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Re: Earl Bates

Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-06-19 11:47

For "natural" players (such as a kid who can perform a Chopin transcription after a year or so of study), everything comes easy. They just do it. Such players often have trouble teaching because they haven't analyzed how they play. It would just get in the way. And for many students of natural players -- even those as talented as Ed Palanker -- "do it again" or "do it this way" isn't enough.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, when I was in high school I tried to teach a few students. It was a disaster, for the same reason.

At Interlochen in the summer of 1962, I had a long and memorable discussion with Bill Conable, a wonderful and highly analytic cellist. http://alexanderworkshops.com/Bill.html He said that he had studied with Frank Miller, the principal cellist of the NBC Symphony and the Chicago Symphony. It was totally frustrating. Miller did everything without effort, but had trouble putting what he did into words. Bill moved to Peter Farrell, who was not in Miller's league as a player but had thought everything through and was great about explaining it to his students.

Many great players -- Stanley Hasty, Robert Marcellus -- could do both, but Earl Bates pretty clearly could not. It's to Ed's great credit that he found his own way.

Ken Shaw

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Date

Earl Bates new

Dan Oberlin

2001-05-10 12:58

RE: Earl Bates new

Ken Shaw

2001-05-10 20:22

RE: Earl Bates new

Douglas

2001-05-11 01:08