Camelot. I suffered from a nasty case of mononucleosis over the summer of 1965, when I was eleven years old. Our family doctor had misdiagnosed the ailment and was worried that I had something a lot more exotic—just what, he didn’t know. Concerned about my weakness, he prescribed 24/7 bed rest. I spent most of that summer in bed, my kitty cat Princess and stacks of books for company. My Dad brought the “good” hi-fi (a blondewood RCA New Orthophonic record player with tubular brass legs) into my bedroom, in reaching distance so I could lean over and change records. He bought me some new records, which looking back must have been a stretch given that his insurance agency was failing and money was tight. One of those records was the Broadway cast album of Camelot, the original LP with its gatefold and raft of full-color pictures from the lavish production. I listened to it endlessly, scrutinizing those pictures and reading the plot description. Eventually I saw a production of Camelot and found it terribly disappointing. It’s one of those shows that works better in one’s imagination, I guess.
Carmina Burana. Music to fondle an AK-47 by. There is something utterly repellent about Orff’s one and only hit piece, despite its pulsating rhythms and nifty Gregorian melodies. It reeks of football, athlete’s foot, stale beer, and corn nuts. Suburban macho in concert hall drag, bombastic, simplistic, and militaristic. The only problem: sometimes I kinda enjoy it.
Carpal-Tunnel Syndrome. My piano teacher at Peabody was a woman named Elizabeth Katzenellenbogen. At one point in her life she had been injured in a car accident and required intensive physical therapy. That led her to re-examining every aspect of piano technique, so she had come to understand just about every jot and tittle of the physical playing apparatus. She passed that on to her students, who were usually assigned to her because they needed a rebuilding from the ground up. Thanks to her intensive and careful training, I was immune to repetitive-stress problems even though during my twenties I courted disaster regularly with endless practice sessions devoted to fearsomely difficult music—Godowsky paraphrases and etudes, Rachmaninoff, the Charles Ives sonatas, you name it. But no matter how dreadfully I was abusing my backbone and deadening my heart with drill, I suffered nary a pang of physical trouble because everything was in balance, no undue tension anywhere but no inappropriately slack points that can cause just as much trouble as tension. 100% relaxation means lying on the floor motionless and immobile. It isn’t a matter of the muscles being completely relaxed: it’s making sure that Part A isn’t carrying on World War Three with Part B. The body should be used the way it is and not shoehorned into unnatural postures or forced to move against its natural inclinations.
Chicago. My dad settled in at Banker’s Life and Casualty in 1971, an excellent fit for him. First he was in the Minneapolis office—thus that’s where I spent my senior year in high school—and then in 1973 the company saw fit to move him to the home office in Chicago. I was a sophomore at Peabody then and had made it clear that I would be staying on my own over the summers, so they found themselves a small one-bedroom apartment on the 38th floor of a highrise along North Sheridan, enhanced by a spectacular south-facing view that featured Lake Michigan and downtown Chicago down south in the distance. I would visit from time to time, sleeping on a cot in the living room. Claustrophobia would set in. I would spend some time at the Chicago Art Institute, but since my visits were during the summer, I didn’t get to hear the Chicago Symphony in all its Soltian glory. (Then again, I wasn’t the hardcore orchestra wonk then that I am now.) Mostly I think of Chicago as a scene of tragedy; my mother had a cerebral hemorrhage when she was only 49 and died a long, long five years later. I spent a lot of time with my dad during her first hospitalization, and then my sister and I went there one last time and relocated our dad to Denver, where he still resides.
Chopin. I may be the only pianist around who has never really glommed onto the Piano Pole. Maybe it’s that emphasis on solo piano, my least favorite musical genre. I don’t know. What I do know is that I have programmed about four or five pieces by Chopin total over my entire career. I got some mileage out of the first Scherzo and the 4th Ballade at one point. I played the Barcarolle and a couple of nocturnes. I’m not even familiar with most of the impromptus, nocturnes, etudes, or mazurkas. Well, I never was a cookie-cutter pianist, and given that I barely touch the instrument these days, whether or not I cleave to Monsieur Le Frederic has become a distinctly moot point.
Competitions. Piano competitions did absolutely nothing for me, although during high school I routinely went through the Music Teacher’s Association affairs with their local, state, regional, and national levels. (I never made it past regional.) I take a certain pleasure in the memory of a Denver local competition in which my teacher’s two teenage piano students were both playing. I hadn’t practiced very much and didn’t care very much. The other student had put in heroic effort, work work work, practice practice practice. I went on to state level and she didn’t, nyah nyah nyah. Her name: Condoleeza Rice.
Conservatory. I am a conservatory brat down to my toes, having dwelled in the confines of such institutions since I was eighteen years old. It would have been even longer, but I never lived in a conservatory town pre-college, alas. How I would have blossomed in a preparatory department! Ah, well. Back when I was writing for Examiner.com I devoted an article to life in a conservatory, including my basic definition: a conservatory is a place designed for the care and feeding of musicians. Conservatories are our natural habitats, evolved just for us and our needs. I hope nobody in power ever really buys into that nonsense about “private colleges that specialize in music.” Private college, my foot.
Cooking. I often enjoy cooking, although not on a full-time basis. When I’m busy, cooking takes a distant back seat while I head for the convenience foods, take-out, or a neighborhood eatery. With age I’ve become a bit less adventuresome, preferring homey fare over exotica. But some of my home-style dishes would be exotica to others, given my fondness for Creole cuisine. On the whole, however, I’m a thoroughly safe home cook, very good with stews and roasts and sautées. I went through a French phase and a Chinese phase and a Hindu phase. Enough phases. Nowadays give me the spaghetti and meat balls, the macaroni and cheese, the home-made chicken pie, the pot roast.