"Conversations in Music" proves a good formula for the times....

Brahms is still on my mind. This tree out my window reminds me of his sound . . burnished hues of gold, brown, orange, red, with stratas of green and yellow. I must play more of his music in the years ahead. Last night I returned to Charleston to fill an emergency request after a cancellation on their series. It was a good turnout for an
Election Night, a mixture of Town and Gown.

I was struck by the beauty of sound of the Steinway in Lightsey Chapel. Gene Koester selected it personally in NYC. It has similar qualities to my personal Steinway Concert Grand, especially in the richness and depth of the sound. My Steinway is always challenging to others, as it has a very firm action, which use to be the standard feel of the instrument. In recent decades piano actions have become much lighter in general, the tone spot often hard to feel under you, especially when dealing with the nerves and pressures of public performance. Of the six pianos I have played since mid-September, five have been Steinway. School pianos get knocked around, there is no getting around it. I have to say the Steinway at Winthrop was especially rewarding, as was the sound in the venerable old hall. So much for pianos!

I continue to explore my new "Conversations in Music". It is challenging focusing audiences today in this modern world of technology. Everything is built on speed and
instant connections. Music of depth, be it pure classical, film scores, standards of
Kern, Gershwin, Rogers,...will always win through. Its great fun to be rid of some of
the constraints of former years, and now play anything I like for anybody to listen to.
Nothing replaces the art of live performance.

Malala

Last March I attended the Commonwealth Day Service in Westminster Abbey. Queen Elizabeth looked radiant, belying her 88 years by walking up stairs unaided, as did Prince Phillip,now into his 90's. They are both amazing and seem to have endless energy and interests. The principal speaker was Malala Yousafzai, who has just won the Noble Peace Prize. Her classmates were seated just in front of us, and Malala stood with her Lady Principal in the aisle as the audience filed in. She goes to school in Birmingham, having been brought to the UK for medical treatment by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Westminster is a difficult space to see anyone, but I walked to the front where an
attendant showed me where the Queen would sit (at the very end of the Choir, on a huge oak chair) and where Malala would speak (from the huge pulpit) and indeed she was right
in front of us. When the Royals came in (we had been seated for over an hour) all we saw was the tops of their hats, as everyone of course stood up. I must say, hearing "God Save the Queen" with full organ blasting away with full choir and congregation made for a real tingle. Elizabeth is very dear to my generation. We saw her often as a young lady in the newsreels during the Second World War, and followed her as she joined the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Corps and learned to be an auto mechanic! Her father George VI told her she couldn't just sit around the palace, much to her delight. When she married Prince Phillip we got up before dawn to hear the service on the radio.

Malala is a force. Her speech was obviously the words of a 16 year old girl, but the power of her presence is very forceful. She has the aura of one chosen to lead. She gives basically the same message over and over, mainly that it is everyone's right to be educated...and of course as a professor and artist, I have always had the same goal. There is something of the miracle in hearing such a young voice give life to this hope for universal knowledge.

Since she has won the Noble Peace Prize, the articles about her have revealed the double edged sword she has experienced in her homeland of Pakistan. While she is revered by millions, she is reviled by many as being an embarrassment to her government, and the product of a publicity driven father and others out for financial gain. They say her father writes all her speeches, that she is a weapon of Western Agents out to shame Pakistan and some go as far to say that her shooting was all an arranged affair. I know this sounds crazy, but in the turmoil of present day Pakistan very believable. The fact that she has risen above all this is a tribute to the truth of her message.

A few days after returning home I read in the London Telegraph that the Queen has made known her discomfort with the short set of stairs that leads up to the choir in Westminster. I remember looking at them while standing at the front with the nice lady attendant, and wondering why they looked so steep and no visible rail. I am always looking for rails these days....funny what you noticed as you approach 80. The Queen is
terrifically spry for her age, but I agree with her! Give us rails and we can conquer the World!

":LONDON CALLING . . "

"Thank you so much for giving such a wonderful performance at the
church and for your generosity in donating the proceeds to the
on-going series. You are indeed fortunate to have so many close
friends who support you in London and they likewise in your talent
for enthusing an audience with anecdotes and consummate playing.
A rare gift!"
Simon Markson
London, October 2014


Trans-Atlantic travel these days is crowded and impersonal, everyone's head buried in
the Web. Its odd seeing everyone looking down, and dangerous too. Its almost a new
kind of public space, where you have to assume the person coming at you like a rocket
doesn't care if you land on your behind, while they plunge ever forward, looking for
who knows what.

With this as a backdrop, 15 days in London is always a thrill. Once there, the vibe becomes what you will. Piccadilly is always jammed, the main artery that connects
Hyde Park with Piccadilly Circus. If you want a view of the current world population, just sit on a bench and watch as the huge tide of humanity passes by. Escape is always
close at hand in London, a few steps can take you into the vast green spaces of the parks, or just to side streets that suddenly become neighborhoods where the city seems far away.

My particular path usually takes me along the C2 bus route, a rather charming flashback
to a more sedate London of years ago. It runs from Victoria, around Berkeley Square, and then Upper Regent's Street to the outlying Parliamemt Hill Fields, where you can walk up the path to overlook the City of London, St.Paul's dome still dominating the horizon just by sheer presence alone, even through huge modern towers are rising everywhere.

I hop off at Albany Street, an almost hidden corner of London, where street life seems that of decades ago. Markson Pianos and I have a long history. When I took a sabbatical in 1969, I rented a small piano from them for my room, and over the years I have used their practice rooms for concert preparation. They are the largest piano rental operation in London, and one has to get use to the continuous moving of pianos in and out. It's a bit like "The Piano Shop Around the Corner", but on a bigger scale. I always love being around the piano restoration area. Young women are entering this once male dominated area, and this has brought a whole new atmosphere with it.

Five years ago, Markson Pianos established a concert series in the nearby Saint Mary Magdalen Church, an imposing Gothic style church, although build in the Victorian Era.
In late September I did a recital for them, returning to the series after three years.
The price of a ticket includes a glass of wine at the close, and that makes for a genial atmosphere. The "Suite Bergamasque" was a huge hit with the audience, and one forgets its more than "Clair de lune", which, by he way, gains immensely by it's surrounding pieces. It is also quite long, as Debussy took his time. The "Passepied" is nine pages, and no place to ever take your hands off the keys.

I played a group of pieces from British films from the 1940's, including the haunting "The Dream of Olwen" by Charles Williams, who also wrote the theme song for "The Apartment". A rarity was the "Cornish Rhapsody" by Hubert Bath, and it is quite virtuoso and involved. The biggest rarity was "Tomorrow" from "The Constant Nymph", the long unseen movie with Joan Fontaine and Charles Boyer, recently re- discovered by Turner Classics.The composer of this is none other than Erich Korngold, who by this time had established himself as one of the greatest composers in film, after fleeing the Nazi invasions in Vienna. We forget that Korngold was hailed as the "New Strauss", and his music has legions of admirers.

As a present to my London friends, I made an arrangement of three classics about the City, including "A Foggy Day in London Town", "Limehouse Blues" and "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square". It was fun weaving a portion of each song into the next one, ending in a series of stacked chords (the way Marian McPartland showed me decades ago), and of course, the chimes of Big Ben at the close. I was almost too clever, but my goodness, how they loved it.

Stillness in Art.....

A swing around the state last week let me take the temperature of artistic
appreciation at two schools of widely varying missions. Returning to the
South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts in Greenville after a five
year absence, I found a strong sense of mission and a warm environment. Like
all schools that can afford it, there is a broader range of administrative
positions in place, in other words, more people to handle the outreach,
publicity, student welfare...the list is rather impressive. The facility
has really outgrown its physical space, and probably was built too small
in the first place. For instance, there is no hall big enough to seat the
entire student body.

All the above aside, I was there to do a masterclass for piano students, and
on the heals of that, a Piano Portrait entitled "The Young Debussy". The
masterclass was well prepared, and the students were receptive and flexible.
One can only do so much with a student playing a large work in the span of
half an hour, so the challenge is to strike a balance between the immediately
possible, and the attainable in the next few days or weeks. Stephen Taylor, one
of our own from USC School Of Music, is doing a fine job, working well within the
limits of having his students for only two or three years. He has brought a stable
environment to the piano area, and has the right personality to reach high school
age students.

As for the Piano Portrait, the setting up of the equipment was a bit dicey, as the
young man doing the set up was not very familiar with PowerPoint. Nevertheless,
a picture finally appeared on the screen, and was big enough to be effective in
a large space. It rather amuses me that very few actually tackle PowerPoint as
a creative tool. It rather remains in the charts, graphs, numbers milieu, beloved
by people who have to present that kind of information in their work. Going beyond
this into the creative world of sound, image, performance and theater, is quite a
different world. The medium is still the message, but the power of imagination and
creativity can lift the whole medium to an entirely different level.

I was impressed with the quality of listening from 100 young musicians. There is
such power in the stillness of quiet passages, allowing the performer, if all systems
are on go, to weave a spell. IS there anything more profound than total quiet from
an audience absorbed in the music?

Returning to Winthrop University is always a pleasure. The huge auditorium in the midst
of the campus still dominates the landscape. Winthrop has such a distinguished history
in bringing music education to the fore in South Carolina in the early 20th Century.
I played there first 50 years ago, and returned many times over the years, not only for
my own performances, but to hear many great artists who performed there. I remember
particularly a performance by Arthur Rubinstein, where an overflow audience extended
onto the stage. The New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez was another landmark
event.

There is a feeling of deja-vu at Winthrop. The music facilities remain the same as
decades before, and obviously their facility has served them well, if somewhat faded
today. The small recital hall has the most wonderful Steinway concert grand, and it
fills the long, narrow hall easily. The PowerPoint slides looked gorgeous, and the
audience was attentive and supportive throughout a 70 minute presentation. Matt Manwarren is a calming presence, and he had a large class of students in attendance.It was wonderful also to have Ann Herlong in the audience, a fine pianist who has contributed so much to our state over the years. I am impressed with many of the younger faculty at the many colleges and universities around South Carolina. The fact that so many attended USC is a feather in our cap. Its amazing to look back over half a century and witness the musical growth in our state.

A Long Summer ...full of work and memories

I am just finishing up six months at home without any trips anywhere! I had to admit it
was the very first time in 50 years that I had spent the entire summer in Columbia. I guess that makes me practically a native son. I did this by choice. Since retiring I have added up almost 20 trips to Europe, and almost all have included stays in the UK. After coming home from Holland and England in March 2014, I felt it was time to pay attention to my house and garden, and to go through personal items I want to pass on to family and friends. Its very liberating getting rid of things...or should I say "treasures", as everything I have in this house brings a memory. About half my music library has been passed on, and another section of it has been sorted, and it is ready to depart. I have kept a basic library, but I have to admit I had to buy new copies of Bach and Beethoven, as mine were in a fragile state. I love passing on music, much of which was passed on to me over the years.

We had a lush early summer, and only in late August did it offer a few oppressive days near 100 degrees...just enough to remind us what it is like. I often think of all the summers I taught the first summer term. It always seemed to be the hottest when I would offer a workshop for pianists. Many times we faced high temperatures going to and fro, but thankfully the AC always functioned, so we were comfortable. I often had a group of teachers from the upstate, and that was nice, as most people from the upstate thought of USC in those days as a Den of Iniquity. I remember one day during class I was demonstrating the use of arm weight, going into all sorts of contortions to get the idea across. One nice lady from Greenville offered to be the guinea pig, so she sat at the piano, and obviously had a lot of good solid knowledge, as she played with complete physical freedom and made a gorgeous sound. I was thrilled, and said "Virginia, you are the LOOSEST WOMAN in South Carolina!" I was the perfect example of speak first and think later. To this day I still get a Christmas Card signed "the Loosest Woman in S.C. Love, Virginia."

Jan Luyken Straat - Amsterdam

Being in Amsterdam recently after 45 years away was both a shock and familiar
at the same time. I was impressed with the fact that the Dutch character is unchanged, a mixture of love of place, value for value, and wry humor. Its obvious the Dutch love their country, and live outdoors as much as possible. Bicycles are still everywhere, and one learns quickly to not step into a bike lane with an absent mind. The renovated Rijks Museum, closed for ten years, is open again, and greets the public with fabulous public spaces, tasteful displays of art, and the feeling of being in an extremely well run and loved place.

All this brought back a clear memory of playing in the Concertgebouw Recital Room in 1969. I was staying with a very supportive family in Eindhoven for a few days, and then
moved up to Amsterdam into a very strange hotel not far from the hall. The room I was given turned out to be under a staircase, and all night long I heard footsteps over my head, making for very little sleep. The next morning I walked around the neighborhood, and came upon a very small hotel in a row of houses on Jan Luyken Straat. There was only a very small plaque by the door, and after I rang the bell, the door opened, but
as is the case in most houses like this in Amsterdam, the person opening the door was
standing at the top of a rather steep set of stairs. The door was opened by pulling a lever, which opened the door below. I asked if there was a free room, and she said yes, come on up and see for yourself. I said I was up the street in a terrible room, and needed absolute quiet. We went to the attic room on the back side, and there I found the most wonderful atmosphere, with a double window looking down on the gardens below.
No one would walk over my head in this room.

The lady who ran this place lived in a small apartment on the first floor, and in the late afternoon, early evening, she kept her door open to greet guests, and offer a glass of sherry. She was interested in my career, and I gave her two free tickets for my "show". She came with a friend, and afterwards she served small sandwiches and wine as we sat around and went over the evening.

I stayed there a couple of more times, before she left to retire on the Costa del Sol
in Spain. She had a devoted clientele, many being business men and women from Hungary, Romania and Austria.

When I was leaving the Rijks Museum, the streetcar passed Jan Luyken Straat, and I
could see the gardens I use to gaze down on from my attic room. Today the old place is a very posh boutique hotel with steep prices. I wonder what my lady would think of that!

What I Learned from Pete Seeger

How curious can life be? Just Monday my nephew called wanting info on Howard Hanson.
He was going to introduce one of the Air Force bands on a concert swing this week, and
wanted to know if I had any bit of musical information that might make his comments on
Hanson"s "Romantic Symphony" more interesting for his audiences. Somehow I made a comparison between Howard Hanson and Thomas Hart Benton, the great artist from Missouri. I said they were part of the group that put a face on the Arts in mid- 20th Century America. By that I meant Howard Hanson had enormous reach as both composer and educator, much the same as Tom Benton, who taught at the Kansas City Art Institute, but also became an internationally revered artist.

Thinking about Thomas Hart Benton, I reached back in memory to the early 1950's when I
knew his daughter Jessie, mostly through a madrigal group formed at the University of Kansas City by my teacher Virginia French Mackie. Jessie was still in high school, but
Mrs. Mackie was a great friend on her mother and father, and suggested Jessie might like a bit more musical exposure. Jessie was quite clever with the guitar, and she conned me into being part of her backup group for a performance of folk songs at the River Club, a very posh KC club of wealthy business leaders. I was pretty woeful in this role, but Jessie was so charming and talented, so I went along with it.

We went to rehearse at her home, and Tom was in the living room with his guest Pete Seeger. Seeper was sprawled on the floor with his five string banjo, letting loose with the most wonderful songs, and Tom had his big glass of bourbon, looking very much the master at home. Rita Benton insisted we see the house, and Tom's studio in the back yard. Its now a museum run by the Missouri Division of Parks and Recreation.

Jessie had no fear of anything, and before we knew it, we were singing "Across the Wide Missouri", and Pete joined in, but being such a gentleman, didn't try to hog the show. When we got to the famous line, singing "Mis sou RI " so prettily, there suddenly was this huge interruption from Tom, who bellowed at the top of his voice, "damn it, it's MIS-SOU-RAH!!" I had always heard Tom Benton was a rugged individualist, and this proved the point.

A dear friend from high school and college posed for Tom as Laurie, when he illustrated "Green Grow the Lilacs" with his wonderful etchings. Most of you will recognize this work as the basis for "Oklahoma!" by Rogers and Hammerstein. His murals were all around Kansas City, including the USC Campus, Helxberg's Department Store, and later, the Truman Libraty. Next year the Metropolitan Museum of Art with display their new acquisition of one of his most famous murals.

To come back to my theme of co-incidence, just this past Monday Pete Seeger died in New York City at the age of 94. His mother was the fine American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, and I often taught a suite of piano pieces by her, and always told the student about Pete Seeger. You must read his obits, as they are wonderfully written, and tell a great American Story.

So what did I learn from Pete Seeger? I heard the most wonderfully direct type of singing, by someone who lived every note and believed every word. He was a Great American.

THE PIGEON STEINWAY

When I first came to the University of South Carolina in 1964 I auditioned in the old
recital room on the third floor of McMaster College. I have few clear memories of that
day, but I remember that the windows were wide open, as there was no air conditioning, and it was a very warm day in late April. The stage was tiny, but there was a rather sedate old Steinway piano, plus the organ console, and a lectern for classes. All those Steinways of a certain vintage had firm actions, so I was streaming with sweat when I finished, of course dressed in coat and tie. Everyone but me was use to the heat, and I particularly remember Dr. Hugh Williamson in his grey striped seersucker coat and bow tie, looking dapper and completely unfazed by me or the weather.

This memory set me to thinking about how all our Steinways came to roost in the(then) USC Department of Music. There had not been any new Steinways in a long time by 1964. I can visually see 6 grands in my mind's eye, all already vintage. I remember I inherited Dr. Williamson's studio, and he had a decent old Steinway, again very stiff in action, and another one that was rather battered. Dr.Williamson and Madame Trembly-Baker were the two piano professors at that time, and Dr. David (Dode) Phillips was teaching class piano.Fufure piano professors Charles Fugo, Max Camp, John Williams and Raymond Dudley were not to begin appearing until much later. I had accepted my new job with the offer of a brand new Steinway, but it took about two years before it appeared. Not long after that, yet another one came, and I absolutely loved it, and kept it until we moved into the new school some 30 years later. By the time we moved out of the old building we had built up to about 17 Steinway grands, and 2 upright Steinways. Some were so old and worn they were sold in a sale, and the choir room Steinway, which figures in this story, brought the highest price. I could not make myself go to the sale...too many memories.

It seems we were always moving pianos around, and I even let my nicest Steinway be moved a couple of times for special events. Eventually Fraser Hall was built, and we had two Steinway concert grands there. Can you imagine maintaining these instruments with the antique heating system in McMaster, to say nothing of the inadequate air conditioning, at that time all window units, except for Fraser Hall. One day not long after I arrived, I was driving down Devine Street and saw a small air conditioner in a display window, a new type unit for casement windows. I had a very tall, narrow window in one corner of my room, and it fit snugly into it, and could not have been any bigger than 15'by 15'. I let it run year round, and it did the trick of cooling my studio, which had enormously high ceiling and was large enough to hold classes. My Steinways started to settle in, and the only real bumps were the seasonal changes from heat to air conditioning,the heat from ancient radiators being especially variable. I remember Robyn Gibson came to visit and brought a humidity gauge, and my room proved to be 0 humidity on a cold winter day. "Just like the desert", I remember her saying.

During the summer of 1985 I was building my home in Hopkins, so I had moved into an apartment near the university for the duration. I had to practice at school, as my Steinway was in storage at Rice Music House. So, I suddenly was at school hours on end, almost everyday for six months. I would often be there on the weekend, when no else was particularly about. The building was always open until late, and even then hard to secure. I would go about closing windows in classrooms, and particularly seemed to be forever closing windows in the choir room, which had many, many tall ones. There was in the choir room a very nice old Steinway grand, and it never seemed to go badly out of tune. Sometimes I would practice on it. Grant Johanneson came to play, and he discovered it also, and inquired if it might be possible to acquire it! So a real seal of approval was awarded to it.

Imagine my dismay when I came into the room one hot July night and found a PIGEON nesting in the Steinway. I thought the term was "Pigeons on the Grass, Alas, Alas", but it turned out to be "Pigeon on the Steinway, Alas, Alas", apologies to Gertrude Stein...no pun intended. Too bad her name was not Gertrude Steinway. Alas. Alas.

Update all this to the planning stages of the USC School of Music around 1992. After so many years of striving to preserve our pianos, I was determined to get as full a quota of new Steinways as possible. I remember the piano faculty were all in agreement, but Charles Fugo, the piano coordinator at that time, sent me to talk to the Purchasing Office, to make the pitch. I remember his laughing about it and saying, "John, you know how to talk to those people". So off I went, presenting my request for two new Steinway concert grands, 9 Steinway 7' pianos for the four piano studios, and one for the pedagogy studio. Other pianos were also needed for classrooms and studios. "Pie in the Sky" was the comment from the budget director. He told me we had to divide the piano order into various companies, and go for the lowest bids; no way could we purchase all those Steinways.

I went back to the piano faculty, and we were rather at loose ends over the whole situation. Be as it may, particularly when dealing with The State of South Carolina, an
event came to past that reversed that decision. USC had just invested millions in a huge new system wide computer system. We were in the midst of registration the following year, when suddenly the whole new system crashed. There was all the faculty once again registering thousands of students by hand, a long, tedious operation. The South Carolina Legislature changed the state's bidding process, and allowed the purchase of top of the line products under certain situations. I am sure there was great consternation that second rate computers had been purchased. The heavens parted, and I received a call from the USC Purchasing Office to come back again. I did, original request in hand, and suddenly it was a whole new ballgame. We could have all our Steinways, and also several Baldwin 7' grands, plus (at first) a whole platoon of uprights from Mason and Hamlin, a small studio piano that both Charles Fugo and I went to play and found to be a very nice instrument. Unfortunately, the company suddenly went into bankruptcy, and we had to scramble, settling on Yamaha uprights. We still had
to divide the order between several piano makers, but it was a triumph to get all
those Steinway pianos.

Bids were sent out, and Charles and John Williams went to Arkansas to pick out the
Baldwins, and then I joined them for the trip to New York City to pick out all the
Steinways, at the factory on Long Island, and the showroom on W.57th Street in Mannhattan. Sadly, Max Camp was very ill at the time, and unable to travel. He trusted us to pick the three that he would need. The bid was won by Fox Music in Charleston, and Mr.Fox and his charming wife joined us for the weekend. He provided limos with drivers to take us everywhere, and we did feel like VIP's. Steinway personnel had some good laughs over "John William and John Adams" gracing their showrooms...!

Once selected, the pianos were placed in storage, I believe in Kentucky, for the wait until the new building was ready. I have a vivid memory of playing the Steinway I selected on the first round of selecting. It had the rich sound I loved, and the action was not so light. It was in a corner, next to a portrait of Rachmaninoff. I felt he
approved, and it only took a few notes for me to make the final decision. I was pleased when Joe Rackers mentioned to me how much he loves that piano, so I told him the Rachmaninoff bit. Unfortunately Max Camp died shortly after we moved in, so he never
got to experience his pianos. The last time I spoke with him, he asked if we were holding his pianos until he could come back. A very sad note. indeed.

Inquiring recently about the current number of Steinways currently in the USC School of Music, the total was 28 grands and 2 uprights. No new Steinways have arrived since I left in 2004, but a friend of mine did donate her wonderful vintage Steinway in 2000 to the school, and of course, there is the Women's Symphony Steinway, purchased in the early years of the S.C. Philharmonic. I played the Dedication Recital on this Steinway. I must not fail to mention my own magnificent Steinway concert grand, a former CD piano reserved for Steinway Artists, that I purchased from Rice Music House around 1980. It actually came from Fox Music House and was housed in Galliard Auditorium. Arthur Rubinstein was one of the immortals who played it. I am proud to have spurred on this great collection, and hope USC will continue to make wise choices.