Jennifer Roig-Francoli (Alexander Technique)

Hi Michael! Thank you so much for having me. This is something I've been looking forward to for a while, so thanks.

Well, I do actually credit Nathan Milstein very much for my intonation. Honestly, I don't think much about my intonation, and I just—I find it funny that you always tell me I have such good intonation. But truly, I had the good fortune—great fortune—to study with Nathan Milstein for five summers from the time I was 12, you know, through my teenage years. And that was in Switzerland; my mother's side of the family is Swiss. So that was really wonderful.And one thing that really stood out from what I learned from him was how he insisted that it was not possible to have good intonation if you couldn't play without vibrato. And so I remember him insisting that I practice my scales and everything that I played without vibrato, because otherwise, you can't hear if you're in tune or not. You need to be able to hit the note in tune at first, instead of what many people do, which is they hit the note and then vibrate immediately, and then you can sort of fudge and get away with not having, you know, accurate intonation.And then playing the Baroque violin is another thing that really helped me with my intonation because—for the same reason—we, you know, learn to play without vibrato, which many modern musicians actually are not able to do right away. It's hard to turn it off for a lot of modern players.

Yeah, although I do see it starting to come back because I have this sense that nowadays there is so much more openness to individuals choosing their own way. And we are the first—well, not me, but like my son, for instance, who's 19, he's also a violinist, and he told me the other day (the obvious, but it hadn't occurred to me before) that he's the first generation that is able to listen to everything.I mean, when I was a kid, we had LPs, and I had a very limited number of LPs, including Nathan Milstein and the other great violinists. But now, there's YouTube, there's Spotify, there's Apple iTunes—there's everything. And all of the old masters have been uploaded, as well as new people. I mean, there's just so much. And so people—young people—are able to listen to all kinds of interpretations.

Yes! And actually, he had, believe it or not, already listened to that, and he agrees with you totally that it is just heavenly. And it is. It's just really special.

Yeah. And for me, Bach has always been that. It's my favorite way to connect musically—well, one of my favorite ways—to connect to God, spirit, my true self, my heart, through Bach. I love Bach. So...

Right! Well, and Bach, I've been playing the Bach Chaconne since I was 18, 19, and it's one of the few pieces that I have kept in my fingers and played regularly all these years. And it's the first piece that I've recorded now as a soloist.

Yeah.

Was a spouse.

I'm a partner now.

That's right, thank you.

Well, I'll tell you that every single time I play anything, it is completely different from any other time I've played it. And ideally, great art is like that. I think that's how I think of it—it ought to be spontaneous. But of course, it's informed by my whole life experience.And, you know, talking about the Bach Chaconne in particular, I learned—I'll tell you a short story that's kind of funny. One of my other teachers was Josef Gingold at Indiana University. And when I was at IU, I was studying both with him and Stanley Ritchie, who is the great Baroque violin pedagogue. And Josef Gingold could not understand at all why anybody would want to play the Baroque violin. He was like, "Jennifer, why would a pretty girl like you want to play the Baroque violin?" Which was—it was funny because Josef Gingold was a loving, wonderful person.

But then, so I learned how to play it in two completely different styles with two completely different instruments. And when I played for Gingold's masterclass one day, I wasn't sure how I wanted to play it. So I just played it the way I wanted to in that moment, which was in Baroque style on a modern violin. And he listened very graciously to the whole thing and then afterwards told me to sit down. He said, "Jennifer, have a seat." And he started—he said, "He started to tell me, 'Jennifer, I really admire your conviction, and this was great, this was wonderful, this was wonderful, this was great. And now, please do me the favor and play it again the right way.'"

And so everyone laughed, including me, and I played it again the way that he would have wanted me to play it.

Well, I mean, I completely understand where he was coming from. He was—I don't remember exactly how old he was, but he was close to 90 at the time where I was working with him. It was in his last years. And he was an old-style, Romantic musician. And that is a wonderful, beautiful way to be. And it just didn't make sense for him, this newfangled way of approaching Baroque music, you know, looking at old treatises and things. He just wasn't interested in that, and it sounded wrong to him, as it did to many other people.I auditioned for Marlboro at like a year or two after that, and I was yelled at when I played it the way I liked it, which was more in Baroque style on modern violin. I was really reprimanded. They said, "Is that what they teach you at Indiana University?" I mean, at that time, it was not mainstream to be—I mean, now you turn on the radio and you hear Baroque music on Baroque instruments, on original instruments. At the time where I was studying it, it was fringe, even though it wasn't, you know, beginning. So, that's where he was coming from, and I don't blame him.

Well, I think much less so though.

But I love it. Anyway, back to how I play it. Right. How I recorded it.

Well, I have decided that I'm just going to do what I like, and I don't care what anybody else thinks! So, the way I play Bach now is just how I love it, how it's—it's how I feel it in the moment, which is informed by the old Romantic style of playing on a modern violin. I don't like to play Bach that way anymore though, because I've gone through decades of playing Baroque music on original instruments. I love playing the Bach Chaconne in that style, on a Baroque violin.But I decided to play this piece on the modern violin for this recording. And you know what? A week before I recorded it, I suddenly had this intuition that I wanted to change the pitch of my violin. So I tuned it down. I experimented with different pitches. My modern violin does not like 415—A415—like my Baroque violin does. And so I tried other things, and I settled on 432, which my violin absolutely loves! And I felt so good playing it at that pitch. I don't know anybody else who plays Bach at 432, and it kind of goes against the grain, but I don't care.

So, my style is very much like a Baroque interpretation, but it's on a modern violin.

Well, when I was at IU and I took Baroque lessons from Stanley Ritchie, we would often spend a whole lesson on one line of music. And he would teach me in detail about the articulations of the period. Way back in Bach's time, the way that you used a bow—which was a Baroque bow at that time, a completely different shape—it causes a different kind of sound. And so your notes tend to be shaped in a different way just because of how the bow is created and how it interacts with a Baroque violin, which is a really different instrument.So overall, it's maybe a softer, deeper, more resonant sound with a shorter articulation that has more shape, in the sense that maybe a long note will swell—it'll grow in the middle and decrescendo or get a little softer towards the end. It's more based on rhythm, a more strict, dance-like rhythm than a modern interpretation or a Romantic interpretation, which is a longer—people in the Romantic period were going for long lines where you couldn't tell the difference between a down-bow and an up-bow. And so, the way you play, the whole—it's a complete paradigm shift in how you approach Baroque music with that kind of an instrument.

And I bet they couldn't do it, either.

Well, in the Baroque period, vibrato was done; it was used, but it was an ornament. It was created—you used vibrato really intentionally to add, you know, luster or a special effect to long notes especially, so that something would stand out and you'd have a little different color. And you could have a fast vibrato, a slow vibrato, and it stood out and made something special instead of—it's like if you eat cake every day, it's not special anymore.

Well, if you're not a string player and you don't know what vibrato is, when you wiggle your finger—your left hand, the finger that touches the instrument actually—you can slightly bend a note. You can move your finger just a very little bit, like a millimeter or so, in either direction, which makes it sound like the note gets a little more sharp or flat, and it just gives it a little bit of a vibrational quality that it doesn't—it's a different vibrational quality. It also increases the—you can project more in a certain way if you use vibrato.But the difference between a Romantic vibrato and a Baroque vibrato is what? Well, I think it's not so much in the vibrato itself as in how and when you use the vibrato.

Yeah, right. I mean, ideally, with a modern instrument, I want to have an incredible amount of, you know, different types of vibrato at my disposal. That's how I was taught. I was taught to develop a very slow vibrato, fast vibrato, narrow vibrato, wide vibrato, and everything in between, but to have a really clear intention for how to use the vibrato to create certain effects in the music, like emotionally. And unfortunately, I think a lot of that nuance has been lost in modern players.

Well, you would play it in such a way that it feels like a tapestry that just continues. It's like an endless ocean.

Yeah, you want these different lines to overlap, that it's just seamless and like a sea of sound. Romantic player: lots of vibrato on pretty much every note, okay?

Well, for one thing, it would probably be quite a bit faster. And there's just more—it's hard to put into words, honestly. I think...

And I have performed this with Apollo's Fire as the soloist in New York, actually, years ago. We did our debut there. Yeah, and what's the difference? Well, it's a little faster, and you're bringing out different—you're bringing out the dissonances, for one thing, which you always want to do in Baroque music. They stress the dissonances. And the most important thing is the harmony in Baroque music, whereas the melody and the line is much more important in a modern or Romantic interpretation. And just that primary distinction makes the sound completely different. And you're so—if you've got two voices together, you really want to bring out the main melody, of course, but as the second violinist, you really want to be, you know, stressing where you're dissonant with the first violin, and you're just bringing out all those special moments in a way you wouldn't otherwise.

Oh, thanks, Michael. Well, honestly, I'm just so thrilled that I've been able to make this happen for myself. I turned 50 this year, and I've always wanted to—since I was a child, I just knew that I wanted to create solo recordings someday. And last year I thought, "Uh-oh, I'm turning 50. If I'm not going to do it now, when am I going to do it? I better just get to it."And that was about, you know, half a year before the pandemic hit when I started taking action on this lifelong dream. I contacted an engineer and producer in Cleveland, Ohio, and talked about how we might do it. And I started practicing in earnest with this in mind. Then when the pandemic hit, I had been trying to decide whether to do this in a studio in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, or from my home. And you know, that was decided for me by the pandemic when it became obvious that I needed to create my own home recording studio. Now, I knew nothing—nothing—about how to record on my own, even though I've, you know, played on professional recordings many times before with ensembles. But this is the first time I just decided to do it all myself. So I bought the acoustic panels you can see behind me, hired an engineer to consult with on the sound for the space, bought a ton of tech equipment, had to learn the software.And then finally, I had a producer in Cleveland and I found an engineer in Virginia, and we learned—I learned—how to do it remotely with them, so that I was actually in charge of the recording here with my equipment and communicating remotely on Zoom and through AudioMovers and apps so she could hear in real-time without the latency problem. And we did it! So we did the Bach—we did the whole Partita—and then we did the Ysaÿe together. And then at that point, I realized I could do it by myself. So a few months later, I took on the project of recording the Enescu Sarabande by myself, without a producer or engineer, and I've just sent that recording to an engineer to do the editing because I'm not interested in learning how to do that. So he'll do the editing and the mastering; he's already done most of it, so it's almost ready to go.But then, the way it is these days is I was advised to release one thing at a time. So I've released the Chaconne. The Ysaÿe is coming out on, I believe, June 11th; it will be released. And it can be, you know, pre-saved now through Spotify. And then the Enescu probably in a couple of months. I might do one more Kreisler piece; I'm not sure yet. But in the fall, I'm going to release the full album. And I just can't tell you how happy I am that I was able to figure out how to do this, and I'm just really happy with the result. I hope people will really enjoy this creation, which is true to my heart.

Yeah, thank you.

You're talking about my Art of Freedom method for conscious living and masterful artistry.

Yes!

Yeah, it was so much fun!

Ah, the million-dollar question! The Alexander Technique is a mind-body system, a discipline, that helps you become more conscious of how you're thinking and how your thoughts influence your body and your movements, and the activities that you engage in. Anything from walking the dog to doing the dishes to playing the Bach Chaconne, or in your case, conducting the BBC!

Right! So, this system helps you to identify ways in which you're thinking that get in the way of your natural design and spontaneous creative flow, so that whatever you decide to do with yourself, it becomes easier, more effortless, and definitely more fun. You get better at whatever you're doing with less effort. It's pretty miraculous. I love it.

Oh yeah, and it's so simple it's ridiculous.

Oh, and it's all online, by the way. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to work together.

Yes, I'm sure.

Right. And actually, I'll just interject that those things that you just mentioned, like the cycle, for instance, that's directly—it's actually a primal Alexander étude. It's in the Hands-Free Method that I teach by Mio Morales.

Yes, colleague of mine. Yeah, he's wonderful.

That's wonderful.

I think inspiration is natural. I think the creative process is natural, and it shouldn't—it shouldn't be hard. It should be easy and enjoyable, and it certainly shouldn't be painful.

Yes. I specialize in teaching musicians.

Yeah. Well, most people who do come to me for help, musicians, are experiencing excess tension in their whole systems. And very often, it's manifesting to the point that they are in pain—like they have tendinitis, or back pain, neck pain, carpal tunnel, you name it. And most people think that if you have physical pain, you have a physical problem. And if you're feeling physical pain in a certain, specific area of the body, that's where the problem is. So they go to a doctor, or a chiropractor, or some other kind of specialist who is going to focus on the physical body, and especially they're going to focus on that specific part of the body where you're feeling it.And very often, there is actually something physically wrong, but it is never just a physical issue. And there was actually a study done in 2012, I believe, in Australia, that really came to the conclusion that any kind of treatment that only addresses the physical body is unlikely to be really successful because people who experience physical pain also have an emotional component to it, and the thoughts are part of it. So any kind of treatment needs to also address the mental and emotional aspects, like performance anxiety or depression, which so many artists experience.

So, the great, wonderful thing about this work that I'm teaching, especially the primal Alexander part of it, is that it's so quick that on Day One when I work with my students, they are able to discover that they can think differently to get different results. And almost universally on Day One, somebody with pain can start to feel hopeful because they realize that there's something they can do to shift their thinking that relieves the pain slightly. I'm not even sure I've ever worked with anybody personally who wasn't able to do this and recognize that there was potential there for them healing themselves through doing this process. It's so simple.

But very powerful.

Yeah. You know, I just had a student—I'll just tell you really briefly, because you asked for an example—I have a student who is a professional cellist, and she just started my program; it's called The Musician's Advantage Jumpstart Program. It's a short 30-day intensive. She had done two years of hands-on Alexander work with a teacher, she's done Feldenkrais, she's done almost daily yoga for years, she's tried everything. She's a music educator, she's a great teacher, great cellist, and yet she was having pain. So she found my program, and literally—I just posted to Facebook about this—she wrote that one and a half weeks into my program, she was pain-free.

Yeah, I am humbled. I'm in awe at what's possible when people decide to think differently, and I just give them the ideas.

You're sweet.

Thank you so much, Michael. I love talking to you, and now when you turn off the recording, we're going to catch up!