Play!

Posted by Ahmed Anzaldúa on May 10, 2010. 4 comments

We pianists do our job: we play. We learn the repertoire for the competitions, the recitals, the chamber music ensembles; we spend hours accompanying singers, amazing, good and bad… and sometimes horrible beyond words; teaching students, enthusiastic and unmotivated; we sit hours in the orchestra rehearsals waiting to play the twenty measures where the symphony has a piano part; we dutifully clean up our Chopin etudes –just not Op. 10, n. 7!– our Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier, our classical sonata; we show up at the violin auditions and accompany the same violin concerto ten times, go to the dance studio and play the same passage in 3/4 time for thirty minutes so the dancers can warm up; we practice our concertos and prepare an encore; we sit down with kids and teach them that our thumb is number one, and our pinky is number five, and to sit up straight and sing out loud; we show up for the singers’ auditions and sight-read Italian arias for hours, sometimes transposing, until our head hurts…

Why?

We often lose sight of why we want to play. Are we even making music, or just going through the motions? We constantly have to work on maintaining our ability, the craft of playing an instrument. We are also stuck in the drudgery of having to think of the business side of things, looking for work and vehicles with which we can use our craft to create a living (that is, if we like things like having food in the fridge, and a roof above our heads.) We get bogged up thinking of perfection, and style, and whether a piece of music is suited to our particular capabilities, and how it will go over with an audience, and if it will sell.

But playing just because we want to? Whatever we want to play? That’s a different story and, for some reason, we stop doing that. We need to find those moments, and embrace them. More importantly, we need to create those moments. Once in a while, we need to put down the sheet music we are required to learn, find something we like and play it. Just for the joy of doing it. Because we can. It sounds so simple and yet, we forget how fulfilling it is to simply make music for no other reason than to make music.

The physical, emotional and artistic satisfaction that we get from making music is something that we should never forget to nurture. It’s so easy to lose our way and forget this part of our artistic soul. Just play something you love. Doesn’t it feel amazing? The way our bodies interact with our instrument and the noise it makes. For a brief moment, losing ourselves in that sweet nonsense that is musical discourse, wrapping ourselves in the vibrations we make. Connecting with other people without saying a thing, just sharing a moment of music with an audience, or with other musicians.

Once in a while, find your voice and make some music because you need it, because you want it. Get together with other people and make chamber music together, find a piece of music you really like and play the hell out of it in your living room, or just sit with your instrument and make some noise. Organize a concert, just for yourself and play music you really love. Write about music and don’t be afraid to share your passion with other musicians, even if it means sounding a bit ridiculous during rehearsals. Then, when you walk back into the business side of things, you know what it feels like to do what you do. To make music just because.