TPP S1 E8: Frederic Chiu--International Concert Pianist, Innovator, & Deeper Performance Studies

Welcome back to another episode of The Piano Pod. I am Eric Hunter.

I am Clara Zhang.

I'm Yukimi Song.

Our guest today needs no introduction. We are very excited to have Frederic Chiu on our show, who is an international concert pianist with performances on 5 continents in venues such as Lincoln Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, The Châtelet in Paris and the Mozarteum in Buenos Aires. He has recorded over 30 albums. He is the founder of Deeper Performance Studies and recently a distinguished faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University and the Hartt School. His non-traditional and innovative approach to art, including interdisciplinary collaborations and integration of new technologies, distinguishes Mr. Chiu as a 21st century pianist. So please join me in welcoming Mr. Frederick Chiu.

Yay, welcome! Thank you so much for joining us.

It's a great pleasure to be with you.

Frederick, I wanted to start off with a little anecdote. I'm sure you don't remember, but I actually played for you in a master class many, many years ago.

I thought so.

Yeah, I know I didn't mention it before now, but, um, yeah, I was thinking about that and, uh, you made a big impression on me in just this, this one class, and I wanted to share that with our listeners. I'll probably paraphrase you very badly, but I remember we were working on some Bach and you were having me work on a passage, and you told me, don't think about whether it's good or it's bad on each repetition that you do, but think about what is my ideal that I want it to sound like, and how much closer or further away from it am I getting. And that really stuck with me, you know, that became an integral part of my practice after that, you know, just from that one master class. So I wanted to—

I'm so happy, first of all, you saved it for the show, this big reveal, which is good. You got a reaction shot. And second, I'm very honored that you have a memory of that that's that stayed with you, that's helped you. That's, you know, my goal, uh, in playing and teaching is to leave a memory, and that obviously worked. So I'm really happy to, to hear that. And what you're saying is great, and that's a point that I always— that always comes up. A lot of people, when they play, they, you know, nobody likes to make mistakes, but of course a mistake is a great doorway into understanding something about your playing. I mean, nothing happens by mistake. A mistake happens because it's supposed to happen that way for whatever reasons. All the things that you brought to it caused that to happen. And if you take the opportunity to look at it instead of judging and saying, ooh, that was good, ooh, that was bad, and somehow being attracted or detracted from it because of some value judgment, then you're not going to learn as much as you can. From that moment. And it's really about learning. And, and anything that we play, no matter how good or how bad, if there's some learning that we can extract from it, uh, then we've improved ourselves, you know, then we've added to our knowledge base and we're higher for that.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. At the time, I think I had a very harsh inner critic, which which I feel like a lot of musicians struggle with in their practice at one point or another. And you got me to kind of view it from a larger perspective, you know, as a natural part of the process. Mistakes, mistakes are, and that should really be in quotes, right? Because a mistake is not a mistake. Like you said, it shows you where you are. It's information, right? And it's just another step step on your journey towards becoming the kind of musician you want to be.

Also something, you know, for pianists, we have to do a lot of our work alone, and even a lot of our end goal is done alone. We perform solo stuff alone, and we're very much in our own heads. And, you know, to be very self-critical is a great thing, but it's also a very dangerous thing. In a vacuum, in an isolation from others. And that's also something that I found for myself, that when I started teaching, when I started working with others, there's so much that I learned from trying to communicate and communicating badly and then figuring out good ways to communicate. There's so much to learn from just being forced to interact with other people and communicating things. And that takes you a little bit out of your bubble and gives you that perspective. So that's also very important.

Yes. Well, thank you. I just— that's become a permanent part of the pianist that I am today.

Well, thank you very much. All right.

So can you tell us a little bit about your background, how you came up, you know, your early studies, and then, you know, how that transitioned into your career?

Yeah, I think my early, like, first, 10, 15 years is probably pretty typical looking. Um, I would— my parents are both immigrants from China, a very strong work ethic at home, uh, not very social in the sense of, you know, having sports and all these kinds of things to do. So, you know, like just doing a lot of good homework and a lot of good piano practicing.

Typical good Chinese parents.

Piano practicing, you know. That kind of thing. I, I feel like music was something that I gravitate— gravitated towards more because I was able to accomplish things, but not because I, you know, like saw a piano and said, 'Oh, I want to play that thing.' It was—

yeah, I can relate to something that I could do well at.

It was suited, uh, and I just moved ahead. And I, I think a lot of people recognize that, especially Asian, Asian American background, they— this idea that if you do this step well, then you go on to the next step. Of course, you do this step well, and then you find yourself suddenly on this treadmill, and you're at, at a far reach of that treadmill, and then you wonder, oh, how did I get here? And for me, that moment of turning around and looking to see where I had been and deciding what to do going forward didn't happen until I was in my mid-20s. And by that time I had already gone to the Jacobs School in Bloomington, I had already gone to Juilliard, I had already won competitions, I already had a manager, you know, so it wasn't like that— it was not a conscious choice until I was in my mid-20s. And there was a moment where all of a sudden everything came to light, and this was when I was struggling a little bit, first arrived in Paris after finishing my studies And, you know, Paris, of course, is an incredibly inspiring place, and particularly for classical music, I think. And I was there for a year, at least that was the plan. And that year started off all of a sudden in catastrophe, and I found myself almost homeless for 7 months, and certainly pianoless, kitchenless, bathroomless for 7 months.

Oh, I had no idea.

There, I knew that I was going to end up okay, but so it was just a matter of getting through these months. But, you know, it was pretty traumatic and certainly very, very different than what I expected and different than what I wanted. And that was a very difficult time. But it was during this time that I was going all around Paris looking for practice spaces and arranging with various contacts, you know, can I practice your place tomorrow? Can I practice your place next week? And one of the places was a little teaching studio in a private building near the Galerie Lafayette, Chaussee d'Antin, and that happened. I came to the building, there was a plaque on the door that said Chopin lived here from 1833 to 1836. So he was 23, 26 years old when he lived there. I was 24 at the time. Somehow everything that I had studied up until that moment in history class, all the things I had read, all these facts that we load our mind with as pianists, all of a sudden came to life. It was like, oh wow, Chopin's a real person.

Yes.

Chopin was my age. I happened to be on this street in Paris that was probably still with the same cobblestones paving the street. And certainly this was the building. I'm going up the stairs, perhaps Chopin put his hand on this rail and just like I am, and even though the life was completely different, all of a sudden I was able to connect and empathize with Chopin as a person. And everything came to light and all of a sudden everything that I was doing was put into a very different perspective. And I realized, wow, I've had this training it's brought me to a point where I can obviously have some expectation of being able to achieve something. And that was when I doubled down and really decided, okay, I'm going to be a pianist, I'm going to do what I can with what I have. And all of a sudden I started practicing more, I started developing other ways to practice, I started seeing every moment in my life as an opportunity to practice.

Yes.

And to enlarge the idea of what practicing means to not just the time I spent sitting at the piano moving my fingers, but also non-piano-playing time and non-music time. All of that was just feeding this, this system that allowed me to play the piano.

Yeah, so can you talk a little bit more about that? Because, um, I know for you non-musical activities are a big part of the way you practice, right, and, and contribute to your music making. And, um, I'm particularly interested in how you got this idea and how you drew the connections to see how it was affecting your musical output.

Well, it was during these 7 months where I literally was not practicing piano. I mean, not in the sense that I was, uh, expected, you know, that I had come to expect and need, kind of emotionally need those hours of practicing at the piano. I wasn't getting that. And so out of desperation, I tried all sorts of things like making a to-do list of passages that I really desperately needed to practice in the limited time that I had. And then the to-do list got me to open my scores to find things. And then I was basically doing a kind of improvised score study through that exercise. And then just the extreme emotional experiences that I was having during these 7 months. My life was pretty normal, you know, like, you know, happy and sad and nervous and whatever. But up until that moment, it wasn't life or death. And it wasn't, you know, extreme stage fright when I did go on stage during these 7 months to play or to record something. It was just harrowing. Because even before getting on stage to see how I was reacting, I had convinced myself that I could not be playing at my best because obviously I had not been practicing what one needs to practice in order to play at one's best. So it was just a self-defined thing. And then of course the self-fulfilling prophecy, I didn't play well a lot. And then the system kind of reverts to the mean, and all those years of training made me play okay, you know, helped me to— I don't forget C major scales just because I'm nervous and because I haven't practiced C major scales. So the basic tools were still there, and all of a sudden I realized that I could still kind of play. It wasn't terrible playing, and in fact my memory was a lot better, and I started to calm down. But it did take, you know, it's like going through withdrawal. It did take a number of weeks and months to get to the other side where I could look at myself and say, hey, the results aren't horrific, uh, I'm still alive, and in fact I'm gaining insight into areas that I didn't have before. And what is that coming from? And that's my natural kind of scientist side, just analyzing things and putting one thing after another, you know, just structurally trying to recreate what's— what was happening. And my understanding was, okay, it was actually my, my work with the score, my work without the score, and then I started defining those things. I started reading stuff that, you know, like The Inner Game of Tennis and then—

great book—

The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Yeah, all these—

also great book—

all these great books and, and kind of philosophical disruptors. And that disrupted me. I was disrupted already, so it was, it was great to, to have that. And that helped me codify some things. And I was wondering many years afterwards, when I had kind of settled these things for myself. I was saying like, why, you know, somebody could have taught this. Yes, somebody could have at least given me some insight into this and not just kind of depend on the random encounter with a person who happened to talk about these things or experience these things. So I set out to create a curriculum which turned into Deeper Performance Studies and, you know, taking people through some of these seminal experiences that I had that really give perspective that we don't get necessarily in school.

Yes, we definitely want to ask you about Deeper Performance Studies. Oh, I have so much to say about that. What a wonderful story. Uh, thank you for sharing it. Um, I, I think I'm gonna latch on to the last little bit where you said you wish somebody could have taught you. You know, one thing I'm finding as we interview more people for the show is a lot of people have this point where you've learned what you've learned, you put in the work, you went to school, did what you're supposed to do, right? And then at some point you're just flying blind for whatever reason. Nobody can help you anymore. You're on your own. You're faced with something that you never dealt with before. And, um, and for anybody listening, I just want you to know that that's natural and normal and inevitable for many of us, but how you come out of that defines the kind of artist you're going to be. Yeah.

Yeah, and I would say to encourage all pianists, I truly feel that it's there already. If you can— if you have the experience of getting on stage and playing a Beethoven sonata from memory for an audience, I mean, it takes a lot of work, a lot of different kind of work, over many, many years to be able to do that.

Yes.

And embedded in that work is all the stuff that you need. It's just inside of you. You may or may not be aware of it, and you may or may not be confident or even knowledgeable about how to apply that to anything else except playing that Beethoven sonata. Right. But it's there, you know. It, you know, if I think about You know, somebody who goes to a country and is immersed in that country and learns the language, they can leave the country and still speak that language. You know, it's— they don't have to deal with things there geographically in order to use some of the skills that they learn. And playing the piano is like learning a language. It's a, it's a physical language. We have this understanding and control and sensitivity to our body and strength and balance and timing. It's this mental world where we're, especially for pianists, multitasking constantly. We're strategizing, we're decomposing and recomposing things, we're understanding theory and architecture. And it's this emotional life where we deal with students, we deal with teachers, we deal with chamber music colleagues, we deal with a person you're playing for, you deal with 100 people that you're playing for as a group, you're dealing with an anonymous unknown listener behind the microphone who may be listening 10 years down, 100 years down the road. We're thinking we have all these opportunities to think about these interpersonal, really diverse interpersonal relationships, and how many people really get an opportunity to practice these things, you know, to have the opportunity to get on stage and have full attention of people even for 5 minutes? To memorize something and to be a master and solo, you know, responsible for something, to have the day-to-day experience of discipline and delayed gratification to arrive at being able to do something incredible.

It is a rare opportunity.

Most people in the world don't even get the chance to experience these things, and we have all of that, and that's our life. And so I really think that that is one of the things for pianists to encourage— that encouraged me. And I think that's one of the great things. If you've already gone through all those years and you're frustrated at the end, you have to turn back and turn in and take those things and somehow appreciate them and redirect them. It may not be in piano playing, it might be something completely non-pianist related, but your sense of discipline and your ability to present is going to aid you because you have it. Your ability to coordinate your fingers to type, you know, like pianists generally are pretty fast typists, you know, that's kind of— because we have a lot of digital control, you know, a lot of people don't know how to type, they're typing with—

that's my wife, you know, no offense, Masha, but you know that that's—

it's kind of silly, but that is something that we have an advantage over other people in that area.

I think the most valuable thing—

it's something really to appreciate and to draw out, because that will make you a better pianist. It will also make you better whatever, yes, whatever else you want to do.

I mean, I think one of the most important things anybody can learn in life is how to learn, and, you know, serious study of musical instrument teaches you that.

Because it teaches you humility.

Among other things.

Among other things.

Because you're making, you know, like what piano performance does not have a mistake in it? Of course, you know, and if you play something, you know, God forbid you play something perfectly once, does that mean that you expect it's going to be just staying there and plateauing forever? Yeah, of course not, but a lot of people don't experience that day to day. We experience that day to day and we've found ways to deal with it. And that's a huge emotional strength that pianists have, that musicians have. Pianists in particular have that.

That's why we have resilience.

Great, right?

Amen to that.

Wow, these are really, really useful information. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. I didn't know all this background, you know, when you first moved to Paris, but it's amazing. I mean, I feel like I almost can draw a little comparison with myself. You know, I moved here when I was 17 in Kansas, and then I moved to New York when I was 23, 24. I had already finished everything and life was great. You know, I decided to be a pianist when I was 3, but at that point I felt like everything was going smoothly, you know. I think that's also the problem when you don't have that big, you know, and then you don't— and all of a sudden you arrive in New York, you're like, wow, it's like you basically feel homeless, you know. Like, nope, you're here, everybody's here, you don't really know exactly how to get going, but here you are, you know, you just have to make something out of it. So I am so inspired now because of that. And I have this a little bit Chinese background, and I know your father is also from the city I was born in. What is And when you went to Paris as well, I know you still do a lot of collaboration. For example, you work with composer Gao Ping, and also I saw this video, it was lovely, of a French movie, but they were singing in Chinese. Just because all of the musicians nowadays are all overseas, everywhere, you know. I want to hear your experience of drawing different culture and your born and raised here in America, right?

Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, I think that's definitely a strength of mine, having a Chinese upbringing, American culture, and then somehow I went to the middle point between the US and China and landed in Paris and kind of immersed myself. And I was drawn to Paris, I don't know why, French was such a draw to me, but somehow a fascination with it. I never studied it in school, but I decided when the opportunity presented itself, oh, I'm going to spend some time in France. I ended up living 12 years there and having a whole life, getting married, having kids, becoming a citizen. And I think those 3 cultures really have forced me to look at things from different perspectives. And, uh, you know, I didn't know it at the time, but, uh, I think that having 3 different points of view was very balancing and, and really kind of pushed me into a lot of the thinking that I was, uh, that I came to for piano playing. And I think that those 3 cultures really have such strong and very different distinct thinking styles. Their perception of time, their perception of work, their perception of beauty are also different.

Yeah.

And perhaps you could have said that about any three cultures, but for me it really was very striking and is always a point of reference for me. Like, am I American? And looking at this as an American, what would I see? Am I Chinese? And looking at it from a Chinese perspective, what does that mean? And French, you know, what, what, how would they see it? And I think that that kind of perspective just came very naturally to me from the very beginning.

Wow, I can relate that so much, and I'm sure a lot of our audience, you know, maybe later on watching us from wherever they are right now currently, right during pandemic. I hear everybody's back, and I mean I also, I moved to Kansas and without a word of English, you know, so that was kind of became my identity. So even to this day, people here in New York call me Topeka, you know, Topeka, Kansas. So it's a very interesting thing. But I want to hear, I know you had a CD with Gao Ping and the WLC. Can you talk about the connection that you draw from? I mean, obviously both composers are—

Yes. Well, Gao Ping, I think he's a good friend, and I met him many years ago when he was studying in Cincinnati at Cincinnati Conservatory. And I heard him play one of his vocalizing piano pieces, and I was just— my jaw dropped, and I was like, I got to get— I got to meet this guy, and I have to play that piece. I have to somehow do that. And he's such a nice person. For anybody who knows him, he's so nice. During the pandemic, I was in touch with him. I premiered a piece of his for violin and piano with my brother, who's a violinist in the Chicago Symphony. And we were all at home and doing nothing. And so I did this remote kind of collaboration with my brother to premiere—

And he was on TV, right?

And he— we interviewed him. Yes. And my brother was on a video screen, and we were doing a live virtual— combination. And by that time in April, things had kind of calmed down in terms of the pandemic in China. They had already kind of gotten it in control. And so Gao Ping said to me, can I send you some masks? Do you need masks? We have a lot of masks. And I think we're at the end of our need for them. So I could definitely send you a supply. I said, that's so nice. That's great. So he put it in the mail. We ended up getting them in July because that's how long the mail took to get here.

Exactly.

I ordered some in the beginning too.

Yeah. And unfortunately, we still needed them in July. So that was not—

Yes.

But when they arrived, I was like, what did Gao Ping send us?

What's going on?

But in terms of music, he also has— because he studied in the States, he has a perspective of— Chinese music from a Western perspective. And his father is one of the great composers of traditional Chinese music. And so he's immersed in that. And so I think we connected on this differing perspective approach to things. And I find his music is that kind of bridge between Western and Eastern culture. And the combination with Debussy, of course, was, I think, pretty natural. Debussy, the pieces that I chose were the ones where he was discovering Eastern culture, and that was such a big revelation to him and to Europe in general around the turn of the 19th, 20th century. So I think that there were, in that particular program, bridges from both sides that kind of met in the middle and exchanged, and I was very I was very proud of that particular program.

I really love that. Yeah, that's— oh my goodness. So you see, sometimes I feel like there's always connection between every culture. We are so far away, but somehow we are also very much connected. And the last question I want to ask, actually, you heard— I mean, you went to Juilliard, and also Juilliard opened up a campus in Tianjin, I guess your father and my hometown. And I have some friends working there now. She knew someone who was the main architect designed it, you know, so I kind of, like my father said, he could see, they used to drive up just to see, you know, because they feel so proud that—

Nice.

Zhu Diyar decided to choose Tianjin as the second, you know, and I don't know if you know much about, you know, China, Chinese culture, besides that we work hard, but there's also a lot of culture, especially in Tianjin, right? We have a lot of musicians, we have a lot of comedians, So what is your take? What do you think this means for the world? You know, now, you know, I see my friends have so much more gigs than we have, you know, in Asia, in Shanghai or in Tianjin or in Beijing.

Well, I think, you know, I think China definitely is the future of classical piano. I mean, there's— my parents left mainland China in '49 and came to the States in the '50s. And they weren't particularly exposed to classical music, but then when they were, they became extremely passionate about it. And, you know, more Catholic than the Pope, that kind of thing. Like, all of a sudden—

it's crazy—

all of a sudden, to have something revealed to you sometimes can be more inspiring than to grow up immersed in it. You don't really appreciate what you have. I think that was their case. I think, you know, to generalize very broadly, I think there is a kind of that— there's that dynamic happening in China. Piano music, the great canon of 400 years of piano music is inspiring. It is incredible.

Yeah, for sure.

And to not have it in your culture, then suddenly somehow have it at your disposal, is a huge energy force that can power, you know, a lot of things. I think that's generally what one— you know, I can describe Chinese relationship with Western classical piano like that. And I think that there's a sense of work ethic and a sense of discipline that really coincides well with the work that one needs to do to become a good pianist.

Sure.

So I think that that general Asian kind of approach to working and time, even the concept of time, is very adapted there. But I do believe that there are some cultural vacuums, some misunderstandings that can happen. For me, that really has inspired me to see myself as as much as possible a bridge persona.

For sure.

Because I straddle both of those cultures and because I have been to China quite a bit and teaching there and hearing things since my first visit in 1989.

Wow.

Or in 19— let's see. Yeah, 1989, just before Tiananmen happened. I was there for like a month for a residency teaching and playing.

In Beijing?

In Beijing and Xi'an.

Okay, Xi'an.

And, you know, and I've been there regularly since then, and it's always been very interesting to see that the talent of the 9-year-olds that I heard, no matter what year I went, there were always these amazing 9-year-olds playing Chopin etudes and Mozart slow movements, and they're just like Oh my God, unbelievable.

Yep.

But then as the students got older, they became more and more fitting the mold, and the personality was not there. And a lot of my work with the older students in China and people who have studied in China and who I've taught in Europe or the States is opening that up. Like, it's there, the knowledge the desire for expression, the personal voice is inside, but there's no permission to let it out. There's no incentive to let it out. And there's no instruction from the schooling there currently to let it out. And it's interesting to see, even over the last 30 years of my experience, that that's has been a pretty consistent situation. Right. So I really feel like there has to be this cultural opening that allows all this training to flower, to blossom, because it's amazing the potential.

Yes, that's true.

And as I said, not just for piano, you know, you have these hundreds of thousands of trained pianists, millions of trained pianists and they all think they're going to do something in piano, you know, I hope not. But literally, these could be business leaders, these could be cultural community leaders, these could be inventors, these could be math— you know, these could be so many things informed by piano training, and that's exciting to me.

And you say that you have some, um, right, piano students even know, right, online that you're teaching, so I'm sure that's This pandemic maybe is changing something.

Yeah, it's a connection and the idea of who's teaching who and how and when, that's all opening up, which is I think a really good thing.

So Frederick, 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 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, that can unfold from that, that can, that can engage people. Like, I have my, uh, you know, Monument to Beethoven. We talk about the 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 from each other, and yet they are tied together by this, 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, was a result of that. And the music was, was an 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 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 huge, 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.

If there's something 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. But in my impression is that you had 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? Um, 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, the grand scheme of things, and yet it was one of the key elements for my whole personal development and therefore my career development. Um, 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, and, 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 in when I discovered myself in the '20s. And I think that when one discovers oneself, interesting things start to happen. Yeah, 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, I just, uh, 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 Yukimi Song, 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 institutions as a full-time faculty. Member, Carnegie Mellon University and the Hart School. So we want to know—

started— yeah, that started a year ago.

Oh wow, how's it going?

Uh, it's been very interesting. You know, 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?

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, 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, you know—

I was going to say, you know, you did—

You were in 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 just try— 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 Abby 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 to 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 up to, ultimately it's up to the student to decide what they're gonna 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 with a click, with a tap. It's really a luxury to be able to focus on one activity. And 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. You know, 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, 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, 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 So everybody practice the piano because it's going to make you a 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, you know, I was fortunate that I did. In fact, I can show you one of the tools that I have.

Oh, wonderful.

Ah, this is a 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 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, 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. And I didn't get tendonitis, and I didn't, 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's— 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'm definitely making this a clip and sending it to all my students under 18.

Yes, me too.

Holy, oh my gosh.

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 these— 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, they do that. And we do that as humans. We come together, we kind of if we self-efface enough to be able to contribute to a greater, 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. They don't— 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. 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, 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 pianists.

Oh, please, yes. Amen to that.

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 that more than most other things. Um, okay, so before the rapid fire, first of all, we want to make sure that we promote your Smackdown concert series, um, which you can find out more about at frederickchu.com, correct?

Correct, there's a sign-up sheet there and then I'll be emailing. These are going to happen, 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 Rapid Fire Questions. So I would like for you to answer each question with short answers. Okay. So are we ready? Yes. All right, so question number 1. So you have a really diverse background. You know, you lived in France and your parents are Chinese, and you lived— you were born and raised in United— in the United States. So what do you consider a comfort food for you? What is the dumplings?

I, I held the world record, uh, for my family and dumpling eating for, 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 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.

Can you name 3 people who inspire you, living or dead?

3 people who inspire me. 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 the Courtauld. Okay. I would say Liszt because that's less accessible and we actually have Courtauld teaching master classes recorded, so.

Yeah, we can only imagine how Liszt played, right? Yes. Okay, and then which historical figure or composer who 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, 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 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 with Frederick Chu. Thank you, Frederick 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 frederickchu.com. The link will be in the description as always.

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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, Riddhik! Thank you so much!