Great Advise
Stolen from david Zerkel….
This is a handout that I provided my studio on the last day of class. Just some practical advice on how to stay engaged in music and music making over the summer break. Enjoy!
Making the Best of Your Summer Away From School
Congrats on making it to the end of the year! As we all limp toward the finish line, feeling the cumulative effect of exams, performances, papers and real life, I know that you will be looking forward to a break. I will be, too! So, by all means, after your last exam ends and your last paper is turned in, exhale. Relax. You’ve earned it.
The trick for you will be to not let a week of chilling out turn into two weeks of chilling out, which quickly becomes a month of chilling out, and by the time you look up, you’ve chilled yourself into a coma. So, my advice is take a week or two to find yourself again and get some sleep.
After that time is up, I would ask that you consider the following activities:
- Sit down and write an essay about why you are studying music. Everyone comes at this from a different angle, so be honest with yourself. Clarifying your sense of direction can frequently have an empowering effect.
- Once you have determined why you are studying music, give some thought to the following question: “If I really care about music, why would I ever give that pursuit anything less than my best effort?” The world is full of musicians who are at different talent levels. That is a given. The one thing that we have all in common, though, is that we are all blessed with the same capacity to try. I am not suggesting a vow of myopia here, where all of your other interests are ignored, but instead a vow of conscientiousness and earnestness. We can all try harder.
- All of us have a pile of etude books. Make your goal this summer to finish at least one etude book, cover to cover. These books are not like a video game where you have to level up by having your teacher “check off” on your work. Read ahead. Devour these etudes. You might find that you will want to do the same with the next book on your stack.
- Listen to something new every day. At the end of this document, I have provided you with a list of great performers and a list of composers with whom every well-read musician should be familiar. Sometimes, when I enter a bookstore or a library I am overwhelmed by the choices and the sheer number of things that I know absolutely nothing about. This list is designed to lead you to great art and great artists. This list will keep you busy. Use it!
- Improvise for five minutes a day. Make something up using only your ear. Be fearless—there are no points off for mistakes. Doing this will allow you to generate greater trust between your brains and your fingers, which will come in very handy once you start reading from the page again.
- Identify your biggest weakness in your playing. Now, kill it. This is where I actually do encourage a bit of myopia. Spend serious time there every single day. Make your own exercises. Research exercises that other people use. Suck until you don’t suck. By dedicating yourself to eradicating one specific technical issue, the problem will get better.
- This last one is a suggestion for not only this summer, but for the rest of your life: Be Curious. Great achievements in life do not occur because people are content with knowing what they know. Great accomplishments come as a result of seeking out what you don’t know. Read. Listen. Occupy your mind with things that will enrich you as a person. Live life. Nourish your brain and body with new experiences.
We only have this one life to live. Determine what matters and go for it. Quoting Dr. Martin Luther King:
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’”
Have a great and productive summer!
DZ
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Arthur Schnabel
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Jim Hall
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James Galway
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Ransom Wilson
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William Bennett
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Julius Baker
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Alex Klein
Richard Woodham
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Sabine Myers
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Martin Frost
Richard Stoltzman
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Donald Sinta
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Stan Getz
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Wayne Shorter
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Phil Smith
Adolph Herseth
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Hakan Hardenberger
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Ryan Anthony
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Miles Davis
Clifford Brown
Chet Baker
Wynton Marsalis
Freddy Hubbard
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Louis Armstrong
Clark Terry
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JJ Johnson
Frank Rosolino
Bill Waltrous
Slide Hampton
Carl Fontana
Kai Winding
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Bob and Nick Childs
Demondrae Thurman
Ben Pierce
Thomas Reudi
David Thornton
Steven Mead
Jukka Myllys
Fernando Deddos
Some Great Tuba Players
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John Fletcher
Arnold Jacobs
Oystein Baadsvik
Walter Hilgers
Gene Pokorny
Les Neish
Pat Sheridan
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Colin Currie
Cloyd Duff
Keiko Abe
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Chicago Symphony Orchestra
New York Philharmonic
Cleveland Orchestra
Concertgebouw Orchestra
San Francisco Symphony
Boston Symphony
Philadelphia Orchestra
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Vienna Philharmonic
Dresden Staatskapelle
London Symphony
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Emerson String Quartet
Juilliard String Quartet
Gaurneri String Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Turtle Island Quartet
Empire Brass
Center City Brass Quintet
American Brass Quintet
Aurelia Saxophone Quartet
Prism Saxophone Quartet
Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet
Dorian Ensemble
Alarm Will Sound
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Some Great Wind Bands
The United States Marine Band
Dallas Wind Symphony
Tokyo Kosei Wind Ensemble
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Woody Herman Big Band
Buddy Rich Band
Louis Bellson Band
The Bill Holman Band
Thad Jones/ Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra
Lincoln Center Big Band
Stan Kenton Band
Rob McConnell Boss Brass
Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band
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Renee Fleming
Kiri TeKanawa
Jessye Norman
Cecilia Bartoli
Anna Nebtrebko
Jussi Bjorling
Luciano Pavoratti
Placido Domingo
Jonas Kaufmann
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Bryn Terfel
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Sarah Vaughan
Ella Fitzgerald
Diana Krall
Dinah Washington
Billie Holiday
Kurt Elling
Joe Williams
Great Entry Level Operas
La Boheme
La Traviata
The Magic Flute
Tosca
Barber of Seville
Composers to Try
Contemporary
John Adams
John Corigliano
George Crumb
Jennifer Higdon
Phillip Glass
Gyorgy Ligeti
Arvo Part
Krzysztof Penderecki
Steve Reich
Joseph Schwantner
Eric Whitacre
Aaron Jay Kernis
Henryk Gorecki
Twentieth Century
Samuel Barber
Bela Bartok
Leonard Bernstein
Benjamin Britten
John Cage
Aaron Copland
Claude Debussy
George Gershwin
Alberto Ginastera
Percy Grainger
Paul Hindemith
Howard HansonGustav Holst
Charles Ives
Leos Janacek
Olivier Messiaen
Darius Milhaud
Carl Orff
Carl Nielsen
Francis Poulenc
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Maurice Ravel
Ottorino Respighi
Arnold Schoenberg
William Schuman
Dmitri Shostakovich
Igor Stravinsky
Richard Strauss
Michael Tippett
Hector Villa-Lobos
Anton Webern
Romantic
Hector Berlioz
Georges Bizet
Johannes Brahms
Anton Bruckner
Frederic Chopin
Antonin Dvorak
Edward Elgar
Gabriel Faure
Cesar Franck
Franz Liszt
Gustav Mahler
Jules Massanet
Felix Mendelssohn
Giacomo Puccini
Nicolai Rimsky- Korsakov
Giacchino Rossini
Camille Saint Saens
Erik Satie
Jean Sibelius
Bedrich Smetana
Robert Schumann
Pytor Tchaikovsky
Giuseppe Verdi
Richard Wagner
Hugo Wolf
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CPE Bach
Ludwig van Beethoven
Joseph Haydn
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Franz Schubert
Baroque
Johann Sebastian Bach
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Claudio Monteverdi
Henry Purcell
Alessandro Scarlatti
Georg Phillipp Telemann
Antonio Vivaldi
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