There were 24 kids in this program, but also 200-some others who were either involved with choir, band, or orchestra as part of the St. Olaf Music Camp. We all stayed in one dormitory, Ytterboe, so we all got to know lots of different people. I was at first surprised to meet so many people from outside the Midwest--from Brooklyn, Dallas, Orlando, Los Angeles, Blacksburg, VA, Seattle, and Maryland were some that I heard.
On Sunday night after I got dropped off and there had been the All-Camp meeting with the student counselors about basic rules and stuff (elevator parties not allowed) and after dinner, us pianists had our first masterclass in Urness Recital Hall inside the music building.
I slept in Ytterboe, but I basically lived in Christiansen Music Hall.
The first girl in the masterclass played an awesome Darth Vader-like prelude by Rachmaninoff.
Fear Darth Maninoff!
and the second boy played a Brahms Intermezzo.
(You can't fear Brahms because he looks like Santa)
To my amateur ear it didn't sound like either one of those pieces needed a whole lot of polishing at first, but our professor gave suggestions about dynamics, equal voicing of the melody and the left hand accompaniment, and talked about arm tension and how to hit the keys in an effective way to get the best sound. It sounds like simple things, but many people ignore them. You can't just play note, note, note, note, and expect people to think you're a good pianist. You have to add depth and substance to it, no matter how difficult or seemingly simple the piece may be.
Every day would start out with breakfast, of course, then we had Keyboard Skills class from 8:30 to 9:30. It consisted of music theory and honing our improvisation skills. For the first few days that was the scary class for me. I haven't done serious theory work since middle school, and would not be able to tell you what iii G6/9 means if there was a gun to my head. All those Roman numeral chords were not my friends. What I learned from playing guitar while I took a piano lesson hiatus though really taught me about chord progressions and inversions. I can't read those Roman numerals, but I can play you those chords and improvise a song. I can't play you a really smooth D Flat scale with two hands but it's still my favorite chord ever and I know all the notes in it!
Oh god, I sound pathetic.
But anyways, I listened a lot in Keyboard Skills. I liked that we split up into groups of two or three to improvise on a certain rhythm and chord pattern, because there were some kids who had a great knack for it, and it was so cool to sit back and listen. It also was a great opportunity to learn how to listen to each other, making sure we were rhythmically together and responding to each other's melodies and harmonies.
After that class, I would have a little bit of free time--ahem, practice time-- before my lesson or duet practice session. When I went to my first lesson with Dr. M, I was waiting outside his office door and could hear a girl in there playing a jazzy and difficult sounding piece, which I later found out was by Gershwin. That's when I started to feel like a very humbled and average pianist.
When I went in I showed my teacher all the music I had brought: a Bach prelude and fugue, an Albeniz prelude, a Chopin prelude, and a Beethoven sonata. It was heavy. When I told him that I was working on the Bach and Beethoven for future college auditions, and was planning to apply to St. Olaf as a performance major, he said, "Okay, let's work on that."
My lessons were a half hour long, and we had decided that we'd meet every day, which I thought was awesome because my brain needs that type of consistency when I'm in such an unfamiliar and hectic environment.
It was kind of interesting to work with a person I'd just met, who basically only knew what I was doing right now for half an hour for five days straight. The first lesson I gave a bit of back ground as to where my strengths and weaknesses are, how long I'd been playing, and who my teachers have been. When he kept on asking me if I had played this sonata and that etude, I apologetically told him that my repertoire is like Swiss cheese--there's lots of holes in it.
Then we found out that Dr. M knew my current teacher, Dr. B. "We're like this!" he said, crossing his fingers. I suppose you can never have enough connections.
So, we did college stuff last week. The Beethoven sonata, Op. 28 (the first movement called Pastorale), we worked on the Notorious Fugue in G Major, and the D Flat Prelude Op. 28, No. 15 by Chopin. That was my end-of-the-week recital piece, and my assignment from Dr. M was to beat down on these huge loud chords with my hands moving towards the wood of the piano. I wasn't attacking them straight down with tension in my arms, but I was sort of in between, and once I got the hang of the airbag-deploying arm technique, I got a wonderfully scary-good quality sound out of the piano. I call the fugue notorious because I was trying to get the harpsichordy sound of Bach into a modern piano, but ended up putting accents where they shouldn't be. To illustrate what he thought I should do, Dr. M took my book bag. "Is there anything breakable in here?" he asked. "Nope." Then he swung it around from his wrist. "See how it takes work to get it going, but then it takes care of itself when it reaches the top?"
"Uh-huh," I said, hoping my copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee wouldn't come flying out of it at me.
So, I've been trying to metaphorically swing a book bag into a Bach fugue...and I'm happy to say it's been working.
Every day the Piano Academy would also have afternoon masterclasses, and every day with a different teacher. I played a little Beethoven bagatelle on Monday, and I oddly wasn't nervous at all to play for a dozen people and a teacher. Every kid that got up there he quizzed on the opus number and the birth and death dates of the composer of their piece. I think a few people were a bit intimidated, but I wasn't really. He was right that the three Coke machines in Buntrock Commons get cheaper as you go down the hallway. And he was also right that I didn't really "sell" the bagatelle, that I wasn't really excited about it. I tried to joke that I chose to play it that day because it was the lightest book to carry across campus, but he kind of ignored that. Oh well--it was partly true, though. He asked the others what they thought of it, and they said things like, "I think your dynamics are good, but you could have more balance between the hands," or "maybe a little less pedal." One of the no-nos was to call it a song, and not a piece.
"Songs have words, pieces don't." Which makes sense, I guess, but it took me the whole time up there to stop saying song. That's what made him laugh.
It was all good feedback that I tried to internalize quickly, and after being up there for 15 to 20 minutes, I'd say it sounded better than when I came in.
I would say that the first few days at the St. Olaf Piano Academy, I was greatly humbled by the talented kids and wonderful teachers that I spent time with, and I was desperately wondering whether I was really all that good, and whether I could become as skilled as the people I met. It was kind of overwhelming. The second part of the week I was feeling more curious, energized and encouraged and confident about developing my skills as a pianist. I had thought, "Music is my life, and I'm not going to give it up."
Pianists were the only ones who had to audition for the week, and not everybody got passed them, so I kept on telling myself that I wouldn't have been there if I wasn't a good pianist. I just had to keep on keepin' on.
