It was not the crystal-ball-gazing or tarot-card-reading kind of psychic presence, but rather the psychic presence you hear in his musical voice: light and airy, while at the same time filled with earth-bound gravity. A combination of the sentimental and the "no-nonsense," spinning with creativity and bound in discipline.
He was a man who was completely in love with the sound and character of the flute. He was also rather thrilled with the doors that playing the flute opened up for him. He told me once that if he hadn't played the flute, he wouldn't have gone to Curtis, and he wouldn't have gotten an education.
The beginning of my time at Juilliard coincided with Julius Baker's recovery from a life-changing heart attack. I didn't know him before the heart attack, but when I met him he was an avid jogger, and seemed to exist by eating cottage cheese and rotisserie chicken, and drinking coffee. He would send students out to get him a half chicken to have for dinner in his office on concert days. Lunch would be in the Juilliard cafeteria, and he would always ask some of his students to have lunch with him in the faculty part of the cafeteria, which was filled with luminaries. Some were visiting him.
In retrospect it seems that the Juilliard teaching experience for him was entirely social. It gave him a nice place to be on concert days when he had a rehearsal in the morning and a concert in the evening in return for what was probably a very low salary and low expectations from the administration. People would always come to Juilliard to study with him, and he had the knack of "smelling" talent. And those with ambition (everyone seemed to have ambition) would succeed with minimal intervention on his part.
[When I first met him he called me "a diamond in the rough." I was just sixteen, and had no idea what it meant, so I asked him. Later in our student-teacher relationship he said something about playing something "in your own inimitable way." It was another new word for me.]
He liked to learn about the "extra-flute" interests of his students, and liked to meet our friends. I introduced him to a singer friend of mine, a very smart woman who had gone to Yale and introduced me to "The Waste Land." She said that he WAS the god Pan. And he used to say that his name in Spanish was Julio Panera.
Julius Baker used to tell his students to listen to Heifetz recordings. I'm sure that most of them did, but try as I might (and I tried with all my might) I could not get my flute to sound like a violin or to sound like Heifetz. I listened to the whole of the Heifetz collection that was available during the late 1970s with my friend Danny Morganstern, and became obsessed with the Saint-Saëns D minor Sonata, which I transcribed for flute. None of my flute colleagues were impressed. And I think that Julius Baker knew that I was really a violinist at heart. The only thing I remember him saying about the Saint-Saëns (which I brought to a lesson because I was preparing it to play on a recital) was asking the question, "Why are you always playing Salon music?"
He was a man who was completely in love with the sound and character of the flute. He was also rather thrilled with the doors that playing the flute opened up for him. He told me once that if he hadn't played the flute, he wouldn't have gone to Curtis, and he wouldn't have gotten an education.
The beginning of my time at Juilliard coincided with Julius Baker's recovery from a life-changing heart attack. I didn't know him before the heart attack, but when I met him he was an avid jogger, and seemed to exist by eating cottage cheese and rotisserie chicken, and drinking coffee. He would send students out to get him a half chicken to have for dinner in his office on concert days. Lunch would be in the Juilliard cafeteria, and he would always ask some of his students to have lunch with him in the faculty part of the cafeteria, which was filled with luminaries. Some were visiting him.
In retrospect it seems that the Juilliard teaching experience for him was entirely social. It gave him a nice place to be on concert days when he had a rehearsal in the morning and a concert in the evening in return for what was probably a very low salary and low expectations from the administration. People would always come to Juilliard to study with him, and he had the knack of "smelling" talent. And those with ambition (everyone seemed to have ambition) would succeed with minimal intervention on his part.
[When I first met him he called me "a diamond in the rough." I was just sixteen, and had no idea what it meant, so I asked him. Later in our student-teacher relationship he said something about playing something "in your own inimitable way." It was another new word for me.]
He liked to learn about the "extra-flute" interests of his students, and liked to meet our friends. I introduced him to a singer friend of mine, a very smart woman who had gone to Yale and introduced me to "The Waste Land." She said that he WAS the god Pan. And he used to say that his name in Spanish was Julio Panera.
I don’t remember what my response was. I don’t know if I would have known what salon music was at that point.
Now, in retrospect, I really have to thank him for recognizing that I was not really a flutist, but rather a musician with a flute who tried her very best to make the most of what sometimes felt like a life sentence. I felt that I had failed musically (and intellectually) at everything else: I stopped playing violin as a child for dumb child-like "reasons," I couldn't play piano (maybe lessons might have helped), I couldn't sing (again, maybe lessons might have helped). But flute was easy for me, and easy, for me, doesn't mean much of anything.
There are people, like Julius Baker, and like my successful colleagues and friends who love playing the flute, for whom the flute is everything.
I am a person who likes to work hard at things that are really important to me. Things that come easily stay on the emotional surface for me. They always have, and they always will. And I have my experiences with Julius Baker to thank for eventually learning that playing the flute was indeed not important for me. And I have him to thank for finding my musical "home" in playing violin and viola, and writing music.
Now, in retrospect, I really have to thank him for recognizing that I was not really a flutist, but rather a musician with a flute who tried her very best to make the most of what sometimes felt like a life sentence. I felt that I had failed musically (and intellectually) at everything else: I stopped playing violin as a child for dumb child-like "reasons," I couldn't play piano (maybe lessons might have helped), I couldn't sing (again, maybe lessons might have helped). But flute was easy for me, and easy, for me, doesn't mean much of anything.
There are people, like Julius Baker, and like my successful colleagues and friends who love playing the flute, for whom the flute is everything.
I am a person who likes to work hard at things that are really important to me. Things that come easily stay on the emotional surface for me. They always have, and they always will. And I have my experiences with Julius Baker to thank for eventually learning that playing the flute was indeed not important for me. And I have him to thank for finding my musical "home" in playing violin and viola, and writing music.
2 comments:
Oh, Elaine, this is so wise:
"How can any teacher know what her or she ends up teaching a student?"
I think that my martial arts teachers mostly have no idea of the different things that I learned from them.
Thank you, Lisa! And you have no idea what your students have learned from you. It makes the work of teaching all the more worthwhile.
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