Playing Up and Playing Out: Twin Cities Lute Summit

One of my music teachers once said to me, "you must perform in public and you must perform often.  If you wait to perform until you are as good as your idols, you may never perform at all."  This was in response to a question I'd asked about when I would know that I was "good enough to perform in public."  His point was that, if one is driven to perform, one should perform and keep performing, and that performance drives one to become a better musician.  Playing Out is a healthy and good thing because it challenges you to put together a performance that meets at least someone's criteria (hopefully your own!) for good music. 

The truth of this advice has become apparent to me often in the past several years, most recently in relation to the Twin Cities Lute Summit, which took place this past Saturday (November 21) at Hamline University's Sundin Hall.  For this concert, I joined four other Twin Cities lutenists (Paul Berget, Rocky Mjos, Phil Rukavina, and Tom Walker) for an evening of Renaissance and Baroque lute music played by duos, trios and a quintet--something that isn't often seen.  The music was sublime, featuring works by Vallet, Weiss, Dowland and Vivaldi, among others, and the arrangements made the most of the instruments and personnel at hand.  Concertgoers were treated to lutes of a variety of shapes and sizes and tunings, from a tiny soprano lute to a giant theorbo--the heavy artillery of the lute world--and everything in between.  It was a fun concert in a great hall and I was pleased--and privileged--to participate.  For a glimpse at how the music sounded (and a brief interview about the concert), check out the following link at Minnesota Public Radio:  MPR: Lute Summit.  I consider the concert--the product--of our collective efforts to be a great success, and I feel that at least the majority of the audience felt so as well, but I'd like to comment (hopefully briefly) on the process of preparing for the concert and how it's affected me as a musician and performer. 

To be blunt, all four of these guys are better players than me, with years more experience, both with the instrument and in the idiom of ensemble lute performance.  This was, in fact, my first experience performing in a lute ensemble (unless you count the duet shows I've done with Phil Rukavina as ensemble performance), and some of the skills required to do so are different--or at least differently applied--from solo lute performance.  Oh, I've played in bands before--rock and roll bands, blues bands, brass ensembles--but performing in a lute ensemble is...different...from all of those experiences, in a way that's somewhat difficult to quantify.  It's not quite like chord comping in a guitar band, or like reading single-note lines in brass playing, but a little of both and not entirely all of either.  Huh?  Little bits of the melody or counterpoint flow through each part and then move on to another instrument, and each piece of music is a continual conversation in which everyone gets to speak and every voice is important, but the resulting gestalt is a single expression.  As a friend of mine said, it sort of sounds like five music boxes playing together in perfect synchronization, with each music box playing a portion of the whole.  It's a sound that makes Renaissance music--and Renaissance music played on the lute--distinct from just about any other style of music performance.  Listen to the link above--you'll get what I'm saying.

A concise explanation of why this was a challenging new experience for me notwithstanding, preparing for this performance was a big leap for me, and there were moments (OK, I'll be honest, entire weeks) when I questioned whether I was up to the task.  This was especially true after the first few rehearsals when it was clear that everyone else was getting this stuff and I wasn't.  I kept wondering when the other guys were going to say, "OK Rick, you gave it the college try, but you just ain't gonna make the cut."  I started saying things to myself like, "the concert is far more important than my ego, and if I gotta take a more limited role, I will," and wondered when I would be consigned to the role of roadie.  There were times, in fact, that I actually wished that somebody would kick me out of the group, because it would be easier than facing the shame of blowing the whole damned gig for everyone else...and all that other self-indulgent crap that people sometimes think when things get tough.

Obviously, I didn't get kicked out, nor did I quit, and I managed to make it through the whole concert without blowing the gig for everyone (myself included).  In fact, I'm pretty proud of how I played, and how I spoke, and how I interacted with the other guys that night, and I'm glad I stuck it out, because here's the Big Secret that I learned:  performing with people that are better or more experienced or more bold or more...whatever...than you are makes you want to be better yourself.  And once you want it, you start to work for it and, by golly, most of the time, you get it.   I don't want to sound like a football coach here, but it's a bona fide truth that Playing Up makes you a better musician.  And the beautiful thing about stretching out of your envelope is that it often makes the things that were within your original comfort zone just that much easier to do.  Can't keep us down on the farm once we've been to the Big City, I guess...or something like that.

So here's my little bit of advice, both to myself and to anyone out there who's interested:  Play Up: work with people who are better than you, change your paradigm (i.e., if you're a folkie, get into some funk; if you're a shredder, learn some jazz chords and just comp for a while; put down the cello and play some harmonica)--give yourself something to work toward.  And then, Play Out: take it to the streets and let somebody hear what you're doing.  I believe that music performance (and art in general, whether static or performance) is absolutely essential to Life As We Know It, and it's entirely possible that you might just have stumbled upon the Secret Chord Progression that will make everything all better for everyone. 

Or not...and that's OK too.

I'm done now.  Come see me play sometime and I'll promise not to talk your ear off.

Be excellent to yourself!

Rick