An evening with Kevin
Monday night I had the fortune of attending a private flute workshop with none other than my personal flute/whistle hero, Lunasa’s Kevin Crawford. Despite his profile, and despite a myriad of more exciting things he could have done on a free evening in a packed gigging schedule, he took the time to sit down with nine intermediate players. He’s a most unassuming, down-to-earth guy, giving individual attention to folks, letting anyone who cared (or dared) to have a honk on his flute, sharing stories of struggles with injury, etc. The evening wasn’t at all about his chops which are out of reach for most of us anyway, but about the love for the music and the practice of appropriating and interpreting traditional tunes.
Initially, he had sent us a list of four tunes that he would cover, but on the spot he decided to test our ability to learn two more obscure (but nice!) tunes by ear. The emphasis was on understanding the structure of the tunes, in order to feel and bring out their “pulse”. They also provided ample opportunity to go over aspects of articulation and (restraint from) ornamentation.
Here are two tips I picked up that I intend to incorporate into my practice:
- play tunes to some sort of drone as a reference point for pitch and intonation
- learn difficult fingerings at a soft volume without getting distracted by tone; put tone and ornamentation together later
Once I get the tunes down a little better, I will post a clip.
Tags: flute
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