Teaching in Kabul

Emma Ayres, a violist and former ABC Classic FM radio presenter, discusses her experience in teaching in Kabul at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music.

CP: You teach viola, cello, and violin as well?

EA: A little bit of violin and a little bit of double bass, although I’m not a very good double bass player.

CP: But I imagine the process of a child learning viola is acoustically terrible, because I spent a year learning violin, and at the end of the year, my teacher just said, “Guitar’s your thing.” 

EA: Just the open strings?

CP: Yeah.

EA: Yeah, and plucking.

CP: But do you have to be resilient to get through those early learning times?

EA: Actually, there was an amazing experience that happened a few months ago, which was terrible, actually. There was a massive bomb that went off at the police academy, and about 30 police cadets were killed. I was at home, and it was warm, and I was sitting outside having a nice cold drink, and I heard the sound of this bomb going off. The thing is that a bomb is actually an incredible sound, because its like it just takes every sound around and makes it into this perfect round thing. So it’s something that you just don’t experience very much. But the thing is that it ends everything. All these young men died.

Then I went to school the next day, as you do, and I listened to a beginning string student, and it sounded absolutely terrible. I was thinking about the sound of the bomb, which was kind of perfect, but it ended everything, and then the sound of this little kid playing the viola, and it sounded so terrible, but the thing is, it’s the beginning of something so incredible.

Emma Ayres, in an interview with Charlie Pickering. The Weekly. Series 2, episode 3. 17 February 2016.

Posted

in

,

by

Greg

Tags:

, , ,

Featured Content

Smooth Sailing
Title: Smooth Sailing Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano duet Level: Piano 1 – 1.1 (five finger position) Product medium: PDF score (audio of accompaniment track only)
Bugs Bunny can save classical music
“The future of classical music lies with the younger generation, which must be weaned away from the cacophony of rock and the neon glitter of “American Idol”-type TV shows. Instead of dragging children to concerts, where they squirm with boredom, rent some old movies featuring soundtracks of classical music. Even toddlers can be exposed to […]
Franz Joseph Haydn: Piano Trio (Hob. XV, No. 25) “Gypsy Trio”
I. Andante II. Poco Adagio III Rondo all’Ongarese Chamber music in the eighteenth century was written for and performed for the aristocracy. Music was an aesthetic pleasure: thus an emphasis was placed on musical balance and clarity in the context of an expressive style: evident particularly in the first two movements of this trio, which […]
What an artist can do for another
The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration. – Steven Pressfield S. Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, New York, Black Irish Entertainment, 2002, p.18
Education and research
Education & research services in the fields below are offered both: – online – face to face Skill areas: – Aural and harmony – Analysis – Music history – Piano tuition How can Emotemuse help you? – Tuition – Research and analysis Contact   THE CRAFT OF THE MUSICAL LANGUAGE Greg Smith completed a Bachelor […]
Art and the strength of the former times
In 1824, Schubert wrote a letter to his friend Schober concerning a general complacency about the role of art at the time: The idle time, which hinders the fulfillment of all greatness, destroys me too. Even golden verse is foolishly mocked by the people, no longer attentive to its powerful message. Only by the gift […]
Appreciating beauty
Music exists only in a passing of time, racing past us like the mid-nineenth-century trains Ruskin so hated. It is utterly non-fixed, and to focus on one moment is to destroy the whole. It is a forest that we have to pass through, not a single tree that we can contemplate or capture. But, if […]
Hammerstein’s card games
Music theatre writer Oscar Hammerstein loved to play games.  His nephew recalls: There’s a family story about his game-playing. I can’t vouch for its authenticity, but it rings true. He was playing a very informal game of bridge with two of his collaborators, the composers Jerome Kern and Sigmund Romberg, and someone else one afternoon. […]
The two faces of an art work
“Every great work of art has two faces: one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.” — Daniel Barenboim. Cited in: Barenboim, Daniel & Said, Edward (2002) Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society. New York: Pantheon Books.
Tchaikovsky and mushroom collecting
Like so many Russians, he was a madly keen collector of mushrooms and could indulge his passion freely at Klin; the woods and fields around his house were filled with them.  However, as anyone will know who has taken to the sport, there are mushroom collectors and mushroom collectors; some have the eye for it, […]