Hard work and creativity

I am a very hard worker. Those of you who know my Yale routine might scoff, for my job is not the most demanding, but I do it better than many would, and I do it efficiently and professionally.

I also work hard at home. I keep the house running: feeding and walking the dogs every day, taking them to the vet as needed, keeping the place moderately clean, doing the laundry, paying all the bills, etc.. With one exception, which I’ll get to in a minute, I do all the housework.

Truly successful people both work hard AND are creative. That is not a word that fits me. I love hearing and seeing the result of creative folk’s work, but I do not create any myself. With all my knowledge of music, and all my experience listening to it, I still do not read music nor can I talk intelligently about one performance over another, more than to say which one I liked better.

Ransom is the true embodiment of a hard-working AND creative personality. He’s proven it over a long career as a flute phenomenon, a teacher and a conductor. Yesterday he proved it again.

As part of New Haven’s Arts and Ideas Festival, Ransom led his ensemble, Le Train Bleu, in a performance of John Luther Adams's songbirdsongs. I heard Ransom lead this piece at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, back in the fall of 2011, and was thrilled by it. The New York Times called it a "gorgeous performance" and "a strange, thrilling immersive experience." (November 27, 2011).

About one performance the News and Courier/Evening Post (Charleston, S.C.) wrote

…exquisitely gentle evocations of wilderness sounds…songbirdsongs transformed the auditorium into the aural equivalent of some enchanted forest…. The effect was musical magic.

Ransom took it one better yesterday. He staged the piece in a real forest, at New Haven’s Marsh Botanical Gardens, outside, under the trees. The ten musicians were spread out over perhaps an acre of land; the audience sat on camping chairs or on the ground, or wandered about, following the musicians, who went from instrument to instrument. You’d hear a piccolo in the distance, followed by some chimes and two more piccolos from another direction. The wind would rustle the branches of the huge tree pictured below while a timpanist banged away. There was a marimba and a xylophone, bell chimes and hand-held chimes and a glockenspiel, as well as bongos, wood blocks and other percussion instruments. And through it all there were birds, real birds, adding their harmonies.

It was, indeed, musical magic. It was, in fact, one of the best concert experiences I’ve ever had.

With apologies to Tara Helen O'Connor who is next to Ransom but hidden by the trees

All five percussionists gathered around the marimba

Oh, and that one bit of house work that I don’t usually do: cooking of course, the chore that requires the most creativity. Ransom excels at it and I am grateful every night that he’s home.