Farewell to the Orff Tour

I’m in the Eva Air Lounge, exactly four weeks to the day since I set off on my Australia/ Asia Orff tour. My work is done, my bags are checked, my Taiwanese money exchanged and my devices all charged. Feeling a disturbing slight dizziness that has been an unwelcome constant companion for parts of the trip and hoping it won’t escalate in the 15 hours to come. 

 

Despite that glitch, it certainly has been a most glorious four weeks. So many friends from previous Orff work that I had the privilege to see again and talk and play and sing and dance and laugh together! All of it savored, but especially the laughter. As I believe I mentioned before, there is a humor connection with friends from Australia, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Macau that mysteriously is deeper than with their American counterparts. (Other countries to add here, these just the most recent.) Don’t know why that is, but in most every gathering, humor is the lubrication that keeps the conversation flowing so effortlessly and joyfully. I love it. Nothing I can fix, it just is or isn’t. When it is, I feel it and relish it and relish is a good Thesaurus choice I just looked up, because it adds flavor and texture to the meat of the meal. 

 

Yesterday’s workshop, my last with 40 plus music teachers from Shenzhen, China, Macau and Hong Kong, was a satisfying ending to a most enticing meal. I dug into material I hadn’t shared in a while and came up with a new workshop theme of some ten pieces in the G pentatonic scale that use the exact same five notes and yet sound worlds apart from each other. The constant of the scale set up on the Orff instruments provides the familiar ground and accents the universality of human experience, while the actual sounds and textures and structures of the music remind us how diverse both imagination and culture are and to our great benefit. (For those curious, though we only had time to play five of them, the pieces came from Finland, the Basque country in Spain, Hungary, Mexico, Iran, China, the Philippines, Bali, American blues, American jazz standard.)

 

The intensive rhythm of the teaching— literally, almost every day in the past 28 days— had the quality of a Zen meditation retreat. That sense of total immersion that builds on itself, so that the teaching just felt each day an inch more inspired and connected. As noted in my “Teach Like It’s Music” book, I value teaching each class as if it’s a piece of music with an enticing beginning, connected middle and satisfying end, a non-stop flow with a clear shape and design. As with each class, so with each workshop and so with each two-day to five-day to two-week course. Choosing pieces that sing back to the one just done and forward to the one about to come so that students feel yet more successful without being aware exactly why. It’s a very different animal from the workshops where teachers throw out one fun piece and then another and then a different one with no emerging design or connection, just a bunch of stuff plucked off of the “cool materials” shelf. Though I will welcome a little rest and getting back to other matters in my life, I believe I could easily teach yet another workshop tomorrow and go on like this for a few more weeks.

 

The other notable feature of this trip was the variety of situations offered to me that I accepted without question, some quite different from what I usually do. A short list:

• Giving an evening solo piano concert at the Sydney Jazz Course. 

• Working with a high school jazz band in Taipei (TAS)

• Putting together a collaboration/performance between the band and 5^th grade Orff classes.

• Leading an hour Folk Dance session with 3^rd graders and their parents.

• Watching my movie with the TAS parents and signing my new book.

• Giving a workshop to International School Teachers in Southeast Asia.

• Teaching kids in a Macau Catholic school from 3 years old to 7^th grade.

• Teaching Kindergarten teachers in above school. 

• Macau workshop with mostly Chinese music teachers from Macau, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai and other places. 

 

That’s a lot of variety! Kept things fresh, kept me on my toes, kept things perpetually interesting. 

And now it’s done. Back to a wet San Francisco, my “retired” life there, a reunion with my wife and daughter and sister and soon, a visit to the grandkids. Back to my piano, to the Jewish Home piano playing, a little subbing, walks in the park, emerging plum blossoms, cooking my own meals (yes!), shopping and so on. Suitcases tucked away, writing projects brought back out (though did quite a lot on this trip), different shirts to wear. Happy to return to it all, but less happy about the homeless people and garbaged streets that have been 100% absent in each place I’ve been this last month. Yet I still love San Francisco and am glad to return to it.

 

But first, those 15 hours ahead. May the dizziness be gone and the movies be good!