Santa Barbara, summer of '93
I was picked up at LAX by a fellow new student and slept at his family home. Last name, Geffen. The next day we were out on his father's speedboat with his new young blonde lady friend. All a blur of jet lag, sea air and generosity, another night in Newport Beach, and then we drove to Carpinteria, near Santa Barbara. Everyone in a decent sized room, shared bathrooms. Food was great in the dining hall, with some American touches: waffle irons, whipped cream in a can, but lots of salads, so I could continue my healthy diet.
We lived there, in the Cate School, up on a hill next to an avocado grove where I ran at 6am every morning, picking a couple off the ground for breakfast. Our new community was made up of specialists on every instrument in the orchestra, plus pianists and singers from the opera program, all already performing at a professional level. I was now 25, with significant performing experience. There were a few others like me and many younger but more talented kids there. An interesting mix. The viola section of the orchestra was phenomenal.
One night, a couple of us sat down with 16 year old Scott Lee wiki and had him play (perfectly) the hardest bits from the firebird suite which he had memorized. Then we moved on to the violin concerto repertoire and he played those perfectly too (on the viola).
McInnes understood the subtleties and tendencies of our 'performer's minds and egos.' He put thought into what each of us needed and of what we were capable. He waited until Sir Jeffrey Tate _ came to conduct us, and sat me principal. We got along well, and he commented to McInnes that I had "aplomb" but I didn't have a dictionary.
Individual lessons and masterclasses, chamber music and orchestra rehearsals were held down the hill in Montecito, at the Academy, a Spanish revival style estate, four minutes walk to the beach. It was a fantastic setup and we could all comfortably get on with the business of improving for eight straight weeks.
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| McInnes Viola class of 1993 McInness was wearing one of my mum's 'paintings' t-shirt |
I was assigned a strong chamber music group. We were: the concertmaster, a nice pianist, me and Todd French, the principal cellist with whom I would have a great deal to do at USC for the next two years, including my initiation into early music, some touring in Europe, a risky border crossing on motor bikes to Tabas, Egypt, and our first ever scuba dive, in the Red Sea. More on that later.
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| Schuman: public masterclass 1993 |
We played the Schumann Piano Quartet in one of the evening concerts, the Faure in another, having had four coaching sessions on each work with Jerome Lowenthal, whose sense of humour was immense, and I encouraged him to try some stand up comedy...
Later in my career, extremely well prepared, I played the Faure with the bigwigs, an LA times review and everything.
Lessons with McInnes were usually an acutely personal affair. He was a marvelous pedagogue with the innate ability to get to the source of his students' technical problems - which most often lived in our minds. In my case, I had been approaching the viola, practicing more than 6 hrs a day, with such drive and intensity that I had become more than a little locked-up. Prof. Bob Lipsett (Heifetz chair) would later comment to McInnes at my final USC assessment:
"wow you did a good job loosening him up."
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| Donald McInnes and Peter Bucknell |
One Sunday morning I attended a service & discussion at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was in a light summer relationship with a pretty girl who encouraged me to read the Book of Mormon, which was a bit of a dry argument, and my colleagues encouraged me to be open minded and go to church. So I still have a soft spot for the Mormons and I always wish them luck when I see them in the airports on their missions.
I'd kept the Colgrass in shape as a Concerto Competition option, but it was deemed impractical, being much longer than one movement, rental parts etc, so I spent more time on the beach.
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| Emily, Peter and Nokuthula (just visiting) |
There was a program specifically for pianists to work with instrumentalists and singers. We could play our sonata repertoire in their masterclasses and pick up an enormous amount of information about accompaniment, in my case, the nuances of playing with viola: use of pedal, full stick, things like that, which I would still be using thirty years later when I was a professor.
Playing in McInnes's public masterclasses was a unique experience in performing. It could be nerve wracking. You played your movement, and the public and all of your peers would applaud encouragingly, and then McInnes put on his 'teaching performance.' His favourite method was to find the single thing that could make the most impact on your playing, immediately. Our job was to then do what he asked. Everyone was firing on all cylinders and you could take great leaps forward, even if you were just watching. Priceless.
Los Angeles, Sept 1993
I stayed at another student's apartment for a few days before I found the apartment with the two black guys. I answered a flier and went over and knocked on the door. My naïvety apparently was charming to them. I said something along the lines of:
"Hey, I'm Pete. Nice to meet you. I didn't know you guys were black. Would it be ok for a white guy to move in with you?"
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| George on the left |
So I lived, bars on the windows, with George and Rob who was 6'11, but did not play basketball. George and I became fast friends, though we only socialized at home. Rob, who was friendly but aloof, ate off paper plates, fell heavily asleep each night with the TV on full volume, and used to get frozen food in the mail from his momma. I became friends with the lady next door and her 7 year old kid who felt comfortable wandering into our house to listen to me play the viola. His mum kept a snub nose .38 in her handbag, which she bought during the riots. On the corner was a vacant lot which used to be a supermarket until angry people set fire to it. One assumed that the people in the neighbourhood were still very traumatized. It was said that this was one of the most devastating civil disruptions in American history, with over 50 deaths, over 2000 injured, over 1000 buildings destroyed.
We were up the University end of the street. I wandered down the other direction one afternoon and a guy who was watering his lawn was like: "You lost?" and not in a nice way. I had a long chat with him -after he heard my accent- and I have come to realize over the years that my manner of interacting with strangers is not normal. It is disarming, when necessary, and also abusive when necessary (that part gets me into hot water).
Anyway, soon after that I bought a car, so never walked anywhere again. This was LA after all.
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| $400 but with no reverse |
The Crips and Bloods had signed a truce in 1992, but gang violence had resumed around the time of my arrival. One had to be careful where they went and what they were wearing. There's me using paper maps and guesswork to get around to my gigs... Risky Business.
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| Crips |
Unlike any Australian University, orientation week at USC was not alcohol-centric. No pub crawls, no boat races, no iron-gut competitions. USA drinking age = 21. That law came into effect in 1984. I barely attended any of it, and as a result had not one clue how anything officially worked at school, and possibly some paperwork went un-submitted. It's interesting that at a private university you can get away with this 'clueless behaviour.' As I write this, the 2026 tuition for one academic year is US$75k.
I somehow enrolled myself in one graduate class -Early Music Studies- which was outside the required 'Advanced Studies' courses. Todd French, my cello buddy told me I should. We both joined the Grad School's Early Music Ensemble which had at its disposal a collection of period instruments, or copies thereof. There were two violas, one of which was an enormous tenor, 'Medici Tenor'
In charge of us, playing the lute, was Dr. James Tyler (wiki) who was famous for helping pioneer the revival of early music. We played lots of renaissance music. Lots of free ornamentation and improv. Great training. We dearly loved this band. Early music would become a very, very large part of my career as a violist.
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| Early Music Ensemble members |
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| Nina on Theorbo, Dr James Tyler |
During my second semester Jim Tyler gave me the opportunity to play the Telemann concerto a couple of times in public, which was a fantastic experience, having a full section of 'pluckers' as he used to call the lute section. The following year I was given the Award for Early Music. pic
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| Winner... |
McInnes introduced us newbies to his class. To our amusement, when he got to me, he finished his bit about me with: "Doesn't he look like Tom Cruise?" which could have been awkward if if I didn't pose sarcastically. He had his weird idiosyncrasies as we all did. Later that year he divorced his wife and came out of the closet and seemed much more relaxed after that.
"Cool! I'd love to."I said 'yes' to everything at that age. It worked well for me, always teaching me something or leading to something even better. In this case it was great for my improv. I learnt the songs, chord progressions and structure and we started doing gigs almost straight away.
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| Todd: arriving in Tel Aviv for the Eilat Festival |
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| Justus and Peter in Gran Canaria 1993 |
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| American Trumpeter, Todd French, Peter |
We found time for some light tourism when we were in Eilat, Israel. Todd and I crossed the border on motorbikes to Egypt. The trumpeter, frightened, turned around and went home as Todd and I entered the shack that was full of locals. I indicated that we were 'here to eat'.
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| Pete smoking a shisha in Taba |
Thirty years later, still diving.