max aronoff viola institute 2007

As I noted in my last post, I’ve been performing and teaching this past week. I was taking part in a string camp that I, along with my then teacher Joyce Ramée, founded back in 1990. With two exceptions (to attend the Tanglewood Music Center in 1994-1995) I’ve taught and performed at the institute every year. My wife, cellist Heather Blackburn, joined the faculty in 1997 and has been there every summer since.

This year was a difficult one – the symphony season was particularly back-loaded with difficult and unfamiliar repertoire at the end of the season, and I did a recital and audition towards the end, so there was little time to recharge built in to the normally quite relaxed end of the season – going from May into June. My state of mind going into the summer would have been quite accurately described as “burned out”.

The teaching part of the institute is a mixed bag, since there are several divisions of participants. There are the violists, who are primarily high school aged kids who range from fairly inexperienced to quite advanced. There are the independent study participants on violin, viola and cello, who are in college or just at the beginning of their professional careers and looking for some fine-tuning and general advice on how to improve their technique and auditioning skills. Finally, there are the adult amateurs, who are there for chamber music coachings and range in age from their mid 30’s to mid 80’s. This year I did a few lessons for the pre-college violists, had one college level independent study student, and coached several pre-college viola ensembles and adult amateur chamber groups.

For my lone independent study student, I took the approach of letting her determine what she wanted to do during our four hours of lessons together, instead of taking a pre-planned series of lessons. I’m not sure what she wanted to accomplish there, but I tried to point out holes in her technique and ways to make her practicing more efficient, and also tried to convince her that the William Primrose edition of the Stamitz Concerto was not perhaps the most authoritative of editions. I’m not sure if she got what she was looking for from the week…

As for the performing part of the program, I played the Bloch Suite (1919) and a Hummel Trio for Two Violas and Cello on Tuesday evening, and then on Wednesday night I played the first public performance of Daniel Ott’s new work Camera Obscura for oboe and string trio. The Hummel went fine, but the Bloch and Ott were pieces that needed more rehearsal and preparation than I had the inclination to give them. It was a symptom of just how burned out I was (am) after this season: I was running on empty and just had only so much to give. The performances came off to the audiences, but I felt bad about my level of execution.

In the end, it was a week which had moments of fun and satisfaction, and even artistic fulfillment, but much was subsumed by the profound sense of exhaustion that I came into the week with. The rest of my summer until August 6th is free of any formal musical activities, and my goal is to try to recharge the batteries, work on some basic technical issues, and try to regain some enthusiasm for my art and craft.

More tomorrow…