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Hi Jennifer, I just went back to my score and don’t see any G flats in m. 19-20 of Kaleidoscope. There are G sharps, but those are in the lever set-up at the top. Did you see the change back to the bass clef for m. 19?
I studied with Mr. Zighera from age 14 to 17, after 10 years with the Custances, also in Boston. In hindsight, I guess he accepted me because he must have seen some potential in my bland, too-fast rendition of Clair de Lune and of Maxwell’s Fantasy on Chopsticks, but for a year he was extremely hard on me as he completely reshaped my position while teaching me classic French solos by Tournier (his teacher), Pierne, etc. I remember him yelling in French and pounding on my shoulder – it was very intimidating. I would concentrate so hard that my mouth would hang open, and he kept some hard candies nearby and would pop one in so I’d close it. But after the first year, by which time I had pretty well absorbed his changes, he mellowed. I had become bored with the music the Custances were giving me, but Zighera’s assignments were both beautiful and challenging and I made huge gains, for which I am forever grateful.
One day when I was perhaps a sophomore, he asked me where I wanted to go to college. “I dunno, Juilliard, maybe,” I ventured. His wife happened to be passing by the living room where we worked and said, “Don’t do it! You’ll end up just like Bernard! He’s at Symphony all day, and at night he’s studying parts or scores. It’s music, music, music all the time!” I wasn’t really one to practice hours and hours, anyway, so I went to Wellesley where didn’t feel I had the time to take lessons, but checked in with him after learning, but before performing, the Mozart flute and harp concerto my senior year. I took my junior year in Paris, and I remember years after that going with my two very small kids to see him in Falmouth, where they had a summer home, and chattering away in French with him. He was so kind and loving to my kids that day. I feel immensely fortunate to have been able to study with him.
Hello,
Patricia Jaeger has just alerted me to the fact that some of you are discussing “Red Sequins”, which I wrote for the 1993 Folk Harp Conference, in particular for Tina Tourin. At the 1991 conference, Deborah Henson-Conant walked on stage for her set in the final concert wearing a short black sequined jacket over her shoulders. She got to the harp, reached around, took hold of the jacket, held it at arm’s length and rather suggestively dropped it to the floor with a crash, leaving her in a strapless black top at a time when strapless harp-playing garb was pretty much unseen. “All right” I thought, “she is off and running!” At the end of that concert, Tina Tourin got up and said, “I’m the chair of the ’93 conference that will be in Burlington, Vermont. I’m making a pledge right now that by the time of that conference I’m going to be 50 pounds lighter and I’m going to wear RED sequins!” Well! I saw her afterwards and said, “If you lose 50 lbs., I’ll write you a piece called “Red Sequins.” Tina lost a lot ( not quite 50) and I wrote the piece which she then premiered with her band at the conference. And that’s the story! And thanks for the other nice comments about my music!
Best to all,
Joyce
