Imagine you are going to a couple concerts over the weekend. The program for one is Bartok and Ligeti, the other is an all Berio program. How do you picture the audience? Like this, right?
And full of people like this:
(For those of you who don't frequent new music concerts, they are typically sparsely attended unless they are at a music school with an energetic and active composition program. The typical audience is made up of composers and performers who specialize in contemporary music, many of whom probably haven't bathed in awhile, or at least shaved or gotten a haircut. :) Just kidding...but the typical new music crowd definitely isn't the same as those who frequent the local symphony.)
Okay, now imagine you have just entered a concert hall, but you don't know what the program is. The hall is packed - every last seat is taken and you have to climb over a bunch of people to get to yours. There are many families with young children, groups of tween girls, elderly couples, and everything in between. What kind of concert are you at? Maybe a pops concert at the symphony where a popular celebrity will be making an appearance (hence the tween girls)?
Well, last weekend I did go to two concerts, one that was Bartok and Ligeti, the other was all Berio, but the audiences for both concerts looked like the second group I just described! Both concerts were sold out, or close to it, and the audience was made up of lots of families with young kids, elderly couples, tween girls, and everything in between. I've been told this is normal for France and Europe in general. What are they doing right in Europe that people of all ages and backgrounds are excited to hear new music and how can we start doing this in the US?
And the concerts themselves were amazing.
The first, the Bartok/Ligeti concert, was done in collaboration with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's dance company Rosas as part of the company's tour of their production called "Bartok/Mikrokosmos." The YouTube video is an excerpt from a documentary (?) about the choreographer and four of her early works, including Bartok/Mikrokosmos. It's very interesting - you should watch it!
The first piece, from Bartok's Mikrokosmos for two pianos, featured two dancers who, over the course of the work, portrayed the entirety of the conflicts, cooperations, celebrations, and tensions inherent in a relationship between two people. All in a microcosm. I was especially impressed at how the dance mirrored the internal workings of the music. For instance, at the end of a work, Bartok often presents an incredibly brief "summary" of the entire structure and plan of work, usually in the space of one or two beats. The dance ended in a similar summary of everything that had happened between the two dancers over the course of the work. Brilliant.
Next up was Three Pieces for Two Pianos for by Ligeti. Very minimalist, like Steve Reich. The full title of the 2nd movement is actually "Self-portrait with Reich and Riley (and Chopin is also there)." Really, really cool piece - I was glad to be introduced to it! No dancers on this one. I posted the first movement here, but you can listen to the 2nd and 3rd movements here and here. Not only was I impressed with the performance, but also with the audience and their reception of the piece. I imagine it would be a challenge to listen to for people that aren't minimalist fans like myself and yet you could've heard a pin drop in the hall the whole time. In the US, people would've been coughing, rustling, opening candies and cough drops throughout the entire performance. At the end, the clapping befitted the phenomenal performance - it wasn't just the obligatory applause you hear for new pieces on American concerts.
The last piece, and the reason I went, was Bartok's 4th Quartet, one of my all-time favorite pieces. I posted a recording of the final movement (my favorite) here, but you can listen to the whole thing on on YouTube if you want. Garth Knox, my teacher, was playing, and he had invited me (and gotten me a free ticket!). He was subbing in with the Duke Quartet, a quartet specializing in new music from the UK. Along with the quartet, which was seated at the back of the stage, there were four female dancers. I was incredibly impressed at their absolute coordination the entire time, even when they were moving very slowly with many pauses and no music was playing. They danced as one person, and yet each dancer had her own individual personality.
At the end of the concert, the audience erupted into applause and brought the performers back for so many bows I lost count. 10, maybe more? In Europe, audiences often show how much they liked something by clapping in unison (which is a little weird to experience, at least for me), which they definitely did at the end of this concert.
The all-Berio concert the next night was a similarly challenging program to listen to, and yet it was also sold out and the audience was just as appreciative as at the Bartok/Ligeti concert. This concert began with the Berio Sequenza for viola, which is the reason I went. I'm working on this now (see my previous post) and I've never seen it performed live. The violist was Christophe Desjardins, one of the best violists specializing in contemporary music in France right now. He was my coach at the Lucerne Festival Academy and I will be taking periodic lessons with him also this year. The performance was accompanied by an avant-garde film, but I paid absolutely no attention to it because I was so focused on Christophe the whole time!
He also played the last piece, Naturale, which is for viola, percussion, and the recorded voice of Sicilian folk singers. (The recording excerpt is with Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky.) He did both the Sequenza and Naturale entirely from memory, which was very impressive. In Naturale, there was also a single female dancer, another avant-garde film, and Christophe himself walked around while he played. It was fascinating!
That it was an outstanding weekend of concerts goes without saying. The performances were incredible and the combination of dance and film was an added bonus.
But, the biggest impression I was left with was of the audience. The Bartok/Ligeti concert was apparently sold out the next night, too, and the audiences at both concerts applauded and applauded when the concert was over. Why doesn't this happen in the US? Does it have to do with childhood music education? When I was a student at the Lucerne Festival Academy, I had a conversation with a woman on the bus after one of our concerts that included a premiere of a very cool, but thorny, work. She told me she was very interested in this composer's music and had enjoyed the concert very much and made some very insightful comments about the piece. I asked her if she was a musician and she laughed and said no. I told her that I was American and if that concert had happened in the US, hardly anyone would've been there and those that were would've all been musicians. She laughed again and said she couldn't believe it, that people wouldn't want to go hear a new piece performed.
Well, it was a pretty bumpy ride to start, but I'm finally all settled in Paris!
I arrived on October 18th and a friend of a friend (both Oberlin grads) was nice enough to let me stay in her room at the Cité Universitaire while I looked for a place to live. Due to their regulations, I could only stay a maximum of 10 days, so immediately I went to work trying to find an apartment. Finding a place to live in France is HARD. Some things I learned:
-When French people say an area is "popular," they mean it's ghetto and sketchy. I looked at two places in "popular" areas before I figured this out.
-In France, you can't evict someone during the winter once they've signed a lease, which means the process for renting an apartment here really difficult. First of all, it's not first-come, first-served like in the US. Here, you submit your dossier, which includes all sorts of financial statements and background information on you as well as your French guarantor. Oh yeah, you need to have a French person who will agree to pay your rent if you don't... Then, once the owner has dossiers from everyone who is interested, they pick the person they like to best to be their tenant. It's like buying a house. So be forewarned, those of you considering moving to Paris!
-French kitchens typically consist of two burners and a micro fridge in an area the space of a broom closet. Counter space? What, are you crazy? I love to cook so one of my requirements was an oven. Kitchens with ovens here are often called "American style kitchens" and they are few and far between!
-Many apartments don't have showers, just bathtubs.
-Paris apartments are tiny, but they use the space exceptionally well.
I looked at many places. All were either way too small, I wouldn't be able to practice there, they were in "popular" areas, or they smelled like smoke. I had originally planned to live with my friend Jenny, an American violinist who has lived here for several years. We quickly realized that not only are there hardly any two-bedroom apartments, but most of the ones that were available were way out of our price range. We looked at a couple places together (including a beautiful apartment that would've been perfect, but the owner needed our dossier right then and there and we didn't have any of the necessary paperwork yet), but I began to think I would have to find a place on my own.
Two days before I had to leave the Cité Universitaire (and had nowhere else to stay temporarily), I still hadn't found an apartment and was starting to get really, really worried. But in one of those strange twists of fate, I got an email from my good friend and fellow musician Danny Holt asking if I was in Paris yet and how things were going.
"Good, except I'm homeless," I wrote back.
He answered my email saying he had a friend who had a friend who had a place in Paris and they had just lost their tenant for the next 7 months. He knew nothing about their apartment (size, location, price), but would put me in touch with the owners.
Saturday morning, the day before I had to leave the Cité Universitaire, I took the metro up to Montmartre to look at the apartment Danny's friend's friend was renting. It was perfect. It had literally everything I wanted. The owners are musicians and they assured me I could practice here (yep, no complains yet!), it had a (tiny) oven in a kitchen that actually had counter space (and a dishwasher! and gas burners!). It was the perfect size for one person - not too big, not too small, with high ceilings that made it feel even more spacious. It was an overcast day when I visited, but the apartment still seemed sunny. Best of all, as I continue to discover, was the neighborhood. It's literally right next to Sacre Coeur. At the top of the street are 7 flights of stairs and when you arrive, huffing and puffing, at the top, you are right outside Sacre Coeur. You are rewarded for your efforts of climbing the stairs not only by Sacre Coeur, but by an amazing view of Paris (the picture below was taken on a really overcast day, but it's still quite the view!). The streets are are cobblestone and there are tons of little shops with meat, fish, cheese, vegetables, bread, shoes, clothes, etc., etc. Picasso and Renoir lived in Montmartre and Amelie was filmed here. When you think picturesque Paris, you think this neighborhood.
And there was another bonus: the owners are American, so no crazy Paris apartment rental application process. No dossier, no French guarantor. And no trying to negotiate a lease in French. I got very, very lucky and I wake up and go to bed grateful everyday. I love this apartment - it has literally everything I was looking for and more: the bookshelves are stocked with hundreds of books, many I've wanted to read for years and never got around to; the kitchen has everything you could possibly need and then some, including the nicest pots and pans I've ever had; it even had internet all set up when I moved in.
This top picture is the view out my front window one evening at sunset. The bottom one is the park at the top of my street.
The only snag was that I couldn't move in until November 10th. The next day, when I had to leave the Cité Universitaire, was October 30th. So I decided to go to Zurich where my boyfriend Ben lives. Not a bad trade-off! Plus, my plane ticket only cost 40 euros, even purchased at the last minute.
When I got to Zurich, I discovered that someone had gotten a hold of my debit card number and had charged over $1000 worth of who-knows-what to my account. In Greece. I still have no idea how it happened. American debit and credit cards don't work in many places in Paris because they don't have a special chip, so I hadn't used it at all since I'd left the US. Thus began my daily calls to Chase Bank to try to straighten it out. I have to say, though, as much as I support Occupy Wall Street, Chase was incredibly helpful and easy to deal with and the whole process of getting my money back was extremely painless and smooth. And FYI, you can call 1-800 numbers for free on Skype, even from Europe. Thank you Skype, thank you Chase bank.
Zurich was wonderful. Ben and I went up to the top of Uetliberg, the highest point in Zurich. On the way up, there were some strange reindeer lamp posts, but the view from the top was amazing!
The grocery stores in Zurich are all closed on Sundays, so on Saturday afternoon, all the meat that is going to expire in a few days goes on sale for 50% off. We got all sorts of strange stuff: wild boar, venison, ostrich. And duck breasts. I love duck and in Switzerland, it costs the same as chicken!
Besides my amazing apartment and the fact that I get to visit Switzerland on a regular basis, one of the best things about being in Paris so far has been my lessons with Garth Knox. I had my first lesson right before I left for Zurich and then I had three in one week when I got back before he left for China for three weeks. Garth Knox is one of the nicest people I've ever met, plus he's an amazing teacher. One of the pieces I'm working on is the Berio Sequenza for viola (you can listen to Garth Knox playing it here). This piece is nearly impossible and many people don't play it because they can't figure out how. It requires that you play fff (really loud) tremolo (very fast) on all four strings (not possible) for most of the piece. I couldn't figure it out how to do it without killing my arm, but at my first lesson with Garth, he broke it down into a series of steps for me. Once I had done those steps, I realized that I could play the fff tremolo over 4 strings without getting too tired. Amazing! Now I just have to practice...
I'm also working on his etudes, Viola Spaces. My two favorites, "Nine Fingers" and "Up, Down, Sideways, Round" are posted below.
You can watch Garth playing all of them at his website if you want. Or check out his YouTube page. There's a lot of really incredible stuff!
I play one etude each lesson for him and it's really fantastic to hear what he had in mind, both musically and pedagogically, while he was writing them. He's also written duets for all of them (the top part is the same as the etude with an added bottom part), so he plays them with me after we've worked on each one. They're even better than the etudes, believe it or not! They're not published yet, but they're in the works, so look for them down the road.
My other big challenge here is learning French. I speak Spanish and some German, but no French. It's always been so confusing to me why there are so many extra letters laying around that you don't pronounce in French! I was talking to Garth about this in my lesson one day and he said that in English, we pay attention to the consonants the most, whereas French is the opposite. French speakers pay most of their attention to the vowels, and the consonants don't matter as much to them. He said that's the single most important thing English speakers need to realize about French, but nobody ever tells you that. In English, when someone is having a hard time understanding, we enunciate the consonants more to help them. If you do that with a French speaker, you're only making it worse because they're listening for the vowels, not the consonants. Very interesting, and very helpful. I'm studying French everyday and I know how to say a lot more than I did a month ago. But I still have to resort to, "Je neparle pas français. Parlez-vous anglais?" (I don't speak French. Do you speak English?) 99% of the time. C'est la vie... :) Google Translate is my new favorite website.
Well, it's time for dinner and then I'm off to a concert. Au revoir!
Welcome to my blog about my year living and studying in Paris!
I hope you enjoy reading about my experiences as an American living abroad and I look forward to reading your comments.
So far, the theme of my life here has been lots of unknowns, hence the title of my blog. I don't speak French (although I'm learning). I didn't know for longer than was comfortable where I was going to live. I'm studying contemporary music here that is sometimes so avant-garde the notation itself is unfamiliar and figuring how to actually play it is another story altogether. I couldn't even think up a name for my blog! Je ne sais pas - in many, many ways. But I'm learning something new everyday and that, to me, is a big reason to live abroad, so I'd say so far my trip has been successful!
