Mon, 03 Jul 2006
Well, I spent the past week at UC Santa Cruz at The Mandolin Symposium. I wish I could say that it was a fantastic experience. Instead, I’d have to describe it as a cluster f&*k of disorganization. Perhaps my expectations were raised too high by last year’s symposium. But this year really was a mess. Let’s take it from the top: When you arrive at UCSC you pick up the keys to your dorm room. Luckily, I knew from last year that we were then suppose to go to the symposium office and pick up our name tags and symposium notebooks. I say “luckily” because just like last year nobody told us that we needed to do that. Our meal cards were set up to pay for the dinner the night that we arrived. But when was dinner? Where was dinner? When is the orientation meeting? We don’t know because nobody told us. I found out by asking other symposium students. So far we have the possibility of missing your name tag (which is your ticket to get into the concerts), your symposium notebook, your first meal and the orientation meeting. So we found the cafeteria (which was not the same place as last year so it really would have been a good idea to tell people ahead of time) and get to the orientation meeting. Now, last year at the orientation meeting as each teacher was introduced they played the song that their ensembles would be learning. But not this year. Nope, we had no idea what the ensembles would be playing. In fact, David Grisman had no idea what his own ensemble would be playing. He said “We’ll probably do a medley of some of my tunes”. This seems to be the start of a pattern of “winging it” that continued throughout the week. The other problem with not having the teachers play their ensemble piece is that we don’t get a chance to hear the teachers play. One of the cool things about the symposium is to be inspired by the playing of these amazing musicians. If you’re not getting a chance to hear them play then you’re missing out on a huge part of the symposium. We had teachers like Tim O’Brian, Mike Compton and Don Stiernberg there and we didn’t hear them play. “OK”, I thought to myself. “I’m sure they’ll play during the evening concerts throughout the week”. That turned out to be wishful thinking. Good News Sam Bush is in the house! Sam gave an awesome workshop/concert. At the end of the concert all the teachers sat in on a jam for one song and each took a solo or two. That was the first time we were able to hear some of the teachers play and it was great. I just wish we could have heard each teacher do something of their own a some point during the week. But that’s just the nightly concerts. Before those happen we have the music appreciation class and then two of the elective classes. How were they? Music Appreciation : The first day’s music appreciation class was on the topic of bluegrass since that’s how most of us came to play the mandolin. The Dawg and Mike Marshall ran most of the music appreciation class and it was reasonably well done. Oddly enough, sitting right next to them on stage was one of the best and most knowledgeable players of the Bill Monroe style in the world: Mike Compton. Mike barely said anything during the class. And did they have Mike play anything in the Monroe style? Nope. Did they have him demonstrate any of the type of techniques or licks that made Bill Monroe’s music unique? Nope. They had the greatest source of Bill Monroe knowledge in the world sitting on the stage right next to them and they didn’t use him. WTF? Maybe that was a freak happening. Perhaps the music appreciation classes for the rest of the week will be better. Not likely. At one of the classes the teachers were talking about how they were up until 3:00am working on the lecture for this morning. I guess we were suppose to be impressed by their dedication. But as a teacher I kind of felt like a student came to me and said “I worked really hard on this report. I stayed up all night finishing it.”. My response would be “You had all semester to write it. Why were you up last night doing it at the last minute?” That doesn’t show commitment, it reflects a lack of planning. And it showed in the presentations. I have to say that there was one noticeably different music appreciation class. That was Evan Marshall’s class. Evan is an amazing classical mandolin player who is also a great teacher (In my opinion, the best teacher at the symposium). He comes into the music appreciation class the way he comes into all his other classes. He knows that he needs to get from point A to point B and he has a plan on how to get there. His presentation was organized and it flowed. There was only one problem with Evan’s presentation: The other teachers. They kept interrupting him. By the end of the class it felt like they were trying to do his presentation for him. It seemed that the attitude during the music appreciation classes boiled down to “We’ve been doing this for 3 years now. We can just play it by ear and it will be fine.” Well, knowing about a topic and being able to teach a topic are very different things. Daily Classes The class schedule had descriptions that appeared to be very useful. We made our class selections based on those descriptions. But once you arrived at a class on, for example, “Improvisation” the classes usually consisted of the teachers asking “What kinds of questions do you have about improvisation?” We don’t know? We came here to learn about improvisation. Yes, I realize that the topic is huge. But it’s the teacher’s responsibility to narrow it down and create a lesson plan that teaches a particular aspect of the topic. For the first two days I didn’t have a single class which I could describe using the words “good” or “useful”. Here’s a specific example. I went to a Tim O’Brian class on using arpeggios during your solos. When we got to the class Tim didn’t even know what the title of his class was. Instead of showing us how to use arpeggios to build solos he just showed us a basic major arpeggio and all it’s inversions. As I said, “not useful”. The thing that turned it around for me was sitting in on two of Evan’s classes. Evan teaches the way I like to learn. He has a lesson plan and he has steps to get the students where he wants to get them. When the class is over you know what it was you were suppose to learn and you know what you need to work on when you get home. Evan’s classes were the exceptions. I walked out of almost every other class wondering “What was it that I was suppose to learn from that?” The other exception was Don Stiernberg’s later classes. I went to his “Chord melody Jethro Style” and his “All Blues” classes and he also had a plan on how to get from point A to point B as well as handouts that showed how to get there. The chord melody class in particular was very well organized. In the All Blues class I picked up some good tips and also learned why the chord progression in “Bird Blues” works. It really was an eye opener for me. But overall I found that it was incredibly easy to choose poorly. Far too often you’d walk into a class expecting to get a lesson on the topic in the class description and you’d walk out not knowing any more that you did walking in. About that class schedule I should add the actual schedule that showed us where the classes would be held wasn’t available until late the night of orientation. Once again, it seems like that’s something that could have been done ahead of time. It’s just one more example of the general disorganization of the whole symposium. The Ensembles I ended up so stressed out over my ensemble part that I elected not to play in the Saturday evening concert. This is my own fault. I was so tired from jamming late at night that on Wednesday I just had to get some sleep. So I decided to sleep through the ensemble class. Well, once I missed a single day of practice there was just no way I was going to get up to speed in time for the concert. I think I was the only person who just didn’t play. But several other students did tell me that they were just going to sit on stage and play the few notes that they could handle. One student told me she was just going to brush the strings with her knuckles. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to play that stuff!” she said. Perhaps they should have chosen Dawg’s ensemble. All they did was to play chop chords and tremolo notes while Dawg, Josh Pinkum and Alex (a great young fiddle player) soloed. So the Dawg group went into the ensemble thinking they were going to learn a David Grisman tune and they ended up playing backup chords to somebody else’s jam session. During the intermission I mentioned to some of the other students “Wow, did Dawg’s ensemble group get ripped off or what?” I got a resounding “YES” from half a dozen students in unison. So here is it, the last night of the ensemble and we still haven’t heard half of the teachers play anything other than their jam with Sam Bush. Finally we get to hear them play. Don came on and did a cool swing version of “Pennies from Heaven”. Tim came out and did an amazing version of “On the trail of the buffalo”. I sure wish they had played more during the evening concerts because it was great to hear them. Mike Compton came out on stage with a young girl fiddle player who was in his fiddle tune class that afternoon. He basically featured her during his one song. All he did was play rhythm backup for her. I have to say, she was great, but I still haven’t heard Mike really play. Hamilton de Holanda If there was a single person who turned this symposium around I’d have to say it was Hamilton de Holanda. He’s an amazing Brazillian chorro musician who was the high point of the whole week. I took the “Introduction to Chorro” class and I have to say that even working through an interpreter Hamilton does a better job teaching than most of the other instructors do in their native language. Final Thoughts So overall I’d give the symposium a C+. There were some high spots to the week, but the total lack of organization and the “we’ll just play it by ear and let it happen” attitude was really disappointing. Halfway through the week I was truly considering checking out and going home. My thought process was “I can’t believe I spent $1100 for this. I could go home and work and make some of that money back.” I’m glad I didn’t leave because I would have missed Hamilton. But overall it was nowhere near the pleasant experience that I had last year. I mean, when I’m considering going home because I just don’t want to deal with the disappointment of yet another poorly planned class that is not a good sign. My final thought: I think it’s worth going once just to experience it. But once you get over the “Oh My Gosh” factor of sitting in the same room with Mike Marshall and David Grisman and you start really looking at how good the classes are you’ll find it lacking. Evan’s classes are great. Many of Don’t classes are great. Some of Mike Marshall’s classes were great. But it’s really hit and miss. I won’t be going next year. I don’t need the frustration.This story is from the
[/music] department
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