William Stalnaker workshop

We had a remarkable horn player this week for our workshop. William
Stalnaker is from Oregon. He is obviously a superb teacher. In one
hour he laid out in the simplest, most accessible, and engaging
manner a number of principles about practicing. He succeeded in
making the process fascinating, engaged us in discovery as we tried
to do certain movements simultaneously or to see what it took to
manage a tongue twister; generally he held us all in rapt attention.
(All includes youth ages 7 to 17, faculty, guests, parents, Board
members.) It was masterful.

As with all good teaching Stalnaker managed the rich content in his
talk with effective pacing, the skillful ordering of the material,
and a fluid presentation. Explanation was balanced with hands-on
experimentation, and the didactic was off-set by the personal. He
spoke as if addressing peers, including as he referenced a scholarly
article of 1956 (Miller) which established the principle of "7 plus
or minus two" as a way of introducing the concept of "clustering" ,
– or focusing on a limited passage that needs improvement.

Periodically he would return to the simple overhead that kept us
focused on the three areas where improvement occurs : the body, the
notes, and the music. At the end of the hour he asked the students
to define what practice is, and they came up with five principles
that his talk had illuminated but not listed. It was clear they had
been listening.

William Stalnaker is a tall, white haired man, with an easy dignity
and straight forward manner. He started off the workshop by taking a
couple of what looked like loops of tubing from his pocket. They
turned out to be his travelling French Horn, and for about two
minutes he made the most gorgeous sounds on it. There was no
question about his authority!

–Karen Romer, CMW Board member