More unfocused rambling on music

College/University Big Band Festival today! It was fun, and good to hear a bunch of different bands around town. As usual, the Capilano College 'A' band was smokin' -- there were some monsters in the band too, for sure. I have to get used to taking my camera places! I always forget, and thus have no photographic memoirs of events. But yeah. Hearing those top, top college/university bands definitely makes me glad that I am an engineer, because I definitely can't cut it to play at that caliber. There's definitely a huge divide between "serious amateur" and "aspiring professional"... One thing occured to me during our set though, and it's that my playing style seems to depend on the kind of group I am playing with. With the big band, I tend to go more 'pedal-to-the-metal', and be a bit more flashy (or obnoxious?). On the other hand, in the small-group or trio settings I seem to play a bit more reserved, and introspective. For example, after our set one listener described my playing as 'wild'...though I'm sure that the same adjective wouldn't apply to my usual trio work. It's kind of interesting, this push-pull between more of an extroverted style versus introspection, between the visceral and cerebral. Kinda reflects the balance that is playing piano to begin with. It really seems to have two parts to it, a cerebral part which is concerned with structure, harmony, and all that stuff, and a physical part which realizes the ideas formed by the first. There's a certain divide between the two, and the divide is made more pronounced by the fact that we don't have to worry about manually shaping the sound and intonation of an individual note like a violinist or horn player has to. We press a key and a note comes out, and it's in tune. Though in the end this physical aspect of playing the piano is harnessed in service to the cerebral, in that technical ability is a tool to realize ideas more than anything else, it's this phenomenon which makes "silent keyboards" for practice realizable to begin with. For me, the physical act of playing the piano is really important too. There's something that's viscerally satisfying about drawing sound out of the instrument. Some have likened it to a dance of sorts, others to some sort of physical endeavor (wasn't it Rubenstein who remarked to Horowitz, "Congratulations, you have won the Octave Olympics"?). I think those two similies are definitely valid. After a certain point, what some pianists are able to do can be considrered downright athletic.