random maliciousness

The 30-lb package of carillon monographs and sheet music and CDs and the almost-complete Klok en Klepel that I so lovingly assembled over the course of several days at the WCF Congress, squandering many Euros on knowing that I would never find these items in the US, and struggling with twice across many blocks in hot weather barely able to carry the weight, arrived.

And at least half of it was gone.

On top of the sorry-looking pile was a paperback book about the Old Testament that I had not purchased.

Perhaps I should not have let the package remain at the Daly City post office for over a week, but it was hardly possible to make it there earlier. Are my carillon books and magazines and CDs still there? Or at some central USPS processing office? Who in the world would find Dutch literature on the history of the carillon so morally repugnant that they would send me a morally repugnant message of their own -- in the form of an interpretation of the Old Testament from Southern Evangelical Seminary?

I waited years to find these items and fully intended to use them for my dissertation writing. Now I will have to wait years (certainly after I've started my writing) to buy them again. Unbelievable.

Some zealous Christian (an American one, I might add, looking at the imprint of this "gift" of a book) may fail to understand his/her disappointing reward in the afterlife for efforts such as these. Should I feel sorry for myself or for the perpetrator of this misdeed? Where do I find the energy to practice carillon this evening after this hoax of a betrayal by a total stranger? All that music I was going to learn, all that knowledge I was hoping to synthesize... gone. Senselessly.

One can hardly imagine a more absurd fate for carillon books.

WCF 4

I woke up relatively easily this morning at 7:15 and hurried to the Academiegebouw. Apparently seventy people had crowded into the little tower yesterday while second thoughts about losing sleep over major third bells kept me in bed, but today only Ted the Aussie and a Dutch lady showed up. Auke de Boer demonstrated the carillon, emphasizing that one must use a light touch to play the little instrument, but I must admit the faint sound of the bells was dreadful inside the playing cabin. Then it was my turn. Without realizing what an suitable repertoire choice I was making, I took out Peter Vermeersch’s Bellbook nr. 2. Auke seemed immensely pleased—its requisite fleet, light touch and modern sound aesthetic made it perfect, in his opinion, for the instrument. I took to the ladders (not meant for any human however, only monkeys) and climbed into to the belfry, where to my surprise the bells sounded perfectly pleasant. Distance seems to make them ugly.

Afterwards Auke and I spoke at some length and discovered that our lives met at many intersections. Just three years ago, he had played a summer concert in Rochester, and still prizes his old LP of the Eastman Brass as one of the best brass recordings he owns. He plays the organ and a brass instrument as well, and has a repertoire of about twenty pieces for horn and organ that he used to play with one of the hornists of the Concertgebouw. Even more strangely, he knows Rudy Zuiderveld of Middelburg infamy. John Brombaugh based a few of his stops for Rudy’s organ on an organ that Auke either plays or is close to.

Apparently Auke has recorded his carillon with brass ensemble – this will be very interesting evidence for my business proposal, which is still valuable to me even if it didn’t merit acknowledgement of receipt. I will need to order the CD from abroad from the RuG Winkel.

My stay in Groningen is confirming my lessons in Middelburg. Go to the Netherlands (or New Zealand, I suppose), and you’ll make all manner of new friends within in the week. Live in Flanders for a year and you’ll be lucky to feel comfortable keeping in touch with anybody. I hope to keep in touch with Auke and other Dutch folks I've met and to see them again in the States. Perhaps Berkeley will host more guest carillonneurs, as was done for Winsemius in 2004. I know it would take a huge budget as there’s no Cali concert circuit, but even one guest would surely be worth the expenditure.

We proceeded to the Bellfoundry Museum in Heiligerlee, where the new Scandinavian traveling carillon was stationed for the evaluation of the membership. Despite the surprising fear of heights and terror of my public debut for 2008 on a non-American keyboard that the contraption inspired, I felt out the World Standard Keyboard with Geert’s Evening Meditation and found it a very odd fit. My performance was less than ideal, yet amusingly enough, Eddy asked the name and composer of the piece afterwards, and Frans Haagen invited me to give a recital in Almelo next Saturday.

Afterwards I shared a good laugh with Hylke and Vegar popping out of the bell moulds in the museum garden (I could fit myself in entirely) and chatting about Vegar’s new iPhone--I hadn't realized the iPhone had until now been unavailable in Europe. In the museum shop I discovered a van Bergen booklet about its exhibition at the World’s Fair in Chicago, truly a gem of a discovery for my most recent research.

We were entertained next with an organ and vocal concert in Appingedam by Adolph Rots and his wife, followed by Geoff Armitage reciting all sorts of facts Koen Cosaert and André Lehr had already emblazoned on my mind. I went in search of a salon in the quaint city centre, realizing too late that one stood virtually across from the church. I managed to get my hair washed and conditioned, but cut the blowdrying short only to discover that the Walloon artist had played a 50-minute concert for his 30-minute timeslot and that Jan was just beginning. It was better that I heard him—my hair still looked far better after the shampooing and drying in the sun, and didn’t even poof up. Mysterious good luck or defiance of nature?

My bus buddies over the course of the day were numerous—Bauke, Erica, Janno, Hylke, Koen van Assche. Yet somehow Phyllis managed to reserve me for her table with her granddaughter, whom she hopes will consider Yale, as well as UF student Ben, and Arendt and his wife, who was extremely urgent about nobody cutting Ben and me in line for dessert. I roved amongst the other tables as my charge seemed indifferent about Yale and responded “I don’t know” to most of my leading questions (and even my non-questions); I don't know which of us was more frustrated, really. And who cares--for a buffet feast was laid before us, with piles of herring, fish grilled before your eyes, salad, cheese, fruit, and desserts of all kinds, most of which I took care to sample. For my social rounds I went first to the British table (to which Trevor commented “So this is the rabble table!” as he passed, to my heated objections) where the (Loughborough?) carillonneur reminded me of our Elgar correspondence. I then made my way to the American table, where our GCNA president recounted my Langlais story to Janet, Todd and I snuggled up for our scandalous “traditional photo,” and Carol, the unexpected recipient of a 5 EUR cordial, waved “Goodbye butterfly!” as I left to be re-interviewed for the Congress DVD, perhaps hoping to nurture a life-of-the-party successor.

The real highlight, however, was introducing Sinnika and Min Jin to each other—the two lone (women!) carillonneurs of their respective countries. How good it feels to introduce two people, see them connect intensely, and suddenly realize you no longer exist for them—something I imagine Margo would do.

I was late for my chat with Andrew, but fortunately he was also late due to the bus. As my laptop wouldn't connect to the wireless network, Hylke installed Skype for me on his laptop, which we discovered had a built-in mic. After Andrew hung up (perhaps disquieted at the voice commenting and laughing in the background), Hylke showed me his websites for his choir and Rosemarie, as well as photos of his brother’s mansion in Aberdeen. I left at a quarter to one... a lovely way to end my last congress day.

pre-Groningen

The shower is going and I don’t know how to turn it off. Curious about how to start it, I had pressed the little red button on the 70’s-era coin machine without inserting any coins and nevertheless water started splashing, first dismayingly cold, then warming up and going... and flowing... and going. As I had no designs on a shower, I started blogging to wait it out, hopefully before someone else arrived. To my chagrin, two German girls strolled in shortly before it stopped.

I’d been amused when the Hungarian girls compared the Stayokay Zeeburg to a hotel, but this hostel shows that they were right. Besides the modestly attractive lobby, the Simplon Jongeren is spartan. Even the ‘Clouds’ painting by Margreet Ubels sprawling across the gridded ceiling doesn’t soften the barrenness. In contrast to what the shorter Hungarian girl noted was a “good view” (of a young man undressing in another window) from our Stayokay room, this hostel has a view of a wannabe construction site and an unphotogenic industrial roof.

I should have been grateful for my Japanese and Korean roommates. Quiet as they were, they were unquestionably preferable to the obnoxious Dutch girls who just walked in chatting at the top of their lungs. Their nasal accent is even more grating. They casually butt into the German girls’ low-voiced but animated conversation, but stay away from me.

When it comes to hostels, you get what you pay for – roommates included. Those Japanese girls though, they were a riot. They had both brought heavy pieces of luggage filled with hairdryers and heaven knows what; they spent egregious amounts of time patting their smiling faces with makeup; unfortunately they took showers barefoot and probably won’t last for long without athlete’s foot. Although they came from the same time zone as the Korean girl, they went to bed early while she went to bed late. One of them locked herself out while putting the bedclothes outside. Never a dull moment with them around.

The Hungarian girls, friends since kindergarten in Budapest, were the friendliest folk I’d ever met in a hostel. I need to visit Budapest. And I should have invited them to visit me in the Bay Area, as one of them loves SF and is starting at UT Austin. My mind is clearly still on vacation.

As a college town, Groningen is lively for its size. Gezellig restaurants and bars buzz along the streets leading from the hostel to the Grote Markt, and my American sensibilities noted two cozy cafes serving frozen coffee and good tea. There is a sizable shopping district, much of it standard chain stores which are relieved by interesting businesses such as a surprisingly run-down Bijenkorf, upscale Dutch boutiques (ick), and specialized bicycle shops. Passing the open-air markets, including a mouth-watering fish market, I reached the Aa-kerk—The famed Aa-kerk with its Schnitger-orgel!—and made a mental note to return for a musical pilgrimage. To my surprise, the church was open late—for an exhibition of contemporary art, all of which was available on loan! A female DJ was spinning; perhaps this was an exhibition opening as people were lingering at tables drinking and crunching on bar snacks. What a strange sensation to walk into my holy Aa-kerk to be met by large-scale photographic portraiture of black gangsters from Amsterdam (clad in American ghetto), this female DJ, and the organ nowhere in sight. Perhaps Groningen is my type of city, to a degree. Perhaps it is only my accommodations that feel bleak.

The clash of old and new, secular and sacred entertains me here. Beyond the Aa-kerk stands the grand Korenbeurs, a historic monolith flanked by two impressive statues. It now houses one of the omnipresent Albert Heijn supermarkets.

There is a little Chinatown a block away from the hostel. It can’t comprise more than ten or so businesses, but it is there nevertheless, with even a Chinese salon. I had dinner in a very nice combination Chinese-Thai restaurant with white table cloths and tall red candles. The cross-influences amuse the knowledgeable eye to no end – Thai art suspended beside upscale Chinese kitsch, and my Buddha vegetable dish served on a warmed “rice table” tray heated by candles. I was one of only two parties there for dinner on that Saturday night. I hope the restaurant does brisker business on other nights; I can’t imagine how it could survive otherwise. The food was fine, and the check came with the largest mint I had ever seen; certainly larger than a quarter. I folded my chopstick wrapper into a caterpillar and set him there feeding on it before I left. A terribly good value for 8 EUR. This is the Netherlands after all.

It’s a small world, running into Boudewijn on my second day in Amsterdam and John Courter on my third. But in Groningen I feel alone. I hope tomorrow that feeling will be dispelled. I also have an interesting breakfast to look forward to. Returning to the organic foods store, I pored over the cereal shelf and bought the highest-fiber package I could find, only to discover at the hostel that it was a rough, powdery substance that would form a paste in milk. Yum. A subsequent trip to Albert Heijn scored a more reassuring box of All-Bran.

I need to stop going to the Netherlands. Especially with $3,000 from Berkeley for the next two years, I should be able to get myself to Scandinavia for a concert tour. Of course I had a delightful time in Amsterdam and am charmed to a certain degree by Groningenas well, but I know the type. I need new horizons. Germany needs to be in those plans too somewhere. My other head will surely show me a good time in München.

My days here are long because the sun goes down late at this northern latitude. At 9:07 pm, golden sun suddenly floods the room and we all turn our heads to see what has changed. The shower is silent.

Amsterdam nº2

I made good use of my second day in Amsterdam. First I wandered through the Anne Frank House (I should have known that Anne’s original diary was in Dutch!), bare of furniture the way it was when the prisoners were taken away and all the furniture confiscated. Echoes of Corrie Ten Boom seemed to resonate throughout the house and Anne’s story. The depth of thought she expressed in her diary shocked even her father. “I can only conclude that parents do not know their children as well as they think,” he tells us in a video. Most touching of all, earlier in the year of her death, Anne learned that diaries and correspondences would be collected and archived after the war. She set about revising her diary letters to the imaginary “Kitty,” but she could never have imagined how the world would come to love her in so many languages. The world gave her little, but she gave us so much as the voice of her people. The last time we know of her being seen in a concentration camp, she believed she was all alone in the world. Her friend, speaking to her across the fence, brought a care package of trinkets to give her something to live for. A woman caught the package as it flew over the fence and rushed away with it. A second package did reach Anne, and that was the last time that this particular friend saw her.

After this haunting affair, I decided it was time to indulge and had my first Hollandse nieuwe broodje of the year at a stand at the foot of the Westerkerk. The frieten from the next stand were the worst I’d ever had, but the broodje was satisfying psychologically and physically. A carillonneur who was rather in need of more training made music to accompany my tiny feast. Afterwards I set out in search of a post office marked on my map, only to find that all local post offices had been inexplicably shut down. This led me back to the Singel, where I saw Boudewijn strolling down the sidewalk speaking to a young woman. People tell me he knows everybody, so one cannot assume she was a carillonneur. Small world here – even in Belgium I never ran into people I knew.

With little time left, I hurried through Mango in the magnificent historic shopping center, then skipped the alluring photography exhibits at Huis Marseille and Stadsarchief in favor of ARCAM. However, I made my roundabout way there via the Stedelijk Museum CS. This allowed me to take more photos at the same underpass as in 2005, realizing later in the SMCS that I could cleverly revise their titles to “Vers Un Nouveau Stedelijk Museum” from my old “Towards the Stedelijk.” Despite the promise of its wild undulating exterior, the free-entry ARCAM offered only one exhibition room, but plenty of architectural biking tour maps to make my mouth water. The text of the captions was typically tiny; attractive but hardly functional for sore eyes. I made a 15-minute run through the SMCS (my Museumkaart is still good for a few days yet) afterward and was glad for it, as the museum is closing in October for the one-year return to its old living quarters, version 2. I wish they sold copies of their posters with the crossed-out names of RIETVELD, MONDRIAAN and so on over the names of lesser known contemporary artists, in reference to the collection on display—the climate control of the old Post CS isn’t precise enough for the exhibition of their most renowned masterpieces.

Hurrying out of the Stedelijk Museum, I rushed in my flipflops to, up, and down the dock behind the station for half an hour until my knees began to complain. As it turned out, the Pannenkoekboot departed from Amsterdam Noord, which is across the Ij. I had forgotten how bad the Dutch are at giving directions, even those who work for tourist enterprises. So I took the free commuter ferry in order to sightsee, and boy did I get an eyeful of new architecture and a magnificent industrial area further south. A rainbow Greenpeace boat partially powered by an aggressive-sounding windmill was docked for the festivities that night, but I wanted to catch Andrew on Skype and go to bed early and so returned for dinner at one of the pannenkoek places on the way from the Dam to the Westerkerk to satisfy my protesting pannenkoek appetite. My stomach declared victory after a couple of poffertjes for dessert.

Jazz at the venerable Concertgebouw put me to sleep, so I slipped out during intermission, made reservations for my final day in Europe at the Stayokay Vondelpark, took note of the nearby Wagamama for a late-night dessert after Gouda, and headed back to the hostel. Thankfully, I was able to video chat with Andrew, and FON.com continued to work in my room just for Gmail. What a luxury, to have free wireless Gmail in your hostel room! I like the FON concept, although I don’t know how workable it is. Seems that there are quite a few hotspots in Groningen, including a cafe. Definitely worth testing.

Amsterdam is no less under construction than it was when I came for the second time with the Yale Guild. The magnificent Central Station is still an unsightly mess, the SMCS is still in the unclimate-controlled Post CS, and the Rijksmuseum is still under renovation. Things move slowly around here. The results had better be good, because I will end up back here soon.

Amsterdam nº1

The first half-day in a new country is a foregone conclusion. You will waste your time figuring things out, no matter how confident you are. I failed to prepare myself mentally for this fact, despite the foreboding location of my hostel in the boonies of Amsterdam.

After finally settling into my lofted dorm room in the Stayokay Zeebrugge (having been let in during lockout by a sweet Asian housekeeper), I hopped the 22 bus to the opposite end of the line at Museum Het Schip and savored the creativity of Amsterdamse School architecture. Pumpkin soup, a tomato-basil sandwich, and a cup of tea kept me going through the utter exhaustion and the damp of the overcast day. After wandering through the furnished exhibition apartment and exhibit (learning along the way that the Amsterdamse School’s official organ dedicated an issue to Frank Lloyd Wright—makes total sense), I made my way to FOAM and discovered Adama Bamba, an African photographer who promised to open a new world to me, although his work was only visible in the brochure. I was also lucky enough to attend an exhibition opening on the first floor, and felt an extra rush of artsy-fartsiness as a result.

By the time I was through with feeling artsy (and woefully underdressed, especially when trying to prevent my ginormous EMS backpack from smacking fellow art lovers in the crowded halls), the rest of the (legit) museums had closed, so I bought a new SIM card and then allowed myself to be pulled into De Slegte, where I purchased two carillon-related books, although I found nothing particularly drool-worthy in the photography or A+A sections, and then into ZARA—the four-story ZARA on the winkelstraat. Boy did I make a killing in there. I certainly could have stayed and bought more, but fortunately I ushered myself out in time to stave off sartorial disaster. I doubt my luggage could have fit much more for the rest of the trip. It’s terribly irksome that after all the trouble I went to tracking down an affordable product, I forgot to bring my vacuum-packing bags with me for the return trip.

By accident (or perhaps because it’s the only authentic and cheap Cantonese restaurant in the area), I ended up at dinnertime at the same joint at which Ingrid and I had gone two years ago when I was dreadfully ill and needed to live on a diet of jook. The food was authentic, but only when I strolled out the door did I discover that the next place was an affordable and appetizing fusion restaurant. Next time. I had to end my long, long flip-flop walk somewhere.

Asian food (as well as Mexican and Argentinean) is quite a delicacy here, although it’s usually considered cheap cuisine in the US. Curious.

To my delight, my roommates from Budapest were extremely friendly. Perhaps Hungarians look more mature than their age compared to your average American, because I assumed they were nearly my age. They were in fact starting college in the fall, and marveled at my independence and achievements at the age of twenty-five. I didn’t know whether to feel like a proud woman role model or an old fogie.

"Three moves are equivalent to a fire," Andrew's father quipped. I've jettisoned several reams of paper over the past week, but only now that most of my apartment is in boxes am I throwing out the 30% DEET roll-on I purchased in Belgium. My unwillingness to part with it is less pack rat instinct, I suspect, than mortal terror. I'm keeping the rest of my arsenal stuff around to arm myself against the Groningen mosquitoes.

First, Bobby and I chat for an hour in Dutch at Java's without any idea of how strange we must have seemed. Next, I find that Yale Educational Travel is hosting a Waterways of Holland and Belgium trip, and the Little Theatre is showing In Bruges. Today I manage to memorize Geert's organ piece in a single day. What's next, Low Countries?

Now I can finally make up for the fact that I never took a polisci course at Yale: Open Yale courses online. Sweet.

Carillon and Organ: Uncovering a Missing Link

Here they are, my submitted Fulbright essays. All this work had better get me somewhere (literally) this time:

In 2006, the sun flooded an overcast February day as I began to ring the bells of the University of Rochester’s carillon. Students emerging from classes gathered before the belfry, asking questions. Is there a musical instrument in that usually silent tower? Can students learn to play?

I enrolled at the Eastman School of Music filled with the hope that as an organ student, I could also realize the potential of this magnificent forgotten instrument, comprising four octaves of bells in a tower played without electric assistance from a keyboard and pedalboard. Over the past year, I have drawn the interest of community groups and the university president alike to this Dutch-crafted treasure, achieving my most urgent public awareness and repair goals and initiating long-term development. The Eastman Organ Department, Eastman Computer Music Center, College Music Department, and a new carillon scholar are cooperating with me in this rejuvenation. I will ensure that the movement becomes self-sustained, because my next degree will prepare me to spearhead the development of a university carillon program from which I can, as an influential teacher, set in motion the revitalization of instruments well beyond Rochester.

My twofold goal combines the organ and carillon in an unprecedented program of study. The American carillon is in jeopardy because instruments outnumber competent players. Historic instruments have fallen silent, their potential to enrich public life forgotten. My answer to this crisis is to attract new talent as a teacher and to call on organists to become stewards and even players of carillons in their churches. I am already bridging the historically related instruments through my research and professional activities. Through university teaching and research, I will establish the carillon as an academic and artistic discipline and create the first environment in which an international panoply of styles can flourish. In the Netherlands, Utrecht University is expanding the music program of its English-language international honors college, the Roosevelt Academy (RA), into the graduate Roosevelt School of Music (RSM). This offers the first chance in history for a carillonist to help realize both goals in preparation to implement them in the US.

At RSM I will study performance on both instruments and, in preparation for a teaching career, develop methods of integrating the studies with experts in both fields. My thesis for the one-year Master of Arts in Musicology & Applied Performance (Carillon) degree will build on the two years of research I will have already pursued through the interdisciplinary sequence “The History of the Organ, its Literature, and Social Context” at Eastman. I will graduate prepared to integrate the study of these instruments in doctoral studies as very few musicians or scholars can.

I am expanding the campanological collection of Eastman’s library and teaching carillon students. But in my research on parallels in the developments of the Dutch organ and carillon in terms of construction, repertoire, and social function, I have found American libraries lacking. One of my papers proposed that while organs and bells developed separately for secular use, the invention of the carillon in the early 16th century allowed their evolutions to partially converge, and during the Reformation to temporarily exchange societal roles. Furthermore, I have found that the carillon underwent equivalent developments to the organ but at intriguingly later dates. My most recent paper analyzed the growing carillon repertoire derived from organ and harpsichord music in the 17th and 18th centuries and causality in the eventual decline of carillon performance and of both carillon and organ building. At RSM, I will be able to make detailed studies of source materials such as early keyboards and carillon, organ, and harpsichord manuscripts, read the large body of carillon research centered in the Low Countries, and consult leading scholars. My thesis will probe connections beginning with the early development of the instruments, and those findings can help bring the carillon back to the forefront of organ studies.

The broader future of the carillon in America is of great concern to me. Much of our carillon heritage is in disrepair or forgotten, in part because the carillon and organ worlds have drifted apart. Carillons were first built and played largely by organ builders and organists in the Low Countries, but today organists are often given authority over carillons about which they know little. By reestablishing the carillon’s importance to organ history, I am providing knowledge that organists need to protect neglected carillons from destructive modification.

Upon attending a 2005 performance by Geert D’hollander, who would become my teacher at the Royal Carillon School, I understood for the first time what it meant not just to play the carillon, but to make music with it. His artistry rivals that of touring concert pianists. The lack of such performers in the US prevents the carillon from being taken seriously. His instruction can help me achieve a professional performance level in order to attract outstanding musicians to my program. I hope to teach a new generation to win the instrument the place it deserves in our country’s public life, revive silent carillons, and see that carillons rather than synthesized chimes are built. It is organists who can best ensure the conservation of this heritage from the Low Countries; they often fail because they are unaware of the carillon’s expressive capabilities, though it offers the largest dynamic range of any acoustic instrument. An electric chime machine and a carillon seem equally musically viable to the uninitiated—and that misconception is at the root of the disasters I want to avert. The Eastman organ department has set a precedent with its model of integrated teaching of the organ, clavichord, and pedal piano, and my curricular investigations at RSM will help me develop a similar program. Through artistry in performing, public outreach, and education, I hope to recover the carillon and to enlist defenders nationwide to recoup the tradition. I am already forging connections with organ builders and restorers. During the 2007 Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative Festival, I gave a recital and talk on the need for carillon preservation. Many of America’s prominent organ builders and scholars embraced my message and its immediate relevance to organists, urging me to bring it to yet wider audiences.

The future of the carillon also depends on international collaboration. I joined a diverse class at the RA’s past two summer carillon courses, first as a student and then as an Eastman Arts Leadership Program intern. In addition to teaching lessons, I helped adult students lay foundations for cross-cultural partnerships in education and carillon restoration between three continents. D’hollander, widely considered one of the world’s leading carillon composers and performers, acts not only as RSM carillon professor, but also as a guest teacher and liaison between national schools. I intend to continue his mission, exploring each style in my teaching to foster well-rounded musicians able to initiate change by bringing disparate communities together.

I want to participate directly in the founding year of RSM’s carillon and organ program, working with director Albert Clement, my trusted advisor and former internship supervisor, to give direction to the program and gain insight not only into educational planning, but also into the administrative challenges of establishing a graduate school. By weaving together carillon and organ training towards a doctorate, I can best meet the challenges of my career—developing an teaching practice that explores the carillon and organ as related musical instruments and that establishes a new level of carillon artistry and scholarship in the US. I want to create an interdisciplinary environment for research into historical relationships and their consequences for construction and performance practice today. The chance to prepare through direct involvement for such a goal will certainly not come again before I begin my task. Thus, there is no better time or place for me than the Roosevelt School of Music from September 2008 to May 2009.

Personal statement

This is my "CV" or personal statement, intended to give background about me as an individual. I was unhappy with it nearly until I submitted it, but after drastic revision it's doing okay:

During my first months in Belgium as a Fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation in 2005, I discovered a principle governing my new life: All that can go wrong may well go wrong on the same day. But through a lens of frustrated tears, I focused on a new under-standing of life: Even the worst situations may conceal reasons to be thankful. My adjustment woes were proof that I was realizing my dream of studying the carillon. I have since met chal-lenges and setbacks with gratitude, approaching them as the complement of real progress.

That I came to music at a late age and found my calling in it even later has positively shaped my goals. I grew up more used to distant gunfire in my low-income neighborhood than the strains of art music. The piano I wanted since age four was beyond reach until my family’s hard work bought one when I was ten. Eventually I made it to Yale, where the premise that stu-dents can dive into new fields and take leadership roles brought me to two new instruments, the carillon and organ. Spearheading the carillon’s restoration and the 2006 Congress of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America, I found power to effect change through music leadership.

Yale broadened my development in other ways. Joseph Soares’s powerful sociology course, “Public Culture in America,” gave me a new perspective on my past and a sense of my responsibility to promote equality of educational opportunity. My Yale and conservatory educa-tions have placed within my reach a wealth of possibilities from which my childhood peers re-main isolated. The love of teaching I developed over three years of teaching carillon to Yale classmates and over a summer of teaching underprivileged middle-schoolers will drive my ef-forts to level the playing field through a university career bound to public outreach. In Belgium, I took my first steps by authoring the underfunded Mechelen Carillon Museum’s first multimedia catalog to rekindle community interest and create an accessible and dynamic visitor experience. Moreover, no instrument enriches the public sphere like the carillon. In Rochester, I am drawing new audiences with innovative programming by commissioning electroacoustic composers at Eastman and local poets to create multidisciplinary performances. These events place the carillon in the vanguard of public culture and reveal its potential to enrich the arts in the community.

A mostly self-taught carillonist, I finally trained in Mechelen and earned what is normally a six-year performance certificate in one year, despite a severe bicycle accident that left me bed-ridden for five weeks but all the more grateful for the time I had remaining to achieve my goals. Although on par with some of the best American carillonists, I know I have the potential to offer students more after further training in Europe, where standards are far higher. Giving lessons at the 2007 Roosevelt Academy Summer School and now at the University of Rochester, I have found tremendous inspiration teaching students of all ages, levels, and degrees of talent. As the university’s carillon instructor, I am building on Yale’s student-centered model, delegating im-portant performances and projects to students so they experience the carillonist’s responsibility to the public. In Middelburg, I can improve my teaching and strengthen the school’s community ties by giving free music lessons and serving as a community English writing consultant.

The organ and carillon make music for all, and learning to play should be within any-one’s reach. This is the challenge I want to meet with community programs and creative concerts that draw young audiences. By organizing an annual subsidized carillon course like Pipe Organ Encounters, a program that introduces young people to the organ, I can bring music into the lives of youths who might otherwise follow the long path I have. The carillon and organ stand in churches and universities, in memorials and city halls. Like me, many learners and listeners will not reach them until they are welcomed and encouraged to pass the great institutional doors.

Day 2: the names of houses

It's my first full day in the Netherlands, and I'm rediscovering part of Middelburg's charm: its houses generally have names painted gracefully over their doorways. Some of these names are very peculiar. Would you really want to live in a home affectionately known as "The Three Halfwit Men"? Or am I mistaken in my translation?

Rotterdam 2007: City of Architecture

I love Rotterdam. After quite a costly ticket and lots of hurrying, I made it to the Netherlands Photomuseum and didn't regret a single cent or drop of sweat. And the Nederlands Architectuur Institut finally brought Le Corbusier's posthumous Eglise Saint-Pierre in Firminy, France to my attention. Not quite on the posthumous scale of the Sagrada Familia, but still damn cool. Anyone want to make a pilgrimage with me? Or a Paul Rudolph road trip?

I took home a new favorite Dutch photographer from the Fotomuseum, Aart Klein. Yet another reason to avoid the photography shelves at De Slegte... this could be very dangerous.

making the Zeeland news again

Lydia Mordkovitch and her family are here, and boy can her pre-teen daughters play the violin. Oh boy.

heckler

Fun word of the day: Heckelphone.

Teaching this morning was tremendously rewarding; it's something to which I can see myself happily devoting a lot of time, tiring as it is. Being a performer is one thing; you can change a life or two by giving a truly splendid performance, but being a teacher means changing lives in a cumulative way, giving people not an external experience of your performance but an internal experience of their own development, of progress from which they can develop further. I was practically jumping for joy at the end of my first lesson because the student had played the final variation of his piece so persuasively, despite his troubles with some of the earlier variations. But perhaps by the third lesson I had tired out, or perhaps my lack of harpsichord training was haunting me again. I had plenty to say about Lerinckx, about Japanese easy listening piano music, and now thanks to my organ training much too much to say about Bach, but I hadn't a clue how to play a Couperin harpsichord piece on carillon, especially not to a very musical but technically rudimentary student. I must make time for harpsichord if I am ever to teach keyboard instruments.

Somehow I ended up doing the same rhythmic exercise for Kees van Eersel's carillon improvisation workshop as I did last year. So be it -- the experience was better, but still challenging. And afterwards I finally enjoyed my favorite soft ice cream (though it wasn't quite as good as I remembered it -- different flavor, perhaps) and made it back just in time for the student recital, which sounded surprisingly good from the ground. I played Paul Coleman's piece to a positive reception, but as Geert advised, the noise of the city called for shorter rests in the first sketch. Tiffany Sketches 1 and 2 sound so foreign to me on a heavy carillon; I must to develop a new conception of it before playing it in Mechelen. Thank goodness Jo will be in Russia.

Bernard Winsemius' concert on the Duyschot/Müller organ (1706) in the Lutherse Kerk was variously fabulous and uneventful. Sweelinck and Butler passed me by; but his renditions of Buxtehude's "Praeludium in g" (BuxWV 163) and in particular the "Klaglied" BuxWV 76 on the death of his father were gripping. Winsemius achieves expressivity without expression so much as delivering the notes precisely as they are [meant to be] and allowing them to speak for themselves. But two long capriccios in a row are just plain bad programming. I already have a limited tolerance for the genre. I met the church organist afterwards and saw the instrument (which I hope I can play later) and tried to talk to Winsemius, but he was again difficult. The person I meet never seems to match the hilarious character of his students' impressions. But he gets extra credit for having ridden his bicycle to the concert. Dutchmen...

Apparently the Graduate School of Music may become a reality in August/September after all. European higher education is so... delightfully unpredictable.

"I was in sex shop [sic]," choppy, with Polish accent. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the carillon quote of the year. In a moment of true devilry, Mariko closed the handcuffs they'd found in the dorm room closet on one of Anna's wrists. The keys were nowhere to be found, and none of the other implements they tried would open the contraption. In the morning, they went to the bicycle shop to ask a bemused employee to cut the handcuff with a bolt cutter.

Then Anna went to the sex shop on the edge of town in search of a replacement. Our master class teacher doesn't want to leave his summer school accomodations for their school-year inhabitant with a note saying, "Thanks for the handcuffs!"

Unfortunately I did not witness any of this. Serves me late for going home at un-ungodly hours to catch up with some work.

I miss Chip. Sad face.

of jem and sirens

My lifelong lack of piercings is sometimes met with shock. This has motivated me to dig up an image of the earrings I always wanted as a little girl -- those which gave Jem from the tremendously popular 80's cartoon Jem and the Holograms her remarkable... musical faculties? The earrings are pretty hideous in retrospect, although I swear I remember them being a pretty sparkly dark pink. Perhaps that image is just a fantasy of childhood formed in retrospect. I remember so little of the cartoon that entranced me for so long. The only scene I remember from any episode at all (I even forgot about The Misfits, their antagonists) is the one in which her earrings end up in a Japanese museum on display as an ancient artifact, no doubt thanks to The Misfits' schemes. As a child I supposed that, however unlikely this appeared to my untrustworthy sensibilities, if it was shown on TV (in a cartoon, no less), it could really happen. Television was the authority on what was possible in real life.

The cartoons I watched as a child have all blended together into a single stage, but I watched them over such a long period of time that they really could/should be divided into stages. I didn't even remember the name of Jem's cartoon by the fifth grade until Sophia named it for me, and since then (for over a decade) I have wondered on occasion whether she was right. To think that I didn't bother to check until now, yet I still remember the question.

Remember Mighty Max? Definitely one of my favorites. I was reminded of the owl, Odin, when I looked up the etymology of "Wednesday" on Sunday. It comes from Old English Wodnesdaeg, named after the Germanic god Odin. This is news to me, and further investigation of the days of week will undoubtedly yield more blog entries. I am thoroughly enjoying this life-of-the-mind reflective learning absorbing reviewing writing moment in my existence.

Today I awoke to the haunting wail of sirens. They ascended in spirals of pitch for an impossibly long time, and though I tried to convince myself that I could ignore whatever Dutch drill was going on, I finally stumbled out of bed thinking the city must have burst into conflagration.

The clock told me it was Monday noon. In Mr. Himberg's class at Hoover, we had always heard the testing of the sirens on Mondays at noon. And the city does it here too, only, as I began to remember groggily, the sirens must be for flooding. Entire towns in Zeeland have been flooded in disastrous breaches before. Last year, Kees drove us past a tower that was all that survived from a seaside town. An eerie sight.

Middelburg Day 1

Although the first leg of my flight with Icelandair came with the requested vegetarian meal, the second leg comes without and the stewardess places the blame on me before saying she'll look to see if anything edible remains and never uttering a word to me again (or offering the drink offered to everyone else). The Brooks Brothers yuppie next to me comments on her peculiar overreaction. He turns out to be a Harvard med student nearly fluent in Dutch, though not as fluent as the middle-aged man sitting next to him, who has until now sported a Boston accent with his wife and little daughter. My sensitivity to American accents and obesity is still heightened as I observe my fellow Americans in the plane juxtaposed against typical Icelanders sporting English competency and supermodel looks.

Digression: Part of what I like and dislike about Cambridge is its effeteness, both intellectual and multilingual. There is no need to suddenly switch one's conversation with the J. Press salesman over to French once this commonality is discovered when English is the first language of both parties. The eagerness to engage one's mind and others in deep conversation about absolutely anything reminds me of the naive excitement I sense amongst some ---- undergrads, although here it is sometimes executed in depth and can lead somewhere important. I love its presence but dislike its open display. I'm one to talk, aren't I?

Schiphol is much the same besides the healthy smoothies stand's transformation into a 'DONER KEBAB' haven, but luggage delivery time is seriously inefficient. I end up on a Brussels-bound train with two finance professors from the Fordham Business School (a secular arm of The Jesuit University of New York), Frank Werner (who introduces himself as Frank 'Warner') and one whose name needs no conscious memory effort, Jim Stoner. They are flush with passionate ideas for a new joint book on sustainable finance and explain them wholeheartedly, even stopping to shed light on some of the terminology. Frank has an interesting answer to my question of why the environment has come to the forefront of public consciousness; both Al Gore's deliberate efforts and Bush's unintended botches have drawn more people to a side that Gore shows as sensible and that Bush shows as an alternative for conservatives to his rapidly support-losing brand of conservatism. I am interested in their enthusiasm for change as large-scale as they are suggesting; I had thought of finance scholars as practical-minded analysts, but here are men on a grand thought experiment determined to bring their results to the world. After all, Stoner lists "Ontological Inquiry, Excellence, and Personal and Organizational Transformation" in his university profile. The masses have not heard their voices clearly before but are more likely to listen now; I wonder if they have always approached finance this way or whether they are developing ahead of the game. Here is an obvious display of scholarship and yet I enjoy it more than much I overheard in Cambrdge; they seem hapless to hold their excitement back rather than eager to make more of it than it is. It is already enough.

I pick up a stoptrein at Roosendaal, still in wonder at how expensive Dutch train tickets are relative to Belgian ones. At Middelburg, I wend my way rather indirectly to the Bagijnhof. I don't yet feel the euphoria of return (that will happen when I finally set foot in Antwerpen again, the city truly woven into my spirit), but I feel a strange mixture of ease and discomfort. Walking down the charmed cobblestone streets, knowing that any destination is within an easy stroll, I have my yearned-for freedom back--freedom to go where I please without being prisoner to the motor vehicle. But Middelburg is a small town, and the inhabitants stare openly at me, and the fashionable women are still dressed in the awful frilly look I came to despise and truly hoped would have changed by now. I have come to expect them, but still I am irritated.


two belfries

Gerda is waiting for me and has already arranged for dinner with one of my new housemates as well as a hybrid(!) bike loan from her family. We chat and I give her the ironically selected Ivy League gift I've borne across the ocean -- a handsome crimson Harvard academic planner, from which I hastily peel the price tag.

Bagijnhof 4 is an inefficient maze of heavy purple doors and crazily steep, narrow, creaky (creaks of the vocal, lip-smacking kind) orange staircases (all but the latter quite typical of stairways in old Dutch buildings). My third-floor room belongs to a certain Iliana, who has a penchant for clipping South Park cartoons and Absolut ads. She has not offered to loan her bedding (not atypical in this country), so I trek out to HEMA and pick out all the cheapest sheets while still coordinating them in bright blue. For a bath towel, I pick out a striped bright blue beach towel that will also serve as a blanket on cool nights. The bed and Iliana's orange IKEA folding chair become the proud the highlights of the room. They are trumped only by the tripartite window that overlooks the Stoppelaartuin (now a parking lot) and the little backyards of the surrounding houses, one of which contains a mural of a hand either holding moss or overgrown by real moss. Iliana is taller than me; I cannot see into the mirror she has set in front of the little sink.

A bell begins to toll, sending up a flock of maybe fifty birds who fly high over the slanting mossy rooftops westward.

Only later do I realize that the ceilings are pitched symmetrically, starting at the hip. I cannot decide whether they remind me of the interior of a Quaker meeting house, a Swiss mountain home, or a witch's abode. But I have finally indulged in the Burt's Bees travel set from Jeannene and for a while the room feels rather like a North Carolina spa.


21st-century Middelburg

Score!

I got it! A cool $1,600 from the Catherine Filene Shouse Arts Leadership Program to intern at the Roosevelt Academy in beautiful Zeeland, the Netherlands and earn credit towards my ALP Certificate for it. Add that to my first Women in Music Festival meeting this morning, and I have to admit I do like the ALP a lot. Students can make of it what they want... and I happen to want a lot. 8) Thank you Ms Shouse!

Anyone down for a World Naked Bike Ride?