AAMHL Concert - Part 2
This is part two of two parts.
Here's Part One
Next Wendy Cheng (violin) and Tina Childress (piano) played a couple of
duets for us. Wendy promised us it would be interesting, because they had
never played together!
Tina is an audiologist who works for Advanced Bionics. She lost her
hearing after becoming an audiologist and is now a bilateral CI user. She
plays the piano, clarinet, and cello, and she gave a workshop on
appreciating music with a CI the following morning!
Tina noted that she played a lot of music through high school. Later
when she started losing her hearing, she no longer enjoyed music and
stopped playing. After getting her implants, she took up music again, but
mostly listening rather than playing.
She has a five year old and has been thinking about having her take
music lessons. Partly because of the inspiration of this concert, she has
decided that she will be taking lessons with her daughter. They will
probably learn using the Suzuki method and will learn to play "Twinkle"!
And she thanked Wendy for "making me do this!"
Wendy mentioned that she uses the Companion Mic system from Etymolic
Research to help her play music. It's a wireless system that is somewhat
unusual, because it has three microphones and one receiver. So, Wendy is
able to hear what three different people are playing or saying. The system
automatically finds open channels, so there is no need to manually search
for those. It comes with a charger and retails for $900. Wendy uses it
when she goes to dinner with several people, as well as when she plays
music with others. For tonight's performance, she places a mic on the
piano, so she could hear what Tina was playing.
The first piece they played was Pachelbel's "Canon". Tina commented
that she was so happy to be doing this piece, because it was played at her
wedding.
Wendy commented that when she decided to become acquainted with this
piece as a college freshman, she had to listen to this piece about fifteen
times; she wasn't using any assistive devices at that time and she did not
have access to the sheet music. It's very flowery, with lots of eighth and
sixteenth notes. She said that this piece has become her friend!
The piano starts first, but will be echoing the violin for most of the
piece, and the violin has most of the melody. It was a beautiful piece,
and much appreciated by the audience.
The next piece they played was Ashokan Farewell, Jay Ungar's theme from
the recent PBS series on the Civil War. It began with a violin solo,
followed by a duet, and concluded with a piano solo. It's really quite a
haunting piece of music.
The next part of the performance consisted of a duet with Wendy on the
violin and Charles Mokotoff on the classical guitar. Charles lost his
hearing when he was 15, but went on to complete a Master's degree in
classical guitar performance. He made his living playing guitar for a long
time, and then decided to stop playing. He says that Wendy dragged him out
of retirement to play a duet with her! So he started playing again and
really thanks Wendy for getting him going again. He practices nearly every
day!
The piece Wendy and Charles played was Jean-Baptiste Loeillet's "Sonata
in A Major". It was actually written for oboe and guitar, but sounds very
good with a violin and guitar. Wendy noted that this piece is pretty
challenging for her, because so much of it is played in second position.
(Violinists normally learn first position, followed by third position, and
then fifth position.)
Finally Charles played several solo pieces. He noted that he recently
played for his local HLAA chapter. They had a loop system installed. He
found it an interesting experience, but didn't like the way his music
sounded using the loop!
He first played several movements of an unaccompanied cello suite
written by J.S. Bach that had been transcribed for the guitar. Each of the
movements had a different rhythm and tempo, and the combination really
showed Charles' talent. He had mentioned earlier that he just picked up
his guitar again a couple of years ago, but he was still able to play
pretty well because of all the hours spent in the practice room when he
was 20 years old. Watching his fingers fly over the frets and listening to
his musical variety was really remarkable.
Charles next piece was inspired by flamenco music and written for the
piano. It was "Sevilla", written by Spanish composer Isaac Albeniz.
Following "Sevilla" Tina commented that she was amazed to see Charles
tune his guitar. He replied that he has about a 70 db loss, but that he
hears pretty well and is able to talk on the phone. He claims that tuning
the guitar is really pretty easy, because it comes down to determining
when two notes are the same pitch.
The final performance of the evening was Charles' performance of a
waltz written by South American composer Augustine Barrios. Charles said
that it is quite difficult to play, but he seemed to me to do a very nice
job with it.
Following the performance Sharon commented that she also uses assistive
devices when she plays. She normally places a microphone near the
conductor, so she can hear him. She also places a microphone near her horn
so she can hear it better. She commented that prior to using a microphone
near her horn she was unable to hear her instrument over the sound from
the rest of the orchestra.
I found this performance to be very inspiring! Each of the musicians
clearly enjoyed playing music and had worked very hard to polish their
talent. It was truly an enchanted evening and for me one of the highlights
of the convention!
