And the role of engineer will be played by: Me.

Quick update before heading off to the plane (in less than 12 hours).
I just got back from a meeting with Luc Michiels. Luc is the local Mechelen carillon builder / mechanic. I initially contacted him because I wanted some workspace and tools to work on my final project for my diploma -- building my own, personal, compact, transportable practice carillon. This is currently what the most compact practice carillons look like. Usually they're a good 50% bigger than this one, at least 3-4 feet deep, and really really heavy.
By the end of the year, its my hope to have one that I could carry out of my house and put into the backseat of an ordinary car. (Let's face it, I'm in a stage of life that involves changing residences from time to time, and space is at a premium).
Last time I met with Luc (a good couple months ago), he said, interesting idea, lets see some sketches. This was really intimidating for me because a) my ideas were nascent and foggy and b) I'm pretty bad with drawing. At that time, I felt ill equipped to sell a professional engineer (even a very nice and friendly one) on my amateur and vague ideas. So I've been working in 2 dimensions on and off for the past couple of months. I even feel more comfortable with drawing now.
I finally e-mailed him, hoping to advance the project so I could hit the ground running after Israel. We met. We talked. I showed him drawings, spoke broken dutch, and gestured wildly. And he liked the plans! He seemed impressed, and he's solidly on board. In fact, not only is he giving me workshop space, but he'll help with building materials and some of the trickier aspects of the building (for me) like making light aluminum tone bars (which is apparently routine for him).
When we meet again in mid-January, I'll have access to professional tools, professional material sources (no more local hardware shop scrounging), and professional advice. Thats one big hurdle cleared and a big boost of support going forward.

Well, that's the biggest piece of news I've got. For the past week I've had a 'vacation at home' -- no classes, no practicing, and more or less no appointments or responsibilities. Its been really nice and a chance to catch up on things like sleep, errands, etc, and to be as monastic and hermit-like as I want. Israel will involve a lot more early mornings, social evenings, and adventurous days, but I think I'm probably just about ready for that. We'll see how it goes!

So This is Christmas...

Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet liked my last entry so much that they requested a photo with me. How could I refuse?



Life has been moving along since the last posting, mostly as usual. Things have been really good out here. Its been a time of holidays, of festive winter activities, stark landscapes, and yes, more carillon study. I watched for months as people around me fell ill with the common cold, thinking I was doing pretty good from an immunity standpoint. Sadly, that era has passed, and for the first time in recent memory, I am with cold. Soon I will be heading off to Israel, where you can imagine there will be at least a few notable things to write about, but for now, here are some of the highlights from the past month.


Christmas Markets:

America could learn a thing or two about Christmas from their European counterparts. For most of December, cities throughout Northern Europe (maybe even beyond) fill their streets with music, decorations, and market stalls selling hot drinks, mulled wine, hard alcohol and all sorts of food. They're open well into the night. Ice skating rinks are set up in the market squares and the sounds of live music fill the streets. Its a full-fledged powerhouse of life and liveliness in the depths of the dark and cold winter. From Bruges to Dordrecht to Brussels, and even Mechelen, I've been soaking up these seasonal celebrations so much that I imagine it will be hard to go through the rest of winter without them.
One of the biggest highlights of these Christmas Markets for me has been the ice skating. I used to do this a lot as a child and its been great to get back into it. I've already gone 3 times, and aside from the Dordrecht experience (pitted ice, hundreds of little kids to weave around, and traffic every which way across the ice), its been really great. By the end of the last time I was really in good control and could dash around the rink without too much fear of losing control. Maybe its time to work on some jumps and spins? Check out this show-off from the Brussels Christmas market -- not too shabby, huh?



Carillon Travel:
I mentioned a couple of upcoming trips in the last update -- I went to Brugges a few Sundays ago, and had a really rough time with the instrument. Yes, apparently this one is also really really hard to play (why don't they tell me these things in advance?). That trip ended up being more fun for the ice skating and city wandering than for the carillonning.
The big mega-trip of the month though, was to visit Boudewijn Zwart in the Netherlands. Boudewijn is a incredibly skilled and virtuosic player who I got to meet a few years ago, first when I visited him with the Yale Guild of Carillonneurs in 2005, and then in Florida for his concert at the International Carillon Festival 2007. He invited me to come visit again, but I didn't know what was in store for me until he sent me the itinerary for my two day visit: 8 carillons, spread across the entire Netherlands, in little more than 24 hours.
We drove. We climbed. We played. We drank and we feasted. And then we did it all again. By the last climb of the last tower I was feeling a bit faint, but I made it and finished in good form.
Its pretty amazing what this guy does. 5 concerts Friday. 4 concerts Saturday. 2 concerts most other days. Not to mention playing organ in church on Sunday (just for fun), studying piano, and running special programs for kids to get them excited about music and the carillon, with his very own personal travelling carillon. (we gave it a try early on Saturday morning before picking up the tour again. It was bizarre to hear bells from some dude's driveway in the countryside. I asked if we should keep it down on account of the neighbors, but he replied that they were used to it by now)

And all sorts of other miscellaneous projects. His take on this? "Its a terrible life. Play music, drink beer, eat good food? Horrible!".
Highlights of the tour include seeing the elaborate brickwork of the inside of the church in Issjelstein (this is the support structure for a brick staircase!), eating "harring" the traditional way (pick up raw-picked fish by the tail, dangle it over your head, and bite.), seeing Boudewijn's living room (complete with 2 grand pianos, carillon practice keyboard, electric organ, harpsichord, and a good half-dozen other keyboard curios), walking through Christmas markets before and after the various concerts, sampling the fare and enjoying the atmosphere, seeing all the locals kids running up to meet Boudewijn before his concert, and of course, playing loads of wonderful instruments and watching Boudewijn in action. Here are a few clips to give you an idea.




Exams:
Initially I wasn't too nervous about the mid-term performance exams at the school. After all, they didn't really count for anything. But as they got closer I realized it would be a good opportunity to practice performing under pressure. After all, G!d willing I do have finals coming down the road, and maybe even a couple of carillon competitions. So a couple of days beforehand, I started preparing in earnest.
In the morning I played the Chopin Fantasie Impromptu for my piano exam. I did really well given the difficulty of the piece, and it felt like some sort of rite of passage, my first piano performance as an adult and a graded one at that! They said I had a few too many note errors but I felt pretty good about it.
Then I went up into the tower to warm up and wait for the call to say that the jury was ready. The call came about an hour later (!?) and I played what I thought was also a solid performance. The biggest piece of feedback I got on this was that I need to work on the unity of longer and larger chunks of music so that the piece flows as several complete ideas, rather than lots of 8- or 16-measure phrases. (I thought this was a little funny because in lessons its not uncommon for Eddy to stop me every 16 measures or so to give feedback). Still, it made a lot of sense to me and after a day or two's digestion, I started to see the ways to work to get there. It actually felt like a nice turning point in my development. I get to "bank" all the technical and microscopic work that I've been doing and move on to the big picture stuff.


Zen Playing, Beginner's Playing:
The next day, while playing for Geert, I got one of those paradigm-shift corrections.
Some background: I think the last paradigm-shifting correction I got was from Jo Haazen 3 years ago. He talked about giving pieces rhythmical structure by accenting downbeats and intentionally un-accenting upbeats. He goes a bit too far with it, but it can produce some really good effects in the right context.
Geert's correction, 3 years later, was the counterweight to Jo's. In legato phrases, every note, downbeat or otherwise, needs to have the same stress (or smoothly crescendoing / diminuendoing) -- otherwise it suggests that you've broken the line and that you're bringing in a new idea. It works brilliantly, but it made me start to wonder... 5 years ago I'm pretty sure that that's how I played the line that we were talking about. Then I met Jo, and his accent system penetrated my brain to the extent that I couldn't play an upbeat without subduing it. Now, 3 years later, thanks to a good correction, I'm playing the line sensibly again. Am I better off?
I think there's something dangerous about playing with too many "should's" in your head. If you don't "know" anything, if you have beginner's mind, all you can do is listen and play what sounds good. When you "know better", it takes you out of your ears and into your head. That's not a good place to play from. Its a place that had me playing a simple legato line wrong for 3 years, in spite of being able to play it right before that, in spite of knowing of some level that it didn't sound right. And I wonder if I'm any better off having two counterbalancing principles in my head that let me play the line right, versus having mystery in my head that forces me to listen. For a while I wondered if I had made a mistake by introducing formal education into my development. The words of Gordon Slater echoed in my head -- "Don't go to Mechelen, just keep doing whatever it is you're doing".
There's a lot of new information here and a lot of corrections to incorporate into my playing, so most of what I'm doing in front of the carillon right now is thinking-ful and intention-ful -- I'm trying to make something specific happen to match the feedback I've gotten from my teachers. I believe that this is both important for my development and, paradoxically, a bad habit that I will have to learn to break once I graduate. To put a variation on an old Jewish saying, "when the mind stands, the ears fall".
I can't go back to pure beginner's mind, nor could I even when Gord advised me to stay away (I had already met Jo, had plenty of master classes, etc). But I will have a lot of work to do when I get back to the states. Not only will I have to digest what I've learned here, but I'll have to get it into my body and then CLEAR IT OUT OF MY HEAD. I'll have to work my way back to just listening. My ears got me here, and in the end they'll be what will let me make something useful of what I've learned here.
The itchy thought in the back of my head is that that's not even good enough. I ought to be able to do this now. I ought to be able to separate between practice (thinking) and performance (listening), so that I don't spend an entire year building the habit of thought-y playing. But so far I haven't been able to succeed there. I don't know if its a discipline issue or if there's simply too much new information flowing in per unit playing time to make that work. But I think that's the needs to be the lofty target.

Well, I think that's about it for this issue. Check out pictures on flickr -- this new set has a lot of pretty ones:


http://www.flickr.com/gp/59706944@N00/4s19C3

And if you're still reading and enjoying, please drop a comment in the comment section -- its good to know there are people still out there :)

Coming up next time, New Year's adventures in Israel!

And now to send you off, a quick video of something you don't see everyday. (And if you look closely, you can see a pizza hut in the background)

Monday, Monday!

OK, so in the spirit of shorter and more frequent blog entries... Things are really looking up these days, and here are some of the reasons why:

-Treasa came back from Ireland today, which brightens everything up. And the sun came out this morning, which has a similar effect. Call me crazy, but I'm actually really digging this Belgian weather right now (though it may not be typical). One day its sunny with all sorts of changing cumulus clouds speeding by, then the next day or even that night, its pouring down torrential rain. Today was very very sunny (I mean now its torrential, but for most of daylight it was sunny). And since I was 444 steps up playing the carillon, I decided to take the extra 70 or so to visit the roof and the balcony. The views were beautiful, you could see all the way to Brussels, and when the automatic play chimed out the 00:45, the tower seemed to shake as the sound echoed out over the entire city, bouncing back at me from every rooftop near and far and every distance in-between, so that it almost sounded like the whole thing was played in tremolo. Sometimes playing the carillon makes you feel like you're off in some distant and unnoticed corner of the existence (who's ever heard of the carillon), but here it felt like I I was in the center of, and on top of, the entire world.

More about the weather, it gets dark early, which makes the daylight that much more precious, but which also really creates a hibernational atmosphere. This is the perfect place to be working on living a quieter life and hunkering down and focusing on music. I guess the thing I fear is constansy, the never-ending, unchanging, grey overcast with occasional drizzles weather that people warned me about.

-My practice in the tower was spectacular -- I was really right about the whole go back to focusing on the performance act, it made my playing 10 times better, and with some new macro-scale ideas from Geert -- thinking about actively suppressing accompaniment and voicing melody (on the note axis) and thinking of fast passages in terms of waves building to a point, rather than sets of notes (on the time axis) -- I've been able to take the performance act further than I used to. Add in the fact that I'm just about technically competent on the Passacaglia now and it made for a killer hour or so on the carillon.

-I finally got serious about getting in gear with travelling, and what should come into my inbox but a reply to an old e-mail I sent to Boudewijn Zwart in the Netherlands, asking about a visit to his carillons. He invited me for next weekend. And Treasa, Paolo and I were planning on going to Brugge tomorrow, but I found out that they play the carillon on Sundays so we're going this weekend instead, and we'll get to play there as well. So in one day I went from 0 to 2 trips around Belgium and the Netherlands in the next two weeks.

-I'm also looking forward to going into Brussels to checking out an exhibit called "Le Grand Atelier", which "follows the journeys of famous and lesser-known artists between the 5th and 18th centuries, their ideas, artworks, and patrons... without attempting to be exhaustive, this exhibition focuses on 14 typically European artistic phenomena that spread across Europe like shock waves." This sounds like just about the most fascinating thing to me ever right now. I've been getting more and more excited about art and music here. The Reubens house, the cathedrals, the orchestral and choral music, it simply amazes and inspires me what an immense wealth of human creativity exists in this world. Its funny, in Washington it becomes easy to focus on all that is wrong with the world. Here in Belgium, it seems much easier to focus on all that's right, and for me right now, this is what its about. I can't seem to get enough of the stories, trappings, and works of people who were living out creative lives. Art, history, philosophy, culture, are coming alive in a new way out here.


-I feel like I'm getting my mind around my relationship with work. I like being busy and working hard. Its not that I grudgingly accept it. I could've had an easier thesis topic but I chose a heavy one that I was passionate about. And that's good. Especially good, since I'm out here and have the very rare privilege of getting to work almost exclusively on things that are interesting to me. At the same time, there's a sort of joy in just lying down, putting on music, and staring up at the ceiling while rain pounds my skylights. The great thing is that I can do both. In fact, in some sense, I have to do both. Otherwise, neither one works.

Some pictures from the tower-top today: