BLUE SKY TEACHING

Natasha Brofsky (centre) takes her cello technique class at the Juilliard School

BROFSKY PHOTO MIZUKI HAYAKAWA. WEILERSTEIN PHOTOS ANDREW HURLBUT/NEC

DONALD WEILERSTEIN – VIOLIN

Reading sections of lesson transcripts, you might think it’s a yoga or ballet class – or maybe a voice lesson:

‘Before you start, feel the spine move.’

‘And the eyes.’

‘Feel the lift in the spine.’

‘The whole thing up, to the top of the head.’

‘You want ecstatic energy from your spine through your body.’

‘Feel the sacrum, the whole pelvis vibrating.’

‘The sitting bones should feel alive down to the floor.’

‘Sing through your body.’

‘Sing like you’re the music.’

‘In the rest, do you feel large and lifted?’

Violinist Donald Weilerstein’s teaching is based on awareness of how energy flows through the body. His approach to technique is less about how to execute an action than about where to direct thoughts in order to release tension, thereby making a passage easier. These are not things you hear every day from a violin teacher.

‘It’s very much a mind-over-matter approach, which I found incredibly helpful, ’ says former student Alexi Kenney. ‘Weilerstein does talk about specific aspects of technique, but for him it’s more about the big picture and using imagination and creativity to find a technique that works for your physique and particular instrument.’

Donald Weilerstein discusses ‘the big picture’

Granted, Weilerstein teaches the crème de la crème of young violinists. Many of his students arrive at his studio with a fully developed technique. But that can get in the way of musical expression – and what the students want to express.Samuel Andonian, a Weilerstein student at the New England Conservatory, has brought a Brahms sonata to his lesson, and plays through the first two movements. Weilerstein listens, moving through phrases as if he himself were playing. ‘Good, ’ he says, when Andonian is done. ‘Nice Brahmsian feel. What do you think you need?’ Weilerstein’s students are used to his Socratic method of teaching.‘Letting go, ’ Andonian suggests. ‘Visualising it, and not worrying.’ Weilerstein nods. ‘I’d like to work on the “letting go” aspect. I’ve been thinking about some things.’

Weilerstein is constantly thinking about things. He has the open-mindedness of an explorer, the precision of a scientist, the faith of a cleric, the patience of a parent. Early on in his own playing, he noticed the power of directing the brain away from the challenge of the notes on the page. When he was 18, he says, he started thinking about singing the music in his mind as he played, and noticed that when he did that, people seemed to like his playing. He read The Inner Game of Tennis (1974) by W. Timothy Gallwey, a bestseller about the mental state required for peak performance. ‘I get things from here and there, and get my own ideas, too, ’ he says.

Weilerstein’s own training, with Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay, was traditional, and for 20 years he was the first violinist of the Cleveland Quartet. But much of his current thinking comes from systems of awareness through movement: Feldenkrais, gyrotonic, Pilates and yoga. They build strength, balance and coordination, allowing the body to express itself fully. They create space in the body as well as support for that space.

‘USING THE BREATH AND HOW THE BODY MOVES IS REMARKABLY APPLICABLE TO VIOLIN PLAYING’ – DONALD WEILERSTEIN

‘Using the breath and how the body moves in gyrotonic is remarkably applicable to violin playing, ’ Weilerstein says. ‘You let the breath lead everything. I’d thought of that years ago, but gyrotonic and yoga reinforced it. Using the feeling of having the stomach go towards the spine and lifting – that’s an idea. Activate it! Make it vibrant!

‘You start from the stomach. Breathe into everything you do. A powerful feeling from the core goes up and down through the spine. If you feel that stretch up and down, it helps the ribs feel better.The ribs have to move when you play the violin. It’s all coming from low in the diaphragm area.’ The energy goes down as well: ‘You’re also working with the feeling of pushing your heels away, feeling the floor strongly.The stomach can help you do that. You can feel it going in both directions.’

Weilerstein doesn’t like to talk about posture – it’s ‘dynamic flow through the body’ instead. Projecting the music is about dynamic flow as well. Even the rests, Weilerstein says, need to be felt expressively: ‘Some people just stop at rests. But you have to project the feeling of it in a dynamic, expressive way.’

Musicians, especially string players, are used to hearing analogies to singing, but Weilerstein takes them to another level: ‘Sing through your eyes – that’s almost a Feldenkrais thing, ’ he says. ‘I talk about the third eye, between your eyes – a yoga principle. If you think of opening that and feeling the vibration from that, you can sing through that also.’

Weilerstein student Eva Aronian says he’s always using new analogies. ‘He’ll say: “Imagine that your tailbone extends into a dinosaur tail. As you’re moving, it’s following your movements. ” Sometimes you think, “How does this apply to my playing? ” But he really gets it.’

‘It’s hard to keep up with all the things he’s said over the course of a month, ’ Aronian admits. ‘Sometimes you feel you have to remember everything. But that’s not the point. You take the things that work for you. You figure out your system.That’s why all his students play differently.’

Even at the age of 79, Weilerstein is evolving. ‘Until I don’t play the violin any more I’ll be exploring what I think works the best, ’ he says. I’m learning things all the time, and learning from what helps the students.’

Weilerstein discusses the flow of energy through the body

NATASHA BROFSKY – CELLO

Students at elite conservatoires can learn as much from other students as they do from teachers. They learn from what inspires, and what’s observed; what’s transmitted over lunch, in the hall, and while hanging out. Now a cello teacher at the Juilliard School is experimenting with getting students to learn by imparting what they know in the traditional way – by becoming the teacher.

The results have been striking. Natasha Brofsky has seen experienced players share ideas about cello playing. She’s long been a faculty member at Yellow Barn Festival in Putney, Vermont, where all the instrumentalists are invited to bring in musical challenges and solicit advice from both students and faculty. At the New England Conservatory, where she taught until recently, she evaluated doctoral students giving masterclasses.

At conservatoires, Brofsky says, there’s an implied mandate to give students the chance to practise teaching. Students need tuition experience not only because they’re likely to teach at some point, but also in order to understand the depth of knowledge required for good teaching – and to recognise that instruction needs to be tailored to each individual pupil. ‘Students can be full of good advice from the sidelines, ’ she says. ‘It’s different when you’re centre stage and in charge.’

At Juilliard, Brofsky’s studio meets weekly. Every third week, there’s a technique class in which eight cellists, including Brofsky, sit in a circle with their instruments. ‘When they’re facing seven people and have to talk on a subject as if they are an expert in it they suddenly get intimidated and self-conscious and start to question what they’re doing, ’ Brofsky notes. ‘They’re faced with the strengths and weaknesses of each student in front of them. In the moment, how are they to adapt their idea to a particular student?’ During these sessions Brofsky often jokes aloud: ‘Welcome to my world!’

Only final-year students and graduates are allowed to teach through this programme, and each participant gets only one chance to teach. They decide what subject they’d like to cover, though Brofsky sometimes steers them towards a particular strength of theirs. Last year, there were tutorials on vibrato, velocity, thumb position, posture, bow stroke and improvisation.

Student Matthew Chen presented left-hand velocity because he’d been focusing on it in his own practice. At the start of the process, Chen said, he was overwhelmed by the scope of the topic, so he narrowed it down to the idea of ‘choreographing’ the left hand. He prepared a handout reflecting his ideas, but when presenting, he deviated from it. Afterwards, he said, he realised that his knowledge of the topic was rudimentary: ‘I understood that left-hand technique is specific to hand size, that it’s not one-size-fits-all. I had to listen closely, and diligently observe the person I was teaching, ’ he said. ‘The information I got from doing this would change the way I interacted with the student.’ He noted that the student’s progress was partially dependent on this connection.

‘STUDENTS CAN BE FULL OF GOOD ADVICE FROM THE SIDELINES. IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN YOU’RE IN CHARGE’ – NATASHA BROFSKY

Brofsky sometimes chimes in. ‘I try to keep quiet, but occasionally I comment on their teaching and on the student trying the exercise. I try to get the teaching student to notice certain things. They may be so focused on their agenda that they have blinkers on.’

Chen says that after the presentation his teaching haunted him: ‘My left hand came under intense speculation, as if suddenly everything I did was magnified. It was a classic practise-what-you-preach moment that lasts to this day.’

In sessions that follow these student-taught classes, Brofsky divides the class in half and reviews the topic discussed. The benefit of student as teacher are many and nuanced. ‘When you teach, you become a better player, ’ Brofsky notes. ‘You have to teach things that aren’t your strengths, figuring out how to do them. Or teach your strengths, where you have to figure out how to convey what you do.

‘Students are naturally involved in their own journeys, ’ she continues. ‘But it’s very good for them to get outside themselves, to be in the “giving” as well as “receiving” part of the loop.’

Students learn from each other during Brofsky’s class

MIZUKI HAYAKAWA

Ali Kian Yazdanfar takes a bass orchestral excerpts class at McGill University

CHRIS MASKELL/MCGILL UNIVERSITY

ALI KIAN YAZDANFAR – DOUBLE BASS

There’s no question: the double bass is physically challenging. One upshot is that throughout history, double bass music has been less complex than music for other stringed instruments. And bass playing has been considered traditionally to be of a different (lower) standard when compared with the playing of other stringed instruments. ‘Out of tune? Well, it is a bass…’

Ali Kian Yazdanfar, principal bassist of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and faculty member at the McGill Conservatory, has wondered about the limits that bassists implicitly accept. ‘The fact that most bassists cannot easily play scales and arpeggios in all of the keys in sequence’, he says, ‘is a sign of the limits we accept as bassists.’ He believes the problem is perpetuated by scale fingerings and shifting patterns based on open strings and harmonics, and by the fact that so much solo bass music is centred on C major, G major and E minor.

‘Understanding all the keys is fundamental – not just to virtuosity, but also to developing musical depth, sound production and intonation, ’ Yazdanfar insists. So he has developed a simple and comprehensive approach to scale practice that builds strength and ease in getting around the instrument in all keys – open strings are treated cautiously and harmonics are not allowed.

Yazdanfar’s approach reflects his background in physics and mathematics: in fact, he studied physics, graduating top of his class at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland – while also taking bass lessons at the university’s Peabody Institute. Logical and thorough, his system considers the fingerboard both vertically and horizontally. The idea is to play every note in a scale with every finger or combination of fingers on all four strings. See examples 1 and 2.

‘UNDERSTANDING ALL THE KEYS IS FUNDAMENTAL TO DEVELOPING MUSICAL DEPTH, SOUND PRODUCTION AND INTONATION’ – ALI KIAN YAZDANFAR

In both cases, fingerings are based on the degree of the scale on which you begin, not the tonic of the key. And it quickly becomes apparent that some fingering patterns are more ergonomic than others. Aiming for a system that one can apply to any piece, Yazdanfar introduces a few other concepts, relating to hand frame and shifting.

Yazdanfar considers a shift merely a change in the balance of the left arm. He thinks about the possibilities for this change in terms of movement of the arm, a change in hand frame, and a change of finger within the frame. ‘In general, I don’t see good results when I change the hand frame at the same time as moving the arm, ’ he says, ‘as it affects the momentum of the movement and consistency of the intonation.’ He suggests one change at a time: a change in position, maintaining the hand frame; or a change in the hand frame, maintaining its position.

EXAMPLE 1 HORIZONTAL SCALES

Eleven notes, across four strings, to be done in all keys Decide which scale you want to practise, and instead of beginning on the tonic, start on the lowest note on the instrument that belongs to the scale. Use only those notes available in one (enlarged) position. Opening and closing the hand frame are allowed; extensions of the hand are prohibited.

ALI KIAN YAZDANFAR

EXAMPLE 2 VERTICAL SCALES

Nine notes up, then eight notes back, putting you one degree higher than the previous starting point; on each string individually and in all keys Decide which scale you want to practise, and begin not on the tonic, but on the lowest note of that scale thats available on the string youre playing on. Then start on the next note of the scale, and so on. Do one-finger scales (thumb and all fingers), two-finger groupings, then three- and four-finger groupings. Stay on one string, and then repeat the whole process on the other strings in turn.

For Alec Hiller, a Baltimore-based bassist who studied with Yazdanfar at McGill, this approach to scales and shifts has been a game-changer: ‘You begin to feel balanced and strong on each finger. It started to feel as if I could do any shift and still always know exactly where I was. You develop a feel for how to transfer your weight. Shifts start to feel beautifully effortless and reliable.’ And, Hiller points out, there’s always a benefit to doing even just a fraction of the complete regime on a daily basis, or cycling through it over a number of days.

New York bassist Lizzie Burns was introduced to Yazdanfar’s scale regime at the Orford Music Festival in Quebec. ‘After doing this every morning for a few days, if I claimed a fingering combination was a challenge, Ali would demonstrate how I’d already done it in some way through those scale exercises.’ His scale system is now part of her daily routine.