Meet My Future Husband

Pictured: Caroline Margaret Maxwell, Seth Thomas Castleton, Oregon Coast

I am engaged to this here BYU sweatshirted young man. Here are some of the things I love about him (not in any particular order):

He is completely committed to aligning his will with God's.

He is going to be a cello professor someday.

He improvises on the piano more beautifully and profoundly than anyone I have ever met.

He loves reading. We love reading together.

He has loving, honest eyes.

He sees straight into my soul.

I see straight into his.

He proposed to me in a practice room. Not planned--don't worry. We were having a beautiful conversation that simply built up into a completely unexpected, yet perfect climax.

He loves to write detailed journal entries.

He served a mission in Peru.

He is humble.

He plays a mean accordion.

He rides his bike everywhere.

He looks good in a red tie.

He is a smarty-pants.

He always considers what I have to say and always wants to know what I think about things.

He plays the slow second theme in the first movement of the Dvorak Cello Concerto in a completely transcendent way.

He loves to make good food, and his cooking improvisation has yielded some unexpectedly marvelous results.

He makes very strange noises while stretching.

He has the same dreams, goals, and desires as I do.

He sings all the time.

He loves his parents and his eight brothers and sisters very much.

He values spiritual beauty over physical beauty.

His two favorite foods are (1) polish sausage and (2) cheese.

He has an impeccable sense of balance. Or so he enjoys telling me.

He's good. He chooses the right and wants to be better.

He loves George MacDonald.

He knows about Klingons--his family watched Star Trek and Dr. Who while he was growing up, just like mine.

His favorite color is forest green.

Anyway, he's amazing and I am SO HAPPY.

Singing Grandfather Clocks, Divas who Deserve to be Divas, Hydrangeas, and Other Lovely Things

Hello, all. It's been a little while... a combination of laziness and busyness. I have spent the past month at a music festival at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. My favorite experience here so far has been playing the Brahms songs for voice, viola, and piano with the two fine ladies in the picture on my right, Naomi O'Connell on the left and Bonnie Wagner on the right. Naomi is Irish and is working on her MM at Juilliard. I have never heard a more talented singer in my life. She was also the lead in the opera we performed, Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortileges. She sings with a rich and full voice and extremely musically; I think part of that is that she loves life and loves everyone. Not only that (and I mean no offense to my vocalist readers out there), she can actually count! Rehearsals were extremely pain-free as far as that was concerned. I learned so much from Naomi about musicality, because as instrumentalists we really are just trying to imitate the human voice. It was so gratifying to try and match her sound and her musical sensitivity.

The Chautauqua Institution is a self-contained community that was established
in 1874 as a training camp for Sunday School teachers. Throughout the years it has expanded to include many programs, including daily lectures, book clubs, theater, visual arts, dance, opera, and orchestra. Mostly what that means is that rich retired people come live here during the summer and hire professional musicians and theater companies and lecturers and all kinds of famous people to come here and do their thing. For example, last week I attended a lecture on the meaning of morality by Elie Wiesel. Students get into the theater dress rehearsals for free; so far I have been able to attend stellar performances of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. The Chautauqua Women's Club raised $92,000 last year in order to bring students to the music festival this year, which is why most of us got scholarships. It feels really amazing to have things paid for by lovely educated rich folks who just want to support and perpetuate the arts.

So far we have had four orchestra concerts, and I have added the following to my list of favorites from the symphonic repertoire:

Hindemith, Symphonic Metamorphoses
Strauss, Don Juan
Beethoven, Coriolan Overture

Chamber music is great, as well, and very intense. I'll be performing all of Beethoven's Op. 95 as well as the first two movements of Beethoven's Op. 59, No. 2 next week. Private lessons are another plus about this program. I have taken lessons from Yizhak Schotten from the University of Michigan and George Taylor from Eastman; next week Peter Slowik from the Oberlin Conservatory is coming. I have learned about being expressive with the bow from Mr. Schotten and posture and shifting from Mr. Taylor, so it has been a well-rounded experience.

The opera absolutely rocked. L'Enfant et les sortileges is about a child who doesn't want to study, throws a tantrum, and destroys everything in his room. Then, a la Toy Story, all the offended items in his room begin to come to life and torment him. It's perfect for a student vocalist experience, because the armchairs, storybook princess, cats, grandfather clock, trees, mathbook, tea pot, dragonfly, squirrel and other inanimate objects or animals got their own arias. Eventually, after a squirrel is wounded and the child tends to it, the vengeful toys and animals realize the boy does have a heart and they soften. It is clever, beautiful, and short (only 1 hour long!).


Apart from my musical endeavors, I have indulged in the other great aspects of Chautauqua. I already mentioned the plays, but I've also enjoyed watching fireworks on the lake on the Fourth of July, checking out the library, going kayaking, going jogging to beautiful sunrises, participating in the Old First Night Fun Run, admiring hydrangeas, and hanging out with the BYU people, Annie, Cari Sue and Tony (seen below in bottom photograph) as well as lots of other new friends.




Being LDS in a festival with other college-age students can often be very funny. A few weeks ago Cari Sue, Annie and I were eating lunch in the cafeteria, when one of the clarinetists turned to the three of us and said, "Have you guys ever drunk beer from a frisbee?" We returned three blank stares and shook our heads. "Did you know you can fit three cans inside of it? It's pretty sweet."




This place is also much more full of egos than NOI was, which is curious to me because I actually think the playing level at NOI was higher--NOI felt professional and the Chautauqua Music School Festival Orchestra definitely feels like a student orchestra. I think most of that is age. While there is the occasional graduate student here, I think the great majority are freshman and sophomores in college; at NOI most people were graduate students or finishing up their undergrad. Some of theme even already had professional jobs.


On the other hand, I have made a lot of lasting friendships here with wonderful, good, and talented people. It has been wonderful to make connections with people from all over the country this summer and to understand a little better my place in the musical world of the future.

Our practice shacks





Annie, Cari Sue, me, Tony

NOI continued... with a glimmer of Chautauqua

My quartet at NOI (Julie, me, Jenna, Charon):

My Chinese speaking buddies at NOI:

Bonnie, Elizabeth, and me, giving our best impression of one of the faculty members at NOI.

Taxi drivers seem to make a great impression in my life. I could speculate for a while about why I think this is, but I think I would rather just tell you about the most recent one, who drove me from the Erie airport to Chautauqua, New York. When I got into his cab, he asked me if I was a smoker, because he saw me lurking outside the baggage claim area, facing the wall with my back turned to the world. I think he must be a smoker, as there was a very faint scent of cigarette smoke coming from him. I quickly let him know that I was actually just trying to tell my mom my internet banking password without anyone hearing. His face sort of fell, and I think he was a little disappointed that he had misguessed and we didn't have that common ground. However, as we started up the road for Chautauqua, he seemed to light up again and told me all about the Amish settlements, the vineyards of Pennsylvania, the NASCAR track, and all the wonderful treasures the country of New England has to offer.

NOI ended with a bang on Saturday night, with Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, Janacek's Sinfonietta, and a newer piece written in 1997 by Thomas Ades called Asyla. I found it a very fascinating piece. Here is an excerpt from our program notes:

Asyla is the plural of "asylum," and Ades's work of this title can be read as a meditation on the diparate meanings of this term. Asylum can be a refuge, an escape from political oppression, or it can be a place which, though ostensibly for rehabilitation, is locked fom the outside. Tus, Ades juxtaposes manic, sometimes ecstatic, music with calmer music, some melancholy, some serene.

This work was detested by several of the students in the orchestra, but I really thought it was remarkable. The third movement is especially frightening. The setting is an ecstasy bar, from the point of view of someone experiencing a trip after shooting up. Ades's description of this is powerful and terrifying. Here is a video of part of this movement (not us--I wish I could post something with us, but I don't even have the recording of it yet).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuyoSznLJNg&feature=related

Most of NOI passed in a flash, but I got to play some really fantastic works, including Strauss's Don Juan, Beethoven's 8th symphony, Brahms's first symphony, Rachmoninov's Symphonic Dances, Sensemaya by Revueltas, and Ravel's La Valse. We had some pretty incredible viola facutly as well: the principle of the Cleveland Orchestra, Bob Vernon; the acting principle of the San Francisco symphony, Yun Jie Liu; the full time viola professor at the University of Maryland, Kathy Murdock; and the acting assistant principal of the Minnesota Orchestra, Matt Young.

Bob Vernon is quite a character. He is a good teacher who has placed many students in professional orchestras. Being principal of the Cleveland orchestra has certainly given him a lot of confidence. Some of my favorite quotes were:

"Is there anything that I haven't played?"

"I want you to think for yourself and ask questions, but you will see that I'm right, and there is only one way to play this passage."

"Now, if you asked a truck driver if your rhythm was good, he would probably say, 'Yeah, it's pretty good.'"

Playing for him was like standing in front of an arsenal and putting a bullseye in front of my face. He ripped me to shreds. I felt awfully humiliated when it was over, and burst into tears when I had a lesson with Kathy Murdock later that day. I had scheduled a lesson with her to see how well we work together since I am thinking of applying to the University of Maryland for graduate school. I felt riduculous afterwards since I felt like I left the impression that I burst into tears during my lessons. But at least I know how she handles that situation.

I hated Mr. Vernon with all of my heart for a few days, but my emotions settled down after that. However, I played a mock audition in which I played Mozart 35 (the excerpt Mr. Vernon helped me with). The conductor loved it, with all of Mr. Vernon's changes. So, he may have ruined my week, but he made me play the viola really well... it was pretty revelatory; being ripped to shreds actually shot me up a level in my performance ability. I have been pondering this ever since--wondering what it would do for me if I actually were under that kind of a teacher. Since I am looking at grad schools right now, and trying to decide what kind of teacher I want, it is certainly food for thought.

Strauss and Nepal and stuff.

Greetings from the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland! I'm going to try to make this as interesting as possible, so that all my readers will not have fallen asleep before I even make it to the part about my Nepalese taxi driver who drove me to Annapolis Hall from the airport.

So I guess I'll just start with him. After saying goodbye to my family and this guy who plays the cello who I really like and taking a couple of really long flights to the Baltimore airport, I found myself sitting in the back of his cab. I haven't had much experience with Nepal, apart from my sixth grade teacher's slide show of his escapades in the Napalese mountains, from which I remember only some flying lawn chairs and the fact that deep in the mountain ranges they don't have toilet paper; its function is reserved for the left hand (gross, I know--but that's precisely why I remember). I didn't mention that to my driver, but I did learn from him that it is an absolutely beautiful country with lots of mountains and lots of villages in the valleys. Teachers are paid very poorly there, but the people are much friendlier than in America and they care a lot about each other. He is unmarried and his mother lives still lives in Nepal, where she is suffering from heart trouble. He hates being a cab driver and is hoping he can make enough money to obtain a better education.



My heart was wrenched by the time he dropped me off at Annapolis Hall at the University of Maryland, but I didn't have much time to think about it, because I was 6 hours later than they had told me to be and 15 minutes late for the first mandatory meeting. I wasn't stressed out about it. This may surprise those of you who really know me well, but that is precisely why I am informing you that I wasn't stressed out: I'm rather proud of that fact.



The next notable thing that occurred was the two Feldenkrais classes that we attended the next day, taught by a formidable Israeli woman with Cinderella's stepmother hair and lots of eye make-up. She had us lie on our backs and practice various movements which helped our bodies feel loose and comfortable and ready to play. That was all very well. It wasn't until we returned after lunch that things got a little shady. A violist volunteered to come sit and play and she did a lot of adjusting to change the way he was positioned. She started commenting on the breathing problems that occur when our abdominal muscles are restricted and the next thing we knew she was having him undo his pants! Although it was not enough to show anything and he was still protected by the coverage of his t-shirt, I was feeling a little disconcerted. And extremely glad that I had not volunteered.



The next day we started our week of chamber music. I learned the third movement of the Shostakovich 5th Quartet with Julie (from Montreal) and Charon (from Nebraska) on violins and Jenna (from Ohio, studying at the University of Maryland) on cello. I had been trying to figure out how in the world Bonnie (my roommate) and I were going to get to church, and it turned out that Jenna's roommate is LDS and could easily take us (insert huge sigh of relief here). Our coach was James Stern, a violin professor at the University of Maryland. He has very inventive ideas about intonation, phrasing, and musicality and he was very inspiring. We performed a somewhat shaky rendition of our work on Sunday evening. Oh well. Next time I play Shosti 5 it will rock. And in the meantime I still learned a lot from my experience with it.



My other assignment for the week was to learn to play Le Gentille Bonhomme by Strauss with an unconducted chamber orchestra. I had never done that before and it was certainly an experience trying to put together tempo changes and address rhythm and balance issues without a conductor. I was so impressed with the maturity of everyone in the group. They were all so considerate with their comments and very respectful to each other. We performed on Saturday night and it went extremely well.



On Sunday morning I attended stake conference for the stake that covers Baltimore, DC, and much of the surrounding areas. I saw Karl and Beverly Snow there, who lived in my home ward long ago and were very good friends with my parents. When we sat down I started wondering if my high school violin teacher, Emily Richards Ricks, who now lives in Maryland, would be there. Suddenly the choir stood up and in front, directing, was a figure with a very familiar blond bob. She hasn't changed a bit since I was taking violin from her. I talked with her afterwards and she invited me to dinner on an upcoming Sunday.



Well, that's all folks. Bob Vernon, Michael Stern, Rachmoninoff, Kathy Murdock, and more with my next post.

Uninvited Guests

Small critters seem to be enjoying my company lately. Or at least making themselves at home in the things that I wear. The other day, I hopped onto my bicycle and a spider came rappelling down from my helmet right in front of my left eye. I guess it didn't understand why its new home was suddenly filled with golden brown locks and speeding through the HFAC parking lot. Then, today, I was washing my hands when I felt two thorn-like pricks in my rear end. The culprit? A very large ant: a stowaway from my hike on Wednesday. Who could have known such small mandibles could chomp so effectively? I guess he must have been hungry after being trapped in my jeans all this time.

第三輪 (Third Wheel)

In the past two weeks or so, I have been taken out to a meal in the Cougareat twice. Both times were very much a date. Both times, someone who was acquainted with one or the other of us saw a great opportunity to sit down to eat with us and contribute to the conversation on a grand scale. Both of these interrupting gentlemen were good people, whom I respect. I don't think less of them (except perhaps that they may be a little less clued in than I thought), and luckily, in both situations, my date and I saw the humor in the situation and laughed heartily about it afterwards.

I am very proud of the fact that we were so gracious. In Asian cultures saving face is a big thing. When I was serving in Taiwan there were sometimes some cultural barriers where saving face didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It got me into trouble every once in a while, because causing someone else to lose face is about the most rotten thing you can do to a person. This scenario, however, helped me get it.

I think we have this in our culture too, and that it's called dignity. The problem is that the media has phased this out of our mindset in a way. For instance, if we were in a TV sitcom, we probably would have said, "UM, 'scuse me, but you're interrupting our DATE." And the laugh track would have sounded (even though that's not funny at all) and the interrupter would have gone away in shame. If we had said that in real life, maybe we would have gotten our private dinner back, but our friends would have been deeply embarrassed, and everything would have been worse. As it was, we just saved our friends' faces by not saying anything and just enjoying their company.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that when social rules are broken, follow the Asians.

More on cellists with piercing blue eyes

A few people have asked me for updates about Peter, my crush of yester-year.

He married my stand partner.