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The Mary Fitzwilliam Award
Study Scholarship Reports
Two study scholarships were undertaken in 2009 courtesy of the Mary Fitzwilliam Award. This award is administered through the NZSO Foundation. The two recipients' report on their trips below:
David Bremner, Principal Trombone
Patrick Barry, Co-Principal Clarinet
David Bremner, Principal Trombone, NZSO
Undertaken in London, Germany and America 25 April – 9 May 2009
Being the year one recipient of the Mary Fitzwilliam Award meant I was able to travel to Europe and the United States this year to undertake professional development. This was a rewarding trip and I would like to thank the Mary Fitzwilliam Award, NZSO Foundation and all those involved for making this possible.
The beginning of the trip was used to travel to London and to Germany. In London I attended a few concerts and spent an afternoon at the Royal Academy of Music. I spoke to students and teachers about the courses offered, and the teaching techniques used there. I am heavily involved in Brass education in NZ, and so having this opportunity is invaluable to my playing and teaching.
After London, I travelled to Bremen, Germany to spend time with the Bass Trombonist from the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Ben Van Dyke. Meeting and spending time with Ben was fantastic. Ben is widely regarded as one of the best bass trombonists in the world, and it was great to play duets with him, and talk about various trombone issues.
Whilst in Bremen I also visited the Thein Brass Instruments factory to select four trombones to be played by the NZSO, generously funded through the NZSO Foundation. I spent a day with owners Heinrich and Max Thein, trying countless trombones with different bells, valves, and slides. It was a long day of tooting, but by the end of it I’d selected four fantastic trombones for the NZSO. I left Bremen feeling extremely inspired, and looking forward to my lessons in San Francisco.
I then visited San Francisco where I had lessons from my old teacher Mark Lawrence, former principal trombone of the San Francisco Symphony, Timothy Higgins, the current Principal trombone of the San Francisco Symphony, and Jeff Budin, Principal of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. These men are inspiring individuals and phenomenal players and I enjoyed the opportunity to sit down and talk about my goals and aspirations with them. After spending time with them I felt incredibly keen to get back home and practice the things we had talked about.
Lastly, I spent an afternoon with the San Francisco Ballet trombone section, and we played quartets. I had met all the players from when I studied in San Francisco, but it was great to play with them, and have a chat about life in our respective orchestras.
I would like to thank those involved for awarding me this scholarship, I felt very privileged to have this opportunity and returned home feeling invigorated and inspired. I hope to be able to do one of these trips again in the future.
David Bremner
Patrick Barry, Co-Principal Clarinet
Undertaken in America June –July 2009
I would like to take this opportunity to thank those involved – Mary Fitzwilliam, the NZSO Foundation and the NZSO for awarding me the Mary Fitzwilliam Award. It has provided me with much needed assistance for furthering my development as a musician and thus improved the quality of contribution I make to the NZSO and to the larger arts community in New Zealand.
When I arrived in New Zealand nine years ago, I was very keen to put the routine of weekly lessons and coaching behind me for good. Being quite young I was sure that I knew, if not all, at least most of what I needed to do the job. However, I quickly found that this was not the case, and that maintaining the type of performance schedule required by the NZSO meant that I had to develop a new set of skills. Quickly. Gone were the days of extensive rehearsal and adequate preparation time! The first couple of years were a bit of a rocky road as I learned to do without the luxury of time and a teacher to direct my efforts.
Over time I began to notice that working in this way created shortfalls in my playing, both in the technical sense and in the musical one - since playing to avoid error and embarrassment is very different from true musical communication.
It was in recognition of these facts which led me to pursue some further lessons. (I wasn't done with them after all.) Through the Mary Fitzwilliam Award this has been made possible. I arranged to study with Yehuda Gilad, a highly regarded pedagogue who teaches at USC and Sean Osborne at University of Washington (formerly of the MET Opera and Phillidelphia Orchestra). Additionally, I planned to attend a performance by David Schifrin of Yale University (also director of Chamber Music at Lincoln Center and Chamber Music Northwest).
Firstly, let me just say that taking lessons again was extremely nerve wracking! I was amazed that an activity which was such an integral part of my life for so long had become such a foreign and frightening concept. Never the less, I found Mr. Gilad and Mr. Osborne to be very generous with their time and feedback.
My objectives for these lessons were not so much to prepare new material, or get coached on orchestral repertoire, but rather to find out where my blind spots are. What am I failing to perceive in my playing, how does my concept of what I'm doing differ from the reality? To that end I worked up pieces that I was very familiar with, namely the Debussy Rhapsodie, and a couple of Jean Jean Etudes.
My time with Mr. Gilad was a real breath of fresh air. For the first time that I could recall, I was being encouraged to break out of the confines of history (both general and personal) and trust my instincts to realize my own vision of the piece. He recognized clearly the burden of correctness that was obscuring my communication and sought out ways of freeing my voice. These ranged from exaggerating shapes in the music, to visualizations of breath and breathing, to thinking about how each part of the piece fitted in to the whole and considering what that could imply about the nature of expression demanded by a particular phrase. This process drove home the need to clarify my concept of structure and phrase before putting the instrument to my lips, and not to doubt that vision while playing.
In my lesson with Mr. Osborn things took a different but equally valuable direction. I say different, but really these things overlap. He pointed out tendencies in my playing which I was not aware of; those 'auto pilot' moments where you think you are engaged in music making, but your preoccupation with other concerns is audible. What we worked with is a concept of phrasing which breaks things down to their fundamentals. If you take a musical phrase to be the equivalent of a sentence, it should have a beginning, middle, and end, and hopefully delivers some content. Where I'm letting myself down, in this model, is in the careful crafting and delineation of the elements of phrase i.e. the beginning is obvious, but where it moves to is not always clear or elegantly shaped, and the end is not always cared for: it is simply the point at which I have stopped playing. The prescription was more work on the fundamentals of breathing and breath control. I'm always amazed at how, no matter how 'advanced' you become, the solutions to problems are found in the very basics.
The performance I attended of David Schifrin's was the perfect way to finish up the trip. I have been a big fan of his since I began playing (my first teacher was a student of his and his recording of the Brahms Sonatas had a huge influence on my concept of sound and phrasing), but I had never heard him live. In his playing I heard the resolution of all the issues I had been discussing and working on. His approach to the instrument was amazing to watch. He is so relaxed (arms, hands, breath, embouchure) that it seems he could drop the thing at any moment. He plays with such a unique voice and with such elegantly crafted phrasing that one could be convinced that what he was doing was easy!
Again I would like to thank everyone who helped to make this happen, I am much in your debt.
Patrick Barry
