Indemnity We Trust

Until today, I was planning to start teaching cello this fall at a sort of high-end private music studio. Unlike the three teaching studios I’ve been associated with most recently (including Ingram & Brauns in Pleasanton, where I still teach), this new place wanted me to sign a contract.

They didn’t bother to tell me about the contract last November, when I initially agreed to teach there; they only emailed it to me two days before my first scheduled lesson. This was perhaps just a wee bit unprofessional on their part, especially considering that the student whose lesson I was scheduled to teach had already paid for a full month’s lessons on the mistaken assumption that the studio had a cello instructor on the roster; but never mind that.

The contract, while sensible enough for the most part, included this charming language: “Instructor shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless [the studio] from any and all damages, claims, liability, unpaid taxes, and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, arising from and related to Instructor’s obligations under this Agreement and any services provided by or activities of Instructor.”

This is pretty typical of contracts drawn up by lawyers. I’ve rejected contracts in the past because of indemnity clauses that the company in question wasn’t willing to strike. The trouble with an indemnity clause is that it asks me to push my life savings into the middle of the poker table and BET that nothing bad will happen. Since my life savings is also my retirement plan, you may imagine that such a wager might not seem entirely prudent to me.

Let’s suppose, for instance, that an insane parent decides to sue the studio because they feel (quite wrongly) that a representative of the studio promised them that little Bobby (who is tone-deaf, dyslexic, and has

Bull Sheet

The demise of the brick-and-mortar sheet music store is one of the lesser-known but keenly felt tragedies of the late 20th century. Perhaps not quite on the scale of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo, but the degradation in quality of life is nonetheless palpable, to those who are paying attention.

Once upon a time, you could walk into a great big barnlike sheet music store (Byron Hoyt in San Francisco, for instance), paw through rack upon rack, and find whatever you needed, be it ever so obscure. But finding it wasn’t even half the point. With popular works, you could compare half a dozen different editions and choose one that you liked.

Today this material — a huge slug of our cultural history — is available only online. And the people who prepare online catalogs of sheet music have neither the time, the expert knowledge, nor the motivation to provide the kind of information prospective buyers need.

Tonight I went searching for an edition of the Brahms B Major Trio, Op. 8, revised edition. I found a Dover edition of the complete Brahms trios on Amazon, with both the original and revised versions of Op. 8. It said that on the cover, that’s how I knew. But nowhere on the Amazon Web page, nor in either of the customer reviews, could I find any mention of whether the edition was strictly a piano score or whether it included the violin and cello parts.

That’s a stark example, and it’s the norm, not the exception. Amazon has a product in stock, and I’d like to buy it from them, but I can’t, because they don’t give me enough information. The reason they don’t is because they don’t give a damn about classical sheet music. It’s not a big enough or profitable enough market for them. They want to sell me a Kindle (suuure…).

Even if they ponied up the essential information, though, shopping at Amazon would be nothing like shopping at Byron Hoyt in its heyday. On Amazon I can’t leaf through the music, decide if the print is large enough to be readable, decide if I like the editor’s markings, and also (with an unfamiliar piece) decide if it’s technically within my grasp.

I buy a fair amount of cello sheet music from cellos2go.com. It’s a great site for cellists, and Ellen Gunst, who is a cellist herself, recommends products (books, cases, whatever) that she feels are superior. But most of her sheet music listings have almost no information, just a scan of the cover, the composer, author, or editor’s name, and the price. With five books of scales and arpeggios to choose from, how do you know what to buy? Answer: It’s a crap shoot.

And here’s a sonata by L. Auerbach for cello and piano. It’s $69.95. I’ve never heard of Auerbach. Am I going to pay that kind of price without looking at the music? Of course not.

The good news is, by searching the Web I was able to find a downloadable PDF of the trio, complete with the violin and cello parts. It was scanned from an 1891 Simrock edition, and while the edition was in mint condition and the scan carefully done, the PDF is kinda gray and fuzzy. But that’s okay. I’ve got the music, and it cost me nothing except the printer paper and ink.

What I don’t have, online, is the ability to browse through music that I don’t know. And that’s a real loss.

Pit & Pendulum

Tonight was opening night for the local production of Peter Pan. The wonderful thing about performances is that they’re shorter than rehearsals! I was out of the theatre by 10:30.

I suspect the production is pretty good. The usual opening-night mishaps intruded — a bit of mic feedback, a botched cue in the orchestra, and I’m told a tree fell over on one of the Lost Boys. (Question: If a tree falls on a Lost Boy, does anybody hear it?)

A friend reminded me how much fun being in plays and musicals can be for kids, and what a valuable growth experience. I was in a few when I was in high school. By now I don’t remember much about it, and the only growth experience I’m sure I had was starting to smoke cigarettes out behind the theatre. (It took me only ten years to quit.)

Oh … and the first time I ever kissed a girl was onstage in a play. We were playing a husband and wife. I still see her around town once in a while. I guess that counts as a growth experience. Maybe not in the same league as flying across the stage on wires, though.

More Tales from the Pit

Midnight. Just got home from four hours rehearsing Peter Pan. We got through more of the show tonight than last night, but I left before the finale. When the director and the stage manager started yelling at one another, I turned off my stand light, put my music in my briefcase, and tiptoed out.

Okay, they had had a longer and more arduous day than I had. I was just sitting there in the pit, waiting for the conductor to start waving her baton. But enough is enough. The scene with the smoke machine was run three times, and of course the smoke just rolls off the stage into the pit. That was charming.

I have a bias as an artist. I like things that are really excellent. I try to be tolerant, but I soon become impatient with works of art that are ill-conceived or sloppily executed.

Peter Pan is very arguably in the former category to begin with; it’s a dumb story. It was first published in 1902, so if we’re feeling charitable we might say

The Pit

Someone ought to write a book (either fiction or nonfiction) on the process of staging a musical in a community theatre. The pathos, the disorganization, the boredom!

Three hours in the pit tonight. Peter Pan is opening in three days, and this was the first time the orchestra has rehearsed in the theatre itself. I brought a murder mystery to read between numbers, and was glad I did. Long, long waits while the director worked through staging details.

A big chunk of the cast is kids, which probably doesn’t make the director’s job any easier. I’m sure the kids are talented and energetic (I couldn’t see them from the pit, so this is pretty much a guess). But even so, getting 20 kids to coordinate a complicated dance sequence … I’m glad I’m just the cello player. I wouldn’t want to be running the show. Especially not when the rehearsal runs until midnight, long after the orchestra has tiptoed away.

The musicians are all excellent, as is the conductor, which helps a lot. Even so, there were times when I wondered what I was doing there. The orchestra includes drums, and the drummer is playing an electronic pad kit. It sounds really good — no complaints. But  by the time the sampled kick drum gets thumping, I’m thinking, “What am I doing here?” I made a decision five years ago that I wasn’t going to play acoustic cello anymore in a group with drums. What’s the point? You can’t hear yourself, and nobody else can hear you either. You can beat yourself silly and you still can’t hear yourself.

On top of which, in the fast numbers I’m often doubling the trombone. The trombone will be audible; the cello will not. If there were a whole cello section (say, three of us) we’d be audible. But it’s all on me. I’m the section.

Once in a while I get to play a cello solo for a few beats. I think my favorite solo is a sustained B-flat. A bar and a half of B-flat, with a fermata, and nobody is playing but me. Oh, the tension! What if I flub it?

More on Musika

A few days ago I posted a piece detailing my attempt to suss out the services offered by Musika — according to their banner, “The nation’s leading music lessons provider since 2001!” Okay, I like to stir up a little trouble once in a while, and I’m naturally curious about the competition.

I also care about music students. Whether they’re studying with me or with someone else, or are only looking around for a possible teacher, it’s important to me that they get the best, most qualified instruction available.

Musika’s website claims to be able to line you up with a cello teacher in Livermore — someone who will come to your home, even. So I filled in the form with a fake name and told them I wanted cello lessons for my nonexistent daughter, Jessica.

Musika was entirely unable to find a cello teacher for little Jessica. They list two cello teachers on their site, but quite obviously these are fake names, not real teachers.

At least they were straight about not being able to line up a teacher. And prompt. And they didn’t ask for money up front. That’s the good news.

What mystifies me is how they think they can make money on a nonexistent service. On their Jobs page, the site says very specifically, “We are currently not accepting applications for teaching with Musika at this time. Please try again at a later date.” So … they claim to be able to hook you up with a cello teacher in Livermore, but they can’t do it because they don’t have one, but yet they’re not looking for teachers. What kind of sense does this make?

I’ll let you dream up an answer for yourself. Maybe they’re just terminally clueless. But they do seem very businesslike, so that theory may not hold water. What sort of people would operate in a businesslike manner, yet provide no visible services? Hmm…

Cello Lessons

Just for kicks, I googled “cello lessons livermore”. The first link that came up, underneath the paid business links, was Musika (musikalessons.com). My own web page is next, following Musika.

I’m not a web programming whiz, but it’s real obvious to me that the Musika page for cello lessons in Livermore is assembled on the fly by inserting “Livermore” and “Cello” into slots in a boilerplate text.

They claim to offer cello lessons “in your home.” Well, maybe there are teachers who do that. Probably not many. But here’s the funny bit: The web page lists two names in a box under the label “Livermore Cello Teachers.” The two names are “Kelly S.” and “Bo X.” There are no links to bios of these supposed teachers, just a listing of their first names and last initials.

So they’re telling you that this guy Bo will come into your home and teach your child, but they won’t tell you

Gifts

This could easily turn into one of those hackneyed “our time on Earth is limited; we have to make the most of it” sermonettes. I don’t want to go there. The thing I want to get at is a little different.

I’m still processing the unexpected death of Larry Granger. Larry was an inspiration to a lot of cellists in the East Bay, and certainly to me. In the past five years we got to be friends. He was a very outgoing, social person, and I’m sure he had scores of friends — maybe hundreds. In that respect we were opposites. But on two or three occasions I saw a side of him that perhaps not everybody saw.

I have the impression — I don’t remember the details of the conversation – that when he was young, he felt somewhat aimless and undirected. But at a certain point he made a decision: He was a good cellist, and he decided that if his life was going to amount to anything, he had better take the cello seriously. So he buckled down and started practicing hours every day.

He wasn’t at Juilliard, or even at a conservatory. He was at Cal State Hayward. But he had good mentors. From that launching platform he was able to move on to a career as a full-time professional, playing first with the Oakland Symphony and then with the San Francisco Symphony. He got to tour the world with the Symphony. He got to hang out with the most famous classical musicians of our generation, or at least watch them in rehearsal from onstage.

I think Larry had a sense of the gift that he had been given, to be able to play marvelous music with so many talented people. He never tired of passing that gift on to other musicians.

In other respects, he was just an ordinary guy. (Not that any of us is really “ordinary,” but you know what I mean.) I used to be amazed by the amount of stuff he carried around in the trunk of his car. Larry was chronically over-prepared. He would go to a casual chamber music session carrying cardboard boxes full of sheet music, just in case any of it were needed – and maybe two music stands rather than just one. From that and from a few conversations, I think he may have felt a little insecure; not about his playing, certainly, but perhaps about some other things.

But he had this one great gift. He was sensible enough to see how lucky he was to have it, and smart enough to see that he needed to take responsibility for the gift, to use it to its fullest.

How many of us take full responsibility for our gifts?

I’ve struggled with this for most of my life. I have too many gifts, for starters. And they’re forced to express themselves from underneath a thick blanket of depression, over-intellectualizing, and more than occasionally just being pissed off at the world. I wish I had been more like Larry. I wish I had had the sense, when I was 20 or 25, to say to myself, “I have this great gift. I’m a musician. I need to make the most of it, every day.”

Here’s a creativity mantra, in case anybody is in search of one: “If I were taking full responsibility today for my gifts, I’d….”

Larry Granger

I was shocked this afternoon (Monday, June 15th) to get a forwarded email saying Larry Granger had died. For a few minutes I was hoping the message might turn out to be a gruesome hoax, but a couple of phone calls to mutual friends confirmed it.

For those who didn’t have the privilege of knowing him, Larry was the unofficial “Mr. Cello” of the Livermore-Amador Valley. He grew up in Pleasanton and lived there most of his life. He played in the Oakland Symphony for a while. After the demise of that organization he jumped across the Bay and joined the SF Symphony, where he played for many years.

He was very active in community music, whenever his schedule permitted. He was a regular member of the Pleasanton Chamber Players, taught cello at Cal State East Bay, and loved playing as a soloist with various community orchestras. Last year he played the Elgar concerto with the Livermore-Amador Symphony. This fall he was scheduled to play the Saint-Saens with the Silicon Valley Symphony, a very good group that he got me involved in. He liked to call himself “a professional cellist, and an amateur soloist.” By playing concertos with local orchestras, he got to embrace the whole of the literature for the cello while sharing his love of the instrument with audiences around the Bay Area.

Larry will be sorely, sorely missed.

We didn’t know one another when we were students, though we both studied with the same teacher for a short period. When we met (in 2002), he encouraged me to get more involved in the local music scene. I was lucky enough to play chamber music with him on a number of occasions. He was the quintessential people person — always doing favors for other musicians, and not shy about asking them to do favors for him in return. Overall, though, I’m sure he gave far more than he ever received.

Before he played a concerto with a local orchestra, he liked to give it a “dry run” in front of a few listeners — an informal recital. Two months ago, as he was preparing the Kabalevsky concerto (I don’t even know who he performed it with), he phoned and asked if my living room would be available on a Monday afternoon for such a recital. Fortuitously, one of my students had just sprained a wrist, so I had a free block of time. Just as fortuitously, my piano had just been tuned.

I invited three of my students to be the audience. Larry and his wife Priscilla arrived with a younger cellist named Aaron Urton. Priscilla played the piano accompaniment while Larry and Aaron played the Vivaldi concerto for two cellos, and then Larry and Priscilla played the Kabalevsky. It was a fantastic treat for us all — and afterward, far from thinking he had done us a favor, Larry thanked me. “I owe you big-time for this,” he said.

No, you didn’t, Larry. We owed you big-time. We all did. Thanks, guy. Damn, what a loss.

Imperfect Pitch

A cello has no frets. The only way to play it in tune is to have, or develop, a sensitive ear for pitch.

How do we learn to distinguish one pitch from another? I’m not a neurologist, so I can’t answer that question in a technical sense. But as a practical matter, I’m pretty sure we develop a sense of pitch primarily by listening to and playing music.

Singing or playing a fretless instrument is probably a good thing to do, if you want to develop a strong sense of pitch. You could learn to play piano quite nicely, on the other hand, by wiggling your fingers. You might only develop a crude sense of pitch, because the piano takes care of the details for you.

If you’re going to play the cello, being able to distinguish 12 pitches per octave won’t do you a darn bit of good. You need to be able to distinguish, at a minimum, a couple of hundred pitches per octave. Not by name, certainly, but you need to be able to hear almost instantly that a given note is