Rafael Popper-Keizer
Audiences probably already recognize principal cellist Rafi Popper-Keizer from his expressive playing on stage at Boston Philharmonic concerts. Offstage, Rafi is a private and introspective person whose evolving insights on music-making keep it as fresh and exciting for him as it was when he first discovered the joys of performing.
“I have a kind of intensity when I play that is not there in my normal life,” Rafi laughs. “The reason I’m playing fills my personality and it’s like I take on a role. I become whatever the music needs at the moment and I put my little stamp on it. Everything I do is something important, something that I am passionate about, so usually when I get to a performance I’m just very…I’m just very happy,” he says simply.
And Rafi does indeed look the very picture of contentment. While his playing demonstrates his ability to take on any personality trait ranging from fiery passion to sweeping melancholy to jaunty cheer, his demeanor offstage is very calm and he shies away from showy displays and bravado. The unadorned introspection with which he speaks about music renders his words all the more sincere; one word that comes up more than once to describe his feelings about performing is “happy”--which provides a refreshing contrast to the sadly common burnt-out professional musician whose original passion appears blunted by years in the music field. When this distinction is pointed out to Rafi, he recognizes the stereotype of the embittered musician at once. “That’s death,” he says immediately. But he says, “I can totally understand why people get that way because it can be tough. I think there’s this expectation in life that every day you’re progressing and going somewhere. I think where people burn out is the first time they do something really amazing, you know? Because life doesn’t just keeping going up like this”—Rafi motions a line going upwards with his hand—“it’s always kind of a series of things like this”—he makes a wavy line with his hand in front of him. “You have to find the wonderful things in what you are doing all of the time. It’s tough, you really just have to roll with it and not expect that every day you’re going to be more famous than the day before, because that really just kills it.” Rafi’s personality seems to be well suited for “taking each day on its own terms” as he puts it. “I feel very lucky to be someone who lives in the moment. You really have to be very philosophical and it’s so easy to be soul-crushed in this…in this…industry.” Rafi says this last word with revulsion, as though he is loathe to refer to music-making in such businesslike terms. “What’s really tough is that everyone who goes into music is doing so because they are passionate, but then the spark can be hard to sustain. Part of it is because it’s not always easy to feel like you are using your own creative energy very much, especially in orchestra playing. People tend to get embittered because even though the playing they are doing is amazing, they don’t feel as invested as they would like. So they have what many people would consider a dream job, but it’s just not.”
And yet Rafi finds the Boston Philharmonic to be unique among orchestras in that it seems to be full of musicians who retain their original excitement for music making. “It’s different with the BPO. One thing that Ben always says which I find interesting is that people who are cynical or jaded are people who are passionate but have had that passion repressed, and I think that’s true. You can’t be bitter about something if you don’t care about it. He tries to find that innate passion in people rather than just dealing with the symptom of the cynicism, which I think is such a great strategy.”
Rafi has also learned from Ben the importance of keeping sight of the feel of a piece, which in turn keeps it exciting no matter how many times it is played. “Ben is like this force of nature; he just goes along and you have to hop on the train. You have to pick up on a certain vibe that he is leading you to.” Rafi has undeniable technical brilliance, but he also says, “I feel like sometimes the more you focus on these details the more you get yourself wound in little knots. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately in many different capacities. As performers, from an early age we are striving for perfection. That’s valuable, but there gets to be a certain point, especially when you are older and have other concerns, when you just have to let that go sometimes and just focus on what you’re trying to say. Some of the best performances I’ve done have been ones where maybe some of the details were not necessarily perfect, but there was this incredible vitality, a sort of real integrity to the feeling…I think it’s very wise sometimes to just let certain things go.”
For Rafi, the amazement and novelty of his early days of playing is still there. “I had my first professional gig when I was ten. It was for a Gilbert and Sullivan musical and I loved it--it was so fun and I thought, ‘I can’t believe I actually get paid for this!’ I still actually feel that way sometimes,” he laughs. His awakening to the possibility of a future in music came from the simple act of expanding the music he listened to growing up. “I remember when I was a kid I had so few classical records. I think what I listened to all the time was Rhapsody in Blue and the Four Seasons because that’s what was around the house. I thought they were great, but then suddenly I discovered a much wider range of music one day—and I was so excited. It just totally galvanized me. The first recording I ever bought was of Chopin, and that just changed my life--it was amazing. And I think actually it was that recording that made me decide, ‘I have to do this.’ I would save up my money and buy new cassette tapes and just listen to them for weeks at a time, again and again, a hundred times. I’d just get so excited. Yeah, that was really for me kind of the point.”
One gets the pleasant impression in talking with Rafi that if he could, he would still spend hours on end just listening to recordings and playing his cello, experiencing the pure enjoyment of music without worrying about the practical logistics of everyday life; as he says himself, “I’m not very good at predicting what will happen two days from now.” When he mentions his family, however, there is no question that they keep him grounded and help him to not become lost in the music. He speaks about them with touching fondness and says he prefers not to perform away from home because he misses them when he is gone. He has learned to balance both music and family, saying, “Music is something that I couldn’t extricate from my life, but things do become a little more compartmentalized as you get older--now I have two kids and sometimes I want to be completely focused on them.”
As a young performer, however, Rafi was immersed in music and he says it was what made him who he is today. “Growing up, I felt like music was in everything I did. To a certain extent I feel that way still. I feel music has really made me the person that I am and brought me to where I am today. I can’t imagine myself without that shaping force. It would be …it would be very strange,” he says quietly. “And you know, I had an opportunity at an earlier point in my life to go in a very different direction and I didn’t take it, and I think I would be very unfulfilled if I hadn’t stayed with music. Music has really been a very focusing kind of force in my life. It’s sort of brought out who I am, I think.”
Written by Pamela Feo