Lee's Excellent Brazilian Adventure - pt. 2

Lee's Excellent Brazilian Adventure - Pt 2

by Lee Monroe

Finale Master Classes

I taught a masters class of about 20 people, most of which were college age students.  They all were quite bright and were anxious to get to the very difficult Finale questions.  It took me a few moments to get up and running.  The computer that they had set up for me was in Portuguese, of course (including the Finale program).  Once I got acclimated though I could get around pretty easily.  My initial interpreter for my first session was Neves, who has a very good command of English.  He is also the administrator of the Festival and the chief administrator of the conservatory in Tatui, so it’s safe to say that his cell phone bills can be quite impressive.  After a while, one of the students in the class took over the interpreting because there were many issues that Neves had to deal with related to the festival.  The result was fewer interruptions but the language barrier increased two-fold.  Luckily they had provided me with an overhead projector that allowed more demonstrating than actual talking (some who know me might consider this a blessing).

I decided to just cover the basics the first day.  It was then decided to break up the classes the following day into a beginner and advanced class in the morning and then a general class for all in the afternoon.  As difficult as the communication was, I was very impressed with the level of knowledge and desire to learn from the participants.

In one of our discussions about notation, I was given some examples of some of the more bizarre music notation examples that one might find published.  It gave me an opportunity to do my speech about standardizing music notation.  Just because a composer makes up a new notation and someone publishes it, this doesn’t constitute correct notation.  It is my opinion, that unless a new notation is something that can be musically detectable by the listener, then it has no place in music notation.  I said “I don’t speak Portuguese and most of you don’t speak English, but we all speak the same language when it comes to music.”  I work with musicians from Eastern Europe to Japan and the importance of us all interpreting the musical information alike is vital to all of our success.

I came away from my Finale sessions with mixed emotions.  On the one hand I know that many of the students received some much-needed guidance.  On the other hand, had I known more about the venue and the environment that I would be teaching in I could have been much more effective.  I already have many ideas should I get the opportunity to return.

Great Food

Another pleasant surprise in Brazil was the food.  Having a major appreciation for meat, I was able to overcome my inadequacies with Portuguese to have many wonderful meals.  Our first night in Tatui we were treated to Doca’s, a nice little family restaurant in downtown.  Marvin had been there before with many pleasing memories (I figured that out when he stuck his head out the window and yelled to the owner as we drove in from the airport in Sao Paulo).

The food was fabulous.  I had steak smothered in gravy with local vegetables on the side (the names of which I don’t remember).  Bill Mays seemed to take delight in all the nuances of each vegetable’s unique texture and flavor.  Whenever I travel I make a point to try almost anything a culture has to offer (related to food & drink that is); some of my most delicious experiences have come from something I would never get near my face in the states.

(Doca’s Restaurant in Tatui)

In that vein I had to try the original Brazilian drink “Caipirinha” made with 1 lime, 2 ounces of cachaça (Brazilian sugarcane liquor), sugar & ice cubes.  I had ample warning of its potency so I only had one and it was quite delectable.

The service was excellent and set the tone for our expectations for the remainder of the visit.

Wednesday we ate at a local Bar-B-Que where the shish-kabobs were more like two-handed swords.   The waiter would bring you one and cut a full steak off for your plate.  Everything was dripping with flavor and there was always too much to eat.  I never left any restaurant in Brazil hungry.

(Dale Underwood [obscured], Neves, Marvin Stamm, several local trumpet players, Tatui Conservatory Trumpet Professor, Rich Viano, [I’m taking the picture of course])

Next - On to the Mountains

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Lee Monroe is the owner of Express Music Services.  He has been a fulltime copyist for 19 years and was strictly a hand copyist for the first 15.  You can check out his hand music font by following this link - LeeMusic.

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Lee's Excellent Brazilian Adventure - pt. 3

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