NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts are spectacular. They’re a YouTube series of small-scale, exquisitely produced sets from the NPR music office in Washington DC which focuses mostly on quirky indie rock. In its long run since 2008, Tiny Desk has hosted a deep roster of musicians, both small and big names, and the intimate setting facilitates unique takes often lost in hyper-refined studio album versions or live stadium sets.
Tiny Desk has broadened my horizon of music, far beyond the comparatively staid classical music from my childhood. I’ve hardly listened to them all (they’re thrice weekly now), but let me tell you about five memorable moments:
Originally I had planned but one post to transition from national to personal matters, but once the other post surpassed 3000 words I couldn’t shoehorn this in anymore. So, for my now annual tradition, a self-centric recap:
I’ve lost count of how many times recently that I’ve stumbled back into my apartment past 2 am, dazed, tired, hungry, and with sore hands after a three- or five-hour session at the piano. For the last six months I’ve been playing nothing but Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, which makes it, by far, the biggest musical project of my life. Now, I can play it front-to-back from memory, but still I’m so vexed and worn down by this damned piece that frequently I think to myself: “I wish I had a different hobby.”
In its 22-minute expanse, I have an interminable list of details to refine: the smoothness of the cascading double-stops in Ondine, the constancy of the bell in Le gibet, the snappiness of chord pairs in Scarbo, so on. I’m resigned to the fact that I will never play Gaspard precisely no matter how much I practice — it’s just that hard — but now I start to wonder: with these diminishing returns, when should I stop?Continue reading Illusory Standards→
2017 was strange mix of freedom, commitment, and uncertainty. Never in med school have I had so much unscheduled time, during which I committed to and hacked away at several big projects. Meanwhile, I also made enormous binding decisions, the result of which still floats in a cloud of vague possible futures…
Gaspard de la Nuit: Ravel’s complex, atmospheric, dark piano masterpiece. I’m learning all 22 minutes of it right now, and the music is consuming me unlike any other piece has before.
