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Performance

The event of a shakuhachi performance is can be many things to many people, but the player can never know what the significance of a particular concert is to each listener. It may be a life changing event one that speaks to one's deepest feelings, or one that provides momentary relief from troubles. The Greek myth, Orpheus the musician is heard playing in the depths of the underworld in quest of his lost love, and for a moment, the captives there forget their torments as they remember the the sound of music which had for them become a distant memory.

A performance may inspire a person, musically mute like myself, to become a player and lead to the discovery of a new world within oneself. For the player, each time one shares the experience of being alive in a musical language that knows no embarrassment, no right or wrong, and no strangeness, it is an opportunity to commune intimately with total strangers, to become vulnerable yet equal to all in shared feelings about the human experience. We can be invincible for a brief moment, only by letting go of the ego that may have encouraged us to gain technical mastery long ago, but now stands in the way of truly heartfelt insight.

If there is but one listless listener, an audience of one, a concert should be played as if there were hundreds held captive by every note. The preparation of the player is the same. It is not the practice of rehearsing scores or programming an event. It involves preparing to meet a destiny of an event that transcends ordinary life, that encapsulates it celebrates it in all its joys, miseries and mysteries.

I takes me a few days to get ready, sometimes a few weeks. I get the feeling that there is something about to happen that I am unaware of and I need to be calm, intuitive, and alert- as if I were about to pass along a message to someone that I cannot interpret for myself. The recipient is waiting, but I don't know who it is. When looking over the scores ahead of time, sometimes it is difficult to determine what to play, considering I do not know who will be listening. So I have a few scores that I think will be needed ready to go, but invariably bring everything I have ever learned to play. Sometimes that is not enough. The only thing left is to improvise.

All the audience really wants is to be taken into your confidence, be shown respect and kindness and then be taken away to a far away place they don't know how to get to themselves sometimes. Intelligence certainly demands to be addressed, to be challenged and stimulated, but ultimately the ear that seeks structure and eloquence at first gives way to a heart that seeks companionship and trust.

This is a tall order to fill as a performer, and the only conceivable way to do this is to just be yourself. The confidence to be oneself in this exposed way comes from the self knowledge that every failure, disappointment, achievement or joy enriches every musical thought. They are the material and reason for musical form in the first place, and if one has followed a course of continual refinement of skills, the music will flow. At every step in the technical development of a player there is an aspect of honesty in intent. It goes a long way. The sound of a young child singing a simple tune in pitch has this pure integrity of spirit. a tone of voice.

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