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Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
I got an email this morning, April 25th, from an Alexander Technique cello client. He said that he wasn’t going to work with me anymore (He had paid in advance and still had 8 sessions left.) He said in essence I had been extraordinarily insulting to him, and he wasn’t going to put up with it. I WAS GOBSMACKED!
I sent him an email saying I was sorry, and would he tell me what I did. He didn’t get back to me. I’ve never had this happen before. I felt I needed to write about it.
He had 12 sessions before he quit, and they all went over an hour, because he was so inspiring to teach. He came to me with a hurting bow hand, and he was unable to play fast. He’s classically trained, but was never a great fan of classical music. What he is good at is improvising and composing.
Within 4 sessions I had helped him so much with his bowing technique, that his hand stopped hurting. I got him to release the tension in his bow arm and thumb, and allow freedom in all of his arm joints, from the shoulder blade and collar bone to his wrist and fingers.
We also addressed his sitting posture. He could really hear how much better his tone was when he sat fully upright with Alexander Technique posture, and not hunkering down to the instrument.
I even sold him an height adjustable padded practice chair I had designed.
I digress.
Anyway, we began to look at his left hand technique. I made it very very clear that it’s the left hand that determines how fast a bowed instrument performer can play. I also made it clear that everyone has the same reflex speed, and that the fastest players do not have something he lacks.
I also got him to question everything that is considered great left hand technique, from flying slapping fingers, to not using the little finger in the higher register, to the positioning of the fingers and hand in the higher register, to the arm’s relationship to the cello in the higher register.
I told him I was not asking him to change his technique, but I was giving him the freedom to do so, if he liked what we did. He was really impressed with my suggestions that tested the efficacy of what was considered the best way to play the instrument.
I asked him to practice keeping all 4 fingers within a quarter inch of the cello’s strings. It made him crazy, but for the first time he realized flying fingers was not good technique. Within a few more sessions, he came back and said for the first time he felt that extraordinary speed was possible.
I had also gotten him to not use arm weight and to allow a floating left arm, using the thumb and fingers as a gentle vice to press the strings. Again, I was asking him to test the traditional technique rules on his instrument.
I could end this essay here, but if you’ve read any of my essays, I can’t “Inhibit” (Alexander Technique term) my need to explain, to analyze what happened.
This client got what he came for and more, and there was more to be gotten. I had also gotten him to step back and see how amazing classical music was, rather than seeing it as stodgy boring out of date compositions.
So, what happened?
I DON’T THINK IT MATTERS WHAT I SAID THAT ANGERED HIM. I believe he unconsciously needed to stop at any cost, before he totally got out of his own way as a great player and potentially great composer.
I have dealt with this before, in myself and other Alexander Technique clients. Sometimes when you take the brakes off of a person’s ability to be a great performing or composing musician, you may be getting too close to taking the lid off of the emotional and psychological stuff that kept them mediocre.
THAT CAN BE VERY SCARY!
I’ve heard nothing more since April 25th from the cellist.
Revenge on the wrong person is a very human thing, even when you’re forty years old, or for the rest of a life.
When you make everyone “wrong”, then you wait until they do something wrong, and then boot them.
