Emilee and the joy of music
Murray Charters
Music, the best soul food, can take you away from our slowly dissolving winter and into bright and happy places. But this works even better when you sense the happiness of the performers. That joy and enthusiasm are conveyed to the listener, and sometimes are more important than the actual notes, yet all too often young performers can get the idea that music is only about technical mastery and attention to detail. What joy it is to find a 15-year-old pianist who is already understanding what the human art of music is for, and is being assisted on that journey by some excellent guidance and teaching.
Emilee Feely is no stranger to music. Her father, guitarist Pat Feely, is well known to Brantford circles and beyond, teaching locally and at McMaster University. Thus, Emilee has grown up hearing good music and began studying it seriously at an early age. Piano was her first love, and she worked with Virginia Blaha from the age of four to achieve her first steps on that instrument. In such capable hands she made giant steps indeed, and in September of 2007 she was accepted on scholarship into the Young Artists Performance Academy (YAPA) at Toronto's Glenn Gould Professional School. There she has weekly piano lessons with Andrew Markow, a well-known teacher, adjudicator, author and clinician, who has been with the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto since 1970.
YAPA places particular importance on the weekly master classes - which, according to its literature, it wisely believes "are one of the most effective ways for young musicians to become fully aware of the international level of musicianship required for success." Considering the emphasis on musicianship it may surprise some that Emilee has encountered an actor, a painter, and performers on other instruments and voice in her piano master class, but this is indeed the essence of musicianship.
The actor had them reciting lines from Shakespeare in order to experience the way verbal rhythm can influence an audience. Both the actor and the painter made it clear that all art has to tell a story or paint a picture for the delight of those listening and watching. Although there are classes missed at school and energy-draining constant road trips back and forth to Toronto, Emilee insists "it's worth it; it's a really big experience. It's very inspiring and you learn a lot from it. I'm so glad I'm in this program."
Another adjudicator introduced students to the idea of improvisation, and while this is fun to do and useful especially to church musicians, it also goes right to the heart of classical music. If you can make those black dots on white paper begin to sound as free as they were when the composer first breathed life into them, your audience will be thrilled to hear you recreate the music as if you were just improvising it yourself.
That is exactly how Emilee describes feeling when performing some favourite music such as a few of Chopin's Nocturnes. "You don't even notice you are playing anymore," she says when describing that total absorption in weaving the story behind those beautifully sensual pieces. The same is even more true for the music of Debussy, for we generally relate how he wrote music to the way impressionist painters created swirls of light and shade on canvas. A knowledge of the evocative legend behind Debussy's piano prelude called The Sunken Cathedral encourages Emilee to "add lots of colours to the piece" as she unfolds the tale for all to hear.
The Chopin and the Debussy will be part of a program Emilee has been invited to perform at McMaster University's Museum of Art next Thursday at 12:30 p.m., as part of a lunch-time recital series. She will also present a complete sonata by Haydn, and music by Kabalevsky and Bach, making a rewarding listening experience for those who go to support this talented young Brantfordian.
And I need to share two more strong signs of that talent with you. First of all, Emilee took up the flute after finding the one that her mother, Denise, used to play. She expands her musical horizons by also taking flute lessons at YAPA along with very useful courses in history and theory. But she also loves to play her flute in the band at St. John's College, where she is in Grade 10, and loves to use the piano to accompany her father or the classes at Virginia Little's Suzuki String School. Making music with others is one of the healthiest things any musician can do.
Moreover, last year Emilee gave the premier performance of Prelude #3 by Canadian composer Anne Southam at a music teachers' conference in Toronto. Not only will her name be associated with this music forever, but Emilee found a special joy in performing this piece. Southam wrote in the very challenging 12-tone style called serialism that many music lovers can neither stand nor understand. Yet the inherently musical Emilee found the piece to be "so new and fresh," and said, "When you connected with it, it was so cool."
I have to say I agree with her that this style can be just as expressive and beautiful as any other, but I also must admit that I got there after many years of experience. So I strongly applaud Emilee's intuitive understanding that leads her to find such real joy in music.
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