Author: hollanderames

I lost one of my Viola Mothers recently. Karen Ritscher passed on to the unknown plane a couple of weeks ago. I was in Italy when I heard. Got home last week and dug out my Technique Book, which i made in 1999. I was studying with Karen at the Mannes College of Music and had been accepted to the Schleswig Holstein Festival, so I was going to be spending practically the whole summer in Germany. I had SO many technique books from Karen, George Taylor, with whom I’d studied for two summers at Meadowmount, and Lisa Whitfield, my high school viola teacher. There was no way I could bring them all, so, one afternoon, I spent four hours at the copy shop around the corner from Mannes. Sevcik, Schradieck, Kreutzer, Paganini, yada yada yada. But I also copied a ton of pages Karen had given me of words from HER Viola Mama, Karen Tuttle, as well as three different interviews with Tuttle.

I’ve used this book in COUNTLESS lessons, and a lot of students have said I should scan it and make more copies… One of these days I’ll do it, but for now, here are Karen R’s interview from 1993 with Karen T, as well as Tuttle’s famous type- and hand-written pages that I think a lot of her students (& students’ students!) will recognize.

It’s been more than a year since we were in this Airbnb, the last of our trip. This place has now supplanted Japan twice as a destination. First, we were supposed to end our Worldschooling year there, but decided to stay in Italy instead. Then, this summer was supposed to be when we finally went east (well, Italy is east for us, but… further east!) but Christopher started a new job as a school principal (he was an AP before), meaning he no longer gets summers off. So we’re saving Japan for when he’s had enough vacay days to make it possible to go for a good chunk of time. Anyway, here we are, and to be here without the viola, without the homeschooling materials, just purely on vacation, is amazing.

I discovered this soda this morning. It’s made with cedar!! Along with the pine-chocolate-chip gelato from Gunther, seems like this is a food trend to watch/enjoy.

Also, pretty cool that I woke up to THIS, after a long nap!!

Love from this handsome devil at the Acatholic Cemetery

What a time to have visited your beautiful country. Today a man who has threatened to re-invade you is inaugurated. Today, the flags that are flown at half staff for another president, the one who signed the treaty giving you back your land and sovereignty, will be raised to pacify the ego of our new emperor. Today is also the day we should all be celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.

On the last day of my time there, I missed the trio concert because my dear father had sent me on a quest to find the murals painted by our ancestor William Van Ingen. They depict the building of the canal. Sadly, I didn’t find the murals. It turns out they’re in the administrative building and I missed its opening hours. But instead, I found the Canal Museum, which told me so much about our countries histories. I learned about the Palenques and Cimarrones. I learned about the gold and silver payrolls. I learned about Operation Just Cause and spent something like five minutes in a very chilling reenactment virtual reality room. Earlier that day one of your moms had given me a book and she hadn’t given it to any of the other teachers. At first, I didn’t remember what Operation Just Cause was, so when I saw the title in Spanish I thought it was a religious book. Earlier that day I had told one of the participants that I was Jewish, so I thought maybe she had told this mom and she was giving me the book to convert me! Now that I know that it’s personal stories from the invasion, I can’t wait to read it, obviously with my dictionary at hand! Our building of the canal coincided with our helping you get independence from Colombia, so I guess that’s a good thing, right? Seeing the pictures and reading the words all about what it meant made me truly embarrassed. Obviously Music is the best way to make bridges, and just know that I am so thankful for our time together, and for learning about all the incredible culture that exists in your country. I will be back.

A mis nuevos amigos panameños

Qué momento para haber visitado tu hermoso país. Hoy, un hombre que ha amenazado con volver a invadir sup país está inaugurado. Hoy, las banderas que ondean a media asta para otro presidente, el que firmó el tratado devolviendo tu tierra y soberanía, se levantarán para apaciguar el ego de nuestro nuevo emperador. Hoy también es el día en que todos deberíamos celebrar a Martin Luther King Jr.

En el último día de mi tiempo allí, me perdí el concierto del trío porque mi querido padre me había enviado en una búsqueda para encontrar los murales pintados por nuestro antepasado William Van Ingen. Representan la construcción del canal, pero desde una perspectiva estadounidense, obviamente. Lamentablemente, no encontré los murales, resulta que están en el edificio administrativo y me perdí su horario de apertura. Pero en lugar de eso, encontré el Museo del Canal, que me contó mucho sobre la historia de nuestros países. Aprendí sobre Palenques y Cimarrones. Aprendí sobre las nóminas de oro y plata. Aprendí sobre la operación que acaba de causar y pasé algo así como cinco minutos en una sala de realidad virtual de recreación muy escalofriante. Más temprano ese día, una de tus madres me había dado un libro y no se lo había dado a ninguno de los otros profesores. Al principio, no recordaba qué operación era la causa justa, así que cuando vi el título en español pensé que era un libro religioso. Más temprano ese día le había dicho a uno de los participantes que era judío, ¡así que pensé que tal vez se lo había dicho a esta madre y me estaba dando el libro para convertirme! Ahora que sé que son historias personales de la invasión, no puedo esperar a leerlo, ¡obviamente con mi diccionario a mano! Nuestra construcción del canal coincidió con nuestra ayuda para obtener la independencia de Colombia, así que supongo que eso es algo bueno, ¿verdad? Ver la imagen y leer las palabras sobre lo que significaba me hizo realmente avergonzado. Obviamente, la música es la mejor manera de hacer puentes, y solo debes saber que estoy muy agradecido por nuestro tiempo juntos, y por aprender sobre toda la increíble cultura que existe en tu país. Volveré.

who don’t know me very well what my husband does, they sometimes ask, “Principal what?” as in, “which principal instrument in the orchestra?” Which reminds me- we randomly happened upon an episode of Law and Order that was about the murder of a violinist in an opera orchestra, and the conductor was the prime suspect, and people kept saying, “Everyone knew he was gonna make her First Violin!” And I kept giggling and had to explain it to Christopher.)

ANYWAY. There are these mornings when he wakes up at 5 and inadvertently wakes me up and I got home at 11:30 last night from a gig and now I am WIRED. And thinking about how I’ve really crashed into Middle Age, and that’s ok— I’m 45!— and I’ve never had that weird thing about not saying my age because my mom had me when she was 40 so we, like, had a huge 50th birthday party for her when I was 10 and no one’s ever believed me when I’ve told them her age. And the trendy thing now is to say perimenopause, and yeah that’s definitely a thing, but MEN GO THROUGH MIDDLE AGE TOO. What’s with this male aging erasure?? Anyway. When you lose a good friend before they turn 40, everything from 40 onwards is a miracle because she’ll always be 38 in my head. And sometimes I’m like, man, Sara is lucky she didn’t have to go through this. And most times it’s just “I miss Sara,” and sometimes just typing that makes me cry. Because it’s been 7 years now, and the thing about Middle Age (or life really, let’s be honest) is that the years pass in big clumps and you can’t even imagine how it happened. 

ANYWAY. My current Middle Age issue is that I have a really shit knee. It’s basically arthritis, it’s gonna be with me forever, the doc said I’m too young for cortisone injections because then my body will get used to them. So I do a ton of leg exercises but mostly I complain about sitting for a long time. And hello, I’m a musician. And that gig was FAR yesterday. So driving. But it was all worth it because it was one of those Candlelight concerts you’ve seen ads for on your Instagram. And it was really lovely! And I got to make new chamber music friends. I call that a W. 

Also: both there and back I listened to the Rest Is History series on Charlemagne, whose coronation you could say ushered in the Middle Ages so it’s all connected!!

Something I keep thinking about: everyone focuses on that part, but what really is so objectionable about saying “Palestine will be free”? It’s not “From the river to the sea, Israel will not exist.” It is, at face value, a chant for FREEDOM. I genuinely don’t get how people are so triggered by it. There’s always like, “well, someone once used that in a way that MEANT they don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.” I really don’t think most people who chant it mean it with that darker, deeper meaning
Nu. No one is seriously arguing that Israel shouldn’t exist. Yes, people have brought up salient points about its founding and the myths we’ve told ourselves for decades (“a land without a people for a people without a land,” for one…) and many, many, many people all over the world, and in Israel, are crying out for it to leave Gaza alone. How can you even begin negotiations for peace if you don’t believe the folks on the other side of the table have the right to be free?
I guess this is my ass-backwards way of saying peace HAS to happen. I want it so badly: for Israel to have peace. And I see how such a completely defensive response to these desperate chants, and to the desperation the war (now wars..? My word.) causes will absolutely not bring understanding , let alone peace. It’s a way of passing the buck, and making a false equivalency. Saying words is not the same as dropping bombs.

In the last two weeks, I had two different students both girls of Middle Eastern descent show up for their classes in pro-Palestinian shirts. One was a third grader a very cute T-shirt with a watermelon on it with flowy script. “free Palestine” above it. The other was a highschooler with a Nike sweatshirt with the I replaced with the shape of the state of Israel, but completely filled in with the Palestinian flag. In both cases, I was not worried about antisemitism, and in both cases, the style was fresh. But they really got my brain going. This is youth culture in so much of the world, but especially to be a young Middle Eastern girl in the United States right now, it’s pretty freaking brave to wear that.

Today was the last day of Green Mountain Suzuki Institute, where Aryeh (my younger son) participated in his first ever Suzuki group class. It was his first organized group learning activity (that’s an awkward way to put it) since before we left last August. He had a great week!! I’m so happy that he’s coming away from it with new friends, help with musical challenges, and a resolve to go back next year. It’s all I could ask for. And there were tough moments, especially in the group class, where I’d been asked to volunteer as accompanist (from the viola! Playing harmonies). He hadn’t had that experience before of constantly playing through old pieces that might be rusty. He’d just sit if he couldn’t immediately remember the fingerings, even if it was a song we’d worked on recently, even if it was a song I’d SEEN him perform from memory years past on one of his teacher Emily’s recitals. The group class teacher, Martha, was 100% fine with this. She really was the perfect teacher for him— joyful and musical and inspiring. Also, her daughter was in the class and giving a bit of sass back every now and then, so clearly Martha knew what I was going through. Every time I’d try to encourage him to play, he’d blow up at me. I shouldn’t have said anything, and I just couldn’t learn!!! But it bummed me out so hard for him not to challenge himself! Martha had a stern talking-to with me (in front of Yeh), telling me that I wasn’t allowed to talk to him during group class, and the next time I did, I owed him a Creemee (look that up if you’ve never been to VT). Then later, one-on-one, she told me, “I’d be doing the exact same thing. Don’t worry, it’s his first time, just let it be easy and positive for him; he’s doing great.”

At the concert today, an older lady sat next to me in the audience, with a giant, glowing smile, grey pixie cut, and silver and turquoise earrings that reminded me of my Grammy’s jewelry. Her name was Judy. I asked her which kid she belonged to, and she said none; she lives in town and comes to this every year. She always knows it’s the Friday afternoon at the end of camp (we really take over Rochester, VT every summer, so everyone knows when camp is on!). She had her Kleenex ready, and told me, “I always cry at these things. It’s just so wonderful, all these kids working together. I’ve learned fiddle in these last few years, and I can’t imagine life without music!” Judy said a lot more stuff like that. She was eager to communicate with me, and eager to hear the music. During so many songs, she’d turn to me and exclaim, “Can you believe they can play that?!” Especially the Seitz Concerto #5 delighted her (I love Seitz SO much), and the end, where it escalates from triplet arpeggios to 16th-notes to double stops, she just kept oohing and ahhing.

Now i realize Judy was an angel sent to remind me why we do all this. The stuff with the kids and the stuff by ourselves in our practice room. I even welled up a bit, carried along with her emotions! I’m so glad I got to meet her.

Here are a couple shots of this beautiful week.

VT has been our unlikely last chapter to the Worldschooling year, subbing in for Japan. We’ve learned a bit about its history— for 10 years, before it became the 14th state, it was its own sovereign country!— and its flora and fauna. I’m insanely nerdily excited to be able to differentiate between sugar, red, and striped maples, as well as balsam firs, white pines and hemlocks, and silver, yellow and paper birches. But over the last couple weeks, the magnitude of our adventure dawns on me more and more. Lately, what’s been blowing my mind is how many museums we went to. I’m going to see if I can name them all, just as a mental exercise:

Mexico City: Anahuacalli, Trotsky Museum, Pop Culture Museum (in Coyoacán), Castillo in Parque Chapultepec, Templo Mayor

Cuernavaca: Museo Juan Soriano, Casa Cortes/Museo Regional de Morelos, Xochicalco ruins & museum

Oaxaca: Santo Domingo, graphic design library

Mérida: Mundo Maya, Museo Palacio Cantón, Casa Gemelas (gallery), Museo Casa Montejo

Tarragona, Spain: Cathedral and Diocese museum, Museo de Arte Moderno de Tarragona, lots of Roman ruins

Barcelona: Joan Miró Foundation (plus the Park Güell, which is like a giant, outdoor museum)

Madrid: Prado, Reina Sofia

Marseilles: MUCEM, Musée des Beaux-Arts

Bordeaux: Musée d’Aquitaine

Paris: Louvre, Centre Pompidou

Exeter: Royal Albert Museum

London: British Museum (Griffin & Christopher— Aryeh and I went to the Harry Potter play), Science Museum

Torino: Cinema Museum & Automobile Museum

Venice: Peggy Guggenheim, Musical Instrument Museum (that we happened upon accidentally walking home from the Peggy G!)

Florence: Pitti Palace, Medici Chapels (Griffin & Christopher), Barghello Museum

Naples: Castell Sant’Elmo

Catania: Museo Civico Castello Ursino

Rome: MAXXI, Castell Sant’Angelo, Capitoline Museum, VIGAMUS video game museum, Jewish Museum

Pompeii!! And the Valle de I Templi in Agrigento

I think that’s it?! Gonna read it to Christopher and the boys and see if I missed any. We saw lots of ruins, too; I only included Xochicalco outside of Cuernavaca and the ruins in Tarragona because they had some significant indoor museum spaces attached to them… Also, we did a print workshop in Oaxaca at Subterraneos , plus saw many incredible weavers and artisans in Oaxaca and Teotitlán del Valle, who were making jaw-droppingly beautiful creations. Plus if you count the churches EVERYWHERE that had so much gorgeousness. It’s mind-blowing.

It’s 10:45 on our last night in Europe. Earlier today, I had something of an emotional overdose. Here’s what’s up (& I have no idea if I’ll be able to get this all out coherently): on Monday, the morning after we land (at 10pm!) I have an audition for a new music string quartet. They’re all busy freelancers— one lives in NYC— so trying to schedule this was a Herculean effort for their lead-organizing member. I’ve been practicing a lot, or, more correctly, a lot for someone who’s traveling and homeschooling. I feel fine about my preparation. But today I was listening to the playlist I’d made of the pieces, and one of them is by Caroline Shaw, and damn if it didn’t break me into little tiny pieces, as her music often does. Just before I’d put in my earbuds, I’d checked us in for our flight tomorrow, and made a password for Icelandair using, as I always do, names of some dear departed pets in it. One of them was Ajax, who died in December, the day we landed for a week at home before going to Spain. I didn’t properly mourn him, obviously, because thinking of him while listening to Caroline, and thinking of all the things we DIDN’T do in Rome, just got me feeling like life is too small. Life is too small for everything. But then the next piece in the playlist came on, and it was Tanya Tagac, and her music does something completely different to me: it makes me feel like playing music is doing something elemental and natural but also ritualistic. It kind of put me back together. I was lying in bed, planning on taking a nap (I got like 5 hours of sleep last night), but instead I got up, made a pot of espresso in the moka ♥️ this apartment has, and set out to see Mattatoio, the cool little modern art museum just across the river from our place. I’d meant to go this whole time. Turns out: it’s been closed the whole time! I didn’t miss anything!! “Men at work,” the guard explained to me. They were getting things ready for the next exhibit. So instead I walked around Testaccio, went to the Mercato, saw this incredible bikini, thought about buying it, decided I definitely do not need it, but I’ll pretend I’m wearing it every time I go to the beach.

We did it. We did this almost 9 months (10 after our time in Vermont, which is next, because we have renters in our house until June 19), we saw so many beautiful things and places, we covered math and writing and science and social studies and music and art in school. I even did a little bit of Ethics with Griffin. We’re not done yet, either. I’m going to finish that Ethics course with him at my parents’ house this week. Aryeh and Christopher will head to VT early, and I have BMOP all week, where I’ll get to see so many people I really like, some of whom I even love.

It’s been a little challenging to deal with the FOMO. Being in your mid-40’s means your friends are doing amazing things, some of them running shit like, um, the school you went to together! Or joining the Kronos Quartet! Or playing tours, or making albums, teaching at universities, playing on TV… And meanwhile, I’m SO aware of how lucky WE are to be doing this, and how silly it is to let jealousy take over. The poisonous side of social media. Meanwhile, I have this audition. I am in the last stages of putting two albums together! I did yoga almost every day this whole trip, and I still have healthy relationships with my boys and husband after 9 months of traveling and homeschooling!! I need the yoga because I need those moments of quiet to give perspective. I need the balance and the consciousness of growth and mastery. But today, as I did my little 16-minute class, I thought: I really need to dance. Hopefully I’ll make that happen at home. Anyone in Boston reading this: let’s get that shit done.

The other day, Griffin and I visited the MAXXI, way up in the north of Rome. The whole family had spent the morning at the Castel Sant’Angelo, a giant circular fortress with the best views of Rome from its roof. Then we split up. Griffin and I looked for a place for lunch and ended up at a Mexican spot, Taco Libre, which was perfect: our first meal on our first night of this whole trip, was at an Italian restaurant in Mexico City, and we’ve been joking this whole time in Italy that we should have started with a Mexican restaurant here. Our waitress the other day could not have been cooler. She told us that she used to live in Los Angeles for 3 years, and that she’d been engaged to Beck’s drummer, and worked as a tour manager for Beck and the Beastie Boys. She said Adam Yauch was the sweetest Beastie, that she was so sad when he died, and that she’d also become good buddies with Mike Diamond’s wife and Beck’s then-wife during that time, but Beck and his wife kept trying to convert her to Scientology. Oh, and that Cat Power’s then-partner was brother of Beck’s wife, so she got to hang with her all the time, too, and it was weird because Cat Power wasn’t a Scientologist. So fun to gossip about early-aughts celebrities! I wish I’d gotten her name, because I’d love to hear more of her stories, including how she’s now working as a waitress at Taco Libre…

Anyway, we made it to MAXXI, and the building is insanely cool. Designed by Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi architect. If anything, it’s kind of weirdly hidden: you can only see its coolness when you enter the gates of the grounds, set back from the sidewalk. The main exhibit was Ambienti 1956-2010, Environments by Women Artists II. Two?! So this was a sequel!? I just read in the brochure: Environments by Women Artists 1956-1976 was presented in 1976 at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Aha! Anyway, this was SO well produced and presented. Lots of very fun, playful spaces to enter, including a giant, like multi-room-sized, phallic-shaped balloon called “Penetración/Expulsión” by Argentinian artist Lea Lublin, plus this magical sound installation “Bird Tree” by Christina Kubisch that used headphones to interact with a metal “tree” on the wall. “By wearing magnetic headphones, listeners can move freely along the wall to generate and mix their own score, becoming a composer and at the same time, a performer with their way of walking, stopping, and moving.” The fact that the sounds were birds I’d hear in northern New England, in particular loons and owls, plus that this was made in the 70’s!!!!! Just completely floored me. How have I never heard of this artist?! Also, looking at the brochure for the show, I just discovered that one part of it that I totally thought was its own, stand-alone exhibit about gentrification and homelessness, Martha Rosler’s If You Lived Here, was actually one of the “environments!” It was a whole separate room, filled with protest posters from around the world, and luxury hi-rise ads from NYC and NJ, and the ostentatiousness of those ads was so ridiculous, you sometimes couldn’t tell what was real and what was satire. I thought it was a project of the museum itself, so I wrote my friend Molly to tell her that they HAVE to have a copy of her mom’s amazing book, Root Shock (I played on the soundtrack for my dear friend Sara Booth’s documentary with Mindy, called “Urban Renewal is People Removal”) in the collection, but I guess it needs to be sent to Martha Rosler. Anyway. I really enjoyed this whole show, not least because it gave Griffin a really good time, and he’s been really down on modern art lately. To have him be so moved and thought-provoked and happy, meant a lot. There was another show we saw, about the Finnish architects Alvar, Ainar and Elissa Aalto, and it was cool, but not very energizing. Did make us want to go see the Aalto-designed dorm at MIT when we get home, though.

But I titled this, way back, “Two Museums,” and the other one I wanted to mention is much smaller, but also very cool, and on my list of recs for Rome: the Casa di Goethe, near the Piazza del Popolo. The curator is a good friend of my friend Daniella, who was just here from Berlin, so I went with D after she dropped off her girls there for a workshop. The special exhibit there was called “The Uncanny House,” and it took the fact that this was Goethe’s actual abode, to consider works that deal with interior dwellings and, literally, uncanny ways of viewing them. I don’t have pictures of them, because D and I were too busy talking, but I really enjoyed the variety of works and the space itself, with its midnight-blue shag carpeting, was magical and somewhat eerie or uncanny itself. Like the MAXXI, the space became one of the elements of the show. (Included in the gallery below is a shot from last Friday, when we went to Mason Bates’ “Soundscapes” at the American Academy of Rome, and the kids played some truly epic rounds of “Fire Water Ice… Something I forget what,” a game Daniella’s kids play at school in Berlin.)

Yesterday, we went to the church of San Luigi Francese, aka Saint Louis the French, to see the Caravaggios so beautifully shown in Ripley. (Nothing like watching American tourists in Italy while being American tourists in Italy! I love the original movie, but I also really love this new show.) Then we ate at the favorite Roman restaurant of my mom’s friend Eve, the author of the incredible treasure hunt we’ve been using to explore and learn more about the Eternal City. The boys and I shopped the Campo di Fiori for gifts and bulk candy afterwards. The boys each got little bags of pasta with souvenir spoons for friends, and I found a gorgeous black silk dress that I’ll wear at the BMOP concert next week (NEXT WEEK!).

Today, we’ll go to see the Castel Sant’Angelo, the hulking former prison on the banks of the Tiber near the Vatican, then split up: C wants to return to the Capitoline Museum, and I want to get to the MAXXI (21st century art museum— get it?). Tomorrow, we go to Pompeii. It’s hard to imagine we’re not going to be exhausted by that (it’s more than 2 hours travel there and back) so Thursday will be relatively mellow: hopefully nice enough weather to go back to the beach in Ostia. Aryeh and I spent Sunday there with my friend Daniella and her girls, all visiting from Berlin, and their sweet Italian/German friends who live in Rome. Aryeh the only boy, but playing with all of them just so happily. He’s had so little time with kids his own age. And for me to get so much time with a dear friend from high school days (we met at NY Youth Symphony!) was precious.

Little trivia fact: the direct train line to Ostia and its beaches was put in by Mussolini. It’s just 1.50 Euro to go and it’s a lovely gift to the people of Rome, even if the giver was a monster.

Some shots from the beach and the last few days’ adventures…