Ticklin' the Ivories in Anchorage

A question I received quite often in the months prior to my departure from Kansas was, “Will you keep playing the piano while in Anchorage?” In order to allay any and all fears you, the reader, may have, here is a synopsis of my piano playing these past five months.

One of my first items of business upon arriving in Anchorage was finding a piano on which to play. Luckily for me, there was a piano in the unit house. Unluckily for me, it was rather completely out of tune. I then turned to outside sources, and checked with the University of Alaska Anchorage to see if I could take lessons or, at the very least, use the practice rooms for my own study. Unfortunately, the former wasn’t feasible and the latter wasn’t allowed.

Things took a turn for the better when I checked with a few local churches, to see if I could use their pianos to practice. While I didn’t find a church I could practice at, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church did have a piano they said I could have. That week, I stopped in on the way back from work to check out what was a pretty decent Yahama upright, and very similar to what I grew up playing back home. To make things better, the church had been keeping it in tune! Feeling very grateful for the generous gift, several others from our church and I came back in a few weeks and moved the piano into the unit house.

The new piano!

It was a great improvement over the previous piano – a much richer bass, more full tone, and it was in tune… for about a day. I should have known that though it started in tune, any piano needs to be tuned after a move, especially when moved in sub-freezing temperatures. So now we had two pianos, both very out of tune. I then began to get creative and set out to sell the first piano on Craigslist, thereby financing a tuning for the new piano. That was three months ago, and nobody has sprung for it yet, though I have gotten a good handful of interesting folks and have been dropping the price. Maybe nobody wants a piano that makes you cringe when listening to it!

Attempting to tune the piano - a rather difficult task that I am not very good at!

Thankfully, I didn’t let all these events distract me from actually playing the piano! While I don’t practice as much as I did last year in high school, I still play generally every day and some days for as much as an hour or two. In the first several months I concentrated on three pieces: Piano Sonata No. 18 in E-flat Major by Beethoven, Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major by Chopin, and Virtuosic Étude No. 2 by Moritz Moszkowski. Now, I am working on a Bach prelude, Brahms’ Fantasies Op. 116, a Scriabin etude, and a piece by Władysław Szpilman. For those of you not familiar with Mr. Szpilman, he was a Polish pianist and composer who, as a Jew, lived through horrible years in the Warsaw ghetto. His story of survival is incredible and I’d highly recommend both his autobiography, “The Pianist” and a 2002 movie of the same name. I was able to obtain his music through Inter-Library Loan and it is a moving experience to play something that was written in the early 1940’s while in the ghetto.  

 
Pieces I have worked on so far this year.

In addition to my classical pieces, I’ve been involved regularly at church, playing hymns, special music, and accompanying singers. With all these opportunities to play piano, I hope to return next year to college with a deeper knowledge and ability than when I left! 

I hope you enjoy these select pieces I’ve been working on. I don’t pretend to have these pieces concert ready, but nevertheless, playing the piano up here has been a true joy!

Virtuosic Étude No. 2 - Moritz Moszkowski

Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major - Frederic Chopin

Prelude No. 6 in D minor, BWV 851 - Johann Sebastian Bach

Winter Photography

My first post on photography (see it here) generated quite a bit of feedback, so I figured you all might enjoy another photographic update!

My winter photography thus far has mainly been confined to numerous trips to Kincaid Park, the western most point in Anchorage. This 1500-acre park happens to be home to a sandy beach, now covered with snow, and my favorite spot in Anchorage to photograph.

An image I made in early November, before much any ice formed.

It is said that the best photographs are often made on “edges”: the edge between night and day, fair weather and a coming storm, or land and water. The beach at Kincaid offers one such boundary, allowing for myriad subjects, moods, and light at this junction between the coast and the waters.

My setup once I've skiied down to the beach.

With snow on the ground, the best way to get the mile from the parking lot to the beach is by ski. This journey prepares my mind to think photographically and also gets my body nice and warm, so that it can maintain core temperature a little longer once I stop moving! The cold does become an issue, influencing everything from how long I am out to what camera gear gets used or not. It’s actually been pretty warm up here by Alaskan standards (for example, as I write this, the outside temperature is 42 it and feels like spring!). That being said, the coldest temperature I’ve gone out to photograph in is 0 plus blowing winds. Always present in this sort of situation is the tradeoff between warmth and dexterity. I have found my mitts to work pretty well, though it can be hard to manipulate all the camera buttons and is all but impossible to do some things like attach a filter to my lens.

Sunrise and a crescent moon rises over a cold (0 degrees) Cook Inlet at low tide.

One issue at this time of year is the short amount of daylight (though we are gaining light back more rapidly every day!). Currently, the sun sets around 4:20 pm in Anchorage, making it hard to be anywhere to photograph the “magic light” except on the weekends. Add to that the fact that Anchorage’s weather lately seems determined to remain overcast and grey without let up. Often, there are long stretches of flat, uninteresting light, but that only makes it more special when dazzling light breaks through, illuminating the Alaskan landscape. Enjoy!

Redoubt Volcano, sunset

Sunset, low tide

sometimes it's just sort of grey...

Sunset, Cook Inlet

On Our Internal and External Lives

Several days ago, I received a letter from my brother. I had sent him a letter a week earlier, mainly focused on all the cool stuff I was doing. The keyword here being “doing”… Not “being” or “feeling” or “thinking”… In his letter to me, my brother wrote the following:

“Life sounds filled with cool activities – choral music, skating, XC skiing, which are all awesome – but how is the internal life – passions, energy, dreams, hopes, struggles?”

midnight cross-country skiing

I thought to myself “You’re right. All I did was list all the outwardly exciting activities I’ve done recently, forsaking how I really actually was.” As I look back on my blog posts, they are virtually all focused on external events, not thoughts, feelings, or ideas. It’s all too easy to get caught up in one’s external life as the internal life goes to the wayside. I find myself, far too often, using my external life to distract from really addressing my internal life; my “passions,… dreams, hopes, struggles.” When asked, “So how was your week,” many people (including myself) seem to respond with a generic “good” and then go on to list the external things they did. Yet it is usually the subtle, quiet, mundane things – not the flashy, exciting activities – that determine how meaningful our lives are.

backyard camping in 0 degree temperatures

a friendly moose out the dining room window

 So while sledding, midnight cross-country skiing, and photography are all enjoyable things, you should also know that I had a good conversation with one of my unit mates, spent the commute to work reflecting on a number of questions and thoughts, really enjoyed the 20 minutes of piano I was able to play one morning, and that I have a hard time apologizing to those around me when I mess up. These are not particularly breathtaking activities, but in a way, they give a better representation of my life than the fact I did this or that snow sport.

Relationships – with God, others, and ourselves – are the most important things in life. It is to these that we should devote our time and energy. The good news is that with a healthy and vibrant “inner life”, cool external experiences usually follow. But they must not be a mask that gets in the way of grappling with our dreams, struggles, and passions.