Last night I played for an Evensong service at K's church. The turnout was small, due to it being very snowy and the roads being very crappy, but the music was beautiful. And it's always a pleasure to play with/for K.
My part was an obligato for Rutter's "The Lord is My Shepherd", a very simple line, very repetitive, but the interesting thing is that the same motif was repeated in sections with very different tone and feeling. I just took the emotion from the choir parts and put it into the obligato. Afterwards, I received many compliments for my interpretation. "You played with such soul," one choir member said.
Soul is what my playing always lacked, not because I lacked feeling for the music, but because my technique was in the way of my emotion. The more emotional I got, the tighter I got, and then the more mechanical and restricted my playing became. The only way I could execute some difficult technical parts was to shut down my emotion and just knock them out like a robot. No more. New technique means that I can turn myself inside out playing the violin. Doing that is beautiful and scary and exhilarating all at once, and I'm so, so thankful to MS for giving me (or making me give myself) that gift.