The start of a new phase as a pianist: to give the same concert many times

This autumn will be the start of a new phase of my piano career: one where I will behave a little bit more like a "normal" concert pianist. More specifically: most of the successful ones usually have a single solo program (or at least a single core of a program) which they play in many different cities during a couple of months, perhaps even up to a year. Then they change that program, and go through some updated version of the same cities again, with their new program. This is e.g. what my currently living idols - Yuja Wang and Grigory Sokolov - do, as do many others.

Yuja Wang playing the 24 preludes by Chopin. She first played this in Stockholm earlier this year (I was there to listen), and has since then played this program at least 10 different times in different cities shortly thereafter. She will most likely keep doing this a couple of months, and then move on to some other program. 

The advantage of this way of performing is that you get the chance to play the same program many times, and really get into the depth of the pieces, by refining and diving deeper and deeper into them for each concert - and by polishing sections of the pieces up that you want to improve between each concert. In the last couple of years, I have myself been in a different phase than this: one where I instead have been building up myself as a pianist. I have been making the transition from behaving like a chamber musician, who mostly play together with others, to a soloist, who mostly play solo recitals. As part of this, I have been building up a large collection of pieces that I know more or less by heart, i.e. that I have played at least once or twice by heart in concerts. This learning has also involved a steep growth in other aspects, such as technically (because many of these pieces I have learnt are quite demanding), memory-wise, etc. Nevertheless, this phase of mine is now at its end, and I now have a large enough repertoire, and skill set, to move on to the next phase: the more conventional concert pianist phase. In short, I now feel ready to start bringing these pieces that I already learnt into a more formal and deeper setting - into slightly bigger concerts, and on real tours.

 My big benefit in this compared to most other pianists, is that it will be quite easy for me to start this next phase. I am already travelling enough in my science to fulfill also my desire to tour as a pianist (around 2 months a year, and perhaps 10-15 cities), and all of these travels are already payed for by my work. I have also already started to explore the combination of giving concerts while on science tours, and have started to build up contacts and ideas for how this can happen. The other reason why I expect this to be much easier for me, compared to most other pianists, is that I already have a good income, much better than most pianists in Sweden in fact, and I therefore don't need to think about finding people and venues who can pay me quite substantial amounts of money for this. I just need to find nice places to play, and think of nice creative environments where my music really is desired, where audiences will want to listen. Kind of like I did already with my lunch concerts in Linköping, and with my family soirees, which are two concepts that can be multiplied easily by bringing them to all of the universities and cities that I anyway visit.

The first program that I have put together is actually in itself a dream I have had for many years, 20 years if not more: to play all of Chopin's ballades. These ballades are absolutely wonderful, and quite demanding, so it is really a program of a "grown up" pianist. At least the first half of such a program. Just as an example: "Yundi played these 4 ballades at his solo recital in Stockholm a couple of months ago (before break; after break he played the 24 preludes, which I also played a couple of years ago). After this, in 2018, I plan to move on to a program with 3 new Beethoven sonatas (probably in the Spring), and a program with the title "Baroque and the 21st century" (probably in the autumn). Both of those latter programs will be two-act programs, i.e. they require a break in the middle, and will take in total about 2h, even though shorter versions of course are possible as well.
As part of this endeavor, I have now put together a little flyer and am already in contact with friends and colleagues in several different cities where I will play my ballades, both in the US, UK, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. If you are, or know somebody more who might be, having a nice concert venue and audience where the 4 ballades of Chopin would be appreciated, during the autumn, or where some of the other two programs would fit in during 2018, please feel free to distribute this to them. And if you have comments on how you think that the flyer can be improved, such comments are of course welcome as well :)

A little update and life progress report from...

Gunnar 

New lunch concert on Wednesday - Chopin's Ballade 3 and 4

When the sun reaches its highest this year, on the astronomical midsummer's eve at lunch time, I will hold my next lunch concert. I will play the piano music by Chopin, written on his own solstice as a composer - his last Ballade, nr 4. To set the stage for that, I will also play the preceding Ballade, nr 3, another beautiful piece, as well as a short movement from one of Beethoven's most famous sonatas.

 

The Ballades are in many ways my favorite pieces by Chopin, and both his first and last Ballade are among my own top 5 piano pieces ever written. I am therefore happy to also announce that I will be playing all of his 4 Ballades at another concert, later in the summer: on August 10 at 16.00 in the castle of Bjärka Säby. (link) 

 

The concert now on Wednesday is in some ways a warming up for that concert (it will e.g. be the first time I play his Ballade nr 3), and I will then be playing that full concert several more times, both here in Sweden and abroad. This summer therefore in many ways marks the start of a new phase in my career, and I am looking forward to celebrating the symbolic pre-start of it with those of you want now on Wednesday.

Where: Berzelius-salen, close to the HU library, hospital area, Linköping
When: Wednesday June 21, 12.20-12.50
What: Lunch concert
Who: Pianist Gunnar Cedersund
Prize: Free of charge

Welcome!
Gunnar

Co-creation at its best - recorded for all to see

I love the internet, and all our various recording technologies available today, which allow us to capture all of the many golden moments that are being created every day - and then share it with the rest of the world. One of the things I like particularily much is when improvised meetings happen that just clicks into place without preparations.

In dancing this happens so often on the dance floor, when you can dance with a stranger, with whom you never danced before, but you anyway immediately click, and have the most wonderful experience together - an experience you know that both of you will remember and cherish for the rest of your lives. In that sense, I like improvised dancing, or - in terms of competitions - Jack and Jill style competitions the best, because then you can really see inspiration as it gradually manifests itself in physical form. Here is just one of many examples of an improvised dancing in my new favorite dance - West Coast Swing - with two of my favorite improvisational dancers: Tatiana Mollman and Maxence Martin.

In music, I equally much admire the people who can improvise, and create music on the spot. But - being a classical musician - I want to say that the same type of new meetings can happen also by playing classical music together with a new person, or, in fact, every time you play for a new audience (because a meeting with an audience is very much also a meeting). Regarding music, there is also a special form of meetings that can happen, and perhaps especially in modern pop music: that the performers invite people from the audience up on the stage, to play along with them, or to themselves play a song for the artist. Below are two great such moments: one with Adele, who invites two guys up on stage, and one with Billy Joel, who brings up a pianist from the audience.

The final video I wanted to share with you today shows an improvised duet with a fan and a star, orchestrated by Ellen. In all of these videos, you see how people can come together, and create magic just by being awesome. Or, as a comment in one of the videos said: "Time, dedication and preparedness meets opportunity and BAM! Lifetime experience."

We should have empowered and empathic human beings meeting us when we interact with the state

 Today I want to write a little it about some of Sweden's recipes for success regarding the creation of a well-functioning state: a state that is encountered as people who one can talk to as people

Hilarious sketch of one of the many encounters one can have with the state, and a slightly dysfunctioning person representing it

When travelling in the world, one is often struck by the impression that many people have of Sweden as a well-functioning country. "You guys seem to have understood something about how to build a well-functioning society", is a saying I have heard quite a few times from people I have met all around the world. I think that the main reason for this is that we have a well-functioning state, which really delivers results, and which is perceived as being "on our side". In other words, we have had people - human beings acting as human beings - that meet us when we for some reason interact with the state (regarding taxes, courts, police, healthcare, etc). 
 
The main importance of having people out in the leaves of the compex tree that makes out the state  is that human beings can see through detailed descriptions of laws and regulations, down to the essense of those regulations. See to it that the spirit of them is fulfilled and not the letter. In many cases these two things (spirit and letter) are not equivalent, and often they are even contradictory (see for instance this example of a well-functioning highly specialized programmer who might be deported from Sweden to Pakistan, because his previous employer did a technical error regarding an insurance policy). In such cases, it is only humans that have the ability to see through to what is right, if the rules should be followed or somehow circumvened - and in all such cases it is absolutely essential that human beings are allowed, empowered, and encouraged to act upon that. The people who make the day-to-day decisions must feel empowered and competent enough to act according to what they feel is right, according to the given essense of what the state (or organisation) is trying to do. 

I really believe that each time such "seeing through" successfully happens, the relationship between the state/leadership and the people/staff/citizen is strengthened, not weakened. Therefore, such behaviour must be promoted and not punished. We must have a humane society, and part of that process is to leave the power to the administration to be able to make their own sensible decisions, and to use their judgement and finger-tip feeling to see the difference between following a rule while upholding its intention, and upholding a rule while opposing its intention. 

Barry Schwartz in his excellent TED talk, on precisely this topic - how to empower people to act responsibly, and to go beyond rules and regulations

However, at the same time as it is important to have freedom of the implementers to have flexibility in their implementations, this must of course not be biased in unfair ways, such as corruption. Also here, Sweden has historically managed to find a good balance. We are one of the least corrupt countries in the world, and we have relatively little problem with racial discriminations or gender inequality. 

How, then, has this come about? It has of course been development in stages over many centuries. But in some sense, these ideals can be traced back to one of the founding fathers behind the Swedish administration: Axel Oxenstierna. He was the de facto ruler during Sweden's most expansive area: when the kings and queens of the time of the 30 year war were out in Europe to try to expand our borders all the way to southern Germany, he remained at home to try to build up a well-functioning state. It is back to him that many of the ideals stem that we still cherrish today, including a low level of corruption, an independence between the administration and the politicians, and a strong sense of responsibility of the people sitting in the lowest levels of these administrations. For those of you who want to know more about this man, there is an interesting SR debate on him here, and an upcoming novel about him here. 

Picture of Axel Oxenstierna, the father of the Swedish administrational system (from Wikipedia)

Finally, I want to emphasize that even though we have an internationally speaking good level in all of these areas, there are many things that still do not function good enough, and there are always tendencies and examples (such as the immigration example above) of how we sometimes move away from these ideals in other directions, where e.g. rules are followed at the expense of their intended idea. It is for this reason, I think that it is important to identify and remind ourselves of the principles that have made Sweden great in the past, and thus use these ideals as a guiding beacon when contemplating whether new suggested changes should be implemented tomorrow. I also think that the identification of such national successful principles is something that can help with our joint evolution of all countries across the world as a whole. 

Yoga scratches where it really itches

You know that feeling of having somebody scratching your back, and finding that spot that you can't really reach yourself, and to which you need to guide them a little while until they find it - but then when they do, you just go "ahhhh". On a deeper level, that's what yoga can do to you, and it can reach to places where virtually no other things can reach.

The yoga technique of neti - something that often really feels like it reaches that spot you cannot get to in any other way - and softly caresses away the irritation that has bothered you. Picture from here.


My father was, just like me when I was younger, sometimes having problems with allergy, and a running nose. He used to carry a handkerchief around, and was blowing in it like crazy. But then, one day, he discovered something that changed that around to some degree: a salt-water mini-injection up into the nose. And then, when we one day talked about why he liked it so much, he said something like: "when I blow my nose, I feel like I am trying to affect a target that is really not where I am working, but when I do this, it feels like I am much closer to hitting the target - to applying the technique to where the problem actually is".

I knew exactly what he was talking about, of course, having discovered the yoga nose-clensing technique neti many years before that - and realized that the pharmacy-driven "nose drops" of which he was taking, was just a sort of primitive precursor to this more comprehensive, and quite wonderful, yoga technique.

However, that story is actually just an example of a more general phenomenon, of which I was reminded today. How yoga - in so many ways - has a wonderful ability to provide techniques that really get to the essense of the problem. Techniques that are not just applying a lot of force (like blowing your nose really forcefully) and applying that force quite far from the actual source of uncomfort (the place in the nose that you would like to clense). Instead, yoga has techniques that are just like the running salt water from the neti pot: they are extremely comfortable, very soft and gentle, and gently just caress, clean, and open up the tensions and "dirt" that you feel disturbing you. And after you are done, you feel a wonderful sense of openness, an ability to breath, and how new energy has come into your system (to be frank, this happens already from such a simple thing as a neti, but yoga's techniques of course also go much deeper than nose-cleansing).

In a way, this is a little bit comparative to the difference between the traditional medicine approach of looking at symptoms - and bringing them back to normal levels at the expense of you losing your balance even more - and yoga's philosphy of dealing with the underlying imbalances and disturbances that have hindered the body from feeling truly good and balanced. Say for instance that you feel stressed, and are having trouble sleeping. Then you might take some chemical compound to artificially make you less stressed and tensed. However, no matter if that chemical is alcohol or a drug, that compound will make you less stressed at the expense of also making you move away from your true balance. Both alcohol and medical drugs will not directly make you less stressed, they will make you numb, and at the same injure your brain and liver - and thus produce the sensation of less stress. In contrast, if you use yoga techniques, you will target the physical, mental, breathing patterns that both represent the manifestation constitute the cause of the problem, and thus really make a difference that is truly positive. In short, yoga has the ability to scratch you where you really itch, and not just make you so numb so you no longer feel the itching.

Under this tree, in a nice little park in London, I have spent a couple of really useful hours this afternoon doing yoga.


The reason why this analogy came to me today, was that I today have had a day off in my travel period. So far, I have been to London, Paris, Barcelona, Eindhoven, Oxford, and now London again - where I at last have a much needed day off. Therefore, I today took the opportunity to visit a park that lies nearby to where I am living, and then spent some 2-3 hours doing yoga under a tree in that park. And during this yoga session, I could feel so many of those itching spots - first in my body, and then in my breathing, and then in my mind - that I have been longing to scratch for days now, and that I at last managed to reach.

So, in some ways you should be careful with trying out yoga - you might just get used to being scratched at places that noone else can reach for you. However, the benefit is of course also that you, yourself, always will be able to scratch yourself at these places. That you will raise your bar for what feeling good really should feel like. And if you do things soundly and harmoniously, there are in reality no negative side-effects to this type of yoga-scratching.

A new travel period has begun

 

The first signs of Hamburg, as seen through the window of a train going from Copenhagen. This is the train that takes me from Scandinavia to virtually all places elsewhere in Europe

 

The landscapes are flowing by outside the window, my internet connection comes and goes, and I have hours upon hours with myself in front of me, to use to my own ends with myself. Those are sure signs that tells me that I have started a new travelling period. As I explained in a few blog posts on my old blog (e.g. this and this), I am living in a carefully designed yearly pattern, that balances and optimizes many of my needs, wishes, and desires. To balance my alchemist and native american visions of digging-where-I-stand with the equally strong vision and ideal of living like a wonderering monk, I have 2-3 intensive travel and vagabonde periods each year, but stay the rest of the year in the same place as I always have lived, and see what I can do with what I am given. Likewise, I balance my desire of travelling with my desire to live in a way so that everybody can live like me, by only flying once a year - all my other travels are normally done by train. By going by train, I can also combine my desire to live in an improvised way, while still granting my other desire of visiting many places, groups, and sceneries, in a relatively short period of time (by being on a train tour, you can easily visit 10 cities in 3 weeks, and still spend sufficient quality time in all of them). And finally, I balance my desire of living in wonderful and beautiful Sweden with my desire to have long summers and short autumns, winters, and springs, by positioning one of my travel periods in mid-september to mid-october in e.g. sunny southern Europe, and another travel period in late-february throughout March period located in even sunnier South America or California. 

With this as a background, it is therefore completely expected that I right now am on a train that takes me down to the south of Europe. This night, I slept in Denmark (Nykoebing Falster), and now I am going to Brussels, and London, where I will be on a conference for a few days. After that, I go down to Barcelona for another conference, and then some 5-6 days of group visitations in France and the Netherlands before a third conference in Amsterdam. The last part of my travel period will take me down to the south of Germany and to beautiful Austria.

Some more details on the scientific part of this trip, inluding links to the conference places, and a listing of all the oral presentations that me and my group will give, is found on my scientific blog. That blog ends with an outreach to my scientific colleagues, to let me know if they want to catch me on the trip, for interesting discussions, something to eat, or some other joint activity. I therefore want to end this more personal and non-professional blog post in the same way: if you are somewhere in the regions of Europe that I will visit, and want to meet me - do let me know, and I will do my best to see if we can hook up!

We can - and must! - raise the status of our school teachers

I just read the following interesting article (in Swedish) featuring an analysis of the reasons for the success of the Finnish school system. The thing that stood out the most to me was the following quote:

"Medan Sverige sliter för att fylla platserna på landets många lärarutbildningar, är det vid universitetet i Helsingfors större söktryck på lärarutbildningen än jurist- eller läkarprogrammen. Av 3 000 sökande i höstas, togs 120 in."

Loosely translated, the quote says that the Finnish school teacher education is one of the most - perhaps the most - prestigeous education you can take in Finland, and that it is harder to get accepted to that education, than to ones to become a lawyer or a medical doctor.

Now that is b-i-i-i-g difference compared to the situation in Sweden (and, I guess, compared to most other places in the world as well). A stark difference. A key difference - which simply cannot be ignored or downplayed. As the article ends, the biggest strength of the teacher education in Finland is not the way it is done (from what they write, it seems very similar to that in Sweden), but it is simply this: they get the best students.

The article also points out that the reason for this high status is not a high salary: it is only marginally higher than in Sweden. It is instead something else: something more related to a sense of calling, that teaching in Finland seems like something many people really would like to do with their lives. That teaching seems like the most meaningful thing many people could imagine doing, and that it to many people would feel like a privilege to be able to do it.
 

I can only agree with this. Teaching is the greatest gift, and the greatest joy, and I love that I have teaching possibilities to such a great degree in my own life. I am also hoping that my life will feature a little bit more teaching in younger ages as well, further down the road. That is actually a long-held dream of mine.

All in all, I think that one of the most important thing we can do in Sweden is to raise the status of the teacher job. Now, how do we do that? It is not that easy, it won't go quickly, but it certainly can be done. I don't have all the answers, but a few simple yet crucial details that come to my mind right away are the following: 

* remove most or at least much of the high administrative burdens on the teachers

* trust the teachers to do their best, and give them the chance to prepare properly, by not only removing administration, but also decreasing their number of teaching hours per week

* have smaller classes, and allow for more extra teachers and volunteers to come in and take of the load of teachers. Have more presence of adults, which by their presence calms unrest and emphasises the importance of the teaching situation. 

* do not focus too much on the bad examples, but try to highlight the examples that do work. Focus on the teachers that are happy in their work, that are succesful. On the schools that are successful. How have they done? We create the image of a thing by the way we talk about it. Let's talk about a teaching career as a gift and as a privilege. As the privilege that it is!