Played Out: Why I Never Practice Piano Any More

People sometimes ask me if I "keep up" with my piano and "Do I practice anymore?" The answer is yes and no. Yes, I still play the piano. Do I "keep up" with it? I have two degrees in Piano Performance and spent 6 consecutive years of my life practicing between 4-7 hours a day on the piano (depending on what time in my schooling). So the first answer is "no," there is no way to "keep up" with that unless you a) do it for a career, b) have no life, c) have no children, or d) all of the above.

These pictures are from a different incident, but accurately represent my difficulty with piano practice at this stage of life.

Being a piano major in a former life presents problems though. Everyone that finds this out exclaims, "Oh, you should play something for me!" And I should. Except that the major pieces I have memorized and under my fingers right now are "Jumbo Elephant" and "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam." It's also troublesome because once you have learned how to really play and do a piece justice, it is very difficult to play in a way that is "half-baked" and doesn't really represent how the piece should or could be played (assuming that you devoted the time necessary to play it in such a manner).

Note the expression of relaxation and enjoyment on all-- well at least one-- of our faces.

I had a friend has been bugging me to audition for a local talent contest (yes, I got your email, Sarah) that even has cash prizes so I have been throwing around whether there is anything I could "pull up" for this. It then presents a dilemma: Do you try to scrounge up time to practice something and seize on an opportunity to perform again? Do you publicly play at a level that does not accurately represent your best? Or do you remember that you have children and 5 baskets of unfolded laundry upstairs and scrap the idea altogether?

Yesterday morning I had the brilliant thought that I should play the piano for a while for fun, as a form of "self-care" or "me" time. I waited until Addy and Jackson were sitting up eating breakfast and then I started to play a Mozart slow movement. Jackson immediately left his cereal to go soggy and took this perfect opportunity to climb on me and add a duet part. Recently I have been working with this er, rather, um, challenging child on being firm and sticking with boundaries, so I gently pulled him off my lap and told him that he needed to wait. He didn't like this ("But mahhhhhm, I want you!") but he was going to have to live with it. He climbed on me again and, yet again, I gently pulled him down and said he would have to wait.

The ideal way to practice....

 I pulled out the Schumann-Liszt "Widmung" and started to play through it. Jackson climbed up on the back of me and then held on to my neck and swung from there, laughing at what great fun this was. Again, I stuck to my boundaries and calmly set him down to the side and told him that he needed to wait. Finally, seeing that half-measures were not working, Jackson took a giant plastic sand shovel that I bought the other day and used it to knock my music down off the music stand and knock the piano lid closed. (Exactly how he did this I am not sure....) At that point, all calmness and boundaries flew out the window. I stopped playing and bellowed, "NO JACKSON!!!! NO! NO! DON'T DO THAT!!! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!! No toys on the piano!!!!!" After about ten seconds of bellowing "NO" and scrambling to contain myself, I calmly took him to time out as he sobbed giant tears. At this point, after liberally berating myself for losing my temper, I tried to remind myself that I am not a perfect mom and anyone has their breaking point-- especially when a giant plastic sand shovel is applied to the music rack of your piano.

I think I see simultaneously why I don't practice the piano very much anymore and why the successful Venezualan concert pianist Teresa Carreno (who had six children) reportedly kept a loaded gun on the piano. Um, yeah. That might work. I guess that explains a lot.


"I'm not a perfect person, 
there's many things I wish I didn't do. 
But I continue learning..." -Hoobastank

A Night Out

Recently Dave and I went on a date to the symphony. Dave had gotten me tickets for my Christmas present this year. We went to hear one of my all-time favorite pieces: Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto. To make it even better, Emmanuel Ax was the soloist. The music was absolutely fantastic and it was a great evening.

We went to dinner at a nice restaurant.

 I dressed up and was ready for a night on the town.

 ...with only one small catch.
It wasn't until halfway through the evening that I looked down and realized that there was one teensy detail that wasn't quite right...

"One of these things is not like the other..."

Oops. For future reference, don't grab dress shoes of the shoe rack without taking a closer look. I guess this falls under my bucket list "101 Ways You Know You're a Mom."

Crisis Averted

OK. Jackson's King's Singers Blackbird" fixation is starting to become a menace. Every time I open my laptop he starts saying, "Bird! Bird! Bird!" until I give in and play it for him. "Blackbird" has officially surpassed "Big Bird" as the ornithological specimen most requested by toddlers in this house.

I turned off the "bird" youtube video to try to actually do something on my laptop this morning. This brought on the requisite tantrum and screams from Jackson. It was getting ridiculous, so I brought out the big guns: "Jackson, do you want to watch Barney?"

"No Barney!!" he screamed, "Bird! Bird!!" (OK, I can't say that I blame him for that particular musical preference.)

In a last desperate plea I asked, "What about Curious George?" His screams instantly stopped and his face lit up. "George!"

Phew. Crisis averted.

The Christmas Program-- and the close of my holiday performances (phew)

Sunday night I finished my 6th and final Christmas performance. Phew.... I played the Hallelujah Chorus on the organ for a Christmas concert. While I am quite capable at playing the organ, I'm a pianist- not "an organist"- by profession, so playing difficult music on the organ is always a bit nerve-wracking. Regardless, I got through the experience mostly unscathed. ;)

Sunday was also our ward choir Christmas program (not to be confused with my Cantico Christmas concert which was last Friday). Up until even two weeks ago, the ward choir Christmas program was striking fear into my heart. Ward choir in so many ways is always a crapshoot: you don't audition the singers, nobody has to come, everyone in the ward [church congregation] is busy with families and other church responsibilities. You don't have a ton of rehearsal time to begin with. And then pretty much every week you have a different configuration of people and you never know who is or isn't going to show up. That's a scary thing to face as a choir director and an admitted control freak.

I knew up front that the Christmas program was going to come soon after I had a baby so I decided that I was going to pare it way down and just choose really simple music this year. And I really fully intended to.... But I looked and looked and I just didn't find anything that really inspired me or that I felt like singing. So finally I threw caution to the wind and just chose music that I really loved. Some of it was very difficult for a non-audition church choir (think Mack Wilberg/Mormon Tabernacle Choir arrangement...), but I had an accompanist who could play it so I decided to do it anyway. It was challenging music. And about two weeks ago, I was thinking, "What have I done? There's no way we're going to pull off this music. The program is going to be a fiasco and it's going to be all my fault for choosing music that was just too difficult."

We barely pulled together our Mack Wilberg arrangement in time for our stake [multi-congregation] Christmas choir concert last week. But we pulled it off, even with our two main sopranos being either sick or out of town. On Saturday morning we had our final run-through rehearsal to prepare for our church program on Sunday. At that rehearsal something magical happened... it suddenly came together-- all of it. People knew their parts and we started making music. It touched me in a way that many choirs that are much more technically proficient haven't. These volunteer singers were singing to share their love of our Savior and joy at his birth. Their hard work over so many weeks had paid off: the result was beautiful.

Ward choir has its quirks. And I have to admit that sometimes it drives me crazy. There are days when I think that I just can't do this anymore-- one more rehearsal with only 6 people showing up and I'm just going to lose it. But then there are days like Sunday, when I realize how blessed I am to be directing a group of singers who, while they do not have extensive musical training, come together and give their all to make music that shares the message of God's love for us.

And On We Go

Well, my concert is over and went really well. Four Christmas performances down, only two more to go.... One of my friends from the music department at BYU had as her facebook status update, "December is to musicians what April is to accountants." It is so true. The holidays don't really start for me until the 21st or so, when all of the Christmas concerts are done. I was hoping to have a cleaning marathon on my house on Saturday, but that didn't quite happen. I was hoping to do the cleaning marathon today, but Adelyn wanted to be held and nursed, so I was lucky to get the dishwasher loaded. Oh, to have a solid three-hour block to work on cleaning without getting interrupted! Maybe someday....

Concert Thoughts

Right now I'm sitting at my computer killing time while I am nursing Addy, so I figured I might as well write a blog post rather than wasting time.

There are only four hours and ten minutes until my Cantico concert tonight...... This isn't consuming my brain or life or anything. =] I'm actually not too nervous about tonight's performance. We've already done two smaller performances and they went really well. But regardless of that, I always get a little bit higher strung right before a performance.

Last night was our dress rehearsal and frankly, it was long and grueling. There were all kinds of logistical details to be taken care of and anything involving that many people just plain takes longer than you think it will. After being on a post-performance high all week, I came home exhausted. So many collective hours of work have gone into this performance...we've been rehearsing since September. And outside of rehearsal time there have been countless hours spent memorizing music, advertising, selling tickets, creating programs, coordinating everything under the sun.

Sometimes (like last night) I have moments where I think, "A person in my situation (with four young kids) has no business directing a group like this." It's easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of details that have to be taken care of, let alone the music. But somehow we all team up and make it work somehow. It seems like craziness sometimes, but I love doing it! Sometimes I feel like I need to pinch myself: I'm living one of my musical dreams- to have my own choir. It really is a fantastic group and I feel lucky to be a part of it, let alone one of the directors. It makes me grateful to live in the internet age, where I can do a lot of organization from my laptop while I nurse Addy (like I am right now). 

It's easy to get overwhelmed with all of the logistics of a concert like this (and believe me, I have). But the reason I do it is because I LOVE the music that we sing. It makes me so happy to have that music as a part of my life. But being able to sing and direct that music with an amazing group of musicians -- and to be able to share that music in a concert with a full house of people is just almost too great to believe.

Well, Addy's done nursing. Time's up. I need to go curl my hair and finish some other last-minute details. I'll come out on stage tonight looking calm and professional and nobody need know that the director who looks so confident and together onstage has a secret alter-ego as a housewife whose dishes pile in the sink and kitchen floor has several days-worth of crumb accumulation from all of her concert preparation. (Can we say "Saturday cleaning marathon, coming up"?)

Here's to music!

A Chinese Garden Festival

Sundays... a day of rest... in theory, at least. But not in practice, at least if you're a musician. I love Sundays, mostly because it is the one day that Dave usually doesn't have work and we get to see a bit more of him than we usually do. But if you judge the success of a Sunday by the proportion of rest actually obtained, then my Sundays would be a miserable failure indeed.

Let's take this Sunday. The choir was singing in church, which means that we meet at 8:15 to run through the piece at the church. I am not a morning person, true, but without children 8:15 is a reasonable time to meet for a pre-church practice. But when you add kids (especially a nursing baby) into the equation, an 8:15 rehearsal becomes a figure of impossibility equivalent to trying to match my weight with a supermodel's or my figure with Barbie's... it just ain't gonna happen. But the perpetual optimist in me really believes that if something needs to happen I will just step it up and make it happen. And I probably would have if I didn't have kids. I came really close. I was ready. Jared and Camryn were ready. Dave was ready to take another car with Jackson later. But then Adelyn wanted to nurse. Now. (No ifs, ands or buts.) And Jackson had a fever, so there was the question of what to do with him for church. I succumbed to the gravitational pull of my kids' interminable needs and ended up walking into my 8:15 rehearsal at 8:28, hanging my head in embarrassment and mortification.

Then I was on to substitute for playing the organ for church. So after a mad dash to find someone to sit with the kids I rushed to the organ and tried to use the few minutes of prelude to run through the hymns I needed to play for the meeting. (This is all the more irritating because I had some beautiful prelude prepared from the wedding I played for the night before. But my limited practice time for the wedding- most of which happened with Adelyn on my lap nursing- did not allow time to prepare the hymns for the meeting, so I was left winging it.) Luckily my kids were abnormally well-behaved. At the end of the meeting Adelyn was still asleep, so I took the liberty of skipping Sunday School to practice the hymns for next week (when I am on to substitute again).

Between an interview and other miscellaneous stuff I didn't get home until an hour before choir. Mad dash to feed kids, pick up house and figure out what is most essential to work on during choir.... Big stress out as I realize how little time is left until the Christmas program... By the time choir is done and cleaned up, most of the afternoon is gone. 

At this point Jared, handed me an important-looking packet of papers in his handwriting. He had issued me an invitation to "a Chinese Garden Festival" taking place at our house that very night! (I had lent out a bunch of greenery from our house as well as some white Christmas lights for the wedding the night before. Jared arranged the greenery, flower arrangements, etc. with white lights on them in our living room, thus creating the backdrop for his "Chinese Garden Festival." Why Chinese? I'm not sure... I guess it sounds more exciting than a just plain garden festival.) Complete with the invitation was a schedule of events (music, games, dinner, dancing, looking at lights, treat) and a list of music asking me if I would play and requiring my signature. (Even my own son can't invite me to an event without asking me to play for it. ;])

I was more than a little bit worn out by that point, but he was so excited about it that I didn't have much choice but to accept the invitation. So at 5:00 pm, Dave and I showed up to the Chinese Garden Festival. We walked around to look at the lights (it didn't take long), we sang songs for our music and then we all played Chinese Checkers before making dinner. After dinner we sang a few more songs, watched the kids dance and had a treat.

So I never was able to squeeze my nap in on Sunday. But I have to admit that despite the absence of nap time for mom, I had a good time. And I went to my very first "Chinese Garden Festival." Beat that, all you nap-takers. =]

How Can I Keep From Singing?

Last Sunday we started ward choir again after my break to recover from having a baby. We got off to a bit of a rough start. We didn't have a lot of people and it was just kind of a tough rehearsal- I didn't feel like we accomplished a whole lot or like people enjoyed it. Today it was Sunday and again, the time had rolled around for choir. While ward choir director is one of my favorite jobs in the world and I LOVE it when things are going well, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with choir. I LOVE choosing music, directing the music, having rehearsals, the friends I make at rehearsals, putting together performances, teaching people about singing, and so on. But trying to recruit and get people to come is the bane of my existence. I HATE recruiting for choir. Mormons are notoriously busy with multiple callings, small children, extended family, community activities and such. Trying to convince people that they can find time for one more thing, especially on Sundays, can seem like an impossible task. All along my hope with choir has been that if I try and work hard enough and long enough, eventually we will get a consistent group of people to come and we will be able to not just sing a song or two for church, but progress as a group and get better... that we will be able to make beautiful music that expresses our love for the Lord, brings the Spirit into the meeting and touches people's hearts. But whenever we start to take steps toward that, it seems like things fall apart and we go back to having a "choir" of 6 or 7 people. I try not to take it personally when people don't come, but it is hard not to....

For a while I have been getting discouraged with choir because it seems like we have had more steps backward than forward and choir has been getting smaller, not bigger. Today I decided that I needed to at least make an effort to recruit for the Christmas program and call to remind people. (Note: I would rather get teeth pulled than have to call and try to get people to come to choir. It makes me extremely uncomfortable and nervous. And I take it personally when they say no.) I started calling people and the very first person I called said, "You know I love choir but I just need to spend that time with my family right now." What are you supposed to say to that? The next two people that I called were also "no"s. At that point I was about ready to just ask to be released from this calling. Why do they have me do this if all I am doing is torturing people, tearing them away from their families and making them suffer through one more Sunday meeting?

Regardless of my inauspicious start, I kept calling people and got a few "yes" responses. I quit calling people when Dave called me to eat lunch. He had cooked bacon, toast and omelets for lunch. (Did I mention that I love this man?) After filling my stomach with delicious, salty, greasy food I felt much better about life.     

By the time we finished eating it was almost time for choir, so I started getting chairs out and getting the music ready. At a typical choir practice, two or three people arrive by 2:05, with another couple coming by 2:10 and a few more at 2:15. Today we had 6 people here by 2:00. By 2:05 there were 14 people. And more and more people kept coming. We had 25 people at choir today, including some brand new people who I didn't even call! We had a great rehearsal, working on a piece to sing later this month and a couple of songs for Christmas. The choir sounded great! We had fun! We made progress! I love this calling! Someone from the choir had volunteered to bring treats so people stayed for a few minutes afterward to socialize and eat treats. It was an all-around great rehearsal and great day.

I always worry that when we have a good turnout like this people will assume that this means that they aren't needed and will stop coming (this has happened to me several times). But if they keep coming, think how awesome it would be...

Getting Through Grunt Work

I've been avoiding my blog recently because of my "must catch up"syndrome. I want to finish some posts about our Alaska trip and some of our summer fun before it is part of the way-too-distant past. But that will have to wait....

I really enjoy when my kids get out of school for the summer. I love the freedom of the schedule, the extra time together, being able to sleep in a little, going for fun outings, etc. But I think it really is about time for school to start again. We've done a lot this summer, but as the summer (and my pregnancy) progresses, my energy is waning. The kids are playing more Wii, we are eating more junk food, whining is getting louder, bedtimes are getting later and healthy home-cooked meals are getting rarer. The thought of having more structure to our schedule is actually beginning to sound like a pleasant change.

It doesn't help that the past few weeks I have been working on several projects for the choir that I assistant-direct. I (and the other behind-the scenes-people) have busy been preparing for auditions, scheduling a venue for our concert, ordering music and getting ready for our fall season to start. The unfortunate lot fell to me to make rehearsal CDs- mainly because I was the only person who had the equipment and know-how to do it (the person who used to make them left the group). So I have been spending hour upon hour painstakingly recording each part of each song, re-recording to fix mistakes, re-arranging the volume (so the part is louder than the accompaniment), exporting the files as mp3s, making a playlist to burn, burning the CDs one by one etc., etc., etc. (In fact, I am writing this post to pass time as I burn CDs.) In short, I have spent the last two weeks of my summer wasting weeks of sunshine on hours of nasty grunt work while my kids' brains are shriveling from too much TV. (To be fair, part of this has to do with exhaustion from pregnancy as well as the typical build up of household stuff on top of the choir tasks.)

Last night we finally had the auditions. It was very encouraging after weeks and weeks of work for what was beginning to feel like a "hypothetical" choir. We had a good turnout and some really great singers to choose from. It was great to see the returning singers at callbacks and enjoy the feeling of being amongst old friends -- some of them I haven't seen since our concert in May. But most of all, once we started singing and this actually became a "real" (vs. hypothetical, "being planned") choir, I remembered why I bother to do all this grunt work up front. There is something magical that happens when you get a group of good singers together and create music. There is such a rush of excitement and energy that comes from being with other people and working together to create something beautiful. Even though I'd had a busy, exhausting day, I felt a renewed burst of energy and enthusiasm for life.

It's always been a struggle as a mom to find the balance of caring for my children -and their practically insatiable demands of time and energy- with taking care of my own needs. Too often it seems that by the time I'm done taking care of only some of my "have-to-do's", my energy is sapped and doing anything interesting, fun or stimulating for me seems like way too much effort than it is worth. My own needs sometimes get pushed so far to the back burner that it's hard to even remember or think of what they might be.

I haven't found any magical answer. Finding balance is just plain difficult and I expect that it always will be... at least for the near future. But when I do get an opportunity to do something that helps me remember or resurrect the non-mommy side of myself, it makes the other responsibilities I have seem like less of a burden and more just like one of many facets of my life.

Why I Love Choir

Choir is one of those things in life that I am passionate about. How that came to be is a bit of a story.

I began singing in our church choir as a 10-year-old (my mom was the accompanist and I got dragged along). As a teenager I continued to sing and often played for choir. As a music major in college I was required to take 6 semesters of "ensemble credit." Given that pianists don't get to play in orchestras, I didn't play jazz, and "Keyboard in Ensemble" was the most horrendous time-sink 1 credit class from you-know-where (so I didn't want to take that any more than the two required semesters), I wasn't left with many options. So what was left to fill those credits? You guessed it, choir. So my love affair with choir began out of a sort of necessity. (As so many things in life do, I suppose....)

I arrived at BYU and decided that I was going to audition for Concert Choir. Mack Wilberg was the director of Concert Choir at the time and I recognized his name from a duet book that I had played as a kid and was like, "Cool. Yeah, I want to sing in choir with him. That sounds like fun." I am embarrassed to admit that at the time I had no idea that he was a rock star of the choir world. I also had no idea that since I was home-schooled through high-school and did not have any experience singing in anything other than ward choir, I basically had no chance (although I have to insert that had I gone to high school there STILL wasn't any choir at our local high school thanks to California budget cuts, so I still wouldn't have had any chance... but I diverge).

So I did the general audition and was politely told to try for Women's Chorus. By this time I had figured out that choir at BYU was a big deal, so I was happy to go for Women's Chorus. I had a great audition, the director loved that I was a piano major who could play for her, I made callbacks... and I didn't make it. I was kind of sad because two of my roommates did make it and I really wanted to be in it with them (both of them had sung in their high school's elite choir for several years). But I had to move on: I added non-audition choir for my ensemble credit and had to beg my way in because I was a girl.

Fast forward to winter semester. I was still irked at not getting in to Women's Chorus, so I tried out at mid-semester. I had a great audition, the director was really positive. I didn't make it. Another semester of non-audition choir for me. By this time I felt that I had done my time, so the next fall I was pretty confident that I would get in to Women's Chorus. I auditioned, it went great, the director was positive, I made callbacks... and I didn't get in. At that point I was stinkin' sick of non-audition choir and quite irritated. So I didn't take ensemble that semester- instead I took voice lessons. Winter semester of my sophomore year I auditioned for Women's Chorus for the 4th time and I finally made it in.

I still remember my first day of Women's Chorus. I took my seat and the director had them sing through a song they had sung the previous semester. We sang Aaron Copland's "Zion's Walls" and the sound just swept through me. I was hooked. In truth, I was hooked long before that. At one of the first university devotionals of my freshman year, BYU Singers sang a bunch of songs from their tour the previous summer. I had never heard a choir sound like that and I vowed that I was going to sing in that choir (or at least Concert Choir) before I left BYU. And so my endless string of auditions began.

Singing in a BYU auditioned choir was one of the highlights of my University experience. I learned to really listen- to myself and others, to work together with other musicians and to be sensitive to musical nuance in a way that I never had before. I sang in Women's Chorus for 3 semesters. The happy end to my story would be to tell you that after all my determination and hard work I achieved my dream and finally was selected to sing in Concert Choir or BYU Singers. Which would indeed be very happy, except that it isn't true- I never did make either of the top choirs. I did make callbacks for Concert Choir with Dr. Wilberg in the fall of my junior year, but didn't make the final cut (it was his last year at BYU and record numbers of people auditioned). My senior year... let's just say it didn't happen. Why it didn't happen is a different story which will have to wait for a different post, but it involves fate and a boy.

So my dream didn't exactly work out how I had hoped. But I had an amazing choir experience which ignited a lasting passion for choral music. I had the chance to sing with Dr. Wilberg and Dr. Staheli (the director of BYU Singers) with the BYU combined choirs and learned so much from the short time I sang with them. I also had the chance to study conducting with Dr. Staheli later as a grad student. And my choral experience didn't stop when I left BYU. I sang with the Valparaiso Singers in California, with the Portland Mormon Choir and now I am the co-director of a new group called "Cantico: The Portland Chamber Singers."

So why do I like choir so much? What I love about being a musician is the chance to experience a musical work first-hand: to be in the driver's seat with the rush of sound in your face, to be part of it as it happens. The piano is my main instrument- and I love it- but it is very solitary. And it takes years or even decades of study before you can play really great works on the piano. With choir, yes it takes study and discipline, but it doesn't take nearly as long to get to a level where you can participate in really great music. In choir there is also the fun of working with other people and the challenge of surrendering self to the group: you have to come together as a unit and listen to each other as much as to yourself.

So to sum it up... I really love choir. And this was a really long rambling way to say that.

[Shameless Plug: If you like choir, you should come see our concert on May 16th: www.canticosingers.org]

Professionalism

Grrr... I've been writing this post and trying to finish it for over a week. I'm posting it... FINALLY!
...
Since October I have been assistant director and a singer in a choir that was organized by one of my old friends from school: a small group of twelve people getting ready to sing a short a cappella Christmas concert at a local Cathedral Christmas festival thingy. Most of us are former singers in a college choir or some other active musical group who have had to move music to the back burner for a while because of other pursuits (like children, families, jobs and otherwise "real life"). So basically the idea is that we are all trying to get our musical fix crammed in between the overwhelming busy-ness of everyday life. We have been rehearsing on an evening for 3 hours every other week, preparing for this Christmas festival and a couple of other minor gigs.

When my friend first called me and invited me to participate I really wasn't sure if I had time for another commitment. Much as I love to sing in choirs, I'm already directing the ward choir and can hardly get my laundry folded within a week of it getting washed, let alone have my brain in place to be second in command for a choir that actually wants to try to do challenging repertoire. But the practicing every other week was the clincher for me- I decided I could handle that small of a time commitment and should at least give it a shot.

And so I did. It has been so great to be singing and directing choir again (much as I love ward choir, it's not exactly the same thing...). I didn't realize how much I missed singing until I had it back again. A few weeks ago we had an amazing rehearsal. We have one piece that my friend is directing that is a lot harder than the others. We really buckled down to work on the difficult passages, fix the tuning issues and lock the piece in to place. It was an intense session, but the result was so worth it: there is something amazing that happens when you get a group of people together, you set aside egos and just work to be completely unified and in tune with the others in the group.

But, two weeks in between rehearsals is a long time... and by the last rehearsal before our first concert things were rough again and I was getting flustered. We had very little time and a lot to cover. It didn't help that I had had a crazy week with different commitments almost every single night as well as rehearsals during the day on some days and I had raced off that night after getting a babysitter with nary a moment to gather my thoughts. We were rehearsing one of my pieces and came to a spot where the singers wanted to know what I wanted: did I want a pause with a breath or to continue straight through. A fair enough question... and as I stood there, in front of everyone, on the spot, I didn't have the faintest idea what the answer to that question was. I was sure that I had an opinion- or would have one if I had time to think about it- but at the moment all I could muster was to stammer, look stupid and say, "Uh, you know what, I really don't have any idea right now."

In retrospect, this wasn't such a very big deal, but at the time I felt mortified. I went home bemoaning the fact that now that I have children I have lost my brain and all of my former professionalism with it. What is it about having children that makes it so impossible to be organized, well-prepared and "together"? At what point did I go from being the uber-professional piano teacher to one who gets stressed out with 2 students? But I digress....

We did get through our rehearsal and even our first two performances. On the first Saturday of December we had our first performance at a festival that displays Nativity scenes. Our first piece is a processional that we sing as we walk in. This went quite smoothly until I realized that in a few bars I was supposed to deftly move out in front to the music stand, conduct the last few bars of the piece and be in place to conduct the choir for the next piece. This in itself was not unsettling except for the fact that the music stand, instead of being a few feet away where it was when we rehearsed, was down in the audience in a row of benches-- not exactly a place to which I could deftly slip out. No matter, I slipped out the back of the group, went down the steps, got into place, laid down my music and lifted my arms to the choir... and for some reason unbeknownst to me (and perhaps to the singers for that matter) at the end of the section they stopped... mid-song. It was just before the ending and maybe they thought I was gesturing for them to stop. So we had an unplanned and uncalled for and um, quite dramatic pause before I was able to bring them in to sing the final lines of the song.

Ignoring that and a few other minor glitches, the performance went quite well. It was actually a relief to get through a full performance and to realize that we didn't completely fall apart if something unexpected happened. There was one piece where one section had a botched entrance and I was afraid we were going to lose it- but to my amazement we held on, pulled it together and finished the song well. Maybe that is what professionalism is all about, right? Taking the funky things that inevitably happen, making the best of them and keeping things going as smoothly as possible.

At least that is what I try to tell myself. But part of me still struggles with feeling like everything I do is half-baked, by the seat of my pants. It's hard to feel professional and "together" when I sit down to work in my office -which I have neatly organized several times- and cannot even find a pen, let alone the floor (which is buried in piles of paper scraps and sundry bits of litter from several uninvited "guest artists"). I like to plan and prepare and feel in control, but too often parenting makes my life feel like a series of reactions to unplanned events and catastrophes. And did I mention interruptions? I can't start a project- let alone finish one- without being interrupted, usually several times. I feel like a can hardly keep a coherent train of thought sometimes amidst all of the environmental noise, chaos and alternate demands for my attention.

So is it any wonder that sometimes I feel less confident in my artistic and professional abilities than I once did? Is it any wonder that despite wanting to teach piano again, the thought of having a piano studio fills me with dread and trepidation?

Part of me says that this is a natural consequence of parenting- that this is just a phase and season in life that requires patience and will eventually pass. But part of me screams in rebellion: "NO!!! I'm really not a slob and I can prove it! I CAN BE ORGANIZED!! I can be neat and tidy! I could get things done, once upon a time..." But part of me secretly wonders, "Maybe I really am I slob. Maybe I'm just using this as an excuse and a cover to protect myself from having to face my own incompetence." Maybe it's too late to be up blogging. Or maybe I'm really just annoyed with my printer and that is making me wax woeful about my life.

(Can I just say that I am really annoyed that I have been trying to print a document for 30 minutes and despite the fact that the printer is plugged in to the computer and the computer shows that the printer has been sent the job the stupid thing won't print! Do you know how many hours of my life have been wasted by malfunctioning or half-functioning computer equipment? And crappy software that is slow and doesn't do what it's supposed to do? Can I just say that I should probably stop complaining and go to bed?) =]

Music Mondays

Did I ever mention that I dread Mondays? I know I'm not alone in this sentiment, but I really do dread the start of the work week. Getting Jared on the bus at 7:23, helping Dave get out the door, trying to simultaneously feed or hold Jackson during the whole ordeal. With our particular schedule, the weekends are the main time that we get to spend time together as a family, to relax and enjoy being together. With the arrival of Monday morning we all get sent off our different ways and I am left to pick up the rubble from the weekend. There is such a change in feeling from the weekends to weekdays that I often wake up with a "Where am I? What have I done? What's going on?" panicky feeling. Laundry is piling up, we're out of bread and on our last gallon of milk. Do the kids have any clean clothes for school? What's going on today that I'm forgetting?

This week I am accompanying a singer and a flute player for a concert on Friday. I was asked to play in this same concert as a soloist back at the beginning of the summer. I said yes without realizing how hectic the summer would be and how long our home would be on the market. When the beginning of September arrived I still hadn't picked a piece, let alone started practicing. I was starting to have my recurring, "I have a piano jury this week and don't have my pieces memorized yet" dream again. I finally decided that I wasn't going to be able to pull it off, so I called back and bailed. This shouldn't have been so hard for me, but I have been going through a musical identity crisis of sorts. I have been developing a musical inferiority complex. It doesn't help that this concert was for the American Mothers Association, so everyone else playing in it is a mom. Is everybody just better than me or smarter than me that they can figure out how to keep up with their music and have a family at the same time? Most of the people I know now have never even heard me play the way that I used to and I sometimes doubt if I even can of it anymore.

In the course of September, I was called by two other people who are playing in the concert and asked to accompany them. Today I had my first rehearsal with the flute player. She told me over the phone that the piece she selected was easy and probably sight-reading for me (definitely a plus, given my current schedule) and she would mail me a copy. I procrastinated practicing it until this past week. After starting to work on it, I got really irritated. The piece wasn't really easy at all and had a second section that is supposed to be played pretty much as fast as you possibly can. This is supposed to be easy? Maybe easy for you? Grrr. At the rehearsal today, it turned out that she had changed pieces and this wasn't the piece that was "sight-reading." (OK, maybe I can feel a little bit better about myself.)

To be completely honest, I was intimidated to meet her. She has her doctorate in music performance, has kids, has a music school, etc. and at least in my mind, she seemed to personify "balancing it all" in a way that I just haven't figured out. I prepared to meet this terrifying person, sure that she would see that I can't really play anymore, but she turned out to be very nice, friendly and quite happy with how I played for her. Sometimes I guess I just make things harder than they need to be.

A Ray of Hope

Today was our second week of ward choir since our break for the summer. And for the second time, WE HAD A REALLY GOOD TURNOUT!!!!!!! We had over 20 people!!!! Not to sound excited or anything, but there may actually be hope for ward choir. One of the pieces we are working on we started before summer break, but we just limped along for weeks, trying to do the best we could with 5-7 people. Now we are cruising along, making great progress. The choir sounds good, it is fun, the music sounds great-- I even have an official accompanist now, after a year of directing the ward choir (and actually not just one, but TWO, one of whom is a fabulous organist). I am in heaven!

At the end of the summer I was dreading the start of choir and the endless pleas and petitions to get people to just TRY coming, even just ONCE. I was dreading getting my house ready and the music ready and spending half my Sunday morning only to have a handful of people show up and to never know if we would have enough people to sing when we were scheduled. I felt like I had tried everything I possibly could, but to no avail, so I decided to make one last-ditch effort. At the beginning of September I decided to try the Sunday-School answer to a problem: I fasted and prayed. I know that may seem like an odd thing to fast about, but I was pretty much emotionally at the end of my rope with choir. Not to say that I haven't done other things like emailing and calling too, but I've emailed and called before and not gotten 20 people. So, call it what you will-- an answer to prayer or a fortunate coincidence-- something is different. And as for me, I probably won't wait a whole year before I fast about a something that's bothering me next time. =]

In other news, after making it to church in the middle of the opening song last week (YES!!! A new early record for us!!! That shouldn't be so hard when our church is at 2:00 pm...), today we were back to arriving just in time to wait in the foyer until the end of the sacrament. It really bothers me to be late to church. It bothers me even more when we finally get inside the chapel and it is a missionary farewell and every single seat is taken so the deacons have to set up new seats for me and my kids while I stand there at the back of the cultural hall, squirming inside as I'm sure the bishop and high council speaker can see me and must be thinking, "Who is that family in the back that is coming in so late? Good grief, the meeting's at 2:00 pm, for crying out loud! Could you please be a little louder setting up those folding chairs?" It really does bother me to be late for church. I think being late shows a lack of reverence, a lack of planning and misplaced priorities. So you would think if it bothered me so much I could figure out how to not be late week after week. I don't have an excuse. I know that if you really try hard enough and plan ahead and if it's enough of a priority you can CHOOSE to be on time. At least in theory....

In our efforts to make it to Sacrament Meeting before the closing hymn, Jackson didn't get fed solid foods before we left. Even the cheese stick and cheerios I fed him during church wouldn't cut it- he was still hungry. Luckily, I had some baby food in the diaper bag, so during Sunday School I headed to the mother's lounge where I did my best to hold Jackson on my lap and feed him pureed peaches without adding lovely orange accents to my Sunday outfit.

I made it back for the end of Sunday School and Relief Society. I took my spot at the back with another fellow pre-nursery mom. Anytime I set him down to play Jackson crawled as fast as he could for the front of the room. After a couple of times of this I resigned myself to a squirming, flailing baby on my lap. During Relief Society, I leaned over to my friend and whispered, "If only we had a Relief Society play-yard back here at the back of the room to keep kids that crawl contained." She then had a brilliant idea: we used folding chairs to make a makeshift "play-yard," fencing Jackson in. This worked fabulously for a few minutes until Jackson pulled himself up on one of the chairs and discovered that they made a beautiful, resonant sound when you whack the seat (yes, he does have musical genes). I spent the rest of Relief Society trying to prevent an enthusiastic re-enactment of "The Little Drummer Boy."

We concluded our Sunday with a lovely formal dinner of Waffles, sausage and scrambled eggs. The kids couldn't have been more thrilled with filet mignon.

Musical Musings

Tonight I was driving the kids home from our Memorial Day "Barbecue" at a friends house (we did grill, despite the overcast sky and periodic rain). Dave stayed at their house to help them hang a light fixture and I was taking the kids home, much after their bedtimes, to repair the damage of the late bed time as best I could. I was listening to music on my mp3 player through the car stereo, trying to keep Jackson distracted from crying, and one of the pieces from my graduate piano recital, Bach's Toccata in G Minor, came on. I almost skipped past it, thinking that it would be too heavy to listen to with tired kids at 9:30 pm on a school night, but I let it play for a moment, just to hear the opening flourish. I gave myself a perfunctory mental pat on the back, "Good job, Karen," and then went on with my drive now that the showy opening part had passed.

As I went on though, gradually, the music started to draw me in. I forgot for a moment that I was the person playing and just listened. It had been a long time since I had heard it. Unlike previous hearings, back when every note, dynamic marking and fingering were still deeply ingrained in my psyche, the dynamics, subtle nuances and improvised ornaments almost came as a surprise. I enjoyed the recording as a listener, regardless of who the performer happened to be.

It was one of those bittersweet moments. I was awed and appreciative of an artistic offering that was made by the very same hands that were now gripping the steering wheel of our mini-van, physically and metaphorically steering our little family along. Yet at the same time I wondered if I still even had the capacity to play like that anymore. Aside from the problem of being technically rusty, I sometimes doubt whether I even have the mental capacity to concentrate on such fine-tuned artistic details. Becoming a great performer is all about doing the last 1%, that final polish that makes it magical. Where do you find the strength to worry about the last 1% of artistic polish if you don't even have the energy to do the first 10% of cleaning your bathrooms? Is it a shame that the same brain cells that were once occupied with analyzing the seven different deceptive cadences that Bach uses in his Toccata are now filled up with care instructions from the wash labels on all the pieces of laundry that get dirtied in my house every week?

But not to digress... it was a really good performance and I really enjoyed listening to it. And contrary to all expectations, the kids didn't complain about listening to it. Jared even seemed to think it was pretty cool. "Hey Jared," I called out to the back seat, "guess who is playing this?"

"Who?"
"I am."
"What?" he said. "You are the person playing that piano??!"
"Yep," I responded, "I played this back when you were a baby still inside my tummy. I used to practice the piano a lot back then, hours and hours a day."
"Wow, this is a cool song," he said, sounding impressed with his mother.

We pulled into the garage and he climbed up into the front seat of the car and sat, listening to the end of the piece with me. We listened to the final flourish in the dark after the garage light turned off.

"Do you still have the music to that, mom? Do you think you could still play that?"
"I would have to practice to be able to play like that again. Maybe I should start practicing the piano again. Hmmm... maybe I should have to practice the piano before I can watch TV, just like you." I teased.
"That's a good idea, mom," he said, seriously. "You should practice the piano and do your homework before you watch TV. But I guess grown-ups don't have homework, so maybe you can do your cleaning for your homework."
We gathered our stuff out of the car and went inside. Maybe I should get out the music to that Toccata sometime. After all, it is a good idea to practice before you watch TV.