Part 2 of Season 1, Episode 8: Frederic Chiu - International Concert Pianist, Innovator, & Deeper Performance Studies

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Start free at RSS.com. You're listening to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry about how they're bringing the piano into the 21st century.

Last time, we spoke to Frederic Chiu about his experiences as a young pianist, collaborations with other artists, and what it's like to be a cultural ambassador. Check out our podcast channel if you missed it. And now, the conclusion.

So Frederic, you have so many things that you can— you are offering, you know, just to visit your website, we were like so blown away. We did not know where to start. All the events that you're creating, it's more like almost like a play or a show, you know, where you have one event and then you can just use that to go to travel to different places, seems like. And each has a different theme. And so can you just a little bit tell us about that? Maybe, um, seems like you have several different, uh, events that you created: The Evolution of Piano, Monument to Beethoven, Carnival of Animals, and then the Classical Smackdown.

And yeah, I mean, you all can empathize, or you've experienced this. I mean, we put so much work into putting a program together, and very often it's a one-time opportunity to play that program, and we work so hard. And I really feel like the more a program can have its own message, then the more it deserves to be played as a package. And so I've always crafted my programs with that in mind, that there's some reason to put these pieces together in this order, and there's some storyline that can unfold from that, that can engage people. Like I have my, you know, Monument to Beethoven. We talk about the actual monument to Beethoven in Bonn and the fundraising that went into that in the early 1800s and how all these composers just kind of dropped the ball. Nobody gave money and nobody did very much to raise money, you know? And Liszt came in and said, hey, this is not acceptable. And I'm just going to give the equivalent of I think it was like $100,000 or whatever. Let's get this done. And I have a great sculptor in mind and let's just do it. Schumann contributed the fantasy. To the effort and said, I will donate, I forget how many scores, the sales of those first 100 scores, let's say, will go towards the monument fund. And then when he saw that it wasn't going well, I think he just kind of said, well, oh, did I promise that? Oh, I forgot. And then he turned it into a love story for Clara. You know, so, you know, he used what he had, which is great, and there's no criticizing Schumann's fantasy. But, you know, that was inspired by the Beethoven Monument effort. And then Liszt, of course, transcribed all of Beethoven's symphonies. That in and of itself is a monument. So I put one of the symphonies with the Schumann fantasy, and you have these two monumental pieces that are so different. Different from each other, and yet they are tied together by this external event. And I think that story really says something to a listener who may love one or both works and who may love that in general, but then, hey, these are real people and they did things and the music was a result of that and the music was impetus. For those kinds of things. I do another series of programs I call Classical Smackdown, which is inspired by The Voice and America's Got Talent, where people basically vote for their favorite. And I love this series. I have 3 programs in it now, and I'm presenting the program online in a few months, so, you know, people who are interested can go to frederickchu.com and and sign up and they'll get notification of that. Basically, two composers and I play pieces that I've chosen that really show the contrast or the similarity between them and put them out there in different rounds for people to listen, basically to taste and say, I like this taste better, I like this taste better, and to vote and then to see how their vote compares with others, other votes, and then to discuss, to debate, to fight with each other about why did you vote for that? I love playing those programs in person, in concert, because at the end of the program, the lights go on and usually half the people are already out of their seats and trying to get out of the parking lot. At a Classical Smackdown concert, they turn on the lights and everybody's in their seat and they're talking with their neighbors and they're like, "Hey, I don't know." And old people are talking to young people and people who don't know each other are talking and everybody's like, discussing and debating, and there's a huge ruckus. And I just love that afterlife of the concert. That's how it should be, I feel.

And if there's something— Very audience-engaging.

—that can make the audience engage and somehow feel like they're relevant, then that makes classical music relevant. That makes this great music relevant today.

Yeah, but that just shows who you are. Like, you're trying to integrate music into our lives. With these kinds of events, it's more meaningful and the music becomes part of life. And that's just very innovative and amazing. So then I'm thinking you're coming from a very traditional path, as you said, you know, until you hit the '20s and things happen and, you know, in France and so forth. In my impression is that you have this kind of— I don't want to say rebel, but being original, it was within you. And but where does this really come from? Where does this drive and force come from? I'm just curious.

And that's a very interesting question. I, you know, I think there were some random things that happened, like this residency that offered its The opportunity offered itself when I finished school to stay in Paris for a year. And, you know, who wouldn't do that? And I think that going through those 7 months without a bathroom and a kitchen and a piano, that was certainly not planned. That was not part of the grand scheme of things. And yet it was one of the key elements for my whole personal development and therefore my career development. And I would say, you know, along the way there were of course things that I regret. I regret, you know, having gone to school and not having this, this idea that, oh, here are my colleagues, I'm developing— I need to develop relationships with them because this is our support network as we get older and become professionals. We, you know, we draw on this group of people and their ideas and their connections and their energy. I didn't know that as a pianist, you know, very isolated. So I think that's something that definitely I regret and has, you know, pushed my career in certain directions. But I don't know, you know, just the different approach to things really, I think, kicked off when I've discovered myself in the '20s. And I think that when one discovers oneself, interesting things start to happen. And I think especially these days with all of the technology and all the incredibly fast changes that are happening, the more you can reveal yourself to yourself and take advantage of all the tools there, it's going to be incredibly rich and diverse and unique, you know, all these career paths. I just read something that— I'm doing some work with my wife on education, and the statistic is that a child entering school-age years now, this year, is going to graduate and work in a job— 65% will be working in jobs that don't even exist today. That's exciting and that's scary, you know. So it really puts perspective on something that we're doing, which is piano, which has been around, you know, at least 350 years, 400 years, building slowly, you know, note by note, piece by piece. It really does put into perspective, if not put into question, what are we doing and why are we doing this? Is this really a tradition that we want to preserve? What are the things in it that are so important that all these hundreds of millions of people are devoting their lives to it?

Right. But in order for this tradition to survive, we have to evolve, keep evolving, keep discovering the possibility, and that's exactly what you're doing, and which is very inspiring. And but this is something that we really are interested as a team of The Piano Pod with, and you're really a great example of that. So yeah, really true. So speaking of, so you have such a— so many things to offer to the next generations to come. So, and you started teaching in higher educational institution as a full-time faculty member, Carnegie Mellon University and the Hart School. So we want to know—

Yeah, that started a year ago.

Oh, wow. How's it going?

It's been very interesting. My whole life I've taught, but not in an academic setting. Mostly I've organized my DPS workshops. And taken some private students here and there, but for very specific periods of time and for very specific projects. And I was excited about the idea of doing academic teaching and having kind of a longer picture and a longer trajectory for my teaching and for students' experience. And I was so excited that Carnegie Mellon offered me, uh, this position. And that, that's a school that one of our kids went to and graduated from, so we knew the school already. And I was my wife and I were like, if they don't accept him, then we're going to enroll in the school. Unfortunately, he graduated with high distinction and has a great career ahead of him because of that. And then to now be on the faculty is so exciting. Wow. And there's so much potential. And at the Hartt School, which is a great school with a long tradition and great reputation, I'm a senior artist teacher there and having a great time with a very diverse student makeup. And all of this in pandemic conditions. You know, I think it was a very strange coincidence that my academic career has started with the pandemic and remote teaching. In some ways, it's made it extremely easy because all of a sudden I wasn't traveling anymore at all, and I could say to my students, okay, these are my teaching days, here are my teaching hours, and we're just going to meet every week on this at the same day, same time. That's something that I couldn't do, uh, in normal circumstances, right? And the fact that I can teach a student in Pittsburgh and then the next hour teach a student in Hartford, the next hour teach a student in China with a 12-hour time zone difference, uh, and then do a coaching in California and just be here. And to be able to string those things one after another is amazing. And so I feel like in some ways I don't know how good I have it because I, I've never experienced any other way of teaching. And so I think for me, I love using the online tools. I love thinking about how to organize group activities, bringing people together from all of these different geographic places to work together in kind of a studio class. I love being able to jump around. I love being accessible. It's really so interesting that I don't have this experience, which in some ways could be considered baggage, and I'm just starting this fresh and bringing as much as I can to the thinking and to the tools and to whatever I can do.

Amazing and wonderful. Thank you so much, and I wish you the best of luck of teaching. It's a different setting because, you know, you have to raise these people for 4 6 years, so it's different from teaching just privately.

So yes, absolutely. Yeah, great.

In some ways I feel it's a great, uh, you know, this long line of influence that I can have across their, their education career. At the same time, it's only a few points along that line, and, you know, 50 minutes here, an hour there, and like Wow, really? Can I get anything across in that little amount of time?

But Eric, to your point— I was going to say, you know, you did—

You did the master class, and so I try to keep that in mind as well. And it's making me go back to my own lessons with my great teachers. And both of them unfortunately passed last year. Coincidentally, right when I was getting my positions and starting this and started to have questions that I never had before, they're not available to ask and to learn their experience directly. So I'm reliving a lot of stuff, trying to remember my student life and trying to remember like, wow, what did my lessons with Avi Simon— were they really like just one, you know, like 3 lessons in this week, and then I'd go for like a month and a half without lessons. Did that really happen? And it did, you know, because he was traveling and performing during that time. And I didn't find anything wrong with that. So it puts into— it just gives me a lot of things to think about and to see how I was influenced and try to imbue that as much as I can.

Yeah, well, I can say that speaking as a student, a son, a parent, and a teacher, you know, you never know what's going to stick with somebody. You know, we give everything we can of ourselves, you know, all our best stuff, and sometimes it doesn't resurface for a long time. You know, when I went to Banff to do my long-term residencies after graduate school, and I didn't have a full-time teacher, I realized that was when I really started listening to my my teachers, like all the stuff that they said to me while I was doing my master's would come back and I was like, oh, now I see why that's relevant. Right. And then that's when you really pay attention. So as teachers and also parents raising kids, it's the same thing. All you can do is try your best. And it's ultimately, it's up to the student to decide what they're going to take from it. Right. Well, Frederick, of course we could talk to you all day. But we don't have unlimited time. So I'm going to ask you two last related questions, and then we're going to move on to our rapid-fire round. So those two questions are, first of all, you know, what's your biggest piece of advice for younger pianists coming up in the world today? And related to that, what do you see the role of concert pianists in this modern world and the future to come.

A piece of advice to young students, really at this point, it's so hard to find the time to do daily practicing. It's so difficult with all the things that are calling to us, all the things that are available, you know, with a click, with a tap. You know, it's really a luxury to be able to focus on one activity, but it's an emotional struggle. Discipline for me is an emotional struggle. Delayed gratification is a very unnatural thing. It's a very human thing as well. Animals are not very good at delayed gratification. Right. But we can. Do that and we can train ourselves to do that more and more and it just builds, the gratification just builds exponentially when it does happen. So that's, you know, sometimes, often we don't want to practice. I found myself during the pandemic going for weeks and weeks without touching the piano because I just don't find the motivation to go there. So really we need to train ourselves to find any little scrap of motivation to practice because in the end it definitely shows itself. So that's my advice to young pianists to please don't despair and really see this as an emotional discipline training.

I love that you said that delayed gratification is one of the fundamental things that makes us human, right? So everybody practice the piano because it's going to make you better human being.

Yeah, and there's a limited time to when physical practicing is going to actually make a big difference. Yeah. I don't know how old your average age is, but unfortunately that age comes at, I don't know, 15, 16, 17 years old. It's not that you can't make physical progress after that, but it's a lot harder. And I can say from my own experience, I've had to go back to doing technical exercises and technical training, practicing, just to keep in shape. And I was fortunate that I did. In fact, I can show you one of the tools that I have. Oh, wonderful. Ah, this is cast iron piping.

Oh my goodness. Wow.

My teacher, when I was 10 years old, recommended. My parents went to a hardware store and got this. This is about 5 pounds. Oh my gosh! And these are my dad's old socks. Hahaha! My mother sewed onto these. There's a little bit of cotton padding. I can't even get my hand through it anymore, but you know, 10 years old, I was a small 10-year-old and I could get my hands through and I would wear these on my wrist and do all of my practicing: scales, exercises, etudes, the regular repertoire, all, you know, an hour or 2 hours with these 5-pound weights on each arm. Oh my goodness. And a special relaxation technique that allowed that to happen longer than a minute. Uh, and I didn't, uh, get tendonitis, and I didn't, uh, you know, mess up my muscle system. In fact, it helped me build muscle. And I was fortunate to have done that, to have had that combination. And I feel like if we get that early enough, it really does stay with you. And so there's a time for physical practice. Before 18 is definitely that time. If you're 18 years old or under, just play the piano. Just play, play, play, play, play. Move those fingers as much as you can. After that, just be prepared to not play as much. Literally, your piano playing will improve by not playing as much after 18 than before 18. And then you start thinking, you start looking at yourself, you start revealing these emotional and mental things that you've built up from that super intense practicing. And then you reveal what you really have inside of you as a unique person.

I am definitely making this a clip and sending it to all my students under 18. Yes, me too. Holy! Oh my God.

In terms of relevance of pianists today, I, you know, one thing that pianists do that almost nobody else trains themselves to do consciously is multitasking. The pianist, at the very first lesson before we even know what the notes are named and, you know, what's going on, the teacher will say, okay, play these notes with this finger, play these notes with this finger, this is the melody, this is the accompaniment. Boom, we're multitasking.

Yeah.

Everybody multitasks, but pianists multitask consciously and we train from the very beginning. It's ingrained in the idea of playing the piano is multitasking. And so we have the societal need for group activity, for collaboration, and this I call all for one, all of us in to do one thing. That's incredibly important. It's a very human thing, although higher animals do that a lot, you know, hives and swarms, they do that. And we do that as humans. We come together, we kind of, we self-efface enough to be able to contribute to a greater whole. And piano playing is the flip side to that, which is the one for all. One person training themselves to be able to do more than one thing at a time, to be able to keep attention on the melody and on the accompaniment and possibly on a middle voice, to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and even more complicated things. And not just for practical reasons, but for an aesthetically satisfying, emotionally gratifying, intense communication reason, there's, there's no greater need for those kinds of skills than today. And, and this is an exercise I do. I think about, you know, all the jobs, all the careers that people have, all the different professions. And you really think about it, like, they don't need to multitask. Of course, if they do, they're better at their job. But their training doesn't really bring that out as a conscious thing. It doesn't bring out the physical, the mental, the emotional depth that playing the piano does. There's almost no other activity that does body, mind, heart multitasking training than playing the piano. And I would put it out as a challenge to your listeners Like, you know, what other profession trains and requires the training to the depth that piano playing does in those areas: body, mind, heart? Yeah. And of course, having the training in any area will make you a better whatever you are, but being a pianist, you just have it and then you have to reveal it. Mm-hmm. And I think that if people knew that, then we would make all of our school kids play the piano. Yeah, I agree. It's one of the most all-encompassing, deep, intense trainings that one can have. And I really don't think there's anything quite like it. And it doesn't mean that you have to be a pianist. After you've done that training. In fact, I would love to have a whole, uh, you know, company employees all trained pianists but not doing any piano. I think it would be a great business. I would have a— I would love to have a government where all the, all the appointees are— yes, that would be amazing, you know. And certainly artists and musicians, performers who have piano training. Of course. So for me, it might be biased, but that seems to me kind of a deep, deep function of what piano and pianists can do.

Yeah, yeah. I think more and more these days we see an increasing number of studies that show that multitasking is actually extremely difficult for humans to do. It's actually not natural. And so the more you train at multitasking, the more you really increase your capability to excel in any area. And piano certainly does require require that more than most other things. Okay, so before the rapid fire, first of all, we want to make sure that we promote your Smackdown concert series, which you can find out more about at frederickchu.com, correct? Correct.

There's a sign-up sheet there, and then I'll, I'll be emailing. These are going to happen, uh, there are 3 of them, one a month, probably March, April, May, possibly April, May, June. Dates to be determined very soon.

And you're also launching a Patreon to go along with that.

That's right, that's gonna be time to open up, probably March, in preparation for the SmackDown series.

Great.

This is rather a new segment, it's called The Piano Pod with rapid-fire questions. So I would like for you to answer each question with short answers. Okay. So are we ready? Ready? All right. So question number 1. So you have really diverse background. You know, you lived in France and your parents are Chinese and you lived— you were born and raised in the United States. So what do you consider a comfort food for you? What is it?

Dumplings. I held the world record for my family in dumpling eating for 40 years. Oh, wow.

Oh, my goodness. Okay, great. So now, are you a cat or dog person? Cats. Okay, next question. What is your word to live by? Multitasking. Multitasking. What is the most important, important quality you look for in people? Honesty. Honesty. What is the worst quality in people you want to stay away from? Hmm, I would say bragging. Bragging. Great. All right, Eric, you want to go next?

Yeah, sure. Um, can you name 3 people who inspire you, living or dead?

3 people who inspire me, uh, can I do 4 piano-related? Sure. Sure. Richter, Horowitz, Glenn Gould, and then above that triumvirate, Alfred Cortot. Oh, okay. Wonderful.

Okay. Well, related to that, which historical figure, composer, pianist would you want to take lessons from if he or she were alive?

Oh, that's a hard one between Liszt and Cortot. I would say Liszt because that's less accessible and we actually have Courtauld teaching masterclasses recorded.

Yeah, we can only imagine how Liszt played, right? Yes. Okay, and then which historical figure or composer would you want to hang out at the bar with?

Oh, Liszt for sure. Oh, okay.

Name one piece in your current playlist.

Oh, in my current playlist, um, I would say Cars from Mars, Robert Ian.

Good one. All right, name a book title you're currently reading.

I'm currently reading, uh, what is it, A Short Swim in a Pond by George Saunders. Just came out, one of my favorite writers and a friend of mine.

You get only one song or piece to listen to for the rest of your life, what is it? Prokofiev's Second Concerto. All right, very cool. And last question, last but not least, fill in the blank: music is blank.

What is music? Music is life. Music is life. Ding, ding, ding.

We heartily agree. Well, my friends, I'm afraid we're going to have to end here for today. That concludes this episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. Thank you, Frederic Chu, for joining our show today, and thank you to the audience for tuning in. As always, we want to remind you guys that his Classical Smackdown series will be available at frederichchu.com. The link will be in the description.

As always, if you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review on whatever podcasting platform you use. If you are watching it from YouTube, please hit the thumbs up button and be sure to subscribe to our channel. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The links are in the description below.

All right everyone, hope to see you for the next episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song.

Bye everyone, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Riddick.

Thank you so much.

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