Some thoughts from State Solo & Ensemble, which happened yesterday on the University of Wisconsin-Parkside campus. . .
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*By the time it was all said and done, I played piano accompaniments yesterday for 35 events, which was exciting and fun- and completely insane. Actually, yesterday unfolded remarkably well and it felt great to be busy and of value- but the days leading up to contest when I was trying to rehearse with everyone was when I was one step away my starring in my own one-man production of “Sybil.” And yesterday, although it was fun and exhilarating, was so busy for me that I was nothing but a blur all day long, which limits the chance to talk with all the people I inevitably bump into at contest. (Which is second only to the actual music-making as the best part of the day.) Plus I had next to no time to hang around after each performance to listen to the judge’s comments and/ or to chat with the musician and talk about the performance just completed. Instead, I almost always had to leap to my feet and race out the door to the next event, sometimes feeling like I needed to be out the door before the echo of the last chord had died away. That’s no fun. So I do indeed need to scale back next year to something more manageable, like 30 or 32. (Just kidding, dear. Just kidding!)
*What saved my life yesterday – and my sanity – was my right hand man, Chase Tonar, one of my voice students at Carthage – who also is a member of Holy Communion. (So I have been working with Chase since his boy soprano days.) Chase volunteered to shadow me at contest, probably not even realizing into what maelstrom of craziness he was going to be plunging himself. I think Chase may have envisioned carrying around my bag of music and maybe turning pages- and otherwise mostly just taking in a lot of music-making (and earning a recital attendance credit for his trouble.) But Chase ended up being my fleet-footed scout, scurrying ahead to check on the various rooms in which I was about to play and gauging how far ahead (yeah, right) or behind (far more likely) they were running – alerting rooms if I was going to be a bit delayed – and helping me to sort out where I should go first in those instances (there were several through the day) when I had two places to be at the same time. . . and one instance when I literally had THREE places to be at the same time. It all worked out amazingly well- and in fact, at the end of my frantically busy morning my last event finished playing exactly five minutes later than the schedule said it would. (Finishing at 12:05 instead of 12.) So evidently my status as the most over-booked pianist there did not bring the whole competition schedule crashing down. But it might have, were it not for the invaluable assistance of Chase, who earned lunch on me plus my eternal gratitude.
*Comeback of the Day. . . One of my private students, who I think will remain nameless, had a rough time with a late morning duet- due mostly to the fact that his duet partner was rather late getting there, which in turn got him so worked out that he actually went into a restroom and threw up. (Not ideal prep for singing Bach.) So he struggled a lot with that and I feared that this might in turn throw him for a loop with his solo in the early afternoon. But he came back with a vengeance and sang his Handel aria as well as I have ever heard him sing – which was a reminder to me that a little adversity in a singer’s life – a little setback – can sometimes be the valuable catalyst for us to accomplish better things.
*Funniest Moment. . . This came during the single hardest piece I played all day, a saxophone sonata by Paul Creston that is a monster for both soloist and accompanist. The soloist, Justin Udry, is the 8th grade son of a faculty colleague of mine and a young man of staggering talent- and I was anxious to do well for him. Imagine my shock, then, about halfway through this fiendishly difficult piece when – in the midst of a typically frantic page turn – I brushed some button which switched the sound of the instrument from piano to treble voices. So I’m suddenly hearing the sound of angel voices singing this wild cacophony of notes. I just came to a stop (fortunately, it was in an interlude) – explained the problem- got a chuckle from the judge- switched it back to piano- and we proceeded to the end without further incident. (I do complain about the rickety, junky, battered spinet pianos we so often play at State, but at least they don’t switch timbres on you halfway through your piece.)
*Small World Moment. . . I’m not sure how best to tell this story, but I’ll do my best. . . A woman goes up to a Parkside music professor manning one of the registration/ welcome tables, to say that for some reason her daughter’s accompanist (from Milwaukee) was nowhere to be found and she wondered if he had any ideas on how they might possibly find a piano player willing to step in as an emergency substitute. At that point, Garcia (Parkside’s orchestra director) spots me waiting to go into a room for my next event and says “I see someone who I’m sure would be happy to help you- and I know he’s a great sight reader. Let me introduce you to him.” So the two of them walk over and just as he begins to open his mouth, she exclaims “Greg Berg!” to which I respond in kind “Becky Spice!” She is a superb soprano from Milwaukee with whom I’m sung for the Racine Symphony any number of times. She was the woman with the daughter needing an accompanist, and Garcia was just stunned that the two of us knew each other. (He had never met her before, and as far as he knew, we were complete strangers to one another.) So it was a great “Small World Isn’t It?” sort of moment- and a reminder that the world of music, for as vast and varied as it is, is also a remarkably intimate world where so many of us are connected.
*Best Wardrobe Malfunction of the Day. . . I’m not talking about my zipper halfway unzipped or my shirt tail hanging out (those are basically a “given” when you’re talking about Greg Berg) but something else. Just as I was about to begin playing my first Tremper accompaniment of the day, Polly came over to me and whispered into my ear “do you know that your shirt is ripped?” And sure enough- I found a fairly sizable tear at the right elbow- and what immediately came to mind was that famous Tom & Jerry cartoon where Tom is a concert pianist and Jerry is running around inside the piano, playing the strings and forcing Tom to try and keep up. . . (playing Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapdody #2) to the point where his tuxedo is ultimately in shreds. I figured that by the time I was done with this full day of piano playing, my shirt would be similarly shredded, but it survived pretty well.
*The Music-Making. . . This is what it’s all about and I am so happy to say that every single person for whom I played did a really fine job, and by my reckoning 30 of the 35 contestants for whom I played earned I ratings. And I was super pleased that 3 different instrumentalists I accompanied received exemplary ratings, which is like a super deluxe I rating given to just a few musicians who do an exceptionally fine job. And I took personal pride in the fact that my voice students sang exceedingly well, with most of them inspiring comments like “there’s not much for me to say” and “just keep doing what you’re doing.” (I keep waiting for the day when a judge tells one of my voice students “you should probably think about taking some voice lessons.” Fortunately, that day hasn’t come yet.)
*My Timely Exit . . . My very first contestant was at 8:00. (In fact, I was double-booked at 8, which was a heck of a way to start the day.) My last was scheduled at 4:00- and it was a trombone student of Guy Gregg, a former Racinian who now teaches in Oak Creek, who was desperate for a pianist. I was a little nervous because I had a recital to play for at 4:30, but if that last event happened on time, I would be in fine shape. That room ran exactly on time all day long, but unfortunately when it came time for this last contestant, they couldn’t find his ballot. . . and for seven minutes the judge went looking through his envelops, his briefcase, his coat pockets, etc. trying to find the missing ballot. . . and I sat on the bench, trying to resist the urge to scream. Finally at 4:07 the judge said that he would just use a blank sheet of paper to write down his comments and then would transfer those comments to the official ballot once it was located (or once a replacement ballot was printed.) Just as I resisted the urge to scream, I also resisted the urge at that moment to exclaim “that’s what I’ve been thinking you should do for the last six and a half minutes!” Instead, I launched into the piece at hand – Polliwog’s Cakewalk by Claude Debussy – and tried not to play it double speed, and the instant that last chord had died away, I was racing for my car with Chase scrambling to catch up. (As luck would have it, my last event occurred in the northernmost room of the competition and my car was parked at the south end of campus. So the trek to my car was as long as it could possibly be.) The end of the story- I pulled up in front of Siebert at 4:28. . . in plenty of time for Brittany’s clarinet recital! (did you have any doubt?) And go figure- I played better for Brittany than I’ve played for anything all semester.
Thus ended an amazing, exhilarating day. . . but one I do not intend to repeat.
pictured above: One of my private voice student, a junior at Case High School named Nick Rauenbuehler, receives comments from his judge after a fine performance of Schubert’s “Wohin.”