#41: Laurence Lewis: Director and Label Distributor

        Pressburger Klezmer Band


"I met James Brawn, who performs at Markson Pianos Concert Series, through his record label MSR Classics which I’ve been looking after for two or three years. It was actually quite a fluke how we met because initially I noticed the label was advertising a three disc box set by Czech composer Viktor Kalabis that I wanted so I contacted them and then ended up being their distributor. So I heard James Brawn through finding him on the same label, and now see him at many of his concerts.

I got into label distribution in a kind of roundabout way. My late wife Helen and I got involved in a project at Finchley Reform Synagogue to research one of their Torah scrolls from a small village near Prague that had been looted by the Nazis. We spent months researching and then went with an organised party to the Czech Republic.

We ended up making connections with a music dealer in Prague who we began buying material from. We put it on our website, and I gradually made contact with a couple of UK distributors. After around six months I got asked by the Slovakian label Hevhetia if we would be interested to distribute their records. The first record they sent was Miki Skuta playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations and it got a double five star rating in BBC Music magazine. And that’s how we got started.

Over time other labels have come to us, or I’ve discovered them. I think I have around 12 or 14 labels, and each of them have extensive catalogues. I tend to concentrate on new releases rather than back catalogues.

As a daily routine I ship out orders to shops, or I deal with customers who come to my website, or to our Amazon store so I take care of the orders first. I have all the packaging here, together with the hundreds of CDs I’m currently handling, and I also have a franking machine. I have to personally take the discs to the sorting office which makes for a pleasant walk as part of my working day. I also write several newsletters to send out to my clients.

I’m currently busy trying to promote Hevhetia who have a really interesting catalogue of music I’d call contemporary in the sense of it could be jazz, it could be rock, it could be folk, it could be electronics, and because it’s Slovakian it’s not quite what you’d expect. And that’s what I like about it. For example, take the record by singer Hanka Gregušova; it appears to be a folk music disc but once you start investigating …. yes she has many famous Slovakian folk themes but it’s all been reinvented and reimagined for the twenty first century, so it comes with jazz, rock, even Reggae beats. She’s gathered around her on this disc some of the best Czech jazz musicians, and also has a cimbalom band. There’s a whole mix of contemporary sounds and there’s her voice in the middle – she’s a real singer! So I’m distributing this worldwide and also as a download; it’s available in over 200 online music stores.

And there’s another disc I’m currently working with by AMC Trio. The band appears to be a standard jazz combo of piano, bass and drums, but they long ago stopped playing traditional jazz pieces like the American Songbook because, as they told me, they didn’t feel that as Slovaks, they could really play American music properly. So now everything they play they write together as a collective, and instead of just being a kind of Slovakian slanted jazz, everything has a story, each piece has a kind of narrative. So if you look at the title track “Waiting for a wolf” (and there’s lots of wolves in Slovakia!), they’ve written this:

Have you ever spent a night, under the stars, deep in the Carpathian Mountains with only ancient trees for company?

And they’ve also composed one of the most heartbreaking jazz numbers I’ve ever heard; “She’s leaving for heaven”

For those who have lost someone close forever

And another of my current projects is the Pressburger Klezmer band who are the oldest klezmer band in Slovakia. Obviously during the war and afterward during the Communist period anything Jewish was not exactly encouraged, but since the Velvet Revolution when Slovakia came into being, there’s been a lot of interest in the Jewish culture. Pressburger have taken these famous old melodies and they’ve wrapped them up in a modern type of medium.

The Slovaks have become very creative. When the old Czechoslovakia broke apart I think the Czech’s got most of the culture and so the Slovaks have had to start again. In doing so they’ve not only been creating new things, as we see in the music of AMC Trio, but they’ve been going back and rediscovering some of their past, as we see in Pressburger Klezmer Band and also in Hanka Gregušova with her folk themes." (Laurence Lewis)

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Connect with Laurence Lewis

Czech Everything

#40: Ella Xunhuan Zhou: Concert Pianist

“Too few of us have social responsibilities, as musicians and as artists. I think some of us are afraid of taking social responsibility because we think this will affect our work as artists and the effort that we put into music or art. For me, I think it's the opposite because we are part of the planet and what we do inspires other people and affecting other people, it’s so important for us to realise that we have this precious opportunity to highlight some subjects out to our audiences and by doing this, it will make our work even better, our music even better.

I like the Russian pianist Andrei Gavrilov, very much. He’s such a wonderful pianist and a brave man For me, he’s the only one that I see who is actively on social media speaking the truth about some real social problems that unfortunately we are facing everyday but maybe feeling too lazy to change it or even acknowledge it. For me the way he does is very inspiring and audacious. I want to be more like this kind of artist. I can’t save the world but I can do my own part and at least influence to a certain degree.

I remember one of my friend told me a story about the history and development of musicians, during the ancient time, people were using music and instruments to speak about truth, about human feelings either beauty or ugliness through singing or playing melodies. In other words, we are a type of 'media'. In this case, I think it would be more meaningful to use this type 'media' as a platform to be more responsible and more engaged in this real world of full of realities. There are so many issues which are affecting us every second, every time we breathe. Things like discriminations; environmental pollutions, animal abuse etc. I can't just stand aside, I am not that kind of person who takes the glory but not returning anything, I think we need to give in order to receive. Many musicians have reached a certain level of fame they can already be influential but they are not. I don’t have that yet, but if I ever going to make it, I hope I can change things, even just a little.

I love animals, dogs, cats and recently I joined the Wolf Conservation Group. I try to do what I can. I spread the news about adopting animals and I report animal cruelty when I see it. I’m involved in stopping the dog meat festival in Yulin, China. One of my dream is to hope one day I can build my own charity for animals, so more disease can be treated and more life can be rescued.

My dog Nunu is a Cocker Spaniel, she’s almost nine years old now. She inspires me so much, every day. When I was very young I read Jane Goodall’s book about chimpanzees and became very aware of how animals and music go together. When I’m practising I get so much vibes from Nunu. I feel her energy and that she’s a really good listener to me.

We assume animals don’t understand, but I think we just don’t know them. I prefer to have the attitude that there are other beings on the planet apart from us who do have understanding. I find the subject very interesting. Glenn Gould said he only get along with dogs. And there are many other pianists close to animals, for example, Nelson Freire and Helene Grimaud. In general I think musicians tend to be very close to the nature.

I was born in Chongqing a city in the middle of China but when I was seven my parents moved to Shenzhen on the border with Hong Kong. I studied piano because my Dad was a violinist. I’ve been studying music my whole life. I’ve had many great teachers. The most recent was Professor Antonio Bezzan. He studied in Budapest when he was very young and when I met him he was seventy four years old and an amazing pianist with a vision. I think as a teacher you have to have a very good vision about where you want to lead the student and to draw the bigger picture for the student. It’s not about telling what is right and what is wrong because you are already at that level where you can judge for yourself if something is right or not. But a good teacher can unlock something in your heart that you’ve been asking yourself for so many years … something that has been inside you that you can’t get to, and then suddenly, by one click, it’s opened. I remember I was playing the Mozart Fantasia in D Minor and, (I enjoy D Minor so much), also the Bach Chromatic Fantasy. Bezzan was standing there and out of nowhere he started to tell me the haunting character of Don Giovanni in such a way that Don Giovanni came in front of my eyes and he stayed there listening to me. So whenever I play this piece, I feel that the character really is there. And also he told me stories about how he’d studied with Frederich Gulda, about his time in Budapest and how he met all those pianists from the golden age, absolutely fascinating And you could see the light in his eyes and you could picture all of them alive, it was so wonderful. Sadly Bezzan passed away last year.

I’m currently working towards a competition I hope to reach the final round so I can play concerto. All my teachers have always encouraged me to play more Mozart because of my small hands, but in my heart I wanted to play Rachmaninov. I love to play concertos and also chamber music. Last year I did the Schubert Fantasy for 4-hands with a great artist in Brazil and everybody loved it. That was a wonderful moment for me because who doesn’t love Schubert?” (Ella Xunhuan Zhou)

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Ella Xunhuan Zhou performed at Markson Pianos Concert Series June 24th 2015 
Mozart Fantasia no. 3 in D minor K397
Chopin Preludes no. 1 to no. 12. op 28
Beethoven Sonata no 17 in D minor Op. 31
Rachmaninoff Etude-tableaux no.8 Op 39
Nikolai Kapustin Variations Op 41

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Bio

Born in China, Ella started to learn piano at age 4, gave her first public performance when she was 6 years old. At age 12, she was selected from one thousand candidates as a child prodigy to study piano and composition in Shenzhen Arts school, among her senior class mates there was Yundi LI ( the winner of the 14th international Chopin competition). During her studies, she participated in many competitions including the Parsons international piano competition(Hong Kong) at age 13 and has received 4th prize.

In year 2000, Ella immigrated to the UK. In Brighton, her talent was quickly discovered by Imogen Windsor and Anna Maria Tabor, under their guidance, she performed Mozart piano concerto in A Major with BHASVIC youth orchestra at age 15, at the same year her mentor Anna Maria Tabor encouraged her to also publish her composition work - The Tango Suite for string quartet. The premier was given by the soloists from Brighton Symphony Orchestra at the Brighton Friends Meeting House, the event was extremely successful and she was congratulated by the audiences and critics which has become a major motivation for her to carry on her music journey.

In year 2003, after receiving the best performance prize at the Brighton Springboard Festival, Ella moved to London and continued to study piano under Professor Roger Green from Trinity college of music, she gave recitals in many venues including the prestigious Southwark Cathedral, whilst she also pursued an undergraduate studies in Philosophy and Political Science at Keele University, at year 2006 she graduated with honours, in the following year 2007, she won 2nd prize at the Richmond Piano Festival Competition.

In 2010, she decided to move to Paris and continue her study with Professor Marian Rybicki in Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, since then, she played in various concerts across Europe including the legendary Salle Cortot. In 2011, she was invited by Prince Zur Lippe to perform her first debut at the Schloss Proschwitz in Germany.

Ella had the pleasure and honour to also participate in masterclasses given by Andrei Gavrilov and Maria Joao Pires. After Paris, in 2013 Ella moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil to continue her music career as a concert pianist and also to study with the latest Maestro Antonio Bezzan, she has performed in several festivals including the Mackenzie music series of Sao Paulo. She is now residing in Paris, Sao Paulo and London.

Connect with Ella  zhouxunhuan@yahoo.com

#39: Robert Stoodley and Linda Ang 'Piano A Deux': Piano Duo Concert Pianists

LA Ours is a unique journey as we met on a dating website to begin with, nothing to do with music!

RS It took about three weeks of emailing to find out whether she was a violinist, a cellist or a flautist. It turned out that she was a pianist.

LA I was certainly not looking for a musician, let alone a pianist to marry! However, we married in 2008 and in 2010 we started 'Piano a Deux'.

RS The transition from being a soloist to working in a duo takes time. This is where you realise you are no longer sitting in the middle of the piano, that you are always sitting at an awkward angle, and you’re limited to your part of the keyboard, which is either the top or the bottom. Then you find that there’s a lot of clashing of hands, you scratch each other with your finger nails, and you bump into each other a lot. Sometimes composers write the same note for both players. You might also disagree about how phrases should be played or how the music is to be shaped.

LA If you listen to orchestras or ensembles, many play in straight time, that’s playing metronomically. Many ensembles, we find, play like that. We wondered why, until we realised that it makes it much easier. Even with just 2 people, using subtleties of rhythm, or rubato as it is called, makes playing together much more demanding.

RS I think playing in a piano duo is really about honest and open communication. Both have to be able to say without offence if something is not working. If issues are not sorted out, they can fester and affect the eventual result. Conflict resolution is constantly essential. In fact, having a therapist on hand would be fantastic.

LA It’s Wimbledon season at the moment. Solo and duo playing are like playing Singles and Doubles: totally different ball games, with different mindsets and different requirements of skills.

RS With any kind of chamber music, you have to listen like a hawk. If you imagine playing a Chopin Nocturne, and then imagine that one person is playing the melody and the other person is playing the accompaniment … or even a waltz and think “I’m going to put some rubato in” … it becomes a very different and difficult thing for two people to accomplish.

RS A soloist has one brain working two hands. With a piano duo it’s two brains working four hands, hence our motto: 'Four Hands One Heart'!

LA We don’t always take the same part; sometimes I play Primo, at other times Robert does.

RS We’ve been on a bit of a journey with this because Linda assumed I would take the top part as I've got bigger hands and bigger shoulders. But then people and also our agents said that Linda can’t be seen when I play Primo. They want to see her and the dresses she wears ...

LA We have realised that the visual impact of a concert is really important too.

RS When we begin a new work we sight-read through it and then practise it separately on two different pianos for some time. Issues arise when we come back together and work out how to find one interpretation from the different ways in which we’ve come to hear the piece. That’s when conflict kicks in again.

LA I think of Maria Callas at this point. She went to every single orchestra rehearsal and said “If you want to know how to act, you listen to the orchestral part, it’s all there”. So it’s really important to know all the parts. Sometimes we actually swap roles so we know the other part intimately – that’s the ideal.

RS We’re interested in finding neglected composers and playing their music, especially when it's really good. We've found the French composer Georges Onslow, who we discovered in a dusty drawer in a music library.  During his lifetime, was as celebrated all over Europe as Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn and admired by all of those, but interest in his music faded when he died. His family didn’t take on the publication or organisation of it, and so it just disappeared from public view. We've just recorded a CD which includes his Op. 7 sonata and his six solo pieces.

LA We also play the standard repertoire, and a lot of our own arrangements, for example 'An American in Paris' , 'Carmen Fantasy', 'Tea For Two' and Liszt’s 'Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2'' where we've added our own cadenzas . Also 'Stranger in Paradise' from Kismet and ' You Are My Heart’s Delight' by Franz Lehar.  There’s also Johann Strauss' ' Voices of Spring'. Very often we take tunes from operetta or music theatre and rearrange them. I used to play these arrangements on my own, and when Robert turned up he added another tier, so we've called one piece: 'Gershwin In Tiers' We’ve recently recorded six Poulenc songs which I arranged and turned into a suite for piano duo: 'Songs of Love & War'.

RS We also add pianistic gestures and write big virtuosic finishes which always work well in concert.

*****

Piano À Deux perform at Markson Pianos Concert Series 

Wednesday 29th July at 7 p.m
St Mary Magdalene Church, Munster Square, London NW1 3PT
Admission is free, though contributions will be welcome at the end

'Carmen Carnival': Bizet arr Ang/Stoodley

 E minor Sonata, Op. 7: George Onslow

'L'Amour et La Guerre': six Poulenc songs arr Ang/Stoodley (selection)

 'An American in Paris': Gershwin arr Ang/Stoodley

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Connect with Linda and Robert 

BIO 
Since its creation in 2010, “Piano À Deux” with its 'Four Hands One Heart' approach is redefining the piano duo experience for audiences worldwide. Robert & Linda have been wowing audiences in Hungary, Italy, Germany, Singapore, in the UK and on cruise ships with their charisma, comedy and virtuosity set in their original musical arrangements. They met not through music, but at a dating website, and married in 2008. Apart from their arrangements they also play the standard repertoire and music by neglected composers like Georges Onslow. They have just recorded his Op 7 Duo Sonata and six solo pieces on their second CD, which includes music by Debussy and songs by Poulenc (arr Linda Ang) Through their first CD: “Strictly Not Bach” released in 2011, Piano À Deux, with their audiences, have raised £2,000 for WorldVision and other charities. Their 2012 appearance on UK’s ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, where one of the judges Amanda Holden said, “I’m sure that the Royal Family would love this!” has earned them the epithet: 'Darlings of ITV' from producer Chris Gidney.

ROBERT STOODLEY Robert studied the piano with Dorothea Law, (student of Paul Baumgartner and Alfred Brendel), and is a linguist and songwriter. Some of Robert’s songs have been published and sung throughout the world. Many have been recorded, the most recent recording being “St. Michael-le-Belfrey--the Vinyl Years”. Robert also gained the Premier Prix at the Conservatoire de Lyon (France), has broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and given recitals and concerto performances throughout the UK. 

LINDA ANG STOODLEY Singapore born pianist Linda, B.Mus. (Edinburgh) won many awards like the RoyalOverseas League Accompanist’s Prize, and was with the Guildhall String Ensemble when they won the Internationales Jeunesses Musicales Competition in Belgrade. Linda has performed in the UK, Europe, Mauritius and Singapore; on Dutch and Mauritius television, Radio Scotland, Radio Oxford, Radio 3, live on Classic FM and Premier Radio and has recorded with several artistes and has seven CDs of her own. Linda was featured in Singapore’s “Straits Times” and Singapore Airlines’ In-flight Magazine and was cover girl for “Woman Alive” magazine.

#38 Nada Kolundzija: Concert Pianist

"I liked Yugoslavia. It was my country and I had a lot of friends everywhere.   Every year I played solo concerts, and also concerts with my violinist brother, in the former Yugoslav Republics. The whole country was my home.  

Then came  the Yugoslav Wars in the period between 1991 and 1999.  I was completely confused.  We couldn't travel anywhere to play. Professionally, it was a disaster. Living also became difficult because of financial and political sanctions against Serbia.  And then in 1992, everything culminated with bombing of Serbia and Montenegro for more than two months.  It was too much for all of us.

At that time I left Belgrade for a village nearby. And actually, I didn't have any wish to work and to play piano, because my feeling for my country had gone.  I know many other people who had a different approach, and they started working more than they had before the war started.  But I couldn't.

I was really lost because I lost my job that was essential for my life.  I became a gardener.  I grew vegetables, there were so many that I ended up giving a lot of them away.  I was a really successful gardener. I enjoyed that job and I still garden as a hobby now in Belgrade.  I lost my identity during those years...things really fell apart for me.  But, when you are in something, you don’t feel how bad it actually might be.  Humans are flexible and we couldn't survive without this flexibility.

In the lead up before the bombing started I was working in Belgrade, at the Faculty of Music. It was a very hard time.  Every day we were advised to stay at home. We never knew when we would hear alarm and the voice over the megaphone that alerted us that the bombing would start and also when the bombing was over.  I will never forget that voice, or the sound of siren.   But of course many people still did go outside anyway, even though we were supposed to stay inside.  It was becoming difficult to manage so many things and so our work became very difficult to do.

Before things changed, and then after things settled down, a strong impulse for music came to me. I started to practice a lot. I played Classical repertoire with my brother Jovan Kolundzija, who is a great violinist and I continued with my love in contemporary music; Schoenberg, Xenakis, Cage, Messaien, Kagel… all those very famous names, classics of 20th Century, and many new composers too. From the time I was in Middle School, I was always very interested in this kind of music, a new music. So, when I returned to Belgrade I took it up again. And, I began to get my identity back when I started to play.   Nowadays I’m very happy, I work a lot, with pleasure, often long into the night.  I feel passion for my work. That’s my life. I am discovering new scores and new music, listening a lot and when I find something that is for me I want to play this so much! 

Right now, I’ve made something new.  I’m now at the point in my career where I've prepared a small concert anthology of music for piano, and from that I've chosen three concert programmes.  So I’m busy preparing all the new repertoire for these new concerts.  The three concerts are one month apart for three months. Such a big job. But so nice!

After that I want to choose the best pieces and play one more concert in a Synagogue in Novi Sad; it’s a great place to play and record, play in more places and make CDs with nice book about composers and with the pieces." (Nada Kolundzija)

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Short bio

Belgrade-based Nada Kolundzija is an internationally renowned concert pianist and Serbia's most prominent performer and passionate promoter of contemporary music.  Over a career spanning more than four decades, Ms. Kolundzija has performed as a soloist and as a chamber music collaborator in countless concerts at home and abroad, been featured as a leading national artist on Serbian radio and television broadcasts, and won national and international awards and recognition for her artistic achievements in classical and contemporary music.

Listen to Nada Kolundzija play Louis Andriessen Image de Moreau - Tocatta  for Piano (1)

Connect with Nada Kolundzija 

#37 Sarah Sarhandi: Composer, Solo Violist & Pianist

“I loved piano, I played since I was a small child; I had one tune that I made up when I was really young. I ended up going to the Royal Academy of Music where piano was my second study but Ive always played and it’s a huge source of inspiration to me to work at the piano.

I was probably four when I first touched a piano. My first memory is that we had some friends in the country who we used to visit. There was a piano in the corner, my friend and I used to make up plays and we used the piano to enhance our stories, we’d make our own music that way. She was my age and interestingly her father was Ghanaian and her mother English whereas my father was Pakistani and my mother English so we had a strange cross culture adventure as tiny children and this cross cultural element has gone on to become a major theme in my music making. My friend, Adjoa Andoh, went on to become an actress and I became a musician!

After those little plays I was desperate for piano lessons. First I learned recorder, then piano and then, somehow, I became drawn to the viola. There was something about the singular voice that attracted me to the it and it grabbed me and became my first instrument.

I began to study viola seriously when I was 11 and almost right away began winning competitions which was astonishing for me, so I just went with it. I wanted to become a solo violist, I didn’t want to play in an orchestra.

When I was 21 I was at sea for many reasons and tried to give up music. I didn’t know what to do. I played with musicians who improvised including Don Cherry. I started to work with the pianist Mark Springer and began to improvise and write with him. I realised there'd been a missing link. I hadn't been making my own music. I wrote a song on the piano for Bjork to sing which she's recorded. Eventually I split from Mark in order to really find my own voice as a composer.

Curiously enough my piano playing began to emerge again as I was no longer working with a pianist. I was always writing, writing, I’d often go to the piano first.

I played in orchestras from the age of 8 and I realise that when you sit at the piano alone, you can make a panorama of sound that goes all around you just like when you are sitting in an orchestra, but just with your with ten fingers. The sonic range of the piano is enormous. All these elements conspired in me. I never really thought of going along in one musical line - electronica and sound are also a very important part of my work.

I’ve been composing at the keyboard recently. At Kings Place last December I performed 'Found' an event of my work and collaborations with other artists, dancers, singers and musicians which included video - some of which I shot recently in Karachi. Piano that I’d recorded myself ran through quite a few pieces. 'Music To Swim To' was a film with music based on a swimming race I'd won as a child and a collaboration with the artist Sophie Molins. The music included a sample of Ravel's 2nd piano concerto and tabla by Talvin Singh. I decided I’d play live piano on stage too, for the first time in public.

At the moment I’m working on an ongoing project which is an exploration and reflection of the worlds I and many others like me inhabit - a teeming, sometimes confusing, challenging but rich kaleidoscope of both intertwined and oppositional worlds - perhaps it simply is the world now. I have been discussing musical forms and creating some exciting work with the Pakistani guitarist and composer Aamir Zaki and I have a collaboration with Vincent Katz the poet and translator. We're writing an opera based on his translation of 'The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius' (National American Translation Award 2005). Vincent is in New York, Sextus Propertius was an Ancient Roman Poet so that’s a cross cultural/time travel project too!” (Sarah Sarhandi)

Short Bio
Sarah makes new sounds whilst drawing on her classical inheritance. Her music is characterised by a layering of strong themes and rhythms, sounds that are both acoustic and programmed, vocals and the geometric shapes of her viola. The complexity of the composition offers a different experience each time they are heard, so that the listener explores new moods and emotions, different areas of time and space.' - Anthea Eno. 

Sarah studied viola at the Royal Academy of Music in London and is known for her work as composer, performer, film director, and visual artist. In 2002 Sarah Sarhandi received the 'Time Out Award For Outstanding Collaboration for Sheer with Russell Malpihant, which was performed at the London Coliseum in 2009 by Thomas Edur and Agnes Oakes. Her show 'FOUND' featuring recent collaborations premiered as part of the Out Hear series at Kings Place, London in December 2013.

She has recorded and performed worldwide. Previous collaborators include Bjork, Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Ivor Guest, Damien Hirst, Michael Nyman, recently and currently Paul Benney, Gina Birch, Jamie Irrepressible, Vincent Katz, Lore Lixenburg, Sophie Molins, Jemima Burrill and Aamir Zaki.

Connect with Sarah Sarhandi

Listen to Sarah interviews by Robert Elms

#36 Dr Valerie Capers, Composer and Pianist (with contribution from John Robinson, Bassist and Colleague)

                        Valerie Capers                                                                         Left to Right: Lola Perrin, Andy Rowan,

                                                                                                                           John Robinson, Valerie Capers, NYC July 2014

Valerie Capers "Until my works are published they only exist in John’s handwriting.

I wrote ‘Portraits in Jazz’ a long time ago. The first time ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) selected my work for their piano grade syllabus they picked “Billie’s Song” from the collection. I was very inspired by Billie Holiday, I would say it took me around two weeks to have that melody composed and written down.

Generally, when I dictate a piano piece to John, it might take a week or two depending on how busy he is. I love to compose music but it’s very difficult for me. Now in this 21st Century they have a lot of computer programmes and things that are particularly created for the blind and the visually impaired. They are not as sophisticated as they should be at this point and there are many, many things, if we're going to talk about writing large compositions, orchestral compositions, oral compositions, they are much more difficult to deal with than people would expect. And I've had people say well Stevie Wonder can do all this; well Stevie Wonder has millions and millions of dollars, and can come up with an idea for this or that or whatever, and I don't know if Stevie Wonder himself would be able to write let's say an orchestral piece. It's just very, very, very, very complicated.

To get it into print - and unfortunately I'm not Mozart- what I do is I come up with the ideas and then I write them down in Braille music which is very cumbersome, extremely cumbersome. And then, after talking to John because he has a beautiful hand, he works and writes for me and we talk about how we can communicate, so I don't have John sitting around while I write the music down and then give it to him, I will take time if I'm working on something ….. I'll get up in the morning, work on the piece of music, write it all in braille and then I dictate the music on the cassette so that John can come in his own time, pick up the cassette and sit down and start writing.

He gave me some pointers to help him when he's writing, for example, in Braille music the keyboard Middle C is called fourth octave C because it's the fourth C on the keyboard and so any note from Middle C (which is below the lowest line on the treble clef) up to the B (the third line of the treble clef), they call it fourth octave C- that's how you can get tones in Braille music, a register which is different from being able to know how high or how low a note is when you see it on a particular line space.

So John changed that a little bit to make it easier for him to pick up right away. He said “you know, we have the keyboard divided into certain sections like “Small”, (C Small, for example, is the second space of the bass clef and anything from the C to the B just below the middle C is called the Small area). Then you have the Grade section of the piano (so C grade would be from the second C on the piano up to the B which is the second line of the bass stave). Down at the bottom it's called Contra (that's the C from the low C at the very bottom up to the B below the C Grade which is below the two ledger lines below the bass).

Now that sounds awfully complicated and it is!

And John says we’ve got to find a way to make this easier. So when I'm talking to John and dictating to him I refer to the notes in the third octave range as C Small. For example if I want the clarinet to play a G below Middle C I wouldn't say third octave G which, I'm comfortable with being a blind musician, I would say a “G Small”.

Every instrument has to be written individually. If I'm doing a piece for woodwinds, let's say an alto saxophone, a tenor saxophone and a clarinet, let's say together, this is what I have to do. I take the lower one first, I take the tenor, I say “here are the notes …., its first note is F Small” so I give John the notes maybe for the first phrase and I say, ”now I go back” and I give him the first note for the alto sax.

Then I give him notes for the clarinet, and remember you cannot see them all at once, you never can see a chord, you see that you go back and you have to remember...

When we were doing the “Ruby” for example, it was only us, measure by measure, because, in one an area there's 64 bars of music that's in the New Orleans polyphonic street band style. I said John " This is going to be very tedious but let's take it phrase by phrase … " and I said “now, at the end of this 4 bar phrase, there were 3 instruments, a clarinet a trombone and a trumpet I said there are 2 instruments that have the same rhythm, let me know” … so he looks and says “yes the trombone has the same rhythm as the clarinet so I said “play the trombone part”.

He's sitting there and I play it, and then I play more...

And then I make the decision as to which instrument I'm going to rhythmically change so because we had to maintain the polyphony, it was hard. You have to understand that anything that I dictate has to be dictated note by note by note."

John Robinson "Well somebody saw my writing and he asked what computer I used and I said a straight ruler and a Pentel rolling writer! We have a mutual friend who's a wonderful sight-reader and she plays through the material after I write it on the page so we can check it all." (Valerie Capers with John Robinson 2014)




VALERIE CAPERS SHORT BIO - click here for full bio 

Dr. Valerie Capers was born in the Bronx and received her early schooling at the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. She went on to obtain both her bachelor's and master's degrees from The Juilliard School of Music. She served on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, and from 1987 to 1995 was chair of the Department of Music and Art at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY), where she is now professor emeritus.

Her outstanding work as an educator has been lauded throughout the USA as being both innovative and impressive. Susquehanna University awarded her the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts in 1996, and Doane College (Crete, Nebraska) and Bloomfield (New Jersey) College (along with Wynton Marsalis) both awarded her honorary doctorates in 2004. Recent teaching and workshop venues include Doane College, Stanford University, the Cleveland (Ohio) public school system, St. Thomas (United States Virgin Islands) high schools, Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) and the Mozarteum conservatory, Salzburg, Austria.

Among the awards and commissions she has received are the National Endowment for the Arts, including a special-projects grant to present a jazz series at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Meet the Composer, the CUNY Research Foundation, the Smithsonian, and The Fund for Artists of Arts International.

Dr. Capers has appeared with her trio and ensemble at colleges, universities, jazz festivals, clubs and concert halls throughout the country, including a series at Weill Recital Hall and the 2001 Rendez-vous de l'Erdre in Nantes, France. Her trio's performances at the International Grande Parade du Jazz Festival in Nice, France, the Martin Luther King Festival in Ottawa, Ontario, and the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague received rave reviews. The group has also participated in the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Mellon Jazz Festival (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), and New York's Kool, JVC and Downtown jazz festival.



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See videos at the African American Composer Initiative website

#35 Nadav Hertzka: Concert Pianist

"In my next concert I’ll be playing Janacek, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and also contemporary composers; Borenstein and Waley-Cohen.

I have an interest in playing new music; I wanted to explore more than the Classical composers I was mainly playing; perform contemporary music and also work with the composers. I don’t collaborate with the composer until the piece is delivered to me. It is at that point that I get involved; before that I don’t know what the composer is creating. So I work with the music and with the composer, and see what the composer wants from me.

Five Breaths by Freya Waley-Cohen was written specifically for me. When she handed me the score I had questions. We talked about phrases and tempi changes, we discussed everything in detail and also elements that were not written out. 

 
I hope that my style of playing has an effect on the composers I work with; that I influence in some way the composition, through the composer having an understanding of my performance.

I have played contemporary music before, but now I have a stronger interest. In Israel we grow up playing contemporary repertoire and that must be part of the reason why I lean towards contemporary composers now. I think it was always important back in the day, and now we must do the same because we have to keep moving forward.

I play a lot of chamber music and I’m also preparing for several solo concerts in Europe. I've recorded a Tchaikovsky CD and looking forward to my second recording.

I came to England to do my Masters at the Royal Academy of Music and decided to stay because I like it so much here. There are lots of things around the business of music, superficial things, to do with image, looks, marketing, but what is ultimately most important is the music itself. When it comes to stage fright, I don’t think there’s a solution but I do think you get used to it. In a way, stage fright serves a purpose and eliminating it completely may be counterproductive; I think it means you care about the performance."(Nadav Hertzka)

Come hear Nadav Hertzka perform at the Markson Pianos Concert Series
July 30th at 7pm
£6 (£3 concessions) on the door
St Mary Magdalene Parish Church, Munster Square, London NW1 3PL
Programme
Janacek: In the Mists
Borenstein: Reminiscences of Childhood op. 54
Rachmaninov: Elegie in E Flat Minor, Op. 3 No. 1
Waley-Cohen: Five Breathes
Tchaikovsky: "The Seasons" Op. 37b (selection)

Bio
Israeli pianist Nadav Hertzka has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia in major venues such as Carnegie Weill Hall, Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Shanghai Conservatory, and Avery Fisher Hall. His festival appearances include the Mostly Mozart Festival in Lincoln Center, the Beethoven Festival in Israel and the Mozart Festival in Malta, as well as engagements in China, Russia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, England and Scotland.

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