Viola, Say what!?
Hello friends and family!
This past week, I just finished the University of Utah Summer Chamber Music Workshop. This was my third year attending this festival, and I was actually also an intern!
Held at the beautiful Gardner Hall, the workshop is a week-long intensive study of chamber music. We would receive two coaching sessions and one rehearsal hour per day. Let me explain what that is.
A coaching would be a rehearsal that is led by one of the faculty members, where we work on the music together.
As an intern, my responsibilities were to make sure the students got to their rehearsal rooms, the rooms were equipped with what was needed, snacks were put out during break, and to socialize with the students during lunch. Oh, and I also ran the social media. I featured a number of different chamber groups and faculty each day. You can see the highlighted story on the @uofumusic Instagram page.
Okay! With introductions out of the way, let’s dive into my group and what we did during the week.
For almost a year now I have been playing in a string trio! We thought participating in this festival would help develop our skills as a group. Last weekend, we even came up with a name! We are the Sego Lily Trio, an all-female, Utah-based performing group. We’ve been gigging a bunch through the U’s Crimson Live program, but hope to start taking some of our own when I get back in the fall. We have a page on my website. It’s not fully set up yet with biographies, social media, and other info, but it will be coming soon!
For the chamber workshop, we played the Reger String Trio Op. 77b. Before this festival, I hadn’t really had that much exposure to Reger’s music. I was intrigued. He was a late romantic, early 20th-century composer, so his styles often overlapped with many different combinations of classical, romantic, and contemporary styles.
One of the best parts of this festival was playing viola. I decided that for this festival, I wanted a new experience and a challenge. So I decided that I would play viola in my trio. I have played viola before, but did not have an instrument until last year. So it made sense for me to have a different opportunity.
Turns out, I LOVE PLAYING VIOLA! Not enough to switch from violin to viola, but enough to keep playing it, especially in a trio. There were many technical things that are different on the viola than are on the violin. For example, it takes a slower-moving bow, more bow usage, and greater pressure to get a good sound on a viola. Also, I learned that it is important to make sure the attack of each finger is precise and powerful.
Making those few changes took me from feeling like a violinist who played viola, to a true violist. Now I don’t have the greatest viola skills in the world - ledger lines and anything on the C string still trip me up - but I still enjoy playing it.
The main faculty we worked with was Dr. Leslie Henrie, Dr. Elliot Cheney, Dr. Hasse Borup, and Dr. Kasia Sokol-Borup. Our coaches worked with us on blending our sound and developing characters for the piece. When you have a piece with so many random melodies, it can be hard to connect the ideas into one story. But a coach is great because they can listen to the ideas we have and tell us if we’re crazy or not!
One of the difficult things for me, playing viola in a trio, was balancing sound. Because the viola is such a larger instrument with a different, more mellow sound, it was difficult for me to judge if I was too loud or too quiet while we were playing. But the faculty were great at advising what sections I needed to be more in and what I needed to be less in.
During the workshop, we had three different clinics. Having these clinics was a super fun way to engage the students in learning outside of their instrument.
The first clinic was a clinic by one of the music theory professors at the U. He was teaching us about how to look deeper into the score and do a basic analysis of phrase structure and overall form. This workshop I found helpful because it provided a framework for me to better understand how to phrase and shape the Reger.
The second clinic was about Alexander Technique. Many people think about this technique as “proper posture.” But it is so much more than that. Julia Caulder, who ran the clinic, focused on balance, free movement, and releasing tension. It was very interesting because, as many of you know, I have had struggles with a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders. So I was intrigued to learn about if it could possibly help me in my career as a musician. I’m not sure if I’ll take any lessons from Julia, but I want to do some more research about the technique and its benefits.
The final clinic was given by Sugarhouse Violins. They gave a presentation on general instrument maintenance and how to take care of our instruments in different situations. It was a presentation I had seen before, but I was seeing it under different career circumstances now. I think having a presentation like this is important for young students to know how to properly care for their instruments.
My father-in-law and his sister suprised me for a visit with BYU mint brownies and Grahm Canyon ice cream! It was so fun to visit with them and say hi amidst all the crazy packing!
Friday was the final day and the recitals. We were able to do our dress rehearsal pretty early in the morning and still had some time to work through some difficult spots before the concert. We were able to perform in the Dumke Recital Hall and it was absolutely amazing!
I’ll post the video on the Sego Lily page of my website and will link it here.
It was an incredible week of music and growth on a new instrument! I will always be grateful for the things that I learn at these festivals. It is amazing how much can be accomplished in just one week! I cannot wait for the adventures to come!!!
On that note, I left for South Carolina on that same Friday on a red eye. No delays, thank goodness, just a long layover in an uncomfortable wheelchair. The one stressful moment of my two flights was when the flight attendants tried to check my violin below the plane because it was “too big” for the overhead bins. Over our dead bodies! Yes you and I will both die before anyone gets to put my violin below a plane. He wanted to also take it from me and try to fit it in himself, but I wouldn’t even go that far. Short of having to rebook my connecting flight, the case fit perfectly and I made it to SC just fine.
The weekend here with my cousins has been a blast! Saturday I took the best nap of my life, and then we got some Panda Express and saw their new house they are in the process of repairing and remodeling. Sunday, we went to church (9am EDT, 7am MDT… oof…). But in order to adjust to the time change, I was trying so hard to not fall asleep in the afternoon!
After church, we drove around Paris Mountain State Park (“mountain” is a relative term here… lol…) and then went to go see the waterfall in the middle of downtown. It was quite warm, but not terrible. The one downside to the walk was I have developed some blisters on my feet because of my new sandals…
I helped my cousin make Father’s day dinner. We were supposed to have chicken…there was no chicken… So we improvised! Made extra potatoes, threw some carrots in with the Brussel sprouts, and used the extra bacon from breakfast (breakfast was probably the most “Mark Francis” breakfast I’d ever seen, cold cereal and bacon!) in the gravy to still have some protein. And we threw in some butter biscuits! It was so yummy!
I am looking forward to our trip up to Brevard on Monday and getting a chance to settle in and unpack my suitcases. I think this new adventure will be challenging, but special, and I feel so blessed to have it.
Caio for now!
~ SK
