We took quite a long break from recording the show with everything going on at the moment, but we are so glad to be back. To kick things off again we thought we would use this episode to go through a bit of what we have been up to, staying home with the LA Phil out of action, some of the work and practicing we have been doing and then to field a bunch of listener questions.

We look back at the last few days of regular work before quarantine began and then talk a bit about how we adjusted our schedules after things completely stopped. Nathan talks about his Violympics group, Akiko shares some of her dreams of home fitness and we explain the home recording process we have been working on.

This unusual period presents a somewhat useful possibility to musicians; we all have areas of our playing that we wish we could improve and spend more time developing — and this could be the time to do it.

After the complete rundown of our work-from-home life, we get into answering questions on quieting inner critics and protecting the joy of playing, practical concerns of changing strings and re-hairing bows!

Key Points From This Episode: 

• The last days of work and the changes in our schedules since the pandemic began.  


• Shifting plans and changing the focus of our practice for time at home.   


• The video recording we did and the insecurities that arise in watching yourself.  


• Unusual repertoires and more practice time in the work from home world. 


• The ‘Violympics’ and the questions that came from the group. 


• Staying motivated and practicing during this time with the LA Phil on hiatus.  


• Considering the plight of young musicians finishing music school right now.  


• Investing in different skills and upping your game during this downtime.  


• Personal qualities that lend themselves to a successful career in an orchestra.  


• Tips for quieting the inner critic when performing or recording.  


• Separating and protecting the joy of playing from the need to do it for a living.    


• The importance of friendships and connection within a job in an orchestra.   


• Changing strings, re-hairing bows, off the string strokes and more.


• Divisions for practicing a new piece and ways to focus on tricky passages. 

Tweetables: 

“I think it is scary to think of coming back together. I think we’ve all changed. I think it’s going to be such a substantial amount of time that we all would have changed in a lot of ways.” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:24:20] 

“Our whole lives I think so much of our self-worth is wrapped up in how we play. I don’t know that that’s healthy or right, but it’s inescapable.” — Nathan Cole [0:25:10 ]

“It is reassuring to know that orchestra or no orchestra, we’re still musicians.” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:25:25] 

Transcript

EPISODE 39 

[INTRO] 

[00:00:00 ] NC: Hi and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I’m Nathan Cole.  

[00:00:05 ] AT: I’m Akiko Tarumoto. 

[EPISODE] 

[00:00:19 ] NC: And last time we came at you, the world was a very different place. Needless to say, we’ve taken quite a long break, but we’re happy to be back talking with each other and talking to you. Yeah, even though things have changed quite a bit. We were just trying to come up with what our last episode had been and we were talking conductors. How important is a conductor? Do we really need a conductor?  

[00:00:43 ] AT: Who knew we wouldn’t need a conductor for months? 

[00:00:46 ] NC: Yeah. We got our wish. Didn’t see any conductors for months. Yeah, it’s like the monkey’s paw. Got more than we bargained for.  

[00:00:56 ] AT: The corpse showed up at the front door.  

[00:00:58 ] NC: Yeah. I mean, we certainly won’t be the first people sharing our thoughts about the changed state of the world on classical music since the pandemic began. Maybe our thoughts don’t have to run too deep. But what do you think about our musical and our artistic lives since this all took route? When was the last time we were at work?  

[00:01:26 ] AT: It was what? March 12^th to 13^th. Something like that. Yeah.   

[00:01:31 ] NC: Mid-March. It was a week full of children’s programs, right? Children’s or young adult programs. Our big challenges that week, we’re keeping all the books straight. Got this book for this program and transferring bowings in and out of this part and that part and just – 

[00:01:51 ] AT: I think there were three different concert masters playing the same solos. That was a challenge too.  

[00:01:57 ] NC: Was one of them you? 

[00:01:59 ] AT: I was sitting next to all of them, I think. 

[00:02:01 ] NC: Oh, okay. 

[00:02:01 ] AT: I was not one of them. But yeah, I was trying to make myself useful.  

[00:02:07 ] NC: I do remember stressing about a solo. Yeah, it’s one of those weird – Something like when you’re a kid, some assignment is due and you pay for a snow day or some fake disaster call the next day that would spare you from having to go in.  

[00:02:22 ] AT: Here now, you got like a snow year.  

[00:02:24 ] NC: Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, who knew that that would be the last day there. I really haven’t been back at the hall. I know you haven’t. I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise that for the next couple of weeks, because it started to sync in, I mean, I’m not sure that I took the violin much out of the case. I had been practicing a lot actually right up until that moment and it came to a screeching halt and then I just didn’t want to play at all.  

[00:02:53 ] AT: Yeah. It was strange. I had somehow injured myself. I think we’ve been doing a lot of like the Ives and Dvořák on the regular subscription concerts. I forget why. I sort of felt like I was susceptible and maybe I wasn’t doing enough individual practice and I was like playing maybe kind of without paying super close attention to my technique.  

[00:03:21 ] NC: Well, it was that point in the season too, where athletes always have that point in a basketball season right around March, April.  

[00:03:29 ] AT: Right. Everyone’s got something going on.  

[00:03:31 ] NC: Yeah, dings and I think we have that too. I often notice by March or April. It’s just been a lot of weeks in a row, and the little things start adding up. 

[00:03:44 ] AT: And we had extra stuff too that we were playing some kind of extra concerts. Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, of course we’re getting – we, I’m getting older.   

[00:03:53 ] NC: Well, I think I am too.  

[00:03:55 ] AT: I guess we’re all getting older. It’s becoming more significant. Yeah, I’m just starting to notice a little more wear and tear. That was happening then for me. Maybe not so much for you, but yeah, I immediately just did not play for two weeks because my wrist really hurt. My right wrist. I have to be careful not to say that I was grateful to have a little time to recover, because it’s been such a horrible, horrible thing that’s happened to everybody in the entire world, which is it’s crazy. Nobody wants to say that somehow there were silver linings.   

[00:04:29 ] NC: Well, me too. I thought, “Okay, it’s been kind of a pain to do all th