Jennifer Roig-Francoli: Transcript
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Bringing open curiosity to your life in moment. So if you can practice that during the day doing just your everyday things, then that's like your golden period before practicing. Then if you've been present during the day, you come to the practice room being present and you're present and curious about how you're approaching your instrument. How are you thinking about your instrument? Are you loving your instrument or afraid of your instrument, for example? And if you could have a better relationship with yourself at first, then you can have a better relationship with your instrument. And then when you're getting along with your instrument, it just becomes a conversation with your instrument and you're always learning something new. It's always fun. You never do the same thing twice, even if you're playing the same scale every day for years, it's never the same way twice.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, welcome to Season Four of Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. For this first episode in 2024, I welcome the violinist, author and coach Jennifer Roig-Francoli. We talk about her newly released book "Make Great Music with Ease: the Secret to Smarter Practice, Confident Performance and Living a Happier Life", and her Art of Freedom Method, which incorporates the mind-body skills of the Alexander technique. This episode also features excerpts from her solo violin album, Solo Con Spirito with Music of Kreisler, Enescu and Bach. Jennifer had the opportunity to study with Nathan Milstein, Joseph Gingold, and Stanley Ritchie, and has had an interesting career as a performer, including with Apollo's Fire. We talk about performing barefoot at Carnegie Hall, travels to India, and in Jennifer's words, "how you do one thing is how you do everything". I myself have been very influenced by different mind-body practices like the Alexander Technique and the power of thought to help me address habitual tensions in my own life has really helped me.
I trust this inspiring and helpful episode will be of help to you, both musical performers and not, because the content of this discussion addresses universal challenges for all of us. This conversation is punctuated by some excerpts from Jennifer's solo album, and I hope you'll listen to the whole album, which you'll find both on streaming services or better yet for purchase on her website, which is linked in the description. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast. And I've also linked the transcript to my website, Leahroseman.com, where you can sign up for my weekly newsletter to get access to Sneak Peeks for upcoming episodes. I've had several interviews talking about some of the same issues as this episode. My interviews with Julie Lyonn Lieberman, Madeline Bruser, Stephen Nachmanovitch, Derek Gripper, and Daniel Ramjattan will be good places to start if you missed any of those. Finally, I'm an independent podcaster and I truly need the help of my listeners to keep this project going. You'll find the link in the description to help with that. Now, to my conversation with Jennifer Roig- Francoli. So hello Jennifer. Thanks so much for joining me here today.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Thank you so much, Leah. I'm really excited to be here.
Leah Roseman:
I'm glad we could work out the timing because tomorrow is the release of your beautiful book, which I have an advanced copy of. Thank you very much. If you could say the title for everybody,
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
It is called" Make Great Music with Ease: the Secret to Smarter Practice, confident Performance and Living a Happier Life".
Leah Roseman:
And I noticed that people who buy this book automatically get the audiobook, which is a really wonderful touch. And you narrated that as well?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes, actually, I have to admit it's not done yet, so people can't get the book just yet, but they can get on the waiting list for it, and it should come out within hopefully the next few months
Leah Roseman:
Coming soon. Okay. Yes. Well, we're going to dig into this book. There's so much there and I can relate to so much of it, but I love to start each episode with some music. And I know when you turned 50 very recently, you made a very special recording. Could you speak to that experience?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes, actually it was a great experience. I had always just assumed when I was a child that I would have a recording someday, that I would make a record Back when we had LPs, I had that dream and then the pandemic hit and I thought, well, this is the perfect time for me to make my solo recording. And so it was quite a learning experience because you can see if you're watching the video, you can see the acoustic tiles here in my studio, I turned one of my bedrooms into a recording studio and learned how to do the entire process and even produced a couple of the tracks myself. And it's some of my favorite music, especially The Chaconne is on there, part of the second Partita by JS Bach, and there's also the Ysaÿe Ballade and Sarabande by George Enescu and the Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice by Fritz Kreisler.
Leah Roseman:
You're about to hear an excerpt from Kreisler's Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice from Jennifer's album Solo con Spirito.(music) Yeah, the Kreisler's not a piece that people play a lot. It is very difficult. I remember
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
It was challenging. I love it. I've always loved that piece. So it felt like quite an achievement for me to actually record it. I was really happy.
Leah Roseman:
It's a really beautiful record. Thank you. And the Enescu is not a piece I'd heard of.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
No, actually, I credit my son for finding that my son is a really wonderful violinist in his own right, and he loves just going on YouTube and finding all these pieces that I've never heard of. And he said, mommy, you should play this piece. And so we found, I looked for the music online and found it and learned it, and yeah, I'm surprised that more people don't know about this beautiful piece.
Leah Roseman:
This next clip is from Enescu's Sarabande. (Music)
Yeah, it was interesting in the pandemic, I think so many of us were recording at home and discovering all kinds of new and old unaccompanied music. I was actually, before this conversation today, I was looking on my bookshelf. I don't know if you have this book by Stanley Ritchie, who I also studied with.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
You studied with him too! Oh my goodness, yes, I have that.
Leah Roseman:
So this book is called "Before The Chin Rest, A Violinist's Guide to the Mysteries of Pre-Chin Rests Technique and Style". And anyone who's curious about Baroque Performance style, it's quite a book that Stanley Ritchie wrote, and I was flipping through it and he says at some point there's no such thing as unaccompanied music because then you're accompanying yourself.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
That's beautiful.
Leah Roseman:
You have to be aware of the bass line and all that.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
The one thing that I always think of when from my time, and I'm sure he said this while you were studying with him too, in Barque orchestra, he would always say "Everything is in one. Everything is in one". Which it's so true, and it really helped me so much. I think I learned the most about rhythm from any of my teachers, from Stanley, just going into the Baroque world and learning about vertical rhythm and everything is in one.
Leah Roseman:
One thing - I played baroque violin a number of years ago. I've since sold my baroque violin. For five years I had a chamber music group. I had a wonderful harpsichordist here in town, Tom Annand that I worked with, and just exploring the 150 years of violin repertoire before Bach. There's such a wealth of music that people don't play. So that was incredibly wonderful for me. I know what I was going to say when I interviewed Julie Lyonn Lieberman, who wrote"You Are Your Instrument", for this podcast, she mentioned she studied with Stanley very briefly before he got into Baroque violin. And she mentioned he was doing Alexander Technique, which I don't remember him talking about.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
I don't either. I'm really surprised. That's interesting.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, and I haven't spoken to him in years. It'd be interesting to ask him about that.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Well, I gave him a lesson once. Yeah. Yes. It was in my ex-husband's studio at the University of Cincinnati Conservatory. That was really fun. Yes, I haven't seen him in a long time either, but he's such a wonderful person. I keep thinking I need to go back to Bloomington. And
Leah Roseman:
You'd graduated there in 1990, right?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Oh gosh, yes. That's right. I was there from 88 to 90. I studied with Gingold and Stanley at the same time, which was really interesting. Two different worlds. And I have some funny stories about all of that. I had never even heard of original instruments when I got to IU. I didn't know they existed. And so I had taken a lesson from Joseph Silverstein the summer before I went to IU and got some tips from him. He said, oh, IU is such a wonderful place. There's so many things you can do. You need to go listen to the opera. You need to do this, do that, and you must listen in on a lesson from Stanley Richie. And I said, okay. So I put it on the list of things I needed to do. And then when I got there, I knocked on his door and said, Joseph Silverstein sent me.
So he said, I should listen to a lesson. And Stanley said, oh, how wonderful. Now you wouldn't want to play in Barque Orchestra, would you? And I needed to sign up for some ensemble. So I thought, sure, why not play in Baroque orchestra? It's as good as any other. And so I signed up for Barque Orchestra, and then he said, well, you'll need to take lessons with me once a week as well. I said, okay, sure, I'll do that. And so I showed up to the first rehearsal of the Baroque Orchestra and he stuck a baroque violin in my hand. And I went, what's that? It's a baroque violin, and by the way, we play at a 415 and we use gut strings and we stand up when we play, and there are only a few of us in this ensemble. And so it was quite an experience.
I'm sure you can imagine I didn't have perfect, perfect pitch, but it was enough perfect close to perfect that it was very discombobulating to suddenly hear the A at 415 coming out of my instrument and seeing the notes on the page. It did not match what I was hearing. So it was a steep learning curve. But I have to say it was the most fun experience. It completely changed my life to play in Baroque Orchestra. We had so much fun, and I fell in love with Baroque music, which I'd always loved Bach, but I never really appreciated other kinds of baroque music. Other composers, for example, the Messiah. I really did not like the Handel Messiah at all until I found being able to do it on original instruments and just fell in love with the whole style just really worked for me.
Leah Roseman:
So I just missed you at IU. I think I got there right after you left, and I did my Master's there. I had a similar experience too. I was really ignorant of all that. It was very eyeopening. And if we could just touch on your experience with Apollo's Fire. You were with them for 10 years?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Actually, it was closer to 20. I was there from almost the very beginning. I don't remember exactly how many years or what year it was that I started, but yes, I was there when Cynthia Roberts was the concert master, and I was on the stand with her as associate, and then she left for a while. So I filled in as Acting Concertmaster for at least a year or so. I forgot how long, but it was a great experience. I love a Apollo's Fire.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I know Cynthia. Boy, I haven't thought about her in years. Wonderful player and person. So I was looking at some of their videos because actually the Klezmer singer, Polina Shepherd, who was featured on this series last year, she was doing some stuff with them, and I was intrigued with this programming that they were coming up with. And so I was looking, they have a very different approach that's kind of theatrical.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot. Jeanette would often encourage us to express the music physically and visually as well as auditorially. And that took a little getting used to for me, but it really makes a lot of sense these days. So much of what we do is visual. I think it's a very different experience for, well, I don't know how it used to be, but I imagine that concerts have become more of a multi-dimensional entertainment experience. Whereas before it may have been more focused on just the auditory experience, but now we need to keep our audiences engaged, especially with classical music. It's just not as mainstream as it used to be a hundred, 200, 300 years ago. So whatever we can do to engage the audience and get them involved and really entertain them, that's one of the things that Apollo's Fire is really good at.
Leah Roseman:
And to lead up to your book, I think it might be interesting for people to understand a little bit about more where you're coming from now, Jennifer, when you'd said, I always assumed I'd make a recording now, having heard you play and knowing what you were doing when you were young, it seems like you would've made many recordings. You were following this path of international soloist and you studied with Nathan Milstein as a teenager, as a child in the summers.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes. For five years, yes. Well, I really was very fortunate as a child, and I wrote about this in the book where I've always felt like I'm one of the lucky ones. I did grow up in a musical family. I had a lot of support, loving support. I never felt pushed and yet just from, I wanted a violin when I was two and got one when I was four, and I was not really interested in anything else. And so just my parents supported me in going in that direction. They're both musicians. And my mother is from Switzerland, and so when they heard about Milstein's Masterclass in Switzerland, it was just, well, I was going to say it was an easy thing. It wasn't an easy thing because I needed to audition to get into that masterclass, and I was in tears by the end of it, not because I wanted to play Bach and he wouldn't let me play Bach, but in the end, we had really good experience together.
It was really fun for me personally to be working with Nathan Millstein. And I have a lot of good memories of specific things from specific pieces. I remember in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, for example, the, I remember him so well telling me I was emoting, and basically he wanted me to not do anything extra to just play it the way it is. And I'm sure he said that to other people too. It's the way he heard it, but it was a really clear way of, it was kind of a minimalist approach where it was understood that the music speaks for itself and he hated when people would add things like add your emotions. And actually, that really dovetails very beautifully with the work that I do with Alexander technique because I often think of the Alexander technique as a subtraction method where we're really letting go of what's unnecessary in our thinking and our movements and everything that we're doing. We're doing too much, so we learn how to do only what's necessary to get out of the way, and then the music can speak through us. And I think that was one of Milstein's great gifts was that he just knew naturally how to get out of the way and not overdo and just let things speak through him. I think all the great artists know how to do that intuitively.
Leah Roseman:
I certainly grew up listening to his recordings and I had the opportunity to hear him in recital. I think when he was 80. He did this tour where he played solo recital, which was really electrifying to hear that sound live for the one and only time I was able to do that.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
That's wonderful.
Leah Roseman:
I studied Alexander Technique about 23 years ago, only for a year. But two things I think that really stayed with me are how to sit properly in a chair, because after that point, I haven't had pain sitting, and I have to do a lot of that.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
That's fantastic.
Leah Roseman:
And how to breathe, which people don't always associate Alexander technique with that, but it is a big part of it, right.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Well, the way I think about Alexander technique is that we are learning to access our natural coordination by not doing what gets in the way of it. So we're learning to not do the extra. We're learning how to notice how we are thinking in ways that cause excess tension in the body. And when there's excess tension in the body, it really gets in the way of natural movement and natural flow. And of course, natural breathing too. We are designed beautifully to be upright creatures and to be free and mobile and flexible and responsive and happy. And yet, from the time we're very little, most of us have been taught how to dampen that and to get in the way of natural free flow in our breathing and our movements and have less joy in life too, which is pretty sad. But I think it has a lot to do with our culture, our society, and imitating, because when we're children, we're kind of designed to imitate the people around us.
And unfortunately, many of the people around us are stiff and holding back and not freely expressing themselves. And so we learn from them what's acceptable in our society, what's acceptable in our culture, how to behave and how to do things that are considered right and not to do what's considered wrong. And so there's a lot of anxiety and fear that's instilled in us, in us since the time we're very little. And it can help us in many ways because we can go along with the norms and become successful. But I think a lot of the times we block our natural creative spark when we do that, and things just get a little more difficult, both physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually too. And so for artists, it's really, really important to notice when we're interfering with our natural coordination so that we can really let go and go at the flow and let beautiful things come through us.
Leah Roseman:
There's another guest I've had on this series, Derek Gripper, the wonderful South African guitarist who's really into Alexander technique. So we talked about a little bit, and he was saying it was more the attitude towards performance that has helped him more than the physical, just that inhibition and not worrying about the outcome so much.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes, that's where the letting go comes from, and trust is absolutely essential. But the way to develop trust and self-confidence is by little by little becoming more conscious of what we are actually doing as a cause to get the effects and the results of our thoughts. We have an idea, we have a thought, and then there's a reflection in the body of that thought. If it's a helpful thought, then the body will just flow with it in a way that's open and free. If it's not a helpful thought, it's a deconstructive or sorry, destructive instead of constructive thought, then it causes more tension and shutting down in the system. And then it's much harder to perform and be expressive again. It's either you're open and you take the risk to really feel and be expressive and know yourself, or you're putting up a barrier between what you feel you're safe to express and to feel. It's a lifelong journey to be an artist and also to know yourself, I think.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, there's so many. I made notes. Your book is so full of really interesting approaches and just the fact that you have developed this hands-free method. So we should maybe back up because not everyone's heard of the Alexander technique and don't know who he was. So maybe if you could briefly summarize that and then how the hands-free method is different than traditional Alexander training.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Sure, absolutely. Well, Alexander, Fredrick Matthias Alexander, was born in 1869 in Tasmania and soon moved to the mainland of Australia in pursuit of an acting career. And at that time, actors would do solo recitations on stage, and he liked to give performances of Shakespeare. And the problem was that very soon in his career, he started to get hoarse on stage, which obviously is a major problem if you're an actor and you're trying to recite. So he went to specialists, voice specialists, speech therapists, doctors. Nobody found anything wrong with his vocal mechanism. There was nothing physically wrong with him, and nobody really could help him other than saying, well, try the rest, cure, rest your voice for a couple of weeks. And he did that. But as soon as he got on stage to perform again, he got hoarse again. So nobody really could help him. And if he hadn't been the self-reliant genius that he was, he might've given up.
I think most people would've given up at that point. But he decided to figure out for himself what was going on. He was only hoarse when he got on stage to perform. So he figured, well, I must be doing something different on stage in performance than I'm doing offstage to cause this problem. So since I am causing this problem, I should be able to figure out what I'm doing to cause it and how to stop doing whatever it is that I'm doing, which was very logical. And at that time, people didn't have full length mirrors. It was unusual, but he got three full length mirrors and studied himself, watched himself in the mirrors. The story goes that it was for years that he experimented with observing himself to figure out what exactly he was doing. He did solve the problem and he realized some amazing things about how the mind and the body work together and started teaching it to other people.
And when he started teaching it to other people, he realized that he wasn't the only one doing what he was doing, that pretty much every single person on the planet does the same thing, which is a specific way of thinking that causes the body to tense up, constrict, and cause problems. And for him, it manifested as getting hoarse as he got on the stage to perform, for a violinist, it might be, well, I start shaking, my bow starts shaking when I got go on stage, but my arm doesn't shake otherwise. Well, he figured out again that it was the connection between his thinking and the results in the body and through lots of experimentation. And he did figure out how to think differently to cause himself to not cause the testing and pull him down in his body. But it was a long process, but really huge revelation that then when he started teaching people, he realized he could help people with all kinds of problems, not just performance issues.
He could help people recover from health problems like emphysema or asthma. These days, a lot of people take Alexander lessons for back pain, neck pain. I have a lot of students who come to me with tendonitis or carpal tunnel neck pain and all kinds of physical problems that come with performing, but also performance anxiety. A lot of my students come to me for that as well. So you asked me about how I teach the Alexander technique, which truly is quite different from what people might, if people have heard of the Alexander technique or experienced it like you've experienced it yourself. You probably had a teacher who touched you and helped you with hands, what we call hands-on, which is a way of communicating the method kinesthetically through touch. Alexander himself clearly didn't have a teacher touching him, and yet he was able to figure out how to solve his problems himself by changing how he was thinking.
I've always been really fascinated in that aspect of the Alexander technique. And there are a lot of reasons which I actually outline in detail in the book about why I started using my hands less and less as I was teaching. But I really love it because I find that it's so empowering for the student from day one. My students are given what we call awareness etudes, little short studies that are self observational experiments that really just take two, three minutes or less even to do the awareness. And by doing a specific kind of thinking that we call constructive thinking, the student very quickly starts to put together how they're thinking and the results they get in the body from the way of thinking. And with practice, the student gets much more to use Alexander's words, conscious, constructive control of themselves. I say it's empowering because the student knows right away what they're doing, how to do it, and how to get the result in themselves.
And so they become less dependent on a teacher. When I took my first Alexander lessons, which were absolutely miraculous, it completely changed my life and my pain was gone with it a few lessons. It was a really wonderful thing to have hands-on, but I was also very frustrated as I kept going back to lessons and it felt amazing. But then I would go home and I wouldn't really know how to help myself to get to that experience. And I took maybe 30 lessons from that teacher, and then I took a three year training course to become certified as an Alexander technique teacher. It's like 1600 hours. And even after the three years, I still couldn't really help myself in the way that I wished I could. So I started experimenting myself after that with using my hands less and less and seeing how can I help my students to think differently to get better results.
And it started working, but then I think it was in 2016, I'm always forgetting what year it was, but I met my partner Mio Morales, who has been practicing Alexander Technique for more than 50 years, and a lot of the time was just experimenting with himself. And he discovered all kinds of new things within the context of the Alexander technique, but different way of looking at it. And he started experimenting with touch-free Alexander technique before I did. So then when I met him at a conference in Ireland, we really hit it off because at that time, almost nobody in the whole world was teaching Alexander technique without touch. So to find someone else who was already doing it and being successful with that was really fun and exciting. So he's actually the one who's come up with a system that he calls Primal Alexander, which I quickly adopted because for me personally, it was far superior in clarity and effectiveness than what I had experienced for many years before.
So that's how I teach now. And another wonderful thing about it is that I can teach anyone anywhere in the whole world. And so both of us were doing this for years before the pandemic hit. And then when the pandemic hit, we were just very fortunate since we were already teaching online, but most of the Alexander teachers in the world were suddenly at a loss because they couldn't engage in their livelihood. So we actually set up three weekends of two-day workshops for free for Alexander teachers around the world in which Mio taught them some of his method for how to help people through the thinking even without touch, which is a really wonderful experience for everyone, I think.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a short from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leah roseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peaks of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing. And you can find that link in the show notes. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now, back to the episode.
Let's talk about transitions. The Golden Period, you call it both in life and music.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes. Well, I have this thing I call the Golden Period, which it's a really useful idea. It's basically the time before, which is very vague because anytime is the time before something else. But when I'm thinking about how I use this idea specifically for musicians, for example, like I said before, many of my students come to me because they have performance anxiety. And so they might start to feel nervous before they go on stage, or they might start feeling nervous the day before, the night before, or maybe even weeks or months before a performance. Well, all of those time periods are the time before it's the golden period before you go on stage. So the time in the green room, that's the Golden Period, the time before you go to bed the night before, that's a Golden Period. So the way we can make, we need to make the best use of that time.
And a lot of us don't really have specific ways that we help ourselves consciously. We might have a grab bag of tricks. A lot of people who perform do have certain things that they rely on. But what we do with Primal Alexander and my work as a whole is called the Art of Freedom method. That includes Primal Alexander. So we're really looking at how can you use the time before your performance in a way that you can take the most advantage of it by getting your whole self integrated and ready. And that really comes down to practicing how to integrate yourself long in advance. If you have performance anxiety, you can't expect to the night before or the day before or backstage to suddenly start doing the things that you think are going to help. I mean, you might get lucky, but it's really good to way in advance, have a system that you can count on, that you're really building up neural network in your brain, your whole body, that then you have control over that when you start to feel the adrenaline rush when you're starting to put on your shoes or whenever that adrenaline hits, you know exactly what to do.
So the Golden Period can be the months, the years of practicing the awareness ages, for example, that I teach, I have my students do those twice a day for just a couple minutes in the morning or evening, maybe they're a great way to warm up before practicing because they bring together how you're thinking with how you're feeling in your body. You become aware of your emotional state and you just bring your whole self as you are to what you're going to do next. That's how I think of the Golden Period. It's really maximizing your opportunity to bring your best self to whatever the activity is, whether it's performance or a conversation, a podcast, whatever you need to do to bring your whole self to it with freedom, as much ease as possible.
Leah Roseman:
And if people are waiting to get your book in the mail or go to their store on your YouTube channel, you present some of these exercises?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes, yes, actually. And there are companion materials that come with a book that people can sign up for. There's a video training that teaches the very basics of Primal Alexander and the Art of Freedom ideas. Yes. And on YouTube, I have quite a few videos that talk about these ideas as well.
Leah Roseman:
So in terms of performance anxiety, once someone's done the preparation and they're on stage, what kind of advice do you give your students for that?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
It's interesting because my mind immediately goes to, okay, what did the person just do before my mind goes to the Golden Period? And a tip that I often give my students is what's happening to you as you're actually walking onto the stage? I've performed, of course my whole life with many people, and it's so common for people to walk quickly, to rush, to get out there to do their thing. So it's almost like that Golden Period is skipped over to get to the good stuff. The music, it's the same in the practice room. How much attention do we pay to how we're opening our instrument case, how we are opening, how we're ning the bow, what's actually happening to us? How are we thinking, moving, feeling? What's happening to us as a whole in the present moment? That's the key. So an easy way to become more present is simply to walk a little more slowly when you go on stage, and I like to tease with my students, think that you're the queen or you're the king and you walk out on the stage as the king or the queen, and everybody will wait for you and they're hanging on your, not every word because you're not talking, but they are watching and loving just drinking in your poise.
They're watching the queen or the king stride out there. They paid to watch you do your thing, which includes that first second that you walk on stage. And if you can walk out there with confidence and ease and clear joy for what you're doing, the audience picks that up as soon as they see you. So you're actually prepping the audience to enjoy what you're doing when you're enjoying what you're doing from the moment you walk out. And so in my programs, I have three different levels of self-study courses, and we actually don't even really get to what you do in performance with your instrument until level two. And level one is really about self integration and paying attention to what's happening in your present moment when you're doing daily activities, brushing your teeth, doing dishes, walking the dog. And those moments are golden because you really get to know yourself and see what your habits are.
And there's no judging, there's no trying to fix them. We're not trying to improve our posture. A lot of people think Alexander technique is about posture, but it's really just a happy side effect of good Alexander teaching. And really it's about paying attention to what's happening to you in this present moment, being conscious, being aware, and bringing open curiosity to your life and moment. So if you can practice that during the day doing just your everyday things, then that's like your Golden Period before practicing. Then if you've been present during the day, you come to the practice room being present and you're present and curious about how you're approaching your instrument, how are you thinking about your instrument? Are you loving your instrument or afraid of your instrument, for example? And if you could have a better relationship with yourself at first, then you can have a better relationship with your instrument. And then when you're getting along with your instrument, it just becomes a conversation with your instrument and you're always learning something new. It's always fun. You never do the same thing twice, even if you're playing the same scale every day for years, it's never the same way twice. And so to me, it's about really being present in your life with your whole self, and then you can bring your best self to your music.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, beautifully expressed. Jennifer. I'd just like to circle back to some of your early education, which would parallel a lot of people's experiences in the classical world. For one thing, you did Suzuki method when you were very young, which involves a lot of imitation and rote repetition. And I was also thinking about, I believe when you study with Mr. Gingold and maybe other teachers, there was a great emphasis on quantity because it's an aspiring soloist, you'd have to learn so much repertoire. That's the idea. So there's all this pressure to process so much music all the time. And then you had taught at University Alexander Technique, and you must have found that students just had so much on their plates. So maybe you want to parse out what I was just mentioning, or maybe that's all sort of one thing for you.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
I think you said a lot of things! About quantity, that's really interesting because I've never thought about it that way in my training. I guess it's true that I learned a lot of repertoire, and certainly when I was studying with Gingold, he was, I don't remember exactly how old he was, but he was already pretty old when I got there. And I remember going to those lessons pretty much with a new piece every week, a different Concerto, different Sonata. And so that definitely was quantitative, but up until that point, that didn't even occur to me. I just did one thing at a time, but I do know what you're talking about from the other side, as like you said, as the Alexander teacher and I was on the faculty at the University of Cincinnati College, conservatory music for a number of years and had lots of musicians come to me, very stressed, and they didn't even have time to breathe.
There was so much that they were required to do for their degrees, and it was really hard. It was hard for them. Some of them told me they could feel the tension in the hallways when they walked down the hall, and a lot of them had great teachers, wonderful teachers that were very supportive, and some of them didn't, had teachers that frankly were abusive. And that's not about that particular school. I know I talked to musicians all over the world, and it's not evolving unique to that school. They don't want to say anything negative about that school and single it out because I think it's the same everywhere. There are unfortunately teachers who are not kind to their students and put a lot of tremendous pressure on them. We learn a lot of repertoire to repeat things over and over again, and basically sucks the joy out of them being there.
But it's not just the teaching, it's also the quantity of courses they need to take. They have requirements of theory. Musicology, my son is doing a Master's now, so he went through a Bachelor's. Actually, both my kids went through Bachelor's at the University of Cincinnati. And there are just so many different areas of study that they needed to keep up with, and a lot of people can do it, but then a lot of people, other kids have a real hard time and really hard time with it. I think the hardest thing though is the competitiveness that can arise between the students. And also just knowing that once they graduate, it's tough in the music world, in the classical music world because the competition is so stiff to get into an orchestra. That's what my younger son wants to do now. He's a violinist doing a Master's in the hopes that he can get into a professional orchestra someday.
Thankfully, he has the Alexander technique and he is progressing rapidly and doing really well. But you look at how many openings there are every year and how many people are competing for those auditions. It's really challenging. So I think that the students who know how to get control over their mindset and to stay present and not be comparing themselves to other people and not worry about the future, when you can get control over your thinking and choose consciously the thoughts that are helpful and positive, then no matter what happens, you can be happy. Whether you get the orchestra job or not, you can enjoy your life because you can do that now. It's not about later.
Leah Roseman:
This excerpt is from Ysaye's Violin Sonata Number 3, the Ballade. A little later in this conversation, Jennifer gets into some interesting insights into her decision to play this above standard pitch.(music)
You were mentioning your son who's a violinist, and I'm curious, as a parent, how did you navigate your children's musical education?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
You're going to make me laugh. Well, that's an interesting question because I think it's really hard to be a professional musician and have kids and know what to do about music, to teach them music or not to teach them music. Well, I knew when my kids were young that I could not be their teachers. I tried, but I didn't try very long. And it always has to do with the actual personality of the children too. My first son and I, there's no way we could have done that. So I worked with my younger son, who's the violinist now, and my now ex-husband worked with my older son. He at the time, he was playing cello. So it worked out really well to kind separate the tasks that way. And my ex actually is also a musician. He's on the theory faculty at CCM Theory and Composition. But anyway, with my, so just to say my first son was with my husband and doing his musical activities with him. So I was with my younger one, Raphael, and he started the violin when he was three and really liked it. He really enjoyed it. And yet I found it very hard for me personally to be the teacher in the room. And it brought out the worst of my character because I could hear everything that was wrong, everything that needed to be fixed.
And yet I saw that happening in myself. So I didn't go there, and I went the opposite way. I went really hands off, and I would stay in the room for a little bit, and then I would leave and go into the kitchen and just leave him to doing whatever he would do. I had no intention of his ever becoming a musician. I'll just say that upfront. I was perfectly happy with him, never being a musician, but he loved it, and he wanted me to practice with him. So it was always, I would go back in the room and then it would be really hard for me, and I would leave because I didn't want to criticize him or put him down. And so it was really hard, but I found a really good teacher for him, and she guided him. Well, he was really sick for a couple of years in the beginning of high school, so I had never pushed him to practice at all.
If he practiced, it was because he wanted to practice. And then he showed up to group lessons on Saturdays and was involved in that wonderful program as his teacher. But he got sick in the beginning of high school, couldn't be in regular school, and he loved that violin. And he also ended up going to Interlochen on a scholarship one summer and loved it and decided he wanted to be a professional violinist halfway through high school. And so my reaction was of great surprise, and I said, okay, well, that's wonderful, but you have a lot of work to do. And he said, that's fine. I'll do it. And we have a really, really nice special relationship where I think it's actually pretty unusual that he's always wanted me to help him, and he's always wanted me to work with him. And both of my kids have been around me as an Alexander teacher their whole lives.
And so they have been aware of those principles, and I've helped them with Alexander ideas always. So he decided he was going to listen to me and my advice from an Alexander perspective with a violin, which got really interesting. And even in college, he got himself accepted to CCM, and then the pandemic hit. He was on his own in an apartment and very happy. He was actually really happy to be on his own, and all he wanted to do was practice. And we got on Zoom, and I taught him Alexander Technique once or twice a week with the violin on Zoom. And it was just fascinating to see him progress. So it's been maybe an unusual trajectory with both my kids. My second one shocked me even more a couple of years ago where he had been in college for political science and philosophy, and he finished his philosophy degree in three years and then came back after a year off in Denver, said he wanted to go into music. I said, okay, great, but what are you going to do? He said, well, I want to be a singer songwriter, he said. Okay, so good luck. Let's see what we can do. So I was the most hands-off musical mother, you can imagine. Although always supportive. And both of my kids now are in music, which still surprises me. It's, I'm really curious to see where both of them end up with the music making.
Leah Roseman:
If we could go back to your book, I wrote down a few quotes, and one of them I really liked is you said "The best teachers are attached to neither methods nor outcomes", which sort of resonates with what you were just talking about, your parenting actually.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yeah. Well, I think when I was writing that in the book, I was thinking about how unique every student is and how, of course as teachers, we have our methods. Maybe a Suzuki teacher has the Suzuki method, or a violinist will teach a Galamian bow hold or a Russian bow hold. And there are all kinds of different styles, but every student is different, and every body is different. Every psychological makeup is different. And so I think with that quote, it's that a teacher can't be too attached to their methods so that they're blinded to maybe a better way that would work for an individual student.
And as far as outcomes, there's a term that Alexander coined, he called it End Gaining, gaining with an N, not an M. A lot of people think it's end game, but it's actually called end gaining. And that's where you're attached more to the goal than process. And it's really easy for teachers, parents, and students to get caught up in the goals. I want my kid to win this competition, or I want my student to get into that school. Or for the student, I want to win that competition, or I want to learn that piece. That's so hard. We always, there's nothing wrong with having goals. I'll just say that goals are great. I wrote about that in the book where I went through a period of being ill and not having any goals, and it's not pretty, but the goals are really important. They motivate us to do good things, but we can't get attached to those goals.
So when I'm teaching my students, I'm always talking about, okay, well, what's your goal? What do you want? Great. Now you have a clear intention. Now forget about it. Put it on the back burner of your brain. You still have the goal, but I don't want you to think about it, forget about it. Trust that your brain can figure out best steps to get you there, but your job is to focus on those steps. So what are you going to do now? And it always comes back to that self-observation and curiosity and really asking yourself, what am I experiencing right now? And if you don't like what you're experiencing, can I think differently to take myself into the next moment in a different way? So in a way, you're creating the future literally by consciously choosing the thoughts that are going to bring you into that future. But it always has to be about right now, the future actually never comes. So if you're too focused on outcomes, then you might neglect the actual things that need to be done to get you there.
Leah Roseman:
Now, in terms of competitions, you did a very interesting competition pretty recently that earned you a concert in Carnegie Hall, a solo recital.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
It's true, yes. I think that was also a pandemic experiment. Yes. And actually I chose, I did opt to not go to the concert. It was in February, and this was a couple of years ago. That's what you're talking about, right? Yeah. Yes. It was an online competition, which I won. And then the performance was put off for I think two years because of the pandemic. And for a variety of reasons, I just decided not to go. But that's a good example of not caring about the outcomes actually, because for me, I was so thrilled and so excited that I had entered the competition. I hadn't entered a competition since I was a teenager. So at 50 or whatever I was now, I'm 53, so it must've been about 50. When I did that, it was a exciting for me to enter a competition and go through the hoops and actually win it on my own terms to get myself to Carnegie Hall. And that in itself was, I had played, I've played at Carnegie Hall a number of times. So the actual experience of playing at Carnegie Hall was not as important to me as actually going through the process of preparing the audition, preparing the music, and then letting go of the need to win it, but then actually winning it. So yeah, it made me very happy.
Leah Roseman:
This final excerpt is from JS Bach's Chaconne, which is the final movement of his D minor Partita for solo violin. If you're not familiar with this work, it's a monumental, incredible work. The Chaconne itself is over 50 minutes long. Again, the name of Jennifer's album is Solo con Spirato. And just a little bit later in this interview, she gets into some interesting interpretive decisions she made when she recorded this. (music)
And when you perform, you perform in barefoot?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Sometimes. Yes, sometimes. Actually. I did perform barefoot in recital at Carnegie Hall, and that was sort of a funny, a coup for me personally, to have the guts, to have the nerve to do that. I know more people these days do that, but when I did it, nobody was doing that, except I was very inspired by Evelyn Glennie, who is a percussionist. You've probably heard of her.
Leah Roseman:
I've worked with her. Yeah.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
She's amazing. She is deaf, and she was, I met her when I was a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and she was a soloist with us. The fact that she was barefoot and she could feel and pretty much hear through the vibrations coming through her feet as a soloist, as a percussionist, she was totally, totally with us and couldn't hear anything with her auditory with ears. I was so amazed and inspired by that, and I thought, that's amazing. And I thought, well, do I really need to be deaf to be allowed to take my shoes off? I really want to feel the ground under my feet and to let my toes spread and to be grounded in that way. I don't wear shoes at home. I'm barefoot all day long. I like to be barefoot outside and then to put on shoes to perform, which is something so intimate for me and so much me to have to put shoes on. I wanted to be able to take them off. So I did, but I don't always do that. I mean, there are dress codes. Sometimes you're playing in an ensemble and you do not have the choice to play barefoot. So I'm not a rebel in every way.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I've managed to find some barefoot style shoes that are formal enough for concerts. I could send you some links.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes, that's the best. If they have wide toes and flat and flexible, those are good.
Leah Roseman:
Yes.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
And sometimes I'll still wear heels just for fun. I like to be flexible, and my work is called The Art of Freedom because it gives me, first of all, the freedom to make my own choices. And then of course for my students, I want them to have that too, to think and move and be who they are.
Leah Roseman:
We'd started this conversation with your recording now, when you recorded the Bach Chaconne, you didn't record it on your baroque violin?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes, that was actually, it's an interesting story. Where do I start with that? I pretty much stopped playing the modern violin completely for a few years because most of my work, or all of my work, actually for a while by choice was on the baroque violin. And then I guess it was right before the pandemic hit. I decided not to play with Apollo's Fire anymore for a while, and then the pandemic hit. So it was pretty much very good timing. And during the Pandemic is when I decided, okay, I want to make a recording. And I just became drawn to playing the modern violin again. And I knew I wanted to play the Bach Chaconne on this recording because it's always been a piece that I've kept in my fingers. I love that piece. I've played it on modern violin, baroque violin, and it was a dilemma, but I decided to do it on modern violin, but in baroque style.
And at this point, I don't really care so much what other people think anymore, thankfully. And I do credit the Alexander Technique to a lot of that. And really, I was making the recording for myself, so it was like a bucket list thing. I want to do this, and these are the pieces I want to play, and this is the way I want to play them. So I did play the Bach Partita on, well, the whole CD on modern violin, but the Bach was on modern. And the funny thing about it was that I think it was about a week before I started recording when one of my students, I forget the details, but I think it was one of my students asked me about tuning, and it got me thinking. And Bach at 440 has never really felt quite right on, of course, you need to do that when you're playing on a modern instrument with a modern ensemble, but you don't really have to do that when you're playing solo.
So I thought, well, what if I teamed it down, but 415 is too low for my modern instrument? It just really doesn't work. And it was right around that time when I had heard about people playing at 432, and I kind of looked it up online, maybe it was my student who mentioned it, but I started looking up about 432 hertz, and they're all these kind of woo woo things online about 432 that I've never heard about. And I thought, well, this is interesting. Maybe I'll just try it on my modern violin and see what happens. And I tell you from the very beginning, it was so clear that that Bach needed to be played at 432 on that violin. It felt open and just easy to play at that pitch, whereas didn't feel right at 440 and didn't feel right at 415, but 432, it really worked.
So I thought, I'm just going to do that because it's working for me and I like it, and I don't care what anybody thinks. And then I got curious about, well, what would happen if I tuned it up higher than 440 for the Ysaye? Because people used to play higher than 440. And actually in Europe, they do play higher than 440. So I started experimenting with different tunings for the Ysaye as well. And I think I ended up playing it at 444 or 445, I forget. So the Ysaye is higher. And again, this was one week or less before I started recording it. So I was a little daring. I had never played such a high pitch before, but it was working for me. It was working for my violin, and it just felt right to do it like that for the Ysaye. So that was fun. Something a little different.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Interesting. Another one of your quotes, which really resonated with me is how you do one thing is how you do everything.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes. Yeah. It really is. You are yourself, and you can't be anyone else, and you are going to be yourself with or without your instrument. And I like to bring the best of me to my instrument. I know every musician wants to be at their best with their instrument. So if you want to perform a certain way, you need to practice that way. A lot of people maybe will go on stage and not really enjoy themselves, and then I wonder, well, did you really practice enjoying yourself? And I don't think we usually think about that. We have practice and performance in separate boxes, and somehow we magically believe it's going to all come together in the performance. And then when we don't feel right and we get a little nervous, we get thrown off and we wonder why. Whereas there are so many things that are different, of course about performing, have an audience in your practice room, but the more you can see them as the same.
And the common denominator really is the musician. So I like to call it primary practice. The primary practice is actually of yourself, your practice, practicing self integration. You're practicing knowing yourself, being yourself, loving yourself every minute you're alive and awake. Maybe even when we're asleep, I don't know, but at least when we're awake, we can consciously choose to pay attention to what we're doing with ourselves, how we're thinking, how we're moving, how we're living, how we're relating to ourselves and other people and things. And that's really the primary practice. When you are doing it consciously and you're curious and you're learning and growing throughout the day in all activities, then it's not different. There's nothing different when you suddenly have an instrument with you and some music in front of you. And it's not different when you suddenly have an audience in front of you, you're doing the same thing. You're paying attention to yourself and integrating yourself, being yourself, loving yourself, knowing yourself. And maybe you're hating yourself but you're not, hopefully not judging yourself for hating yourself.
We all have bad days, but if you can observe yourself having a bad day or having a down mood or feeling rotten, maybe you just had something horrible happen. Lots of terrible things happen in the world and it's hard to be happy, but we can be present to that experience and let ourselves feel what we need to feel and let those feelings pass through us so that we're not rejecting them and we're not holding onto them, which both cause tension. If you let the feelings flow through you and just feel them, then the next one can come and the next one and the next one. And as artists, it's absolutely essential to develop that skill of being able to feel, but let the feelings flow through us into our art. And that's not something that you learn just in the practice room for an hour or however long it is when you're with your instrument. That is the primary practice that happens all day long. It's about who you are and then bringing that to your instrument and that who you are then melds with the music you're playing and somehow something fresh and new comes out that hopefully is inspiring to you first and moves you first and then inspires and moves the audience.
Leah Roseman:
Beautifully expressed. I just want to ask you, you had an opportunity to go to India and do a month long meditation retreat last spring. Do you want to speak to that experience?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yes, it was a wonderful experience. There is an Indian saint named Amma and people who are curious can find her online amma.org. And I've been curious about her and followed her for a long time, maybe since more than 10 years now. At first I was skeptical because she attracts huge crowds of people and I don't actually like crowds of people, so I was a little turned off in the beginning by that. But I kept hearing amazing things about her, so I, I decided to go and see for myself and drove to Detroit and she was there once and had a wonderful experience. And so I would go see her once a year or every other year while she was in the States on tour and just felt every time that it was a very special connection. So I just decided last year that I was going to go to India.
I had been there 25 years ago and it was one of the best experiences of my life. In fact, it was so wonderful. I said I would never go back to India because it could never be as good as the first time. But this time I was going specifically to visit Amma's ashram. So I knew it would be a completely different kind of trip anyway. And I wouldn't say it was better, but it certainly wasn't worse and it was absolutely wonderful. It was just completely different. And yes, in many ways it was better because that was really special being there. It's funny, I had a serious culture shock when I went to India the first time, not so much because of the poverty, which what people usually think of first from this country, but it was more just every single one of my senses was bombarded with something new The first time.
It was a little overwhelming. I got over it quickly, but it was intense. But this time, my culture shock was actually when I got home because living in an ashram where I had, it was $7 a night. It was bare bones. I had a little room with a bathroom to myself, which I was grateful for, but it was a tiny little room and it was a world that didn't care about anything material. One of my favorite things about it was there were no mirrors in the rooms and I wore no makeup and didn't care. It didn't matter. But you looked like nobody cares what you look like. Nobody cares what you do. Nobody cares. I didn't even tell people I was a violinist, but they wouldn't care anyway. Well, actually, they really appreciate the art and sure, but it wasn't about what you do, it's about who we are.
And I think that's the biggest distinction and that's why I went there because it is not a religious institution. It's a place for people to get in touch with who they are spiritually. And it's a universal ashram. It's not Hindu. There are Hindu aspects, but there are people from all over the world. All religions are accepted there. And it's like you are there with these people and everybody's just the same. We're human. We think we live, we eat, we move, and we try to be good. We do good for other people. And it just was such a wonderful experience to have that be the focus for everyone there not what you do, how much money you make, what your livelihood. It was more just, let's work on who we are. Let's be ourselves. Let's meditate, let's be quiet. Let's get rid of the chatter and the unnecessary, the things that aren't necessary. Let's let go of whatever we can and connect with a loving heart. I loved it. It was really great. And then coming home, the culture shock was going to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, seeing the prices and how much we have here. So grateful for everything I have. And it took me about a week to come back to living the kind of lifestyle that I'm so privileged to live, knowing what it's like in other places and how it's possible to let go of all that.
Leah Roseman:
To close out, I was wondering if you could maybe just reflect on with your Art of Freedom teaching. You've reached people all over the world and heard so many personal stories. Are there any that sort of surprised you?
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Yeah, there are a number that come to mind. One thing that I really enjoy is I give some scholarships sometimes, actually I give a lot of scholarships, but some of the ones that really stand out are right now I have a student in Syria and she's gone through wars. There's bombing. There's just so much that she goes through and learning the techniques that I've shared with her to calm the nervous system. And she's also violin teacher and she passes on what she's learned from me to her violin students who they went through the earthquake the last year, no, it was earlier this year, the Syria and Turkey, there was devastating earthquake. It hit where she is and she was able to help this children that were traumatized through the techniques that I was sharing with her. Another story that stands out actually, the ones that stand out maybe the most, no, not the most.
There's so many, but sometimes I'm really, really surprised by the students who can't take one-on-one lessons with me and they can't come to my live group sessions. All they have is my self-study course, and they can watch recorded classes. I have a student in China, for example, that we tried doing private coaching and the connection was so horrible. We gave up. And then I have a student right now in Iran, that one really amazes me. She was in so much pain, she could barely eat. Her jaw had so much pain. She was in law school and she didn't want to be there. She was suffering greatly. And her doctor, her doctor told her she shouldn't be playing the violin because it's unhealthy to play the violin. And so she was being encouraged to quit. Her parents, I don't, I don't know if they're supportive or not, but she was in law school and didn't want to be there.
And she started taking my self-study course, and I think it was after a week, really very little time, a week or two, she wrote to me her pain was gone. I mean, huge, huge kind of miraculous changes in her physical being. And then she kept taking the course and I don't remember how long it was, maybe a few months she decided to quit law school. Not my fault. She decided that she didn't want to be there. I would never, ever encourage anybody to quit what they're doing. It's completely up to them what they want to do. I just help people to be able to get more in touch with what they really want and how they're really feeling. Sometimes they're afraid to face, a lot of us are afraid to face how we really feel about things. But she faced it and she really didn't want to do it.
And she decided she was going to quit law school and she was going to audition for a music school in Malaysia. So that's still a story in progress, but that one really stands out. And I have a student who, I think the ones that really stand out for me right now is the ones that are going through extreme trauma. So being able to be there for people who are suffering. A lot of my students have had cancer and helping them with those issues. So I think it's funny because I'm not even mentioning much about the music. People always come to me because they're musicians and they have an issue with their performance. Like I said before, pain or performance anxiety. Or maybe their skills aren't going anywhere or they're just stuck. But then the more they learn to pause and get curious about themselves and like I said, dare to feel what's underneath, the more they can relate everything that we're doing to everything in our lives.
And come in full circle. Back to what you said about what you do in one area is which you do everywhere. It's really the case. So they come for help with the music and then realize that what we're doing with the Art of Freedom is helping them in every single aspect of their lives. And very often there are what they call miraculous transformations in other areas of their lives that they had no intention of changing relationships, changing health challenges, changing life situations, changing for the better and amazing ways. I'm always really humbled to watch a person's process because I feel like I give them the tools and then I step back and they do what they do with them. My students are always inspiring me. It's amazing to watch them take the tools and run with them.
Leah Roseman:
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much.
Jennifer Roig-Francoli:
Thank you. It's been really lovely talking about all these things. Thank you so much, Leah.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support the series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.
