thirteen ways

Ojai, week 1. Subtitle: “It’s a tough life…”

We begin in paradise, otherwise known as Santa Barbara, CA.

Sure, this town houses lots of bizarre, orange colored people whose skin is too tightly drawn across their bones to be entirely natural. And, sure, the place doesn’t have much in the way of ethnic diversity (except for the orange, stretched people, who I suppose do constitute some sort of minority group). And, sure, you can see the enormous oil rigs just off-shore, and observe the light black film that covers the water as it washes onto shore.

But take the sun, surf, sand and perfect sunny weather together and you have the ideal environment to engage in busy, sometimes stressful two-week-long preparations for one of the biggest “moments” of 8bb’s career, Ojai Festival 2009. (And on a personal note, the smell of salt water, suntan cream and gum trees made me feel very much like I was at home in Australia at Christmastime.)

Below, the entrance to Music Academy of the West’s newly refurbished Hahn Hall. I never had the good fortune to attend this renowned summer academy, but the facilities are absolutely second to nowhere I’ve seen anywhere in the world.

The rehearsal schedule at the Music Academy of the West was full, tight, crazy; there was music going from 9am until 10pm every night, and most 8bb-ers were involved in everything.

• We had our last — very productive, quite stressful, never-a-dull-moment — five days of work on Eckert/Mackey Slide; 
• Music for 18 lurched then sprang to life, helped by Greg Beyer’s inspirational and kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm;
• The screaming dissonance and ear-splitting collective roar of Worker’s Union put the burnished wood panelling of Hahn Hall through its paces, and this piece came together incredibly fast with some amazingly good playing from all 40 of our invited Ojai guest musicians;
• 8bb’s experiment with an unconducted version of David M. Gordon’s phenomenally difficult Quasi Sinfonia creaked to the starting line with the help of some seriously intense preparation from the Alb, the Mac and the Phot;
• And, best of all (what a blast!), the newly Pulitzer Prize-awarded Double Sextet had its first outing with 12 professional musicians, all of whom were trusted friends and colleagues from around the world.

And colleagues did arrive from all over the map: a battery of percussionists from the east coast, an amazing folk/jazz group from San Fran, a flutist from Australia, string players from all over, a clarinetist from Hong Kong, a guitarist, bassoonist, oboist…

I was to make my professional piano-playing debut at Ojai in Music for 18 Musicians, and it’s fair to say that I was shitscared. There was doubt in some quarters as to whether I could pull it off, and I certainly felt nervous. But I had an ace up my sleeve in the form of my supportive and impossibly easy-going fellow on-beat-player (meaning: we both played 40 minutes of quarter note pulses together), the amazing Doug Perkins. Below, a very typical expression. Doug, with his musical partner in crime, Todd Meehan, were the rocks of the Music for 18 performance, and they were the major reason that rehearsals progressed so smoothly. (Although, Doug, mate, there was that ONE missed cue right at the outset of the performance. You looked at me, a look of profound concentration on your face, then began, then immediately forgot what to do next. We still love you!).

Below, my fellow Music for 18 pianists, L to R: Amy Briggs (who was the off-beat Tweedle-dee to my on-beat Tweedle-dum, and whose schnozz proved to be quite lyrical in this piece later in the festival), Lisa Kaplan (star 8bb pianist), and Jeremy Denk (ah, Mr ThinkDenk, who it might be noted is seen here playing on an upright piano, even though I, a flute player who struggles to play a C-major scale on the piano, was seated at a full concert grand…).

(A side-note: How amazing, not only to be able to grab Jeremy Denk to do a Ives/Bach insane-vaganza, but also to have him play Piano 4 in Music for 18, to take a major role in Thursday night’s 2 piano/percussion show Music for a Summer Evening, and just be around to audit rehearsals, offering advice and just being a ridiculously intelligent, inspiring presence. In microcosm this was the point of Ojai09: bring awesome people, feed off their energy and incredible talent. Dragging Alexis Kenny, an Aussie flute player who I’ve known since we were just starting high school together, to the US was another example: having to match her clear-as-a-bell sound lifts my playing instantly, and challenging her with crazy things like memorizing and choreographing flute duets makes her give something extra as well.)

That bloke looking on from the distance below? None other than Ojai impresario Tom Morris, who was present for almost all of the two weeks of preparatory rehearsals. Never have I seen such commitment – there first thing, holding meetings during lunch, talking shop at all times, staying through til late in the day. Crazy.

Below, Music for 18’s “front line”, including brother-and-sister team Eckert!

We had a full day of rehearsals to put together this 70-minute piece. Greg Beyer, who as vibraphone-ista was the closest we came to having a conductor, first had us run a couple of sections to give a clear sense of the relationships between the instruments and how the music was structured. After this there was much discussion within sections: the vocalists freaking out about what they could and couldn’t hear; the clarinets freaking out about cueing (To life the clarinet or not life the clarinet, that is the question); the pianists freaking out about sigh-lines (so much talk of fat asses); the percussionists joking around, cool as cucumbers. Following this, once prima donna (there were lots of us) egos had been settled, we did a full run of the piece, took a break, had some more discussion, ran a few sections then ran it again.

The hardest thing for me, a piano newby: stamina. Sixty minutes of fast, loud, repeated chords takes its toll. But I had three pianists on had to offer contradictory technical advice: “put your seat higher,” “…lower,” “sit further up the keyboard,” “try a little more wrist curve,” “…less wrist curve,” “think about nothing…”

Below, Mr Beyer with his patented “left-foot-up” technique.

Below, a rare sight, a quizzical Think Denk:

Below, some photos from Double Sextet All-Stars rehearsal. Front row, sextet 1: Darritt Adkins, Oberlin cello professor, and the source of the loudest and most amazingly focused cello sound ever produced (the Phot immediately after rehearsal: “He sounds like a CANNON!”); the Alb; the Mac; Alexis Kenny, jet-lagged Aussie flutist, with one of the best sounds in the business (the Mac after rehearsal: “Her low register is like a trumpet!”).

Below, 3/4 of the back row: “leg-up” Beyer, “the Schnozz” Briggs and the Duv. Rehearsal method for Double Sextet: run it, hit a few spots, run it, hit a few spots. This piece is fast becoming our “Beethoven 5″ or “Tchaik 4″ – we feel so natural and at home inside it – and bringing other people into “our” world is an incredible amount of fun. The result? The enormous surge of energy that this collision created gave us such a buzz that no matter how long our days had been, we were jumping off walls. (You can tell when 8bb is wired because the humor gets more and more bizarre and offensive. I’ll spare you the details…)

Culinary adventures? Several times we ate at the most famous tacos place in the universe (complete with the fastest taco-hand-maker in the known world), which was pretty much as fabulous (and hole-in-the-wall-y) as promised and also tried the two brew pubs in town, which were both, well, meh…