S2 E13 Part 2: Dr. Marilyn Nonken--Concert Pianist, Steinway Artist, Musicologist, & Educator

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

In the first half of this episode, we spoke to Dr. Marilyn Duncan about her career as a concert pianist, recording artist, and her love and passion for piano music by living composers. Check out our YouTube or podcast channel if you missed it. And now, the You mentioned about bridges, so you talk about that in a research article, Performance Practices, which was written in— well, pretty recent, right? And that article, I'm going to post it on the description section for the audience, but it was very inspiring. So one of the— you're comparing two artists, and then one of them is your teacher, David Burge. So We first of all, I'm curious to know about him and it sounds like he had such a great impact on your career as a pianist and musicologist, of course, but as an educator as well. And one of the things, like, I'm an educator as well. I ask myself, what does it mean to be an educated musician, trained musician in this new era, especially after this very difficult 2 years we had. What does it mean? What sort of skills, what sort of training, what sort of knowledge we have to have, what sort of function we need to be involved in, right? Then I think you mentioned that in one of the videos I saw that David Birch mentioned that the reason that contemporary music did not reach listeners was not because of the composer, but the fault of the performers. So he has this strong opinion about, you know, being a performer. So could you just tell us a little bit about Mr. Burch?

Well, he was a wonderful teacher for me. I worked with him for only 2 years, and which always makes me feel that if you come in contact with a great teacher, it can be for— doesn't need to be for— when I see people who want to stay with their teacher for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years, we love our teachers, but often the gifts they give us they give us fairly quickly, and it can last a lifetime, an excellent lesson. You know, it's, I think, always with teachers, it's about the quality of the time that you spend with them and not the quantity of time you spend with them. David was an extraordinarily provocative person. He really, really believed that the function of the performer is to serve the living composer. He didn't like being called a new music pianist. He thought that's what all pianists should do. I mean, he was trained as a classical— with classical music. He studied with, you know, Ivo Bärtz, who was a Belgian pianist who very much came from the lineage of Liszt and virtuoso playing. And David, I think, really saw his role wherever he went as promoting the composers of his own time. And this could be a great colleague of his, like George Crumb was his colleague in an early job at Colorado College. Or it could be just anyone that he met. He played— he was not about who is the greatest composer to play, but felt that with his traditional repertoire, always to be performing new works by people he met. It could be very important people. They could be student composers. He felt that was necessary in that if performers did not do that, they were lazy. And he's just— that was his perspective, that he thought it was a great laziness only to play pieces for which there was already established performance practice, but that performers needed to be out there creating performance practices and making connections with composers. I think that that counters what might have been a very typical view a few years ago, which was that contemporary composers don't know how to write for piano. And that this is, you know, and it's true, there's many composers who don't write well for piano. But there are many composers, like as I found with Tristán Mirai or somebody who write beautifully for piano. And it's probably, and I guess David would say, it would be lazy to hear, to have a couple of bad experiences with contemporary pieces and say, well, there's just nothing here for me. He always felt there was something for every pianist in the contemporary repertoire. So he was a tremendous influence that way. He also very much believed, as I do, that technique is natural and that most performers, most pianists, do not play well because of things which are, let's say, based on too much tension or extraneous motion, extraneous gesture, negative things that they have acquired. And if you can excise those things, the natural technique is a healthy technique, which is more about uncovering the natural technique within a person, not imposing another kind of discipline on top of them. He was an extraordinarily powerful player, but also, just a terrifically relaxed player. And I guess one of the great images I have of him is him walking on stage for a concert, and he was like 6'4", an incredibly skinny guy, and just sort of would just stride on stage, sit down, and start playing. Just like, you know, he was— there was this energy, just this complete— he didn't sit down and get set and get ready. And he used to laugh at what he said at the pianist who would sit down on stage and look for God, you know, when they started to play, looking up and getting in the— because I remember mentioning it to him and he said, you know, if you're standing backstage and you're not ready to play, he said you should have been ready 2 weeks ago. You should not be getting into the mood as you sit down, you know, you should have been there 2 weeks ago and be ready to sit down and show it. And that lack of pretension. You know, he was an awe-inspiring figure, but certainly there was that sense that what we do is very direct, what you do is very natural, and you don't need a big show to play impressively.

You really write about his story comparing to his, I guess, contemporary pianist, Mr. Miller. Those two have completely different path, yet there's a common interest in music or how— and so the article I read, there are 3 words, 3 things just popped out of in my head. It's the access and self-preservation and audience engagement. So those are very, I mean, never-ending discussions as musicians since the beginning of this music music, I guess, creation. But as an educator, what do you think about all these three very important topics? Especially let's focus on self-preservation. I'm not sure, but to me, my interpretation of that word was how we can sustain ourselves as musicians. That's a topic really that we need to discuss, especially we went through some really horrendous 2 years. And so that, and self-preservation as in maybe preserving the tradition of classical music. So if you could just briefly tell us what you think.

Sure. I think you're so right. And I appreciate your reading that article so carefully about David Bergen. Robert Miller, who I didn't know they were contemporaries. They were both great interpreters of living composers. And David Burge was someone who was sort of almost a pop musical populist. You know, he was always traveling small towns, large towns, different communities, different styles of music, really reaching as many people as he could. And Robert Miller, just in a— as a contrast, was a New York-based, very successful lawyer actually for his job, who in his sort of spare time— of course he was brilliant— was a great pianist concertizing at Carnegie Hall, you know, at Lincoln Hall, basically New York, Boston, and Princeton, working with an extremely select group of composers and playing for very elite audiences and making wonderful recordings. You know, they both made incredible recordings and were terrific in some ways terrific models. Well, there aren't a whole lot of models sometimes we look for, but models for myself of pianists who played the music of living composers. But yeah, so different, right? So how does that play into the idea of self-preservation? I think one of the ideas, how do we sustain ourselves, that I think is in common to these two different types of performers is, you know, it's important about finding your community, finding your people.

You—

to create a career where you sustain yourself as a musician, you have to have that sense of purpose of what is the music you play and who are you playing it for. And I think sometimes when I see young, um, you know, grad students here at NYU or in the field, that's a hard thing to decide because when we're educated, we're told, oh, you play everything. You play Bach, you play Romantic, Baroque, Classical, you know, maybe 20th century, maybe new music. And who do you want to play? Well, I want to play for anyone. You know, this idea we want to play for everybody, but that's a crazy kind of career path. We can't play all music, we can't play all music for everyone all the time. It's hard to find anyone to listen to us sometimes. So the idea, I think, my thoughts on the self-preservation to sustain a career, you have to have this idea of, you know, what are you in it for? What is the music that you care most deeply about? And what are the strategies you can develop to bring that to people who either already appreciate it or people that you want to bring that music to who do not have access to it already. And so again, it's about connecting with the community. So someone like Robert Miller, maybe people might say, well, that's very elitist, but he connected with composers, with listeners, with funders, with presenters. He was able to sustain a very limited kind of career in a way because maybe it was a narrow group of people, but it was a very deep group of people, right? It was a little seam of gold that he had there. And I think actually in classical, we call it that music, a lot of classical music is like that. It's a very small listenership. It's a very devoted listenership. And how many people will go see the complete Beethoven sonatas? It's a group of people who want to hear those pieces again and again and again. Played by different performers, different ways. The niche, but it's a very rich kind of niche. Or, you know, you might have a player who says, well, I want to play that music, but I want to play it for people who've never heard it before. I want to go out to places where it's not played every season, you know, in a big hall. Or I want to go and play it in a venue where nobody hears piano music a lot. And I want to introduce people to these pieces. So sometimes it's about repertoire, sometimes it's about audiences, but about finding a community of listeners that aligns with the repertoire that you love and the role you see for yourself as an interpreter of the music. So I suppose in order to talk about self-preservation, we really have to have these specific goals, you know, about what our role is. I don't think there's one role of a pianist, but it's about finding the particular Well, for you, do you think we should be more equipped as a pianist?

This is the really difficult question, right? Because to be honest, school tuition is not really something that, you know, we really have to talk about it. But, you know, we have the student loan that we owe after we graduate, and we have to be very creative in terms of how we sustain ourselves, literally. So, so I've been asking some guests about, should we— should the school teach students about different ways, like maybe different software that they need to know, or in a more practical way? So what do you think of that? I know it's a little difficult question, but I think absolutely.

I mean, I think just teaching— I don't want to say just teaching music, but the ideas of how to create a career and how to create an interesting individual career. It's not ethical not to teach these things. I really feel an ethical obligation.

I—

it's not that there are too many musicians, but I feel sometimes there are too many of pianists graduating who all are playing the same music and have the same general idea about what their function is. I'm going to teach, I'm going to do some chamber music, I'll do some solo music, I'll do this. And I teach a class, a professional development course here in piano studies. And a lot of times people all seem to have the same basic career goals. And there's just not room for so many people with such general ideas. So I often try to work with the students. What is it you really want? What kind of audiences do you want to play for? What type of music do you really want to play? What are ways you could reach people that are not just the typical ways of reaching listeners? And I think it's important for— to consider that, you know, for schools to teach these different skills. And it's not just marketing so much as, um, helping students realize it's important to be obviously a good, well-rounded musician, but the most unique career opportunities are not going to go to the most well-rounded person. They're going to go to the person whose work captures people's attention and interests. And often that is— it's not fair, but it's, you know, it doesn't always go to the person who has the largest repertoire, maybe the most compelling way of putting it out there and communicating with listeners. So that's, I think, you know, really important. I mean, I will say when we talked about my recording of Tristam Urai, and that was, you know, okay, I was— when I made it, people didn't really know who I was. Which is, which is fine. I wanted to make the recording. But after that came out, I was the only pianist, and I still am in some ways, playing that music in this country. It resulted in a tremendous amount of opportunities because if people wanted to hear that music, they had to ask me to play it, you know. So it's a way of saying that if you have something that you do which is special, the opportunities will have to come to you because there's no one else does that. And so I think it's that idea of specificity does not need to be about contemporary music. But there's this wonderful story, the American pianist Richard Buhlig was pianist in the 1930s and wonderful, wonderful American who went and studied in Europe and came back to America and premiered and played his first performances of Debussy and Scriabin and Schoenberg. Richard Buhlig, his fabulous legacy There's a story of John Cage as a student, like 19 years old, camping out on Richard Buhlig's driveway in California, wanting to hear him play Schoenberg's Opus 11, the three pieces which were written in 1909. Richard Buhlig was the only person who played them in the country, and they hadn't really been recorded or anything. And John Cage literally camping out and waiting for him to come home and asking him to play these pieces for him. I mean, and it's that sense that That's the greatest tribute to any player, is that someone wants to hear what you have to play. And so I think especially in this day and age when there's so much recorded music, we want to encourage our students and, and for ourselves to find something that we do which has that uniqueness that we believe is that special, people will need to come to us for it.

You are really training these musicians that come to, you know, grad school at NYU or even undergraduate, and they are playing this new music. First of all, I'm curious of the audition, you know, process. Like, it's a different school, right? I also actually, 2005, I was going to study at NYU with Mr. Bernstein, and, uh, but at the time I was very young, and, you know, my teacher in Kansas was so worried that I decided to go to UMass Amherst, you know, where there was— but then, you know, and I met you, I think, a couple years later, and then talking about the PhD program And I think, you know, this, as a young musician, sometimes it's difficult, right, for us to really know ourselves as, can I do this? Or, you know, is this the right decision? Or is this even a responsible decision, right? So how is the audition process like for you as, you know, a mentor or a faculty member? How do you choose these musicians?

I'm curious. Well, I'm fortunate to have wonderful colleagues as well. So, you know, we always— we're not looking— I think maybe one thing we share, we come from different backgrounds, different traditions, different ideas. I think we are not looking for one kind of pianist, but we're looking for— I think more and more the idea is, again, looking for people who are interesting personalities, have a singular voice, who have a unique way of playing. That's just becomes live performance, getting back to this idea, when there's so many recorded versions, so many things online to see, wanting to develop artists who are worth seeing live, where you— it's a different kind of voice is very important. It's funny because we're not a new music department, you know, and I say that because actually I'm so dedicated to what we consider, you know, traditional discipline technique. I find Often programs which focus on only contemporary or put a big emphasis on only contemporary music, often they lack some of the traditional technique or the emphasis, which I think is so important to actually playing the instrument. So we don't have— when we audition at NYU, I changed the audition requirements that we require obviously a Baroque, Classical, Romantic. A piece written before 1945, and then just simply a piece written after 1945, which had not been the case before, you know. And it seems like a very small change to ask for something, you know, written in the last 65 years or something. But it's actually quite true that many pianists still, you know, they play a piece of Debussy or Scriabin, and that's their 20th century piece. And so to say, you know, a lot has happened. And what's— so what becomes very interesting at the audition process is, you know, there's plenty of tonal pieces written after 1945 as well. And so what I find actually when people audition here, that their choice of the work written after 1945 really shows a lot. And we see a little bit— so maybe a student say, oh, I'm going to play, you know, Bach Prelude and Fugue or Chopin Ballade. You know, we— the pieces we love from the earlier historical repertoire, which show a great deal of it. But then sometimes though, the piece they picked it's more contemporary, it's a little bit more of a question mark. What are they going to choose? Yeah, composer you've never heard of. Is it going to be a little piece? Is it going to be a big piece? Is it going to be a tonal piece, a minimalist piece, you know, spectral piece? Is it going to be, you know, there's just so many different ways of— is it going to be a neoclassical work? You know, there's even like Poulenc lived to 1969 or something. I mean, you know, it's funny. So we get it. I find that the choice of the work written after 1945 is really revealing. And it does often show something a little different about what that player likes to do. It's funny because I've sometimes said if somebody really didn't want to play a piece written after 1945, they could play John Cage's 4'33" and just— half a minute to not do anything. And that would also be such a wonderful statement, I think. I'm not gonna do anything for this. And, you know, that would take such courage, and I think I would have, um, it would be a different kind of respect for a player, you know. So I feel that, um, asking people to make that kind of personal choice is part of the audition. And I know that we often look forward to what is that mystery piece going to be, the piece where there isn't such a prescriptive attitude about what— you know, a lot of pianists, they'll play Ligeti A2, or maybe Lieberman. We get a lot of, you know, maybe they'll play Leonard Bernstein. Oh yeah, maybe more traditional choices. There might be something really quite, quite unusual. There might be a piece written, you know, by a student composer, written by a comp— sometimes the student will bring a piece, it will be like, what is this? Who is this person? Tell us who this person is. And then we learn something at that audition too. I think for a long time, maybe in previous generations, there was an idea that we cannot evaluate students playing new music because we don't know what it is, or— but you can tell, always. You can tell how a person plays the piano. You can tell technique and color and sensitivity and expression and all of those things we pick up on even when we don't know the piece. We can overwhelmingly tell if it's a good performance, right? Because it's not like all new music sounds the same. Of course it doesn't. And so even when we don't know the piece, we can still learn a lot about the performer.

I think in a way it also shows the, you know, really, like, as a classical musician, sometimes I feel like we work so hard, but it's hard to step outside the box.

Right?

So, you know, like, I, I remember, you know, when we were younger, like, your teacher would say, well, you know, you can enter a competition with this piece or that piece, but this piece you definitely will feel more comfortable. That one, you know, it's new but it's different, right? Like, are you able to handle it, right? So I think it really shows the character of each musician, and that is really beautiful. So now, and this— and I also mentioned this earlier, like, Being it's Women's History Month and we've seen some beautiful posts, and I'm someone who's very, you know, interested in music history. And, you know, I changed my name into Clara when I came to this country, you know, with a certain idea. And I used to post on Instagram like the every single day, you know, I find a composer's birthday and then I find some true fact. And I saw all these. So tell us a little bit of this project you've been doing with the women's history and What influence have you brought?

Well, it's funny because social media is always— what do we do with social media? What do we do with visibility? And I try to— if when I post, you know, I try to put up things that I think are thought-provoking. And last year during the pandemic, right, I just, like many other people, not sleeping well. And when we had Women's History Month, I think I had the idea, I'm just going to try to find a woman pianist or a musician that I respect and, you know, put them up every day, one every day for the month. And I was— last year my real goal was not to pick the usual suspects because I think, of course, everyone, we always know Martha Argerich or Alicia de la Rocha or Myra Hess or Annie Fisher. There's— I mean, there's some people that we teach more than others, and— or Clara Schumann or Fanny Mendelssohn, you know, those people that we say, oh, well, those are our sort of go-to women composers or pianists, you know, people we think of. And I wanted last year, I thought I'm going to just hunt around being up in the middle of the night and whatnot, find some examples of maybe not the pianists that we know about and maybe we have recordings of, but these women who have stories that are compelling stories to learn about. And I learned so much. And this— This month putting up people, you know, pianists who were émigrés, people who are immigrants, people who were displaced during the war, women whose careers were cut short because of family concerns and because of the place of women. But these fantastic stories of performers who really toured Europe, who worked with important people, who works were dedicated to. And a lot of them are simply just lost to history because they didn't record or they didn't teach enough to create a lineage of students who would sort of venerate them and talk about them the way we talk about, you know, some other pedagogical traditions. So not to say that these are the most important people, but to look at their stories. Everyone has, you know, everyone has a story, and maybe part of this is my questioning. We always want to question the stories we're taught, and to question who our models are and why are we taught what we're taught. You know, our field of piano performance and pedagogy is very dominated by certain kinds of traditions and stories. And it's not that they are untrue at all, but they're one version of history. And so I suppose my musicologist sense, or music historian sense, is it always— asking, well, what are the other stories that coexist, and what are the other kinds of narratives that we can think of? Which especially for women pianists, we don't have models like that, you know, we don't have so many of those stories. And maybe this is getting into dangerous territory, but certainly a lot of young women pianists damage their hands and suffer injuries trying to sound like a male pianist and play the piano in a way that is maybe not the way physically we can successfully play the piano. So the idea of searching for different kind of models that might be more appropriate, to which we might be more sympathetic to, I guess, in Women's History Month.

That's true. Wow.

I'm learning so much, really. You know, I am definitely one of those people sometimes. I look at your, you know, your posts And I'm Googling more and learning more. And that's actually true. I didn't even think of this being— when I was younger, I did have very skinny arms. And then so that was always kind of a thing. I felt like I couldn't really find the music that I felt. And I was also very picky with the song. I didn't really— this is all making so much sense. And I tend to try to inspire my own students as well. I think sometimes as educator, or even musicians ourselves, you know, like we, we all have to be— inspiration really is the most important thing, you know. It doesn't matter how good we are, if we're not inspired, it's hard to keep on going forward, right? So what you're doing is really tremendous. So thank you so much.

I was going to mention one other thing with this, the deal of female, you know, women as role models. But early on, when I first became serious about playing, one of the first things I did, of course, was get tendonitis as a young teenager. I was practicing a lot, suddenly exploring a lot of technique, having a male teacher, suddenly lots of playing. And you see this a lot. And the idea about finding the repertoire that is right for you and expressively and developing technique and approach to the piano that is individual is something that I think is important, you know, artistically we talk about, but also just in terms of physical and mental health. That's a very big issue, and certainly with young people we see a lot of issues as, as musicians with psychological stress and physical. We need to pay a lot of attention to that.

So let's talk about your latest future project. One is you just released a CD album called Syncopated Musings which music of mainly Scott Joplin, which is a really big shift from all the other pieces. But come to find out, I guess Joplin, Mr. Joplin, and then Schoenberg and Charles Ives, they're the contemporary composers, right? They share the same era. So can you tell us a little bit more?

Absolutely. Well, the early 20th century is such a a rich, right, a rich, rich time period. And I came to Joplin's music a strange way. Obviously, the closest thing I really played before doing this was Charles Ives' Concord Sonata, which, you know, refers to ragtime and American popular music in it. But during the pandemic, I really became very serious about Joplin and his composers he worked with, his contemporaries. When we had the lockdown, so many people found— changed their plans, and I had to stop performing, and I suddenly was at home with my upright piano, which is not my instrument of choice. I wasn't able to come to my studio to work, and I found I was not able to keep playing the same repertoire. I found a different instrument. I wanted to have different music for that piano. I didn't feel right just playing the same repertoire on this different instrument for no reason without any chance to perform it. And we've always had this book of Joplin's piano music. In fact, it's right— maybe people have had it. It's a very traditional— How sweet. In our house, my husband is actually a very big fan of early American music. And I thought, oh, just start looking through this just to play every night, just to keep playing. And I'd never really spent time with the scores. And I just sort of fell in love with the notation. Was really impressed in an odd way with the music that I never spent time really listening to or looking at. There was a kind of elegance and— I don't use that word discipline, but the scores are very particular. It wasn't my image of what ragtime music was. My idea of ragtime was kind of barroom piano and people in funny hats and, you know, this more the idea of a popular music. Whereas when I looked at the scores, I thought, um, this looks music written by a very intelligent, serious, thoughtful composer. And so I was playing a lot of the pieces, and I actually was playing a lot of the pieces written by Joplin with a collaborator. And this was something— Scott Joplin, I learned, was part of a a community of very well-trained performers. He was a singer. He was a violinist, cornet player. He was, you know, not only a composer but a teacher. And Joplin moved in a circle of other very well-educated Black composer performers who toured, who wrote, who taught. And in many cases, when these other composers like Scott Hayden, like Arthur Marshall, Joseph Lamb, Well, Joseph Lam was not part of that community, but when these composers wanted to get published, Joplin would say, well, let me— I'll work with you, we can put both of our names on it, and it'll get published faster, make more money because my name is on it. Because Scott Joplin was so well known and these other composers weren't. There's all these pieces written by Joplin and someone else, and it's very interesting as a performer to try to figure out how much is really Joplin, because Joplin has such a distinctive style. And then like Scott Hayden is quite different. Sometimes you can really tell who wrote what, or sometimes it's really clear that Joplin didn't really write much of it at all, but his name is just on it to attract more players. So I'm really interested in playing this music, which is musically challenging. It's interesting. It's virtuosic. It was a challenge for me because it was entirely different than what I'd been doing. And my husband, who is very musically savvy but not a professional musician, I'm not a musician really, but a very good listener. He said, well, why don't you present this to your record company and see if they'd like a recording of Joplin? And I thought, well, I don't know, does the world really need this from me right now? But then the more I listen to other existing recordings of Joplin, I thought, you know, I feel like I have a different take on this. I feel I have something I want to say, which is always, you know, what we're after. Is there something that we can provide to the musical universe that's not already out there? And the more I listened to other recordings, I thought, you know, I really— I don't really like some of these recordings so much. I would like to have my own say on how maybe this music goes. So I contacted the record— the same record company that did music with Tristan Murad before American Family Music. And the producer there was like, I love Joplin, which is so funny because suddenly I find people come out of the woodwork that quite a lot of people like Joplin, but It's also one of these things that in a conservatory environment is not quite accepted, right? Has this idea of being more of a popular, not a classical composer. What does that mean? You know, can— there was actually a student here at NYU who said, I didn't think we're allowed to play Chopin. And I thought, that's very strange. I mean, why would we say that? You know, so part of me started thinking, why, you know, why is it that we are not allowed or encouraged to play this music or to take the music seriously. So that became sort of a little mission of mine. And so we put together this recording during the pandemic under—

Wow.

—circumstance. Actually recorded it at NYU. Wonderful. But so much of this was done remotely. I'm not— we didn't record it remotely, but editing, doing notes and communicating without really seeing people. But I'm very, very proud of the project. Just came out last month. So it's music, the complete music of Scott Joplin and his collaborators. It also includes a few of Joplin's solo, you know, compositions that he wrote himself.

And then this is available on all music streaming services, and also Amazon, you can purchase the CD. That's right. Yeah. The Diviner site.

And we're definitely going to promote this. Joplin, I remember a few years ago, a friend asked me to help promote Joplin on WQXR, where she works. He actually shared the same birthday as me, so, you know, I was very interested in his story. And he's also on the Lower East Side, I believe, right? When he was in New York for a while.

He did come to New York, you know. Exactly. So, that's very exciting for me is that I'm going to be playing this summer at the Joplin International Festival in Sedalia, Missouri. So, wow, that's awesome. That is great. Very exciting to, again, like New York, which we think of as this great cultural center, but actually to go to Joplin, where Joplin settled, where these people lived, and to, again, reach a different audience. It's an audience that venerates this music, that loves this music, that is not coming to it from the same direction that I'm coming from. For me, it's a different kind. So I'm actually really excited to meet audiences and to talk about, you know, what I do in a different way. So I think in a sense it's very— always important to be trying, you know, trying new things. So definitely I'm looking forward to that.

I would love to hear what are the advices you could give to young people, especially after this crazy pandemic, you know, this so many different ways of living, you know, as musicians we have to What is your advice?

My advice would be for people, for young pianists and teachers, to think about those unique narratives. Because we all go into music and piano because we love what we do, because we love the repertoire. And in that sense, we're all the same, right? In that sense, And even the idea of playing piano and technique, there's a sameness to that. You know, the instrument is unique, but there are good things and bad things. There are ways to play the piano that are effective, there are ways to play the piano that are technically not effective. So there's a sense when we're all at a high level working well that we're very much a community of people who have a lot of the same loves and abilities and talents. So the question becomes how to distinguish yourself, what makes you unique, whether it's the repertoire, whether it's the people you play for, whether it's how you talk about the music, whether it's how you put programs together. It's so important for— in order for a self-sustaining career as either a teacher or a performer, I think even as a lifelong music lover, to recognize what makes you different. When I was small, I remember watching the Van Cliburn television and when they used to show that on TV. And I remember very clearly a segment in which the competitors in the Van Cliburn were playing Chopin's First Etude and they were playing away and the camera would zoom in on one set of hands and then zoom out and it would be a different player and then it would zoom in the hands and it would zoom out and be a different player. And I know it was meant to show how everyone was playing so flawlessly, but the impression it gave was that you could not tell one player from the other because everybody was playing so fantastically well, um, that they sort of all were uniformly excellent. And for me, that was just sort of inspiring and also just entirely sickening because you always want someone to remember what is unique about you. And certainly when we love performances and remember good performers, it's for what is special about them and not for what is the same. So whereas we're aspiring to a high standard and a kind of uniformity of excellence, it's so important for us to find and capitalize on what makes us different.

That's beautiful. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, Marilyn, thank you so much. I know we kind of gave, gave you the this bullet of questions, and, but, uh, we learned a lot and we appreciate your time. So now we want to move into this fun segment, and it's called The Piano Pod Rapid Fire Questions. I would— we would like for you to answer them in the shortest answers as possible. Okay, all right, it's really fun. All right, so my question is, what is your comfort food?

My comfort food? Marzipan. Great.

All right, cats or dogs? Cats. Yay!

What is your word or words to live by?

The more I practice, the luckier I get. Beautiful.

What is the most important quality you look for in other people?

Compassion.

What is the worst quality you want to stay away from? Incompetence.

Name 3 people who inspire you, living or dead.

The writer Michel Houellebecq, he's French, a French writer, a very controversial. Julia Child. Okay, great, great chef. And I'm trying not to pick pianists. I know it's difficult. Václav Havel, the playwright.

Name one piece in your current playlist.

That would have to be Carmina Burana. Great. Yes, you're performing very soon.

Yes.

Name one book title in your library.

I'm currently reading Coming to My Senses, which is a memoir of Alice Waters.

You get only one song or piece to listen to for the rest of your life. What is it?

Olivier Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus, the 20 gazes on the infant Jesus by Olivier Messiaen.

And last question, last not least, music is— fill in the blank.

"Music is what sound becomes." What sound becomes. Wonderful. That last quote, it's actually not mine originally. That is the quote of the French spectralists when they started their— what became the spectral movement. Music is what sound becomes.

That is beautiful.

Very, very deep. Okay, so thank you. So this concludes this episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song. Thank you, Marilyn, for joining us today and sharing your wonderful stories and insights and expertise. And you can find more information about her on her website at MarilynNongken.com. And I also want to encourage our audience to listen to her latest album, Syncopated Musings, available on all music streaming services. And also, we didn't get to mention, but you have another CD album coming up, Morton Feldman's Complete Music for Piano and Cello. The Piano Pod with the cellist Steven Morotto. So all the links are listed in the description.

Thank you to our wonderful audience and the fans for tuning in today. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review on whatever podcasting platform you use. If you're watching us on YouTube, remember to hit the thumbs up button and be sure to subscribe subscribe to our channel. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The links are in the description below.

If you're interested in, uh, to be the guest or want to recommend someone to be on our show, or you— if you'd like to sponsor us or collaborate with us, shoot us an email at thepianopodnyc@gmail.com or send us a DM via social media. We See you for the next episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Marilyn. Bye everyone! Thank you so much! Thank you Marilyn! Thank you so much! Thank you for having me!