Rhonda Ringering, Pianist and Piano Teacher

After much dreaming and scheming, pondering and planning—not to mention a lengthy and painful birthing process–No Dead Guys is launched. A small independent record label, No Dead Guys (http://nodeadguys.com/), features great contemporary music (with a tune and a beat). My newest CD, A Spin On It, is one of the first albums to appear on this label. It, too, had a lengthy and painful birth. It will finally be released on Saturday, February 4, 2012, from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM at Montinore Estate Vineyard (http://montinore.com/) in Forest Grove, OR
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Both of these ventures are examples of heart-over-head decisions. Passion for new music and affection for the composers who write it won over common sense and self-preservation. Call it a positive by-product to being a middle-aged classical pianist with no aspirations of fame or fortune—I get to play, record, and promote what I love. There are no managers to consider, no expectations to meet—just my fingers, the piano, and the newly-crafted notes that come to life as I strike the keys.

All artists—in our halting and stumbling way—seek to serve their art to the best of their abilities. We know we’re unworthy and that we have cracks and warts and proverbial feet of clay, but we stumble on, knowing that each imperfect attempt may bring something truthful and beautiful to life.

Some artists may find this process creative and easy; I find it consists of much doubt, plenty of swearing, and frequent vows to “never do anything like THIS again.” Still, on this lovely day as I sit watching the waves and writing from a dear friend’s beach house, I feel joy, and maybe even a little cautious hope.

This past weekend I had the honor of attending a concert featuring the music of all women composers.  They had a full house of enthusiastic listeners—male and female—who represented so many branches of the arts—music, dance, visual arts, writing, and theatre.  As a friend commented, she was “blown away” by how amazing and vibrant everyone was. It was impossible to avoid comparisons with several unhealthy and bitter musicians I have encountered over the years.

At risk of making a sweeping statement, I am going to make a sweeping statement:  Art is so powerful that we either allow it to humble us into being better human beings or will we allow pride or rage or fear to turn us into monsters.  Art—like religion—taps into the deepest parts of human beings and that power will either soften and transform us or harden us into musical “terrorists” who destroy others in the name of preserving the art we think we must protect.

For every amazing and inspiring artist I know, there seems to be a shadow collection of monsters who—twisted by their own insecurities and rage—turn on those around them with cruelty and the intention to destroy.  Teachers and mentors are no exception.  In the piano world, artistic savagery has been known to destroy musicians—guaranteeing they will have little or no interest in making music ever again.

The inspiring musicians know that music is not a product; it is a relationship.  Each of must fall in love with the pieces we play and allow that passion to bring us to deeper and deeper understanding of the composer and the score.  If our encounters with music are shaped by fear and shame, we will be defensive and emotionally detached from the score.  We will be unable to make deeper and deeper commitments to the demands of the music—technical, intellectual, and emotional—and the music will not permeate and change us as it should. In the end, the music we fight to protect will end up being one more dead language that no longer to speaks to people today.

Bitter and angry art comes from bitter and angry people.  We are responsible for our own actions and words.  No one can “make” us be cruel or “make” us humiliate another human being.  Regardless of circumstances, we each have the duty to do what we need to do in order to be civil and professional members of the human community.  It is not others’ fault if we do not get the performing careers we think we deserved, make as much money as our friends, or have accolades piled up at our feet.  We need to be grown up professionals who know how to manage ourselves and our jobs with dignity and humanity.

Art is the language of the soul and working artists are the guardians and tour guides of this sacred realm.  We are the midwives who help birth the love of it in the next generation.  Through our hands runs unimaginable power—power that is not ours to own or misuse.  This power will either transform and heal or destroy. The choice is ours.

A clean empty beach,

Light dancing on pristine snow

New music to me

As Oregon dries out after a record-setting soggy spring and summer, I drench myself in new music.  The scores arrive as email attachments from friends, bound copies in my mail box, or hand-delivered by the composer himself.  Each one unexplored territory—the notes go from the composer’s hands to my own.  No fingerprints of generations of pianists, musicologists, or critics clutter these pages.  They are newborn babies waiting to be given voice in the world.

Like so many other musicians, it is my lucky job to be the first interpreter of some truly beautiful and transformational music.  It is immediate and fresh.  The composers are—or they become—friends.  I enter their sound worlds and see something new in myself and in the world.

This summer I am playing the music of Jason Heald, Dana Libonati, Joel Pierson, and a long-time favorite, Dave Deason.  I recently discovered Cynthia Stillman Gerdes, David Bernstein, Larry Rausch, and Jan Mittlestadt.  Their scores have joined the original stack on my piano and I am dipping into them as well. To paraphrase a dear friend, how can we say there are too many pianists in the world when there is so much great music begging to be played?

Next month I record some of this luscious stuff.  This fall I launch it through No Dead Guys—an on-line record label devoted to intelligent music with a tune and a beat. It has taken me years to see the blessing in being a minor pianist in a small city: I have no important reputation to protect and so I get to play, record, and promote what I love.  I teach it too—and in doing so have passed the love of this music along to the next generation of pianists.

In a world crowded with music, some would ask “why?” I ask, “why not?” Most of these pieces may disappear without a trace, but one—maybe just one—will change someone else’s world like it has changed mine.  That’s new music to me.

Rhonda Ringering – The South Side

Green salad with herbs and steamed snow peas from the garden, topped with salmon and served on a French table cloth rich in yellow and blue—it was lunch at a composer friend’s home.  The conversation bounced from music to literature to activism to travel to tango dancing and, of course, to composition.  The house is alive with books, sculpture, antiques, paintings, and the piano, and every room is drenched in light from the generous south-facing windows.  And after lunch, music: tangos, a toccata—a chance to hear the notes straight from the fingers of the creator.  I drove home heady with the conversation and the music, fingers itching to try the pieces myself, on my own piano.

Coffee, pastries, a tired upright piano in the corner—it was Saturday morning at BJs Coffee.  Young piano students played fifteen minute “sets” of background music to a Saturday morning crowd that filled every available chair and applauded and tipped the players after every song.  One young mother was seen dancing with her daughter to the Maple Leaf Rag as they waited in line to order her coffee.  The young pianists left euphoric, clutching their tips in one hand and their music in the other.

Wine, gourmet dining, antiques, art, hand-made one-of-a-kind pottery pieces (created by one of the hotel owners), and a stunning alto vocals (created by the other hotel owner)—it was a weekend at the Shelburne Inn in Sea View Washington.  In an era of recession and frugality, owners Laurie and David purchased an artist quality grand piano and bring local and regional pianists in to play.  In this bed and breakfast, beauty, art, and graciousness are not buzzwords; they are the natural result of lives devoted to hospitality and the finer things of life.  I came in a weekend pianist, eager to play my Friday and Saturday night gigs; I went home a member of the Shelburne “family.”

As we watch the death of so many institutional arts, it is easy to say that people no longer care for music or painting or literature or dance.  But even as the most visible artistic monuments struggle to survive in these lean times, the arts are still a living and breathing part of everyday life—in inns and coffee shops and friends’ homes people still write music, make pottery, and sing songs.  It’s still here, in the notes we write, the pianos we play, and in the bonds of beauty only art can create.

Rain falls from gray skies, pelting the skylights with reminders that this is a day to be inside. The grand piano’s lid is open to full stick and the piano lamp makes a pool of warm light in the dusky room. The smooth black and white keys respond automatically—they are old friends who absorb joy, sadness, contentment, frustration and passion without complaint. The song is a favorite—a piece written by a buddy, a piece dedicated to a beloved soul friend, now gone.  Music can’t wake the dead, but you listen closely anyway, hoping that somewhere under the notes and the rain, and the sound of the living room clock chiming the hour, she may be listening.

For the musician, notes are knitted to our lives in deeply personal ways. Rachmaninoff Etude-Tableaux in g minor—falling in love in college; “My Foolish Heart,” performed the day you learned of a favorite uncle’s death; Liszt’s “Sposalizio”—healing and hope after 9/11; and “Reminiscence,” written by Dave Deason, dedicated to Elvira Rizzo, each performance a poignant tribute to the Grandma who loved without reservation.   As our fingers and brains learn the notes, our hearts learn how to weave our lives into each line until we wear the music from the inside out.

A pianist is more than her hands.  The best of us allow all the experiences of life to filter through the music they play so that in the moment of creation, our shared humanity knits composer, performer, and listener into a place of beauty and transcendence.  And for all our focus on perfection, sometimes it is our failings—as musicians and as human beings—that gives the music life. We show up at the piano, join hands with the composer, and create a temporary beauty that somehow becomes permanent in our hearts.

Rain falls from gray skies, pelting the skylights with reminders that this is a day to be inside. The grand piano’s lid is open to full stick and the piano lamp makes a pool of warm light in the dusky room. Each note is struck, and then decays. In each one we hear the memory of what came before and feel the anticipation of what is coming; in each one we know the beauty or frustration or joy or sadness of the present moment, the present note. We dignify these moments, weave them into our lives, and then move on, knowing we carry each one of them with us in our hands and our hearts.