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

Let My Tongue Be Silenced – Psalm 136 (137)
Title: Let my tongue be silenced Text: Psalm 136 (137) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano (unison verses) Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:    
Columbine’s Veil
Title: Columbine’s Veil Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score Background: Pierrot, separated from his love Columbine, is weeping in his room. Overcome with sorrow, he falls asleep in the corner. Some friends of Pierrot come to visit. When they eventually find him, they fetch a nearby pianist and suggest waking Pierrot with […]
The musician’s contribution to the world
“As musicians, we are already doing something for the world … We make it more flowing? … Through music”. Pianist Lang Lang Shirley Apthorp, “Piano Man”, The Australian, May 14 2011.
Mozart improvising
In 1777, Mozart was having lunch with his uncle at the Holy Cross Convent in Ausburg. Mozart played a sinfoni and Vanhall’s Violin Concerto in B. In the evening, at supper, he performed his Strasbourg concerto, a keyboard prelude and his Fischer Variations (K179). It was suggested to the deacon of the Holy Cross Conen, […]
How to get an audience
Johannes Brahms and the violinist Eduard Remenyi had been concertizing to great success in Cello and Lüneberg.  By this time the two musicians were so elated over their success that they decided to try a concert in the city of Hildesheim entirely on their own.  They had no one there to herald their coming, write […]
Mozart’s masterpieces
“Mozart makes you believe in God – much more than going to church – because it cannot be by chance that such a phenomenon arrives into this world and then passes after thirty-six years, leaving behind such an unbounded number of unparalleled masterpieces.” Sir Georg Solti Source: Kelly, Henry & Foley, John (1998) Classic FM […]
Anton Arensky: Trio in D minor for violin, cello, and piano (op. 32)
I. Allegro moderato II. Scherzo: Allegro molto-Meno Mosso-Allegro molto III. Elegia: Adagio IV: Finale: Allegro non troppo Accounts of Arensky are of a juxtaposed nature. On the personal level, he was described by Tchaikovsky as incredibly nervous, and he was never known to have a romantic attachment. He was considered “the most delicate person by […]
Pavel Kolesnikov on the Goldberg Variations
“Like climbing an infinite stairway, one step at a time.” —Pavel Kolesnikov, working on Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Jeal, Erica, “Pavel Kolesnikov, the pianist making ‘a palace of sound built by your own imagination’”, The Guardian, 9 September 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/09/pavel-kolesnikov-the-pianist-making-a-palace-of-sound-built-by-your-own-imagination, accessed 11 September 2021.
Communication with the audience
Igor Stravinsky contemplates the ultimate goal of an artist versus reality: “Art postulates communion [between the artist and the audience], and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself. But in spite of that need, he prefers to direct and frank opposition to apparent agreement which is […]
That’s a wrap
Electronic music composer Jeff Bryant never imagined that learning to knit would be part of his graduate coursework at California Institute of the Arts. But when his interface design instructor challenged him to build a non-boring MIDI controller device last fall, Bryant found an unlikely musical ally: red yarn. By weaving conductive thread into the […]