what up, in-n-out
in restaurants, family
restaurants
the inaugural interview: john yeh (aka DAD)
in mum, restaurants, music, family
the basics
full name: john bruce yeh
birthdate: 05.23.1957
hometown: los angeles, ca
occupation: musician, chicago symphony orchestra
john bruce yeh: no i did not! but thank you for explaining such
m: so let's start off easy... what would be your last meal on earth?
j: it would have to be extremely large, bulk food. yes, extremely bulk food. it would have to have a large variety of food items including, but not limited too: paella (my favorite food item), caviar, probably small tastings of molecular gastronomy, and of course charlie trotter would have to be involved... oh and of course (your sister) jenna would have to contribute.
(sister jenna, more commonly known as stoop)
m: was your meal at charlie trotter's the best meal you ever ate?
j: yes. that, or alinea
m: favorite composer?
j: mozart. other favorites include stravinsky and schoenberg.
m: favorite piece of music?
j: that's tough. you're asking such hard questions!
m: if you had to have musical accompaniment to your last meal?
j: either mozart or brahms.. something extended like the gran partita... or... (he gets distracted and has to ask for directions to the freeway. we are, by the way, en route from los angeles to la jolla).
m: favorite daughter?
j: hahahahahahaha.....no.
m: if you weren't a musician, what would your job be?
j: prolly a kind of doctor. but at this point i might have changed. so maybe a chef.
m: what's it like having a 3 year old daughter and a 23 year old daughter?
j: i think it's pretty cool. you guys can learn from each other and have very cool experiences together and for me i'm going through fatherhood twenty years later again and it's really interesting because i learned from experience but at the same time i have less energy. i think it's especially cool for mia because she can learn from such older siblings and i think it helps her to be more mature.
m: you've had the same job for 32 years now, what keeps you excited to go back every day?
j: we play new pieces, we have new colleagues, and we have new performances of the same pieces that we've played time after time and we try to do them to a higher level...and the great masterpieces require many different interpretations.
(john yells at me for the capitalization thing. what gives?).
m: what's the worst part of your job?
j: the stress.
m: the principal clarinet position in the cso has been open for quite some time, and you've auditioned for it twice but haven't won. how does that feel? and what will be different about the third time around?
j: the third time will hopefully be the charm. i've learned so much over the past two years of auditioning and its a process that continues. the audition process is so different from day to day performance preparation.
m: tell us about your audition preparation.
j: you have to imagine how you would sound in an empty hall and still imagine the orchestral context. i always knew that you have to show knowledge of orchestral context, but now i've learned that you also have to sound attractive in an isolated situation. if you play exactly the way you would play in an orchestra during the audition, you might not have as good as results as if you tweeked things so you sound really good by yourself. sometimes i think you have to be more in a box in an audition because if you play with an orchestra, they give you more latitude to do things out of the box. this is sort of ironic actually. but that's been my experience.
m: do you use beta blockers?
j: i don't even know what those are.
m: what do you eat before an audition?
j: a few days before i have a lot of pasta. the morning of, eggs, or something else with protein.
m: caffeine?
j: absolutely not.
m: did you party or go crazy in college?
j: nope. no substances. the craziest thing i did was sneak into carnegie hall on a regular basis.
m: what was dan druckman like in college?
j: what? dan druckman??! he was pretty much like he is now. very serious but at the same time casual and laid back. he was a really really cool, but serious dude.
m: favorite composer?
j: mozart. other favorites include stravinsky and schoenberg.
m: favorite piece of music?
j: that's tough. you're asking such hard questions!
m: if you had to have musical accompaniment to your last meal?
j: either mozart or brahms.. something extended like the gran partita... or... (he gets distracted and has to ask for directions to the freeway. we are, by the way, en route from los angeles to la jolla).
m: favorite daughter?
j: hahahahahahaha.....no.
m: if you weren't a musician, what would your job be?
j: prolly a kind of doctor. but at this point i might have changed. so maybe a chef.
m: what's it like having a 3 year old daughter and a 23 year old daughter?
j: i think it's pretty cool. you guys can learn from each other and have very cool experiences together and for me i'm going through fatherhood twenty years later again and it's really interesting because i learned from experience but at the same time i have less energy. i think it's especially cool for mia because she can learn from such older siblings and i think it helps her to be more mature.
m: you've had the same job for 32 years now, what keeps you excited to go back every day?
j: we play new pieces, we have new colleagues, and we have new performances of the same pieces that we've played time after time and we try to do them to a higher level...and the great masterpieces require many different interpretations.
(john yells at me for the capitalization thing. what gives?).
m: what's the worst part of your job?
j: the stress.
m: the principal clarinet position in the cso has been open for quite some time, and you've auditioned for it twice but haven't won. how does that feel? and what will be different about the third time around?
j: the third time will hopefully be the charm. i've learned so much over the past two years of auditioning and its a process that continues. the audition process is so different from day to day performance preparation.
m: tell us about your audition preparation.
j: you have to imagine how you would sound in an empty hall and still imagine the orchestral context. i always knew that you have to show knowledge of orchestral context, but now i've learned that you also have to sound attractive in an isolated situation. if you play exactly the way you would play in an orchestra during the audition, you might not have as good as results as if you tweeked things so you sound really good by yourself. sometimes i think you have to be more in a box in an audition because if you play with an orchestra, they give you more latitude to do things out of the box. this is sort of ironic actually. but that's been my experience.
m: do you use beta blockers?
j: i don't even know what those are.
m: what do you eat before an audition?
j: a few days before i have a lot of pasta. the morning of, eggs, or something else with protein.
m: caffeine?
j: absolutely not.
m: did you party or go crazy in college?
j: nope. no substances. the craziest thing i did was sneak into carnegie hall on a regular basis.
m: what was dan druckman like in college?
j: what? dan druckman??! he was pretty much like he is now. very serious but at the same time casual and laid back. he was a really really cool, but serious dude.
dan druckman and daughter holly
m: how many girlfriends did you have before my mum?
j: well that depends on what you would consider a girlfriend... when i was in high school, it was carol robinson. when i first got into the cso, it was nina allen. she played the horn and her father invented the allen wrench. at juilliard, i wanted diane barere to be my girlfriend. but she didn't really want to be my girlfriend.
m: ouch. sorry bout that. so that's all of the questions. any final words? no more than ten.
j: live clean, live full, live with your ears and your eyes open. is that ten words?
m: sure. we didn't go to math school.
j: well that depends on what you would consider a girlfriend... when i was in high school, it was carol robinson. when i first got into the cso, it was nina allen. she played the horn and her father invented the allen wrench. at juilliard, i wanted diane barere to be my girlfriend. but she didn't really want to be my girlfriend.
m: ouch. sorry bout that. so that's all of the questions. any final words? no more than ten.
j: live clean, live full, live with your ears and your eyes open. is that ten words?
m: sure. we didn't go to math school.
oh, jody!
in mum, restaurants
behold, my mum.
she thinks i should occasionally use capital letters in this little blog (i used caps in "FOOD" at the right, does that count?). what do you think?
when i was in high school, we took tap dance class together. it was hilarious, to say the least.
above picture is from our celebratory tea time at alice's tea cup after signing the lease on my new (and first) apartment! that weekend was just the best because it was her first weekend visiting me in new york when i didn't have a concert or school to bog me down. instead we slowly ate our way throughout manhattan and (gasp!) in to brooklyn!
places that mum and i dined at in our weekend eating expedition:
sushi a go-go (sorta touristy, but very convenient, as its right across from my schoo)
the new pizza place on 104th (?) and broadway who's name escapes me and is so new it doesn't even have a website, but everything was tasty nonetheless!!
brunch at cafe du soleil
pre dinner after a glorious walk from 106th down to chelsea market (which ended with an ithinki'vediedandgonetoheaven ice cream sandwich from eleni's).
(lots of tasti d lite on the way, duhhhh)
a late dinner at max soha. what's better than sitting on the quiet little european stretch of amsterdam ave between 122nd and 123rd, sipping on sangria, munching on gnocchi and carbonara, discussing paint colors with mum? answer: nothing!!!
lunch at IKEA! (oh, lookie, i got so excited that i used caps!) the swedish meatballs make facing brooklyn for the first time in daylight WORTH IT. honestly, go swedes.
(ready for the grand finale?)
so after our wild and successful excursion to ikea, mum and i convince ourselves that since we're already in brooklyn, and since the famed and illustrious di fara pizzeria is also in brooklyn, we must be within steps of it!!! (false). brooklyn's huge, man. but alas, us yeh women, the navigators that we are, managed to get to the little man before he ran out of dough (because legend has it, once he runs out, even if it's still within store hours, he shuts down).
we ordered a circle pie (the other choice being a square pie), thinking, "well that's silly, what dif does a circle or a square make?" but it apparently is code word for thin crust (circle) and thick and doughy (square). we waited. and waited. and waited. in the smokey, and oddly quiet, hole in the wall that mr zagat gave a 4 rating for decor {and a 28 or something for taste}.
we watched as the guru silently worked on each individual pizza, one at a time. the other thirty or so customers who were waiting were pretty much silent as well, as to not disturb the master. (sort of reminded me of sitting in mr. shaw's calculus class in high school, with everyone too afraid to say anything for fear they'd give a wrong answer). finally after about two hours, his one worker who had to have been his son, whispered "m.y.?" i swear, we would have missed it if we weren't watching the man like a hawk. i snatched the pie and then devoured it with mum, only pausing to mop up the olive oil that dripped, nay, poured down our arms.
the verdict? the ingredients were no doubt the best. and the dough was so buttery and delicious! mum said that if she went back she'd tell him easy on the olive oil (oy, i can just picture him coming out of his silent shell to bite someone's head off for such a request). if i go back, i'd sample the square pie. i say "if" though because as amazing as it was, i don't know if it was completely and truly worth the two hour wait and and two hour ride back to the upper west side. if someone presents me with a fine imported beer and excellent conversation topics, i'd do it. if not, i'll fly to chicago in the same amount of time for some lou mal's.