Blog posting written by Jairo Geronymo, pianist, Nurnberg, Germany
 
On November 8th,  I will play  a program entitled Three Trios, Three Players, Three Lands  with two of my colleagues.  

The program at the Rathaus Schoneberg, the City Hall of West Berlin and now a cultural center, will include  Johaness Brahms’ Trio opus 8 (Germany), Paul Schoenfield’s Café Music (USA) and Astor  Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (Argentina).  I have played the four-hands version of the same piece by Piazzolla with  Diane Birr as part of a  previous FLEFF production .  Sexy music plus tango plus historical footage spells great project!

Piazzolla had a colorful life, living in Argentina, US and Europe . His main instrument, the bandoneon, is the perfect medium for expressive music with a nationalistic character.  Folk music of countries as France, Germany and the USA also utilized the accordion in its many forms and shapes.

Today, in my first trio rehearsal, we breezed through Brahms, without any stylistic controversy. And then…  the old question about Piazzolla’s music as it is played outside Argentina poked through.  The music is so passionate that the performers become afraid: they don’t want the textures, dynamics and timbres to sound like a  Latin American caricature.  So I ask: How much is too passionate?

We want to transmit the passion in the music.  But a hard question lurks:  where is the line between passionate and caricature?  We certainly do not want to sound like a Mexican soap opera!

There is a market for Mexican soap opera--and that’s why they do well.  So what’s wrong with them?  Is passionate expression of what others might hear as mundane condemnable?  People in different cultures express themselves quite differently in the world of emotions.  Are these cultural differences playing a role in covert racism?  Is cool and reserved the model to be followed?  Should we all get musical Botox injections and perform in a wrinkle-free, expressionless style?  Is there a place in the musical world for both the reserved and the extravagant? 

Performance practice today is a minefield.  Many performers do not play Bach in concert anymore. They fear being labeled purists or extreme romantics-- sometimes in the same concert.  Recordings have created an educated and opinionated audience.  We musicians silently agree on standards of performance practice. Then we criticize someone who strays from these standards.  These attitudes do not help to expand diversity in the field of classical music.

Are only German performers entitled to play Brahms?Are only  Argentine performers entitled to play Piazzolla?  Are only American performers entitled to play Schoenfield?  No.  I suggest that we expand our horizons:  we should not accept any dogmas in the art world. 

Let music and our performance of it be free!

I leave you with Piazzolla playing ‘Adios Nonino’ with a German orchestra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTPec8z5vdY&feature=related
 

Blog posting written by Jairo Geronymo, pianist, Nurnberg, Germany
 
I do not drink alcohol but I am a member of the Martini Mafia.

The president of the Martini Mafia, Charles*, a retired piano professor and the owner of the largest collection of portraits of Queen Elizabeth II outside England, has introduced me to Sarah.  Sarah studied piano with Charles and recently gave me her first book, filled with watercolor portraits.  People, pianos, blues, greens, browns.
Charles, Sarah and Jeremy, a piano professor always happy to talk about his promising piano students met regularly to go to concerts, talk about music and  discuss our dear piano students. 

Sarah is a founding  member of the Martini Mafia, even though she also does not drink alcohol! Charles introduced me to Robert, an active New York singer and actor that shares his time between NYC and his second home in Montgomery, NY where he tends his garden, hosts parties for friends and rents his house for film productions.  Charles and Robert met in the 1960’s in San Francisco, in a New Age Monastery before that sort of retreat became fashionable. 

Once I moved to Ithaca, Robert introduced me to Sherman, a soldier at the Second World War, a former executive who had worked all over the world, with long stints in the Middle East in the forties.

I met Sherman shortly before his eightieth birthday. I attended three of his birthdays at his mountaintop home in Lockwood, NY, thirty miles south of Ithaca.  His birthdays were celebrated with wonderful food and much singing.  I sight-read songs on the piano while many of the guests sang joyfully.  They were always amazed that I didn’t know the different songs.  I was a baby when these guys were already performing those songs onstage!  Sherman lost a singing competition to the teenager Barbra Streisand.  I will save that story for later.

I just received Sherman’s second CD in the mail. He recorded both his CDs after he turned eighty.  The inside cover portrays him through four images from different periods of his life: as a teenager, as a soldier in the Second World War, atop a camel in the desert,  and today.  In this CD, “Songs from The Greatest Generation” he sings hits from Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Bennett and others.  I will reserve my compliments for  when I talk to Sherman on the phone.  His singing inspires me.

So why did I tell you about all these colorful characters? What do they all have in common? 

They all have come together as friends through music.  It is interesting that something as ethereal and volatile as music can keep friends united for decades.  I baptized the group known as the ‘Martini Mafia’.  They are actually music makers, one way or another.  They met to go to concerts, talk about music, piano students.  Life. 

So I raise my Martini glass filled with orange juice to all these women and men that have loved and made music throughout their lives.  Their music has enriched the lives of so many others--and that’s what this is all about.
 
*All the characters portrayed in this blog are not fictional.  All names were changed.  Sherman’s CD is not available commercially.  I never had an ‘alcohol problem’.  No animals were harmed during the writing of this blog.