With life continuously launching a seemingly never-ending barrage of tasks in our direction, pure uninterrupted time might be the rarest and most valuable gift we can receive.
Over an extended holiday break at the farm, I had the luxury of time. Calm. Un-rushed. Private. When the rush of the gifts and dinners faded, I was able to spend hours exploring new music and new composers, listening to recorded submissions from young artists who are interested in performing with the Symphony, studying and marking up the individual musician parts for upcoming orchestral concerts, and in composing new music.
Just as a painter begins their work with a beautiful fresh canvas, free of any impurities or stains, likewise, musicians do their best work with a clean slate - free of sonic interruptions. The farm is hauntingly quiet. It’s beautiful and serene. No unwanted sounds enter my ears.
Unlike painting or sculpture which last forever, live music is fleeting. Once it is performed, it disappears. It must be re-created each time anew. Spotify on-demand certainly makes accessing recordings available, but we must remember that listening to Beethoven on our earbuds is akin to viewing the Mona Lisa on a postcard - we aren’t experiencing the real thing. In fact, we aren’t viewing Da Vinci or hearing Beethoven. We are viewing the work of the photographer and hearing the recording engineer.
Remember New Year's Eve 2016 when Mariah Carey got off of her lip-syncing track? With more televised events, lip-syncing is becoming more and more the norm. It’s great risk management. It’s terrible art. A few years back, I was hired as a pianist for some live shows with a “Billboard Top-10" kind of famous vocal group on the western leg of a Canadian Tour. We went through all the work of rehearsals with the orchestra, getting everything perfect. The stage was beautiful. The lighting was exquisite. The huge Steinway set centre stage was perfectly polished and freshly tuned. There were expensive microphones for all the instruments. We were all delighted to be there.
Then the show happened. In that two-hour show, I might have played live for six or seven minutes. The rest of the show was a recording that we were simply playing along to, just for the illusion of live musicians on stage. We could have played all the wrong songs, and the audience wouldn’t have known the difference. They paid hundreds of dollars for tickets, only for the sound man to hit play on a track. The living, breathing musicians on stage with hundreds of years combined performance experience were reduced to well-paid props who, at least, appeared to know what they were doing.
While that show was certainly good for my résumé, it was one of the least fulfilling artistic experiences of my entire life. Fortunately, I have had many exquisite moments on stage as a live performer and as a conductor. Every time I step on the podium and see the 50 smiling faces of the Rocky Mountain Symphony Orchestra, I’m reminded of the reason we make art. For joy. For beauty. For community. For each other.
A real live music performance of the highest calibre is akin to a religious experience. An artist in a perfect room with a perfect instrument, taking risks, making artistic choices in the heat of the moment, performing passionately with a zeal for exposing the composer’s most complex intentions…to a room full of living, breathing people - this is art. Even the same authentic live performance recorded for a video is missing something – a certain je ne sais quoi.
Having the past week of uninterrupted time at the farm allowed me the time to work through the music for our upcoming “Mozart’s Birthday” concerts at the end of January. It takes time at the piano (and a lot of quiet time in one’s head) to internalize a masterpiece of classical music and to form an interpretive plan for an entire orchestra. That quiet time was the catalyst I needed to get the work done, and I’m excited for the rehearsals to begin in a few weeks.
I promise it will all be live – no recordings in sight! Just an orchestra in a perfect room performing at the top of their abilities for a live audience. No cameras. Just art.
Setting aside uninterrupted quiet time for ourselves to listen, read, create, and slow down, is one of the simple foundations of a creative life. We have lost the culture of stillness. It will take some time to reclaim our quietude, but it will yield beautiful results for ourselves and our families.
Stay creative, friends.
Carlos Foggin is the music director of the Rocky Mountain Symphony Orchestra and the general manager of the Polaris Centre for the Performing Arts, in Balzac. His column – 'Backstage Views with Carlos Foggin' – appears monthly in the Airdrie City View
