Willpower

A month ago I wrote about a nearly disastrous page turn during a concert. Now, to balance the universal chi, I'll mention one of my favorites. (Favorite page turn? You are strange. I know that. Just listen.)

It was another holiday concert, a year ago last month. I have a strong desire not to leave out any notes on a page turn if I possibly can--besides, publishers like to put the piano interludes on the page turn so it is particularly obvious if you are leaving out one hand in order to get the page turned. Their theory is that the people with the free hands can't sing and turn pages at the same time, so the one person employing both hands to make music has to give up one of them to turn their page. I try to pretend I have a third hand and play everything on the page AND get the page turned. In this particular case I remember only wanting very badly to play the full chord on the next page. The next thing I knew, my left hand hand played the chord in the bass and instantaneously leapt two octaves to capture the right hand notes. I look down at my hand and grinned sheepishly as if to say "I didn't know you were going to do that!" This was also the concert at which I realized that if I put my music on both sides and left a spot open in the middle of the music stand I could see the reflection of the conductor in the brightly polished wood without the need to keep turning around to see the conductor who was off to my right and behind me. I put that one in the observation and problem solving category. The page turn is just a matter of will.

Things like that don't just happen, however. I practice page turns for efficiency and impossible hand jumps at every rehearsal. I never stop the choir if I play wrong notes, get lost, or my music falls on the floor, which is one reason why I was able to get through last month's debacle. Instead I pretend it is a performance and try to get out of any tight spot the best I can, learning to minimize mistakes and get back on track so fast there is hardly time to notice something was wrong in the first place. This explains why I am so tired after a rehearsal. It also explains why I can deal with adverse situations well--I get as much practice dealing with them as I can. Which means every chance I get.

I have to chuckle when I read exhortations from piano teachers about practicing slowly and fingering everything. It isn't because it isn't important. I've had teachers who insisted on that and I'm grateful. It's just that these days I can't possible do it anymore. There just isn't time in the (what is it? 60-odd pieces of music per week?) mass of material I have to deal with, all the concerts and rehearsals and church services and compositions, to sit down and studiously write in all the fingerings. Instead, my fingers have to think on the fly. They can do that, however, mostly because they've absorbed scale and arpeggio patterns, and thousands of other patterns from pieces I've played and memorized in the past.

In other words, I couldn't do what I do without a firm foundation. But for a professional musician there comes a time when you have to be so fluent that you can "leave out" those steps and still fly. It isn't a matter of choice, really. You just don't have the time anymore. Play a piece through once and it's time to hit the stage, practically. Your fingers better know what they are doing!

One of my teachers at the conservatory told me that I had a real luxury of time to prepare and that I should enjoy it while I could. Now I know what he meant.

Will power isn't a substitute for training. But here is what is interesting. It will often get you through a concert for which you were unable to adequately prepare. It will help to make your performance more interesting musically if you are so engaged in the moment that nothing can get in your way. It allows your instinct to have something to say, even if your premeditated, along the ground self hasn't had time to catch up yet. It is often improvised, the result of just wanting something to come out, and it focuses on the end result rather than on process. And yet, though the method is inconsistent, it is practiced. Just wanting it real bad isn't going to get you there. And yet, that may be what drives you to practice hard in the first place.

New Year's Eve at the Virginia (part seven)

We now return to our regularly scheduled rag sonata, already in progress.

The last of the three movements of William Albright's "Grand Sonata in Rag" is modestly entitled "Ragtime Behemoth" and it is certainly a monster. Mr. Albright lets us know that right away, with this reference to Liszt's "Dante" Sonata. Dante's story of obsession obsessed 19th century composers, particularly the bit about making a pact with the devil (turns out to have been a bad idea; who knew?), and Liszt begins his sonata with a musical illustration based on the tritone, an interval so bizarre to Medieval minds they referred to it as "the devil in music."

[listen]

It gets the point across that something sinister is going to happen, doesn't it?

Now for Mr. Albright's version, which is simultaneously more diabolical and more fun at the same time:

[listen]

We can tell right away we are dealing with something a bit on the wild side. A Behemoth is not really a very nice animal, after all.

Then the composer takes us on a wild ride through something that sounds like it was made for the vaudeville stage. It starts out nicely enough; then it turns into this:

[listen]

Writing at least 75 years after ragtime began, Mr. Albright has the luxury of mixing, matching, and generally amplifying various influences and voices that we now know as ragtime, stride, jazz, novelty, even various references to Hollywoodish entertainment. I present for your inspection this little number from later in the piece, which somehow reminds me of the Dick van Dyke show:

[listen]

This is a long way from Scott Joplin's idea of dignified ragtime--clearly he's lost control, here! As entertaining as it is, The Monster seems to have won. This may be a "Ragtime" sonata, but ragtime purists will have started scratching their heads a long time ago.

But it isn't as if Bill Albright doesn't know his history--in fact, he's practically giving us a pellmell rundown on the whole thing in just a few minutes!

One of the trends in ragtime was for a pianist to take a well-known tune and "rag" it. Making even classical tunes, popular songs, whatever you could find, sound like ragtime. I recently demonstrated this at a party to general laughter when someone called out the tune for "Amazing Grace." Being able to do this on the spot was kind of a way of demonstrating your "chops." Another thing that ragtimers and popular entertainers ever since have done was to make fun of serious music by ragging it. And so, for the second time in the same evening (the first was when the writers of "The Girl in 14G" worked in a reference to "Tristan and Isolde") on the program was a bit of fun at Richard Wagner's expense. Richard Wagner was a composer so serious that even other serious composers like to make fun of him, which tells you something!

Anyhow, listen to this bit from Wagner's "Ring" cycle--an ethereal progression of just four chords, followed by an outburst of horribly uncouth ragtime:

[listen]

This happens three times, and the third time Mr. Wagner appears to be very upset!

[listen]

In the end, a fairly jaunty, Joplinesque tune has us heading for home, and we get there with a bang!

[listen]

One of the problems with writing a long series that runs well into January is you have to get on with the rest of the schedule. Which means this is the end of the line, even if it could have used a little more of a wrap up. Thank you for reading!

The World Is My Parish

It is "Baptism of the Lord" Sunday this week, and as we usually emphasis water as a visual aid and a theme, I often play pieces of music having to do with water. This year I've finally gotten around to a piece from one of the books I was given while playing concerts in Taiwan some 12 years ago. The title of it was translated for me as "Flowing Water." I'm going to play it for you in a moment.

I've been struggling with the piece all week. It isn't that the piece is all that technically difficult--it isn't especially easy, though, so I had been wondering, coming out of a very busy Christmas season and generally exhausted for about 4 days after the New Year's Eve Concert, whether I'd be able to make a start on it soon enough to be able to play it. I found after a few days that the piece would probably be ready just in time, and the snow and extreme cold we've had in Illinois at the start of the week provided a chance to stay home and practice in a relatively stress-free environment.

The struggle has been more philosophical. I've been wondering whether the piece really works. The opening is beautiful, and some of the later ideas are wonderfully atmospheric, and grand, but I'm not so sure about the coherence. The harmonies, in particular, don't go where I want them to go, and, given the strange state of discontinuity between them, I've had occasion to wonder if this is simply a bad piece, and if I should simply not waste time practicing it. It may be beautiful in places, but if it doesn't hang together it won't get past my ears, or those of anyone else who listens for musical sense.

But there is the question of culture. The music was written by a Chinese composer. We don't know who because the individual names aren't listed in this "collection of Chinese tunes piano." Recall the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic games in which one could see how important it was to be a cog in an immense and well-synchronized wheel, and where individuals are not important on their own. When I was given the book I was told this is a part of the communist philosophy. Of course, that position was represented to me by citizens of Democratic Taiwan. The two countries (or one, depending on who you are talking to) do not have a cozy relationship.

It is not especially desirable to be critical of a culture you do not understand very well. And I have been wondering, given the sheer foreignness of this very Eastern piece to the ears of this very Western gentleman, whether the fault is with the piece or with me. It is certainly possible that this particular book does not exactly represent the high water mark of musical composition in China, and that, just as there are plenty of composers in this country who are able to compose pieces for the piano that sound pretty but don't go anywhere, that have ideas but are not able to develop them, or maintain their musical focus long enough to create a line, explore more than the most obvious possibilities, and ultimately create something that will engage the mind as well as the senses, there must obviously be a talented few in China and a number of also-rans. Not possessing more than a few books from this enormous cultural storehouse, how would I know?

In the other corner there is that possibility that I just don't get it. For the most part, my questions are about harmonic continuity. But is this of value in the culture in which it was written? Or do the ears perceive this differently?

Consider this: how different Mandarin is from English. In the first place, it is a language which is constructed of vast numbers of quasi-pictorial, labor-intensive characters, rather than an assemblage of 26 letters which are simply strung together in combination to make sounds. Mandarin is also a very musical language, in which the speaker often changes pitch to indicate difference in words which might otherwise be identical. Obviously the cadences in Mandarin are very different as is apparent to anyone who has heard a Chinese person speak English. But it is also, I think, not a property of Mandarin speech to necessarily fall at the ends of sentences, the way speakers of Romance Languages tend to do, causing a cadence (the verb "cadare," to fall) which indicates finality.

Those already represent some radically different fundamental assumptions about the way in which communication ought to happen. Consider how they might be carried into music. The pentatonic scale, which I am told is only a partially accurate representation of the notes used in much Eastern music, is, to Western ears, "missing" two notes that are not only an important part of a lot of Western music, they virtually drive most of it. It is those two notes which cause tension and which call for harmonic resolution. Our experience of having a need and driving toward a musical goal is not a universal assumption, nor a universal philosophy nor a universal experience of life.

This is not simply an "academic" question, for if I understand the piece differently, I will play it differently. It may be that if I am able to "resolve" some core issue at the heart of the piece's construction, I will do a better job of making it successful for my audience. It often happens that at one moment music seems muddled and poorly written, and the next, through a change of emphasis, perhaps of not overstating unimportant details, or of making a clear, bold announcement of the music's essential line of thought, that the same piece of music has suddenly been granted a much better position, as if its composer had instantly gained a great deal of mastery in the art of composition!

This approach is fundamentally different from that of past centuries. When Methodism's unintentional founder, John Wesley, said "The world is my parish" he may have reflected a concern for people far beyond his own piece of real estate. It was also an ambitious proclamation. And for years before and after, whenever Christians had dealings with China, or any other exotic foreign lands, they tended to assume that folks there were in need of what Westerners could bring them, because theirs was a superior culture with a superior understanding, not just in terms of having the correct religious notions, but with more developed ideas about industry and economy. Such an arrogance would not bother to consider whether, when at an impasse, the fault lay with the Westerner or the Easterner or both, or whether there was a lack of understanding involved, it would naturally be for the Easterner to adjust to the Westerner's views of the matter. Bred in such an environment, one should unquestionably assume that any standard of musical integrity to which a "foreign" piece of music did not cleave was the music's fault, not one's own. Thus, the lack of harmonic coherence must be because the composer doesn't know any better. Let us teach him (and add paternalism to arrogance).

It is, however, tempting to want to see a lack of harmonic sophistication at work here. One need not be limited to potential generalizations of other cultures. There are examples closer to home. I can't help thinking, for example, of pieces by Michael Praetorius, in which the final chord has nothing at all to do with the tonal framework but simply reflects local considerations--in other words, if the final note of the chant is an E, that is the piece's final harmony, no matter whether it was prepared in advance. Melodic and harmonic inflection in pieces of the Renaissance often do not go where our modern ears would like--and these were the professionals of their era. It is easy to think them crude by our standards. Popular musicians often think in chords, and allow several notes to move in the same direction, not thinking of the various notes individually, as with a polyphonic texture in which each voice moves separately. This is much harder to do, and there are few examples of composers who did it well, almost all in Europe, several of them named Bach! Most indigenous music throughout the world moves in blocks of parallel harmony. It can be argued that a knowledgeable composer with the ability to think in multiple voices might at times choose to composer in blocks of parallel harmony (Debussy) but it is just as likely that much music eschews this because it is just too hard for the untrained.

And supposing it is a lack? What then? Is there a way for me to play the piece which will cover up this shortcoming? Even if it is really no fault of the composer within their culture, if my ears cannot accept it, what then? As of writing this blog I am playing some passages such that I bring out the melody greatly, and leave the harmonic filling out much less, so that there is a larger dynamic difference than there would be otherwise. The harmonies are closer to overtones under this scheme. It seems to work.

It is a kind of musical transliteration, I suppose. But then, the composer has already modeled a bit of that. The music was written for a Western instrument--the piano was invented in Italy. While the title is in Chinese the musical expression markings are all in Italian. Beside the standard "Andante cantabile" and "molto riterdando" there are a few (from other pieces) that are quite amusing. My favorite features one of several terms that are completely made up--this one is also redundant: "allegro fastoso." I get the point, however.

I'll never meet this person and I'll never know how the music sounded to him or her, or how they played it. Although you never know. Youtube can be a glorious thing. In the quest for understanding, and for overcoming the natural parochialism of human beings, one frequently encounters things tantalizingly out of reach of one's understanding. The important thing, I think, is to keep asking questions.

New Year's Eve at the Virginia (part six)

I forgot something in my rundown of the concert on Monday. It's a little piece called "Nola" which I played after the intermission.

"Nola" was written in 1915 by Felix Arndt and dedicated to his then fiancee Nola. I first ran across the piece on the internet a couple of months ago and was considering it as something to play on the concert which turned out to be a very interesting choice.

Over the holidays I had the usual problem a pianist has when he is on vacation and there is a concert coming up: where to practice? (someone once wrote to me to ask about this, and my answer is here)

That somewhere turned out to be at a relative's house nearby. My wife has several members of her family in close proximity and one of them graciously offered her piano for my daily use, without which I definitely would not have been able to make this concert happen: I simply had not gotten more than a few days of practice on some very demanding pieces before the holiday. Even if I had played most of them before, three or four days of practice is not enough, not to mention what can happen if you don't touch the piano for a week leading up to the concert!

As I told the audience at the concert, my host had only one request: that I play a certain piece for her before I left. That piece turned out to be "Nola."

After I played the piece for her, I learned that the piece had been outfitted with words (not so unusual for a piece of that era), although she could only remember a few. I relayed this to my audience and suggested they sing along if they happened to know them; if not, they could just join in the part I knew: "I'm in love, so in love with NO----LA!" which I sang for them (you're lucky if you weren't there; you missed my singing). I told them they must be in fine voice after the singalong we'd just had: they laughed.

And then I played--this--for them:  (Enjoy!)

Nola    by Felix Arndt

And now, the exciting conclusion.

New Year's Eve at the Virginia (part five)

The annual New Year's Eve concert at the Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign, Illinois, isn't like anything else that happens all year. This year's concert packed itself into a trim two-and-a-half hours and contained choral and solo singing, instrumental solos and accompaniment, colorful commentary and jokes, audience participation, a pretty full house, and plenty of time to go celebrate the New Year afterward unless you just wanted to go home and sleep.

Before the show begins I play the Wurlitzer for 15-minutes. The Virginia is an old Vaudeville Theater which was built in the early 1920s and boasts a theater organ dating from the same time. Like the Theater itself, it had fallen into disrepair and been kept going on wings and prayers, or in the case of the organ, rubber bands and duct tape. The organ owes its continued existence to two gentlemen, the last of whom, Warren York, played the organ at this concert until the year before I started doing it. He was a beloved figure in our town, along with Dan Perino, who led the second half singalong into a couple of years ago. Both gentlemen have passed away. Warren York used to always wear red socks, which is why I wear them every year in tribute. Last year after he died the entire men's section of the Chorale wore them as well!

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any pictures of the Wurlitzer. I tried taking one myself--at the concert--you can imagine it didn't look like anything! The Wurlitzer has recently been restored by the Buzard Pipe Organ company of Champaign, Illinois, and looks and sounds great.

The concert is bookended by the 70-voice Chorale singing sets of a half-dozen pieces. In between, guest artists fill in with songs and instrumental music, and the audience gets to join in with the popular sing-along.

This year I was one of the guests. I played about half-an-hour of piano solo music of the lighter variety. In addition to the Grand Sonata in Rag which I've been discussing in other posts in this series, I played Gottschalk's "Union" and a little novelty piece called "Nola." One of our former college scholarship winners, Caitlin Caruso-Dobbs, returned to sing Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "My White Knight" from  The Music Man, and "The Girl in 14G." I was also the accompanist for her.. Since I double as The Chorale's regular accompanist as well, that meant that I was on the stage or in the pit for the entire concert, playing everything. Since the concert began at 7 and finished up at 9:30 (minus the 20-minute intermission plus 15 minutes before on the Wurlitzer and also 5 minute before the second half also at the Wurlitzer) I spent 2 and a half hours in concert. No wonder I'm still a little tired! I told someone backstage that I had set a new record that I wasn't planning to beat.

The Chorale usually goes "American" for this concert, and this year was no exception. We began with a very intriguing arrangement of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" by David Dusing, which was introduced by real-life radio man Jeff Bossert (who sings with us). We were then joined by a fellow named Josh on the harmonica, the first time either of us had collaborated with the other instrument. The occasion was Mark Hayes's arrangement of "Home on the Range." We then sang arrangements of "the Lonesome Dove" before concluding with a Gershwin pairing of "I've Got Rhythm" and "The Real American Folk Song is a Rag" which introduced Caitlin's rendition of the Berlin and the Rag Sonata. Fade to intermission, complete with a harmonica player strolling the lobby and later some more grand sounds from the Mighty Wurlitzer.

The sing-along always features music from the 30s and 40s, which was a little before my time, and the words are projected on glass slides that date back to the early days of the Theater. Sometimes they also have wisecracks on them.

Eve Harwood leading the singalong

I often have to go to Youtube to familiarize myself with these songs. This year I was at the airport waiting for my flight home from Dallas, listening to them through headphones from my Android and writing them down on a stray piece of staff paper. I notated the melody, hinted at the chord structure, and away we went on Tuesday night!

I should mention here that I had my second pleasant sing-along experience of the holidays season (the first was at the 7 o'clock Christmas Eve service) where a large gathering of people know the tunes well and are obviously enjoying singing them. The first thing you realize as organist is that you don't have to play the melody very much, and that you can even not play at all for a few beats here and there, creating a real accompaniment part under the congregants because they really don't need any help from the organ to sing out and even if you use a healthy selection of stops you are only going to be the junior partner in the proceedings, which allows for more creativity as you simply soak up the sounds and add a little pizazz at intervals. It was terrific! (I also remembered not to look down from the hydraulic lift!)

On the second half, after Caitlynn's singing and my other two numbers, the Chorale came back to sing more Stephen Foster--Oh! Susanna, attractively arranged by our friend Alice Parker. Then came a haunting version of "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" by Michael Richardson (I think he has Illinois ties). Ed Harris's arrangement of "Bound for the Promised Land" uses the original minor key version of the tune. Then we finished off with rousing renditions of "Who Are the Brave?" and "America, the Dream Goes On."

We finish the concert every year by holding hands (both out in the audience and on the stage) and singing "Auld Lang Syne." We sing it through once, then the organ modulates up a half-step (although this year I discovered a small cipher on the low f#--that's when a note won't stop sounding--so I went up a whole step instead. I hope Warren York's spirit won't mind!). This year the ceiling at the Virginia has been refurbished so there wasn't any "snow" as we got to the final chord. And yes, I managed to get a picture of the warm and fuzzy moment, even if I had to play 8 bars with one hand to get it:

It's not much of a picture, but the moment was pretty special.
------------

This year one of the funnier moments occurred when the Chorale had just finished singing their first set. The curtain came down quickly and our director, who was going to introduce the singer, was trapped on the wrong side of it. There I sat at the piano, alone in front of the curtain, while a pregnant pause threatened the production. So I played the moment a little, looking wistfully into the wings and giving signs of being very alone at the piano with nobody else on stage. The audience laughed and the show went on after a few seconds. Apparently it was convincing because I was asked later if that was part of the show! Somebody else told me they realized that I am really a ham!

onward to part six, which, I believe, is nearly the end. Thanks for reading this far. Seriously.

New Year's Eve at the Virginia (part four)

I've been telling you about the piece I played at the concert this week. Let me interrupt the flow of my narrative for a bit to tell you about the concert itself.

The Chorale is a community choral organization that began over thirty years ago as a handful of persons cobbled together to sing Christmas carols in the town of Mahomet, north of here. Still under their founding director, Julie Beyler, they've since transmogrified into a group of about 70 rehearsing every Sunday night and giving three major concerts a year (with occasional additions). The first of these is always the first weekend in November; the second is on New Year's Eve at the Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign.

I should see "us" instead of them, because for nearly six years now I've been part of the group. I serve as the accompanist.

The New Year's Eve concert at the Virginia is an experience like no other. Read on, I'll show you!

To start with there is the dress rehearsal the evening before. It helps if you have done a few of these before because they require some patience. There is no tech rehearsal except at the dress so everything is being done at once. The Virginia is a pretty dry theater so the singers have trouble hearing each other and the piano, I have trouble hearing myself, and the monitors are very far away. The piano is generally overmiced at first so you have the impression that if you were to suddenly strike a loud chord you would blow up the stage! There is occasional feedback. Eventually they get the levels set and the feedback mostly goes away. We have to try to ignore all this and just get on with the business of rehearsing.

In addition to the sound, there is a visual feast going on as well--they are trying the lights. One moment the stage is all green, the next it is all blue, and then suddenly you can't see anything for a few bars. We've all gotten somehow adept at continuing to sing and play without being able to see anything. I think my favorite memories in this regard are from the year pianist Jacquieline Schwab was our guest. She has to be the nicest person I've ever shared a piano with, and in her polite New England way she kept jumping up from the piano bench with her arm in the air and addressing herself to the sound booth in the back of the hall saying, "um, excuse me,....ah, I can't see the keys!" I'll try to give you a vague idea of what all this looks like:

I didn't manage to take any with the lights out. The only reason for the existence of these is that I've developed a talent for being able to play with one hand while taking pictures with my cell phone! But I did get one with the spotlight on me. Like the others, it is a very tame-looking representation and in no way conveys the full sense of disorientation that accompanies this sensory burst:

Some of the other challenges include remembering not to look down when the Wurlitzer organ is at the top of the hydraulic lift, and not tripping on the stairs in total darkness while hurrying from the organ (which is in the pit) to the piano (which is on the stage). One also needs to have faith that there is indeed an audience during the two-and-a-half hour show as most of the time the theater is pitch black--only the stage is lit--and one is addressing total darkness.

I'll tell you about the performance next time.

New Year's Eve at the Virginia (part three)

When I took the stage last night at the Virginia Theater to play William Albright's "Grand Sonata in Rag" I was surrounded by memories. Those of you who live in the environs of Champaign, Illinois, and particularly those of you who don't mind that I'm here making music among you may be interested to know that you kind of have Mr. Albright to thank for that.

I was a struggling graduate student wondering where I was going to come up with the astronomical sums of money needed for school. At the time I was finishing a Master's degree during my second year and getting ready to audition for the Doctoral program. Despite loans and despite grants, I couldn't keep up with the remaining out-of-pocket cost of school. I had own some piano competitions the year before graduate school and I think the government looked at my savings account and decided that if they took all of it the first semester it would magically grow back in time for the next payment three months later. I came really close to selling my piano. It had never left my parent's house anyway--I couldn't afford the cost of moving it three states away.

That winter Bill Albright came for a visit. He told us to call him Bill. He was informal, funny, knowledgeable, and of course, a celebrity to us. A composer from the University of Michigan whose colleague, William Bolcom, visited the U of I campus about a month ago, the faculty arranged a concert of his works, and some students got to join the faculty in performing the works. My friend and roommate was a saxophonist, and he arranged for me to play Albright's Sonata for Saxophone and piano with him.

I found a performance of that recently on Youtube. It is a wild piece, very atonal and avant-garde. If you heard the "Grand Sonata in Rag" I played last night you would never think those two pieces were written by the same person. But the man had many facets.

We opened the concert with it and it brought the house down. In the cavernous St. Paul's church the applause was particularly thunderous. Some students told us that it was one of those performances they would remember for a long time. The composer was very complimentary.

I think I had been too nervous about the piece for too long to take it all in. We'd had to put it together pretty fast; it was difficult, and besides, I remember thinking, at your degree recital you don't have Beethoven sitting in the front row.

Perhaps I was a bit over worried. At the coaching we had the afternoon of the concert he seemed eager to just let us make music. I had looked at the score with all of those adjectives over practically every chord in the fourth movement and thought "what a control freak!" and feared I wouldn't get everything just right. My friend at one point missed several notes in a run and Bill said seriously that he needed "more information" which is one of the phrases we'll always laugh about until we die. I asked him a few philosophical questions about his music and he was evasive. And at the dinner afterward he was genial and funny.

The day after the concert the chairwoman of the voice department charged into the Dean's office and announced that she really wanted Michael Hammer to accompany her 20th century art song class. I overheard, not because I'm a busybody, but because I happened to be working in the office at the time. I did work-study for a couple hours around lunch every day, answering phones and questions when the staff was at lunch, and until then I was in a little cubicle on the other side of a wall and cut off from the hallway by the as yet unopened window, so she didn't know I was there. The Dean agreed, and after I was accepted into the Doctoral program, they cobbled together a Graduate Assistantship--one that didn't exist yet. It included my teaching a remedial theory class to two sections of incoming freshmen in the fall and spending the rest of the year accompanying lots of singers for their lessons and recitals, and, of course, that 20th century art song class. There wasn't a lot of funding for graduate students at Peabody then, and I had been trying to get one of a very few theory assistantships but having no luck. On the third try, they made one up and I got to stay in school at the eleventh hour.

That chairwoman was Phyliss Bryn-Julson, who knew practically every major musical figure of the twentieth century and premiered many of their works, and that dean was Steven Baxter. I owe them big. My Doctorate wouldn't have happened otherwise.

And if I hadn't stuck around Baltimore for a few more years I wouldn't have developed a relationship with a young woman at my church who thought I was kind of cute and who I married once she graduated college. At which point she and I decided that the program with the funding and the flexibility that she needed to become an MD/PhD was right here in Illinois. And now you know the rest of the story.

William Albright's role in all this was, of course, indirect, and unsuspecting, but he got the ball rolling. I can't help think of this episode in my life when I play his sonata. I learned it a year later after checking to see what else he had written that might prove of interest. Phyliss Bryn-Julson heard me play it in recital and suggested I send the tape to Mr. Albright but I didn't think I had played it very well. The composer never heard it. He died only a year after I encountered him for the first and only time, much too young. He had been an alcoholic and he died of liver failure. It was a shock to us. I heard that his colleague across the hall had some harsh things to say at his funeral.

Such is the nature of memories. They are not all pleasant. But they make up the story of our lives. Particularly the turning points. So if you are not in despair at my being here  in Central Illinois you know how it happened. I'm certainly not sorry about it. I'm lucky to be able to play such music for all of you, friends, neighbors, relatives (my parents were in the audience last night). Year after year we go to the Virginia for a night of fun and celebration and it feels like home. I hope those of you in the audience and on the stage know how special this is, and how many people, present and past, made this possible. And as we got to celebrate Scott Joplin's Victory over his critics and the New York school of velocity I could feel all of us enjoying the music, together. Including the ghost of Bill Albright, hovering close by.

part four, coming up!