"Protecting the Most Important Part of Your Instrument, Your Body" - An Interview with Janet Horvath, Cellist and Author of "Playing Less Hurt"

Welcome to the Chelo Sherpa Podcast, where we explore all aspects of the climb to the summit from intermediate musician to the professional stage. Check us out online at thechelo-shirpa.com or follow us on Twitter and Instagram @TheCheloSherpa. I'm Joel Dallow, your host. I joined the Chelo section of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1999 and founded the Riverside Chamber Players based in Roswell, Georgia in 2003. Today's episode is sponsored by Clear Resources, your premier resource for compliance, legal, ethics, and risk. For more information, visit them online at clearresources.com. Janet Horvath was the Associate Principal Chelous of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1980 to 2012. She is also a soloist, writer, and award-winning advocate for injury prevention for musicians. Her first book, "Playing Less Hurt in Injury Prevention Guide for Musicians," has received international critical acclaim. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Chelo Sherpa Podcast. Thank you. I really appreciate being invited. So you've had an impressive career, playing on the front stand of the Minnesota Orchestra for 32 years while also working as a writer, speaker, and soloist. Can you share a little bit about what your orchestral career was like for you and how all those years informed how you're spending your time after retiring from the orchestra? Well, the first thing I'd like to say is that my father was a professional chelous too for 38 years in the Toronto Symphony. And so I knew what it took. Maybe I didn't know that when I was young, when I would hear him practicing for hours with a metronome and always being the earliest person at the hall. He could have been the custodian. So I really knew what the career meant, the long hours, the grueling schedules, although in those days they didn't play for concerts a week like the Minnesota Orchestra did when I was in the orchestra. My parents, both musicians, really insured that I had the best possible teachers. And although I was terrified of Starker when I first saw pictures of him and heard about him and played for him when I was young. I was very, very fortunate to have been able to study with him. And I think he informed my whole life as you'll probably hear that for most chelous who study with Starker. Landing the Minnesota Orchestra was a huge deal. At the time there were no women in the inner circle. I know that sounds hard to believe at this point in the history of music. But I at the time was 25 or so, 25 or 6 and I saw a committee of distinguished looking gentlemen and thought, "A gam sunk. I look 10 years younger than I am and how can I be more sophisticated and try to look like I deserve to be an associate principal cello of this stature of orchestra." So somehow I played four or five times well into the wee hours when we used to go after midnight didn't matter until they selected a candidate. And it's a funny story, my audition story. I guess everybody has one. But I previously was in the Indianapolis Symphony as associate for two years. And I particularly wanted that position so I could stay in touch with Starker and keep going to Masterclasses and everything. So I got that position. And then I saw this was open. And I didn't apply for auditioning until I was invited for a specifically invitation only audition because they hadn't selected anyone and they decided to choose several associates in a little bit lesser orchestras than Minnesota and invite them to an audition. So they called me and they said, "Hey, can you come next week?" I said, "Well, what's the list?" And they told me the list and I thought, "Well, sure, why not? I can come." And I wasn't all that prepared, obviously. And I blew the Chikoski 4th Sloan movement, big shift to the F on the D string. I mean, I just missed it totally. And so they stopped me and they said, "Thank you very much. Go home." And backstage the personnel manager came up to me and said, "You know, I'm really sorry. You didn't get past the prelims. I don't think you're ready for this orchestra." And I said, "Oh, yes, I am." And then I thought, "Oh, what have I said?" I knew I was probably going to try to come back and really prepare. And here I kind of stepped on the personnel manager's toes. And sure enough, several months later, I did come back, although it was in the middle of the Mar-Bero music tour. I was selected to be on the tour that year. And when I asked for permission to just go for two days to Minnesota, Frank Solomon called Ron Bollash, the personnel manager and said, "Hey, what are the chances?" And Ron Bollash said, "You know, she didn't even get past the prelims before. I don't know. Neville Mariners are all in particular." And so Frank Solomon said, "No, I can't excuse you from this tour." So I ended up flying at the end of a full day of rehearsals. I landed in Minnesota around four. I played four or five more times until I was told at two in the morning. I'm not exaggerating. It was in the wee hours of the morning that I got the job. I was on a plane at seven in the morning to go back to New York to rehearse. And I cried the whole way on the airplane. So I frequently tell people that -- and he used to also run Bollash -- that don't give up. That on a particular day, you may be green and the conductors looking for blue and -- or in a particular style. But with consistency and focus, you can land the right job for you. Yeah, that's great advice. And you violated so many of the other pieces of advice that we give to people. Don't fly on the day you have to play. Especially if you've played all day. Look at how that turned out. I was hungry. I was cold. I was tired. Yeah. Well, thank you. How would you say then? I mean, obviously you've written this book that's gotten so much attention about staying injury-free. Did this book come about because of you suffering from injury in your professional career in the orchestra? How did this come about that you became someone who's speaking so eloquently and so much on this subject, on such an important subject? Well, actually, I did hurt myself, but when I was a student of Starker, and when I got there, I was determined to be the best Starker student who ever lived. And I was away from home for the first time. I was lonely. I'm a little person, you know, you can't tell. But I have tiny, tiny hands and I'm only 4-11 and a half. I won't lie. So I didn't understand also that Starker would give us three lessons a week and then we had a masterclass too. And then he would be gone for two or three months. So he chose people that could assimilate a lot of information at once and then work on their own. So I would lock myself in a practice room. I couldn't lose my practice room. And so I would stay there for hours and hours, race back after dinner to try to get a room. And my arm started hurting and I thought, no, no, no, can't be hurting. I'm becoming a better cellist, right? I mean, no pain, no gain was the prevailing mentality in those days. Yeah. I thought, sure, I'll just work harder and I couldn't have been more wrong because after a couple of few weeks, I couldn't not only not play the cello. I couldn't use an iPhone 4. I couldn't turn a door knob. I couldn't hold a phone or wash my hair. I mean, really, I was that debilitated. And at that point, I was in a panic. I saw a dozen doctors of all different kinds. I went home to my parents and cried. And I don't fault the doctors who I saw now that I did then because at that time, repetitive strain injuries were not really on the map. But also, I know now that soft tissue injuries don't necessarily show up on standard medical tests and MRI cats can an x-ray, for sure, unless you actually have a nerve or bone or tendon thing and most injuries are soft tissue injuries that we see in musicians. So they said things like, "Well, you know, do something else. How about, you know, why don't you try something out?" Or, "Oh, it must be on in your head. You need musicians. You're dramatic. Maybe even hysterical." Yeah. Or, they didn't believe me. Or they said, "You have to give it up." And I refused to listen to that. I was very fortunate that when I was terrified of telling him, of course, when he came back from his tour, he, I think, hid his horror quite well. And he just basically started me over. So for many months, I was really worried. I did nothing but some open strings, some very light playing in higher positions because the first position is probably a more awkward position. Sometimes your arm is more open when you're up higher. I'd play, you know, Debby C in. But very little at the beginning, 10 minutes at a time. And I was afraid to do more, actually. I was afraid that my career was over. My life was over. I thought I was a terrible person. That's the thing that our identity is so wrapped up in what we do that we not only think we're bad musicians, we think we're bad people. Yeah. That we allowed this to happen to us. Right, that we must have done something wrong. Right, and that's not necessarily so because many of these injuries are cumulative and occur over a longer period of time of too much playing too intensely not enough breaks, not the best posture. And they add up sometimes over a whole career. It took me six months to get back to where I was but also a whole new attitude to my physicality at the instrument. And as I said, I'm a small person. So I can make a big sound without forcing without pressing without, you know, some of these words are in our vocabulary in music, you know, bite and attack. So when I got to the Minnesota Orchestra, I was very stunned that at least six people were sideline with injuries at the time. And, you know, and Bloomington, I just thought, you know, everybody's getting injured and in nobody talked about it. It was a really taboo subject and we didn't call it tendonitis. We called it Bloomingtonitis, but it was really way more rampant than I knew or that people spoke about or admitted to. And so I decided to approach doctors that I knew that had been musicians or were very interested in music like Alice Bramford Brenner, who really was one of the grandmothers of this field. And I thought, let's have a few people come and talk to the orchestra and it's no ball. There was so much interest that I ended up doing the first, it was called playing hurt conference, national conference on the subject. And over 500 people came from all over the country. Wow. What year was that? Do you mind me asking? I'm just curious when this started and how the trajectory went forward from there. That was I think 1982 or very early 1980s. Okay. And it was actually the first time doctors spoke to musicians and musicians spoke to doctors. So I had George Shebuk from Indiana University. I had Kato Havashu. It was way ahead of her time and talking about natural approaches to instrument. I had some great pianists and pedagogues come here and tuddled some other really great people to address the doctor so that they could understand our jargon and understand how much physical strain there really is even though we look so glamorous and we try to make it look easy. And you found then obviously what must have been a very receptive audience within the orchestra if all of these doctors started coming and people were clearly interested in hearing what they had to say. Well, the interesting thing was that at first only hurting people came, people who were hurting. Some people would be lying away from me, you know, thinking maybe it's got to continue just I don't even want to think about it that something could happen and I could hurt myself. It took a long time before musicians were willing to look at themselves as athletes, small muscle Olympians and not to be identified with jocks. But obviously we're artists, but we're also doing something tremendously physical. Yeah. And to be aware of that at all times all through your career, not just when you're getting older and things are sluggish and so interestingly enough, there were representatives from orchestras and conservatories and colleges from all over the country, but still when people wanted information that they would call me. They wouldn't give their names in a hospital setting. You know, I started help start a clinic here. Oh, wow. And if they had to give their name and they wouldn't they just wanted to talk to me because I've been there, I've done that, I survived. And so in self defense, I really wrote the book. Yeah. And so I was like, my phone was ringing off the hook in days when there was a hook. Oh, yeah. So you wrote the book because you were getting inundated with so many questions and so many people that were looking for information that that motivated you to put this all in one place so that people could start referring to a book instead of constantly using up your time and your energy on their problems. They still did, but at least there was a resource and then there wasn't one. As I said earlier, there also wasn't a field of ergonomics and repetitive strain injuries, which people started getting as the 20th century melody of just from the computer. And it's not hard to push down keys of the computer, but it's the repetition that's the issue. And the old days type of said to consult a colleague, they had to change the ribbon. They had to go get research out of a filing cabinet with the advent of the computer. And so you can do everything right there. And so that's when injuries started becoming rampant. So we really got credibility because of repetitive strain injuries at carpal tunnel everybody knows about that now, which they didn't them. Yeah, I mean, I had a similar injury my senior year of high school. I was at the interlock and arts academy and going into all of my auditions for college. Suffering from tendonitis in my left arm for six months. So I know exactly what you're talking about. And it was very challenging for me also to figure out what to do. And I had the same experiences. Things don't show up on scans. So they start telling you, well, maybe this is that maybe it's this and you don't feel like you're getting an answer because there's nothing visible that somebody can point to. And then it can be very frustrating going through that process. And then obviously I've had colleagues people that went I've interviewed on this show that I went to school with who never made it as a professional because of injuries before that in college and high school. So it's obviously so important to have this resource and the fact that you did this is so helpful to us. So let's talk about what people find when they purchase your book and open it up. And then how do they find in that book that will help them if they're struggling with injury or if they'd like to avoid injury. It seems like either case would benefit greatly from the information you're providing. Well, the book I think hopefully never goes out of print because anytime anybody's playing an instrument. So I think it's a similar issue for all of us, no matter what instrument you play. And so I tried to cover the introduction of a general number of injuries that can occur. Most of them, as I said earlier, are muscle tendon overuse injuries. Those are more than 50% of the injuries. We also talk about nerve entrapments. Any nerve can be entrapped but like squeezed, but it can occur at three characteristic sites for musicians, the carpal tunnel, which is at the wrist, the all-nourner, which is at the elbow. It's more acute in people who have to keep their arms bent all the time. So is there an instrument where we don't have to keep our arms bent almost all of us. And you know, you'll look across the stage and you'll see people never uncurling their arms and letting their arms hang down. That's just one little example. There's also the thoracic outlet syndrome, which is up here near your collarbone where it's usually postural where nerve can be squeezed. But that one is a little harder to diagnose. So don't self-diagnose. I always say to people because pain or the numbness can be similar, can refer. Numbness is always a red flag, but so is pain and we tend to ignore it. Or it can be very much more subtle. It can be tightness. It can be weakness. It can wax and wane as the muscle gets warm when you're playing suddenly it doesn't hurt. And so you play that Brahmsonata or Strauss piece and then it really hurts when the muscle contracts back and gets cold and then it hurts. So some of these issues are in the book. I try to touch on arthritis and a few things that are more of wear and tear over time. I have my practice rules which people if they only follow these five practice rules. practice rules, they would be in good shape to avoid an injury. That is to warm up, and I mean slowly, first away from the instrument, maybe doing jumping jacks or swimming or just rolling your shoulders and doing a few stretches. Warm up at the instrument that is not arpeggios or triple-tonguing or cosmic studies or dunes on the violin. That's technique-building exercises. Growing up is staying in the middle range of your instrument with medium volume and going not to slow, not to high, not too low. Warm up. Take breaks. 10 minutes per hour is suggested because 80% can be recovered after a 10 minute break. And I know in the orchestra, you may be playing a mall or symphony that's 90 minutes and you don't have 10 minutes off, but you can certainly do what I call my on-stage stretches. And you can move, you should move, you can wiggle, you can uncrow your arms, you can do one big shoulder roll. You can look left and right and you can adjust your posture. So the static positions are when the tension can really build up. But taking many breaks on-stage backstage at home when you're practicing, don't let time go by without taking that break. We'll really be what will save you over time. Very your repertoire. How many times have we played some thing we're in love with and we get stuck on a passage and we'll play it over and over and over again for 20 minutes, half an hour. An hour. And then in the end, we'll play it over and over again. And then we'll play it over and over again for 20 minutes. Especially for the violas and the cellos. So I will often play with an earplug in my right ear at least because the cello is loud but I've read that it's not as loud as other instruments when it comes to what is coming off the instrument to you and how damaging can be it's less damaging than a violin for instance is what I've read I could be wrong. You're not wrong. The highest pitches are the most damaging and the sad thing is that the first damage that can occur is in the highest frequencies in your hearing and OSHA doesn't recognize that because they only recognize speech like being impaired to the point that you can't hear speech. By then you're really done as a musician. So it's now been proven that across the board violinist left ear are compromised because of the proximity of the F hole to the person's ear. Yeah. And if nothing else a violinist should practice with a left earplug they should minimize the amount that they're way up in 19th position. But we have to be very careful where we sit you know how close we sit to the piccolo high head symbols trumpets. Yep. You know all those higher pitched instruments although I will say that trombones lower but it can definitely be really really loud even in the low range. I do want to at least give credit to the fact that our organization has ensured that everybody has access to custom earplugs and hearing tests so that everybody on stage if they choose to will have a set of custom earplugs that. It would normally cost $500 to have made but they have taken care of that to make sure that we can protect our hearing properly which has been great and very helpful. That's true of the Minnesota orchestra and I think we were one of the first to have someone come to the hall to fit everybody with the ear and a modic research ear deep fitting earplugs. And they paid for most of it and that's still today and there are of course boxes of other kinds of earplugs backstage. So what's interesting is that the brain does get used to hearing with these and because it is across the board when they're deep fitting for wind players they won't hear their swallowing and they're tonguing in their heartbeat as loud as you would with those squishy ones that you could buy. And the drugstore which of course you can't play with. But if you're going to a fireworks display or you know you're going to be outside where there might be jack hammers and leafblowers those are the worst to have them handy wherever you go is really important because we get enough exposure on stage we don't need more when we're not on stage. Like a sports facility can be deafening and what's really scary is that wherever you go now the volume is cranked up and I think it's because I know it's because young people already have injury to their hearing. And millions of people have tinnitus which is the ringing in your head that is caused by loud noise exposure to loud noise but people don't realize how it's impossible to live with it's very difficult let me say to live with because for some people it's a jet plane roaring in their head. It's very loud for some people it's a pitch it can be chirping it can be ringing it can be a multitude of different types of sounds that are in your head that only you can hear and that's a noise induced hearing injury and there are others and they're devastating to live a normal life with you know it's not just that you can't play. Yeah well in the interest of time here where can people find this amazing resource online what's the best place for them to look it up. Well if they just Google playing less hurt they will find a number of places Amazon. good reads, Kindle versions, electronic versions that you can get. Yeah, it's still available, which is amazing after 20 years. Yeah. I was going to ask you if you'd like to offer some parting words of wisdom. Parting words of wisdom. What people need to musicians need to be aware is that most athletes playing at their elite level are done when their late 30s or early 40s dancers and athletes. And we have extraordinarily long careers who doesn't know orchestral players and musicians who play 30 seasons, 40 seasons, who are playing into their 80s. They're the lucky ones. They did something right, obviously. There are some people that are prone to injuries and those are people that maybe genetically are prone, maybe have more slender tunnels over time that you can be more injury prone. But to be aware that if you start initially with good habits, I urge young teachers to start their lessons with a little warm up and a slow beginning to get people used to approaching their instruments that way to be vigilant about your posture, that your knees descend from your hips when you're sitting, that you try to stay in neutral or natural positions as much as you can, that you get out of stretches or big cords or extreme positions as soon as you can, that you have a quick technique from lifting and releasing quickly instead of slamming your fingers down. All those things will put you in better place for a long period of time so that you can continue your career into your 50s and 60s and 70s. Yeah, well that's such a great point and such great information, so valuable for our audience. So thank you so much for joining us today on the cello Sharpa podcast. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much to Janet Horvath for sharing her advice on injury prevention and thank you for listening to another episode of the cello Sharpa podcast. For more information and any links we discussed today, check out the show notes by scrolling down on the episode. Be sure and catch our next episode where Kevin Case returns to speak about the current state of affairs in the orchestra world. He is one of the most sought after attorneys in our industry as he represents musicians and artists nationwide in labor and employment matters, including the drafting and negotiation of collective bargaining agreements for more than a dozen orchestras. We're here to serve you, so if you have questions or topic suggestions you would like to cover in future episodes, please use the contact page on our website, thecheloshapa.com, or tweet the matters at the cello Sharpa. You will also find information about the specific services we offer on the website. Don't forget to follow us and rate us on whatever platform you get your podcasts. This helps us climb the ranking so other people can find us. Today's episode was produced, edited and recorded by me, Joel Dallow.