Ah, Recording!
My Shortcut to Carnegie Hall
CD Notes
Probably every musician has heard that famous joke when a visitor asks a New
Yorker - "How can I get to Carnegie Hall?" and gets the reply - "Practice,
practice, practice".
I don't know anyone who has performed at Carnegie Hall without countless hours
of practicing. I certainly did my share of it. But, aside from simple
practicing, to prepare for my Carnegie Hall debut, I recorded a lot. The genius
of recording is that, along with all the right notes, intonations and feelings,
it dutifully captures all the wrong ones and then exposes them back as a guide
for further work, saving weeks of blind repetition.
So, over the months of preparation for that recital, I was working with students
and graduates of the sound recording program at McGill University (Montreal,
Canada) usually in late night training sessions. In those grueling hours we all
practiced our craft and, indeed, learned from it. For example, I realized that
you don't shout to the sound engineer before the last echo of the last note has
died in the hall; and my trainee engineers have learned that once you start
recording in earnest, you stop fidgeting with controls.
Peter Riebeek of the Amsterdam "Studio 150" and my jack-of-all-trades husband
Andrei have fixed some of the recording mistakes. In the end, we found that
several of those practice tracks had enough artistic value to be released as a
CD, both to enjoy and to guide others in preparation for their important
recitals. Because, the punch line for that Carnegie Hall joke would be even
wiser if it were - "Practice, record, practice".
My best wishes,
Irina Voro
BIOGRAPHY
Award-winning teacher and performer Irina Voro has played as a recitalist,
chamber musician and concerto soloist in Western Europe, China, North America
and Russia.
Dr. Voro, as she is known to her students at the University of Kentucky (USA),
has a precious gift for uncovering the drama of the piece and telling the world
something new, touching and wonderful - something the world is subconsciously
looking for.
From a very young age Irina has been creating personal stories about the pieces
she plays. It is not surprising then that in the year 2000 she debuted at the
Carnegie Hall with a performance called "L'Excital for piano, narrative and
imagination", a performance in which she preceded the music of great composers
with her own poetic narratives, subtly inviting listeners to find her stories in
the music. This unusual combination was received so well that now Irina Voro is
giving her L'Excitals around America and around the world, getting the most
enthusiastic audience. Releasing a CD of "L'Excital" is her next recording
project.