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The following transcription has been lightly edited for flow and is not an exact transcription:
Hello everyone. Welcome to the very first Radda interview. I'm Michelle Schodowski, the founder of Radda, and I had the pleasure of interviewing the wonderful pianist, Dr. Joanne Polk. Joanne is currently a piano professor at the Manhattan School Music in New York City and is also an exclusive Steinway artist. She has had a dynamic career both as a performer and a teacher. She dedicates much of her time performing and recording works by female composers such as Amy Beach, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, and most recently Louise Farrenc. Her CD "Songs of Amy Beach" was nominated for a Grammy Award and her other CD featuring solo piano works by Cécile Chaminade, “The Flatterer" debuted at #1 on the Classical Billboard Chart. In this interview, Joanne and I discussed her musical career from the very beginning as well as her teaching style and advice she'd give to aspiring musicians. I hope you enjoy the interview and be sure to connect with Joanne at RaddaConnect.com for personal feedback on your performances.
Michelle: So what I was figuring, we could just start at the very beginning. I know you started piano at a very young age so what got you into doing lessons?
Joanne: I was maybe 2, and I was just climbing up on the piano in the apartment where I was living and started playing everything that I heard. I think my parents just freaked out and thought they had a big prodigy on their hands. I was sent to Juilliard when I was 4, but I was a little bit too young. So I had to wait until I was 7 to go back, and I was at Juilliard until I was 12. I had perfect pitch, and I just demonstrated an immense amount of talent as a child, and I think that's what launched it. I have a son who is a cellist, and his talent came more to the forefront when he was about 6. But mine by the age of 2.
Wow, did you have any family that were musicians?
No.
Oh, so they just recognized it right away?
Yeah, I mean we had a piano, and I had family who loved music and all studied music, but there were no musicians. There was a distant relative who was a violist, but no. It was just an unusual situation so they immediately sent me to Juilliard.
Wow, that's incredible. So what was your experience like while you were at Juilliard as a kid?
It was overwhelming as a kid. I was too young. It was just a little bit overwhelming as a child. I went back in college where I was a little bit more prepared for it. It was exciting and stimulating, but I was just swimming. I was just was tiny. I learned a lot, but it was a lot.
Was it very competitive as well?
Yeah, it was. I can't say that I circulated so much because I was so young. And you'd have to check me about this, I'm not positive that this is true, but I don't think they take children that young anymore. I think it's too young. I would be in school from Monday to Friday, and then I'd spend all day Saturday at Juilliard. It was a lot of work as a kid.
What were your teachers like as you’re going up?
They varied. I think when you've got an immensely talented kid, there’s a lot of excitement. So there was a lot of pressure, a lot of work, and a lot of practicing. And one of the biggest challenges I now understand as a parent is when do your kids get the practicing done, right? Because they're off to school, and when they come home from school, they’re tired and have homework. I had to do an hour of practicing before school at 6:30 in the morning, and then I had to do an hour after school. My teachers were excited and pushed me. Some were more gentle, some were more aggressive. I would really have to say that my best teachers, the ones that I feel did the best for me, came in when I was in college.
Let's talk a little bit about that. You got your Bachelor's and Master's at Juilliard and then your Doctorate at Manhattan, correct?
Correct.
What were the most memorable moments you have from your teachers during college?
I had a teacher in college who taught me that the piano should sound like an orchestra. He would be teaching me, and at one point he'd say that should sound like a flute. He'd say play the flute, and when I did, the whole sound of piano would change. Or you know, the other thing is that pianists don’t have to breathe and everybody else has to breathe, especially wind instruments. So I had teachers who tried to get me to understand that I should be breathing in my phrases as a pianist. And the idea of an orchestra is a really important one because one of those difficult things about a piano is getting a great sound. Everybody can plunk the instrument. It's not like, for example, violin or cello where you have to actually find the note. Anybody can plunk the piano note, but to get a certain kind of sound- I had a teacher once who told me that I needed to caress the keys, and again this came in in college. Then I had a teacher who gave me my general philosophy of sound, which is that the sound comes from the back. She would say to me, “your arms like spaghetti, your fingers like steel.” Your arm basically has to become a water pipe. It has to become a complete pipe so that all of the energy from your back goes right to your fingertips. Very often when we're nervous or cold, our shoulders go up. When we’re afraid, our shoulders go up. That takes the sound right out of the piano. I spend a lot of time with my students trying to get them to relax their shoulders and their arms so that sound can go right into their fingertips. We will succeed in that in the lessons, and then they'll get up and do a performance, and they'll be scared and it'll be like this. So we do it again and we do it again. But those were the kinds of things that I learned as a student. I will say that it was difficult being a girl. It was difficult being a woman pianist as I think it still is in many ways because when I started, it was really around the time of competitions really getting going. It was a bit of a sport, and you don't put women against men in sports. So it was a little bit like who could make the huger sound. That was a little bit tricky for me, but in general, the philosophies that I got from my teachers really informed how I played the piano. A lot of what I've learned, though, in reference to solving problems at the piano and teaching has come from just doing it. From teaching, from performing, how do you solve the problems, how do you solve the technical problems, how do you project your sound. Do you play differently in a small hall than you do in a large hall? These things have come from simply playing a lot of concerts, doing a lot of recordings, and doing a lot of teaching.
Do you approach each of your students the same way or do you find that you have to adjust quite a bit between all of them?
Yeah, I mean my teaching philosophy is to take a student from point A to point B with absolutely no investment in where point A is. As long as the student has gotten into Manhattan School of Music as a college student, we have to assume that that person is at a certain level. It's a very individual approach, and sometimes I'll come up against a real obstacle. Something that happened to them when they were children, a total fear of performing, this kind of thing. So I work a lot with each person, really just to get them to be the best that they can be. That’s really my philosophy. I just want each student to feel proud, to enjoy what they're doing, and not to feel the horrible pressure of what happens if I miss a note. So no, I can't say that I have one standard way of working.
What about your students? What do you look for whenever you’re accepting students into your studio?
That's a really great question. I must tell you I look for personality. To me, that is the most- I can't teach it. I can't teach it. There’s certain things I can't teach. I can teach technique. I can teach you how to solve problems. I can teach you how to practice. I can teach you how to practice in order to solve problems. I can teach you a little bit how to be confident on the stage, and I do that a lot by holding weekly studio classes literally from the first day of school. To just get up and play, and get up and play, and get them to a place so when it's time to do that adjudicated graduation recital, you're really prepared for it. But I can't teach personality. So I look for people who have an unusual bent, an unusual take, an unusual interpretation, and that I feel I can work with best.
You also judge competitions as well. Do you look for that as well in competitions?
I do look for that as well. I don't see any value in repeating an interpretation that happened fifty years ago. I don't think we should live anybody else's life so I really want somebody to do something a little bit different. You know, classical music is a tough sell because a lot of the same pieces are played. I do look for students who are interested in unusual pieces, unusual composers, living composers, not the named Beethoven sonatas all the time. There's 32 Beethoven sonatas for the piano, but some of them get played more often than others. So I'm looking for a creative and intellectual mind, somebody who's really curious. So that’s basically what I’m looking for, again given all the other sort of standard stuff that is required to get into the school.
Of course. So going into that, with the living composers and whatnot, you're really dedicated to promoting female composers. What got you started into being really passionate about pursuing that?
I'll tell you exactly what got me started. I was touring with a baritone, and we were sort of going around the country. Then we're in New York City, and he said, look, I'm doing a concert at an American concert hall. He got me a free ticket, and I went and I heard a piece by Judith Lang Zaimont called Parable. And at the end of the piece, there were four singers and an orchestra. The orchestra was playing, and the four singers were reciting the Kaddish, which is the Jewish prayer for the dead, over the orchestra. There's about five times in my life where I've actually burst into tears at a concert hall, and that was one of them. I was just so taken by this. And somehow Judith and I connected, we met, and she told me she had a piece called “A Calendar Set,” which has one movement for every month of the year so there's 12 movements. Asked me if I would learn it and record it, which I did, and that began a really long friendship. She lives in Arizona, and I recently saw her in December. She opened my eyes to the struggles of being a woman composer, and the whole subject touched me. I began to do research, and I began to look up music, began to discover music, began to discover beautiful music that had been recorded really not too well. When I was a doctoral student at Manhattan School of Music, I went into a hall, made a cassette recording of some Clara Schumann songs, sent it off to a record company, and they said yes. And then it just sort of went from there. So I am very interested in bringing to the forefront the struggles of women in the past who had to sort of compose in a closet as well as today. Today I really think there’s been tremendous progress, and I think that in conservatories now you're going to see a 50/50 split with men and women being accepted as composers. But my most recent CD, the one of Louise Farrenc- she wrote 30 études for piano. She taught at the Paris Conservatory. Those 30 études were required of all pianists, and they wouldn't let her teach composition. She could only study composition. Isn't that ridiculous? She could only teach piano, and she wrote the pieces that were required. She wrote a nonet for nine instruments, and it was premiered by Joachim on the violin who was generally a renowned violinist in those days. It was such a huge success that she used that success to go to the powers that be at the Paris Conservatory and ask for equal pay because she was being paid half of what her male colleagues were being paid. And she won. She did get that. Never got on the composition faculty. So that kind of thing touches me. I want to put her music out there so people can listen.
Yeah, it's crazy. I am pianist as well. I went to University of North Texas, and I got really involved in the composition department there. And even then still most of the composers were guys so it's still very prevalent today.
You also see that with conductors. I just had an interview on it with Fred Child on Performance Today, and one of the things I just said to Fred was I would love to get to the point in our lives where we eliminate the adjective. You know, it’s just a composer. We don't have to put an adjective. It doesn't have to be woman and a man, and this and that, just a composer. That's where I'm hoping we’re heading. But for now, I think everybody needs an advocate, and every composer needs an advocate, and I'm gonna advocate for those women. I mean I'm playing music by men as well, but I'm interested in just bringing to the forefront music by women that would normally not be brought to the forefront.
Yeah, I think that's fantastic. So going into what it’s like to be a musician today. The situation is very crazy with COVID-19, and a lot of musicians have been having to adapt in order to make a living. What have you seen on your perspective?
Well I think freelancers are getting hit the hardest. It's a nightmare for people who depend on freelancing and concerts to make a living because you can't do them anymore. You simply can’t. I don't know when that's gonna come back. That has mainly to do with when we're going to be able to be in a crowd so that has been a nightmare for people. Those of us who are teaching, especially at universities, conservatories, and colleges, we're continuing to teach, and I think of the students in conservatories who are most affected are people like pianists and harpists because they depend on the schools to have pianos. I was just telling somebody I had to adjudicate a graduation recital of a woman who is about to give birth, and she had to play on an electric keyboard. She was playing Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, and Beethoven on an electric keyboard, which didn't even have 88 keys. Those of us teaching are trying to make it work. It's the performing aspect that has been really devastating and making people just panic and wonder if it’s ever going to be better. It will be better, but it's going be a while.
Do you think it's gonna cause a big shift in the industry with everything that’s going on?
The only shift that I hope that it causes is that when we are living without live music, we long for it more. I think the first live concert we go to is going to be very moving for all of us. It really brings to the forefront what you're doing because what you're doing works in this environment. This is what's so wonderful about what you're doing because right now, this is all we’ve got. I mean, thank goodness we have the technology to be able to reach out and not be in the same room, but I just think that it's going to make people more grateful to go to rehearsal because before it was like “ahh, another rehearsal.” Well now we get to go to see each other. I'm very curious as to whether or not- you know, it's one thing if you have a chamber group, you have four people. What about an orchestra? Are we going to be able to sit in that larger group? But I've lost a lot of concerts. Everything I have is certainly cancelled until the fall and maybe beyond. So it's very difficult, especially for younger people who are just starting out and they're basically living on gigs when gigs aren’t happening. It's a very challenging time.
Do you have any advice that you would give to musicians and how to be successful in their careers, especially given the circumstances right now?
Well I think the answer to that is two different answers. I'm going to just get rid of the current circumstance because I do think it's temporary. My feeling, and this is what I say to my students and really anybody who talks to me, is if you want to be a musician, you're going to be a musician. You’re going to find a way if the passion is inside of you. You have to have tremendous tenacity. You have to be able to take a ton of rejection, but you have to believe in your own artistry and your own right to be a musician. You are going to be rejected, and people are going to shut the door in your face. I think one of the things that got me so excited about Judith Zaimont was that the day I met her, she told me she has a philosophy. If you can't walk through, walk around. And I love that image. If something is standing in your way, find a way around it. So if you’re interested in being a musician, you have to work extremely hard, and you have to have an individual way of saying things. You have to have something that differentiates you from the crowd, and so in that way, you find a way. Whatever the way is. You offer your services. You find assisted living facilities. You teach children. You do whatever you can to get out there and make the world a better place because of your music. And in the process of that, you're going to have some kind of career. In reference to today and what people are struggling with today, there are a lot of organizations out there that are helping musicians, particularly the freelancers who are losing a lot of money. But I don't think this should be wasted time. I think it's the kind of time we're never going to get back. One of the things that I'm experiencing is because I don't have a concert coming up next week, I'm actually exploring new repertoire, which is a freedom that I rarely have. So find a way to use the time. This will be over. It doesn't feel like it's ever going to be over, but it is going to be over at some point. Those who use the time will fare better than those who spent the time lamenting the losses, I think. I don’t mean the health losses. I'm talking about the losses of employment. So I would just say see if you can use the time to your advantage if it's at all possible. It's tricky, it's hard.
Do you have anything else that you’d like to share with the audience?
There were a couple of questions that you sent me that I wanted to talk about a little bit. You asked me about one of the exciting moments in my career and also what's exciting about students, and that’s interesting to me. I wanted to answer that question by saying that when a student plays a wonderful performance, it's completely fulfilling for me. To see students who arrive very shy and then emerge on a stage is very fulfilling to me. A student wins a competition- a student who has the courage to enter a competition whether they win or not is exciting to me. A student who has the courage to try for the next degree category, goes from Bachelor's to Master's or even Master's to doctorate and gets accepted is very exciting to me. So just watching a student emerge, it is to me just the greatest joy. And aside from being nominated for Grammy, I was nominated for a Grammy on a CD of music by a woman and then I also had another CD come out where it was number one on classical billboard. I don't know what happened, but again it was music by a woman. So just the idea that two CDs got a certain kind of recognition by the public, and the CDs were music by a woman composer or classical composer. I think there may be a shift, and that was extremely exciting for me.
Wow, well thank you so much for talking to me. It's been enlightening, and I loved hearing about your life and all of your successes as a musician. Joanne's a reviewer on Radda as well. You can reach out to her and get feedback on your performances. So with that, that concludes our first interview, thank you.
Lovely to talk to you, take care.