah yeah and i think that's the the hard part is just sitting

down and just getting started but once i do start then it's like you know time slips away and it's like nothing else yeah matters right or nothing well not that nothing else matters let's just like that i everything kind of like i toggle into my what i'm doing and i and what's that yeah yeah and what's interesting is when we show up when we don't feel like it i mean it could be different for everyone but i know that for me it builds in a self-confidence that i have my own back i show up even when i don't feel like it oh yeah committed to my purpose well i mean the work makes me feel more confident right so like the more i'm prepared the better i feel so like um you know when i show up on stage and i'm like really prepared i'm not nervous because i've done

the work and i can trust that i've done the work i know that this is going to work today because i've i've worked on it i've prepared you know and that's a good feeling you know like to walk on stage and feel confident in yourself and your abilities because you know you've put in the time you know and i think that's why i do it is because it's that little bit of peace of mind it's like you know controlling the thing that i can right like i stay in good visible condition And I really make sure that, like, you know, my body's strong, but I also make sure that my, you know, I'm in shape practicing wise. And that way, like, it's just much easier to deal with the stress or to deal with, like, whatever is coming at me at work. Yeah. What about the mindset?

Oh, man. I think you have to trust yourself. you know and it becomes one of those things that like uh i give them the chair and i you know i think like okay i know how this goes i know this and i think the more experience i have the more i trust myself because the more i'm like i've done this this and this worked out because i did the work you know i prepared myself and uh i was showing up today and i i trust myself still you know um there's a lot of great sports books you know that i've been into recently especially like talking about like um basketball players and you know um tim grover was a coach of michael

jordan and you know he just talked about like how every day even after the big tournaments you know after the the finals he'd be like all right michael what time do you want to show up to the gym tomorrow you know five in the morning six in the morning or seven in the morning you know it was just it wasn't an option whether or not he was going to show up because he's like hey what time are we showing up you know and uh I think that that's an inspiration for me because it's like hey you look at these guys who golly they're playing like you know basically 90 minutes of basketball or however many minutes of basketball and it's just like grueling physical exertion and you know Michael Jordan used to work out before every game you know like and then you'd

be hitting it in the morning after right it's like wow that that's the kind of dedication that I want you know and I God knows he must have not some days he probably didn't feel like going but he did anyways you know then I think it's because he wanted the end result and that's what mattered to For me, the end result is like playing with a musical expression that I want, right? It's being able to express myself and not have to doubt my physical ability. It's like whatever I imagine that goes in the horn because I've done the physical work and put the time in. You know, it's like that ability to just, you know, not have to think about the technique, the ability to like think about the artistry. and just let the physical take care of itself.

Yeah, freedom. Yeah, it is freedom. Yeah, it's freedom to allow yourself to be totally immersed in the art, your music, and the story. Every piece has a soul of the composer who wrote it, the feelings of that person who wrote it, the story of whatever they were going through at that point. You know, and if you really listen, you can find that story and you can connect with it, too.

Or maybe put your own life experiences to that same feeling. That's so well put. Yeah. You talked about how Michael Jordan worked out before a game. Do you have some sort of pre-performance ritual that you go through? Well, I do take hour naps. I really think naps are important for me. I tend to burn pretty hot and fast.

So like midday, I usually just try to take a power nap. 20 minutes is really all I need. As soon as my eyes shut, I wake up, you know. But it's one of those things that just kind of helps me punctuate my day. You know, that's like, that's something I really, I think about the first half of my day, I take my nap and then the second half of my day. and you know it's if i don't have that you know that halfway point you know and it's just a time where i'm just like you know not thinking about anything i'm not doing anything i'm like just taking a moment just to myself and it really just um it helps me so much um i don't know i just feel

like a new person after that 20 minute nap i'm a strong believer in power and abs too It's so important, right? Yeah. I drink tea. I like tea. First thing in the morning, I drink a cup of tea or two. But yeah, I enjoy that and make sure that I don't start my day with my phone. Because if I do, I feel like a ping pong ball.

And I just feel like I'm bouncing from this to that to this to that. And so I wake up, deliberately don't look at my phone first thing in the day. And I just take some time. I just kind of like make my tea and, you know, I have a really nice Japanese teapot, you know, or I heat the water to a specific temperature and make, you know, loosely essential tea. And it's just kind of that tea routine, you know. Like a grounding. Yeah. Like, no, I feel like that's something really important. Also, you know, exercise.

Yeah. Sometimes before concerts, I enjoy like a 10 minute run or I really enjoy getting in the water, especially here at Ravidia. like even go out and go to the beach just you know i'm getting like michigan it's just so um centering for me to just be uh you know i just feel like after i come out of the water i'm just like a much calmer and better version of myself yeah and uh you know uh depending on the show like leaving enough time so i'm not rushed to the hall and then i like to sit on the stage and just really um look at the back of the hall you know i look at the room and i know it's a big room So when I'm warming up, I just like to open my sound up and think about filling the back of the hall.

It's really just a nice feeling. You know, I do this really simple pitch bending exercise. And it just really, you know, I do it chromatically and it just feels like it opens up my tone and it gets me kind of, like, adjusted to my sound in the room. And then I, you know, go off and I always make sure I use the bathroom before I go on stage, maybe TMI, But, you know, I always make sure that like I've been in situations where, you know, there was an opera and I like, oh, yeah, the first half of the opera was just like I couldn't have it couldn't have been longer.

I was just like, oh, my gosh, it felt so long. And I was I barely made it out of the opera pit and I was like running. But, yeah, that's, you know, staying in operating procedure. Yes. so and speaking of pre-performance routine i should probably let you go so you could go warm up so in wrapping this up is there um something that you would like to pass on to the audience maybe a tip i call this the actionable tip that they could implement either in the practice room or in the life that something maybe that was beneficial for you that you'd like to share

with that one well i would say um don't be afraid to fail you know i think failure isn't anything to be ashamed of failure is something that you know a lot of times we want to avoid at all costs because it's painful but i think failure is only truly a failure if you don't learn right and so the real failure would be to have something like that like happen to you that's you know quote unquote not positive and to not grow from it and not learn from it and be bitter about it right so like you know setbacks will kind of happen we're gonna have things in our career that we don't want that have happened right like we won't end up getting the part that we wanted we you know don't make the audition no we don't get tenure whatever right you know these things are part of life we

don't always get what we want but um the fact is is that if you're still growing it's a win if you've improved it's a win if you're learning right like and i think you for me i've had to redefine what what a success is you know my success is you know did I get better at my instrument did I become more confident in myself did I trust myself more do I maybe value the things that I have right instead of the thing you know it's not so much about the things that all all the things that I want right it's about how I feel about the things that I have you know and so taking that and just saying like hey like i'm playing music today at whatever level and just looking at that is like oh my gosh i i'm so lucky to play music because it's something i

love doing and you know here i am like getting to play on stage with the chicago symphony it's like if you would have told me that when i was 20 you know two years old i would have been like oh my gosh like this is amazing and if you said like you'd only be here for four years i'd say that's still amazing you know this is and then you know i can't feel um any less about anything i've done just because it's you know not as long as i would have wanted it to be you know i have to feel like and the part that's awesome is that you know i got to be here i got to spend time with these people and like learn from them and like work with you know amazing conductors and you know play amazing music and in the process like i've really improved my practice i've become more

consistent um i figured out ways to um maybe be a better colleague or be more responsible or whatever or things i can do to uh really make myself that you know 0.01 better you know whether be like um mentally consistent or um caller or whatever so um yeah i i have to like look for the wins even in the moments where it feels you know maybe not you know it's not the outcome that i would have wanted yeah and then uh and then everything can be a a winning experience so So, yeah, I think, you know, redefine success as learning and growing, not on the outcome or the, you know, the title. Such powerful words. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you so much, David. Yeah, of course. Thank you. It's really nice to speak with you. And, you know, it's really it's a it's a gift. You know, thank you for letting me share. There you have it. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with David Cooper. You know, I absolutely love what he shares with us at the end when it comes to not being afraid of failure. He beautifully reminds us that failure isn't the end. It's a stepping stone to growth. His perspective on setbacks and redefining success as learning and growing is a lesson that we can all carry with us on our journeys, both musical and personal.

In the classical world, we often set high standards for ourselves, aiming for specific outcomes. But the true magic happens when we shift our focus to the process, the learning, and the self-improvement. That's where the real success lies. And it's a mindset that can bring joy and fulfillment to every day. And if you're currently dealing with the aftermath of something you perceive as a failure and you feel like you might need support and guidance finding your footing, book a consult with me. Head over to mindoverfinger.com slash coaching or click the link in the show notes. When you book your free consultation, you and I will talk. We're going to go over what's going on for you right now. We're going to discuss strategies to help you

process it, and we will create a blueprint to help you move forward and get the results you want. I work with my clients one-on-one for six months to transform their mindset, their career, and their life. The call is completely free, and either way, you're going to walk away from that call with clarity. All right, that's what I have for you this week. Much love going your way, and à bientôt!