Q&A with John Petrey, viola

In 2014, in honor of our 50^th anniversary, the Bowdoin International Music Festival created the Kaplan Fellowship Program to offer tuition free opportunities for advanced musicians at the beginning of significant careers in music. Now in its third year, the program is a unique offering geared to mature, accomplished players. Kaplan Fellows perform with artist instructors throughout the summer concert series and become familiar faces to concert goers throughout Maine. Kaplan Fellows also receive a full scholarship to cover all participation fees and housing and are sponsored by members of the community.

In advance of their arrival we sat down with these 17 highly skilled Fellows to better understand where they’re coming from, and where they’re headed in the future. The talks ranged from musical memories, to incredible sagas of how Fellows obtained their instruments. What follows is a selection from one of those conversations.

BIMF: What are some of your earliest musical memories?

John: As a child my sister (also a violinist) and I would play classical duets at weddings. I was around 9 years old at the time but I distinctly remember that the chairs were not kid-sized and my feet couldn’t touch the ground. I also remember that there were about 300 people there, my sister and I were the only music for the ceremony, and I got paid $60 for playing, so all in all it was a great day!

BIMF: At what age did you start playing your instrument?

John: I began musical studies on the violin in kindergarten at age 6. I completed the Suzuki method and some of the early violin concerti before switching over to the viola in the middle of high school. I had asked a friend if I could try out his viola and was immediately hooked on the C string, but couldn’t focus only on the viola for the next entire year as I was currently the concertmaster at my school and the local youth orchestra. In one year I moved from concertmaster, to principal second violin, to principal viola (there were only three other violists at the time) and made up my mind to major in viola performance in college shortly after beginning viola lessons. I think that I have always been a violist at heart but didn’t even know that the instrument existed until middle school as my beginner Suzuki classes only taught violin. I still play my violin almost every day as I teach ten violin students from age 8 up to age 55 out of my home each week as well as several beginner violin classes to low-income students near Charlottesville, Virginia.

I also enjoy playing viola and first or second violin in local string quartets, chamber orchestras, operas, and other gigs whenever I get the opportunity. Playing both instruments regularly has really helped my technical abilities on each as well; the violin’s small size and blazing fast response time help when navigating sections of virtuosic passagework and the viola’s larger size and ability to take a serious amount of force teaches you how to play with a great sound and to constantly focus on tension-free playing as much as possible. I have studied privately with the majority of Karen Tuttle’s most skilled viola students over the years and have personally found that her brilliant viola “coordination” techniques work just as well when applied to my violin playing as they do on the viola. Similarly, the study of how great violinists such as Heifetz, Perlman and Zukerman use their bows in many different scenarios has greatly helped my right hand/arm technique on the viola as well. These two instruments often have quite a bit more in common with each other than significant differences and being able to fluently read both alto and treble clefs is also a great way to train your brain!

One of my long term goals as a musician is to learn as much as I can about what works and what doesn’t technique-wise for all of the other stringed instruments as well as for wind, brass, percussion, and vocalists so that I can become a much more versatile chamber musician and teacher.

BIMF: Does your instrument you play on have a story? How did it come to you?

John: I am fortunate to own my viola and I just acquired it this past October from Perrin and Associates in Baltimore, Maryland before beginning the graduate school audition process. I tried it against more than twenty other violas (many of which were more than twice its price) but I knew immediately that it was the right one for me. It’s a 16.25-inch Polish viola made by Wojciech Topa in 2012. The primary criteria I was using in the search was for the viola to be smaller than my old 16.5-inch Friedrich Wyss viola as well as possess an improved dynamic range, ease of playing, a more varied color palette and a great projection of sound. This viola met all of those criteria and I’ve been told from several previous teachers that it sounds “like my voice”, meaning that it lets me speak through my playing much more easily. One of the tricky parts of the instrument search was finding a viola that matched the C.N. Bazin viola bow I already own and love, but I could immediately tell that this pair resonated perfectly.

One of the lesser-known facets of luthiership that I find fascinating is that a master luthier puts all of their creativity, knowledge, and decades of life experience into every new project, giving each instrument a distinct personality and soul. Some luthiers take several years to make one instrument and that level of detail is the reason it has a fantastic sound as well as a high price tag. Every instrument (even a cheap $100 workshop violin) is totally unique and will sound different than any other, so choosing only one can be daunting when two instruments that are similarly priced both sound great in different ways. I also find it amazing that in the hands of a master craftsman a few choice pieces of maple, ebony, and spruce, some glue, and four strings can be crafted into a beautiful instrument that will often remain in a playable condition for centuries longer than either the craftsman or the player.

BIMF: How do you make a well-known piece of music your own?

John: At first, I try to find as many recordings of a piece as I possibly can through resources like Spotify, a music library or the Internet (YouTube is an amazing resource for musicians!) and then analyze each performance while following along with the complete score in front of me. You can learn so much about a piece just by listening to different performances of it with the score; each performance is unique, including the phrasing, stylistic tendencies and even technical things such as bowings or when to shift. I take all of this information and add it to the information I have researched about the composer’s life or the happenings in the world around when and where this particular piece was written to help influence my interpretation. I use as much of this information as I can to make a mental toolbox full of useful ideas, because once the score study and other research has been done all that is left to do is to sell your own interpretation to whomever your audience is.

The basics such as rhythm, pulse, and intonation always have to be there, but what I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that you can often break the societally perceived mold of a well-known piece and take it wherever you want to go as long as you do your homework, trust in your instincts (and your teacher’s!) and play confidently.

BIMF: How would you explain your passion for chamber music to a non-musician?

John: The best way for me to describe the rush during and after a great chamber music performance is to discuss the lengthy preparation process it takes to even be able perform the piece at all. The first step is to know your own part so well that you are able to play it almost by memory. This step is one of the biggest hurdles as rehearsal time is not there for you to learn your own part; rehearsals are for you to learn everyone else’s parts and how to fit your part together with theirs seamlessly. When everyone in a chamber ensemble comes to the first rehearsal with their part learned you can move right to perfecting the inner details of the music, and how each person can individually present their melodies and harmonies in the way that the composer (who is often not available to ask questions to directly) was intending when they wrote the piece. The next big hurdle in the rehearsal process is learning how to work at an incredibly high level with people whose musical ideas you may or may not completely agree with. A famous pianist, during a coaching of the Johannes Brahms Piano Quintet in A Major, once told me that the person with the most important ideas in the room must always be Brahms, not those of any of the individual musicians playing his piece. This concept has helped me a lot when tensions can rise in rehearsal for any number of reasons.

Once these difficulties are overcome and the time to perform comes, however, the rush of giving an awesome performance is a totally unique and immensely gratifying experience. Without the ability to speak during a performance, we are required to trust in each colleague’s preparation, technical abilities, and performance skills and actively communicate with each other with our own musical voices and many subtle body cues. When all of these puzzle pieces come together and each person is actively supporting each other throughout the performance the audience can’t help but to be drawn in. One of my favorite aspects of performing any piece of music live is hearing from members of the audience how our performance of a piece has positively impacted their life at that moment and whatever they were individually dealing with. This ability to inspire and improve the lives of so many different people through a single great performance makes all these difficulties seem very insignificant at the end of the day.

BIMF: What do you look forward to most about your time as a Kaplan Fellow?

John: As this will be my fifth summer at BIMF and my first year as a Kaplan Fellow I am very excited to be given so many opportunities to perform with and learn from a large percentage of the world-renowned faculty members and the other incredibly accomplished fellows. I find that I learn the most when I am surrounded by great colleagues, and the intense but supportive environment at BIMF in addition to the many friendships I’ve made over the years always leaves me wishing that the festival was much longer!

I am also very thankful to each of the generous donors to the Festival, as I have been fortunate enough to have received a significant scholarship every summer I have attended BIMF. Last summer I wouldn’t have been able to afford to attend for more than 3 weeks, but a donation from Mr. and Mrs. Collins from Harpswell made it possible for me to study with Phillip Ying and Jeffrey Irvine for all six weeks. The BIMF office staff provided me the Collins’ contact information and I enjoyed meeting them at their home and also invited them to several of the free student concerts I would be performing in during the Festival. I recently contacted them again and they are looking forward to reconnecting and already have their tickets to many of the concerts this summer! Quite a few of the friends I met at BIMF in previous years have returned for multiple summers on scholarship as well and some are also pursuing further musical studies during the academic year with the professors they met at BIMF. Every dollar you can donate to the Festival individually helps another student with a story just like mine to be able to afford to attend and continue to improve their musical abilities!

BIMF: What’s next for you after the Festival? What are your career goals?

John: This spring I completed seven applications and live auditions for masters
programs across the nation and was fortunate enough to be accepted into programs at all but one school, which I was wait-listed for. After many sleepless nights weighing these many options I will proudly be studying with Phillip Ying at the Eastman School of Music (ESM) in the fall, where I will be starting a Masters of Music degree in Viola Performance and Literature.

As I double majored in Viola Performance and General, Choral, and Instrumental Music Education during my undergraduate at the University of North Texas I will also be serving as a teaching assistant to ESM’s music education department teaching secondary viola lessons to their undergraduate music education majors.

I am just as passionate about teaching as I am about performing, so I will be applying for doctoral programs in performance with available teaching assistantship positions immediately after completing my coursework at ESM. I would ultimately love to become a college professor and be given the opportunity to travel, teach, and perform with other university faculty members at the collegiate level during the year and serve as a faculty member at music festivals during the summers.

BIMF: What advice would you offer to an aspiring musician?

John: Continually try your hardest to avoid comparing yourself to others: the only person you need to focus on being better than on a day-to-day basis is yourself. After taking all of these auditions recently, I realized that the professional classical music world tends to determine your value based on how advanced of music you can play nearly perfectly, along with musicality, an outwardly perceivable sense of personal confidence in your abilities, and your resume of personal achievements.

What many musicians don’t realize (until they’re experiencing it firsthand) is that this career is often brutal in many ways. As professional musicians we constantly fail for hours each day processing dozens of pages of music, and even when we do succeed we are often met with criticism. In some environments such as masterclasses and studio classes our weakest areas are not only publicly identified but also objectively discussed in order to further improve our playing. We even pay other people to teach us how to sequentially address and fix the issues we can’t seem to figure out on our own in the endless pursuit of our own personal idea of perfection. This goal of perfection is and will always be unattainable, but the trick to finding success in this career is cultivating the ability to maintain joy and fulfillment from the *pursuit* of perfection, along with thick skin, a great work ethic, an open mind willing to try new things, and a *very* good sense of humor. Many professional musicians even bring their instruments on vacation with them as we risk losing a significant amount of progress if we don’t practice for a week. The hours we work each day can also heavily tax our relationships as we’re usually going to work (or we’re still at work for many more hours) when our family is just getting home.

The thing that makes it all worthwhile, though, despite all of these negatives, is knowing that you are able to positively impact so many lives in the process, even if you don’t think that music is positively affecting your own life at the moment. You are literally in the same room as hundreds of your own successes every day in many different forms, including your excited student who just learned Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star and can’t wait to show it to their proud family and friends, every time one person in the audience comes up to you after a concert and says that your performance allowed them to come to terms with something going on in their own lives, or every time you nail that tricky passage in a rehearsal, practice, or performance and you get that spine-tingling surge of adrenaline.

Most teachers and professional musicians do not get paid much money relative to our high level of education and stress, but what we do get tenfold to other careers is that we get to live lives rich in unique and amazing experiences. Richness of life can come from material wealth and your possessions, but that richness comes with the weight of never being satisfied with what you actually have and always wanting more. If more musicians can take a step back from the immediate hardships we put up with on a daily basis we can begin to see so many different ways that our music has previously and will continue to positively impact the world around us. Keep this in mind if you’re like me and always tirelessly seeking the next thing to acquire or achieve; sometimes the greatest gifts in life are already within your reach but are hidden in the most difficult to open packages!

Check back soon for more interviews…