JAVS Fall 2024

After lunch I went to a wonderful lecture-recital given by DePaul University Associate Professor of Viola Ann Marie Brink about music from Chicago-based composers. The program spanned music from 1850-1995. The highlight for me was a “Barcarolle” for Viola and Piano by Blanche Blood (1882-1933). Most of her music has been lost, but this was simply lovely. Mid-afternoon was the time set aside to mingle with the exhibitors. Hundreds of violas were available to try, and at least half a dozen were being played at all times. Nowhere else could you hear Hindemith, Clarke, Bach, Walton, and – surprisingly to me – the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” That’s not one of the pieces I use to try out violas, being more of a “Haffner symphony” kind of person. I browsed through Yesterday Service Sheet Music’s huge selection of viola repertoire, ending up with PDQ Bach’s Sonata for Viola Four Hands and Harpsichord, some duets for my students and me to play together, and Kenji Bunch’s Four Flashbacks for Clarinet and Viola. 1

I wandered up and down the aisle mingling and soaking in the viola-ness of everything around me. It’s a great feeling of camaraderie. One of the vendors said that he goes to a ton of these kind of conferences, and the viola conference is the only one where people seem to like each other. Ha! But in all seriousness, people were very supportive of each other. Young and old, new friends and old friends. My final workshop of the day was a two-and-half-hour behemoth - and the whole reason I went: “Building a Better Practice,” led by Molly Gebrian and Sarah Niblack. Molly Gebrian is a violist and neuroscientist whose book, Learn Faster, Perform Better, came out in July, and Sarah Niblack is the founder of Spark Practice. Their lecture was all I hoped for and more. My brain is still spinning. They talked about what current studies are showing in terms of best practice techniques.

They talked about interleaved practice as a way to build up your tolerance for performance. They talked about the illusion of mastery that is often gained during block practice (i.e. What we have all been taught: play something over and over again for a long period of time) and how that illusion is broken when you have to play for a teacher or in a performance situation. How mental practice actually forms the same brain pathways as physical practice. And, of course, they gave ways to practice that are quite different than my usual patterns.

I absolutely need to play the PDQ Bach at least once in my career.

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 40, No. 2, Fall 2024