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Feb. 6, 2023

Arianna Warsaw | Navigating The Dynamics of Identity Change

Arianna Warsaw | Navigating The Dynamics of Identity Change

Join us as we sit down with music industry insider, Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch. Discover her unique perspective on navigating identity change and get an insider's tour of the industry.

Join us as we sit down with music industry insider, Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch. Discover her unique perspective on navigating identity change and get an insider's tour of the industry. From musician life to proper clapping etiquette, Arianna shares her knowledge and experiences. Don't miss this chance to gain a deeper understanding of the classical music world through the eyes of a seasoned professional.

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Transcript

Srini Rao: Ariana, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Thank you

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: for having me. I'm really excited.

Srini Rao: Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. You have a new book out called Declassified, a low key guide to the high strung world of classical music. And I absolutely love this book because it was hilarious.

As a former musician, I just thought there were so many things in here that I could relate to. But before we get into all of that, I wanted to start asking you, what did your parents do for work and how did that end up shaping the choices that you've made with your life and your career? That's that's such a spot on question because I, so my parents are both teachers or they were both teachers now they're retired.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: But my dad, he was a music theory and piano teacher. and a pianist. And my mom is an, or was an English teacher and a writer. So actually, this book is really the culmination of everything they taught me growing up. What was the narrative about careers around your house? You have both parents being educators, but one being a musician.

Srini Rao: And as I was just telling you here having Indian parents was like, you're going to be a two, a performance major. It's no that's a pretty much a dead end, which they were right. Since as I said I'd be looking at obituaries, not job boards to find a job. But what was the narrative about this?

Because you and I both know the reality of this. The odds are so stacked against you right from the get go, if you choose to do this as a career. Yeah. Actually, I think one of the reasons that I. started so early. So I started playing the violin when I was two and a half. And this was before, yeah.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: And according to my parents, that was when I decided to become a violinist, but it wasn't, it was just. like one of many things that I was interested in at the time. I chose the violin as an instrument, but I had been exposed to it a lot because my dad is a pianist. He used to he was always practicing.

He was always listening to music. He had a lot of students come by. So I'm sure there were violinists who came to rehearse with him. And I think he was a big factor in why I started playing. I have a two year old now. And if you ask him what he wants to do, he just wants to get in the car and drive all the time.

That's all he wants to do. And we don't listen to him unless we actually need to get into the car. So it's a little, it's a little weird for someone to say Oh, you were two and you said you wanted to be a violinist. So we got you a violin. That's not like the reality of what parenting a two year old is.

So it's pretty clear. That my dad, that I started playing when I was two and a half because my parents wanted me to. And my dad particularly, so he, when he was. He decided he wanted to be a pianist and I think six is old enough. So I don't know if you should sign any contracts that are binding that will last for the rest of your life.

But I think six is old enough. What your preferences are. And he was determined to become a pianist and his parents didn't believe him. So they put it off year after year and he kept asking and then they relented when he was nine. For piano, that's on the late side. And I think. It does take a huge push from the parents.

Anytime there are kids in music you have to be willing to find the best teachers and to drive considerable distances to get to them. And it's a lot of money, a lot of work. And I think my grandparents were very supportive of him, but I don't think they realized quite how much was involved if he wanted a shot at being a concert pianist.

So my dad really felt as, as gifted as I think he was. He felt like he was behind for much of his training and by the time he got to Eastman School of Music and for his graduate school, he really felt like he missed the boat. And he put in eight, 10 hour practice days where he was really just grinding his fingers down to the bone, but he just never felt like he had a shot.

So yeah, when his two year old was like, I want to play the violin, he's let's get this kid a violin. He jumped in and I sounded like, am I allowed to swear on your show? Yeah. Yeah. I sounded like shit. And it was awful. And the only way that anyone could get through those years of absolute.

Excruciating cacophony was if they're really motivated Yeah. To get through. And my dad was I can relate to the excruciating cacophony. My sister was just pissed off all the time. She's of all the instruments you could pick, why did you pick the tuba? Because tuba, much like yourself, I was really dedicated to getting good.

Srini Rao: What I wonder is, do you ever have a sense that your dad was trying to live his dreams or fulfill them through you 'cause of this. I don't think that's what he thought he was doing. And I don't think, I actually, I'm not sure he actually used to joke because we have a very open relationship and we've talked about all of this and we always talked about it.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: And he used to say things like, Oh, no I'm not living my life vicariously through you. I just need you to get famous so that then I can accompany you. And someone's going to say, where is this pianist been? So it was that was a joke. But I think, I really do think it was more that he felt that he hadn't been given this shot and he just didn't want to make the same mistake that his parents had made.

And what's funny is that now, I'm doing the same thing with my kids. Like people always ask me, are they going to play instruments? And I'm like, oh, fuck no. Like maybe they'll study the piano because I think it's really good for development and hopefully they'll learn some work ethic through practicing, but I don't want them to be.

musicians. So it's every generation tries to compensate and probably overcompensates for the mistakes of the previous generation. Yeah. So I wasn't as early as you were with starting music yet. I think in Texas, if I remember correctly, music education was mandatory for all of junior high.

Srini Rao: And part of the reason I picked the tuba was because my parents said, Oh, we don't have to buy an instrument. The school will provide that for you. Pick that instrument. And, I started out playing trombone and then I switched and I realized, oh, we'll never have to buy a tuba because they cost more than a car.

But a good violin does too, as but one thing I wonder is when you start that young, when you're two years old and you sound probably you're sacrificing animals while playing. How does your perception of the entire concept of practicing and committing yourself to this thing change with age?

Because two, it seems like you're barely aware enough to know what's going on.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: Yeah, I think that's right. I, there are some videos from that time where my dad's practicing with me. I don't, maybe it would have been more like three because when I was two and I started with a tissue box tape to a ruler, so I wasn't really practicing at the very beginning.

I was just learning how to hold the violin and stand and everything. But then it really was just my dad teaching me how to work through any problem. So I would try to play something motor skills aren't really big with two and three year olds. So I would put my finger down.

It was in the wrong place. And he'd say Ari, that was great. I think though, let's next time, let's try to get it more like this. And so it really was more about just teaching me patience and yeah, how to crack something that seems difficult at first. But then later on. It became much more focused on the technical minutia.

So as I became more solid on the instrument, then I started to be more aware of how you make mistakes, what the mistakes are to look out for, you start to get very I don't know, maybe not everyone, but for me, for a while, I felt like. I could play freely once I got the hang of it, then I felt like I was just playing and it was really fun.

And then at a certain point, once I started getting good, then came the awareness of don't do this, don't do that, don't don't vibrate too widely, don't, you have to start the vibrato from the beginning of the note, you have to keep your bow exactly at this sound point. And don't like yeah keep the speed steady so that there are no swells.

You start to become very aware of all the things you can do wrong, and it becomes pretty inhibiting. That, for me, was a big it started to feel pretty limiting around when I switched to my, my my second teacher who taught me apart from my, so I had a Suzuki teacher, and then I had. A teacher, Mark, who was great and he just let me play and helped me form my technique, but in a very it was more to serve my enjoyment of playing.

And then I had a teacher who was really a drill sergeant and she was like, that's when it started with the yeah. So she took me off of, she took me off of all music, also all performing pieces for a year. And I just did exercises and etudes to try to iron out that. Yep. Yeah. And it was really so technical.

But the crazy thing was that I thought it was a great idea. Like I was like totally on board because I wanted to be really good. And this is what I thought I needed to do in order to get to that level that I was hoping to reach. So this ACAS podcast is sponsored by NetSuite 36, 000, the number of businesses which have upgraded to the number one cloud financial system, NetSuite.

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Srini Rao: So that desire to want to be really good I can relate to that to a degree. I think the reason I was so committed is I remember the day I picked up the tuba in seventh grade, my band director said, you're going to make all state band. I was like, to this day, I have no idea why he said that.

Cause I didn't have any natural aptitude per se, but where do you think that came from that drive to want to be so good at it? For me, it was literally, I want to prove this guy I think there's some of that I'm sure like, so again my dad and I are very open. We've talked about stuff.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: He sometimes is worried that he gave me a fixed mindset growing up. Do you know? I don't know. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And he was saying he was talking to me years ago about this study they did with these kids. And. They, to one group, so they gave them all a test, and then they split them into two, and group A, they told, hey, you did really well on this test, it was an easy test, and they said, you must be really smart, and to the other group they said, you did really well on this test, you must have worked really hard to learn these these things.

And then the group, and so they were essentially just giving the kids that they were complimenting that they were they were attributing it to inherent intelligence, their success, then these kids, they gave them kind of this fixed mindset and they administered a harder test to both groups and the group that had been told you worked really hard, they did much better on the second harder test than the kids who had been told you.

Yeah. You must be really smart because when they encountered these challenges, they just started questioning themselves and doubting themselves anyway, and then the kids they gave them a similar test to the first one and the kids with the fixed mindset ended up doing even worse than they had the first time around because they were so discouraged by what had happened in the second round with that harder test.

And I feel now I actually think I'm pretty open to failure and rejection. And that's how I was able to write a book because it also involves a lot of rejection. Oh yeah, I've been there, I know. But I think that for a while it is very hard with musicians because you're told as soon as you play something well, then people start telling you how good you are and how gifted you are and how there are all of these people make all these plans.

And you're raised with the expectation that as, as soon as you can get your technique in order, then your voice, whatever that means, will shine through and people will want to hear you. And there, my dad always talked about the champagne moment. It's like the moment after. the concert or whatever it is you've been working towards when you pop the cork and you can celebrate.

And then all the things that you sacrificed along the way will feel worth it because of that moment. And the problem is with music is that you have little moments, but then there's always the next concert or the next competition. And so I, I do think that, yeah, that I, part of the need to, or my feeling, my ambition came from, as you say, wanting to prove people right that, They had believed in me and they thought I was special and I wanted to make sure that I turned out to be so that they wouldn't have been wrong, but it's also just the way that the training is built you, I think if you have a good ear, you can always hear that there are these things that can be better and you hear the recordings and you want to be able to do that too.

So it's And it's probably, there are probably some inherent personality trait. I think I am pretty obsessive I probably have a personality that's just more prone to this kind of like getting

Srini Rao: carried away. Oh I can relate. I, the minute my band director said that it was literally three to four hours a day starting in seventh grade, and I remember we moved into a two bedroom apartment where I couldn't practice and it would be seven in the morning.

Before I would go to school, the only place I could practice where I wouldn't wake up the entire family was in our minivan. So I'd literally sit in a minivan and practice the tuba for an hour. And did you wear ear protectors? It must have been so loud for you. I

don't even remember.

But it was funny because I was, I, with my ninth grade band director and his wife came and she, I was my accompanist in the solo and ensemble competition that they had. And he said, I don't know if you remember this, he said, but

,

I gave you a solo and he said, that thing was memorized within a week. He said, you were literally playing it from memory within a week.

And so that, that actually makes a perfect segue to the next question I wanted to ask you. You were talking about motor skill development, and I, this is something that I've been trying to wrap my head around. So I never could pick up another instrument again. I played the tuba, I think for the time I was in seventh grade until the time I was a junior in college.

And speaking of the Champagne Moment, I realized I didn't love the music, I liked the moment in the spotlight. And that's when I knew I was done. I was like, I don't actually love this, I like the attention it gives me because I'm good at it. But the motor skill development, we'll come back to the Champagne Moment thing, but one thing I wonder is...

How that ability to develop motor skills evolves with age or degrades with age, because I feel like I've tried to pick up a guitar and I'd ask Dan Coyle, who wrote a book called the talent code about this. And he said he's are you going to open for guns and roses at their next concert?

No, never. He said, can you get so good that you're impressed the shit out of your friends and family? He said, absolutely. It doesn't matter what age you are. I just wonder as somebody who has made a career out of this what is like, why is it that it was so easy when I was in seventh grade?

And now the whole idea of getting that dexterity in my fingers and my guitar, despite the fact that I was pushing valves on a giant tuba, feels almost impossible. Yeah this is a really great question. And also, I recently got a question, I think someone wrote to me over Instagram and asked, they're in high school, and they wanted to know if I thought that they could start playing an instrument, or I guess the violin at the age of 16 or 17, or whatever they were, and whether that was too late.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: And this is really interesting. And I was just writing to them cause we spoke of Northwestern earlier. Northwestern, there's a faculty member there, a cello faculty Hans Jensen. Is that his name? I wish that I had looked this up, but anyway there's a cello faculty member there and he was, I think he started playing when he was 17, which is super late for a string instrument.

Bye. He somehow pushed through and he is amazing. And I think this is a very rare occurrence. I think usually you, you do need to start early and I'm not sure exactly what it is. I don't know if it's the brain wiring or the muscle that probably as you grow, your muscles do develop in a certain way because you've started.

Exercising them in this way. I'm sure, actually, my left hand fingers are longer than my right hand fingers because on the violin you, so that's the hand that does the finger work and then the right hand does the bow. So my fingers on that hand, they got totally stretched. And also my pinky, if I look at them, so my pinky on my right hand, it does what normal pinkies do and like curves a tiny bit in.

But my pinky on my left hand is straight because I spent so many hours just trying to stretch it so that it would not do that because You really want it to have maximum extension. And so I'm sure that some of it is the way your muscles develop when you're using them this way every day that by the time you're grown up, then you're, yeah, all of that is already in place.

So it gives you less flexibility, but it's also probably. The way your brain is wired, the way it's also so much easier to learn language when you're young to learn new languages. And I've been struggling with that with German because I

Srini Rao: live there now. To this day, like I, I speak my parents native language it's a South Indian language called Telugu.

I can't tell you or deconstruct how I learned it. We stopped in India for six weeks. My grandmother didn't speak English. We left and I was fluent.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: Oh my god, see, that's what I mean. I think you're just like a sponge when you're that age. You

Srini Rao: just... Which is why I still think it's ridiculous we don't teach foreign languages until seventh grade.

I'm like, why don't they have foreign language in kindergarten?

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: You're absolutely right. No, it's just, I, and I'm, that's one of the things I'm grateful for that my kids are going to an international school where they get English and German so that hopefully it's not as hard for them. But yeah, we should do more languages.

Srini Rao: Let's talk briefly about that champagne moment because I think that for me, that was really the most profound realization was that I don't love this. I like... The spotlight. And if all I'm after is the spotlight, that's just a fraction of a moment. Like you said, there's always going to be the next concert, the next thing.

How does that play out for you? As somebody who has made a living doing this and done this what does that look like in your life for you? Has that been something that you've struggled with?

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: Yeah, definitely. I it's a very, for me, my relationship with the spotlight is very strange because on the one hand, I think it's pretty clear that I crave attention.

Like all the things that I do are, so I want to play the violin and perform and then when I stopped doing that, then I decide to write a book. So obviously I want people to hear what I have to say. You and I both. I, But at the same time, I often felt very uncomfortable performing. I would have these weird moments when I was playing when I thought oh my god, are people, are they interested in what I'm doing right now?

Is this Are they comfortable in their seats? Why? I felt very unworthy sometimes. And actually, if, God forbid, I had a performance that I hadn't prepared enough for, because then I would show up and I'd basically be like, my whole psychology would be a total mess. And I'd be like, I don't deserve to play well.

I deserve to be pelted with rotten vegetables. Like I, and then it would be so hard for me. Because you can actually like wing it and then do a really good job if the technique's in place. But sometimes I just wouldn't even let myself I would just be so determined to, to punish myself for not having shown up prepared.

So I have a very weird, and I think when I look at it now, when I look at people like, Oh, I was watching the Super Bowl halftime show years ago and when Lady Gaga was performing and I was like, Oh, I'm just not a performer. Like she's a performer. It's like very clear that she's so comfortable in, in this environment on the stage.

And I actually wasn't as much as I trained myself to seem comfortable and to seem gracious. I think I just actually wasn't wired that way, but I, but there were other things that I'd. did feel really comfortable doing. I loved I loved playing the violin in some ways alone in my room.

And I loved recording. I think recording was like, it was always so much fun because especially if you know there's editing, then you feel totally free to try out whatever you can really go for all of the interpretation, like the points that you want, that you would like to, but in live performance, sometimes it feels too risky because you have to.

You have to prepare yourself for the next passage or something. And and again there are performers who I think don't have this whole complicated internal monologue and weighing of do I go for it? Do I hold back? They just let it go and they're probably just much less in their own heads than I am.

But for me. The recording studio was where I really felt like, okay I'll just try to do this and if it doesn't work, we'll cut it. And if it does, great. And if I fuck up the next passage, then we can edit that out. And so it gave me maximum freedom of expression. And that's something I loved.

But I also feel like my relationship with the violin ended up really. It was similar to your experience. I ended up really feeling like what I cared about or what I spent my time thinking about was the, yeah, the recognition, the validation achievement rather than enjoyment. And in my case, though, I really did love the music.

I just. didn't let myself focus on. And in fact, I got so far away from that. I couldn't even access that love anymore. And that was when I really knew that I also, I had to get out because the whole reason I'd started playing that my parents had started me when I was two and a half was that I.

I used to go around belting out these Mozart arias because I was I loved this music so much that I needed to find a way to express that. And it just was really unhealthy for my vocal cords to do it that way. And probably really unpleasant for people to listen to. So they wanted to channel that into something more productive.

And it really was in those early days, I feel like as awful as I sounded on the violin, I still love listening to music so much. But somewhere along the way, I don't know if somewhere during Juilliard, maybe it started a little before or after, I'm not really sure. Definitely during Juilliard, it wasn't solely after, but it could have started before.

I started to just lose sight of all of those reasons that I'd been pulled to music in the first place. And what I, yeah, what I cared about was just showing off, even though I didn't feel comfortable showing off but I wanted to be comfortable showing off and it was just very complicated and not very healthy.

And. It was a great step for me to get away from that. I can completely relate to all of that. Something that you said at the beginning of the book, and I wanted to ask you about this story that really struck me, you said, so when did I pledge my heart, my soul, and all of my waking hours to classical music?

Srini Rao: I was seven and it was because of a boy. Tell me about

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: that. Yeah, so it's a little bit misleading because it wasn't because of a boy that I wanted to marry or but it was because of a boy I heard perform, and I think probably in some ways I was a little bit in love with him not in a, he was much older, so it wasn't like a, and I was seven, so it wasn't a real but I definitely admired him more than I had ever admired anyone in my short life before yeah I was seven and I went to a concert with my dad and with my teacher at the time, Mark. And this boy was, who was 17 or 18, he was performing his senior concerto with the school orchestra at the school where my parents taught. And he was playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. And it was just the most transporting moment.

It was. I both remember and don't remember it. I don't really remember anything during that happened during, I think for me, if I look back on it, the whole performance went by in half a second. It was just like almost like being asleep that I was just so I was in this kind of trance.

And then when I came out of it, it was like no time had elapsed at all. But on the other hand, everything had changed. So it was. It was like, I was sitting there in the chapel and I remember the beginning, the very beginning when he first started playing. And I remember what the silence felt like to me, the, there's this great thing that happens in, in concerts where you have this sort of electricity there, like when you're waiting for the music to start, or if there's a pause in the music and you just hear the reverberations in the hall.

And these were just. So I remember some of that and it just the combination of this boy and the piece he was playing, which was the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, it was just, for me, I don't know I'd never experienced anything like it before. And I just felt I had to do that. I had to do what he was doing.

I had to be on stage, playing in front of an orchestra. Like controlling the sound like that and like telling this story. I really felt like he wove this whole story. And that was. Yeah, that was when I decided this ACAS podcast is sponsored by NetSuite 36, 000, the number of businesses which have upgraded to the number one cloud financial system NetSuite.

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com slash unmistakable all lowercase. Go to shopify. com slash unmistakable to take your business to the next level. That's shopify. com slash unmistakable. Before we get into the book, I want to ask you, you have one more thing, day to day life for somebody in your position while you're a professional musician.

As I think I told you before you hit record for me, I realized the things that came from that, that still unfolds my life to this day where habit, discipline and consistency we published a

,

podcast episode, I think two times a week for the better part of 13 years. And that came from that ninth grade band director.

He taught me the importance of practice. He taught me the importance of the habit. He was. Diligent. And he showed me like what you could accomplish for you and your daily life. What does this look like? And have those carried out later to what you've gone

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: on to do. Yeah. I'm totally with you.

I think that there's so much of the work ethic that's built from. this kind of daily practicing. In fact I talk about this a little bit in the book too. When I first stopped playing the violin and I ended up, this wasn't before I totally quit, but I just took a few months off because I was, I'd reached a point where I just I knew this was where it was heading, but I wasn't really, I, yeah, so I took some time off and It was a disaster because I had all of this productive energy that I was used to getting out every day.

You really wire yourself to have to create and to have to it's the creation, but it's also the nitpicking and the, yeah, the obsessiveness that you have to be able to obsess over something. And what happened to me was that this. It unfortunately coincided with when I was planning my wedding.

So I ended up really channeling all of this like critical attention, the scrutiny to all of my wedding plans and particularly my wedding dress. And I ended up just becoming so infuriated by some of the seams in the bodice that I like totally caught, I caught up my wedding dress. And was, I have no, I can't sew at all.

I can't sew a button. I really I couldn't tell you anything about sewing except what I learned while I was trying to reconstruct this dress, which had cost a lot of money. And I don't know, it just seemed like the only thing that I could do, I really couldn't stop myself. There was just so much creative, obsessive energy that had to get out that I just took this on and I ended up doing this totally elaborate, again, no idea what I was doing, but I created something very complicated and that didn't function at all in the end. It was it didn't stay up. So that was a big issue that I had to deal with. But yeah, it's much better when I have something like a book to write because then I can work on, and I actually, I find, I don't know about you, but the issue for me with performing was always that you spend.

all of these hours in your practice room, like scrubbing away, polishing, trying to make your interpretation clean and clear. And then it comes down to that moment in the performance and you have to execute it. And if you mess up, then it feels like all the practicing that you didn't matter. Yeah, it was for nothing.

Even though I think we just don't have perspective. So I think probably like to most audience members, they're not noticing the mistakes that we're noticing, but. It feels you feel awful about it. And what's great with writing is that you can work on a sentence for as many hours as you want.

And then it stays that way. Usually then you change it anyway because you

Srini Rao: decide to go into it. It's funny you say that because I think that people don't ask me about the process of writing a book. And I said, the most empty part of it is actually when the book is done and you're holding this thing in your hand.

I was like, because it doesn't. I'm It like that, it pales in comparison to what it represents, the hour be laboring in a room. But I'd always like the actual process of writing more than the actual promotion part where you have to basically go on interviews and do press and all this stuff.

And at that point. You're in this like moment of things you can't control, which is how many copies this is going to sell, how well is it going to be received whereas I think I like the fact that you could control the process part and I'd always told people, it's yeah, you'll spend two years writing a book and get to spend two days talking about it.

That's the reality. So if you don't like the writing, then you shouldn't write a book. Yeah. If all you want is bringing us back to that sort of moment in the spotlight. But I think to me, I think the discipline was a big thing. And one of the things that you actually say is that the difference between a talented and untalented violinist at the beginning is not a difference of good or bad.

It's a difference of whether you'd sacrifice your firstborn or only your favorite aunt in order to make the noise stop. And then go on to quote somebody. You say either you didn't practice or you have no talent. The kick in the nuts highlights an important truth. A talented person who hasn't put in a time.

will sound very much like a person who isn't talented. And I think that's true for any art form. I think that there, people have this idea that oh when I get to this level, I'll be able to rest on my laurels. I was like, no that never happens. Stephen Kotler put it well. He said, if you're doing anything in the professional arts, he said, you're always somebody's

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: bitch.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's absolutely right. It really never, and I guess this is also the thing that I think we don't really realize when we're training. And you said, I think it might have been before we started recording, but you were saying that your dad talked to you about, he talked to you out of going into it professionally and maybe saved you a lot of agony that way.

And I do feel like there are so many things that I didn't know about having a career performing until it was too late and all my degrees were in music performance. There are. It never gets comfortable. It's actually, okay. I was watching so long ago. I think it was an episode of elementary.

And Sherlock was talking about his, he was talking about addiction. And I know that obviously I'm not trying to compare my experiences as a violinist to someone struggling with alcoholism, but there was one thing that he said that I think reminded me of some, sometimes the way that I felt with the violin.

He said, it was like there was this leaky faucet and the best you could hope for was that it wouldn't drip, right? Like you kept fixing it and the best you could hope for was that it would not malfunction. And I feel like that's where I got to with the violin in performance that I felt like there was so much maintenance and I wasn't deriving.

joy from performing anymore because I had emotionally disconnected from performing since I found it very challenging to actually feel emotions and execute things at a technical to meet my technical standards at the same time. Because when you feel powerful emotions it has impacts on, it impacts your hands.

You, maybe your fingers sweat or you shake and that is really detrimental to playing technically well. So I felt like I had disconnected and I wasn't getting much joy from playing, but the best that I could hope for was that I wouldn't flip, that my fingers would stay in the shape that they were in. And that night after night when I was playing the same piece, that I would be able to recreate the best standard that I'd reached from that set of concerts.

So I really, again, I don't think it's this way for everyone, but for me, it was, definitely not. Yeah, it definitely wasn't something that.

Srini Rao: Yeah, we, so you alluded to some of this when you were talking about the wedding dress. And this is something I wonder, because I've talked to a lot of professional athletes whose athletic careers inevitably come to an end at some point, or some who were superstars in college do basically had spent 25 plus years with this idea that they were destined for the the NFL, NBA, and then the reality sets in that they're not going to make it but you made it, but then decide to leave.

Like, how do you. Rediscover an identity or recreate an identity when something like this has been such a huge part of your identity for so

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: long. This is, this was a question that I asked myself a lot when I started to realize maybe I would be happier not as a violinist because my, my parents had sometimes questioned when I was going through high school.

It was very, I was at an academic high school, so practicing was very tough. And then of course, when you decide to apply for colleges, then it's important. to know if you're going to go the conservatory route, then you're not going to have that many options outside of performing. So it's, we did examine things then.

And, but I, only I didn't. So I would be, people would ask me questions like, are you sure that this is what you want? And I didn't even really think about it. I was like, of course it's what I want because this was who I was. It was what I was good at. I was Ari, the violinist. And that was.

It was my niche, it was to, and when you grow up with something like that from such a young age that's such a part of your identity, it's just very hard to imagine yourself without it. And there were also a lot of parts of myself that I think I hadn't really fed. during the time when I was so focused on the violin.

So I wasn't aware of all of the other qualities that I had that I might value in myself I was so focused on this side of myself. And when that side wasn't going well, I was very unhappy about it because there was nothing to balance it. And when I got to the point where, thankfully, I ended up meeting my husband and then moving to Berlin.

Right before I made this decision and moving to Berlin was great because it was also where my sister was. So I think there's something about family that really your family members, especially the ones you had from birth. They know you so and they know all the sides of you, even the sides that you don't pay attention to.

And so being around my sister and being with my now husband, who's just one of these people who's so genuine that I think It's very hard to put on airs around him. You, he makes you, you have to be yourself because he's so much himself and he's so comfortable and he, it feels like he's like he sees into you so I felt like a lot of the behaviors that not that I was like prancing around or anything there, there are certain practice behaviors when you're.

When you're performing, when you're greeting your audience members and you have these little feels and you have these things that you say and these smiles that you give. And it's not that they were never genuine, but they are also, you become aware of them and how they come across to people.

And then when you're with someone who has none of that, then it feels like, disingenuous to use any of your arsenal of, I don't know, whatever charms or whatever you've rehearsed for other social occasions. And it really, so I feel like the combination of Stefan and my sister really allowed me to connect with some sides of myself that had nothing to do with music.

And then in doing that, I started to also start to reconnect with music that as it was separated from the violin. So I started to listen to music. with Stefan, not to play it for him on the violin but to find recordings of it that I enjoyed. And I started to realize actually, it could be a pretty cool thing to be able to listen to music and to not have to worry about executing it.

And that sort of grounded me. And I remember my parents also saying at around that time, I'm like getting emotional talking about all of it. But I remember they said the way I was. Or the way I started behaving then reminded them of how I was when I was, like, a kid before I'd become serious about the violin.

And when they said that, it also, that, even just hearing that from my parents made me feel really emboldened because I felt like, oh, wait, that means that there's this whole side there that has nothing to do with the violin that I can access, that I can, that can be where I live, and it's not that.

It's not that the violin side is not also a side of me. Again, certainly the productivity and I haven't ruled out the possibility that I would someday try to play again. I just don't think that I could do it in a way. I'd have to find a way of doing it without throwing myself back into this mindset.

But, and I don't know how, I don't see how I could separate it. Cause I don't think I'd like to sound bad, so I don't, do you not play at all? I, no, I don't play at all now. Wow. Yeah. And I played for a friend's wedding like two, two or three years ago. I played at their wedding. And that was so just for a month I picked it back up and that was the only time.

But yeah so I really then just started to focus on the other things and the fact that maybe not in talking, but I think when I write, I'm actually funny, and this is a side of myself that. That only came out when I was really angry, when I started ranting about things, then sometimes it would come out the hyperbolic whining about the world and various things that were happening to me and that, and so it really was, it was very therapeutic also to write the book because it was also a way of reconnecting with the both, it was reconciling with the world.

My relationship with music with these other more personal sides of myself, too. I've been speaking with the book I haven't really given you a chance to talk about it much And we probably got another 10 or 15 minutes one of the things that you say is that you'll leave these pages with enough expertise to join the ranks of those insufferable connoisseurs who've been scaring you away from this music for all those years only you won't join their ranks because you'll know better a true gentleman as my dad likes to say is someone who can play the accordion but doesn't Which I'm thinking to myself, yeah tubas and accordions, I feel the same way about I had a friend who played soprano saxophone in high school, and he took his date on prom night, and he serenaded her with that Kenny G song forever and loved her, and I'm just like, you're an asshole, I can't do that.

Srini Rao: And the two guarantees you're not going to have a date for prom, let alone be able to serenade somebody. But talking about this cause I think to your point, classical music is one of those things where like you say as most people think of it, it isn't a real thing.

It's really just centuries of all sorts of music shoved into one hodgepodge of a genre. And the funny thing is, if you listen to some of your favorite popular music, you hear threads of it in that music too.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: Absolutely. Yeah. No. There, there's been so much influence that actually one of the I don't want to like

,

quote a blurb from my book, but there, but one of the people who wrote a blurb for me, he's a movie executive now, but he's an amazing violinist.

And he referred to this music as the most resilient and influential artistic form in modern history. And I think that's really true. It is think about how long it survived and also the influence it has now. And even I rail against the medieval period in this book because I personally react really badly to medieval music, but but there is actually a lot of this influence in a lot of the pop songs.

Now you hear some of this return to some of these early sounds. It's used in all kinds of all kinds of music. And there's certainly a lot of the Baroque in, actually, I didn't even know that this was a thing, but apparently Baroque pop is a whole form, it's like a sub genre of pop. And apparently, The cold play song, VIBA la Vita, which I absolutely love is Borough Pop, which makes it makes perfect sense that I love it.

But it really, so there are these techniques and elements that find their way into pop music and these chord progressions. Mozart use this I'm gonna get technical, but this the No i'll, so you know, the heart and soul chord progression. It's like the 1 6 4 5 or 1 6 2 5. Yeah. This is used all over pop music, all over pop songs.

I basically instantly love any song or piece that uses this chord progression. And you find it everywhere in Mozart and all over the classical period music from that era. So it's definitely all over the place. And it's also, yeah, as you say, it's not, and as I talk about in the first chapter, it's just classical music isn't a real genre.

It's just. The only kind of music that existed for, or that was written down anyway for hundreds of years. And it wasn't built for these aficionados that I referred to. It was just built for, it was made to express things that the composers were feeling. Sometimes it was composed for parties.

Sometimes it was composed for ceremonies. Sometimes it was composed for people's enjoyment. But it, these people weren't. specifically the aristocracy they were all kinds of people. And one of the other things that I highlight in the book is the more human side of these composers. So these composers who are so often referred to or credited with composing music for snobs, some of them were like, and total anti snobs.

They often hated their employers who were the rich ones paying them. And also Mozart Mozart wrote the most. Like creatively disgusting poems about poop, mostly like his poop and like his whole digestive tract gets a shout out in a lot of different places. He wrote this actually there's more than one that he wrote, but he wrote one canon called lick me in the ass.

And it's not you can't call his music country club music when this was a guy who was writing. Quite seriously sitting down he's joking as well, but writing songs about his ass and other people's asses and he he didn't put this music on a pedestal.

He, I think he believed in his music and there's, there are times when he discusses it and he shows that he thinks it's great music. He also didn't take it too seriously. And I think it's important for people to know that and also to know that in case you don't like Mozart, since we were just discussing him, Shostakovich, who's also a classical composer, doesn't sound like Mozart.

Neither does Bartok. And there are often references, but it's a totally different treatment totally different sound worlds. And there is also contemporary music, which is... also part of classical music, but sound also completely different. So it's not really possible to have one feeling about the entire genre.

Yeah,

Srini Rao: no, I, it's funny because I know all of this only because I was a band geek. And so I either forced to listen to her, I listened to some of this out of choice, but. Speaking of band geeks, I think this is something that I was really curious about. Are these just observations you made or is there some truth to this?

Although I always joke and say I'm like stereotypes exist because people validate them. Like Indians all Indian parents want their kids to become doctors and engineers. I was like, that's kinda true. Yeah, we have enough evidence at this point and enough Indian doctors that we can say, you know what, that stereotype has been validated by actual evidence.

But yeah, like I thought this was hilarious. Like you say, the violinist personality represents one of those difficult chicken egg cycles in which it's unclear whether our competitive perfectionist training is responsible for our competitive perfectionist tendencies or whether it's our competitive perfectionist tendencies that are responsible for our competitive perfectionist training.

And you go on to describe like each groups of people when you say brass players always struck me as the rowdy fraternity brothers of the orchestra. And I think the funniest thing is they're often attractive when they're young, but the men tend to go bald early in life.

I'm like, Probably another good reason that I didn't do this. But talk to me about that. Women, is there something in a personality that draws certain people to certain instruments? Cause even you, you mentioned the oboe and I'd asked my ninth grade band director about this when we met up for dinner the other night, cause I never forgot when one of the.

Kids in our class, I think he was a percussionist. His dad was a doctor who had went to Curtis and been a professional oboe player, but then went back to medical school. And when he went up to ask the band director if he could switch to the oboe, the first thing he asked was, what's your GPA?

And then he said, he was like he's like being an oboe player is incredibly meticulous. You have to make your own reads. He said it just requires a certain personality type. But yeah talk to me about this. Is there like, is this anecdotal evidence we're talking about or observations? What is it that draws certain people to certain instruments?

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: Yeah, I don't know. So this was definitely just based on my observations. Of course, it's like playful and it's not you can't make these generalizations seriously because there will always be exceptions. But there, there do seem to be these archetypes. Certainly if you think about singers opera singers, it makes sense that the type of person who would be drawn to singing opera would also be outgoing and on the theatrical side and maybe bond of themselves because no it makes sense because you're you have to love your voice, right?

So you have to love yourself and you have to be confident. And so that makes sense to me. And I don't know, I think part of it is, yeah it's what the instrument attracts. So the violin has so many great solos, right? There, there's so many. moments where the violin shines and the violin is also given all of this hard passage work.

So I think it does attract people who like a challenge, who are like if you want to be lazy, then you choose a different instrument. Yeah. But I think the reality is that all of these instruments require a lot of work. It's not that I'm speaking within the realm of the classical instrument.

So lazy would always be a relative term. But so yeah, partially what the instrument attracts, but then probably also what the training and what that particular set of, like when you play a role over and over again, that also probably shapes you. So if you're a violinist and you're used to getting the melody all the time and having this hard work and being exposed.

In high pressure situations, then I think that does affect the person that you become. And the same goes for, yeah, if you're a violist and you, people tell jokes about you all the time, then you also probably become pretty like lovely and laid back and I don't

Srini Rao: know. It's funny you say that because I growing up, because I had made all state band, and I was always a featured soloist when I band and got to do concertos.

And then when I got to college, I remember I was in the orchestra for one semester and I remember going to this, I think we played Dvorak's Eighth Symphony and the tuba part in Dvorak's Eighth Symphony, you're going to laugh when you hear this. You know what it is? No. One whole note. I'm like, did some tuba player fuck his wife?

Like what happened here? I

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: know. Why would you even make them sit

Srini Rao: there? I literally sat in the back of the row, like waiting for this conductor to cue me for my one whole note. I'm like, would anybody notice if I wasn't here? Seriously, why did he even put this in? This is like so unnecessary. Oh my

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: God. No, it is.

It's so funny. There, and there's all this, I think with the lower brass instruments, this happens a lot. I think that has a great video that some, so someone in a major symphony orchestra, he, I think it was a trombone player, maybe bass trombone. I'm not sure. And he recorded its whole, yeah, contribution to this Rachmaninoff symphony.

He just put a camera up. And recorded all of the notes that he played during it. And, but yours would have been an even better example. Cause one note that's totally crazy for him. It was like five notes or something. And that was his point. But it is totally ridiculous. And I also think, and I wrote this in the book, that I think that is a different kind of really high pressure situation though, because you counting is one of the most stressful things in Oh my gosh.

Because what if you get lost if you lose track of where you are, oh, this

Srini Rao: was my Achilles heel as a musician. I remember sitting principal to an Allstate band, my junior in high school, and the conductor looks at me, he was like, what the hell? And he was like and I, this was something I was absolutely terrible at.

I remember a, even for my Allstate band auditions. When I was a freshman, my band director literally, he was like, all right, we're going to play this at half the tempo. We're going to use a metronome. We're going to get this like as accurate as you can possibly get it. And I remember he made me audition playing it at, I think a frac, like a half a tempo that it's supposed to be played at.

And I ended up being second chair in our region. And the other guy was a senior and people called me the kid who looks like a freshman, but is actually a senior, but he was spot on. I, that, that whole idea of accuracy and slowing it down really stayed with him, but yeah, I totally get, I know what you mean.

Cause that is literally, that was literally my Achilles

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: heel. Yeah, no, and I always found, so sometimes people would like friends ask you to page turn or my dad used to ask me to page turn for him. This is, it's similar. It's just so stressful because it's almost a thankless job.

If you have one note or if you're just turning pages. You can fuck it up in myriad ways, right? But you will rarely get credit for no one's going to be like, great job. You did such a good job. Although,

Srini Rao: yeah, nobody even heard.

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: Exactly. But if you played it in the wrong piece or in the wrong place, someone would have heard it.

That's the irony, right? Like when you play it in the right place. There's so much in the texture that it probably doesn't make a difference. But if you play it two measures early, then people

Srini Rao: notice. Yeah, especially with a tuba, that would be pretty hilarious, actually. Yeah. Wow. This has been amazing.

I've had so much fun talking to you. So I have one final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the Unmistakable Creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable? I want to say something like authenticity that I think, it's actually a question that I struggled with a lot because of this issue of having your own voice as a player, right?

Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch: That when you're growing up and you think that all you have to do is perfect your technique and that you'll have some inherent voice that shines through, it's really difficult to come out into a place like Juilliard and then beyond. And to feel like even if you're doing well there, there are still so many amazing violinists in my case who are just as amazing and they, yeah, we have all slightly different things to say, but if you, if there are enough voices out there, then sometimes it feels like yours doesn't matter.

At the same time, I think in my case, I wasn't being that true to my voice at that stage of my development. I was definitely holding a lot back. for the sake of technical perfection. And I think in writing this book, I've, I found a different kind of voice it's a more literal voice, but I think that's, it's really committing to, to your own beliefs and to your own stance and anything that is truly what it is, can't possibly be it's like a snowflake or a fingerprint, or it can't possibly be duplicated and then.

Of course, the question is whether it matters, but I think it does. I think it's like this this line from the Camelot musical, right? The, let it not be forgot that once there was a spot for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot. And it's like what you said about writing a book, maybe you don't get to talk about it more than a few hours after you spent a whole year or two writing it.

But I think it matters that you put something out there that true to what you believe in that is. Still balanced, hopefully, but that represents your self. And I think that's it doesn't have to be a book, but it can be with anything that you do. I think that it's that if you're being yourself, then there won't be another thing like it.

It will be unmistakable. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story and your wisdom and insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything that you're up to? I, so I have a website. It's like all of my names any version of my name will probably get you there, but I think the easiest one for spelling is ariana warsawfan.

com. So that's like Ariana with two N's and then Warsaw, like the capital of Poland. And fan like an electric fan and all one word. And I also I'm on. I'm on Instagram and TikTok and Twitter not very good with any of those platforms but very reachable in case people want to have a conversation.

And yeah, and then the book is, I, hopefully it's available everywhere. And if it isn't, then you should ask whatever bookstore you're talking to, to get it. But it's at Barnes and Noble and Amazon and yeah, most of the bookstores that I've checked have carried it. So hopefully.

Srini Rao: Awesome. Bye. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.

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