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Posted on July 10, 2014 by Anne Ku
Last photo of Dad and me, Taichung, Taiwan, March 2014

Last photo of Dad and me, Taichung, Taiwan, March 2014

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Reunion madness

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Anne Ku

A full moon makes me think of and long for reunions. Why? Because the moon when full, symbolizes a complete circle — a reunion.

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Learn to play piano

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Anne Ku

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Community college: a college of and for the community

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Anne Ku

When my colleague in Humanities sent an e-mail with nothing but a link to the Civil Beat article to a mailing list subscribed by some 641 employees and students at UH Maui College this past Monday April 21st, my immediate reaction was “don’t they teach family planning to avoid unplanned pregnancies?” My second reaction was “maybe that’s a taboo subject.”

Others who read the article more thoroughly had more substantive things to say. Two days later, my colleague Stephen Fox who teaches “Experiences of Music” rebutted in Huffington Post.

For me, these two articles and the long e-mail trail of first-person testimonies to their own experiences in appreciating the community college system caused me to ponder if I had too tunnel a vision in my initial attempt to “fix” it.

I arrived in Maui with no experience of attending community colleges and only a brief teaching spell at a university that was a former polytechnic in London — the closest equivalent to a community college. It ranked last place out of 122 institutions of higher education in the UK at the time. My probability and statistics students were struggling in class and juggling work and family commitments. I often excused myself from class to scream silently into the empty hallway, to regain my strength and composure.

I did not understand what it meant to be struggling and juggling until it was my turn to be a mature student. Going back to school to pursue a full-time degree in music after years in non-music industries was an eye-opener. Among talented kids half my age, I felt inadequate and old. Every day I’d spend half an hour grooming myself to look young and fit in. It might have been easier if there were other students my age. But life-long learning at a conservatory was unheard of.

Now I teach and study part-time at a community college in Hawaii, and I am grateful for the opportunity to do both. Not everyone is here to get a degree. I’m taking a class to improve my writing and conflict management skills. I would love to take art history and all these other courses I never could afford the time to take during my undergraduate years because I was so set on getting my degree in engineering.

I am sure there are others in the community that would take courses for personal enrichment and self-interest. Unfortunately, accreditation agencies don’t assess on that basis. They measure how long it takes to graduate, how many graduate, how many transfer, how many complete their courses, how many part-time students become full-time degree-seeking students.

On those bases, I would be a poor statistic, for I am not taking classes to pursue a degree. I have students and classmates who are former combat soldiers, retired financial analysts, former prisoners, grandparents, working adults, and full-time students that fit the traditional profile.

Not everyone is here to get a degree.

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The cost of performing and producing your own concert

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Anne Ku

Every conservatory student is faced with the daunting task of putting together a concert in which he or she performs or composes. When I had to prepare for my “final exam concert” in 2008, I had no idea what was involved, only that I had to do it.

There was no such thing as crowd funding back in those days. Or at least I had never heard of such a thing. The only cost I was worried about was the dinner after the concert. How was I to treat 40 musicians to an authentic Chinese banquet? I should also pay for drinks and snacks after the concert and before the “verdict” — a half-hour period of rejoice and uncertainty before the jury announces my grade. I should also buy gifts for the conductors and soloists and flowers for the orchestral musicians.

I decided I would ask for sponsorship — whatever that meant.

Invitation to Anne Ku's Culture Shock! Final Exam in Composition, June 2, 2008

Invitation to Anne Ku’s Culture Shock! Final Exam in Composition, June 2, 2008

I asked the university where I had been teaching as an adjunct lecturer. They helped me reduce the cost of printing the posters and programme notes. I asked the bicycle shop next door. The owner was surprisingly supportive. I asked the wine shop opposite. I asked the dental practice opposite the wine shop. That covered three of the four corners of my street.

The dentist said his practice was new. He didn’t have any cash to give. I negotiated free dental cleaning for the soloists and choir singers in my chamber opera. The wine shop gave me a big discount on expensive wines for the two conductors and a case of wine for the Chinese banquet.

How do I make sure the 200-seat concert hall gets filled? I could call and e-mail all my friends. I could put a poster up and hope people would notice. Someone introduced me to Facebook as a means to grow an audience.

These costs were least of my worries.

My real worry was finishing my opera in time, early enough to find musicians to play it. I had a mental block to finishing it. I had a row with one of my teachers. The other lived in Belgium. Fortunately, my first composition teacher, who had retired a few years before, came to my rescue. The late Henk Alkema lived on a house boat within a short cycle distance from my house. He not only offered to help me with my opera but insisted that I needed a conductor. And that he wanted to conduct it.

The story of how Henk helped me deserves a blog post in itself. I wish I had asked him how to recruit musicians for my opera. He told me the more violinists the better. I deliberately avoided writing a viola part because I knew there was a shortage of viola players at the conservatory. I went to the teachers and asked for names of their best students.

Would I have to pay them to play my music? I hadn’t budgeted for that. We were all students, after all. But why would my classmates want to volunteer their time to study, rehearse, and perform my music? Unless, they did it out of the goodness of their hearts, they got credit for doing so, they would feel left out if they didn’t, or I’d do the same for them. I simply didn’t know what motivated musicians to play music, and in this case, unknown music by an unknown composer.

As the project wore on, I got more ideas and more help. People volunteered. I recruited a stage manager. I recruited a front office manager – someone who graduated with a Masters in arts management – to handle the audience and programs. I invited my next door neighbor, an amazingly good amateur photographer, to take profile photos of the musicians before the concert. I even got interviewed in the university newspaper.

In hindsight, I daresay that it was the most empowering experience I have ever had. If you can produce your own concert from scratch, you can do anything.

The audience at Anne Ku's Final Exam Concert, June 2008

The audience at Anne Ku’s Final Exam Concert, June 2008. Photo credit: Fokke v.d. Meer

 

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Empty your mind with yoga

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Anne Ku

Empty your mind.

That’s what meditation tells us to do. I have trouble emptying my mind. When I do yoga, that’s when I let my mind wander. It wanders off to distant places. It’s a playground of possibilities.

I should be emptying my mind when I do yoga. I try to focus on the pose. But my mind needs to go somewhere.

I have been practising yoga for a long time, off and on, until I finally gave up and gave in.

Outdoor yoga in Utrecht, Netherlands, June 2011

Outdoor yoga in Utrecht, Netherlands, June 2011

My late maternal grandfather was still doing yoga even before he died of lung cancer in his mid-seventies. My friend’s mom, a chain smoker and a yoga instructor in northern Germany, introduced me to a few poses while on holiday on a Danish island. My Swiss/Italian reflexologist friend brought me to her yoga class in London. I didn’t understand it at all. I did not sweat. I didn’t see the use of contortionist poses. What was yoga supposed to do for me?

Later, I decided to give it another chance. I noticed that yoga teachers possessed the kind of bodies I wished for myself — slender, fat-free, and toned. Their faces showed the health of their bodies. They moved like cats. Maybe that’s the result of practising yoga.

In 2002, I joined a local health club in London that offered yoga and other classes. I cycled to the club every day to take fitness classes and swim in the over-chlorinated indoor pool. I was introduced to different kinds of yoga – the simplest kind, the kind that made you sweat profusely, and those that made you hold your position until you wanted to collapse.

When I moved to the Netherlands, I actively sought out places where yoga was taught. It took a year or two before I found a club that was convenient. I learned my Dutch that way. The classes at the sports club on the other side of the canal where I lived were always full. The yoga mats were as densely packed as the country’s reputation of being the densest in Europe.

To fulfill a dream I’ve had, I brought a Hatha yoga teacher from the Himalayas to conduct a class in my house. On centrally-heated oak parquet floors we did what-I-called “authentic yoga.” A year later, we did it in our back garden with even more people. The friends and neighbors who participated also brought vegetarian dishes to contribute to the shared meal afterwards. The experience manifested the true meaning of yoga: union.

Now in Maui, yoga is a regular thing for me. I still practise it indoors though I long to do yoga on the beach or in the park. The single experience of doing yoga on the campus lawn last year left a vivid impression.

My front garden in Wailuku has two levels of lawn with a view of the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps one day, I will organize a yoga session out here.

In the last pose, the corpse pose, we are told to lie on our backs with our eyes closed for five minutes before we conclude with “namaste.” That’s our last chance to empty our minds.

By then, my mind is bored with the playground of possibilities. I feel a calmness. I resign to emptiness.

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Travel to step outside one’s comfort zone

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Anne Ku

After a simple vegetarian lunch near my father’s condo in Taichung, Taiwan, I walked to the corner optometry shop to pick up the glasses I had ordered when I arrived two days ago. The optometrist advised me to replace the pitch-black lenses of the year-old Maui Jim sunglasses and not to leave them in the sun or inside a car to prevent deterioration.

I was grateful to have those sunglasses on standby when I had accidentally dropped my made-in-Italy Gucci prescription sunglasses in San Francisco nearly a year go.

Satisfied with the replacement lenses, I paid and got ready to head into the noonday sun.

Just then, I caught the overworked optometrist staring at me with admiration. She hesitatingly whispered, “I wish I could travel.”

“You can,” I said immediately.

She smiled and shook her head. “No, I don’t have the money.”

Then it occurred to me that I had taken travel for granted. To travel, one must have the inclination, the time, the means (money), and the health. To travel independently as I have done, one must be able to communicate in the native language and be fearless about getting lost and approaching strangers.

Dad and me at the Notre Dame in Paris, 1998

Dad and me at the Notre Dame in Paris, 1998

Earlier, my eighty-three year-old father asked me how many countries I visited. In responding, I could only think of countries I did not visit. In my own mind, there’s a pecking order. A visit doesn’t count as much as a lengthy stay for work or study.

Before coming on this week-long trip, I wondered why I had become content not traveling as wildly as I used to. After all, I once commuted out of London Heathrow Airport, preferring to shop at duty free and living in spotless, clutter-free hotel rooms to my own home.

Nowadays, I question the interruption of travel. Why would I get on a plane and endure the logistical hassles of queuing for luggage inspection, visa clearance, and other third-party approvals, when every day on Maui is a day in paradise? With high speed internet, I could easily FaceTime or Skype my friends in other time zones. Have I become too comfortable?

Now that I am away from “home” I remember why I travel. Because I can. As long as I can still travel, I will travel.

When I am far away, I remember all those things I forgot that I missed.

Speaking Chinese everyday. Eating authentic Chinese food every meal. Hearing my father speak in Shanghainese dialect. Hearing my maternal relatives speak in Hakka dialect. 

When I travel, I not only cross time zones but also, it seems, time itself. I am a daughter again. I am a teenager again. We revisit the past as if it is still yesterday. My father recounts the same stories with detail: lament for his best friend who returned to Shanghai because he was homesick, only to suffer in the Cultural Revolution, his second-best friend who helped get him a university teaching position in Taipei, and his all-expense-paid trip to mainland USA on his East-West Center Fellowship in the late sixties.

Other than my first eighteen years, our lives intersected in discrete periods of time: the summers I returned to visit, the occasional family reunion, travel to mainland China, Paris, Amsterdam, and now my solo visits during Spring Break. For health reasons, my father stopped traveling a few years ago.

Travel has taken on a new meaning for me. It’s not about going places where I’ve not been before but visiting those I care about, wherever they are.

So I should say to the optometrist, “if you really want to travel, you can.” But most people are too comfortable where they are.

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Earth Day Jam Piano Workshop

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Anne Ku

Free one-hour workshop to celebrate “Earth Day” on Maui

Curious what it’s like to play the piano?

How about playing the piano with others? It’s as though you’re in a rock band, ensemble, or orchestra. Really!

Most pianists never get to experience what it’s like to play with other pianists, let alone other musicians. When you play with other musicians, it’s even better than singing in a choir. You’re surrounded by live stereo music that you produce.

Today’s digital pianos are equipped with a variety of sounds: grand piano, electric piano, church organ, jazz piano, harpsichord, string, voice (choir), vibraphone, and more. You can create your own symphonic orchestra through keyboards.

Even if you’ve never touched a musical instrument before, you will quickly learn how to play the piano like a rhythm instrument. The piano belongs to the percussion family after all. You will also learn, within ONE hour, how to play all eighty-eight keys on the piano.

Really it’s possible. It’s been done before.

Earth Day Jam April 22, 2014 at UH Maui College

Earth Day Jam April 22, 2014 at UH Maui College

For more information, reply on the COMMENT box below and mention if you would prefer a private response.

  • Tuesday April 22nd, 2014
  • Doors open: 1:40 PM
  • Time: 2 to 3 PM

University of Hawaii Maui College
Kupa’a Building, Room 104
Kahului, Hawaii 96732

More INFO about the piano ensemble approach to group piano class

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Piano ensemble approach

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Anne Ku

I am developing an approach to teaching adult group piano by conducting the group as an ensemble.

It occurred to me that most pianists never get a chance to play with other musicians. At most they may play duet or accompany a singer but to play music the way string quartets or bigger ensembles, such as rock bands or orchestras, that is extremely rare.

Why?

Pentascale, oil painting by Mauro Castillo

Pentascale, oil painting by Mauro Castillo

For one thing, if a group needs a pianist, it needs only one. There’s no room for two or more.

Another is that the way someone learns to play the piano is one on one such as through individual, private lessons.

Nowadays, with digital pianos that have buttons for strings, jazz organ, harpsichord, guitar, choir, etc., it’s possible to simulate a bigger ensemble with just pianists.

Adult beginners learn much more quickly than children. But they can easily get bored or time-challenged by other responsibilities and “drop out.” To prevent dropping out, there has to be some social accountability such as in a group situation. In a group, they learn to listen, play in time, and participate in a way they can’t in individual lessons. Group dynamics makes piano playing fun and enjoyable. There are other advantages to playing in a group.

Finally, it’s cheaper to take group classes than individual lessons.

As a Hawaii state resident, it’s just $212 to take 16 weeks of piano classes either 2.5 hours each or twice a week for 1.25 hours at college — compared to $100 per hour for individual lessons at market rates. [Read my post about the comparison.]

I’m arranging music for different levels of pianists to play together. By doing so, I can have different levels in one class.

SAVE THE DATE:
EARTH DAY JAM — free one-hour workshop at UH Maui College on Tuesday April 22nd.

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Writer’s block

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Anne Ku

6,000 words.

Six thousand words.

That’s what I have to produce this weekend. I keep putting it off.

First I had to do filing. Pay my bills. Clear my desk.

Next, I decided to install Sibelius, a process that took four CDs and two hours. While that was going on, I sat outside and did a “free write” to warm up.

I wrote the story of Maui EVA – why electric vehicles make sense on Maui — the big picture of why I spent the last two years dedicated to this cause. Just when I got into the rhythm of writing, using a very nice black pen, sipping my Italian espresso coffee outdoors, I heard a click.

Maui EVA project kicks off at the Grand Wailea, November 1, 2011

Maui EVA project kicks off at the Grand Wailea, November 1, 2011

Sibelius 7 finished installing. I went back online to activate this music notation software. Normally I would start using the software, but I knew I had to write the story.

Instead of plunging into the 6,000 words, I plunged into another writing activity — a four-page reading log (double spaced, font 12) capturing the four main concepts in chapter four of “Interpersonal Conflict,” the textbook of the cross-listed psychology and communications online course I’m taking this semester.

By the time I finished all assignments due next Thursday, it’s nearly time to do my laps in the outdoor public pool nearby. Should I skip it as punishment for killing time and not writing those six thousand words?

No. Swimming gives me clarity of thought. As I already have the entire story in my head, I  just need to type it up and get into it.

I have also finished all other admin and e-mails that could possibly get in the way of my writing. There should be no more distractions except for the reward of attending a free concert tomorrow with my mother.

It’s always like this. I resist and resist. I do everything to get rid of what might get in the way of the flow of writing. And then I plunge into writing, unstoppable but regretting that I didn’t start earlier.

Looking outside, I fidget. The grass needs mowing. I can’t afford to do that now. I shall take a dip. When I return from Sakamoto Pool, I will have no more excuses.

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