[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I have an excellent friend who is a self-taught flute player. He’s a good player, and is a very clever man, so approaches his playing with great intelligence. He listens to all sorts of music, and really thinks about what he hears, so his ideas are always developing. But he’s had very few traditional ‘lessons’. I coach him from time-to-time, and last year I played continuo for him in a Bach sonata.

As we were rehearsing, I didn’t say a lot, as I didn’t think it was my place. I was his continuo player, and he was the main voice. But I played for him as I would a professional performer. I came to the first rehearsal with everything ready to go at tempo, having pulled apart my part and was ready to really rehearse. This is the way I was trained by my teacher in London. I believe it shows respect for my fellow musicians, and also the music I am playing. Some people don’t approach rehearsals like this, but I do.

This week, over dinner, he was talking about the effect that my playing had had on him and how it had really hoicked him into shape – it had raised his playing to another level. I was delighted. And it got my thinking about the musicians that have raised my playing to a new level, or the things I have done to raise my playing – recording, playing Bach suites with a percussionist, touring, learning to re-arrange things and then perform them.

It made me realise how important it was,for any musician, professional or amateur to allow themselves to be totally lifted up by their bootstraps by another player, or an experience, and how important that is. To not play with players who don’t think. Or who think they are better than they are. To try new repertoire and new playing combinations. To perhaps play with a baroque bow. To not grow stagnant.

Thank you to the players who did this to me. Who forced me to do things I didn’t want to do. Who suggested pieces that terrified me. Who took things at tempi I wasn’t comfortable with. Who hoicked me into shape.

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It’s the New Year. A time to reflect on what I did last year (good grief! Was it really that much?), and to have a think about what 2017 might be like. For those of you that know me, I love a good list. I’ll make a list about anything – jobs to do on a particular day, things I’d like to teach, movies I want to watch, as many famous Finnish people as I can think of….

So I thought I’d make a list of things I’d like to make happen in 2017. In no particular order. Who knows if they will happen….

1. Learn Bach’s sixth cello suite. I haven’t really done this properly. Ever. It’s really hard.
2. Garden more. I love being able to stick my hands in the dirt. I don’t do it enough.
3. Stop getting angry about the state of music education in this country to the point that it makes me cry.
4. Be able to do urdhva dhanurasana in a yoga class. (It’s ‘wheel’ pose for those of you who don’t know your sanskrit.) Also I need to stop shirking backbends…
5. Fly in a helicopter. Just once.
6. Laugh more and worry less.
7. Go to England to see old friends and my family over there and eat lots of Lion Bars, Topic Bars and Revels that haven’t spent ages in shipping containers.
8. Be able to stop a bit more. I am terrible at this. As in NOT work, or practise, or send emails.

And that’s it, I think. There’s probably other things. I could hope for world peace, I guess, but I think it’s going to need more that me working on that to fix things. I’ll just stick to music teaching. And I’d like the government to be a bit more responsible, honest and human-like – but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’ll just stick to my 8 things….

Here goes….[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It’s the end of the year. And like most teachers at the end of the year, I got sick. After three-and-a-half days in bed, I went to the doctor, and I was diagnosed with bronchitis. This made me feel a bit less like a malingerer, and more like a genuinely sick person. I’m now on fairly strong antibiotics – I can’t go out in the sun (so I am now a coughing vampire), can’t lie down after I’ve taken them for a few hours and feel slightly stoned. I keep talking rubbish (well, more rubbish than normal) – forgetting words, mixing up sentences. But I’m getting better.

I was back in a school on Monday where the kids are a bit tricky. I maybe shouldn’t have gone back to teach that day, but I was getting bored at home (I’m a terrible patient). My voice was a bit croaky, and I was still coughing enough to give myself a headache. But I went. In comes year 6. They haven’t been very well-behaved at the moment. I feel sorry for most year 6 kids at this point in the year. They are going off to high school, so everything will be changing. There’s lots of hormones racing around their bodies…. Not a place I’d like to be. So a lot of them are teary, or nervous, or angry. Nearly all of them are worn out, so they are slightly hysterical.

The conversation I had went like this…. “So, year 6. I am sick. I’m pretty worn out, and I don’t want to be cranky with you. I’ve loved teaching you, especially this year, and I don’t want to finish by having to be grumpy. If you don’t want to be here, you can go to kindergarten. You won’t get into trouble – I just don’t want to battle with you.”

Pause.

No-one moves.

So I continue with the lesson. It’s one of the nicest lessons I’ve had with them for a while.

At the end a number of them come up to me “Feel better soon, Rachel!” “See you next week!” “Have a good rest!”

These are kids who are naughty. They get into trouble. Right-wing radio shock-jocks would call them scum. And yet, when they are treated like grown-ups, they are lovely. They are kind. They are considerate. They do their best.

Everybody lives up to the expectations that are placed on them, don’t you think?

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Last weekend was a time of great highs, and a few lows. It’s getting to the time of year when I am tired and drained. Practising is hard in the morning – although it’s light, it’s hard to drag my sorry arse out of bed in the morning. I am tired of fighting within the education system to prove to the people who make decisions how important music education is to children – especially to children who are exposed to trauma. And, just like you, when I’m tired, everything is felt more keenly.

So when I get a review that completely misses the point of what I do in a magazine it makes me sad. It seems that the reviewer totally missed the point about what I was trying to do in my last CD with David. For a start, he called it ‘a mismatched patchwork’. Since it was really just a recording of how I’d present a concert, I know not to invite him to a live concert. When I talk to audience members after concerts, they like the patchwork. In fact, they love it. (Maybe I’m talking to the wrong people?) ‘Questions of style seem beside the point’ he wrote. Hmm… is this a compliment? An insult? I still can’t tell…. He finished by smothering me with condescension and calling the disc ‘a labour of love’. It really is what I expected from the establishment, but a little part of me was hoping I would be wrong. That they would see what I tried to do. But they didn’t. Sigh…

And while I was descending into the murky gloom of a bad review, I was performing at MONA. Which was incredible. I was playing with one of my favourite performers, in an amazing space (a room full of barrels of wine) with beautiful acoustics. And people flocked to see us play. When we weren’t playing, we went for a wander in this amazing place. Full of fabulous art. Full of people wanting to be in this place consuming fabulous art. Musicians playing in all sorts of places. David Walsh wandering around welcoming people. It was one of the most wonderful weekends – and so ‘non-establishment’. I loved it. It was a privilege to be there. And it inspired and nourished me. 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming home, very tired, on the plane, I realised I like being outside the establishment. I’ve written about this before. Because if people like David Walsh and Brian Ritchie are there, that’s where I’d like to be. With Judith, my artist friend, and David, Vero and Anthony. All of my musician friends who will push boundaries. We’re certainly not going to be rich. But we will remain true to ourselves.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I’ve just come back from a week in a town in NSW. It was a huge week – I had two days to get three groups of children ready for a big performance at the town’s entertainment centre. I was also coming at it from a set of chamber music performances (four concerts in four days), so I was pretty raw. Did it make for better teaching? I’m not sure. It certainly made me very aware of all the things that go on in a classroom that weren’t the actual delivery of the lesson though….

So here, in no particular order, were things I experienced.

I love teaching kids music. It doesn’t matter how tired I am, or if I know them well or not, I love it. I love watching little people experience the joy of the thing that I love the most. I love watching them listen and cotton on to things – a joke in a song, a rhythm they love, a tune that is singable.

It really does matter to me how good a performance is. People will often say to me ‘But don’t worry Rachel. Just the fact they are getting up and having a go… that’s what it’s all about.’ Actually it’s not. Don’t say that to music teachers. It does matter. It actually matters a lot. Kids know if what they’ve done is good or not. And if you demand that they do something really well, 99 times out of 100 they’ll give it to you. Most children will be able to achieve more than we grown-ups think they can.

I went into some really tough schools. I was really working hard – and I’ve been doing this for a long time. And yet the children who are seen as ‘difficult’ in classrooms weren’t. So is this a way to engage kids? Is our education system, geared towards reading and writing, and sitting and learning from books wrong? Do you know, I’m beginning to think it is. Really wrong. It’s fine to do that for privileged kids. Kids who don’t have to deal with trauma on a day-to-day basis. Kids who get enough fibre, and don’t have nits, and who are wormed regularly. But the other ones? It’s not the way forward for them. And yet we keep trying to force them to learn that way. And so what do they do? They cut school. They play up in the classrooms. They are branded difficult. Maybe the system is wrong – not these kids.

I got stared on the street. Really stared at. The last time I got started at like that was in Timor. I know I’m a bit not-normal-looking, but this was like I was from another planet. And I got stared at most of all by older white men with no teeth. Not in a leery way. But like I was an alien. It was exhausting.

The difference between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is getting bigger. And this is not good. This will lead to things like more crime. More hatred.

And kids love drumming. Really love it. Actually, so do I.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]