March 1, 2023 • 38 mins
We generally think of interruptions in the context of human conversation. One voice, speaking words, interacting with another. Music is another form of conversation, with instruments (including voices) interacting and purposefully building upon one another, melodies to harmony to counterpoint and fugue. In this podcast, we talk with piano teacher and professional accompanist Doris Mattingly about her perspectives on interruption. We journey through the interruption of the COVID pandemic on teaching and how she has adjusted her listening in “virtual studio” lessons. We explore what interruption means during a lesson, and also listen to music – Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Beethoven, Bartók, Bach – to understand how musical interruptions may be the same and different as those in spoken conversation. Join us for an audio feast!
To learn more about We Interrupt this Podcast and to suggest people we should talk to and topics we should explore, please see our webpage at: https://www.weinterrupthis.com or contact us on twitter at @HaakYak. Information about Doris and her piano studio is at https://www.mattinglystudio.com/.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Composers will layer things to stop the flow of continuity,
to stop the expectation you have of what's going to happen, and making you wonder instead of giving you the answer.
Welcome to We Interrupt This Podcast.
(00:22):
I am Laure Haak, your host.
We generally think of interruptions in the context of human conversation.
One voice,
speaking words,
interacting with another.
Music is another form of conversation with instruments,
including voices, interacting and purposefully building upon one another.
Melodies to harmony,
to counterpoint and fugue.
(00:43):
In this podcast,
we talk with piano teacher and professional accompanist and vocal coach, Doris Mattingly,
about her perspectives on interruption.
We journey through the interruption of the COVID pandemic on teaching and how she has adjusted her listening in virtual studio lessons.
We explore what interruption means during a lesson and also listen to music --
(01:03):
Dvorak, Beethoven, Bartok, Bach --
to understand how musical interruptions may be the same and different as those in spoken conversation.
Join us for a musical feast!
(01:26):
Doris has been my piano teacher and my son's piano teacher now for many years.
I just love her to death and I'm really,
really happy she was able to join us today.
Thank you.
Doris, I wanted to start this with a question -- when I talked to you about interruption on our piano lesson a few weeks ago,
actually,
several weeks ago,
I was like,
I really would love to have you come and talk to us about interruptions.
(01:48):
And since then we've been going back and forth and around and up and down about what that means.
And so the first question is, what does interruption mean to you?
And why were you intrigued or interested in participating today?
What brought you to this conversation?
Well, the first thing was the question itself,
which is not that easy to answer on the surface.
(02:11):
And then when you think about it,
you realize that your life is just filled with interruptions.
I mean,
that you experience interruptions more in your life,
certainly more abundantly than you do continuity. That we're always trying to find continuum.
We set a plan in place and,
and we want to see it happen.
(02:33):
And along the way,
there's so many interruptions that what we thought originally was where we were going to go, is almost never where we end up.
Interruptions are just part of what we have, and many of them,
most of them we ignore, but others,
we just can't.
I guess it's how we navigate our way through them, around them sometimes, or in spite of them,
(02:56):
that shapes our life, that makes our lives.
There's interruption in teaching music and there's also interruption in music itself.
And we're gonna try to talk about both of those things today.
So tell us a little bit about your background
and your career.
My mother was a piano teacher.
And so I did not really have the option of choosing whether or not I was going to study piano,
(03:19):
but I did have the option as to how I was going to continue with it in my life.
It was,
of course,
it's difficult to practice.
It's difficult to be a pianist because you're a solo instrument practicing by yourself.
I somehow managed to make it through the first 10 or so years of my life.
And I remember being in my aunt's house. Everybody was downstairs and I was in her living room. And there was a record player, and I saw a record and I thought,
(03:51):
what's this?
And it was this beautiful woman.
And I thought,
oh,
it's very intriguing. And I put the record on, and it was Anna Moffo, and she was singing from Puccini's Tosca, Vicci d’arte.
And I just was...
that was it. [Musical clip]
(04:15):
That was the defining moment in my life.
(04:39):
I can trace it to that instant where I heard this music,
I saw this woman, and I was transported, and I wanted to be Anna Moffo.
So I studied voice with a local woman.
She was into music theater and musicals and I sang in all of the school stuff.
(05:00):
But I continued as a pianist because that was my strength.
So I accompanied a lot of people.
And along the way,
I studied with a woman at Juilliard.
She was a vocal coach and she was a very prim woman in this gorgeous apartment filled with music.
I was so impressed.
And then I decided I was gonna wander off to college and I got various scholarships. I decided I wanted to get away from where I was,
(05:25):
which was in Northern Jersey.
And I went to Catholic U. And I decided I was going to be a voice and piano major.
So I met a woman,
she was actually a graduate student and she wanted me to accompany her to sing for this then-famous voice teacher in the Washington DC area.
And I said, sure.
The fellow happened to know that I was also a voice major and he wanted me to sing.
(05:49):
So I did,
I sang for him.
He made me sing a cappella.
He left the room, and he came back in a minute and he said that he was gonna make me a great singer, greater than Roberta Flack,
who was his student.
I was crushed.
And I remember saying,
so you mean I can't sing opera?
(06:10):
And he said,
why would you wanna do that?
So I decided after that,
that I was going to be an accompanist and I was going to be a vocal coach.
I just made my way through it.
Got my Bachelor's of music and then decided that I was going to go get work.
So I called every company in the Washington DC area and said,
(06:31):
look at me,
I play the piano, I can accompany. If you need a substitute, call me.
And I got a lot of work.
And what I realized was, you just had to show up.
You didn't have to be the best,
but you had to be reliable.
And that was something that I've learned that I've taken through my entire life.
(06:52):
I always have to be there.
Which of course,
given the topic of our conversation, has been a challenge upon occasion.
I just accepted work and learned from it the way most people do. And I was lucky to have it.
I started teaching when I was very young because there were a lot of neighborhood kids who didn't want to study with my mother.
(07:15):
They thought I was fun.
So I taught throughout college and I taught throughout my entire career.
So it's been a very, very long time.
I find it really, really fascinating to teach,
to try to figure out how people think and how to help them through little tiny problems.
(07:35):
So when I started playing with you,
you had been teaching my son.
I took piano when I was a kid, and then had probably about a 30 year hiatus. And my son started playing, and I remember going to your recitals, and every time I'd go to recital,
I'm like,
oh, man, I really wanna play again.
And I think I finally screwed up the courage about two or three years into him taking lessons and going to these recitals.
(08:01):
And I walked up to you at the end of one,
I'm like,
could I take lessons from you?
But that was also,
-- I think it was 2018, give or take.
One of the things that,
that you've had to contend with.
the big interruption, has been switching how you teach.
All of the teaching, the accompanying everything you've done,
you had to show up in person. And the same thing with lessons.
(08:24):
People come to your house, they play on your fabulous piano.
And then COVID comes along, and now how do you teach piano?
That's a really great question.
It's one I've thought about a lot.
I was very, very lucky. Several years ago, in 2017 or 18,
I had a student who was then a sophomore in high school,
(08:45):
who had studied with me his whole childhood, and his family was moving for just a year to Canada.
And when he told me this,
of course,
I was sorry and I would have been very sorry to see him leave. And he said,
but I don't have to!
(09:05):
I don't have to stop taking lessons with you.
And I said,
how is this gonna work?
And he said,
we can just Facetime
And I thought,
ok, sure,
we can just Facetime. Really?
And so he said,
let's just try a couple over the summer.
(09:25):
And I said, sure.
And there it was.
It was the opportunity to see somebody --
I mean,
it was fantastic.
I couldn't believe it.
I was able to be with him.
He was always on time, and even if he was a little under the weather,
he was there.
(09:46):
Same, you know, both of us.
And it was,
it was a such a wonderful way to engage in listening.
And I realized that all of the distractions that we have with physicality --
(10:06):
being next to a person, being in a physical space that's different from our own -- were removed.
That the wonderful thing was --
And,
then at the time,
there was no ability to interrupt each other.
If you recall,
even with Zoom in the very beginning,
you had to wait for someone to finish speaking before they could hear you.
(10:28):
Now, of course,
we can slightly interrupt each other.
And there are ways even of playing together,
maybe not perfectly,
but that'll improve too.
But at that time,
I couldn't.
I could teach him by listening and watching and it was a very focused way to do what I needed to do.
(10:52):
And he adapted beautifully.
I mean,
the two of us had a great year.
So after that,
I offered this as an option to people who went away in the summer,
to their summer homes or whatever it was that they did.
So when it came time,
that terrible time,
when we had to shut down our physical relationship with people,
(11:15):
I just suggested we switch to Facetime. And then I found Zoom as a better platform.
There was the learning curve, and I had to teach people how to use it,
but people have found it wonderful.
And I teach now all over, and even people here,
if they're not quite well, or they don't want to travel a half hour,
(11:35):
45 minutes to get to me.
We Zoom.
It was all because of that one boy that I was able to make that shift so easily though.
There was one piece I've been playing that has this very large arpeggio series in the left hand. I do not have big hands.
I was struggling.
We have the computer sitting on a table so that she can see the keyboard and my hands on the keyboard.
(12:02):
But it reminds me of when I went to her house in person,
that's where she sat and she was able to see what I was doing with my hands and then demonstrate with her hand how to move my hand.
It worked really well.
It's just a matter of watching what it is that people are struggling with.
And as you say,
(12:22):
the notion of how one's hand travels on the keys.
I have a wonderful vantage point, if your computer is slightly above the keyboard.
So it is a matter of setting things up well, training,
and of course,
we do have, thanks to Zoom, some audio issues. I do wish they were a little more available to help us with that.
(12:43):
Of course,
I miss being next to people.
I miss a hug.
I miss greeting them physically at the door,
having my dog greet them at the door.
The pandemic was a wonderful time for me to really remember what it was that I was supposed to do,
and the job was really worthwhile then for many people.
(13:04):
People really needed this.
They needed to figure out that there were things that they could do, that they needed the interruption of playing the piano to keep them from obsessing over what wasn't necessarily working well for them.
So it was wonderful.
And it was a way for everybody to meet. And, I have recitals online. What a wonderful thing!
(13:27):
You're now teaching people all over the place.
And I'm wondering how it's changed how you run your business.
I moved during the pandemic to the middle of the United States from the east coast and took all of my students with me.
With very few exceptions.
(13:48):
I picked up others.
I have never met several of the students that I have in person,
but I've met them on Zoom.
They're people that I know, they are people whose lives I follow now in a very similar way to how I did before.
Has it changed the way I do business?
I'm always here and I was always here then. Mostly people are grateful, and especially families, I should say.
(14:13):
If you have a few children,
it's just a nightmare to try to collect everybody to go to a piano lesson,
sit in the car for 45 minutes.
This way, there's none of that.
So the way I do my business is not much different.
It's how everybody else does business with me.
(14:34):
In life, interruptions can be incredibly positive.
I mean,
we don't think of the pandemic as being positive, do we, in that regard?
However, from it, so many positive things have happened.
(14:58):
In an orchestra, there are moments where individual instruments have their moment to shine.
Most of the time, it's the blending of all of the instruments that we hear,
except for the soloist.
One of the things that you had asked is about the circumstances or context in which an interruption could be a positive thing.
(15:20):
And I thought about that, and there's so many. We just talked about one -- this horrible situation we all went through had many positive things emerge from it that we all discovered individually.
One of the wonderful things about an interruption is to keep us from obsessing.
(15:42):
People have to concentrate in a lesson to such an extent that it's really hard for them to think about anything else.
I have had students in the past as well that have this kind of obsessive behavior, and part of it would stem,
you could say, from their want to be,
they're perfectionists.
They want everything to be perfect. And when they make a mistake,
(16:05):
oh my gosh, that has to be fixed.
And it can't just be fixed once. You have to go back and you have to go back and you have to go back and you have to go back.
The hardest thing to teach students is to fix it forward.
If you go back,
you just sort of double down on the mistake as opposed to just moving on from it.
(16:27):
Trying to teach students to deal with these interruptions that have this kind of obsessive nature is probably the hardest thing that I do.
I have some students who have the opposite problem.
They don't care.
It's like whatever, it's good.
I'll make a mistake and I can just go on, and
(16:49):
that's how they'll make their way through a lesson.
Unless I say,
I think we should go over this little part,
maybe try to fix it.
In general, people don't like to make mistakes. They don't like to be interrupted.
To me, the game or the challenge of what you do as a musician, is your ability to fix it forward.
(17:13):
If you're in an orchestra,
there's no option.
People who are part of that kind of an ensemble,
learn to move forward,
learn to forgive themselves.
It's not that they don't practice or care.
It's just that there isn't an option.
I've played in ensembles.
I used to play flute. And playing in an orchestra is a different thing than playing piano solo.
(17:40):
And I've also had the opportunity to play piano with a rock band, coming the other direction from playing the whole part by myself in my house and then joining the band and playing it with them.
You have to keep going.
You know,
I can't do my standard thing,
which is,
oh,
I gotta fix that problem.
(18:00):
You just have to keep going.
But I think one of the nice things about being in an ensemble is that you all kind of pick up after each other.
So if one person flubs,
there's three or four other people playing and you just keep going and,
and you keep a smile on your face and most of the people listening to you have no clue you've just made a mistake.
Doris, there's the mistakes, the performance aspect of it,
(18:31):
but there's also the,
the creation of the music itself.
How do we think about the construction of the entire piece?
And I'm wondering if you want to talk about how continuity and interruption makes you feel as both a musician and a listener.
And maybe some examples.
It's hard for me to describe how a composer might think about how they're putting a piece together.
(18:58):
That's just so personal.
But using a few examples,
interruptions in general make us stop.
They make us think, I hope.
They can be annoying, but they can also be opportunities for us to rest.
(19:18):
I think it's the balance of that,
that makes a composition good, great,
or exhausting and disappointing.
So when I go to hear music performed,
I'm trying to understand what a composer is asking me to hear.
(19:40):
I've heard a lot of music in my life, and I've listened to a lot as a teacher,
which is a wonderful vantage point.
When I hear, for instance,
the opening to Beethoven's fifth. [Music clip starts]
Listen. He's demanding you to listen throughout the whole movement.
(20:13):
It's very, very powerful.
Fortunately, it's worth hearing what he has to say!
When he develops those few notes,
you know,
it's like,
yeah?
Yeah!
And it's funny how, even though
those few notes, that little theme keeps coming back, even in as it is demanding,
(20:35):
it's even more demanding as it continues.
He makes you listen by stopping your thought.
I was trying to find a counterpart to that, in something that is not interruptive,
but something that it has a lot of continuity.
(20:59):
I of course chose Dvorak, the second movement of Dvorak's ninth symphony,
which is so so beautiful. [Music clip starts]
(21:22):
But even that if you listen to that movement to the very, very end,
he has little moments where he only just gives you a tiny bit of it, and then he stops, and a tiny bit of it, and he stops, until he resolves it at the very end.
And that's to say,
Remember this?
(21:42):
Remember this!
Remember this.
It gives me goosebumps.
It's so, so beautiful.
Interruption in music is as abundant and necessary as interruption in life.
(22:45):
Because what are composers trying to do?
They're using this medium,
this code to express life.
And we may not know exactly what it is that they're saying,
but it makes you think, what is it?
It makes you wonder. And these interruptions well placed will do just that.
(23:09):
Composers will layer things. A good composer will introduce another instrument to make you hear something differently, to stop the flow of continuity,
to stop the expectation you have of what's going to happen, by saying that maybe this could happen, and making you wonder instead of giving you the answer.
(23:38):
It's fabulous.
So it's the not knowing what's going to happen in a piece that interests me, and it's the the layering of everything.
It's the stopping my expectation of what's going to happen,
interrupting it by having different instruments,
a different theme, of some loud thing,
(24:01):
something very soft,
nothing.
The importance of a rest in music.
And just as a,
a little sidebar to that,
I would say in teaching,
one of the most difficult things to teach is silence, is to teach a student how important it is to just stop,
(24:24):
to get off of that pedal and let that one note sound or just have that moment of rest where nothing is happening.
It's really ok.
But people are so afraid of that.
It's like,
oh,
if I stop?
I've stopped!
So stop.
(24:48):
When I got out of college and I was teaching, I was just,
this is the way you do it.
You know,
you study this,
you study this,
you study this,
you,
then you study this,
this,
this,
this and there was a formula,
you know,
there was a way to do this.
I was gonna teach,
you know.
And um,
I actually think I fired some people,
I would never ever think.
I swear,
I swear.
I have to say, I was 20.
(25:09):
I obviously,
as I said in the very beginning of this,
I made a lot of mistakes in my life along the way.
But one mistake I don't do now,
I just do not do:
I would never fire someone.
And yet I've heard,
I heard from a student that her grandchild,
(25:30):
this is the age of people I teach, as well as young people.
But I heard that her grandchild,
we went to a local music store where they had lessons. And after four lessons,
the teacher fired the child.
The child only wanted to do what the child only wanted to do.
(25:51):
Well, I kind of question what the teacher was asking the child to do, to begin with.
I look at this as,
yeah, there are some things that don't fit right.
There are some people and circumstances that don't work well.
But can you imagine saying as an older person,
gee, when I was six,
I took four lessons...
And I hear this kind of kind of thing.
(26:13):
I hear people come back to me, saying, I took lessons as a child and my teacher was unhappy with me, or
I had to quit, or they fired me, or whatever.
And I think to myself,
oh my gosh,
you're living with the burden of that.
And it's the way we approach this with such seriousness.
And my thinking is that people will evolve to the level of importance that something is, if you give them the space to do that.
(26:42):
If you show them that something can be interesting,
a wonderful puzzle,
a challenge,
something that you can laugh about, something you can enjoy, that they maybe will go the next step to say,
well,
how do I do this better?
And there's your opportunity to say,
well,
let's try this now.
(27:03):
As opposed to, let's do this now and then do this and then do this and then do this,
and then you're gonna be a wonderful pianist. And if you can't play your scales, then I don't want to have anything to do with you.
One of the things you do really well, Doris,
is you inquire with your students as to what kind of music they like to play,
what music resonates with them.
And there's been more than one occasion when you've said,
(27:26):
hey,
Laure,
why don't you play this piece?
And I come back the next week and I'm like,
yeah,
it does not speak to me.
Could we please find something else?
And you're not like (27:34):
You need to learn it.
You're like,
OK!
And then we go through the inquiry process of, what kinds of things might you like to play?
Which ended up with that --
what was the
the twinkling stars piece that you had that was just crazy?
Yeah.
Which is just triplets versus eighths?
It's wonderful!
(27:55):
Coming back to the story about the,
the kid getting fired by their teacher.
How much space is there in the teaching of music, Doris,
to your point, and the teaching of the teachers of music, to allow for those customizations for the students.
It's very hard to teach people how to teach.
(28:15):
First of all,
you have to figure out how you learn.
You have to go through,
how did I learn?
And then, how is somebody else working through this problem?
Not in the same way,
hardly ever.
Because we're so different.
Even for a child, if a child is not doing what you're asking them to do,
(28:36):
there's a reason. And you have to first try to figure out what that is, before you can help them get through that.
Sometimes it's because ... my mother is making me do this and I'm gonna decide not to do this,
even though I think it's kind of fun and you're a nice lady.
There's that. It's identifying that, and then trying to find a workaround to support the child.
(29:02):
And sometimes you can't always do that.
But the other thing too is that sometimes we're just young, and sometimes we just fire people.
Usually not after four lessons.
That's why experience counts for something.
We're all trying to gain experience.
And I think one of the things that could really help people is mentorship.
(29:25):
I think there are a lot of pianists or musicians that feel because that's what they can do,
that's what they can teach.
But attaching themselves perhaps to someone who's had some experience might be useful.
And right now I am working as a mentor for some teachers,
(29:46):
which is really fun -- and I'm doing it on Zoom.
I was just gonna ask!
This might be actually an interesting point at to mentor, because you don't have to be in the room with them.
You can be listening in on Zoom.
So how is that?
How does that work?
It's fantastic.
It's absolutely fantastic.
One of my former students moved and had a neighbor child ask her to teach them,
(30:11):
but she didn't really know how to go about it and was very uncomfortable and wanted them to study with me.
But they wanted to study with her.
How is this going to work?
And I just said,
well, let's just try this.
Let's do this:
I'll work with the child one day.
And then the next week you can work with the child, and you can give me a report on how it went and what your issues were and how,
(30:34):
how the lesson went.
And then the next week I'll teach and we'll see how this goes.
It's working beautifully.
She listens into my lesson and sends me notes about her experience with her.
And I suggest the music, and we work through all of the issues and it's just,
it's actually a lot of fun I think for everyone. And the girl is patient enough to try to work through whatever problems she's having.
(31:03):
She studied with a very strict teacher formerly who I don't think had any clue what this child did not understand.
And I think that can happen too.
You know,
that children want so much to please,
that they won't ask the questions.
So having someone who's a friend is helpful.
I've done this sort of thing before,
(31:25):
but I've never done it on Zoom.
It works out really well because we can be at each other's houses enjoying the same real time experience.
So I have another question about the music.
One of the things, Doris, you mentioned was that interruption is the time to get you to listen,
to get you to stop and to rest.
(31:46):
At the same time, there is also
-- not necessarily in music --
but I'm I'm wondering if you can reflect on this,
this idea of interrupting as a way of building upon an idea.
So you end up with two melodies that come together into a harmony and the harmony builds up those two stories into something that is the same and yet different in a remarkable way.
(32:08):
I don't know if one would ever call two melodies coming together into a harmony as an interruption.
But in a way, as we humans talk to each other,
when two people start talking at the same time,
it is perceived in many cultures as an interruption rather than the harmony.
And I'm wondering if you could reflect on that.
(32:30):
Sure.
So I'm thinking of one of our favorite composers,
Bartok.
Bartok wrote a series of progressive pieces to teach his son about music.
He wrote six volumes of these, and within them,
he from the very, very beginning
(32:50):
introduces what we come to understand in music as a conversation.
And in an orchestra, there's a conversation going on all the time. You hear it,
the flute will say this,
the clarinet will answer.
The oboe will say this,
the bassoon will go toot, toot.
So they're constantly reflecting on what each of them has said in a musical way,
(33:15):
just the way we do in conversation.
So Bartok, a really clear example of this is, he's got a piece, Melody with Interruptions.
And I always like to think of music in terms of conversations or experiences in life.
And you know that, because I will say, What's happening here?
Where are you?
What's the scene?
And I say this to younger people too, because they react even better than adults, with (33:34):
pretend you're a filmmaker.
Where would you put this,
what's happening in this music?
Is someone chasing someone,
do they get them,
do they get away?
And the more I ask these questions of my students,
(33:55):
the more they're able to think of music in terms of perhaps the way a composer did.
So Bartok has a lot of examples where he'll introduce a theme,
a call and response is what we call them.
What do you think of this? [Music clip starts] I think of that about this.
The better the composition becomes or the more more difficult say a composition becomes,
(34:22):
one will begin with the introduction of this theme and then midway through the next voice will come in understanding what that is about.
So there'll be an understanding that these two voices or three... and of course, you have fugue form, as in Bach,
where you have all of these voices talking to each other, and then one will say this, and the other will invert this,
(34:52):
but I thought you meant this?
Oh no,
but I meant this! Oh, really?
Well, that's great.
And go on.
(35:25):
And to me it's all language.
It's just language. It's just a different language.
We use words in this conversation we're having with each other.
But music uses tonalities and layers of those tonalities.
It's very, very exciting.
(35:54):
The hard thing for a musician as a performer,
especially a pianist who's asked to do multiple voices at any single time, is hearing them happening and being able to bring them out when it's their turn, with just 10 fingers.
So it becomes quite,
(36:15):
quite the challenge.
You know,
rubbing your tummy,
patting your head constantly.
But when you hear someone do it,
you say,
oh,
why, isn't that cool?
But it takes lots and lots of practice.
And it also takes the ability to listen and to hear.
There was this quote from Claudio Abbado who is saying that many people learn how to talk,
(36:40):
but few people learn how to listen.
Listening to each other is a very important thing and music makes you do that. Music helps you to do that, because that's all we can do is just listen.
There's so so many examples of music --
In fact,
that's what it is, basically.
It's not just melody over harmony.
(37:02):
It's generally this conversation that goes on in music that we find really,
really interesting.
There'll be all sorts of interruptions and some of them are dissonant and terrible,
but some of them are lovely.
Just like, life.
(37:25):
Doris, thank you.
This has been just a wonderful conversation about all kinds of things,
teaching,
playing music,
your career,
dealing with the COVID pandemic.
And, how do you teach piano during the pandemic.
But also getting into how do we think about the construction of music itself,
(37:46):
how we listen and what music asks of us?
Thank you.
You're so welcome.
This has been great fun.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us today.
For more about this podcast.
Please see our website
(38:07):
at www.weinterruptthispodcast.com.
There, we have show notes,
links and other episodes.
You can also contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
I look forward to hearing from you.
This podcast was produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee, Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples.
(38:27):
I pay my respects to Elders past and present and to emerging and future Indigenous leaders.
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you also to Emma Levinson for her Interruptions artwork featured on our website,
and to Alan Huckleberry for allowing us to use Bartok's Melody with Interruptions from the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy video recording project. In addition to clips of classical pieces (please see show notes), we also use "Sinfonia No. 3 in D Major - BWV 789" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) as segue music.
Composers will layer things to stop the flow of continuity,
to stop the expectation you have of what's going to happen, and making you wonder instead of giving you the answer.
Welcome to We Interrupt This Podcast.
(00:22):
I am Laure Haak, your host.
We generally think of interruptions in the context of human conversation.
One voice,
speaking words,
interacting with another.
Music is another form of conversation with instruments,
including voices, interacting and purposefully building upon one another.
Melodies to harmony,
to counterpoint and fugue.
(00:43):
In this podcast,
we talk with piano teacher and professional accompanist and vocal coach, Doris Mattingly,
about her perspectives on interruption.
We journey through the interruption of the COVID pandemic on teaching and how she has adjusted her listening in virtual studio lessons.
We explore what interruption means during a lesson and also listen to music --
(01:03):
Dvorak, Beethoven, Bartok, Bach --
to understand how musical interruptions may be the same and different as those in spoken conversation.
Join us for a musical feast!
(01:26):
Doris has been my piano teacher and my son's piano teacher now for many years.
I just love her to death and I'm really,
really happy she was able to join us today.
Thank you.
Doris, I wanted to start this with a question -- when I talked to you about interruption on our piano lesson a few weeks ago,
actually,
several weeks ago,
I was like,
I really would love to have you come and talk to us about interruptions.
(01:48):
And since then we've been going back and forth and around and up and down about what that means.
And so the first question is, what does interruption mean to you?
And why were you intrigued or interested in participating today?
What brought you to this conversation?
Well, the first thing was the question itself,
which is not that easy to answer on the surface.
(02:11):
And then when you think about it,
you realize that your life is just filled with interruptions.
I mean,
that you experience interruptions more in your life,
certainly more abundantly than you do continuity. That we're always trying to find continuum.
We set a plan in place and,
and we want to see it happen.
(02:33):
And along the way,
there's so many interruptions that what we thought originally was where we were going to go, is almost never where we end up.
Interruptions are just part of what we have, and many of them,
most of them we ignore, but others,
we just can't.
I guess it's how we navigate our way through them, around them sometimes, or in spite of them,
(02:56):
that shapes our life, that makes our lives.
There's interruption in teaching music and there's also interruption in music itself.
And we're gonna try to talk about both of those things today.
So tell us a little bit about your background
and your career.
My mother was a piano teacher.
And so I did not really have the option of choosing whether or not I was going to study piano,
(03:19):
but I did have the option as to how I was going to continue with it in my life.
It was,
of course,
it's difficult to practice.
It's difficult to be a pianist because you're a solo instrument practicing by yourself.
I somehow managed to make it through the first 10 or so years of my life.
And I remember being in my aunt's house. Everybody was downstairs and I was in her living room. And there was a record player, and I saw a record and I thought,
(03:51):
what's this?
And it was this beautiful woman.
And I thought,
oh,
it's very intriguing. And I put the record on, and it was Anna Moffo, and she was singing from Puccini's Tosca, Vicci d’arte.
And I just was...
that was it. [Musical clip]
(04:15):
That was the defining moment in my life.
(04:39):
I can trace it to that instant where I heard this music,
I saw this woman, and I was transported, and I wanted to be Anna Moffo.
So I studied voice with a local woman.
She was into music theater and musicals and I sang in all of the school stuff.
(05:00):
But I continued as a pianist because that was my strength.
So I accompanied a lot of people.
And along the way,
I studied with a woman at Juilliard.
She was a vocal coach and she was a very prim woman in this gorgeous apartment filled with music.
I was so impressed.
And then I decided I was gonna wander off to college and I got various scholarships. I decided I wanted to get away from where I was,
(05:25):
which was in Northern Jersey.
And I went to Catholic U. And I decided I was going to be a voice and piano major.
So I met a woman,
she was actually a graduate student and she wanted me to accompany her to sing for this then-famous voice teacher in the Washington DC area.
And I said, sure.
The fellow happened to know that I was also a voice major and he wanted me to sing.
(05:49):
So I did,
I sang for him.
He made me sing a cappella.
He left the room, and he came back in a minute and he said that he was gonna make me a great singer, greater than Roberta Flack,
who was his student.
I was crushed.
And I remember saying,
so you mean I can't sing opera?
(06:10):
And he said,
why would you wanna do that?
So I decided after that,
that I was going to be an accompanist and I was going to be a vocal coach.
I just made my way through it.
Got my Bachelor's of music and then decided that I was going to go get work.
So I called every company in the Washington DC area and said,
(06:31):
look at me,
I play the piano, I can accompany. If you need a substitute, call me.
And I got a lot of work.
And what I realized was, you just had to show up.
You didn't have to be the best,
but you had to be reliable.
And that was something that I've learned that I've taken through my entire life.
(06:52):
I always have to be there.
Which of course,
given the topic of our conversation, has been a challenge upon occasion.
I just accepted work and learned from it the way most people do. And I was lucky to have it.
I started teaching when I was very young because there were a lot of neighborhood kids who didn't want to study with my mother.
(07:15):
They thought I was fun.
So I taught throughout college and I taught throughout my entire career.
So it's been a very, very long time.
I find it really, really fascinating to teach,
to try to figure out how people think and how to help them through little tiny problems.
(07:35):
So when I started playing with you,
you had been teaching my son.
I took piano when I was a kid, and then had probably about a 30 year hiatus. And my son started playing, and I remember going to your recitals, and every time I'd go to recital,
I'm like,
oh, man, I really wanna play again.
And I think I finally screwed up the courage about two or three years into him taking lessons and going to these recitals.
(08:01):
And I walked up to you at the end of one,
I'm like,
could I take lessons from you?
But that was also,
-- I think it was 2018, give or take.
One of the things that,
that you've had to contend with.
the big interruption, has been switching how you teach.
All of the teaching, the accompanying everything you've done,
you had to show up in person. And the same thing with lessons.
(08:24):
People come to your house, they play on your fabulous piano.
And then COVID comes along, and now how do you teach piano?
That's a really great question.
It's one I've thought about a lot.
I was very, very lucky. Several years ago, in 2017 or 18,
I had a student who was then a sophomore in high school,
(08:45):
who had studied with me his whole childhood, and his family was moving for just a year to Canada.
And when he told me this,
of course,
I was sorry and I would have been very sorry to see him leave. And he said,
but I don't have to!
(09:05):
I don't have to stop taking lessons with you.
And I said,
how is this gonna work?
And he said,
we can just Facetime
And I thought,
ok, sure,
we can just Facetime. Really?
And so he said,
let's just try a couple over the summer.
(09:25):
And I said, sure.
And there it was.
It was the opportunity to see somebody --
I mean,
it was fantastic.
I couldn't believe it.
I was able to be with him.
He was always on time, and even if he was a little under the weather,
he was there.
(09:46):
Same, you know, both of us.
And it was,
it was a such a wonderful way to engage in listening.
And I realized that all of the distractions that we have with physicality --
(10:06):
being next to a person, being in a physical space that's different from our own -- were removed.
That the wonderful thing was --
And,
then at the time,
there was no ability to interrupt each other.
If you recall,
even with Zoom in the very beginning,
you had to wait for someone to finish speaking before they could hear you.
(10:28):
Now, of course,
we can slightly interrupt each other.
And there are ways even of playing together,
maybe not perfectly,
but that'll improve too.
But at that time,
I couldn't.
I could teach him by listening and watching and it was a very focused way to do what I needed to do.
(10:52):
And he adapted beautifully.
I mean,
the two of us had a great year.
So after that,
I offered this as an option to people who went away in the summer,
to their summer homes or whatever it was that they did.
So when it came time,
that terrible time,
when we had to shut down our physical relationship with people,
(11:15):
I just suggested we switch to Facetime. And then I found Zoom as a better platform.
There was the learning curve, and I had to teach people how to use it,
but people have found it wonderful.
And I teach now all over, and even people here,
if they're not quite well, or they don't want to travel a half hour,
(11:35):
45 minutes to get to me.
We Zoom.
It was all because of that one boy that I was able to make that shift so easily though.
There was one piece I've been playing that has this very large arpeggio series in the left hand. I do not have big hands.
I was struggling.
We have the computer sitting on a table so that she can see the keyboard and my hands on the keyboard.
(12:02):
But it reminds me of when I went to her house in person,
that's where she sat and she was able to see what I was doing with my hands and then demonstrate with her hand how to move my hand.
It worked really well.
It's just a matter of watching what it is that people are struggling with.
And as you say,
(12:22):
the notion of how one's hand travels on the keys.
I have a wonderful vantage point, if your computer is slightly above the keyboard.
So it is a matter of setting things up well, training,
and of course,
we do have, thanks to Zoom, some audio issues. I do wish they were a little more available to help us with that.
(12:43):
Of course,
I miss being next to people.
I miss a hug.
I miss greeting them physically at the door,
having my dog greet them at the door.
The pandemic was a wonderful time for me to really remember what it was that I was supposed to do,
and the job was really worthwhile then for many people.
(13:04):
People really needed this.
They needed to figure out that there were things that they could do, that they needed the interruption of playing the piano to keep them from obsessing over what wasn't necessarily working well for them.
So it was wonderful.
And it was a way for everybody to meet. And, I have recitals online. What a wonderful thing!
(13:27):
You're now teaching people all over the place.
And I'm wondering how it's changed how you run your business.
I moved during the pandemic to the middle of the United States from the east coast and took all of my students with me.
With very few exceptions.
(13:48):
I picked up others.
I have never met several of the students that I have in person,
but I've met them on Zoom.
They're people that I know, they are people whose lives I follow now in a very similar way to how I did before.
Has it changed the way I do business?
I'm always here and I was always here then. Mostly people are grateful, and especially families, I should say.
(14:13):
If you have a few children,
it's just a nightmare to try to collect everybody to go to a piano lesson,
sit in the car for 45 minutes.
This way, there's none of that.
So the way I do my business is not much different.
It's how everybody else does business with me.
(14:34):
In life, interruptions can be incredibly positive.
I mean,
we don't think of the pandemic as being positive, do we, in that regard?
However, from it, so many positive things have happened.
(14:58):
In an orchestra, there are moments where individual instruments have their moment to shine.
Most of the time, it's the blending of all of the instruments that we hear,
except for the soloist.
One of the things that you had asked is about the circumstances or context in which an interruption could be a positive thing.
(15:20):
And I thought about that, and there's so many. We just talked about one -- this horrible situation we all went through had many positive things emerge from it that we all discovered individually.
One of the wonderful things about an interruption is to keep us from obsessing.
(15:42):
People have to concentrate in a lesson to such an extent that it's really hard for them to think about anything else.
I have had students in the past as well that have this kind of obsessive behavior, and part of it would stem,
you could say, from their want to be,
they're perfectionists.
They want everything to be perfect. And when they make a mistake,
(16:05):
oh my gosh, that has to be fixed.
And it can't just be fixed once. You have to go back and you have to go back and you have to go back and you have to go back.
The hardest thing to teach students is to fix it forward.
If you go back,
you just sort of double down on the mistake as opposed to just moving on from it.
(16:27):
Trying to teach students to deal with these interruptions that have this kind of obsessive nature is probably the hardest thing that I do.
I have some students who have the opposite problem.
They don't care.
It's like whatever, it's good.
I'll make a mistake and I can just go on, and
(16:49):
that's how they'll make their way through a lesson.
Unless I say,
I think we should go over this little part,
maybe try to fix it.
In general, people don't like to make mistakes. They don't like to be interrupted.
To me, the game or the challenge of what you do as a musician, is your ability to fix it forward.
(17:13):
If you're in an orchestra,
there's no option.
People who are part of that kind of an ensemble,
learn to move forward,
learn to forgive themselves.
It's not that they don't practice or care.
It's just that there isn't an option.
I've played in ensembles.
I used to play flute. And playing in an orchestra is a different thing than playing piano solo.
(17:40):
And I've also had the opportunity to play piano with a rock band, coming the other direction from playing the whole part by myself in my house and then joining the band and playing it with them.
You have to keep going.
You know,
I can't do my standard thing,
which is,
oh,
I gotta fix that problem.
(18:00):
You just have to keep going.
But I think one of the nice things about being in an ensemble is that you all kind of pick up after each other.
So if one person flubs,
there's three or four other people playing and you just keep going and,
and you keep a smile on your face and most of the people listening to you have no clue you've just made a mistake.
Doris, there's the mistakes, the performance aspect of it,
(18:31):
but there's also the,
the creation of the music itself.
How do we think about the construction of the entire piece?
And I'm wondering if you want to talk about how continuity and interruption makes you feel as both a musician and a listener.
And maybe some examples.
It's hard for me to describe how a composer might think about how they're putting a piece together.
(18:58):
That's just so personal.
But using a few examples,
interruptions in general make us stop.
They make us think, I hope.
They can be annoying, but they can also be opportunities for us to rest.
(19:18):
I think it's the balance of that,
that makes a composition good, great,
or exhausting and disappointing.
So when I go to hear music performed,
I'm trying to understand what a composer is asking me to hear.
(19:40):
I've heard a lot of music in my life, and I've listened to a lot as a teacher,
which is a wonderful vantage point.
When I hear, for instance,
the opening to Beethoven's fifth. [Music clip starts]
Listen. He's demanding you to listen throughout the whole movement.
(20:13):
It's very, very powerful.
Fortunately, it's worth hearing what he has to say!
When he develops those few notes,
you know,
it's like,
yeah?
Yeah!
And it's funny how, even though
those few notes, that little theme keeps coming back, even in as it is demanding,
(20:35):
it's even more demanding as it continues.
He makes you listen by stopping your thought.
I was trying to find a counterpart to that, in something that is not interruptive,
but something that it has a lot of continuity.
(20:59):
I of course chose Dvorak, the second movement of Dvorak's ninth symphony,
which is so so beautiful. [Music clip starts]
(21:22):
But even that if you listen to that movement to the very, very end,
he has little moments where he only just gives you a tiny bit of it, and then he stops, and a tiny bit of it, and he stops, until he resolves it at the very end.
And that's to say,
Remember this?
(21:42):
Remember this!
Remember this.
It gives me goosebumps.
It's so, so beautiful.
Interruption in music is as abundant and necessary as interruption in life.
(22:45):
Because what are composers trying to do?
They're using this medium,
this code to express life.
And we may not know exactly what it is that they're saying,
but it makes you think, what is it?
It makes you wonder. And these interruptions well placed will do just that.
(23:09):
Composers will layer things. A good composer will introduce another instrument to make you hear something differently, to stop the flow of continuity,
to stop the expectation you have of what's going to happen, by saying that maybe this could happen, and making you wonder instead of giving you the answer.
(23:38):
It's fabulous.
So it's the not knowing what's going to happen in a piece that interests me, and it's the the layering of everything.
It's the stopping my expectation of what's going to happen,
interrupting it by having different instruments,
a different theme, of some loud thing,
(24:01):
something very soft,
nothing.
The importance of a rest in music.
And just as a,
a little sidebar to that,
I would say in teaching,
one of the most difficult things to teach is silence, is to teach a student how important it is to just stop,
(24:24):
to get off of that pedal and let that one note sound or just have that moment of rest where nothing is happening.
It's really ok.
But people are so afraid of that.
It's like,
oh,
if I stop?
I've stopped!
So stop.
(24:48):
When I got out of college and I was teaching, I was just,
this is the way you do it.
You know,
you study this,
you study this,
you study this,
you,
then you study this,
this,
this,
this and there was a formula,
you know,
there was a way to do this.
I was gonna teach,
you know.
And um,
I actually think I fired some people,
I would never ever think.
I swear,
I swear.
I have to say, I was 20.
(25:09):
I obviously,
as I said in the very beginning of this,
I made a lot of mistakes in my life along the way.
But one mistake I don't do now,
I just do not do:
I would never fire someone.
And yet I've heard,
I heard from a student that her grandchild,
(25:30):
this is the age of people I teach, as well as young people.
But I heard that her grandchild,
we went to a local music store where they had lessons. And after four lessons,
the teacher fired the child.
The child only wanted to do what the child only wanted to do.
(25:51):
Well, I kind of question what the teacher was asking the child to do, to begin with.
I look at this as,
yeah, there are some things that don't fit right.
There are some people and circumstances that don't work well.
But can you imagine saying as an older person,
gee, when I was six,
I took four lessons...
And I hear this kind of kind of thing.
(26:13):
I hear people come back to me, saying, I took lessons as a child and my teacher was unhappy with me, or
I had to quit, or they fired me, or whatever.
And I think to myself,
oh my gosh,
you're living with the burden of that.
And it's the way we approach this with such seriousness.
And my thinking is that people will evolve to the level of importance that something is, if you give them the space to do that.
(26:42):
If you show them that something can be interesting,
a wonderful puzzle,
a challenge,
something that you can laugh about, something you can enjoy, that they maybe will go the next step to say,
well,
how do I do this better?
And there's your opportunity to say,
well,
let's try this now.
(27:03):
As opposed to, let's do this now and then do this and then do this and then do this,
and then you're gonna be a wonderful pianist. And if you can't play your scales, then I don't want to have anything to do with you.
One of the things you do really well, Doris,
is you inquire with your students as to what kind of music they like to play,
what music resonates with them.
And there's been more than one occasion when you've said,
(27:26):
hey,
Laure,
why don't you play this piece?
And I come back the next week and I'm like,
yeah,
it does not speak to me.
Could we please find something else?
And you're not like (27:34):
You need to learn it.
You're like,
OK!
And then we go through the inquiry process of, what kinds of things might you like to play?
Which ended up with that --
what was the
the twinkling stars piece that you had that was just crazy?
Yeah.
Which is just triplets versus eighths?
It's wonderful!
(27:55):
Coming back to the story about the,
the kid getting fired by their teacher.
How much space is there in the teaching of music, Doris,
to your point, and the teaching of the teachers of music, to allow for those customizations for the students.
It's very hard to teach people how to teach.
(28:15):
First of all,
you have to figure out how you learn.
You have to go through,
how did I learn?
And then, how is somebody else working through this problem?
Not in the same way,
hardly ever.
Because we're so different.
Even for a child, if a child is not doing what you're asking them to do,
(28:36):
there's a reason. And you have to first try to figure out what that is, before you can help them get through that.
Sometimes it's because ... my mother is making me do this and I'm gonna decide not to do this,
even though I think it's kind of fun and you're a nice lady.
There's that. It's identifying that, and then trying to find a workaround to support the child.
(29:02):
And sometimes you can't always do that.
But the other thing too is that sometimes we're just young, and sometimes we just fire people.
Usually not after four lessons.
That's why experience counts for something.
We're all trying to gain experience.
And I think one of the things that could really help people is mentorship.
(29:25):
I think there are a lot of pianists or musicians that feel because that's what they can do,
that's what they can teach.
But attaching themselves perhaps to someone who's had some experience might be useful.
And right now I am working as a mentor for some teachers,
(29:46):
which is really fun -- and I'm doing it on Zoom.
I was just gonna ask!
This might be actually an interesting point at to mentor, because you don't have to be in the room with them.
You can be listening in on Zoom.
So how is that?
How does that work?
It's fantastic.
It's absolutely fantastic.
One of my former students moved and had a neighbor child ask her to teach them,
(30:11):
but she didn't really know how to go about it and was very uncomfortable and wanted them to study with me.
But they wanted to study with her.
How is this going to work?
And I just said,
well, let's just try this.
Let's do this:
I'll work with the child one day.
And then the next week you can work with the child, and you can give me a report on how it went and what your issues were and how,
(30:34):
how the lesson went.
And then the next week I'll teach and we'll see how this goes.
It's working beautifully.
She listens into my lesson and sends me notes about her experience with her.
And I suggest the music, and we work through all of the issues and it's just,
it's actually a lot of fun I think for everyone. And the girl is patient enough to try to work through whatever problems she's having.
(31:03):
She studied with a very strict teacher formerly who I don't think had any clue what this child did not understand.
And I think that can happen too.
You know,
that children want so much to please,
that they won't ask the questions.
So having someone who's a friend is helpful.
I've done this sort of thing before,
(31:25):
but I've never done it on Zoom.
It works out really well because we can be at each other's houses enjoying the same real time experience.
So I have another question about the music.
One of the things, Doris, you mentioned was that interruption is the time to get you to listen,
to get you to stop and to rest.
(31:46):
At the same time, there is also
-- not necessarily in music --
but I'm I'm wondering if you can reflect on this,
this idea of interrupting as a way of building upon an idea.
So you end up with two melodies that come together into a harmony and the harmony builds up those two stories into something that is the same and yet different in a remarkable way.
(32:08):
I don't know if one would ever call two melodies coming together into a harmony as an interruption.
But in a way, as we humans talk to each other,
when two people start talking at the same time,
it is perceived in many cultures as an interruption rather than the harmony.
And I'm wondering if you could reflect on that.
(32:30):
Sure.
So I'm thinking of one of our favorite composers,
Bartok.
Bartok wrote a series of progressive pieces to teach his son about music.
He wrote six volumes of these, and within them,
he from the very, very beginning
(32:50):
introduces what we come to understand in music as a conversation.
And in an orchestra, there's a conversation going on all the time. You hear it,
the flute will say this,
the clarinet will answer.
The oboe will say this,
the bassoon will go toot, toot.
So they're constantly reflecting on what each of them has said in a musical way,
(33:15):
just the way we do in conversation.
So Bartok, a really clear example of this is, he's got a piece, Melody with Interruptions.
And I always like to think of music in terms of conversations or experiences in life.
And you know that, because I will say, What's happening here?
Where are you?
What's the scene?
And I say this to younger people too, because they react even better than adults, with (33:34):
pretend you're a filmmaker.
Where would you put this,
what's happening in this music?
Is someone chasing someone,
do they get them,
do they get away?
And the more I ask these questions of my students,
(33:55):
the more they're able to think of music in terms of perhaps the way a composer did.
So Bartok has a lot of examples where he'll introduce a theme,
a call and response is what we call them.
What do you think of this? [Music clip starts] I think of that about this.
The better the composition becomes or the more more difficult say a composition becomes,
(34:22):
one will begin with the introduction of this theme and then midway through the next voice will come in understanding what that is about.
So there'll be an understanding that these two voices or three... and of course, you have fugue form, as in Bach,
where you have all of these voices talking to each other, and then one will say this, and the other will invert this,
(34:52):
but I thought you meant this?
Oh no,
but I meant this! Oh, really?
Well, that's great.
And go on.
(35:25):
And to me it's all language.
It's just language. It's just a different language.
We use words in this conversation we're having with each other.
But music uses tonalities and layers of those tonalities.
It's very, very exciting.
(35:54):
The hard thing for a musician as a performer,
especially a pianist who's asked to do multiple voices at any single time, is hearing them happening and being able to bring them out when it's their turn, with just 10 fingers.
So it becomes quite,
(36:15):
quite the challenge.
You know,
rubbing your tummy,
patting your head constantly.
But when you hear someone do it,
you say,
oh,
why, isn't that cool?
But it takes lots and lots of practice.
And it also takes the ability to listen and to hear.
There was this quote from Claudio Abbado who is saying that many people learn how to talk,
(36:40):
but few people learn how to listen.
Listening to each other is a very important thing and music makes you do that. Music helps you to do that, because that's all we can do is just listen.
There's so so many examples of music --
In fact,
that's what it is, basically.
It's not just melody over harmony.
(37:02):
It's generally this conversation that goes on in music that we find really,
really interesting.
There'll be all sorts of interruptions and some of them are dissonant and terrible,
but some of them are lovely.
Just like, life.
(37:25):
Doris, thank you.
This has been just a wonderful conversation about all kinds of things,
teaching,
playing music,
your career,
dealing with the COVID pandemic.
And, how do you teach piano during the pandemic.
But also getting into how do we think about the construction of music itself,
(37:46):
how we listen and what music asks of us?
Thank you.
You're so welcome.
This has been great fun.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us today.
For more about this podcast.
Please see our website
(38:07):
at www.weinterruptthispodcast.com.
There, we have show notes,
links and other episodes.
You can also contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
I look forward to hearing from you.
This podcast was produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee, Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples.
(38:27):
I pay my respects to Elders past and present and to emerging and future Indigenous leaders.
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you also to Emma Levinson for her Interruptions artwork featured on our website,
and to Alan Huckleberry for allowing us to use Bartok's Melody with Interruptions from the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy video recording project. In addition to clips of classical pieces (please see show notes), we also use "Sinfonia No. 3 in D Major - BWV 789" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) as segue music.
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