Music and More: Sara Penny Blog

  Nurturing for the Long Run By Sara Penny, CCAC Vice President, for Iron County Today      Luke Heaton at Whittlesticks has a plant from his grandparents that likes music. It is over 70 years old.  The ten foot vines of the Wax Plant thrive in his shop where he makes and repairs string instruments. When he was in high school, he practiced string bass near this huge  hanging plant and it even flowered in the summer. While he was away for his violin making apprenticeship, it deteriorated. Now, it has music at the shop, and it is thriving again.        Our arts organizations need that constant care and encouragement to thrive. For 96 years, Cedar City Music Arts (CCMA) has brought musical professionals to Cedar City. I remember CCMA performances in the Southern Utah University Auditorium as a child. I was told that they used to use the old auditorium above the school district offices on 300 West and that the legendary violinist Isaac ...

Instruments Can Gain Value by Sara Penny, CCAC Vice President for Iron County Today Rare instruments that have survived for centuries are valued for incredible tone. The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) recently announced that it has acquired a viola made in 1610 by the acclaimed Italian instrument maker Giovanni Paolo Maggini. Another example is the Danish String Quartet violinist Frederik Øland receiving a Domenico Montagnana violin made between 1730 and 1740, and cellist Fredrik Sjölin receiving a 1687 Ruggieri cello and a Sartory cello bow. Sometimes an investor will buy the instrument, insure it for a fortune, and let a performer use it.  There is a quartet of Stradvarius instruments at the Smithsonian that are played on a regular basis to maintain the tone. As Shinichi Suzuki said, "Tone has living soul." If an instrument is not played regularly it loses part of of the tone, so practicing makes the instrument more valuable. When I was 14 my Grandma Hafen took me to Ba...

Delegate and Celebrate (column for Iron County Today) By Sara Penny, CCAC Vice President  It is impossible for one person to do it all. Learning to delegate and engage others is valuable in the arts, as well as in business. Not only can we accomplish more, we are training others to propel our organizations forward. I am all about collaboration in my projects and with my students. When we work together and build each other up, it is good for everyone. Building an arts organization takes lots of teamwork. Learning to delegate is essential so the project continues. The tricky bit is finding the right people and giving them the freedom and support to excel. That is when everyone can celebrate and show appreciation. If you are waiting to be found, there are countless opportunities to get involved in our arts community.  The dance and theater groups require sets, props, and costumes. That means teams to build and sew. For example, the costumes for the recent Cedar City Junior Ballet...

  Muscle Memory in Music  by Sara Penny      Imagine you are at the piano ready to play a Mozart Concerto with an orchestra. You are in front of 2000 people and they start a different concerto than you prepared. Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires was in Amsterdam when this happened at an open rehearsal. She panicked, the conductor leaned over and said you can do this, and she played beautifully. She prepared #23 and the orchestra started playing #20. Details matter. It had been perhaps 11 months since she’d last played the piece. She said, “that’s the moment where you start losing the memory of the details. That’s how the memory functions, you know. And when people see this panic, they perhaps don’t know that the reality is, we lose our memories after just a couple of months.” In the Open Culture article they explain, "The eleventh-hour call Pires received asking her to take the gig was part of the problem, but so was a misheard number. According to the Köchel ...

  Bit by Bit to Create Art  By Sara Penny, CCAC Vice President       “With a big task, we don’t get overwhelmed. We break it down, and those become our milestones. That is the engineering mindset,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM CEO. This struck me because in violin teaching we strive for “one point lessons” where we focus on just one technical challenge such as posture or bow hold or getting the second finger in tune. This is more effective instead of expecting the student to make multiple corrections all at once. Learning something like vibrato takes months for many students. We have to balance the violin on the shoulder so the left hand can be relaxed. We have to feel the motion of the undulations to mimic the vibrato of the singing voice. We have to adjust the width depending on the intensity of the musical phrase. The same for notereading. This takes a dedicated step by step procedure and lots of repetition. Sometimes the math brain skills need to develop be...

by Sara Penny, CCAC Vice President for Iron County Today Authors create worlds to explore, and in some cases, survive. An older book that has stuck in my mind is the adventures of a ship crew that got stranded in Antarctica in 1915. The leader Sir Edgar Shakleton has become a case study in business schools for leadership in crisis. He had unwavering optimism with a heavy dose of reality. He prioritized his crew over the mission and the 27 men managed to survive in brutal conditions. My favorite part was when they sailed to the wrong side of the island to find rescuers and had to sled down a mountain. When things were going badly he suggested the "Need to put the footprint of courage into the stirrup of patience."  Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage  by Alfred Lansing will make you appreciate your warm home and hot meals that are much better than boiled seal.  A more recent book is the  Wild Dark Shore  by Charlotte McConaghy. Layers of myst...