From the Concert Hall to Out in the Community
February 25, 2025
I love non-traditional performance spaces. My duo partner, Katie Baird, loves them. But sometimes, learning how to perform in them means performing in the concert hall first. Katie and I specialize in these types of performances, bringing music to places where it wasn’t previously deemed possible or welcomed. Need only look to our collective 200+ hours of performing music for patients and medical professionals at our local hospital to see that we really are passionate about this sort of thing. And I find myself at this time of year again, where my role as Director of the Sundays in the Garden concert series comes into full swing, successfully (hopefully) producing eight concerts at the outdoor performance garden at Tohono Chul Park in months of March through April.
Katie and I had the brilliant idea of melding these passions of ours, and have began to embark on a concert series of our own, one where we will perform music for patients of assisted living facilities and memory-care homes. Across Tucson, Ariona, we will visit residents of these facilities and curate a concert for them, performing little-known works written and well-known transcriptions for viola and guitar ensemble.
Where last week we dug deep into what it meant to interpret a piece of music from a foreign culture, this week our undertaking was actually performing and the rollercoaster of emotions and experiences that come with the territory.
Performing for a crowd is not easy.
Really anything can happen on stage and its really difficult to prepare for every possible scenario. You can do hours of practice even more hours of memorization and visualization but it always seems like there’s something that will catch you off guard.
As musicians, especially as musicians built on the idea of being perfectionist, its an interesting thing showing a mistake. Much of our training as classical musicians tries to prepare us to eliminate mistakes in every possible way. This culminates when we find ourselves in front of a crowd.
So when you make a mistake in front of a crowd, our training kicks in and we have to do everything we can to not show that mistake, and mentally we cant do anything but focus on the fact that we made a mistake. We have this weird paradox where we want to hide our mistake but hiding it from ourselves is the last thing we can possible do. Overcoming this, especially in the span of 20 seconds, is probably one of the hardest things we can do as performers, and one of the most fascinating things that we can come to terms with. This happened this very night when we performed to my partner Katie.
My partner made a mistake. But can you even tell? No, but Katie definitely did and I could immediately pick up backstage the familiar wave of anxiety that our hard work didn’t go according to plan.
Why fear the mistake?
So what was it about this mistake that was such a big deal anyway? We kept our cool on stage and yet still, that cold feeling crept up on her afterwards. What I think its come down to is expectations, the ones that we have for ourselves and the ones we think that people have for us. Tis was no ordinary Saturday night concert, this was a concert (that I let Katie know about the night before) for THE David Russell, one of the most distinguished and incredible classical guitarists alive. That’s no small crowd. And here we are on Holsclaw Hall stage with one shot to play for this giant and we obviously wanted to make it good. This expectation of what somebody of his caliber would demand from a performance influenced our own expectations of ourselves. We didn’t hear anybody say we have to play perfect, we didn’t hear anybody say he was looking to find mistakes (which he is far from that), we just told ourselves that that was expected. That’s a lot of pressure for a five minute performance.
What actually happened
I couldn’t tell you, really. Half a measure off at one point, and a couple missed notes gave us the impression that the whole section, and therefore the whole performance fell short. I spoke with Katie afterwards and she shed some light as to what she was going through.
“I flipped the page one too many times and couldn’t find my way back in the sheet music. I didn’t quite trust my gut… And I just forgot what came next.”
To use or not to use sheet music in a performance.
It’s always a tricky situation when a piece is somewhat new and you think sheet music could help you, but maybe you can get through it in one go without looking. I don’t know the science behind it, although I’d like to do some research on it, but I’m sure this happens from our brain’s inability to multitask.
How is reading and playing the same music multitasking, you might ask?
Well, they are completely different things, in reality. On the one hand, one action uses your memory and sensory self-monitoring of your playing to move you along; playing a piece by memory. You trust your muscle memory, you hear yourself, and you just know what comes next. The other action involves interpreting your vision, anticipating what you will see, and converting that into muscular movements. When we play and read at the same time, we’re not really hearing ourselves, but really relying heavily on our eyesight to give us the answers.
What comes from this is our body and mind at odds with ourselves.
This leaves us with one choice: to make a choice and to stick to it. Go for it.
Of course, you have to feel comfortable with playing by memory a bit before you do, but at some point, you have to just trust in yourself. Know that you know where to go, what comes next, and that, in special cases, your partner’s got you.
And we can develop this trust in ourselves.
There’s surely countless exercises that you can train your memory of a piece, from visualization of the sheet music and of your performance, thinking of every note, to memory drilling like I’d like mention here.
This works best with a partner (but even I sometimes have to do it alone when Katie’s called it a night), but how it works is: your “partner” follows along your playing with the score, and at random, incredibly inconvenient times, they tell you to stop playing. But don’t take this as the chance to go on a mental vacation. They’re still following along, and when they say go, you better pick up and play where they are.
It’s really difficult, but sooo helpful.
If you want to try it for yourself, I’ve included an audio snippet I use in my own practice:
Losing the Pressure
Remember that pressure we “felt” from the kindest, sweetest, most approachable guitar icon? Well, we have to attack that too if we’re going to have fun up there, both on stage an off.
1. Let it all go
I love to do meditations before going on stage, visualizing why and who I’m playing for, how prepared I am, and how much fun it is to perform in the first place. Walking on that stage should feel like a treat, not a chore. Take a minute, maybe five, before you walk into the backstage, or even when you’re already there, and just breathe, thinking of a “happy place.”
2. Getting Thicker Skin
We’re all going to mess up. It’s natural. So why fight it? Why beat up on ourselves for something the audience couldn’t even see?! Then don’t. I’d love to say more about this, but its as simple as that. And it’s ok to forget that sometimes, I know Katie did backstage. I was happy to remind her of the fun we actually had at the expense of “perfection.” Our artistic worth does not rely on perfection. Our artistic worth relies on our art.
3. Play Outside of the Pressure Cooker
If you’ve ever been to Holsclaw Hall you know its stressful. For any concert hall for that matter. I still get stressed, and I’ve had the chance to perform there for four years. This is where part of my inspiration for my modern work with music came from.
Play somewhere with NO pressure. Find a place for you where you can get out there, playing for people, and developing good, healthy experiences doing so. While you’re at it, play for the benefit of the community, and you’ll discover real quick how it humbles you, changes your entire approach to this craft, and does so all for the better.
Keep following this little series to see what potential this community work has to offer.
A Duo Project to Bring The World to Tucson
February 18, 2025
Imagine: the eclectic music of Central and South America played in the halls of assisted living communities throughout Tucson, Arizona.
When I brainstormed last winter with my partner, Katie Baird, about a potential project I would undertake in my senior year of my bachelor’s degree, it was a no-brainer that we had to create a duo project aimed at using music for healing as a wrap up to my college experience. Allow me to introduce ourselves: I’m Dante, classical guitarist and Healing Arts Musician at Tucson Medical Center; and my partner is crime is Katie, violist, Healing art Musician, and TMC’s Special Events Coordinator. Since our start at TMC two years ago, we have collectively performed more than 200 hours for patients and medical professionals throughout the halls of our community hospital.
If you haven’t picked up on it already, we are both extremely passionate about the future of music integration in the healthcare industry, and how we see it, the future is now. What better opportunity, then, than this one to create something for this mission. And so, we have decided to create a viola and guitar music-integration duo, and uncommon pairing, performing the music of Central and South America in our very own concert series, aimed at providing music for patients and residents of assisted living facilities across Tucson, AZ.
Why do I say that this is an unusual pairing? Well, you would be hard pressed to find many chamber music pieces written for the viola and classical guitar, let alone ensembles transcribing and performing music for this partnership. The closest “recognizable” piece you’ll find to this pursuit is the Arpeggione Sonata by Franz Schubert, a sonata written for piano and the guitar-viola-combination instrument known as the arpeggione, and even still one of us would have to transcribe something (and just wait, the Arpeggione Sonata is on the horizon for us, eventually).
We knew, then, that we would have to look deeper. And look we did, only it seemed that the searching had already been done for us years prior by Katie herself. In Katie’s college career she was integrally responsible for the International Viola Society’s database on BIPOC and underrepresented composers, in which she and her team collected pieces from more than 1000 composers globally. Among that bunch, to our excitement, we found several generally undiscovered pieces written specifically for viola and guitar. And here we find the Latin American “link.”
There is no removing the nylon string guitar from the musical culture of Latin America. As I had known since the start of my upbringing in the craft of the classical guitar, Central and South America are home to some of the most important composers for my instrument. Villa-Lobos, Antonio Lauro, Agustín Barrios Mangore, Leo Brower, and Sergio Assad to name a few are from the countries of Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay, and Cuba; and what makes them so special is the permeating influence that the music of their cultures has had on their compositions. I bring this up to reference how crucial the musical art forms from these nations and cultures are to the guitar, and by extension, how important they are to a viola and guitar duo such as us.
What immediately stood out to us in this database was a piece written about one of these very cultures from a composer born in yet another one of these cultures: El Gran Mambo by Dan Roman; a puertorriqueña composition written in the style of a Cuban Mambo. The catalyst for the creation of our concert program.
We took to brainstorming, listening to some of our favorite Latin American musicians and composers and devised a complete program of the music from these cultures, including Tango works by Astor Piazzolla and Carlos Gardel, The Cuban Mambo by Dan Roman, and a piece by Brazilian Composer Sergio Assad.
And now the difficult part – realizing these pieces in our duo.
When we started this process this week, we quickly realized how important, and at times difficult, it is to highlight the undying, continuous heartbeat that is the rhythmic pulse of this music.
This process comes in two stages: 1) understanding the conventions, and 2) working on their implementation.
Understanding the Conventions
Listen, listen, listen. A composer can write down accents and rhythmic figures, but it is only after listening to the music of the region that you begin to feel the beat. We decided to start looking at the music of the Mambo to help us better understand our latest undertaking that is El Gran Mambo. We are by no means experts at this point, far from it, but I think after this week we are one step further in the right direction. Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and Chucho Valdes made up the soundtrack of our lives this past week, and for good reason. Some of the most important figures in Cuban music, these artists exemplify the best of the best, innovation, and experimentation, and interestingly enough, with that same unwavering Mambo rhythm underlying it all.
Although there are countless rhythmic patterns and clichés that can be found as the foundation to a Mambo, the one that works as the framework of our piece appears to be quite straight forward.
Above is an excerpt from one of the first few measures from the third movement of El Gran Mambo. I have gone ahead and written in the accents that are crucial to feeling the swing of this piece and rhythmic cliché, and of note that the composer did not write in himself.
Pay close attention to those final two accents on the off beats, as those are the special touch that gives this music its swing.
Speaking of accents, when talking about any ensemble performing music of any variety, coordination among the instruments is crucial, and in regard to this specific repertoire, is key to making it or breaking it.
Implementation
Just yesterday I had the privilege to attend a masterclass on a Brazilian piece of music written for cello and guitar (by Sergio Assad) taught by one of the best classical guitarists of our time, David Russell. In this class, he explained this very accent-coordination.
I’ll do my best to summarize:
Although both string instruments, the guitar and viola, or any bowed instrument, work in substantially different ways. Note decay. When talking about note decay, we are referencing the sonorous transformations that a note goes through after it is played. On the guitar, as soon as the note is plucked, the sound will continue to, and quickly, die away. On a bowed instrument, however, the note being played can grow louder after its onset.