Immanuel Abraham: Interview Transcript
Immanuel Abraham:
Inspiration, as you know, I started from a video recording with Perlman. But I always tell people, students of any level, whether they're college students or day-one beginners, just listen to the violin. And it doesn't have to be classical, just listen to it and get curious. The ones that do always, always come back with excitement over something that they heard or something that they didn't know was possible.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. My guest today is Immanuel Abraham, a very special musician who's an inspiring violinist, educator, and composer. His phenomenal talent, discipline, and creativity is even more inspiring since he didn't have an opportunity to learn a musical instrument until the age of 14, and four years later, he was auditioning for the renowned University of Michigan in violin performance, playing the same Paganini Caprice he'd heard Itzhak Perlman play on Shalom Sesame as a child.
He speaks candidly in this interview about his perseverance in the face of very difficult challenges. He's well known on social media as the Violin Doctor, which is a Doctor Who reference, but Immanuel actually is a Doctor of Musical Arts, from the University of Arizona. When he was a student, in an effort to learn as much as he could that was violin related, he started the Violin Guild, which is an amazingly supportive Facebook group of over 60,000 string players worldwide.
Our conversation focused on different aspects of music education, personal development, and you'll get to hear some clips of Immanuel performing some of his 24 Caprices for solo violin. In the description, you'll find a link for a discount code the week this is released, and if you're a violinist, I encourage you to buy this amazing volume, which I've been learning and plan to start recording this summer. Immanuel will be releasing his complete recording of all 24 Caprices.
Hi, Immanuel. Thanks so much for joining me here today.
Immanuel Abraham:
Thanks for having me. It's already a pleasure to be here with you.
Leah Roseman:
A lot of people ask me about the research I do, and lately I have been meeting with people ahead of time, and I had such a lovely chat with you when we met before. It's nice to have that and not feel like we're meeting for the first time.
Immanuel Abraham:
Agreed.
Leah Roseman:
And you started relatively late, according to the common ideas about the violin being one of the hardest instruments that people normally start when they're young children. But you were a teenager, you were 14, right?
Immanuel Abraham:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. You worked very, very hard. When you talk to people who are starting later now, what kind of advice do you give them? Because not everyone has the same goals, you know what I mean, in terms of studying music?
Immanuel Abraham:
Absolutely. Well, it depends on their goals, of course. If they're just playing for leisure versus becoming a performer or a performance major, those are very different goals. So that advice would depend on what they want to do with it. If they're going into performance, there's a large degree of humility that has to come with that, because for example, my very first violin classes were group lessons. I was 14, a teenager, and my classmates were six and seven years old at the oldest. And this was extremely humbling, to say the least. And those kinds of episodes, if you will, atmospheres of learning are how it will feel at the beginning.
That classroom, while I was only in that classroom for a few weeks before the teacher said my rate of progress was enough for me to move on, that classroom really represented, symbolically, the kind of atmospheres that I was walking into repeatedly at the very beginning. I joined a couple of orchestras. So whether it's being in a classroom of six-year-olds or sitting the absolute last chair in a high-school group, or being several Suzuki books behind when you have peers who are already playing their Paganini Caprices, that's the kind of atmosphere that you have to be able to handle. You have to be able to not be taken seriously at the beginning.
Equal to that is the necessity to take yourself seriously. You have to take yourself seriously in the beginning, because initially, no one else will. And for me in particular, multiple factors played into that. I was a Black male from the inner city. I think we spoke about the episode already that I had at a music camp, one of my first music camps. And I traveled out there, and we all sat on this outdoor stage, very beautiful area, and the conductor had the violinist seating on a roster on his podium stand. I was assistant concert master for this particular ensemble.
When I came there, I'd say I was one of the first dozen in the room, and I sat down and the principal second looked me, and I smiled, and the look I got back was just one of utter disgust. You could see it in her face. It looked very, very annoyed, would be the best word. And after about a minute or two, she said to me, she said, "The seating is up there on the conductor's podium." And I said, "I know, thank you," and I went back to warming up, and then the concert master came in and sat down. I was still the only Black person in the room. And he kept looking over at me, and he looked over at the principal second, and they kept looking at each other and then looking at me. And I felt these eyes, and I knew immediately what it was about. I didn't say anything.
And so while I'm playing, she taps me on the shoulder again, and she said, "Hey, the seating is up there. You should look at it." And I said, "I already did. I'm Immanuel Abraham. This is my seat." And then she and he looked at each other again. They left me alone. And that was one of very many episodes of I was the only Black person in almost every ensemble that I played in as a kid, and certainly one of them throughout every institution that I studied at. As a kid that was new, and not being taken seriously for your age is one reason, but that other reason, my ethnicity also stacked on top of that, and it became a motivator, if you will, even more of one to work harder.
I didn't have space to practice at home, so I would go to a graveyard. Ironically, it was called Emanuel, a graveyard in Chicago, spelled with an E, and I had a pile of nails that I would bury in the ground and a small hammer. So I would go to this graveyard and hammer my music to a tree and practice there after school, because no one was there, I wasn't being bothered, and I had a very large family crammed into a very tiny apartment. So this is where I practiced in solitude.
Taking yourself seriously and being able to handle not being taken seriously at all are definitely, regardless of who you are, what you are, or where you come from, those are things that you have to be able to handle. Those were probably two of the biggest challenges for me during my start at 14.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. It's really heart-wrenching to hear this. And I mean, Chicago doesn't have the weather you have in Arizona now. You couldn't have been practicing outside that much.
Immanuel Abraham:
I definitely did not during the winter. During the winter, I practiced in the bathroom at home, and this actually became helpful, because I realized how much a mirror helps. So basically, over the winter is when I fixed any issues that I saw with my form and posture. Of course, there was only one bathroom, so I frequently had to leave. But it also became another motivator, if you will, because I was also desperate to practice as much as possible before the next person had to use the restroom.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And at school you were able to practice as well?
Immanuel Abraham:
Yes, usually stayed after school until the orchestra room closed. I was usually the first one in the orchestra room and the last one out. Eventually, the orchestra director gave me the keys, because he knew I would be the first one in and out most days. My high school was not a pleasant environment. That was very difficult. The orchestra room became a safe place for me. The people who caused me physical pain elsewhere in the school just weren't interested enough in orchestra to even come there to bother me.
Leah Roseman:
Did you feel unsafe carrying your violin around because of that situation?
Immanuel Abraham:
During that period, during most of that period, I had... It would've been different if I were using the instrument that I have now, because of its value and trying to keep the instrument safe. The instrument is really like, it's like another person. So I take it with me, even if I'm coming from a rehearsal and going grocery shopping, the violin goes into the grocery store with me.
Leah Roseman:
Oh yeah.
Immanuel Abraham:
And back then, I didn't feel as threatened for carrying the violin around with me. It was about the same weight as my backpack, so it was kind of just like carrying two backpacks.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I had an adult student many years ago, and he grew up in my city of Ottawa. And it really was very sad, because he had violin lessons for a short period of time when he was a kid, but he said he would be beat up by these kids who'd wait for him with his violin, and that was kind of their target. So he just had to give it up, and then he started again when he was in his fifties, I think. It was pretty sad that he felt there was no way forward.
Immanuel Abraham:
Yes. I can attest to that. I definitely had my share of being hurt in school, including I was stabbed with a knife. I still have the scars on my arm. And that was actually close to the end of high school. Some people heard that I was going to university, which was not in the plan. Most people in that area were not going to college, and so they saw me as kind of the one who escaped, if you will. And so I was stabbed in both arms a few times to keep me from going, but it wasn't enough to deter the playing. I still feel a little bit of pain every once in a while, but it's mostly subsided, and that was almost 15 years ago now.
Being physically hurt wasn't really as much for playing the violin as much as just having a difference in interest. I was really grateful that despite the financial difficulties which put my family and I in the projects, my family always encouraged a large curiosity about different things, and so my interests just didn't align with most of the people at my school. Also, my growth spurt, I guess my final growth spurt came relatively late. I'm 6'1" one now, and during most of high school, I was peaking at 5'8". That was definitely bullyable.
And I wasn't really interested in sports, which was kind of what was the deciding factor as to whether you were cool or not, was how into sports you were, which athletes you were a fan of, whose cards you collected or traded, and what games you were going to see. I just didn't have any interest in it at all. And when I tried to pretend like I had interest, that made it much worse, because they could tell that I didn't know who was who or what was what, and I also didn't care at all. I still don't, but I don't need that to be cool anymore.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Now, you heard a violin on a recording when you were quite young that piqued your interest.
Immanuel Abraham:
Yes. The first recording that I heard of the violin was Itzhak Perlman, which of course is, it's like your first experience of any metal being gold. And he was playing Paganini's 14th Caprice on a show called Shalom Sesame, which was a version of Sesame Street filmed in Tel Aviv, Israel, where Itzhak Perlman was actually born and raised, and he was playing the 14th Caprice by Niccolo Paganini.
I had not heard classical violin before, and this just, it was something that was totally different. It totally blew me away. I didn't know what to think of it. I think one thing that helped was I didn't have any label to put on it. I didn't know what it was. It was just music, and it was amazing. I loved his approach to it. I liked that he clearly enjoyed what he was doing while he was playing. The reaction of the audience. Everything about it was just amazing, and the music was beautiful. My idea of the violin, at that point, I didn't know how many strings the violin had. I probably couldn't spell violin either. But the 14th Caprice in particular, there are parts of it where the voicing goes into four voices, so you've got these four block chords on it. And just hearing that come from one violin and look so easy, as Perlman makes everything look, of course, I just thought, man, I want to do that. I want to do that so badly.
And so that's when I started asking to play the violin. It didn't come until much later, but it came from an ad in the newspaper that... It got thrown away. There was an ad for a free violin lesson at the Merit School of Music in downtown Chicago, an area known as the Chicago Loop. They were offering one free violin lesson during their, I think it was their summer program. I saw this ad on the newspaper. I ran to my mom with it and said, "This is a chance to learn violin." My mom said, "Yeah, you know what? It is." But I didn't have a violin.
My first violin came from the Salvation Army. And that was well aligned as well, because I went there and the violin that I got was in a pillowcase, as well as the bow. They were just in a pillowcase together and high up on a shelf. It looked like they had been there for years, because when I pulled it off, all this dust fell down and I got dirty with it. But I got it and brought it to the Merit School of Music and had my first violin lesson. That was a group lesson.
The teacher, she said she appreciated my... Well, the first class was a group class, and when I came back, she saw that I'd not only learned the first piece in the Suzuki book while everyone else was still learning how to hold an instrument, but I had also started the second piece in the Suzuki book, and I had memorized all the variations in the Suzuki method. Because I'd listened to that CD that week, I just listened to that CD hundreds and hundreds of times just on repeat. And she said that she would see me by myself for a private lesson after the group lesson next week for free. She did this on her own time, during her lunch break, and she did this repeatedly.
And so I just thought, okay, I'll keep working for this. And I learned the first book in the Suzuki series in a matter of a couple of weeks, and I memorized everything in it. And she told the head, the dean of the Merit School of Music, who at that time was Helen Eaton, and she told her that I needed to move on from these group lessons. And Helen Eaton's husband was Guillaume Combet, who at the time was a member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and now he's a Professor of Violin, phenomenal violinist. And he started teaching me from that point on, and he taught me for the rest of high school.
But yeah, that was where the violin came from, was that few seconds worth... It was a clip. It wasn't even the complete Caprice from Shalom Sesame, and Itzhak Perlman playing Caprice Number 14 by Niccolo Paganini. Four years later, I used that piece... Four years after I started, rather, after that point, I used that piece, among others, for my college auditions.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And for people who aren't violinists, I mean, it's not like every professional violinist can even play Paganini. They're very, very difficult. So Immanuel, I discovered you because of your 24 Caprices, which I love, and I've been practicing them, and I hope to record a few, and I know that you're going to share a couple of videos with me that I'll be able to edit into this episode. So I was hoping you could speak to them a little bit and introduce what people are going to be hearing.
Immanuel Abraham:
Sure, sure. Well, if I'm sharing a couple of Caprices, my idea would be to share ones that are contrasting. So one of the goals in writing them was to offer a broader spectrum of music to people within a single set. And I felt that that was more representative of the world today versus the world when most sets of solo violin repertoire had been written, whether it's from the Bach Sonatas and Partitas or the tradition that we had in the Romantic period of violinist composers writing 24 Caprices for solo violin. They all reflected one genre, one style, one time and place, and that really, in its own way, reflected the world that those composers were in. I love when artists push the violin. I love when artists push the violin's horizons and challenge us with different things. And so I wanted to also include music that would be interesting for violinists to play, so it is technically challenging.
My choice to write "24," first of all, it honors four late through early romantic-period composers. Pierre Gaviniès is the first of them. He lived during the 1750s, Jakob Dont, Pierre Rode, and Niccolo Paganini. And they each were violinists and composers. And they had a tradition of writing 24 pieces for solo violin. All of those pieces reflected the time and place that they were in.
Then no one did it again for roughly 170 years, a little over that. And I thought it was a beautiful tradition to see the violin's boundaries get pushed by these different sets of work. People use them for educational purposes, people use them for entertainment. People use them for their own personal practice. It's not even known whether Paganini actually performed any of his or not. But I just thought that everything that they helped the violin world with was wonderful.
We have means of transportation, for one thing, that they didn't have back then. It would take them months to get to the neighboring state or neighboring country. And today we do that in an afternoon.
We've got email, we've got the internet, we contact people on the other side of the world in seconds. We find out the news from the other side of the world in seconds. And that's only becoming faster and faster and more and more immediate. Before we know it, we'll probably be transporting from one place to the next in a matter of seconds as well.
For the music to represent that world, it would no longer represent one time or one place. Classes of people are also starting to live closer to each other, and we're starting to be more inclusive. Inclusivity and diversity and globalism are huge themes and of today and themes that companies, schools, institutions of all kinds are aiming towards supporting. In my 24 Caprices they don't just represent one time or one place or one style or one genre. They have multiple styles and genres in them.
I have American fiddle tunes, I have baroque-style fugues, I have written jazz, waltz's, tangos, things that were inspired by ragas, and those were inspired by the time that I've spent playing Hindustani music and Carnatic music and Kirtan. All of that has come together in these 24 Caprices.
And one thing that I've heard the most from people who've played them is that there's something for everyone. One of my former teachers one of my favorite quotes about it recently. She said, "If there's something that you don't like, just turn the page." And I love that. I was like, "That's great."
Another thing that it supports is giving... As far as that large spectrum that I've been speaking of, they can be performed together. And that's one of the reasons why they're all in one set rather than publishing a set of three fiddle caprices or three few caprices or things. They're all in one set together.
And all of the recitals that I gave during my time in school, I tried as much as I was allowed to combine genres into one show. And the audiences loved that. I loved it. I found it a lot of fun. I, for one, enjoy hearing a violinist, play a Bach fugue and then a Paganini Caprice, and then improvise on jazz and a fiddle tune on the same concert. Because I love that, and why not?
As far as what we'll hear is just pieces that we'll show that contrast of each other. Caprice number 14, it's a fiddle caprice. It's actually been the most popular of them by far.
Leah Roseman:
Immanuel has shared a clip from Caprice number 14. (music).
Yeah. I think what it might be nice to do is we'll edit in those, interspersed with our conversation. It's nice to have music breaks. And if that's okay with you, then people can open their ears.
Immanuel Abraham:
Absolutely.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Thanks so much for sharing your music, as well as your insights today. Here's a clip of Immanuel playing his Caprice Number 21 in C Minor, "The Blues." (music).
Immanuel Abraham:
And Caprice number 23, which is one of a Fugue.
Leah Roseman:
Finally, here's Immanuel performing his complete Caprice number 23, which is a fugue.
Immanuel Abraham:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
You mentioned that one of your former teachers had said, "If you don't like it, turn the page." Which teacher was that? Who said that?
Immanuel Abraham:
This was Elizabeth Ortiz from Chicago. Se's one of my first violin instructors.
Leah Roseman:
I was wondering if you'd met Itzhak Perlman.
Immanuel Abraham:
I have not yet.
Leah Roseman:
Somebody has to figure that out.
Immanuel Abraham:
Yeah, it'll happen. It'll happen at some point.
Leah Roseman:
Hi. Just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster who does all the many jobs required to produce the series, and there are a lot of costs I bear as well. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip or becoming a monthly supporter, starting at $3 Canadian, which is close to $2 US or two Euros, and getting access to unique perks. The link is in the description. Now, back to the episode.
I was wondering if you could tell the story about how you bought the Suzuki book when you were at the store. You had a few dollars.
Immanuel Abraham:
Oh, sure. Yeah. I bought my first Suzuki book from a store called Performers Music in the Fine Arts Building in downtown Chicago. It's still there. And something about the austere of that store seemed very cool to me. Because it looked like something out of time, from the past that just had these rows and rows and rows of sheet music.
And at that point, the 17 or 18 pages of the Suzuki book seemed like a ton of music to me, because that was the most music I had seen in one place ever. When I went there to buy the book, I saw the Suzuki book, but I just saw this smorgasbord of other music, and so I couldn't help but look around. And then I saw Niccolo Paganini's 24 Caprices for solo violin. And so I thought, "Oh, okay, I'll look at this, couldn't possibly be harder than the Gavotte from the end of book one."
Because when I learned that, I started feeling... That's why I felt awesome. I thought I made it. And I opened up this book just out of curiosity, and I saw this page it just looked like it was covered with ink. To my eyes at the time it looked like several people had... They drank a bottle of ink and sneezed on staff paper. And I was just blown away by this, and it said, "solo violin." And I remember taking the page. This isn't it, but I kept doing this with the page, looking at the music, and then looking back at the cover to read that solo violin over and over again.
And I was just in disbelief with it. And I looked at my Suzuki book. I thought, "Wow, this Gavotte no longer looks like the most challenging thing on earth. And that was a huge help to me. Because if my goals had been that Gavotte and then maybe pieces at the end of book two in Suzuki, I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did in enough time to audition for college and go to college. College wasn't in the plans at that point.
I kept looking through the book. I eventually, I recognized Caprice number 14 from Itzhak Perlman. And of course, the sheet music looked much more challenging than Perlman had made it look. And so I thought, "Okay, I have to get this. But I also have to get this Suzuki Book 1 because I actually need that. I need to study with that.
And so I had my book money for Suzuki book 1 for my mom and my lunch money. I decided to spend it all and get both Suzuki Book 1 and the Paganini 24 Caprices at the same time. And I still have that old book of 24. As I was learning the music in Suzuki Book 1, I would also hold my violin like this and try to pluck my way really slowly through what I could figure out of the Paganini Caprices.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Immanuel Abraham:
And that's 14.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Kind of a mandolin version. You actually play a little mandolin, don't you?
Immanuel Abraham:
Yes. Yeah, I picked it up. I picked it up during college.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Immanuel Abraham:
When I found out I had the same tuning as the violin plus frets, I said, "How hard can this be?"
Leah Roseman:
I recently featured the great jazz violinist and Mandolinist, Aaron Weinstein, who's also from Chicago. And people are interested in that, it's a really cool episode. I was just thinking about, you mentioned about studying with Guillaume, and then when you went to Michigan, you studied with Andrew Jennings.
Immanuel Abraham:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
How were their styles of teaching different?
Immanuel Abraham:
The atmosphere changed. And so a lot of the difference I think had to do with playing for a grade, needing to pass a certain level and also being a kid, versus suddenly being an adult and needing to not just wanting to do well, but having to do well in order to stay in the game, so to speak.
Things immediately got more, I won't say more strict, but more intense because the importance changed. If I didn't learn my Bruch Concerto well before, or my Mendelssohn or whatever, it meant that I might not do well in my college auditions, which is like your own, it's that - you haven't lost any money, you don't want to not pass college auditions or any audition. But you haven't lost money and whatnot at that point.
If you're going to school, and in my case, the University of Michigan, which is not a cheap school, and you flunk out because you can't pass your juries. That's a totally different atmosphere of learning. I also had a studio of people who at least at the time, were better than I. By the time I got to the University of Michigan where I did undergrad and grad school, I had this peak of confidence because I had been practicing so hard in so many hours. And everyone who I studied with in every orchestra and every camp and every this and every that, I had eventually risen to the top very quickly. Everyone who had laughed at me before was no longer laughing either.
And then I got to the University of Michigan where most of my peers had started as toddlers. And so I was in that same boat once again of feeling like the novice of the group. I could play Bruch, I could play Mendelssohn, I could play Conus and a couple of student concertos. But my peers were on their fourth or fifth Paganini Caprice themselves and/or doing Tchaikovsky.
And I just felt immediately behind once again. A difference there was that I knew how to handle it. I knew how to handle feeling like the worst. And I also knew how to raise my level to at least be at the same level as my peers. A huge part of the humility of it is just being able to learn everywhere.
Everyone, whether they're better than you or not or older or younger than you, everyone has something that they can teach you. I've learned something from every one of my students, and I'm proud to say that. And a lot of people are... Their ego is this wall that's in the way. And so they won't ask a peer for help with something if they're not sure about what bowing to use or a good fingering for this particular measure. A lot of them would rather spend three days trying to figure out something that works and eventually doesn't than asking for help from someone who's who they know has played it before.
That was a huge part of what I was doing during my undergrad at the University of Michigan, was just asking people for help all of the time. And Andrew Jennings saw and recognized that. And he always seemed very supportive which I really appreciated. He seemed to, despite knowing where I was, he seemed to have a lot of faith in me that at the time. I really didn't feel like I had merited. As far as the difference between he and Guillaume, I think one of the things was that Guillaume had an intensity about picking more pieces of music for me to learn. I think he was aware of the fact that I was starting as a teenager, and that I wanted to make a career in music, and that I would be an adult in four years. And so he was really pushing about me learning repertoire, so I wouldn't always perfect one piece before moving on to the next. And with Jennings, he was very intense about getting a piece to his best point possible before moving on to the next piece. I'm sure part of that was motivated by juries, for example, because you need to have things prepared if you're going to play them for a jury. But I think that that was also a fundamental difference in the approach to where I was.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's interesting. I mostly teach teenagers, and often people come to me from other teachers, so I see from my students other people's approaches. And I find there's too much stress for kids on doing an exam, or you just prepare a very limited repertoire during a whole year and they might be get bored. And I'm kind of the opposite. I think most people are going to benefit at that stage from learning different styles of music and not going for perfection all the time, just to get more exposure. What do you think about that, for your average student just growing up?
Immanuel Abraham:
I think age certainly has a lot to do with this. And their goals, if they even have any goals, especially with children in particular, you have some children who are there because their mom told them to. And then you have some children who are there because it's something that they are crazy about and really want to do. And then other people are there because of their peer group. And the level of perfection that they want to get to often has its roots in what they are learning the instrument for.
And I think about whether I'm cooking something for myself, or I'm cooking it for my girlfriend. That has a big contrast, because oftentimes I'm flying out the door and I'll cook something really badly for myself that no one else would want to eat, but I'm fine with it because it's just for me. If I'm cooking it for my girlfriend, I want to give the best possible cooking that I can. So I'll take two, three times as much time with it and put my little bay leaf or cilantro on top to make it look good also. So performance is a lot like that.
So whether I move on from the piece so they don't get bored, it relates to one way that I parry boredom and a feeling of monotony in the music, is I always let students choose their music from a selection of three or four pieces.
Leah Roseman:
Me too.
Immanuel Abraham:
So sweet. So yeah, even I have a few different method books. And so, with the Suzuki method, for example, I'll play one piece, I'll play the next piece, and I'll play a couple from another method at the same level, and I'll ask them which one they liked the most. And so usually, I'll check in when I check in, and ask them, "How do you feel about this piece? Is it still interesting, that you just say it? If it's boring, that's one of the first things I want to know because we need to move on then." And usually they'll say, "No, no, I really want to play this. I want to play this well." And they have this desire that is, it's one of the most adorable things to see in children is when they want to perfect something. And I just love seeing that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And I love with student recitals, I will ask them, did you hear something you want to learn with somebody who's more advanced or just different rep? And they generally, there's one piece that stood out. I think that's like we need. Yeah, it's so important to hear your peers as well as listen to great recordings, because that's more realistic to aspire to play that person than the recording right away. You know what I mean?
Immanuel Abraham:
Absolutely, absolutely. That's a huge part of the inspiration for, I mean, as you know, I started from a video recording with Perlman, but I always tell people to, students of any level, whether they're college students or day one beginners, just listen to the violin. And it doesn't have to be classical, it doesn't have to be anything but the violin, but just listen to it and get curious. And the ones that do always come back with excitement over something that they heard or something that they didn't know was possible. "Those whistling noises, I knew about harmonics, but it sounded like they were doing two harmonics at a time." Or, "Was that a harmonic trill? How do you trill a harmonic? Well, it sounded like that guy was trilling two notes at a time." Or, something that is really, it just brings that excitement out and that motivation.
It's a really beautiful thing to see, because I think in the end, in my opinion, that's such a large part about what life is about, and that's probably the hardest thing to define. But giving that kind of excitement and enthusiasm about what can come next, that's an excitement and enthusiasm about the future. That's excitement and enthusiasm about the next day and the day after, and what you can do a year later or two years later. There's so much that's so important.
Leah Roseman:
So speaking of inspiring kids, your first teaching, well, I think one of your first teaching assignments, you were working with the Sphinx Organization when you were still a young student. Can you describe that, because it was such an ambitious thing that you did?
Immanuel Abraham:
Sure, absolutely. So I worked for the Sphinx Organization during a program that they had, I don't think it exists anymore in Detroit, called the Sphinx Overture Program. And that's where they would have a performance, violin performance major come from the University of Michigan and teach at two schools in the Detroit area, every day after school. I was assigned four schools and these were elementary students. And this was intense teaching. Every teaching assignment that I've had afterwards has felt easy by comparison.
Leah Roseman:
I'm sure.
Immanuel Abraham:
Because it was two schools a day, but the way it was arranged was, it was schools A and B on Monday, Tuesday, C and D, Wednesday A and B, Thursday, C and D, Friday A and B. The next week it flips. So Monday, it's schools C and D, et cetera. And that was so much to keep track of. And the schools were just far enough apart where if you accidentally went to the wrong school, there's no way you're going to get to the next school across town in time. For me, I was working at the time to pay for school, and I also, I was a full-time student, as well. So after my school day and after my working another job, I would head out to Detroit and teach for this Sphinx Overture Program. And I have so many stories from that. And it was one of the most educational things for me because of, I just learned so much about working with large groups of children, and how to stay calm and keep calm, and have that calmness be the default when you walk into a room.
So regardless of whatever kind of day that you had, if it wasn't a good day, you didn't get a good grade on something or whatever, you don't bring that into a classroom with your students. Your students are, they deserve the fresh you, no matter what. They deserve to calm you, no matter what. And the environment that a lot of the students came from reminded me a lot of the environment that I came from. We're talking inner city Detroit. And for me it was inner-city Chicago. And so, I had a lot of empathy for every single one of the students. Some of them, they would say something and I could tell exactly what the situation was at home.
So I really wanted to do right by these children because I thought about how a small thing as small as a ten-second clip or a violin in a pillow case changed my entire life. Now I've traveled the world. I've got a book that's traveling even more of the world than I have, and I have a doctorate in violin performance. And none of that would've been possible without some small gestures. And I realized, I was in a place to give those kinds of gestures to all these children at four schools. Yeah, that's what the position was like for me. I really loved it. I loved all of the children. One thing I learned about large groups of children was, when I was explaining to them a little bit about the violin and its anatomy and I talked about the bow, and how our bows shaft. Has this curve going this way, and one of the children asked me why it's called a bow.
And so I mentioned the pre-Francois Tourte bows, which as you know, they go the other way. And those look like a bow since, and hence why they were called bows. And I was going to give them an introduction to rosin since I was talking about bows. And it turned out I had left my rosin in my car. My car was right outside, I could see it out the window. I told them I'd be right back in a few seconds.
I came back in a few seconds and everyone had their bows, and they were shooting pencils at each other with their bows. And that was just a brilliant moment for me, because the principal of the school happened to be walking by and looked into my room, and she saw all. It was my first day teaching, all the kids are shooting arrows, shooting pencils at each other as arrows. You can't explain yourself out of that. She walks in and I just said, "Sorry." And fortunately, she giggled also. She didn't know exactly what was going on. I tried to tell her afterwards, which she thought was hilarious, fortunately. But that was just one of many learning experiences I had, working for the Sphinx Overture Program.
Leah Roseman:
We don't have time necessarily for lots of stories, but it would be great to hear if you could remember one or two. You said, you had lots of stories from that time of teaching those kids.
Immanuel Abraham:
Sure. Well, another was, the school's name was Carpenter Elementary. And the children, they had had teachers before teaching them music. And some of them had teachers for two or three years before. And I was astonished that most, not half, but most of them couldn't recognize a note on a staff. And from what I could tell, it just sounded like someone had completely wasted their time. And no one could tell. And I could tell that in other areas, and this is what the inner city is like, I can speak for that myself. Having been to schools where they just do not care. The schools are places where the kids go. Generally, are not safe at all. And when the parents come home from work, then the kids leave. It's a harsh daycare center, basically.
And so what I demanded for the children, I said, I asked for each one's parents' emails, and some of their parents didn't have emails. They gave me phone numbers. So I contacted all the parents. I asked them if the children could show up for their recital with black bottoms, white top, just concert dress. And I even asked for a dress rehearsal for them, wearing their concert dress. And when I did that at Carpenter Elementary, teachers came outside the window and were literally passing by and they started recording the class playing on their phones. I don't have any of those clips, but I could see that happening. And they just started talking about how beautiful the children looked and the kids were. They just loved it. They said they felt, a lot of them said, "I feel rich."
And just from looking different and being perceived differently, they went home and they practiced hard. They felt like, they felt that need to earn the attire that they had on, and the atmosphere that they were setting up. So they performed at Carpenter Elementary. I do have a couple of pictures of that on a hard drive somewhere. And they all had their white tops and black bottoms. And there were literally parents in the audience who I could see crying from the stage. And the pieces they were playing were like, Lightly Row, Go Tell Aunt Rhody, from the beginning of Suzuki Book One. What I saw and from my own background, I could relate to the emotions that the parents were feeling. So while I was on stage, I started tearing up myself.
That just goes, went to show, in my opinion, the impact of a chance. Whether it's one chance of hearing a solo violin, which for most people doesn't just happen in a grocery store or on a movie. You need someone to reach out or something, or an organization or part of your education to give that to you. And schools in those areas, they don't give that. Now I've been around to dozens of wealthier schools and the differences still blows me away. Everything from the food that they eat, and the music that they play, and the quality of the teachers. But this showed me what, and I was rushing between schools, but the little bit I was able to do during that period had such a strong impact that it brought parents to tears and concordantly, myself. That never left me. And that's one reason why I still love to work with children today. Most of my students now are adults. But I do love and I'll always love working with children.
Leah Roseman:
Are you doing a lot of your teaching online?
Immanuel Abraham:
Since COVID, yes. That was actually when I started. I hadn't taught or studied, I hadn't taken any online courses, I should say, online until the start of COVID.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Immanuel Abraham:
With the advent of that, then I started teaching online, and now I'm starting to see people in person again. But the majority of my students are still online right now.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So when you just recently finished your doctorate at the University of Arizona, and I believe you played the Brahms Concerto with your own cadenzas with the University Orchestra as part of that.
Immanuel Abraham:
Yes, ma'am.
Leah Roseman:
And Andrew Jennings at University of Michigan had sort of got you started composing when he asked you to write your own cadenzas, way back for different concertos for Mozart or something?
Immanuel Abraham:
Yes. Well, Andrew Jennings had mentioned, he had encouraged me to write my own cadenzas for the Mozart concerto. For me, that had a lot of impact because I was already writing music, but I didn't feel anyone taking me seriously with it. It was kind of like this private thing that was inside, that I would never ... and I had books of manuscript here. I still have them, full of things that I had written, but I also figured the world would never hear. When Jennings asked me to write a cadenza for a Mozart concerto, it is, it's just another example of that little thing that's gets done and has this massive impact. So I wrote a cadenza for a Mozart concerto. I think for that one, it was Concerto Number 4 in D Major. He enjoyed it. The studio enjoyed it, when I played it for the studio. One of my friends from the studio asked for it because she was working on the same concerto. So this just impacted me in huge ways. And I was also playing other genres at the time.
And so, I had done this little online competition, if you will, for this. The competition was called Stamp.FM Music Competition. The award for it was that you would get to open for We The Kings at the Michigan Theater. So this big super, super loud, lots of lights hall. I played something from my classical repertoire. I don't remember what it was. And I wound up winning the competition. And I don't think I was the person they wanted to win it, because they don't want someone playing Mozart to open for We The Kings at the Michigan Theater. Everyone else was doing some pop or country music.
So I won this and I thought, "Oh great, I get to perform at the Michigan Theater." And the person who put the program together, he calls me and he says, "Hey, Abraham, you won. Congratulations." And I said, "Thanks so much." And he said, "Yeah." And he sounded really not happy about it. I figured it was because he just saw me as a classical musician. Maybe he was embarrassed that I won his competition with the classical work. And he said, "Okay, so you're opening for We The Kings. I got a couple of rules for you. No classical, no, no. And none of those sub things either. No, none of that romantic stuff. None of that impressionist stuff. I said nothing classical. Do you hear me?" And he's just really, really strict about this.
And I wasn't going to turn down this huge gig. So I said, "Yeah, no problem." But it was every bit of problem, because I had never tried writing another genre at that point. So I started listening to all the rock music that I could, and seeing how can I put any rock and roll on a solo violin. And I changed from all of my focus in school to writing this piece that was rock inspired. I went as far as to buy my first electric violin, an NS model from Shar Music, Ned Steinberger violin. I liked that one. For one, it was fretless and it was what I was used to. I wrote this rock inspired work and put many, many, many hours into it and I opened with it. I got a standing ovation at the Michigan Theater for it. That was the last hurdle that I needed to jump for writing, and putting my writing out there. I started writing all these other genres like kirtan for a monk that I met on campus. And yeah, it was really the start from writing that Mozart cadenza to suddenly having this huge pressure with the Michigan Theater and a guy calling me in shouting, no classical.
Leah Roseman:
I have to ask, what is the We the Kings thing I'm ignorant of.
Immanuel Abraham:
Oh, We the Kings is, they're a famous rock band. That was me also at the time.
Leah Roseman:
Well, yeah. Shows where I'm coming from. So when you were at University of Michigan, I just want to go to this quickly. When we'd spoken before you told me what I found kind of a shocking story where you were basically humiliated for showing that you had this amazing skill at transcription in your jazz class, which is a skill that all jazz musicians use most to learn, is their ability to transcribe when you hear something and you're able to write it down.
Immanuel Abraham:
Yes, when I realized that my writing could be taken seriously and started to be taken seriously and people started asking for it, I immediately wanted to be able to write everything I could. So I started taking every genre of gig that I could and learning how to play those and writing them as well. And so from all this writing I was doing, and a lot of times it was just riding the campus bus, having an idea and needing to write it down in a hurry, and then playing it. So I had a lot of trial and error with writing things down from my head, going to a practice room as soon as possible, and the stuff that I wrote down, not sounding like what I had in my head earlier. So I had a lot of practice with that until I got good at it.
When I started my jazz courses from Mark Kirschman and Edward Sarath at the University of Michigan, they had this exercise that they had the whole studio do, I would say it's just under a dozen students there, where one of them would play a phrase on the trumpet and everyone else had to go in a circle and play that exact phrase, note for note, rhythm for rhythm, et cetera. And I saw a couple of people do this and I thought, oh my God, I'm not going to be able to remember this, because the phrases were getting longer and longer, class by class.
So of course I pulled up my staff paper and I started writing these down and I numbered them. I was really organized about it. It was like one through 20 and Mark comes over and he says, what's that, Abraham? And I probably said, oh, I'm writing down your phrases for when it comes to my turn. And I was proud of this, because the environment that had come from before, would praise that as good ear training and transcription, but not there. He just said no. And I said, no? No, what? And then the whole class just starts laughing, not even a little, just hysterically, because everyone else in the class, they had been doing jazz for a while. They were all part of this jazz group. And I was one of maybe two outsiders in this jazz class. And so he did not like that I had written these things down and he said, no, writing it down.
So from that point, I felt naked at first in the jazz class, and I tried to cheat a little bit with a sharpie, because I would try to write these small phrases, these little bits, on this side of my hand because that faces my face when I'm playing. So I can play and look at a little bit of the phrase on my hand. But very quickly I realized that I would get caught doing that. So I had to stop altogether. And that was one of many learning experiences where I learned the integrity that people had with their all integrity, being able to hear things and play what they hear.
And when you hear a very good jazz group and they're passing solos around that they're doing it from a place of being able, not only being able to imitate exactly what the last person had done, but being able to do variations off of it. That taught me so much, because it's like how am I going to do variations on a thing that I can't hear in my head or that I can't play. If I'm going to improvise, I need to improvise off of something that I know. And if I'm on the spot, in a jazz group, it needs to be something that I know immediately. And that just taught me so much, not just in jazz, but improvisational genres in general.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I think the first time I heard you tell that story, I didn't realize it was in the context of that sort of call and response sort of exercise. I thought it was just general transcription, but still it's, yeah, there's no reason to humiliate people and laugh at your peers for trying to learn. I wanted to ask you one violin question, and I wanted to wrap up with yoga. So if we could do that. I saw something you did, and it was about finger independence and vibrato, and I wanted to ask you about that, because it didn't really make sense to me and I want to understand where you're coming from with that.
Immanuel Abraham:
Sure. Well, it could, just going off of that, it can lead into a number of different things. Finger independency is one of the most important things that I think, gets overlooked in a lot of our technique. Every finger influences every other finger in some way, whether it's reaching one back, it's influencing four at some level. So every finger influences the other. A lot of players have this immense amount of capability, but they start cramping up in their arm and things start feeling tight. It's one of the reasons why so many people struggle with their tenths. For example, and there's two notes on this. One is that the first, and I think this might be where you meant, we're referring to the relation relationship with yoga-
Leah Roseman:
No, that's separate.
Immanuel Abraham:
Oh, that's separate. Okay.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, sorry.
Immanuel Abraham:
Not at all. Not at all. Well, when things get tough on the violin, our adrenaline, our cortisol and other stress hormones are activated and start mass producing in our bodies. And that does not help us on a technical level. That's part of our primate state coming back in the present. And when we see something tough and we start like, oh my God, that's a 10th. And we try and force this at 10th to happen.
But when you tighten up things and you make the, what I call the wolverine claws, coming out of your wrist. When you tighten up, you're actually contracting things. And when you're contracting things, you're making it much more difficult for it to reach. If you can relax your hand, which requires chilling out about the fact that it's a 10th, the 10th becomes much easier. And anyone can reach a 10th and not be strained by it. And a number of people who didn't believe that I've said that to, I've showed this to, and they're able to play consecutive 10ths with relative ease. A good way to start is reaching with the four and reaching back, very relaxed with the pinky, with the index.
Leah Roseman:
But in terms of vibrato, because I think on Instagram you showed an exercise for independence of the fingers, and you felt like it was key to vibrato. That's what I was wondering about.
Immanuel Abraham:
I do have these finger independence exercises, they're usually what people talk about, and they do help with every... I think, because they help with every aspect of playing difficulty singling out vibrato. So there's going back and forth like so. And because we play with the tips of our fingers, we want the tips of our fingers to articulate with the palm. And ideally our hand is facing this way, we're supinated, so I'm just showing it this way so that you can see on the video. And then we can also switch outside and inside, and then side to side. And that independency really helps.
I was mentioning about five minutes ago where fingers are affected by, not only by what the last finger had done, but what the next finger is going to do. That finger that's in the present and that we are playing is affected when we start reaching, the moment we start reaching for that next finger, it's affected by it. And vibrato, along with everything else, is helped if we have enough independency where we can stay loose and not have something feel like it's pulling on on other fingers.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. I see what you're saying.
Immanuel Abraham:
That's where the independency can come in. And usually, when I'm talking about finger independency, it's about something else like double trills or reaching 10ths. The context of helping vibrato is a little bit more extensive than I think we have time for at the moment.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. No, I just was curious. No, I just curious to ask you, I know you'd got your yoga teacher training and I was thinking about how in your life you just packed so much in, even University of Michigan doing so much in every single day. So doing yoga now, has it sort of enabled you to carve out more balance or just sort of step back a little bit?
Immanuel Abraham:
I would say more of the latter. It's helped me to... A huge part of the motivation in high school was also a very, very high stress level, trying to get every minute mattered. So if I could get five minutes of practice in somewhere, I was even hospitalized for an issue with some allergy as a teenager, and I bugged them so much about needing to practice while I was in the hospital. I convinced them to clean out a towel closet. It was about this big and let me practice there, which they did. They let me practice there for all three days that I was staying there. They even had me go down a couple of floors to play for some senior citizens.
But it became a really intense and high stress situation. And I thought that if I kept that stress, like a peak stress level, that meant that I was moving forward. I got to a level of the repertoire though, where that stress level started pushing things back, because it was coming out in a physical way. I wanted to play things that were super fast. So I would go through it as fast as I could, but I started digging my fingers into the fingerboard, things that don't help. I don't know if you've heard about the business card trick?
Leah Roseman:
From you, yeah, it's excellent.
Immanuel Abraham:
I mentioned it too many times. But yeah, it's a huge help. And that the idea is that while you're playing, even while you're vibrato-ing, you're able to slide a card under your fingers, because all we need is for the string to touch the fingerboard to stop the vibration on the other side. So we only have the vibrating string line. But learning how to only press that hard, especially during double stops or tough double stops or triple, quadruple stops.
And that's where yoga really came in for me, because yoga was basically telling, teaching me how to step back. It's okay, you can relax and still do this and you don't need to maintain this peak stress level in order to achieve it. You'll be much healthier, you'll have much better root and a much faster root if you can keep the stress level down.
And that really helped, not just as far as technique, but performance as well. If you're in a chill state, when you go out on stage, the stage begins to feel like the practice room. And that's when a lot of people sound their best, is in the practice room because they don't have any nerves bothering them there. So yoga really helped to get rid of performance nerves that had started to plague me at the very beginning of college.
Leah Roseman:
So in your life now you have a balance of composing and teaching and performing, would you like to keep that kind of balance going forward?
Immanuel Abraham:
In the foreseeable future, I would. I enjoy all three of those. And I feel that they're... Charles Darwin had a very interesting quote on music where he said, we hear the phrase a lot that music is a language. And he has a quote in Origin of Species where I'm paraphrasing slightly, where he says that it's not music that's a language, rather it's language that that's a music. Because before our tongues evolve the ability to articulate words and have articulate sounds, we communicated with pitch and rhythm. And pitch and rhythm are basically the two elements, when combined, that make music. So in his theory, music was our first language.
Teaching, writing and performing are really three sides, the three sides to that, in my opinion. If I learn a language, I want to be able to write the language. If I write a language, I want to be able to speak that language. And if I know other people, I'll communicate best if they also know things about that language. So a lot of my best friends, most of my best friends, are all musicians and that's a lot of fun. So yeah, that would be why I'd like to keep that balance between the three. They support each other, they don't get in the way.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Beautifully said Immanuel. It's been really great having you here today.
Immanuel Abraham:
It's been wonderful to talk to you. And if I may, just before we close here, I believe the release date for this is May 12th, and I would like to give our listeners access and a discount to the book 24 Caprices for Solo Violin. It's a second edition now. It's 76 pages. It's accessible via my website, which is theviolindoctor, all one word .com/24. Again, theviolindoctor.com/24, and the discount code that will be activated during the week of May 12th, so May 12th through May 18th is, theviolindoctor. So it's the same thing, basically, all one word, all lowercase. And this discount code is 25% off of the 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Second Edition.
Leah Roseman:
Excellent. Yeah, I can put that in the description, at least for the week of the discount. And of course, all your links will be linked directly to this episode, so no worries.
Immanuel Abraham:
Well, thank you so much and thanks for having me and this it's wonderful conversation with a fellow violinist.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Thanks for following the series on your favorite podcast player and sharing your favorite episodes with your friends, all of which help find new listeners. I've lots more episodes coming in this Season 3, with a fascinating diversity of musicians and their stories and music. Have a great week.
