Bios, Blurbs, and Beethoven in my Hometown

Year 2, Week 15, in one pianists' journey to perform the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven.

“If no thought your mind doth visit, Make your speech not too explicit”.

That little adage, by the Danish scientist Piet Hein, is one in a slim volume of poetic proverbs he called “Grooks”. I kept this book by my side when I was a young, “emerging” musician, often referring to it for comic relief in the hard world.

It wasn’t just that the grooks were funny, human, and wise; it was that Piet Hein was adored in his hometown and home country. He wrote these grooks after the Nazis invaded Denmark, to cheer up his fellow Danish citizens and as part of the Resistance.

What prophet doesn’t want to be loved in their own home town? Not that I’m a prophet, but I think the same is true of pianists, like me.

I’m playing a concert in my hometown this Saturday night at 7:30: you can get tickets here.

Long since growing up here, I’ve been living out a career as a pianist, developed mostly away from here. One part of the job is having to write short bios about myself, used in media like entertainment magazines, websites, or printed recital program brochures. All of the above are quickly becoming out-dated, giving me hope that the bio might die, too. No luck so far.

“A bio for the program”, comes down the request. The last time I wrote one, it was 800 words, possibly too long this time. I open my folder of bio files and get out my editor’s pruning shears. Marie Kondo needs to write a book about bio folders. In her famous books about the magic of downsizing your stuff, she urges you to keep only what “sparks joy”.

What, in my bio file, sparks joy?

Nothing. My bios do not spark joy. I remember, longingly, the bio of the world-famous cellist Janos Starker, who taught at Indiana University where I studied. A balding man with heavy eyebrows and a cynical grimace, he used to have a bio consisting of one sentence. I can’t remember it exactly, but it was something like, “Distinguished Professor Janos Starker has recorded 150 albums and plays a Stradivarius.” You get the idea. It would stick out like a sore thumb in a page full of faculty bios. His message, to paraphrase Piet Hein: “Brilliant thoughts my mind doth visit, therefore MY speech need not be explicit”.

For most of us, when condensing our complicated lives of failures sprinkled with qualified successes (not to mention the hilarious embarrassments), Hein’s advice not to be too explicit serves us well. You know the sort of thing.

“Numerous engagements” –

[Weekly in one’s living room for that music-loving hamster your kid named Ratty because they’d wanted a rat and you drew the line.]

“Internationally recognized” –

[By hordes of Carnival cruise ship passengers, as long as you wear that same fuschia outfit with the bling statement necklace].

“Appeared at Carnegie Hall” –

[As the third alto on the right in the fourth row of the East Moravia Children’s Choir reunion concert].

Here's my problem. This week, I have to write a bio for a solo public recital of Beethoven piano sonatas in my home town. Believe me, I do know full well that if one of the audience members who’ve lived here since I was a kid was asked for a few spicy sentences about me, it would not resemble the bio that will be distributed to that very same audience.

Then there’s the matter of PR blurbs. I’m not expected to write blurbs – I’m expected to solicit them from experts who know my work. As lovely as it is to receive a good blurb from one of them, I’m aware that on my Island, such a blurb is first given its due respectful consideration (perhaps while read aloud to others before deciding to ante up for tickets), then blended with a wide range of other local information that is also (more or less) true (or reputed) about me (and/or family members), with results that may (or may not) provide a far more nuanced and personally humbling view.

Here are a few photos representing what my hometown may know about me, in vivid contrast to what my bio knows about me.

1969: This is me in grade 5. I’m tall. I’m from away out West (Winnipeg). I have big round glasses. This was self-imposed, since “my” Beatle was John Lennon and they didn’t have the wire frames. I can play classical piano really fast and also the Beatles. Dad is driving me to my piano lesson at the brand-new University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) Department of Music.

1970: The first-ever UPEI Summer Music Camp. I’m wearing a horizontally-striped sweater and holding a cello. We’re standing in front of a residence on the campus of UPEI. The cello was put in my hands by the director of the camp, Hubert Tersteeg, mostly because I was too lanky to hold up my violin very well. He’s also given his a cello to his red-headed son Ricky, the standing boy in the orange shirt. Ricky and I were the cello section of Island string ensembles for years after, along with Jennifer, the sitting girl-with-cello in front, daughter of the Head of the UPEI Music Department, Dr. Alan Reesor. This was the year the Beatles album Abbey Road came out. Its songs were endlessly played on a turntable brought to the residence by older campers while they made tie-dye shirts for us.

1973: My family poses at a photographer’s studio in PEI. We have squabbled in the car on the way there, because only *some* of us got a chance to freshen up in our single bathroom beforehand (I am a loser, thus the flat hair). You can likely tell that this pic is my mother’s idea. My dad is a quiet high school guidance counsellor who is embarrassed by pictures generally, my bro is a bicycle-speeding rascal who thinks this photo-op is hilarious, I’m a grumpy 13-year-old, and my sister is emerging into her pretty-teen phase, where she will star in her high school musicals and appear as first violinist in various things. My sis and I are wearing the uniform our mum designed and sewed for PEI’s new school string program.

1974: This is my first-ever PR pic. I’m still wearing clothing hand-sewn by Mum, but I have sourced my first wire glasses! I’m about to represent PEI at the National Festival of Music in Toronto. This pic was printed in the local newspapers. I had to type up my first-ever first bio of a few sentences: I was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Victor Toews (that family name was enough for people to know we were “from away”). I was playing a Chopin scherzo and Mendelssohn concerto. I had won a school prize for an essay called “Care of the Eyes”.

1975: My minute of fame as a teen rocker, before an audience of literally a thousand or so gathered for the city’s Natal Day celebrations at the Victoria Park bandshell. I’m on the far left, standing and playing ELO’s “Evil Woman” on a Fender Rhodes keyboard. This event sadly never makes it onto my bio of today. But locals may remember!

I went off to Montreal a year later, to study at McGill University. But in 1985, when I was 25, I returned to UPEI, to teach piano for a year as a substitute for my former piano teacher there, Dr. Frances Gray, while she went on sabbatical.

Some fine Island musicians will remember that year. I arrived in town with my violinist boyfriend Mark, who was from California, and we lived in a basement apartment. Mark practised a lot for his professional orchestra auditions in the upstairs student practice wing at UPEI. He would occasionally swear vocally, or stamp his foot, to the delight of my students in the hall outside his room. Then they’d go downstairs for their far more demure lessons in my studio.

Mark and I, circa 1987

This week, I return to UPEI, to present an all-Beethoven concert. Now in my mid-60s, I enjoy audiences so much more than back when I was young and anxious about my career.

Will an all-Beethoven concert be of interest to people? I’m aware that maybe it might seem a bit obsessive, especially to those locally who know I play all sorts of music, that I’ve gone learning all 32 Beethoven sonatas.

My inner critic (I’ve named her Martine, she is pencil-thin and knows everything), sometimes asks me, “Just who do you think you are?” I’ve learned, though, that Martine is just one audience member, and I don’t have to give her the best seat in the house. The other seats are taken up with people who love music, some who may remember me, others not. People who would appreciate wonderful music to listen to on a January evening, that I’ll play as well as I can. People with whom I can share some of the interesting bits I’ve learned about Beethoven’s life during the French Revolution.

With so much revolutionary news these days, I find it absolutely fascinating to take a look at the history of liberal democracy, and how great art has interpreted such times. If you’d like to hear my talking and playing, I look forward to seeing you there!

And to you my readers: I’m delighted to have just reached the milestone of 100 subscribers. Thank you so much for reading!!