I came back from London in December sick and was relieved of my final responsibilities to my classes. I didn't renew my contract, and am therefore finished working for the school, and it deserves a little send-off.
My first lesson of the day on Thursdays was in Bicocca, a little "suburb" that has sprouted around one of the numerous university campuses here. The tram drops me on campus, and I walk through a series of buildings that are all the same, coloured a specific shade of burnt orange and really really square -- hey must have been built in the 70's; they have that look about them -- to a piazza that is literally an outdoor mall and food court, complete with escalators and picnic tables, "paved" with something that looks like tile, where my students live in a really nice 10-or-so-floor condo. The buildings are tall for Milano and rise up all around you. They are still constructing in this area -- it's soon to become even more of a hub, with its own metro line. It's a vibrant area, or at least has some life about it -- the students pour out of the buildings at lunchtime and line up for kebab or a slice of pizza, and sit all over the piazza. Part of the reason I love going here there and everywhere to teach is getting to discover these new areas of the city, not necessarily beautiful in the same sense as the Duomo is beautiful, or the Foro in Rome; but each face of the city lends it its own flavour and deepens my understanding of its people.
I taught the majority of my lessons in Piazza Aspromonte, a 15-minute walk from my apartment. My walk to work will be a nice memory, if banal. By now, the row of kebab shops, restaurants, knick-knack stores, and cafés is as familiar to me as the row of houses on the way to the corner store where I grew up. OK -- maybe not quite as familiar. But it only takes something as small as a daily walk or other mundane routine to instill a sense of home.
My students were all Italian. Some were children, and some of those children were insupportable, but I am going to miss the little girls who drew me pictures. I'll miss the determined university students working towards proficiency exams and the Spanish-speaking Italian businessman who went crazy for Dire Straits. I won't miss the many cancelled appointments and the students who didn't try; these taught me patience, though, and which things to get stressed about and which to let go.
As for working for an Italian school, I think the well-oiled machine that was my Toronto job spoiled me.
I'm done with the school now, my contract having expired as I said; I've chosen to not renew it and spend my last six or seven weeks travelling and focusing on my personal and artistic development, and enjoying myself. My itinerary is up in the air, and more on that will come later, but I am looking forward to an extremely productive couple of months.
Bonjour, c'est moi.
- Danielle
- Your average Canadian soprano sallies forth into the big bad world of classical music in search of integrated, meaningful experiences as a performer and spectator. Currently in Baltimore, MD, pursuing a Masters degree in voice performance under the tutelage of Phyllis Bryn-Julson. Special interest in contemporary and experimental classical music, as well as interdisciplinary projects.
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
07 January 2010
18 December 2009
apples and oranges
November 4, 2009
Furniture exhibit at the civic museums, Castello Sforzesco, Milano
It's not so much that there is a fresco hanging in a gallery near a furniture exhibit in a gallery.
It's that these frescoes are hanging everywhere. I would not be surprised to see frescoes hanging over the toilets and leaning against walls in closets in my apartment.
As I come from a country several centuries younger than most of these frescoes I don't have to explain why this is novel.
The image as microcosm of the city itself:
Italy is littered with 2,000-year-old stones, preserved saints' bodies, most of the wonders of the art world in full restored glory, and boasts an incredibly rich cultural and military history.
Cars whiz past the Colosseo in Rome. People on cell phones or headsets weave through tourists on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
The subway system in Milano houses several glassed-in ruins they found while digging the tunnels.
It's 1200 and 2009 in Italy right now.
Milano is an incredibly modern city. It's on the very edge of design and fashion, and the Milanesi strive to one-up each other with the latest in this technology, that runway trend, this car, that artist. There is some serious money here, which makes it all possible (there exists the other extreme, unfortunately, and I have yet to really define a middle class). Although like in other great Italian cities, the ancient presides silently over the progress and the velocity and chaos and traffic and noise of modern Milano, there seems to me here a tension between the old and the new.
This is really only speculation, but let's take Rome. It is really, really difficult to ignore the Colosseo and the Foro Romano, and the rocks strewn about the city, and eventually you make peace with the fact that your past will always haunt you, kind of like the old-fashioned stodgy uncle you really hate because he's always talking about how you should be more like he was at 20-whatever but you can't really hate him, because he's family and you can't choose your family.
Milano, on the other hand, has little ancient treasures hiding in unexpected places. I turned a corner yesterday and came face to face with an enormous Baroque church I had never noticed before, because it was obscured by a modern building housing a bank (Milano is the financial seat of Italy... let's call this symbolism).
I was a little shocked but in a pleasant way, as I am discovering the city as an outsider/tourist and everything is a little bit magical. But humour me and imagine I am a Milanese: I am a self-styled Modern European. I am on the cutting edge, always. I can't find the balance between where we came from and where we are, because I move forward, not in circles, contemplating, pondering. I like fast lunches and long work days like they have in America. Sometimes I eat McDonald's. Maybe I have an inferiority complex... maybe that's why I can't stand the backward, old-fashioned south.
It's hard to put a finger on it. But in my opinion, the table wasn't happy about being next to the old-fashioned uncle fresco.
Emanuele Arciuli played a great solo piano program on Monday night. I sat above him in the gallery and watched his hands.
The Liszt and Schumann were played beautifully with a lot of sensitivity. Visually, they make so much sense to our well-conditioned brains. The keyboard is used in the ways we expect -- up and down and up and down go the hands, moving together or away from each other, moving in parallel lines from left to right and making broad strokes in one direction or the next. There is always a linear relationship between them. Tension grows and is resolved. Western music is so satisfyingly predictable.
The Carter he played, Night Fantasies, took linear relationships and said, "This crap is useless." I described Arciuli's hands to a friend as "robot spiders"; not only was the piece full of 64th and 128th notes (I don't know, it just seemed that way), it worked out musical ideas in circular, repetitious patterns that left the listener stewing over them even after the piece was done. There was cadence and discernible shape to the form, to be sure. But in terms of pitch content and for lack of a better word, musical "shapes", it resembled a scatter graph or an Etch-a-Sketch when realized. While Liszt and Schumann seem to muse out loud, Carter seems to need to brood introspectively over musical "problems" in order to develop and resolve them. In fact, I think this says a lot about the sociocultural "mood" in each relevant epoch. Extremely provocative; caused me to realize all over again that I think of music visually and how important that element of it is.
Today I went straight to the practice room following a particularly harrowing reading comprehension lesson with my class from hell.
Some things just don't feel like work. Some things make you forget anything that's bad in your life and obscure stress, worries, insecurity. They clarify priorities and put your life in perspective. Even a passive experience, like being a spectator, instills calm and replenishes what soul has been sucked that day.
Some things are a job that make you money while you pursue more lofty ambitions and don't deserve time or energy off the clock. This is taught to you by the enlightening experiences you have singing Verdi and Massenet, a clandestine locked away in the corner of the conservatory where no caretakers will find you and evict you from your not-booked, totally not-yours practice room, before a concert in which you hear the Brahms string sextet and Verklarte Nacht.
Or... I mean... other enlightening experiences.
(Aside: I see most of the concerts I go to alone and it's during this time I usually have weird abstracted brain experiences. I think it's why I have never been tempted to try drugs. Verklarte Nacht put me on another plane tonight; I had forgotten how much I love it.)
a wee taste.
To finish:
Further proof of Italy's schizophrenia follows in the form of two towns on the same lake (Como).
Colico in the north...
and Lecco in the south.
Furniture exhibit at the civic museums, Castello Sforzesco, Milano
It's not so much that there is a fresco hanging in a gallery near a furniture exhibit in a gallery.
It's that these frescoes are hanging everywhere. I would not be surprised to see frescoes hanging over the toilets and leaning against walls in closets in my apartment.
As I come from a country several centuries younger than most of these frescoes I don't have to explain why this is novel.
The image as microcosm of the city itself:
Italy is littered with 2,000-year-old stones, preserved saints' bodies, most of the wonders of the art world in full restored glory, and boasts an incredibly rich cultural and military history.
Cars whiz past the Colosseo in Rome. People on cell phones or headsets weave through tourists on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
The subway system in Milano houses several glassed-in ruins they found while digging the tunnels.
It's 1200 and 2009 in Italy right now.
Milano is an incredibly modern city. It's on the very edge of design and fashion, and the Milanesi strive to one-up each other with the latest in this technology, that runway trend, this car, that artist. There is some serious money here, which makes it all possible (there exists the other extreme, unfortunately, and I have yet to really define a middle class). Although like in other great Italian cities, the ancient presides silently over the progress and the velocity and chaos and traffic and noise of modern Milano, there seems to me here a tension between the old and the new.
This is really only speculation, but let's take Rome. It is really, really difficult to ignore the Colosseo and the Foro Romano, and the rocks strewn about the city, and eventually you make peace with the fact that your past will always haunt you, kind of like the old-fashioned stodgy uncle you really hate because he's always talking about how you should be more like he was at 20-whatever but you can't really hate him, because he's family and you can't choose your family.
Milano, on the other hand, has little ancient treasures hiding in unexpected places. I turned a corner yesterday and came face to face with an enormous Baroque church I had never noticed before, because it was obscured by a modern building housing a bank (Milano is the financial seat of Italy... let's call this symbolism).
I was a little shocked but in a pleasant way, as I am discovering the city as an outsider/tourist and everything is a little bit magical. But humour me and imagine I am a Milanese: I am a self-styled Modern European. I am on the cutting edge, always. I can't find the balance between where we came from and where we are, because I move forward, not in circles, contemplating, pondering. I like fast lunches and long work days like they have in America. Sometimes I eat McDonald's. Maybe I have an inferiority complex... maybe that's why I can't stand the backward, old-fashioned south.
It's hard to put a finger on it. But in my opinion, the table wasn't happy about being next to the old-fashioned uncle fresco.
Emanuele Arciuli played a great solo piano program on Monday night. I sat above him in the gallery and watched his hands.
The Liszt and Schumann were played beautifully with a lot of sensitivity. Visually, they make so much sense to our well-conditioned brains. The keyboard is used in the ways we expect -- up and down and up and down go the hands, moving together or away from each other, moving in parallel lines from left to right and making broad strokes in one direction or the next. There is always a linear relationship between them. Tension grows and is resolved. Western music is so satisfyingly predictable.
The Carter he played, Night Fantasies, took linear relationships and said, "This crap is useless." I described Arciuli's hands to a friend as "robot spiders"; not only was the piece full of 64th and 128th notes (I don't know, it just seemed that way), it worked out musical ideas in circular, repetitious patterns that left the listener stewing over them even after the piece was done. There was cadence and discernible shape to the form, to be sure. But in terms of pitch content and for lack of a better word, musical "shapes", it resembled a scatter graph or an Etch-a-Sketch when realized. While Liszt and Schumann seem to muse out loud, Carter seems to need to brood introspectively over musical "problems" in order to develop and resolve them. In fact, I think this says a lot about the sociocultural "mood" in each relevant epoch. Extremely provocative; caused me to realize all over again that I think of music visually and how important that element of it is.
Today I went straight to the practice room following a particularly harrowing reading comprehension lesson with my class from hell.
Some things just don't feel like work. Some things make you forget anything that's bad in your life and obscure stress, worries, insecurity. They clarify priorities and put your life in perspective. Even a passive experience, like being a spectator, instills calm and replenishes what soul has been sucked that day.
Some things are a job that make you money while you pursue more lofty ambitions and don't deserve time or energy off the clock. This is taught to you by the enlightening experiences you have singing Verdi and Massenet, a clandestine locked away in the corner of the conservatory where no caretakers will find you and evict you from your not-booked, totally not-yours practice room, before a concert in which you hear the Brahms string sextet and Verklarte Nacht.
Or... I mean... other enlightening experiences.
(Aside: I see most of the concerts I go to alone and it's during this time I usually have weird abstracted brain experiences. I think it's why I have never been tempted to try drugs. Verklarte Nacht put me on another plane tonight; I had forgotten how much I love it.)
a wee taste.
To finish:
Further proof of Italy's schizophrenia follows in the form of two towns on the same lake (Como).
Colico in the north...
and Lecco in the south.
20 October 2009
Tuesday Chapter Two
Sometimes, you just don't want to walk up the stairs.
Like when it's 11.30, you're tired and have to pee, haven't really had dinner, and there are seven flights of them.
You'll all be proud to know I did it! I used my feet for the entire day, and when I needed to get somewhere fast (work), I jumped on the subway.
For this week, that's fine. But I think I wouldn't choose this particular issue to be militant about. Sometimes, it's OK to take the elevator, you know? But I stand firm on gas-guzzlers.
I saw a concert tonight -- a great little Baroque orchestra that reminded me a lot of Tafel -- the 5 euro ticket reminded me of them too -- and 3 singers, performing the two cantatas that Handel wrote in Italian. It was a long concert, about 2.5 hours, but it was really well-played. It took place in the Conservatory's massive Verdi Hall, which puts VKH and Walter Hall to shame, but not Roy Thomson -- it is acoustically excellent but a bit less comfortable than RTH, and smaller, of course. It might seat about 700. It's actually a really nice hall and I have enjoyed everything I've seen there, as the sound is always great and I am always able to find a seat with an excellent view.
Anyway, the three singers -- it was interesting to hear some very dark voices singing repertoire that we normally relegate in our singer-brains to light voices without the power to cut a bigger orchestra. Well, these voices were dark, but definitely rough around the edges and though they were all excellent artists, there were some technical problems with each of them. Isn't it funny? If you can't sing opera, sing Baroque. What a shame, that this mindset/stigma/whatever exists, however subconsciously, in singers' minds. I think this is especially true in Italy, where large, rich voices are prized.
Though the concert ran long, I enjoyed it. It was conducted from the clavicembalo and the violinists and winds stood; I think the energy this brings makes for a more intimate, engaging performance for the audience, not to mention the performers.
If you don't know Tafelmusik, you should... take a second and check them out.
Anyway, I want to tell you something else. Before this concert, I had to teach my class from hell.
Colin Beavan maintains that living no-impact makes you a happier person. Is it possible that this can rub off on other people? My class from hell was not the same class today. I couldn't believe the difference -- they acted like humans, sat still, listened, spoke English, answered questions, and did their homework. Was it because I came in with more positive energy? Maybe it was because we finally had our textbooks -- kids like structure, and they feel like they're in class with a book in front of them. I'd like to think it was the former, though.
Some things just take time, I guess.
So far, this has been a week of victories, and I am glad I can say that after being turned down for the masterclass. Everything bad can be made good; everything old, new; everything used, re-used. This is the lesson!
Oh, and I did it -- I carried my snot around today and it wasn't half bad.
Like when it's 11.30, you're tired and have to pee, haven't really had dinner, and there are seven flights of them.
You'll all be proud to know I did it! I used my feet for the entire day, and when I needed to get somewhere fast (work), I jumped on the subway.
For this week, that's fine. But I think I wouldn't choose this particular issue to be militant about. Sometimes, it's OK to take the elevator, you know? But I stand firm on gas-guzzlers.
I saw a concert tonight -- a great little Baroque orchestra that reminded me a lot of Tafel -- the 5 euro ticket reminded me of them too -- and 3 singers, performing the two cantatas that Handel wrote in Italian. It was a long concert, about 2.5 hours, but it was really well-played. It took place in the Conservatory's massive Verdi Hall, which puts VKH and Walter Hall to shame, but not Roy Thomson -- it is acoustically excellent but a bit less comfortable than RTH, and smaller, of course. It might seat about 700. It's actually a really nice hall and I have enjoyed everything I've seen there, as the sound is always great and I am always able to find a seat with an excellent view.
Anyway, the three singers -- it was interesting to hear some very dark voices singing repertoire that we normally relegate in our singer-brains to light voices without the power to cut a bigger orchestra. Well, these voices were dark, but definitely rough around the edges and though they were all excellent artists, there were some technical problems with each of them. Isn't it funny? If you can't sing opera, sing Baroque. What a shame, that this mindset/stigma/whatever exists, however subconsciously, in singers' minds. I think this is especially true in Italy, where large, rich voices are prized.
Though the concert ran long, I enjoyed it. It was conducted from the clavicembalo and the violinists and winds stood; I think the energy this brings makes for a more intimate, engaging performance for the audience, not to mention the performers.
If you don't know Tafelmusik, you should... take a second and check them out.
Anyway, I want to tell you something else. Before this concert, I had to teach my class from hell.
Colin Beavan maintains that living no-impact makes you a happier person. Is it possible that this can rub off on other people? My class from hell was not the same class today. I couldn't believe the difference -- they acted like humans, sat still, listened, spoke English, answered questions, and did their homework. Was it because I came in with more positive energy? Maybe it was because we finally had our textbooks -- kids like structure, and they feel like they're in class with a book in front of them. I'd like to think it was the former, though.
Some things just take time, I guess.
So far, this has been a week of victories, and I am glad I can say that after being turned down for the masterclass. Everything bad can be made good; everything old, new; everything used, re-used. This is the lesson!
Oh, and I did it -- I carried my snot around today and it wasn't half bad.
06 October 2009
Young'un Yelping
OK.
If going off my hypoallergenic diet and being attacked by hives didn't kill me, maybe living with two small children and a cat would. If that didn't kill me, maybe having the ordeal of a lifetime trying to get a 39-euro phone fixed on warranty would. If the phone war didn't kill me, maybe getting a job with a shady company and breaking my non-existent contract for a better offer and not getting paid would. Nope, that didn't either, so maybe running out of supplements and searching out viable alternatives and praying I don't have reactions to the new products would? Nope.. Not that either. OK, maybe then having about half the amount of stuff to do in a day than I am used to, and a significantly lower number of friends in Italy than at home would. Not yet but we're getting close.
Nope.
It was the 5 devil children from Hell... I mean.. uh, the class I taught at the Educandato today.
The Educandato, as it is familiarly known, is the city's foremost Italian-language private school (there are international schools as well) and they have a reputation as such. The children are rich and privileged and they know it, and it is impossible to ignore this fact when they are basically doing whatever the hell they want in your class while you try not to swear at them in English.
To make matters worse, the Director of my school decided to sit in and observe, which she did for the other classes too, but she didn't observe -- she micromanaged. She somehow failed to realize that by talking to me and giving me extremely valuable advice on my lesson plan, she was taking my attention away from them and they were wreaking more havoc than was really necessary.
So... What exactly is it that is so important to tell me while I try to control the beasts, lady? Tell me all about how they need to speak more English, please. As if I didn't know.
I don't know how people do it -- all of you out there teaching children, I salute you.
I never want kids.
If going off my hypoallergenic diet and being attacked by hives didn't kill me, maybe living with two small children and a cat would. If that didn't kill me, maybe having the ordeal of a lifetime trying to get a 39-euro phone fixed on warranty would. If the phone war didn't kill me, maybe getting a job with a shady company and breaking my non-existent contract for a better offer and not getting paid would. Nope, that didn't either, so maybe running out of supplements and searching out viable alternatives and praying I don't have reactions to the new products would? Nope.. Not that either. OK, maybe then having about half the amount of stuff to do in a day than I am used to, and a significantly lower number of friends in Italy than at home would. Not yet but we're getting close.
Nope.
It was the 5 devil children from Hell... I mean.. uh, the class I taught at the Educandato today.
The Educandato, as it is familiarly known, is the city's foremost Italian-language private school (there are international schools as well) and they have a reputation as such. The children are rich and privileged and they know it, and it is impossible to ignore this fact when they are basically doing whatever the hell they want in your class while you try not to swear at them in English.
To make matters worse, the Director of my school decided to sit in and observe, which she did for the other classes too, but she didn't observe -- she micromanaged. She somehow failed to realize that by talking to me and giving me extremely valuable advice on my lesson plan, she was taking my attention away from them and they were wreaking more havoc than was really necessary.
So... What exactly is it that is so important to tell me while I try to control the beasts, lady? Tell me all about how they need to speak more English, please. As if I didn't know.
I don't know how people do it -- all of you out there teaching children, I salute you.
I never want kids.
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