JAVS Fall 2024

Kira Blumberg is the principal violist of the Redlands Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Long Beach Symphony. She teaches at the University of Redlands and Pomona College.

I came home and babbled to my family, happily explaining everything viola. I also tried an interleaved practice session today. Five sets of five minutes each, with a timer, deciding beforehand what I would work on. I came out of the practice session very discombobulated. I normally practice large chunks of music for large chunks of time. This was very small bits: five bars of an etude, thirds in my scale, a half bar of octaves in a piece. It made me focus at a very deep level. It was also fairly uncomfortable mentally, but that is part of the idea. Hopefully tomorrow when I practice the same things again, my progress will be evident. Smacking the brain around and practicing each bit in as many ways as possible is the idea. As a yoga teacher of mine once said, “If you are comfortable, you probably aren’t learning anything.”

Footnotes 1 Kenji’s works can be found at: https://www.kenjibunch.net/.

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

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