Some thoughts

Back in August I was visiting Ryan for a few days at Tanglewood in between summer festivals and got a call from a violinist I knew from Yale.  She was looking for someone to perform two pieces as a soloist with an ensemble she leads in some concerts in Connecticut in December.  I was so honored and excited to be asked to work with some of the most talented musicians I know, people who did their graduate work at Yale and Juilliard while I was doing my undergrad.  I only hoped that nothing would get in the way of the performances and that it wasn't all a dream!  

There were some difficulties in arranging the logistical details: both concerts were offered free of charge to the public and only the second was part of a regular concert series that was offering the ensemble--a relatively large one, with 13 total players--a modest fee.  Katie, the ensemble's leader, explained that she and the other musicians largely did this as a labor of love and that there likely wasn't enough money going around to pay for my travel expenses.  After both of us fruitlessly searched for applicable travel grants, I wrote to the dean of my school to see if he had any other suggestions.  Thanks to the incredibly supportive administration, I wound up applying for and receiving a grant from the Student Opportunity Fund, which paid for my flight and other transportation costs and made the trip possible.  

Katie and I decided to program Handel's beautiful motet Silete Venti alongside a piece the ensemble was premiering, a setting of 10 African-American spirituals from an 1896 publication the composer arranged for string orchestra and harpsichord.  I had performed the Handel before, on my recital in the spring, and I have been in love with the piece since my early years of college so I was very excited about having the opportunity to sing it again.  I was admittedly a little nervous about performing spirituals, though, as it's a genre with which I'm relatively unfamiliar and I was consequently concerned that I wouldn't be able to do them justice.  It does seem strange and sad to feel more culturally connected to, say, operas written in Italy 400 years ago than more recent songs from my own country, but I suppose my trepidation comes from being the recipient of so much privilege and worrying that people who do identify with this music will find me somehow disingenuous in my performance of it.  I was somewhat comforted by the composer's own musical predilections ("standard" english pronunciation, classical technique) and also by his treatment of the songs, which were both harmonically interesting and also incorporated rhythms and extended technique in the ensemble to approximate traditional African music.  I also do firmly believe that all of us--no matter our race, ethnic background, class, age, income level, you name it--feel pain and suffering, joy and elation.  It is impossible to discount someone else's life experience as somehow lacking because A) you have no idea what goes on inside their head and B) we are all capable of empathy, and if we weren't, art (in all its myriad forms) wouldn't exist.  So, as I prepared for these concerts in Connecticut I tried to do some research about the various songs and did my best to stay true to their original intention but also anchor them in my own experience.  

I traveled down to New York after a whirlwind of graduate school recordings and applications, classes, and the last New Music Ensemble performance of Unsuk Chin's Akrostichon-Wortspiel and had a great first day of rehearsals with the composer and ensemble.  It was such an unbelievable joy to work with this immensely talented and responsive group of musicians.  There's nothing quite like finding other people who also deeply care about the music you're performing and who are so professional, respectful, and focused--but also creative and curious and open to new ideas.  I really can't articulate well enough what an honor it was to be able to work with such fantastic players.  But really, none of this was a surprise: I knew that it would be like this four months ago when Katie asked me about participating in these performances.

On Friday morning I was able to attend a dress rehearsal of the new production of The Barber of Seville at the Met (opera) thanks to a generous friend from Yale.  Afterward I met up with my dad (also in town for a conference and the performances) to rest a little before rehearsal in the evening, and that's when I heard about the shooting in Newtown.  In a pattern repeating all too often these days, the news unfolded first in a nebulous haze and then, as the weekend progressed, more and more sickening clarity.  Though I wasn't performing in Newton, Connecticut is small enough that everyone was reeling from the shooting.  The Saturday concert in Hamden began with a moment of silence for the victims.  As I sat backstage, listening to the first piece on the program (Corelli's Christmas Concerto), I couldn't help but wonder what I had done to deserve to be surrounded by such unadulterated beauty.  Sometimes going into music seems like the most overwhelmingly selfish choice I could make: I depend on the generosity of other people to support my quixotic pursuit when the money that makes all of this possible could be going to so many other worthy causes, and when even I could be doing something so much more tangibly productive with my mind and body.  Then come these moments of clarity, when I realize that perhaps I truly am able to make some sort of difference, that perhaps I am blessed with music because eventually words and medical care and legislation and whatever social safeguards we employ to prevent such tragedies are not enough.  We need art because it allows us empathy, to express and to absorb what words alone are insufficient to convey.

In the light of these events, singing the spirituals--music transcending years and years of institutionalized violence, music created to help a people rise above dehumanizing slavery with hope--was very fitting.  Attending the first concert was also a group of homeless men staying at the church hosting the event, many of whom were African-American.  As I began to sing, I realized that perhaps what they, and what all of us, needed to hear was not someone who came from their own experience, but someone who wanted to honor it.  I will never know what it is like to suffer racism, to come from a background which is not my own, and I pray that I will never know the pain of losing a child, a sister, a brother, a mother, a father, to senseless violence.  What I do know is that I am capable of fighting prejudice, ignorance, and evil with--as hokey as it may sound--the truth, beauty, and love with which I hope to imbue all music I sing.  I remain humbled by the opportunity to try to help begin the healing process, to try to reach out to strangers and to brighten their lives or to bring them some small amount of peace and solace and, above all, belief in the greater good of humanity.  And I remain humbled by the power of sound, of notes written down hundreds and hundreds of years ago to remain not only relevant but necessary in our lives today.

I wish you all a joyful holiday season.

love,

Lucy

Thanksgiving bread

Happy Thanksgiving!  And look at that!  It's almost one month after my last post!  How time does fly...

Really, it's been crazy, crazy busy.  This past weekend Ryan and I performed in the school's fall opera production, which means the previous week was filled with daily rehearsals.  We had one day "off" on Sunday to recover and prepare for coming week.  Monday was a busy day of classes (and a happy meeting with a friend from college, in town to look at schools).  Tuesday was class and the New Music Ensemble concert at the Canadian Opera Company, also filmed for a TV broadcast, which thankfully went very well!  Yesterday was a meeting with the man coming in to asses the school for the Canadian Heritage Fund, who then also observed my lesson.  And then finally I had the afternoon off!  Holy mackerel!  It feels like it has been ages since that happened (and let's not even think about the rest of the week...).  So Ryan and I made vegetarian stuffing for dinner (homemade sourdough with mushrooms, celery, leeks, chestnuts, and apples--recipe below) along with a salad with pomegranate seeds (the pomegranate was given to me by Rubana at Economy Fruit).  I also put together another batch of bread to retard in the fridge overnight and to bake today.  Per the request of one of my classmates, I measured the ingredients in volume in addition to weight so that I could make a version of the recipe for people who don't have a scale (though investing in a kitchen scale is probably a good idea if you're going to be doing a lot of bread baking because it makes measuring really easy and largely reduces the large margin of error found in volume measurements).

One loaf made last week.

So here is Susan's recipe for Norwich Sourdough from her blog Wild Yeast, adapted for volume measurements and with my little addenda.

Yield:
Two big loaves, or 10 mini loaves (which is what I made today), or one loaf plus a pizza, or... you get the picture.  It's a lot.

Time:
Mixing -- 5 minutes
Autolyse -- 30 minutes
First fermentation -- 2.5 hours

If you're baking that day, then you divide/rest/shape
And then you proof -- 2.5 hours
And then you bake -- 30 minutes max

If you're not baking that day, I've been (in a probably incredibly unorthodox move) just transferring the dough directly to a container, usually a big tupperware, to retard for up to two days.  Then I form the loaves as quickly as possible before throwing them in the oven.  I've found that the sour flavor really improves after the two days in the fridge.

Ingredients:
900 g white flour  -- or 6 cups

120 g whole wheat flour -- or 1 cup

600 g water at about 74F -- or 3 cups

360 g mature starter -- or 1 3/4 cups (which in my case is about half white and half wheat)

--later--

23 g salt -- or 2 tbsp

cornmeal for dusting

Method (for a completely handmade, no mixer 'cause I don't have one, bread):
Mix the flours, water, and starter until just combined, which usually I'm not quite strong enough to do with a big wooden spoon, so usually I just use my hands.
Let the dough rest (autolyse) for 30 minutes.
Add the salt and mix until the dough reaches a medium level of gluten development.  (Her pictures are really nice, so check them out.)  I usually wind up sort of pulling the dough between my hands until it actually stretches.  In the beginning it sort of breaks and won't stretch very well, but then as the gluten develops you can stretch it farther apart.
Transfer the dough to an oiled container (I usually just oil the bowl I mixed it in).
Ferment at room temperature (72F – 76F) for 2.5 hours, with folds (again nice instructions here, but basically you just stretch and then fold up) at approximately 50 and 100 minutes.

At this point I sort of deviate from Susan's instructions.  If I'm baking that day, I might shape one half of the bread into a ball, which I'll place on a piece of parchment paper dusted with cornmeal.  Otherwise I'll take my nicely oiled ball, find a big tupperware container, and dump the whole thing inside.  Make sure there's some room for it to expand because it will keep growing.  And then I put it in the fridge and wait a day or two.  I've found that 48 hours in the fridge results in a really nice and sour bread.

When I'm about ready to bake, I preheat the oven to 475 and put in the vessel I'm using for a cloche along with a baking tray (I don't own a bread stone, but I hear those are great).  Thanks to Susan's website, I recently started using this technique instead of trying to make steam in the whole oven.  First of all it's a lot safer.  Second of all it basically doesn't require any equipment (except the cloche).  Third of all it actually works. 

So what is this cloche thing?  Basically it's a heat-proof vessel like a big ceramic casserole or something that you can turn upside down and create a seal with a baking sheet.  You can also purchase a real one, or apparently make one out of a flower pot (instructions on her website), but really a deep ceramic baking dish seems to work perfectly.  The cloche traps the moisture that's already inside of the bread, allowing the dough to rise much more and ultimately creating a better crust.  You bake for 12 minutes or so with the cloche over the bread and then remove it for the last part of the baking.  Easy peasy.  No trays of boiling hot water or squirt guns or whatever.  No giant steam cloud threatening to cook you to death like a squishy lobster.  

So, you set the oven to 475, put in your big ceramic pot and your tray for baking the bread.  When the oven reaches the proper temperature, take a piece of parchment paper and dust it with your cornmeal.  Take your dough out of the fridge and quickly and gently shape (pat, coax) it into a size that will fit underneath your cloche.  Using a sharp knife, cut two long slashes into the dough.  It sometimes helps me to oil the knife blade a little first.  Then, I usually take the baking tray out of the oven and put it on the stove; transfer my dough to the baking tray using the parchment paper; and then take the cloche out of the oven and invert it over my piece of dough.  Then the whole thing goes back in the oven and you set the timer for 12 minutes and turn down the oven to 450.  After 12 minutes, carefully remove the cloche.  Mine's a little hard to grip, so yours might be too.  Just don't burn yourself.  And then keep baking until the bread is brown and done looking.  Depending on the size of the loaf and the temperature of the oven, this might be another 10-20 minutes.  And it's as easy as that!

And what will I be doing with my 10 mini loaves of bread?  I'm bringing them to a few of the people I'm really thankful for here in Toronto, including Rubana at Economy Fruit and my teachers and administrators at school.  It is sad not to be able to take the day to celebrate with my friends and family the way I have growing up, and I would especially like to be able to personally contribute to the storm clean up effort in New York, but I figure that I can at least do this small thing to give thanks for my innumerable blessings and the bounty that is in my life.

Adventures of the Bird Spirit

Last week I traveled to Hamilton, NY, home of Colgate University's Ho Tung Visualization Laboratory, a planetarium (see below), to perform Anna Lindemann's Theory of Flight. Anna is one of my friends from Yale and also one of the most inspiring and creative people that I know. She was in my residential college and a year or two ahead of me in school. We sang together in the Yale Glee Club my freshman year and collaborated on another project, Bird Brain.

Here is the Dalai Lama visiting the planetarium! I'm not sure what the date of the photo is, but I think it's a few years back though relatively recently.

Perhaps you have heard me talk about this piece before; I performed in the premier last year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (see the photo I stole from the internet):

The story of Theory of Flight can be found on Anna's website (along with a video of our original performance and many photographs), but I'll try to sum it up here too.
First of all, the question of genre: What is it?
I'm not sure how to answer that question, still--though I think this is a good thing. Theory of Flight has two characters, a scientist named Alida and a Bird Spirit. The scientist (played by Anna) only speaks; the Bird Spirit (played by yours truly) only sings. It is a staged work. In addition, there are two sets of animations: one which serves the purpose of a chalkboard (albeit the most beautifully-designed chalkboard you've ever seen) and another which serves as both focal point and backdrop in the scenes featuring the Bird Spirit. The animations were made using both stop-motion and computer programs. The accompaniment to my singing is all electronic and is executed with Synful, a synthesizer (I think that's what you'd call it, anyway). Anna wrote and created and made all of these things, plus collaborated with her cousin Ky on the costumes.
Now that we've straightened that out, What happens?
Again, perhaps a little difficult to say. Essentially, the scientist Alida becomes obsessed with achieving flight in non-avian species (namely herself). Over the course of the drama, she falls deeper and deeper into this obsession, eventually amputating her arms and--through the help of science--growing wings. All of this is presented under the guise of a lecture series; we see Alida at three different points along this trajectory. Interrupting all of these lectures are appearances by the Bird Spirit, who sings arias which are related to material from the lectures. Alida is able to grow wings from her amputated arms but these are not powerful enough to let her fly, and it is only through intervention by the Bird Spirit that she is able to achieve her goal.
In the first production, the space at RPI (shown below) featured a rigging system.

At the end, Anna was literally able to fly, making smaller arcing leaps and finally a long flight across the stage while I was singing a final aria. The new location being a planetarium, it did not feature any rigging. So, a lot of this past week was spent thinking about the meaning of the ending. Would Alida really fly? How does the Bird Spirit feel about this? How much of this is in Alida's mind? And vice versa?

A photo from the first performance. Alida is attached to the rigging and wearing the wings given to her by the Bird Spirit.

Eventually it became clear that the best way to be a convincing Bird Spirit was to have a separate storyline from Anna/Alida. In my Bird Spirit mind, I was a scientist of some sort myself. Alida was my subject in an experiment and the intercalary arias (sung in English) were therefore not Alida's dreams but the Bird Spirit's way of influencing my test subject. Planting the idea of using an axolotl blastema as a means to introduce embryonic avian genes was not so much divine intervention (as Alida might think) as a further step in the experimental process. Eventually the Bird Spirit realizes--partially from wisdom and partially from jealousy--that her experiment has gone awry. Perhaps the Bird Spirit was hoping for company in her lonely life, but eventually found the introduction of another powerful figure into bird-dom too threatening. Perhaps Alida actually does represent a far greater danger to birds in her new half-bird state. If we are to ascribe human emotions to the Bird Spirit, it is most likely the former masquerading as the latter. Regardless of the reason, the Bird Spirit decides to ostracize Alida. In this iteration, the final aria (sung in bird speak) is not a celebration of Alida's successes but an affirmation of the Bird Spirit's bird-ness and also a cautionary tale: did you learn so little from Icarus' attempts? Beware lest you too fall from great heights.

The three performances went quite well (and were very well-attended), but Anna and I were a little flummoxed by the audience's somewhat bemused receptions to the first two shows. There are parts of Theory of Flight that are funny, but the first two audiences were very subdued. The third performance was our best despite some technological glitches, largely because there was so much positive energy coming from the other side of the room! At first we were worried that the community of Hamilton wasn't used to something so different, but in the end it seemed that it was a combination of factors: a large number of younger children in the audience (who tolerated the show quite well but probably didn't get much of the science) and also the afternoon performance times. The last performance was on Saturday evening and was followed by a Flying Feast, an edible, bird-themed reception designed and concocted by Ellie Markovitch and Rose Mitchell. Thanks to the appreciative audience, the Saturday night show felt more spontaneous than any of the others. At the Flying Feast we were able to talk to some of the attendees, many of whom seemed so excited by the mix of media and disciplines. Several of the professors expressed either delight at seeing scientists talk to artists (an art professor) or were impressed by the ability of artists to discuss important scientific processes (a science professor). It's always gratifying when you have a performance that seems as if it will stick in someone's mind for a while.

Anna was able to get a grant from Colgate to put on three performances of Theory of Flight along with a Flying Feast and to pay for the sundries of transportation, lodging, food, and fee for all involved (including the tech crew, made of Colgate students, operating all of the confusing computers and lights). One of Anna's friends, a luminous person named Emma who often wears amazing pants and is talented in so many ways that perhaps it is enough to say that she is luminous, was the director of the RPI show, but she could not come to this performance. So, we were joined by a friend of Emma and Anna's and another Yalie, yet another luminous individual who is also playwright and actor but is named Alex. I think Anna has a knack for meeting interesting people. Anyway, Alex and I stayed at Holcomb's Bed and Breakfast, a friendly establishment run by the loquacious and gracious Karen. It was such a luxury to have the opportunity to drop my daily cares and to be able to focus on the task at hand. I had been worried about taking the gig because I only had this one week off from school this semester and thought I might need the chance to recuperate. In the end, I think that this trip was both more rejuvenating and relaxing than a week at home could have been. Instead of sitting by myself in a practice room, I was working on character development for the Bird Spirit and thinking about how it might apply to Calisto. Instead of just worrying about my ribs and support while staring at a mirror and poking my sides (which I also did at the B&B), Alex gave us warm-up acting exercises that quite often dealt with some of the same issues we constantly ponder as singers. It was also wonderful to be in a little town with bright stars and deer and quiet nights. And, as always, it was a gift to get to work with Anna and, for the first time, Alex, and to meet new, friendly faces in a new place. It's stuff like this that makes me miss Yale.

And now back to work. I returned on Sunday, continued to brush up on Calisto on Monday, and started our week of intensive staging rehearsals today. Also, as a postlude to my bike saga: today I brought it in to a bike store near my house, Sweet Pete's, where it was fixed by an affable and competent mechanic, for free, in a few minutes.

But I shall close with a few photographs:

A ladybug found in my room one snowy morning. I put it in a plant inside because I thought it might be too cold outside.

The farm literally next door (fresh eggs for breakfast!)

Some plants in the field across/up the street/creek.