Blog from the firing line
These are messages from performances I have taken part in. Each time I tried to reach a way of playing that felt easy, involved, enjoyable. Sometimes I find it, but with different methods. Here is how...
Oct 2011
Schumann 3 in Geneva
An almost buried feeling of my lips not being in the right place - a bit too “pinchy”, or maybe too open, lower lip too far down so slightly set-in, blowing at the wrong angle. What a lot of information - it must take a lot of energy and worry to have all this in my head, even though it is held almost non-verbally. It is obvious in a physical sense but not analysed until I consciously did so. Anyway, the feeling is that if I play like this I would not be very flexible. It feels too stuck. That
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Così 11 &12
Listening, just being in the moment. Maybe all these techniques are just about this.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Così 10
Again, I just did the playing version of letting go. It works. But it also spreads the feeling of letting go, of things correcting themselves, to the body. It seems that if you start with specifics, other things fall into place, even a feeling of the interconnectedness of everything. As below, so above.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Così 9
Back to basics. It is nice to generalise, to expand to the limit, but it is draining. What I mean is, I am interested in accepting the things that seem unacceptable, because they have a deeper meaning than just “wrong”. So it is fun and meaningful to apply this to everything - my tiredness, my can’t-be-bothered-ness, my disillusion with all this accepting etc etc. And to think that this might be a way to enlightenment.
But tonight in Così I went back to basics. Forget the expanding of
Monday, 21 June 2010
Così 8
Trying to find a balance, a knowledge, a contentment. Not succeeding. Then I spent some time just standing. I was in a position that became uncomfortable. I let the body make it better. I got balance, knowledge and contentment in my physicality. It is often the best place to start for me. Now I could work on my head...
You can only consciously take in 15 bits of information per second but we are bombarded with about 15 billion. These all have some effect. You can’t possibly process it all, let
About this Blog
