Month of Love: One.Music

In the Beginning…
Ever since we started learning how to play recorders in the third grade I knew that music would be a part of my life.

I remember telling my parents that I wanted to do music in college and the look of loss and abandon that they gave me. Growing up as an ABC (American-Born Chinese) put me in that transitional generation of kids who often live in two different worlds - I had my suburban New England school life with my suburban New England friends and cafeteria food during the day, and my working-class Hong Kong family and my mother’s rice cooker at night.

Being the first one in my family to go to college, I might as well have told my parents I was running away and joining the circus.

There was something about making music that held me captive. And when the 4th grade finally came around, I picked my weapon of choice - the flute. My elementary music program didn’t have strings so I couldn’t live out my Asian stereotype of playing Paganini at Carnegie Hall. And we didn’t have enough money for private lessons so I never learned how to Rachmaninov on the piano. So, I chose the flute. I can’t remember exactly how or why, but I did.

I stumbled through that for a couple years until I switched to clarinet in 6th grade. I think I was just bored with the flute by then and we didn’t have any clarinets in the band so I completely changed gears, going from having to assemble three flute parts (3) to a bajillion clarinet pieces (7) and always searching among the stacks for the perfect reed.

My clarinet became my obsession. Every time I visited my grandmother I would always go to the music store next door and spend hours there looking at all the music stuff and really investing in my clarinet music geekdom. That’s where I bought every new brand of reeds, upgrading through the lowly Ricos to the Vandoren V12s to fit my upgraded Vandoren B45 mouthpiece and Rovner ligature. I would scour the store in search of clarinet music, landing on Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Clarinet and Mozart’s K. 622. I would rifle through the music accessories like I was on Project Runway going through the Banana Republic accessories shelf.

And that took me through high school, taking private lessons on clarinet, making All-State, auditioning for GBYSO (and not getting in), being a musical prodigy in my corner of the world (but a relatively mediocre player in world-at-large).

It wasn’t until the summer after my junior year of high school before I stumbled onto the notion that I would be a singer and not a player. I had made it into All-State for voice before I made it for clarinet, so that summer I got a scholarship to play clarinet at music camp, all I wanted to do was sing. I went to voice studio that summer instead of clarinet studio and joined the concert choir, got into the chamber singers and the honors jazz choir. That did it for me.

I spent my senior year auditioning for music departments on voice, having never taken voice lessons but bolstered by the fact that within my 5′6″ frame was a Bass - when my voice changed in sixth grade I could easily hit a low C (two octaves below middle C).

And in college started the 2nd phase of my musical journey.

And for your listening/viewing/downloading pleasure:

• Beethoven - Missa Solemnis: Gloria. Bernstein/Concertgebouw.
• Rachmaninov - All Night Vigil: Bogoroditse Devo. (I’m hoping it’s the USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir but I’m not positive)
• Anuna: http://www.myspace.com/anuna
• Dan Bukvich - Song of the River
• Dan Bukvich - Unusual Behaviors in Ceremonies Involving Drums

-ho|T