music competition

I just came back from a WVU staff and faculty talent show.   And wadda you know, I was second runner up.  Wow, was I delighted.....because it's a pretty big cultural reach to move a Morgantown audience with 19th century jewish music on the accordion.    I shouldn't assume, but I doubt if any of the judges (mostly football players) had heard Klezmer before.

The whole event was very hamisch.   There were two faculty members:   myself and Rich Fleisher doing his Cy Berg future comedy routine.   There were 5 additional staff who were all singers....all were really quite good.   The audience surprised me (snowy winter day, etc.) by probably topping a hundred.   The feeling was really good, people getting up to perform because they had something from their hearts to say.   All the performers were tremendously supportive of each other.    a real feel good event.

I tried to remember other musical competitions.   I was once in a battle of the bands in high school with a really lousy band.   I don't remember much about it, but we didn't do well.

Coming up through high school age I did compete in a northern jersey music teachers annual competition.   You were not awarded a place (like first, second, third, etc.) but given a grade for your performance.   Somewhere in the boxed up archives I have a green and gold placque from one of those.   I think I did pretty well.   I remember one year I played Debussy Gradus ad Parnassum,  which I had pretty well mastered, and the last movement of  Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.   That's a BIG piece.. big in conception, big in sound, and lots of technical challenges.   I remember that as I played for the 3 judges, I got in the zone and played through to the very last line where there was a big fermata (paus).....that's when I came to from being totally inside the music....and remembered that I had never quite mastered the furious two handed arpeggios that end the piece.   Fear, panic, ohmigod.   How long can I rest and stall on the fermata.   What a moment of terror.   Well the show must go on.  I pushed on through, roared out most of the notes, and hopefully the inner voice mistakes were not to evident.   I think I did tell the right musical story.

In the realm of competion.... another bitter moment in life.   This was a competition that didn't happen.  I was an undergraduate political science major at Haverford College.  The music department announced a competition for a pianist to play a Mozart piano concerto with the college orchestra.   I signed up.   I got called in by William Reese, chair of the music department, who said, "How can you possibly do this, you're not a music major."   I said that was true, but I wanted to try out.   He kept saying I couldn't possibly be good enough to win, and I retorted, then why don't you let me audition.   We went round and round.   He won....he wouldn't let me try out.   Another guy (Howard Pancoast was his last name) got to do the concerto.   I think it was wired for him from the start.  I was pissed!   and still haven't ever gotten to perform a concerto.   Maybe I'll take that on after my upcoming showcase, now that I'm back in the classical piano swing.

I did get to perform some nice four hands things at a number of recitals with another Haverford music faculty member.   We did some Mozart and some Brahms.   That was a bunch of fun.