At 4:30AM on the 17th January my lofted bed rocked back and forth so violently that I was nearly thrown out of it. During the next eight seconds I scrambled under the sturdy frame, dragging my viola case with me. The deep rumbling was loud and alien. The crashing of dishes out of the kitchen cupboards onto the floor added to the racket. When it subsided, I got dressed, alone in the house, and went out the back door to see if the neighbour and her kid were ok. She was freaked out, but we were happy to see each other. I don't remember going back to bed, but I must have after cleaning up the shards of glass that used to be my shelves and the crockery on the kitchen floor. I suppose I called Australia to tell them I was fine and went to sleep. It had been a 6.7 magnitude, which is high.
Next morning, Dr. Relax rolled into the driveway, unannounced, with his bong packed and ready to go.
"Let's go for a drive around town."
Turned out it was a great idea. There was not a single car out on the road. The epicenter had been 30km away, but the highways had been affected. Corrugation everywhere. The Northridge 'Blind Thrust Fault' had also ruptured.
The aftershocks kept scaring us for three weeks after that. It was almost worth leaving town, but it was the beginning of 2nd semester and we had things to do. It was the beginning of an important year.
Simon Oswell, a fellow Aussie viola player and a good friend for many years after, passed my name on to one of the Hollywood contractors who would call me when she got to the end of her list, which put me in the unique position of being able to ask for double.
"Sure, but don't tell the other musicians."
So easy it makes one wonder if they could have afforded to pay all the musicians more... but it's the way of the world.
During a January recording session there was a sizable aftershock during a take. The reactions of the musicians was telling. Fifty percent of them packed up and left. I stayed and had the engineer play back the last take. Interesting to hear an earthquake without feeling it. It's like ten bass drums playing ffff at the same time. Frightening, sinister somehow.
Somebody wealthy hosted a fundraiser for the LA Baroque Orchestra. I played a little solo Bach, and later I helped Jamie Lee Curtis (who has a very cheeky smile) move a couch outside. This was LA, where stuff like that happens.
One of the weirdest ones was running into Australian actor Stefan Dennis on the street, who played ruthless businessman 'Paul Robinson' on Neighbours, which of course I used to watch in the 80s. He told me he'd quit neighbours and was looking for work here.
I went to a 30th birthday party at a house in Beverly Hills that belonged to a wealthy old fellow called Richard D Colburn, who had a vault (literally) full of valuable stringed instruments. We read a little chamber music with him. I played his Goffriller viola (1700s). Losing his place in the Mozart Quintet we were playing, he exclaimed: "Man overboard!" which McInnes later told me he was famous for doing. After the reading session, I switched to whisky in a wine glass. (error in judgement). Smashed, but I had to get home at a certain hour as I had invited 30 people to a party that started 3 hours earlier at my place. A Russian colleague, comfortable driving drunk, gave me a ride back. Our party had been a huge success without me, but now only two people remained.
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There was a limited amount of baroque work in LA, but luckily for me, there were very few players to do it, so as a result I had plenty of high quality early music making with some well trained people, in the process getting to know LA's highways in the sporty little Fiat (Ernie) which was gradually becoming difficult to get out of 1st and 3rd gears, so I was using 2nd gear from stationary, going up in the revs then 4th. Just a matter of time before Ernie, like Bert the Renault before him, would have abandonment issues...
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| 26 y/o with 'Medici Strad' |
The Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra asked me to put on a Hawaiian shirt and play a Guillermo Gómez-Peña production of Purcell's "Indian Queen." There was a wrestling ring, skateboarders on a ramp, full nudity, blue-skinned Carmen Mirandas... Brilliant entertainment conceived by exquisitely creative people.
Orchestral Repertoire Class:
I'd never had any help learning orchestral viola parts until I started at USC. The goals of the Orchestral Rep class were to prepare us for orchestral auditions and to give us knowledge to pass on to our own students in the future. Transforming the repertoire's difficult passages into 'old friends' to be revisited when needed. Each of us had to play this gnarly stuff alone in front of the class - an invaluable weekly practice- to rid you of nerves. Later in my third semester Prof Alan Deveritch took a sabbatical and was replaced by someone from the LA Philharmonic's viola section. During his first class we played the previously assigned difficult solo excerpts, and he was like:
"Oh.... you're preparing stuff for principal viola auditions"
and we all looked blankly back at him, thinking:
"Hah! I guess we are."
These moments of realization hit me periodically during my first four years of high level study. In class, one could look to their left and see a violist who would soon be in a famous quartet, or first chair in an important orchestra. Our professors, in most cases, were training their replacements.
In '97, lessons with Bashmet, at Chigiana would remind me of the distance between us students and greatness. A distance that would forever be an impossible voyage.
As the second semester neared its end McInnes recommended me to fill in for a chamber music project of Faure piano quartet and Mozart flute quartet. Seasoned professionals from LA, which was a huge relief for me. In Australia I had been playing with the upper echelon, but here I was mostly with younger students, talented, sure they were, but it was hard work getting things done. The pro's only had three rehearsals and you were ready to perform, which was the case with this gig.
I paid my $900 tuition for the '94 summer at the Music Academy of the West, and gave notice to my housemate George that I'd be moving out in July.
'94 Summer Music AcademyThe Fiat barely made it to Santa Barbara. The gearbox almost entirely seized up. It would remain parked for the summer except for one 1st gear burnout around the Cate School, amusing my mate, Barnabás but alarming the adult residents, whom I didn't realize were living in those buildings so far back on the property.
Later, I took off the plates (Barnabás has one of them still) and left Ernie the Fiat X-19 on the side of the main road with the key in it, and told someone at the gas station that they could have it. No paperwork. You would think you could get into trouble doing that.
The music academy went smoothly. More principal viola, more lessons, I met a girl called Saskia, and played lots of high quality chamber music. I had a Brahms Piano Quintet going with cello champion Zuill Bailey and three other equally strong personalities. I had a stroke of genius in the first rehearsal and suggested that we use the names: shnookums, honey-bunch, cutie-pie, pumpkin and dear when talking to each other. It worked miracles. Not a single disagreement, and a very coherent and exciting ensemble who put all their inner tension into the music.
The Brahms turned out to be one of those works that would pop up again three years later in France with the Danel Quartet and I would kick some French ass without having to practice at all.
My good friend, Hungarian violinist Barnabás Kelemen appeared that same year, being only 16y/o but already a phenomenon on the violin. Baszd meg. He taught us all some Hungarian which I would later use when I stayed with his family in Budapest.
Barnabas and I played lots of duets. We infuriated his teacher, Kathryn Winkler by performing our Handel/Halvorsen duet in one of the evening student concerts. She was planning for him to play something bigger, but we wanted to do it so I forged her signature or something like that. Nobody was going to stand in our way. Massive applause.
That kid taught me how to have fun again playing music. It was a valuable part of my experience there. He's very famous now and I'm sure he's a wonderful teacher. Fun
I was practicing Viola d'Amore with the intention of playing a double concerto with Dr James Tyler the next semester. He was disappointed when I told him that I didn't have it under control enough to stand up and play a concerto in public. The 6 strings are tuned very differently to a viola and I'd been told that when your viola muscle memory kicks in you can play on the wrong string and have a disaster. In hindsight I should have ignored that advice and gone ahead. I'll never know for sure. At least I wasn't overloading myself like I used to do.
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| The president of the Viola d'Amore society came over to talk, with two of his instruments |
McInnes had me playing Paganini's 24th Caprice and the two movements of Walton's concerto that I'd never gotten around to after that New Zealand competition. I had also been messing around with getting rid of the shoulder rest, but without success or adequate supervision. The following year in Germany I would get that expertise from a professor who had all of his students play without one, but the correct way.
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| Music Academy of the West 1994 |
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| John Secondini, Jeremy Geffen Peter Bucknell and Don McInnes |
At the end of summer, McInnes gave my name and my buddy Shawn Mann's to the Los Angeles Opera. The contract stipulated $150 for performances $100 for rehearsals = $1400 total. It wasn't much but it was useful for both of us. They were recruiting a few extras for their Elektra (Strauss) production. The difficulty of the string parts would raise an eyebrow on any professional. In act IV the first three desks of violas all reached forward and picked up violins that were hanging on the stands. Apparently we all looked funny with these little instruments under our chins.
I spent quite some time on the score, which came in useful again, six years later in Sydney with Simone Young on the podium and the Sydney Symphony, this time with 18 violas - in the pit for the first time since 1960 -. I would be extremely thankful to have a project in Australia at the close of 1999 for the arrival of the millennium because the Sydney Opera House would be the best Y2K new year's eve party on earth.
I was dreading being back in LA in August. Most people didn't like the city: the traffic jams, the smog, the sprawl, the smell, driving everywhere, though several of my class still live there thirty years on, doing well by all accounts.
Saying goodbye to my summer fling, Saskia (Dutch mother, painter father) whom I would meet again four years later, I packed my instruments into John Secondini's car, and he followed me closely as I drove Ernie X-19 as fast as the engine would allow in first gear, sounding like a Ferrari. The engine never blew. Screwdriver in hand, I got out, removed those iconic blue & yellow number plates and said goodbye to the first car I had ever owned.
Back at USC, living with Secondini, for what would turn out to be my final semester, I enrolled in sonata class and played both the Brahms sonatas. McInnes had me play Paganini's 'Moto Perpetuo' in class, violin repertoire that Mr Gutman had started me on.
A new lineup for a Brahms string quartet, more Early Music Ensemble, Aikido training, and a new girlfriend called Songa Lee, a violinist to whom I would have to say goodbye after only four months.
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| Songa is the one on the right |
The USC orchestra had programmed Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet which most of the violists had just played under the baton of Texan conductor Carl St Clair at the summer academy, so we messed around a lot in rehearsal while we waited for everyone to catch up. It took the conductor a while to notice what the rest of the orchestra could see: the viola section waiting until two beats before our most difficult passage before spinning our instruments one revolution up to our shoulders. I was a bad influence amidst a couple of other talented clowns. Eventually I did get pulled aside by Dan Lewis the 70 year old maestro, to talk about 'my attitude.' We immediately became friends and wrote to each other after my departure.
Rules of Teaching (2005 version)
- Teach with love
- Don't talk on the phone
- Keep an up to date file on every student
- Have no favourite students
- Encourage mutual respect between students
- Don't talk about students to other students
- Always listen to questions
- etc
Long story short, I unplugged his office phone at the beginning of every lesson.
If you are lucky, you get three great teachers during your life. If you are really lucky, you get them in the right order.
Anonymous
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| John Secondini and Peter at home in Magnolia Street |
I'd programmed the recital for December, on my second last day in Los Angeles. David Louie a very talented pianist agreed to play for me, and Korean dynamo and blackbelt in Karate: Michelle Kim came in at the end for a Halvorsen.
"You've got a lot of people out there, Peter."
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| McInnes: "My work here is done" |
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| Simple but effective advertising |
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| Shawn, John, Peter and Ab |