Stand Partners for Life

Violinists (and husband and wife) Nathan Cole and Akiko Tarumoto give you an inside look at performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Each week brings new repertoire, conductors, soloists… and new stories from their life-long love affair with classical music, the violin, and their family. We took quite a long break from recording the show with everything going on at the moment, but we are so glad to be back. To kick things off again we thought we would use this episode to go through a bit of what we have been up to, staying home with the LA Phil out of action, some of the work and practicing we have been doing and then to field a bunch of listener questions. We look back at the last few days of regular work before quarantine began and then talk a bit about how we adjusted our schedules after things completely stopped. Nathan talks about his Violympics group, Akiko shares some of her dreams of home fitness and we explain the home recording process we have been working on. This unusual period presents a somewhat useful possibility to musicians; we all have areas of our playing that we wish we could improve and spend more time developing — and this could be the time to do it. After the complete rundown of our work-from-home life, we get into answering questions on quieting inner critics and protecting the joy of playing, practical concerns of changing strings and re-hairing bows! Key Points From This Episode: The last days of work and the changes in our schedules since the pandemic began. Shifting plans and changing the focus of our practice for time at home. The video recording we did and the insecurities that arise in watching yourself. Unusual repertoires and more practice time in the work from home world. The ‘Violympics’ and the questions that came from the group. Staying motivated and practicing during this time with the LA Phil on hiatus. Considering the plight of young musicians finishing music school right now. Investing in different skills and upping your game during this downtime. Personal qualities that lend themselves to a successful career in an orchestra. Tips for quieting the inner critic when performing or recording. Separating and protecting the joy of playing from the need to do it for a living. The importance of friendships and connection within a job in an orchestra. Changing strings, re-hairing bows, off the string strokes and more.Divisions for practicing a new piece and ways to focus on tricky passages. Tweetables: “I think it is scary to think of coming back together. I think we’ve all changed. I think it’s going to be such a substantial amount of time that we all would have changed in a lot of ways.” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:24:20] “Our whole lives I think so much of our self-worth is wrapped up in how we play. I don’t know that that’s healthy or right, but it’s inescapable.” — Nathan Cole [0:25:10] “It is reassuring to know that orchestra or no orchestra, we’re still musicians.” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:25:25] Transcript EPISODE 39 [INTRO] [00:00:00] NC: Hi and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I’m Nathan Cole. [00:00:05] AT: I’m Akiko Tarumoto. [EPISODE] [00:00:19] NC: And last time we came at you, the world was a very different place. Needless to say, we’ve taken quite a long break, but we’re happy to be back talking with each other and talking to you. Yeah, even though things have changed quite a bit. We were just trying to come up with what our last episode had been and we were talking conductors. How important is a conductor? Do we really need a conductor? [00:00:43] AT: Who knew we wouldn’t need a conductor for months? [00:00:46] NC: Yeah. We got our wish. Didn’t see any conductors for months. Yeah, it’s like the monkey’s paw. Got more than we bargained for. [00:00:56] AT: The corpse showed up at the front door. [00:00:58] NC: Yeah. I mean, we certainly won’t be the first people sharing our thoughts about the changed state of the world on classical music since the pandemic began. Maybe our thoughts don’t have to run too deep. But what do you think about our musical and our artistic lives since this all took route? When was the last time we were at work? [00:01:26] AT: It was what?