The joy of passion projects
It was one of the busiest times of my life. I was teaching a full studio of private students, working as an accompanist at a university, and performing chamber music on the weekends, yet Chopin’s G minor Ballade started calling to me. I’d learned it years earlier and had no upcoming opportunities to perform it, but it haunted my dreams. I found myself humming it while driving or cooking dinner. Finally, full schedule notwithstanding, I put aside fifteen minutes per day to work on it, knowing full well that I had no intention of performing it for anyone and just wanted to play it for myself. When I told a friend about how foolish I was for doing this when my schedule was already so full, he replied,
“You needed a song for the heart.”
His words stayed with me: a song for the heart. The Chopin Ballade was the first of a series of songs for the heart I’ve learned over my lifetime. Sometimes I’ve been drawn to what I refer to as companion pieces as I worked towards a performance or recording, other times I felt myself drawn to music that was more than just a single piece. I call these long-term, multi-piece songs for the heart “passion projects”.
As a retired pianist who still chooses to show up at the piano five days a week, my passion projects have moved from being something I did on the side to something that provides overarching structure to my practicing. One of the things I loved about being a professional was the sense of accomplishment and closure I felt once a performance had been given or a recording made. Without those markers it became difficult to know when to let go of a piece of music and when to keep working on it. This was when my latest project—the long-term passion project—was born.
Long-term passion projects fall into the category of life dreams. They’re projects undertaken with an eye to what I want to have in my hands in the future, when I get old and have physical and perhaps mental limitations. Like a song for the heart, these pieces are ones I learn for no practical purpose other than my interest in playing them. Furthermore, I’ve promised myself I won’t play them for others—it’s my way of circumventing a lifetime of interpretation “do’s and don’s” that tend to paralyze me if I let them. I’m approaching the pieces in this project without expectation and without the layers of other people’s suggestions. In this, my goal is direct communication with the composer, using just the score as my guide.
Discerning readers have probably noted that I haven’t revealed my passion project. This is by choice. I’m building a life-long relationship with the music and its composer, and like all intimate relationships, it’s personal. I want to keep as much of my ego out of it as possible. I want to keep my focus on the music rather than others’ reactions to my choice of it. That said, my passion project is a long one and, truth told, the music is not in my area of expertise. The project is an enormous undertaking, one that will take years to complete. I like that about it. I like the purposeful purposeless nature of it. I like that if I live long enough to finish it, the notes I’m learning will be written on my heart.
For those who might be interested in starting their own long-term passion project, I offer the following thoughts:
Choose something you truly love, not something that someone somewhere told you you’re supposed to love. Choose with the heart, not the ego.
Keep your own counsel. Someone else’s opinion of your chosen project is a distraction.
Play these pieces for yourself and yourself alone, The point isn’t mastery according to an outsider’s expertise but a relationship with the music itself.
Set aside a portion of every practice time to work on your passion project. Chip away at it. It may take a decade or more, but that’s the whole point. During that time you will be building your friendship with the music and the composer.
Playing the piano is a luxury and a gift we give ourselves, not a self-improvement project. It offers us direct access to the minds of great composers and insight into ourselves. Without deadlines, external expectations, and others’ opinions, we’re free to have wild, unscripted encounters with the music we play. And in the sheer indulgence of adopting a passion project that has no practical purpose and no hope of external reward, we may just find the freedom and self-expression that can only come when the ego steps aside and lets us make music at the doorstep of transcendence.
Photo by Etienne Giradet, courtesy of UpSplash