Celebrating Thanksgiving

This is my first time in New York. I heard lots of teachers and classmates said that there is a very famous parade for thanksgiving in the morning every year. So I woke up very early and  went to 42nd Bryant Park to watch the parade. I absolutely did not think of is,  so many people were waiting there, and some people even  had already waited there all night in order to get a good seat. That's so crazy! At the same time, I admire them so much for their passion！

 When I came home, I was pleasantly surprised that Dr. Gilbert sent our expander a email which he created a piece of song for thanksgiving and sang it by himself. It is so unbelievable. When I was in China, none of my teachers did such creative thing. I have to say, Dr. Gilbert is full of energy and vitality.

Improvisation & Blind People

Today Dr. Gilbert shared us a few stories. One is about a performance named Noah’s Flood, the other is about blind people.

Noah’s Flood was performed on this weekend. And it was also intended for combining professionals and nonprofessionals together performed at a church. It produced by the Lighthouse. There were lots of blind children in the performance. Lighthouse and our department have been developing a relationship, so some students in our department can interns there to work. One of our classmates from Chile serves as a intern at the Lighthouse. He is been learning Braille. Braille is designed for blind people. The blind people can read it through touching the dots. Helen Keller was a deaf and blind person. She was so wild that nobody could handler her. But one of the governesses helped her to feel the world by touching something again and again. She became one of the most educated people at last.

So, Dr. Gilbert thinks that what if we put the Braille typewriter into our performance. At the same time, music is expanded for people who don’t have sight but also can bringing a musical experience. In the mean time, most of blind people are very genius. They can perform improvisation because of their excellent sense of hearing and musicianship. As musicians, the most important thing is not how good we are but who we are. We need try our best to explore our potential. So to do improvisation is the best way to express our feeling and musicianship.   

Warming Up

In this week's class, one of our classmates Pablo brought his typewriter in the theater. The typewriter is designed for blind person. Dr. Gilbert suggested Jee Yun to do choreography. Then, Jee Yun designed a series actions for each of us. We imagined us as a blind person, and was feeling a piece of music by touching the blind scores. It is a different way to express the blind people's music life. It was very fun! 

Free Play

Dr. Gilbert gave us a book named Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art. It was written by Stephen Nachmanovitch.

The most impressive sentence is "i" am not "doing something"; it's more like following, or taking dictation. So the only thing we need to do is listen our heart and follow them. Lots of musicians are good at accurately expressing composer's music. When there are no solid scores for them, some musicians will feel anxious. I think the most living music is from communicate with our partner and then express what has feelings for the communication. This communication not only means language communication, but also can include music, dance, pictures and so on.

This video is a sand animation. A Russian woman named Kseniya Simonova drawn it based on the Second War. Even though I saw this video more than 10 times, I still was moved when I saw it again this morning. 

This video is totally improvisation. It is very funny.  

Expanded Music and Collaborative Projects at Choga

We had an amazing class this afternoon. We got together at Choga for a dinner instead of meeting in class. The food was so delicious that all of us were every full. 

After dinner，we did warm-up as usual. Jee Yun asked us to imagine that we own the power to touch the universe. Then, she cooperated with Emirhan. At the same time, some of classmates did the collective improvisation. It was so fantastic! 

Zen in the Art of Archery

Dr. Gilbert gave us a gorgeous book named Zen in the Art of Archery. I learn a lot from this book.

Zen is this kind of thing - A thousand words from the pen in a stream, but ten thousand li away from the subject. It is too simple that just needs to feel, but we need to go over again and again. Otherwise, we will forget it immediately. Maybe it is too simple to use logic and memory. If we don’t go over it regularly, we will forget it.

Performing music is likes archery，shot arrows one by one. Because once we start, we can’t stop. Every time we shot an arrow is different but is the same. The only thing we do is just bow and arrow. It is meaningless whether we hit or not.  The entire meaning of archery is to feel the spirit of Archery. Actually, when we achieve mastery the spirit, we can hit. But it has lost the meaning in that time. May be we can adopt some techniques to hit, which it is make sense. However， since there is meaningless whether we hit or not, what is the meaning of using techniques. It might become a block. So we just need to shoot one by one and feel the spirit. Then we have mastered the meaning. At the same time, it is not important whether we are the master or not, either.