Interview with Gordon Shumway!

by Mouse

Gordon Shumway is an active member of the Fiddle Talk Forum. We know very little about Gordon, other than what we read in the many wonderful posts he has contributed. He is now contributing an interview.

First, Gordon Shumway, let’s get this out of the way right now. We have something in common, fans of Alf, (aka Gordon Shumway) Fess up, are you really Alf? One of my favorite TV characters? I remember talking with you about Alf on the forum when I first saw your display name on a post and you said that you were an Alf fan. I know I have referred to you as Alf periodically on the forum, but I am not sure how you like it, so I try to hold back. Are you still a fan?

I do need to ask, if Alf was to play an instrument, what do you think he would play and why?

Doesn’t he play sax in one episode? Maybe he should have played it more, like Sherlock Holmes and his violin – not that I’ve read anything other than the Hound of the Baskervilles, so I don’t know how good Holmes’s violin playing was supposed to be. I think by temperament Alf would play the bass drum most of the time, but sax suits him too when he’s in a cool mood.

You are right! I forgot that, Alf and his sax. I think in the opening credits/clips they show him with the sax.

Okay, ice is broken.  Let’s get a little feel for who Gordon Shumway is. According to your profile you joined Fiddlerman’s Fiddle Talk Forum on August 1, 2016. You have been an active supportive member for about 9 years now. What do you get from the forum, and what is it that you think are your most important contributions? You can be serious, silly or a combination.

I joined Fiddlerman in 2016 with a VSO that I was too frightened to play. I learnt a couple of pizzicato scales while watching the telly, but basically I didn’t touch it and forgot I was a member here for the first 2 years. My first lesson was October 2018 – that’s when I rediscovered Fiddlerman. By then I’d been trying to bow for a few months.

7 years ago there were a lot more members here, and I’m not a beginner any more, so I have to confess I don’t get as much from the forum as I used to. Nowadays there are maybe half a dozen regulars and they mostly talk about the fiddle. When I talk of fiddle in my profile, I really mean violin.

The best I feel I can offer the forum, because I take lessons from a very good teacher who lives a 15-minute walk from me, is to share what she teaches me, partly in my blog and partly by offering advice. This also helps me to remember (someone once said the best way to learn is to teach). But I should really buy a voice recorder for my lessons.

I know that I appreciate your tips. I have your bowing tips you added to my blog printed off and on my music stand.
 

You live in London, England. People reading your interview come from all over the world. One of the things that I, and I think others on the forum find interesting is the ability to meet people from around the world. Could you share a few things in the life of someone who lives in London or England in general, that might be more of a London or England way of life, a bit different from elsewhere, from your perspective?

That’s a very general and vague question! For me, due to my age, things changed completely as a result of the Covid pandemic. I no longer go to the pub. The place where the uke group met was demolished, so we don’t meet any more. I don’t even go to central London any more – once a year for dim sum in Soho, maybe, and to browse the bookshops. So I lead a suburban life that I share with my girlfriend, who isn’t as mobile as she was and doesn’t like restaurants, because they can’t cook as well as she can, and so I enjoy twice weekly outings to orchestras for a change of scenery.
 

Have you always lived in London? Can you share a little about the younger Gordon Shumway?

I spent the first 18 years of my life on the South Coast of England in Hampshire. This was fortunate, as their education and libraries and arts policies were excellent. I first went to London to university in 1978. I bounced back and forth between “home” and London from 1981 to 1991, including a 16-month stint in Bavaria (83-84) washing dishes in a hotel, but I’ve basically been permanently in London now since about 1991. The office where I worked from 1985-2010 has branches in London and Hampshire – that’s part of the reason for the bouncing about.
 

You stated in your profile that you play piano and oboe. Then you started playing ukulele and harmonica. Why the switch?

I gave up oboe and piano in 1981 when I left university. Life happened and I basically just forgot about them. I took up classical guitar and ukulele in about 2010, harmonica a couple of years earlier, I forget why (probably influenced by Captain Beefheart). Playing the uke shredded my already fragile fingernails, so I gave up the guitar.

A piano is a big physical object and it doesn’t help if you don’t have room for one. My parents sold my piano when I was at university, which also didn’t help. But it had a solid steel frame and weighed a lot, although upright, so moving it would have been a pig.

Also, I never had the money to buy an oboe – I borrowed the school’s plastic oboe and then took it to university with me and gave it back afterwards.

I always planned to get a Yamaha flute with my first credit card, but got distracted by 25 years in the civil service.
 

Much is said about a connection between math and music, You state in your profile you have degrees in math. Do you think math played and still plays a part in your understanding of music theory, and music in particular? Could you expand on that?  

I did my music theory exam in 1975. That was for the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music). “Grade 5” theory is/was necessary if you wanted to go on to more advanced practical exams. I graduated in math at the age of 50 in 2010.

I’m a music=math skeptic. There’s more to music than the overtone series. People say  “Oh, it’s common for both…” but that’s a subjective correlation, you can’t prove it or disprove it, and also it depends on someone pretending to have assessed musicians’ musicianship.

However, there’s a James Stewart movie called Dear Brigitte (1965), which I saw on TV when I was a teenager. It’s about a musical family who, to their disappointment, have a mathematical son who falls in love with Brigitte Bardot. Who knows if that’s worth watching again!

Funny. I just watched that movie around 5 months ago.

I understand that you play in The Dulwich Symphony Orchestra and The South London String Orchestra. Are you still in both orchestras?

Sure. I began with the DSO only last September, and I’ve been in the SLSO for 5 years.
 

For readers not familiar with you from the forum, what instrument do you play in the orchestras?

Currently 2nd violin in both, but I might have a go at viola in the SLSO one day, and certainly 1st violin in both. (there aren’t any auditions – you sit where you like)

What do you find fulfilling about playing in the orchestras?

Meeting people and trying to progress in music beyond the stage I reached as a teenager.

I assume they have different conductors, I am not familiar with playing in an orchestra, and for others like me, is there a big difference when playing for different conductors, do you find it easy to adjust to each conductor’s ways?

The only thing that is difficult is indistinct use of the baton.

Some conductors have a firm beat, others seem to prefer out-of-phase beating (their up-beat is your down-beat – or, worse, their wrist goes down when their baton goes up and vice versa!), which I hate; and one of our conductors has more of a nervous twitch than a beat. That’s going to get difficult in the Schumann 2nd symphony, as there’s a section where all the woodwind play staccato off the beat, everyone else legato on the beat, and his beat won’t be visible. (a sub conducted our last rehearsal)

It’s important to sit where you can see the conductor, and adjust the height of your music stand so that (s)he’s immediately above your music.

How many pieces do you learn for each orchestra?

3.5 on average, per term (trimester)

Are the two orchestras performing during different times of the year, or are both orchestras performing all year, thereby learning pieces for each orchestra at the same time? There is an orchestra in a city about an hour away from me and they are seasonal, not all year. I guess I am wondering how you can learn pieces for two different orchestras?

Our community orchestras seem to coincide with school terms (trimesters), probably because school premises are convenient rehearsal places. Although the SLSO meets in a church with two adjoining community halls. Another reason for school terms is that parents are only available to come when the kids are at school.

I don’t really learn the pieces, I just sight-read and progressively get better each week, and I’m never perfect. I’m hoping, as my general ability improves, that approach will matter less and less. And eventually, I’ll give up lessons and practise only orchestra pieces. I believe that you have a duty to an orchestra to play the best you can – it’s not just fun.

There’s also an orchestra for civil servants and retired civil servants, that may or may not play all year round in Whitehall. My downstairs neighbour plays oboe for them, so I may ask him, but I can’t afford the time or the money to play in three orchestras. (playing the violin costs me about 200USD a month)
 

Do you do other public performances, other than playing in the orchestras? For those, like me, who tend to shy away from letting people hear you, how long did you play before you were you able to play in public? Maybe you can help others learn to break loose from their walls and share their music, or is it just a natural part of your personality makeup? What could you say that might make it easier?

No, I’m quite shy. I hated playing piano solo, although I did it in music festivals every summer. I only ever played the oboe solo once and it was a disaster due to forgetting which repeats the pianist and I had agreed on. Very bad nerves. But as principal oboe in the town’s orchestra, I was happy soloing. I joined the SLSO after I had been learning the violin for a year and a half. That was madness, but I coped by playing everything ppp, when I could play it at all.

You are also taking violin lessons, correct? How do you split up your time with your orchestra pieces and your lesson pieces?

I mostly practise for lessons, as they are all about remedial technique.

I don’t have enough time to practise orchestra pieces too. There are a few tricky passages, I was reminded at rehearsal last night, where I’ll have to play them slowly and work out a final fingering today, but that’s about all the time I can spare on them.

Do you ever use your orchestra pieces in lessons?

Not yet, but I suspect I’ll have to in order to lighten the load. The lessons are about technique, so the teacher-prescribed pieces are designed to correct the techniques that I’m poor at – orchestral pieces would be too random. My piano teachers were both trained technicians, and I insisted on my violin teacher teaching me technique. But that at least means that you learn how to practise properly – I am forbidden to “perform” at home. That how-to-practise skill can then be transferred to orchestral pieces.

You obviously love your violin and the music. Do you play your flute much?

No, not enough. I have progressive arthritis and at the same time as I was having problems with top F# (a common flautist’s problem), I was finding holding the Eb key down most of the time with my right pinky was painful (it’s a feature of the flute’s keying system – the Eb key stabilises your hold on the flute, so all the notes are tuned so that the Eb key can be held down most of the time!).

But arthritis has stable plateaux, and I may be able to find a different way to hold the pinky, so I need to find time to go back to it. Also, I still have oboe fingering muscle memory (slightly different from flute fingering, in particular F and F#), believe it or not, although I haven’t played the oboe since 1981, and I’d like to correct that.

What music were you drawn to when growing up?

Definitely Classical from a very young age and without any family influence. In Britain we have a radio station called Radio 3 that plays almost entirely Classical with some jazz. Until 1967 it was called the Third Programme. I used to build a fort out of a table and a sheet and hide in it listening to the Third Programme on the transistor radio – just found the station by myself and listened to nothing else.

I was aware of some of the catchiest pop songs in the 60s, .e.g. by the Kinks, or the Scaffold or the Strawbs, but was repulsed by Heavy metal (or possibly it was Jimi Hendrix, which is a pity, as he was special). I have no recall of the Beatles, strange! I regained an interest when I was 15 and heard Deep Purple’s Made in Japan, but diverged into more progressive music like Brian Eno and his record labels or Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, Soft Machine, Henry Cow, Gong. I played the oboe with the London Musicians Collective for a year, but that was just foolishness.

Did you have a favorite group or solo artist?

Not really, apart from what I’ve mentioned above – my Classical listening was 99% passive – my ears turned off when the announcer was talking, so I don’t seem to have wanted much to know what I was listening to.

Heinz Holliger has been the only oboist I’ve listened to since I discovered him in 1978. Maria Callas is the only soprano I listen to, Pavarotti the only tenor.

I don’t have the same approach with violin for some reason – all the old-school ones that had personality sometimes had too much personality! I could stick with David Oistrakh, except that he is guilty of playing everything “bolshoi” (which means “big” in a typically Russian way – watch a bolshoi dancer – they always jump higher than any other dancer! “Bolshevik” means “majority”, something to do with their government). I don’t know why I’m wary of  Menuhin – he was steady, which I can learn from, but sometimes his constant profundity seems like a kind of Schtick.

The pop record that had the profoundest effect on me was Trout Mask Replica – from the age of 17 I listened to it at least once a day until I was in my 30s.

Is there anyone else in your family that has interest in music, plays an instrument, etc? Do you ever play together?  

Not really. My father played the chromatic harmonica soulfully every few months until it rusted up in about 1968 and was binned. He didn’t tell me until I was about 55 that he had been in the Salvation Army when he was 14. He had tried to learn the cornet but found it too difficult.

I forgot to mention – our next-door neighbour, Doug, was a self-taught pianist and classical bassist. He gave me my first piano lessons and found me my first proper teacher, and I practised on his piano until my parents bought one. I guess I was 10 or 11.

And a few doors down was a family of Salvation Army people, and their son Stephen let me play his trombone, but I was too small for it really.

On March 30, 2021, you started a topic called Gluck. I asked how you play it and you said you didn’t yet, you were planning for the future, have you played it? It is a lovely piece.

I did, but it was a long time ago. In those days I didn’t play pieces for longer than about 6 weeks, as that was how often I remembered or misremembered my piano prescriptions changing when I was a teenager. I’m basically self-taught on violin, except that during my first 4 years I had a dozen lessons from a violist (sic) friend.
 

I have to ask, why Gordon Bennett for your blog title?

“Gordon Bennett!” is an exclamation of unpleasant surprise (probably a corruption/euphemism of Gor Blimey!), which you’d utter if you heard me playing at my worst.

Let’s get a feel for the non-musician Gordon Shumway. When Alf, aka Gordon Shumway, is not dropping through garage roofs, driving the Tanners crazy, or raiding the fridge, what is an average normal day in the life of Gordon Shumway?

Raiding the fridge doesn’t leave a lot of time free, but for 40 years I’ve spent at least 3 hours every day reading something in a foreign language (I read 10 with varying levels of ability). Currently I’m reading Die Blechtrommel and Don Quijote. It’s my way of coping with ADD, probably. Recently on the radio I heard an interview with a woman who used music to address her AD(H)D, but sadly, I’ve never been able to use that option.

I became obsessed with European languages before I was 10 (my father worked with a German ex-pat), and loved my half-hour French lesson every morning at school when I was 10/11. At least with related languages you can bounce from one to the other, and in the long-run they all cohere – it’s very much like balancing spinning plates.

The civil service is the only employer where someone with ADD is safe. All the time I worked for them my commute was about an hour each way and so I read for 2 hours on the bus and then spent an hour each evening looking up vocabulary. I still do it now, although it is harder to concentrate when not commuting.

In the afternoons in theory I practise the violin, although by then I’m tired and concentration is difficult, so I may ask my neighbours if they’d tolerate violin practice in the mornings.

At about 6pm I turn on the TV and cook and eat, but I mostly only watch DVDs and declutter my collection.

Do you like to cook, or do you prefer “the easier, the better” for meals?

I used to be adventurous in the kitchen (I worked in a Greek restaurant in the summer of 1985) until I met my current girlfriend, but now I’m barred from her kitchen (except to wash the dishes, lol!), and the three days a week I’m at home I can’t be bothered cooking any more. At most, corned-beef-and-sweet-potato hash. Or plain omelettes with ketchup.

How about a new type of food? Are you more of a stick to what I know I like, or are you more of an, “I really would love to try that”  food type of guy?

I try almost everything, within reason. I’ve eaten tripe, sea-urchins, chicken’s feet, haggis, octopus. I love black pudding – I don’t consider it adventurous, but I know some people find it a step too far. I ordered duck web in a Chinese restaurant and the Chinese waitress said, Ugh, don’t have that, it’s disgusting! In the Far East, I’d love to try a snake curry or stir-fry. I eat cooked oysters, but I’m allergic to raw ones. I would absolutely not try Icelandic rotting shark. It strikes me as road-kill on the beach, and eating it nowadays is turning ancient necessity into a modern virtue – it’s Viking machismo!

Are you adventurous? Do you like to roam off to places you have never been, take hikes in new places, or do you prefer to stay in your area?

Not really, not any more. I tend to prefer going where I can speak the language, and preferably by train, which means some of Europe. But also I’ve never had the money for extensive travel (and extensive health insurance!).

Also travel is exhausting. I once found myself on the pavement in Paris with a rucksack on my back on a hot day and thought “I’m not doing this again.” I’d rather go to a B&B on the coast 100 miles away by train.

But I am adventurous in the sense that I’d be happy to learn Japanese and live in Japan for 2 or 3 years (depending on money), but I wouldn’t visit the place just for a 2 or 3 week holiday.

If older Gordon Shumway could go back in time and talk to younger Gordon Shumway, what would older Gordon Shumway like to be able to tell younger Gordon Shumway, other than, “Do not get rid of the Alf DVDs”? You can be serious silly, or both.

Get tested for ADD, or whatever ails you, take the prescribed amphetamines, and don’t eat cheese (heart disease means I can’t take amphetamines now).

In your forum profile, you state that you have a degree in the classics. How long did you study classics? Can you expand a little about your studies? When did you become interested in the classics? What are your favorites?

It’s late in the questionnaire and the chronology is confused due to my profile, so at risk of pretention, I’ll come clean. Latin (like most things) had been on-off since 1983. Greek I started teaching myself in 1999 just before I studied it formally in 2000, to give myself a tactical advantage.

My studies have been as follows: –

1975 music theory

1978-1981 Electronics degree – dropped out in final year (ADD?)

1999-2004 First class honours Humanities (Open University)

2005 postgrad Greek papyrology exam success (so that I pretend I have a First in Classics) then dropped out again (ADD?)

2005-2010 upper second in maths (OU) totally disappointing – I wish I’d done Social Sciences instead.

I own a foolish number of books (it hovers between 750 and 1000), not just in Classics. Right now I’m wondering how to cull the ones I’ll probably never read.

The ones I’ll stick with will include the Greek and Roman novels and satirists and poets such as Catullus and Horace and a few others. Comedians of any kind (Plautus, Aristophanes, etc). Hesiod, Homer and Herodotus, Hellenistic poetry (I also read that as a postgrad). Anything mysterious in its origins (part of the fun is solving the mystery). There’s no real mystery in Plato or Cicero or anything historical rather than literary or poetical.

I am self-taught in French, but I only ever spent 6 weeks there, so I don’t speak it well, and French literature is my favourite, especially Proust, Jules Verne, Alphonse Allais, Gaston Leroux, Raymond Queneau and Simenon.

What are you proudest of?

My Classics degree, but also, in 1979 I played 2nd oboe in what was intended to be the British premier (unfortunately we were beaten to it by a week by a company in Camden. I never did find out their name) of Prokofiev’s Duenna under Howard Williams of the English National Opera. It was a pro-am production between UCL and the ENO (every bass instrument ever made was used – the stage vibrated!). My favourite memory of it is Howard pointing to a violist during a rehearsal and yelling (I want to write screaming, but I don’t know if it’s libellous!) “You, third note of bar 144, you played A# instead of A##!” I’ve never been sure if he was serious or joking, but Peter, who conducts the SLSO, has been conducted by Howard and tells me he was serious!

Let’s do something new. Let’s do what they refer to as a “lightning round”. I will ask a question and you reply with 1 word or short sentence, no explanation about the answer, try not to think too much, whatever pops into your mind. No cheating.

Who do you think of first when you hear “violinist”- David Oistrakh

Best to be a little flat or a little sharp – Sharp – you can roll away vibratoing

Spring, Summer, Fall or Winter – Spring, only because it makes the British “summer” seem longer.

Train or Airplane or Ship – Train

Walking or driving – Walking

Camembert or Brie – Brie

Favorite place to visit – Chip shop

What makes you happy – Fish and chips

Most wanted do-over – My whole life – at school I’d only study music, languages and woodwork.

Dracula or Frankenstein – Dracula.

TV show – Lovejoy

70’s, 80’s or 90’s (whatever you think I am talking about) – 70s

Checkers or Chess – Checkers

Sausage or bacon – Sausage.

Cats or dogs – dogs.

Hello or See you later – Hello

Thank you – Sayonara

Gordon, on the forum, you are very good with words of wisdom. Do you have any words of wisdom in closing?

If you consume politics via any kind of media, always find at least one way every sentence could be a lie, because it usually is. (my girlfriend has the opposite politics from me and thinks I’m an idiot. I probably am – I pay for her newspapers!)

Could you please add whatever else you would like to add about Gordon Shumway? Maybe about the area you grew, the area you live, what you like to so growing up, etc, whatever you would like to add. Closing comments.

I’d plead the 5th if I weren’t keeping schtum.

Thank you so much for the interview, Gordon Shumway. It has been so wonderful to get to know you a little more.

Below are some links to Gordon Shumway forum posts:

Introduction link: Introduce Yourself – “Here’s me”

Profile

Blog:  Forum Member Blogs – Gordon Bennett

Mandolin related posts: Mandolin Related – R.I.P. Mandolin!

Sense of humor (can you figure out the joke?): The violin – What bowed instrument does Kermit play?

Classical: Gluck