Pabbi á afmæli í dag

Faðir minn, Hróðmar Ingi Sigurbjörnsson, á afmæli í dag og ætla ég að nota tækifærið að óska honum til hamingju með daginn.

Í gær var ég boðaður á fund með DOK kennurunum mínum þar sem var spjallað um það DOK verkefni sem ég gerði, semsagt íslenska tónlistardaginn eða Icelandic Music Day. Það var farið lauslega yfir efni skýrslu sem ég skrifaði um verkefnið mitt og svo var mér gefin einkunn. Og ég fékk 9. Ég þótti sýna óvenju þroskuð vinnubrögð og hafði náttúrulega hæfileika til að miðla tónlist til fólks.

Skýrsluna sem ég skrifaði má lesa hér að neðan, á ensku.

Til hamingju með daginn pabbi.


Icelandic Music Day

Introduction

If you are looking forward to reading a report regarding my DOK project that tells you everything you need to know about what I did in the project, then with some regret I have to inform you that then you can put down this "report" of mine and get yourself a cup of coffee. When writing this report, which has been somewhat a lengthy project, I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was not to write what people wanted to hear, but to write what I needed to say. So enjoy, or not enjoy, it is a free world after all.

A crazy idea

The idea for this kind of event came up in my head someday in September 2008 and started with only one piece actually, Skálholt Mass by Hróðmar I. Sigurbjörnsson. When talking about this crazy idea of mine with friends and colleagues I got more and more confident and decided to add two more pieces to the program, requiring a chamber orchestra and an Icelandic horn virtuoso. To my great surprise this event actually happened, Saturday 14th of February to be exact, and even more surprising was that everybody involved liked it. In retrospect it is a pretty great achievement and I feel no shame of being proud of this creation of mine.

Organic flow

In order to make a successfull concert it is important to have high artistic goals. But how does one define artistic goals and how would I then define my very own? That is a question with no easy answer and though I ask myself constantly questions of similar nature, the answers often elude me and change shapes from one day to the next. In fact the "correct" answers I might give today might be totally irrelevant tomorrow, and is that not a part of the making of the people we tend to call true artists? Evolution?

Art is organic and it evolves like the different species of the world, it is of uttermost importance to be aware of this evolution. Only by studying the past can we predict the future and the great thing about concerts is that it is possible to have different periods of music in just an hour and a half. Though in terms of music history the pieces I selected are written relatively close to each others one has to bear in mind that all the pieces are written in modern times, the most turbulent in the history of mankind.

When looking at the evolution of national borders within Europe it is clear that it is moving like a lizard through the ages. New countries come to the surface only to be gone several decades later. For someone from Iceland this is most fascinating as the continent we belong to both in political, cultural and geographical terms is struggling with a severe case of identity crisis. As an island inhabiter with very clear national borders one has to go to considerable lengths to develop an identity crises. No man is an island, but being from an island can possibly affect they way one perceives life. And music is only an extension of life, like a baton is only an extension of the arm of the conductor.

Icelandic music?

In order to explain Icelandic music one has to take a moment to think about the Icelandic mentality. A country with such a rich heritage of literature, with such a few inhabitants and the fastest growing country in the western world in the 20th century. That can only lead to an enormous ego and Icelandic tourists are usually proud to tell everybody that wants to listen that they come from this historical island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The nice thing about cultural heritage is that it can survive almost anything. With the current economical crisis Icelandic people still feel proud to be Icelandic, of course we are ashamed of what has happened but we are still proud to be Icelandic.

I am almost one hundred percent confident that people listening to the concert on 14th of February felt this energy. This confidence in oneself. It takes a lot of confidence to write variations on a theme by Beethoven, as it requires uttermost believe in ones ideals to write a mass with an almost tonal language. To get together an orchestra, three singers and a hornvirtuoso requires also an high percentage of ego.

Art vs. education

When thinking about the terms, artistic and educational value, then I often can´t separate them in my mind. For me personally those terms are so extremely linked together that it is almost like an symbiotic relationship. What is art other than a form of communication that tries to inspire the auditor to see life in a different light? What is education other than inspiring people to open their eyes for all that is wonderful and good in this world? In my view education and art is something organic, one can´t be thinking about acquiring a certain level of execution or gather enough memorized data to meet the approval of the approved curriculum. It is about evolution, evolving as an artist as well as a person.

A part of a team

For me to be the conductor of the chamber orchestra I put together, it would of course have been very easy to just dictate everything for the musicians, and they would just do what I told them to do. Arguments have surfaced favoring this kind of approach for conducting but in my experience, somewhat limited I would be the first to say so, it is absolutely vital to be a team player. One has to work with the people that make up the orchestra. What can you do to make the musicians do their absolutely best? My answer to that question is so simple, people have to enjoy themselves and they have to have the freedom to be who they are. If I as a conductor meet those standards then I believe I am in success. It is absolute rubbish in my view that concerts are strictly about music and also I don´t believe in conductors that only conduct in the strictest understanding of the word, leading together. It all comes down to communications and that was the uttermost message I wanted to give to the people participating in this orchestra of mine. I did not want them to perform because of some sense of duty, I wanted them to really enjoy performing. I wanted them to communicate all their wisdom with everybody that wanted to listen, only that they would communicate with music instead of words. And that is what happened with many of the players, they seemed to feel some kind of liberation and that was so important for me.

Tackling the monster

I remember a time, in mid November I think, when I was seriously thinking about canselling this project of mine. I felt like drowning because of the responsibility of the whole task and I did not have enough confidence in my abilities to lead this type of an organizational monster. In retrospect I think the main reason to keep fighting was my undying desire to conduct this concert. So everything else just turned into a necessary preparation for my conducting gig. A conductor needs an orchestra, sheet music, concert location, rehearsal locations, music stands, all sorts of instruments, some financial backup and a number of other things. So in that way it became kind of rewarding to contact all those negative violinists and extremely busy conservatory staff. And I learned a lot!

It takes me back to this evolution creature I already mentioned earlier, the fact that I was learning something kept me going. I was maybe not learning anything in terms of artistry or new ways of how to play some note on the trombone, I was learning to interact with people. Some people did not bother to read their e-mail so I had to call them, others would allways elude giving a final answer. These things became at some points incredibly frustrating, I was seeing people I only had heard stories about that I regarded as myths. I had extreme difficulties trying to understand some of the people I encountered, what joy is there in music if you don´t want to share it with others?

In a way I had to become a sales person. I was selling this project of mine to underage stringplayers and I had no underwear model to help me. That was really challenging and informative and for me, extremely important. I am this kind of person that enjoys playing with people so I do my best to fit in projects and now I know that there are people out there that are from out of space in that aspect, people that actually make an effort to not participating in projects. What a wonderful world we live in.

When reading the last few paragraphs one might feel a bit depressed and that is true, many things can make you depressed but you can never allow the depression to consume you. It is so important to stay positive constantly and never give up hope, even when you know that nobody will think lesser of you if you give up to this kind of monster.

Satisfaction

I think I can honestly say that the concert I conducted on February 14th was the climax of my musical career. To be able to share this wonderful music with other people, to share my philosophy of performing and to look smiling to the audience when I walked on stage. One has to be able to take pride in ones actions but I think it is even more important to acknowledge all the wonderful people that helped me along the way. In order to pull of something like this it is so important to have a whole village of people supporting your every move and when you feel that kind of support it is hard to even for a second not to give your absolutely best. It is an organic flow that happens between people and to know that I was a part of this kind of flow makes me extremely happy and it makes everything else less important. Being a part of something that is greater than yourself is so important for the sake of mental health and that vision kept me going and still does.

In retrospect

I have never been very fond of dwelling on mistakes people make and therefor I don´t spend a lot of time examining my own mistakes. Mistakes happen and that is a part of life and like I constantly tell people that I teach: "The only bad mistake is the one you don´t learn from." But that kind of learning can never be very intellectual, it has to happen in a state of flow. Just rethinking the event in terms of what could have been better, not what went wrong. I can honestly say that there were a lot of things that could have been better and I can also honestly say that nothing went wrong. In a way life is only as good as the attitude, a negative attitude makes everything bad and when everything is bad then nothing is good, and if nothing is good then it is difficult to laugh, and if you can´t laugh then you need medication for some kind of mental disease you did not even know existed, and you need to pay for that unless it is some kind of a drug experiment and if so then you get paid but still you have to pay the price of being a guinea pig for some kind of a medical farm with a billion dollar gross income, after taxes, and that makes me sad. So to treat life with a smile saves money.
To continue, on probably the strangest argument for a positive attitude that you have ever read, I think it is very important to meditate briefly about the fact that no teacher was directly involved with my project apart from my DOK mentor, Frits Heimans, which was probably the best match for me because he was never negative, what a relieve from the world of classical music drenched in negativity. So this lack of a teacher was very positive because nobody planted seeds of doubt in my mind, I never doubted myself and that is so important. The worst critic was my father but that is written in the genes and he doesn´t get paid for it so I survived. What I can´t stand is people getting paid for making people doubt about themselves, that can be so crippling. And it was so healthy for me to do this project just on my own and doing basically want I wanted, not fulfilling the needs of some teacher.

In a way this project made me re-evaluate the whole term of teaching and also gave me a huge confidence in my own ability and nothing is a better teacher than experience.
In the end I am very grateful that there is a course within the CvA that encourages people to do something of their very own and in my personal opinion it should be every year.

Best and kindest regards,

Ari Hrodmarsson