CelloGeek

Vivaldi Double

2011-07-28T16:39:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since I posted anything related to cello playing! I have been busy practicing and playing. We had a few orchestra concerts, including real church bells and a cannon for the 1812 Overture during the 4th of July concert. I've been playing with an all-cello group led by my teacher, and we've had a few gig+party events, with the next one coming up on Saturday.

A few weeks ago a friend who teaches flute asked if I would play the cello part of Haydn's London Trios with her and her graduating student. She wanted her student to record a CD for her family - what a wonderful gift that will be for her parents! Of course I agreed and our friend Tim provided the recording equipment and was our sound engineer. Tim plays the cello, and during a break we decided to play the 2nd movement of the Vivaldi double cello concerto, and because we could, we decided to record it. Here it is:
RV531 Largo Cello duet by Antonio Vivaldi

There are moments that I cringe, hearing myself (I'm playing cello 1 part) but it has been a long time since I heard myself on a recording and such are those moments of truth!

More customer service woes...

2011-03-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

I ordered Zuill Bailey's Brahms CD and much to my surprise received 43 CDs. The company claimed I had ordered 90 CDs. I wondered why there was such a big box for 1 CD when I received it. Since then, I have been trying to return the extra CDs. I haven't been successful. At the rate they are going they may never get the CDs back.
the email thread is from the latest date (today) going back in time.....

Response
---------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for contacting customerservice@concordmusicgroup.com,

Please do not reply to this automated notification. We prioritize our e-mail by the order in which it was received, so there is no need to send multiple messages regarding the same issue. We typically respond to messages within one (1) business day, excluding holidays, but we may take longer due to the high increase of traffic.

Again, thank you for contacting customerservice@concordmusicgroup.com. We appreciate your business.

Regards,

Concord Music Group
Customer Support

www.concordmusicgroup.com
Discussion Thread
---------------------------------------------------------------
Customer (Sent:Wed 3/30/11 8:56 AMTo: customerservice@concordmusicgroup.com

any update?

From:
To: customerservice@concordmusicgroup.com
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 09:40:17 -0700

UPS did not contact me and managed to come 3 days in a row when I was
out of town. They have not picked up the CDs and have left a tag saying
that they will not come again because they tried 3 times.

Had they contacted me in advance I would have arranged for a time for them to come when I was at home.

Can you arrange for pick up again

I assume they have a shipping label? I don't know where to send the box.

Also I am only home until so it needs to get picked up soon if you want the CDs back.

Thank you,

> From: customerservice@concordmusicgroup.com
> To:
> Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:31:15 -0500
> Subject: Your order with concordmusic.com [Incident: 110319-000279]
>
>
> Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support
> center. Below is a summary of your request and our response.
>
> If this issue is not resolved to your satisfaction, you may reopen it
> within the next 7 days.
>
> Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.
>
> Subject
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Your order with concordmusic.com
>
>
> Discussion Thread
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Response (Jennifer) - 03/22/2011 02:31 PM
> Thank you for contacting Concord Music Group!
>
>
We have issued a call tag for pick on your duplicate items. UPS will be
contacting you for a date and time of pick up of the merchandise.
>
> Please contact us if you have any questions.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Concord Music Group
> Customer Support
> www.concordmusicgroup.com
>
> Customer - 03/21/2011 11:13 AM
>
Please deal with this soon if you want the CDs shipped back to you = I
am about to leave for xx days trip and if I can't send the CDs back to
you soon you will not get them back until ..
...
>
>
> Response (Nichole M) - 03/21/2011 08:29 AM
> Thank you for contacting Concord Music Group!
>
> We have forwarded your request to the correct department to be reviewed. We apologize for any inconvenience.
>
> Please contact us if you have any questions.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Concord Music Group
> Customer Support
> www.concordmusicgroup.com
>
> Auto-Response - 03/19/2011 06:41 PM
> Thank you for contacting customerservice@concordmusicgroup.com,
>
>
Please do not reply to this automated notification. We prioritize our
e-mail by the order in which it was received, so there is no need to
send multiple messages regarding the same issue. We typically respond
to messages within one (1) business day, excluding holidays, but we may
take longer due to the high increase of traffic.
>
> Again, thank you for contacting customerservice@concordmusicgroup.com. We appreciate your business.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Concord Music Group
> Customer Support
>
> www.concordmusicgroup.com
>
>
> Customer - 03/19/2011 06:41 PM
> I ordered 1 CD and you mistakenly thought I had ordered 90 and shipped me 43 CDs
>
I called to get this straightened out and talked to someone named
Jenny. She told me that she would ship a UPS return shipper so that I
could return the 42 CDs that I did not order. She said it would take a
day or two. She canceled the rest of the order so you wouldn't ship me
more CDs (below)
>
> It is now 5 days and I haven't seen
the shipper label. I would like to return the CDs I didn't order. I
don't think I should have to pay for shipping when it was your mistake
to send all of the extra CDs.
>
> Please let me know when and how you will send me a return shipping label.

Visit to Parikrma School in Bangalore

2011-03-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

I've been remiss in writing - yesterday I returned home after a week in India. I spent the week in Bangalore for work. The best part was the last day, where we volunteered at a school that serves the poorest children in the slums of Bangalore. It was an amazing experience that made me ashamed of how much we take for granted at home and disgusted with how students in the US squander the opportunities in front of them.

Parikrma has 850 children in 4 schools. They have diverse backgrounds but common stories include abuse, neglect, lack of food and medical care. The school feeds them, provides medical care and outreach programs into their communities, and supports them through university if they pass the entrance exams. The school has 96% attendance and 100% attendance for parent-teacher conferences. The children take a demanding curriculum that includes English and university preparation classes. What impressed me the most was that the children are also transforming their communities: the director told us stories of parents who came for their conferences and signed the report cards with a thumbprint, but over time started initialing and then writing their names, thanks to their child's tutoring.

I was assigned to the kindergarten class with 2 of my colleagues. The classroom held 30 kids and 2 teachers. The kids sat on the floor in designated spots - no desks. They were happy, cheerful, and completely engaged with as we shared songs, asked them to spell, and told stories.

Other colleagues were assigned to other classes. We all agreed at the end of the trip (a long week at work) that the visit to the school was the highlight of a busy week.

the mozy nightmare continues...

2011-02-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in customer service purgatory. the restore nightmare continues. For some reason it is impossible for Mozy to burn a DVD to replace the defective one...which turned out to be a duplicate of another disk. I now have no idea what files have been restored. I spent hours manually pulling together all of my data but now I have no idea what files are missing. There doesn't appear to be a tool that can tell me what files I don't have so that I can just request those files. I asked for a replacement set of DVDs even though I'll have to go through that awful manual process again but apparently after requesting it multiple times all I get is an email every 3 days saying that they would like to close my case. And I got an email saying that the price for the service is going to increase. It's getting so ridiculous that it's almost funny.

Backup and restore nightmare

2011-01-25T08:02:00.000-08:00

Our old Windows PC died, unfortunately before I had a chance to back it up locally. But, I had it backed up online with Mozy and I thought I would be ok. With the amount of data I had backed up I needed to get DVDs to restore all of my data. Also we had purchased a Mac and had to get DVDs anyway to migrate the data

So the nightmare begins.

I started pulling data off of DVDs and one DVD has an error and won't completely finish pulling out all of the files. But I keep unpacking all of the DVDs.

I look at the files in the DVDs and discover that the files are scattered all across the DVDs and that I have to manually recombine the files back into their original file structure. An example...I have multiple folders with MP3 files organized by album. The song files were spread across multiple DVDs and I had to do the cutting and pasting to put the album back together - usually songs were spread across 3 or 4 DVDs. This took more than a few hours to put my files/folders back together - we're talking thousands of files.

Then I discover that the DVD with the error appears to have duplicate files - as I try to put those files into the original folder structure I discover that those files are already there

So now I can't tell which files were restored and which ones are missing unless I comb through each folder manually (would you want to figure out which song got left out from an album, and it's worse with thousands of pictures - how can I tell which ones were restored or not?)

So where is Mozy support during all of this? Suggesting each time I correspond with them that I've made a mistake.

I am not pleased with this process.

Moral of the story: back up locally and back up online. I have been dealing with this data restore and Mozy for 2 weeks so far and still don't have everything recovered.

I am looking around for another online backup service so if any of you have recommendations I'd love to hear about it! Plus I am looking for a recommendation for a network storage system so I can back up multiple PCs over on my network and house music centrally - any recommendations there?

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T14:36:00.001-08:00

I added up my practice hours in 2010 and it totaled 561 hours. It is almost the same number of hours as last year! I was pretty happy because I traveled so much more this year - nearly 120 days - taking out nearly 4 months of practice time. Each year I've set a goal of averaging an hour a day for the year. Maybe this year I could try to break 600 hours, which would be a worthy stretch goal.

I looked back at the year and am happy with my progress and am looking forward to next year. Some of skills I'd like to improve this year:
--better vibrato. My teacher called the current state of my vibrato "acceptable for ensemble playing" but I'd like to get more of a "solo vibrato" and be able to keep it going.
--a singing line more often. One of the biggest improvements I made this year was that sometimes I can actually hear phrasing and a musical line. I'd like to turn that "sometimes" into "most of the time"
--control the volume. Would love to control those crescendos and decrescendos!

My Dungey cello is starting to develop a wonderful tone as it goes through its terrible twos - in February it will be 2 years old. In early December I was able to see Christopher and have him do some overdue work on the cello. I met him at the house of Ken Finch, a member of the Portland Symphony and owner of an older Dungey cello. I asked for and got a lesson from Ken! It was very exciting to play for him and get his encouragement and tips on what I could do better. I also got to hear him play my cello. He was loathe to give up both my cello and my bow :-) He's agreed to give me additional lessons if I make it down to Portland again!

So here's to 2011 and happy new year to all!

It's been ages since I posted

2010-11-21T19:25:00.000-08:00

....but I've been busy, playing, traveling, working. I had to go to Singapore for work a few weeks ago and was able to fly my husband over to meet me. We went to Bali for a few days before returning home. That was wonderfully relaxing but coming home has been hard. Going from 12 hours of daylight to around 8 or less has been difficult. My travel for work has picked up again, so it's been hard to get consistent practice time.

This summer I hit a lull in my cello playing but the travel break seems to have done me a lot of good. My cello teacher commented at my lesson that my tone has improved and that I am starting to play lyrically. That felt good!!! I noticed the improvement after my trip...think I'm more relaxed. After expending so much effort to learn I forgot that I didn't have to work so hard as my skills improved. Last night we worked on vibrato and the basic message was to not work so hard at it. When I relaxed my left hand it immediately sounded better. I'm also working relaxing my right hand while keeping pressure down on the string; working on a smooth change of bow direction. Occasionally it's hard to tell when I'm switching bow directions (wish that could be any time I wanted it!).

My cello teacher started a group practice log where many of his students post practice times. It's pretty amazing what competition will do. I find myself playing a little longer because everyone sees my time. The good news is that when I'm home I'm getting in at least 1 hour a day, which is my goal. I've also started playing the piano more frequently. I finished reading through all of the Beethoven sonatas and am now reading Schumann's piano works. So now what, it's time to go play ...hmm.. piano!

Videos from our last concert

2010-07-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

These are 2 videos from 2 concerts (same program). What a fun program, including selections of music from the game Halo, Rossini's William Tell Overture (I got to play cello 2 in the opening cello quintet!), selections from Star Trek, and patriotic music. Unfortunately I was traveling and didn't get to play until the second concert, at the Ballard Locks in Seattle. It was surprisingly fun to play the music from Halo, which you can hear in this video:

Our principal trumpet player did a solo, "Trumpeter's Lullaby" and did an excellent job! Below is the video from the first concert, which I missed because of traveling for work....

My poor cello didn't fare very well with the outdoor concert. It has a 3" crack from the top of the f-hole to the purfling. Fortunately it isn't in a horrible spot, but still I was *not* very happy to see that crack. Next week I will take it to get fixed. I was happy that I brought my older cello, not my new Dungey cello.

it's been a while!

2010-04-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while...been very busy with work and travel. I'm still trying to keep up with practicing but it's much harder now that my travel has started picking up again. My favorite Hertz attendant at the San Jose airport told me that he believes that business is picking up because rental returns are up to 1/2 of their pre-downturn levels, after dropping to about 1/4 the rate at the worst.

I'm continuing to work on the same things, mainly on bowing. I think I've finally found a bow grip that doesn't hurt my thumb. I had to work on getting my pinky to be supple and to be an active part of bowing. It felt like it took forever. I spent lots of my practice time just bowing on open strings trying to get a feel for the string. Thank goodness my sound started to get better; it was getting very discouraging when I felt like I had started all the way back at the very beginning. Now I'm working on making my tone sound great while I'm changing bow speed. Also I'm trying to keep a steady vibrato when I'm changing bow speeds...once I get more comfortable with that I'll start trying to vary my vibrato speed too. But one thing at a time.

Orchestra had a concert a few weeks ago and I finally listened to part of the concert. I traveled the entire week prior to the concert and came home the day before - not optimal for getting back into playing. I practiced the morning of the concert and by concert time was feeling better about my playing. In one piece, Sibelius Spring Song, my stand partner and I opened up the piece with the melody, which we held for quite a while. The violins came in and doubled with us, but it took quite a while before the cello section was together. I thought we did a good job.

570 hours

2010-01-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

Last year I started logging my practice time with a goal of averaging 1 hour a day for the year. I added up the time for 2009, and voila! I had reached 570 hours! This includes piano and cello time, rehearsals, and basically any playing time. I figure that even performances are 'practice' of some kind - just the kind where there are no 'do-overs'.

I'm happy with the results, and have begun logging my time for this year. I still have the same goal - averaging 1 hour a day. This year I expect to travel more than last year, which really impacts my playing time. Last year I traveled 50% less than the previous year, and didn't travel at all for the first 5 months of 2009.

I didn't set specific playing goals last year because I'm not sure how to quantify 'playing better'. I am happy that my playing has improved, and the longer I play the more amazed I am at how much there is still to learn.

Some of the things I'm working on now -
--arm weight, all the time!
--vibrato, getting more control over speed and width
--crossing strings, making the sound more even and reducing the gap in sound
--an even sound..working towards being able to really control dynamics
--getting rid of all of the pain in my right thumb

and a random one, just because
--reading through all of Beethoven's piano sonatas

Why? I've played many of them but not all 32...so I started from sonata number 1 a few weeks ago and have been working my way through. I played sonata number 8 yesterday. I hope to make it through by the end of the year...am now starting to hear him enter into his middle period and losing the heavy Hadyn influence of the early works. I'm also hearing how much playing chamber music has helped me steady out my rhythm. I'm finding that playing the slower movements is much easier because of all of the practice counting.

So here's to 2010! Happy New Year to all!

Holiday concert report

2009-12-22T17:18:00.001-08:00

we had 2 holiday concerts last week, playing the same program. The second concert was at the Seattle Center. We were supposed to play there last year but our concert was canceled because of the snow (how quickly we forget...last year at this time we were on our way to 3 feet of snow at our house)

We had 3 weeks of rehearsals prior to the concert. Most of the pieces we had played during previous seasons, so getting ready was pretty straightforward for most of us. I thought we played better during the second concert. It was an all-holiday music concert, including favorites like "Have Yourself a Merry Christmas" "Sleigh Ride" and other arrangements of holiday music. My husband's favorite was the arrangement of Channukah pieces we played, with a great viola solo played by our principal violist.

Now we're off until the new year! Happy holidays everyone!

Breakthrough

2009-11-24T20:52:00.000-08:00

I've been taking cello lessons for 6 years now, and it still surprises me that progress is non-linear. I'll notice little to no improvement, then suddenly one day, I'll have a breakthrough.

It was really exciting at my last lesson to have one of those 'aha!' moments when I could finally do something my teacher has been telling me about for years (literally!). I guess I was finally physically ready, and prepared enough for that breakthrough.

I finally could rotate my hand, wrist, and arm to get consistent bow weight on the string all the way to the tip without straining anything (particularly my thumb, which has been sore). I could feel and hear the difference in the richness of tone when I got it right. Like any new breakthough, I couldn't get it right consistently, but when I did I could feel a lot more control over the connection between the bow and the string.

It doesn't seem like much, but it sure has taken a long time to get to this point!

Concert report!

2009-11-21T14:58:00.000-08:00

We played a concert last weekend, and immediately after it was over I left for the airport and have not had any free time since I returned yesterday. We leave again tomorrow and I'm taking a break from work now...

We played
Magnard Hymn a la Justice (about Dreyfus case)
Verdi Overture to Nabucco
Elgar Enigma Variations

I thought that the orchestra played very well. Even 2 weeks prior to the concert I wasn't sure that we would be ready. There were a few rough spots in the Elgar but we managed to play well.

This was a tough program. The Magnard and Elgar are very challenging pieces. The Magnard had some very high passages in B major where the cellos had the lead. The Elgar has such beautiful writing for the cellos with very challenging rhythms. One variation was all about the cellos and was apparently an inspiration for his cello concerto. It was lovely but not easy to play, one of the themes that repeats all the time is a set of descending seventh intervals, making getting the intonation right challenging. Then there was the finale with the ultra-fast passages, which I played as Note on the Downbeat - mush - Note on the Middle Beat - mush - Note on the Downbeat - all played really fast while accelerating to the final presto section. But all in all I was pretty happy with the way I played.

My Dungey Cello's Most Excellent Adventure

2009-09-27T17:26:00.001-07:00

Christopher delivered my cello last night! It has a new color and is all tuned up.

It looks beautiful! It sounds better than ever

My cello had the most excellent adventure on its way home. Chris stopped in Boise and gave a talk at a cello workshop on his way. He also lent my cello to Zuill Bailey, who played my cello (!), another one of Chris's cellos, and his Gofriller cello during the master class he led there. Chris shot video clips of Zuill Bailey playing all of the cellos and it was so exciting to watch him play my cello! I wish I could have seen the entire class plus listened to him perform the Elgar.

It was cool to hear the different cellos - the other Dungey cello was built in 2005 and it has a much more developed sound. Mine is still so new that while it sounds wonderful, it still sounds like a new cello. And wouldn't it be nice if I could play better...

Funny Cat Video!

2009-09-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, not a cello post, but I had to share this video. I've watched it 3 times and I've laughed throughout the entire video each time.

Dumb Cat Can't Figure Out How To Drink - Watch more Funny Videos

Cello Run!

2009-09-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

We just got back from Pocatello, on a trip to bring my Dungey cello back to cellomaker Christopher Dungey to get its last coat of varnish and a general checkup and tuning. I've had it for 6 months. My Dungey cello will be with Chris for at least a few weeks and will change from a yellow/brown color to more of a reddish brown. Chris said that over the summer he had 10 of his cellos back and that it was amazing to have so many at the same time. He still had 3 of his older cellos in the shop and I had fun seeing how his cellos have evolved over time. The model cello I have is his latest and greatest and will continue to sound better as it ages.

As an extra treat, he had some David Russell Young bows that I tried out. I'm ready for a new bow, and Chris just happened to see David Young not too long ago and had some of his new bows. It was unreal to hear the difference in sound between my current bow (unchanged since my last cello because I wanted to get used to my Dungey cello before buying a new bow) and the David Young bow. Chris kept saying, wait until I adjust the cello and you will be totally blown away by the sound! Even though the cello still sounds pretty great!

He has had the student cello that I had previously for the last 6 months; he took it home with him when he delivered my Dungey cello in February. We had agreed that he'd return it when I brought back the Dungey cello so that I'd have a cello to play. Chris replaned the fingerboard, changed the strings to a different set to get a better sound, replaced the soundpost, and repaired some varnish nicks and scratches. My student cello now sounds really good but I sure miss my Dungey cello.

Our other treat for the weekend was hanging out with Chris and his family, and my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. My husband's brother is married to Chris's sister, so Chris is family. How great is that, being related to such a talented cello maker? I have learned so much about cellos from Chris. Plus he gives me a lesson each time I see him :-)

gig report

2009-08-30T20:05:00.000-07:00

it's been a while since I posted!

Today we had a gig, and played 2 movements from the Brahms Sextet No. 1. I was very happy with the way I played today; all of the practicing to get ready for today was worth it. More vibrato would have been nice, but I hope that is just a matter of time. What made me happy is that I'm starting to be able to control the bow more and am better able to control phrasing than previously. We also played "Turkey Creek" and other arrangements (really fun!) and a Kummer duet for 2 cellos. My husband said that the cello duet was his favorite piece.

Last week I was invited to a cello festival - we had 10 cellos playing together! It was so much fun. A number of us from the cello section in orchestra got invited to join in with a cello ensemble. They have enough cellists that composers have sent them new music to play. We played some music written for 8 cellos, quite a few cello quartet arrangements, and just plain had a great time. I hope we do that again soon.

On the injury front, I am slowly getting better on all fronts. After a month of swimming slowly and concentrating on rotating, one day I just knew I was rotating correctly. So I've been slowly ramping up effort in the pool, trying to keep form at all times, and slowing down and concentrating on form whenever my form starts slipping.

My thumb still hurts, but not as much as previously. I've been working on bow exercises and working on flexibility of my hand. After looking at it my teacher gave me some tips and some exercises to work on. I think it's going to be another slow process before I correct that problem.

We are headed to Pocatello this week - I'm bringing my cello back to Christopher Dungey to get another coat of varnish and to have him look at it after 6 months. It is developing a better sound. He will return my other cello to me so that I have a cello to play while he is working on my new one. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are driving from Colorado and meeting us in Pocatello and we are really looking forward to seeing them!

Slowing Down

2009-07-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

I've been plagued by a number of injuries over the past month, which has required me to slow down. First is the herniated disk which is causing pain and tingling in my left hand, arm, shoulder, and neck. That hasn't really affected my cello playing but waking up with tingling in my fingers is not very much fun.

The second injury is a very sore right thumb. I think I was straining it with my bow hand, so over the past few weeks I've been playing much more lightly and I've modified my bow grip to relax my whole hand more, use my arm more for weight, and just played more lightly. I've also decreased my practice time (which drives me nuts), and have been icing my thumb after playing. It is slowly getting better, and has been a good reason to spend time working on vibrato.

The third injury is a pulled shoulder muscle from swimming. My husband the former swim coach tells me it's because I don't rotate enough. So the past week I've backed off from swimming very hard, focused on rotating, and have basically driven myself nuts taking it easy in the pool. I've forced myself to swim behind people I normally swim in front of, and to stay back and swim slowly behind people who I know are slower than me. Although I've had my share of amusement making them work really hard while I've been cruising at a slower speed than normal (they all know that I'm not working hard while they're busting their guts to stay with me) it's not been very much fun to swim slowly.

It's been really hard to pull back and take it easy, on my neck/arm/fingers, thumb, and shoulder. I want to accelerate the healing and the irony is that I need to change what I'm doing and rest each injury in order to let it heal.

My vibrato practice has been mostly practicing controlling the wobble to a metronome, very slowly. 2 wobbles per beat. 3 wobbles per beat. 4 wobbles per beat. It's very hard to keep consistent. I've also added trying to keep the wobbles steady while changing bow speed, and while shifting. It's been instructive to see where my vibrato falls apart, and to slow down to get it consistent and right. And, it's been driving me nuts go to slow. Unfortunately I've learned that in order to master a skill it's necessary to slow down before speeding up. So a few more weeks of 2 wobbles per beat, then 3 wobbles per beat,....

Concert Report!

2009-06-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

Both the studio day and the orchestra concert were fabulous!

Yesterday was our concert. Here'a link to a video of excerpts from 3 selections - Jurassic Park, Hoedown from Rodeo, and the 1812 Overture:

I'm sitting in chair #2, so you can see me playing! I was amazed that the celli look really coordinated (also I was amazed that I look really synchronized with our principal, who is an excellent cellist)

We played:
Jurassic Park
Grondahl Trombone concerto (has the distinction of being 1 of 2 Romantic trombone concerti; think pirates and battles and love songs and you've got it)
American Salute (was an arrangement of "when Johnny comes marching home" written for radio broadcast)
Rodeo (Buckaroo Holiday, Saturday Night Waltz, Corral Nocturne, and Hoedown)
1812 Overture
Stars and Stripes Forever

I think our concert last week, on Monday, was better (with the exception of Hoedown), but the venue, outdoors at the Ballard Locks, is fabulous and we love playing there.

Saturday, the day I spent in the studio recording music written by students of the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program. The films are created by students, who get orchestral music composed for their film, a win for both the filmmaker and the composers.

It was a long and tiring day. We started at 10am, finished at 5:15pm, with a 10 minute break every hour and a 1 hour break for lunch. By the last hour it was really hard to play well. We rehearsed less and recorded right away. The day is run like it would be if we were professionals (although Hummie said that the food, provided by the students, was an exception). We didn't see the music until we showed up. We all had headphones so that we could hear the click track (a smart metronome, synchronized to the film so that we would play the required tempo perfectly, even when it varied during a piece). We rehearsed whatever it was that we were playing a few times (sometimes just once) and then recorded 2 good cuts. Then we moved on to the next section. Hummie could see the film while he was conducting, but we couldn't see anything. He did tell us what each film was about, so that we would play with the right sound. One movie had an exploding monster in it, so he asked the winds and brass to make an exploding sound at the end of one piece. I think we recorded music for 3 films on Saturday. Hummie said that students in the program have now scored 93 films, and that 34 students from the program have gone on to score feature films. Pretty impressive.

Into the Studio!

2009-06-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'll spend the day in the recording studio, playing film scores written by students of the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program. I wonder what music we'll get. Two years ago we recorded the music to this charming animated short, 2 Old Chicks.

The video was created by students in the animation program at the University of Washington. The original orchestral music for the video was composed by Steve Brush, Doris Bartha and JR Rhodes as part of the requirements to complete the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program. Hummie Mann, composer and the founder of the program, conducted.

Sight Reading day

2009-06-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

During our chamber group today, we had an unusual configuration of players. We had 1 violinist, 1 violinist or pianist, 1 cellist, and me (cello or piano). So I volunteered to play the viola part on my cello, so that we could play piano quartets or string quartets. I suppose we could have doubled parts and played piano trios, but I like having my own part for chamber music.

Everyone was gracious enough to play easier pieces than we normally play, at slower speeds than normal. We played through Mendelssohn's first piano quartet (op.1 - wonder how old he was when he wrote it..but it already sounds like Mendelssohn), and 2 early Schubert string quartets, D87 and D74. I still had trouble sight reading the viola clef, managing to play maybe 50% of the notes correctly (repetition was a good thing; gave me time to figure out the notes!). I would get settled in and be able to read (sort of), and then something would flip in my mind and I would start thinking in another clef, tenor or treble and totally screw up. I tried to fake it by matching the harmonies or at least playing something on the downbeat or tried to sing my part. It was a workout! Tomorrow I will be able to play a cello part, and be a cello (thank goodness!)

My lesson yesterday was good; I showed my teacher the exercise I made up to try to learn how to change bow speeds when I change bow direction while keeping the tone consistent. He really liked it and I'm sure he'll use it or something similar with his other students. Inconsistency of tone and poor bow control when switching directions is something that he's pointed out in my playing, so I've been playing scales and making up exercises to try to produce a nice sounding tone and consistent volume when I vary the speed and pressure of the bow. Next up is really learning how to control the volume and tone so I can really do a good job of crescendos and decrescendos.

He's started me working on the Lee op31 exercises, and had me work on a relaxed legato bow and making eighth notes really even. It felt like moments of panic interspersed with calm. It amazes me that producing an even sound requires such uneven effort. Then I played the 3rd piece from the Hindemith Drei Liechte Stucke. I really like them. He has programmed the piano part into his computer, so I've had the challenge of playing well with the accompaniment. On these pieces it is not easy because the rhythms are offset and it's easy to screw up.

Practice Goals for June

2009-06-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about being a member of CelloBloggers is that one of the sub-groups is the Practice Club. There are 13 members and we are keeping each other honest by sharing our practice goals and reporting our progress. Here are my goals for June, which as it's more than halfway over, are a little late (but hopefully doable!)

--being ready for the last concerts of the season for orchestra. That means panic practicing to be ready for the first concert on Monday. We have a hard program; the 1812 overture, Copeland's Rodeo (rhythms are really hard on this!), a really neat trombone concerto, and some other pops and patriotic music.

--improving my ability to get a consistent and even sound when I'm changing bow direction. Today my husband said that for the first time he heard my play the longest sustained sound he's ever heard...meaning that he couldn't tell when I changed the bow direction! Now if I could only do that consistently and reliably...that's the goal

--and for consistency, practicing every day that I'm home. I'm traveling 3 out of 4 weeks this month, but have managed to practice all except for one day when I was at home. My excuse for the day that I missed was that it was the evening I arrived home from a trip and I had a pile of work to finish before the next day.

I forgot to add this last goal to my post, and it's an important one, and that's being very careful to be very relaxed and in good form with very little tension while playing. For the past few weeks I've been suffering from pain in my neck and having problems with numbness, pain, and tingling in my left shoulder, arm, hand, and fingers. My doctor sent me to get an MRI done and the MRI showed a bone spur and a disk protrusion in my neck, along with degeneration in the disk. I think this is the long term effect from a rear-end collision I was in 6 years ago. The pain started a few weeks ago but so far I've tried to keep it from interfering with my practicing. But I am so aware now of whether I have extra tension in my neck and arm...and have actively sought to get rid of that. I want to be able to keep playing the cello for a long, long time!

Shopping in the Asian Grocery Store

2009-06-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

you wouldn't want to cook with fake fungus

and I'm not sure what this is, much less how it's prepared for consumption

The Gap

2009-05-31T19:30:00.000-07:00

Recently I read a book by Glenn Kurtz, Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music. It is about his return to playing classical guitar after a long hiatus.

One thing he wrote struck me,
"I have to hear the sounds before I make them, and I have to let the sounds be as they are. Then I have to hear the difference between what I have in mind and what comes from the strings."

That really rang true to me. At my last lesson, my teacher and I talked about thoughtful and purposeful practicing, that is, changing what I am doing in order to improve my playing. Listening and hearing the gap between what I hear in my head and what I play, figuring out what is causing the gap, and changing something to bridge the gap is the essence of playing.

Great fun at the gig!

2009-05-19T21:00:00.001-07:00

It was a lot of fun on Sunday, playing for our friends in our fearless leader's lab. The acoustics were wonderful; everyone sounded great, and we had a lot of fun.

we played the Mendelssohn octet - the best we've every played it. The funny thing about performances was that I had trouble where I've never messed up before, and I nailed some of the really hard passages. That was true of everyone else too. There were parts that sounded really amazing.

The program was
Handel - Entrance to the Queen of Sheba
Mendelssohn - Octet
Vivaldi - flute concerto
a Telemann violin duet
Rabinowitz - 4 pieces for string quartet
Vanhall - flute + string quartet
Vivaldi - Summer/Winter

I played the keyboard to accompany our fearless leader playing the violin for the last Vivaldi piece. He sounded really great. I couldn't figure out why I would lose him, but yesterday he told me that he had dropped beats here and there and messed with the tempo and wasn't sure how I managed to stay with him. It helped that I could read his part while I was playing. I had fun playing and improvising around what he was playing, but for a while I couldn't figure out why I wasn't staying with him. We did start and end together (that's always a victory!) and I certainly had fun playing (liked the challenge of figuring out what to improvise).

Exhausted

2009-05-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

It has been a really busy week, and not good for cello playing.

Our group is getting ready to perform on May 17th, and we had dress rehearsal scheduled for Friday night. One of the pieces we're performing is the Mendelssohn Octet. Given everyone's schedules, we've rarely had all 8 of us together at the same time. We've practiced with parts of the group, but every person plays am important part.

I was really tired after traveling this week. I left Sunday and came home on Friday. It was for work, and was pretty stressful, with long hours every day. My playing last night suffered from lack of practice and exhaustion. At least I have a week to practice the parts that have been giving me trouble all along.

I was also bummed yesterday to find out that I have to start commuting to headquarters again. It's been so nice this year to be home for longer periods of time. The silver lining to budget cuts was that my work travel had been severely curtailed. Yesterday I found out that I have to start commuting again; we negotiated every other week, 3 or 4 days a week. Previously I was commuting every week, 2 to 3 days a week. Now I know I shouldn't be whining so much about this; I love my job and am thankful that I have one. But still, traveling for work is not at all like traveling for fun, and the frequency was exhausting. Plus it impacts cello practice time.

When I was commuting regularly I had rented a cello ( I am fortunate to be able to stay with my brother when I'm in the Bay Area). One of the reasons why I accelerated getting my new cello was so that I could have a decent cello in the Bay Area. Then I stopped traveling as much and the urgency to have 2 cellos disappeared. But I still only have one cello. My other cello is in Pocatello with Chris..he is doing some work on it. The plan is take my new one to him in September for a check up and another coat of varnish. He will return my former cello to me then, so I have a cello while he works on the new one. Now I'll have to decide whether to rent a cello in the Bay Area again or just not practice while I'm there.

Exhaling

2009-04-25T13:57:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks during my swim workout I have been concentrating on exhaling completely. It sounds rather silly to think about breathing, but it is amazing how much it has helped me feel strong during some hard swims. Yesterday one of our sets was 6 100 IM's. In the past I would have cheated on the butterfly, maybe swimming half of the length fly and finish with freestyle, but with my new mantra of breathing out (if I exhale loudly when my face is in the water no one can hear it!) I was able to do all 6 IM's with the 25 fly and even felt reasonably good going into the backstroke. wow.

So that got me thinking about what simple-sounding thing I could do during cello practice. How could I change a practice approach? The 'aha!' moment I had was thinking about feeling the bow against the string. I've been worrying about the flexibility of my bow hand, drawing the bow straight, and a whole host of other things. During the past couple of days I've been concentrating on feeling the bow - feeling my bow catch and move the string when I change bow direction, feeling and controlling string pressure against the bow during long slow bows, feeling the string when I change bow speed. The other issues are probably still there, but I've already noticed that my tone is much steadier and consistent. another wow! why didn't I think of that before?

Today we had piano trios and I got to be on the cello instead of the piano. Yay! We played the Mendelssohn D minor trio, the Schubert Eb major trio (love the cello solo in the slow movement!), Beethoven Piano Trio #5 (the 'Ghost'), and Fanny Mendelssohn's Piano trio. I am really happy with my cello. It is beginning to open up in sound. It was really fun to crank it up! after we were all done, I even got to try to play the Arpeggione sonata. There are sections that I can play now that I've never been able to play, and it is so nice to have a cello that can handle the high notes...really easy to play over the piano. it was so much fun today!

the cello is not a violin

2009-04-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

but I had fun today anyway...we started practice in my Sunday group and had 4 people - violin, viola, and 2 cellos, and a quartet that we're planning to play at our next gig. I volunteered to try playing the violin II part since my teacher has wanted me to practice playing up high on the cello. It was a blast pretending to be a violin! My cello sounds wonderful - clear and full even really really high up (got up to the f 2 octaves above middle c - high for violins too!) and it blended well with the others.

then I got back to being a cello - we're rehearsing the Mendelssohn Octet - really fun to play and very challenging - we have just over a month left to get it ready for our next gig...

Concert report

2009-04-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

This week we had our spring concerts. The first was on Monday, and the second was yesterday (Saturday)

I was happy on Monday that I didn't make any major gaffes. I missed the 2 rehearsals prior to the concert because I was traveling, so I was very nervous before Monday's concert.

We played
Butterworth - Shropshire Lad
Holst - Suite No. 2
Vaughn Williams - Pastoral Symphony

The music was beautiful. Our conductor gave a short talk about the Vaughn Williams piece and we played short excerpts from it prior to playing the entire symphony. He wanted the audience to listen for some of the sections, such as the horses and mules in the 3rd movement (love the donkey sounds!), the heroic theme from the winds, and the sound of the bugle...

I thought we played better on Monday, but our conductor thought that Saturday was better, with the exception of the last movement of the Vaughn Williams. The 2nd concert was in a different place than where we rehearse, so the sound balance was very different. I couldn't hear myself very well; couldn't hear my stand partner at all; could hear things I'd never heard before; and couldn't hear sections I was used to hearing in rehearsal. It really threw me off. There was one place where the cellos had a exposed note and I saw our conductor wince when I hit the wrong note (but quickly fixed it). Ouch. Still, it was fun!

Lynn Harrell playing his Dungey cello

2009-03-27T13:04:00.001-07:00

Below are videos showing Lynn Harrell playing his Dungey cello - the Mendelssohn D minor piano trio, with Anne-Sophie Mutter and Andre Previn

movement 1

movement 2

movement 3

movement 4

New cello!

2009-03-10T21:45:00.001-07:00

This has taken me a long time, mostly because I had to make time to take pictures. The cello is astounding. I can't think of enough superlatives to describe it. Every person who has played it has the same reaction - utter amazement and absolute pleasure.

It is beautiful to look at and even more beautiful to listen to. The C-string has a clarity and power that I've never heard before from a cello. The upper registers are very pure and powerful. The sound is even throughout all of the strings.

Christopher Dungey made the cello. He recently made a cello for Lynn Harrell, who is performing regularly with his Dungey cello.

My cello is made from the same pattern as Lynn Harrell's Dungey cello. The body is the same as his 1720 Montagnana cello. It has a narrow top side to side and is has a much larger curve in the body than other cellos I have seen. The smaller size on top is much more comfortable to play, especially on the A string near the tip of the bow.

I feel like I've won the lottery of cellos, but, on the other hand, I put myself on Chris's waiting list over 4 years ago. It feels like investing in a new artist before the artist becomes famous. I was expecting a wonderful cello from Chris, but I think he has really surpassed himself with this cello and I feel pretty lucky to be the owner of it.

It's Almost Here!

2009-02-08T20:01:00.000-08:00

My new cello!!! will be delivered on Friday. It's been over a year since I started the process of talking about what I want, choosing the wood, ...
I am so excited about it

A year ago I don't think I was ready for a new cello, but now I feel like I'm much closer to being ready for my next cello...

Fun Gig Today!

2009-01-28T20:58:00.000-08:00

Today at work we had our holiday potluck. It was supposed to be in December, but got cancelled because of the snowstorms in Seattle over the holidays. I had volunteered to play cello with a co-worker who plays the flute, and we had picked out Christmas music. Somehow Christmas music in January didn't seem appropriate. When the new date of the potluck got announced, we started looking for new music.

We played a Beethoven duet originally written for clarinet and bassoon, and a selection of "Rustic Airs and Dances" by Febonio. I think we played some of the pieces much better in the 2 rehearsals we had. Friday, less than a week ago, was the first time I saw the Febonio pieces. Needless to say I had a panic practice session last night. I think what threw me off today was that I wasn't seated where I could see the flautist very easily, so it was hard to stay together. Oh well. A lesson learned. Everyone who listened really liked what we played. One of the things I've learned through lots of performing is that most mistakes are not noticeable. It was a lot of fun to play!

Busy!

2009-01-24T21:39:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy week - got in some extra practice time because I actually had Martin Luther King Jr. day off as a holiday. Trying to fit in everything I want to practice is tough.

We had our first orchestra practice for the new year! The program is very nice - Holst 2nd Suite; Butterworth "A Shropshire Lad", and Vaughan Williams Pastoral Symphony. I was really confused about which part I was playing - the cellos go divisi a lot and sometimes it was by stand and sometimes it was inside/outside...so a lot of the time I wasn't sure if I was playing the correct part.

This Wednesday I'm playing a gig at work with a flautist. We were supposed to play at the office holiday party, but the party got postponed because of all of the snow Seattle got around Christmas. We had to find some new music to play because Christmas carols in January didn't really seem like a good idea. So Friday we played some music together for the first time, to pick what we'll play on Wednesday. We're going to play some dances from Febonio op29 "Rustic Airs and Dances" (I've never heard of Febonio before!), and a Beethoven duet that was originally written for clarinet and bassoon. fortunately, today I was able to run through everything with the violinist in my chamber group...not much time to get it ready for Wednesday.

Today's chamber group was a duet for a while, then a string trio. The string trio we read was a keeper! It was 3 string trios by Hyacinthe Jadin (a male, not a female). We were pretty excited about every movement in every trio!

and last but not least...my lessons continue and we just started playing a Kummer duet op156, duo #4 - we played through all of the movements at my lesson on Friday and hopefully soon will be able to play it at speed. I have my list of things that I'm working on..
--loosening my wrist while bowing, right now really working on dotted rhythms and a quick snap of the wrist and getting the short note to articulate
--detached bowing (on the string and off the string)
--arpeggios: this week need to work on nailing the shift down from the root to the fifth of the chord when descending)
--shifting exercise from Sevecik op8
--trill exercise (based on Cossman)
--vibrato
--scales: work on controlling bow pressure so that sound volume stays consistent (my teacher pointed out the it looked like I was easing up at the tip and at the frog...and hence producing inconsistent volume/tone)

oh..and don't forget to have fun playing...!

Logging My Practice Time

2009-01-14T16:25:00.000-08:00

Recently I decided to throw away my concerns about privacy and joined Facebook. One of my friends is my cello teacher. Last year he logged an average of almost 4 hours a day of practice time, a really impressive number, which I found out about in one of his wall posts. I say almost 4 hours because he was so close...but missed it by 20 seconds a day....he was bummed. What got me thinking about tracking how much I practice was listening to him talk about how he logs his practice time, what counts as practice time, and how he finds the time to practice.

For nearly 20 years I've kept a training log of my workouts, which now that I'm not training for any sort of competition, seems rather useless. But then again, I can see when I miss a day, or 2, and the log screams at me when there is an empty spot or an notation of "rest day - no time" (hopefully because it was a travel day...really no way to make the time).

So I've started tracking my cello practice time, noting the time in my training log. My goal is to average an hour a day over the year. That seems to be a realistic amount of time that I can spend, balancing work, family, exercise, and other life demands.

I've read other cello-related blogs and seen that many of you also log what you're doing as well as how long. I can't figure out why I have that discipline for my exercise log but don't really want to track what I'm doing during my practice time. I guess that I feel that the proof of how well I'm spending my practice time is measured by what my playing sounds like. How do you measure "producing a better quality sound"? So while I figure that out I'll just track how much time I spend practicing...all the while wishing that I could figure out how to allocate more time to playing the cello.

chamber music!

2009-01-10T17:56:00.000-08:00

my saturday group finally met, after more than a month off. The holidays, the weather, travel, all conspired against us. We had 5 of us today! We started with violin/cello - a Telemann piece, very nice. When our violist showed up we started a Mozart Divertmento. Then our other cellist showed up and she and I doubled on the Mozart. When our 2nd violinist showed up we switched to string quintets. I got another shot at the Schubert...one of my all-time favorite pieces...it's so much fun to play. We finished with a Taneev string quintet (2 violins, viola, 2 cellos...there is Taneev string quintet with 2 violas...but we never seem to have 2 violas) That one was deemed worthy of another time reading though it.

very fun and sure nice to play with everyone again!

and really good news ... I got pictures of my new cello ... hope I will get it in a month or so....

Fun at the Last Gig

2009-01-08T19:22:00.000-08:00

We celebrated the new year with a gig at our other cellist's house. It was fun - people listening, drinking, eating, and having a good time. We had a good time playing. You can see me in the back but it's hard to see our other cellist.

We played a number of celtic tunes, our leader the fearless violinist/violist/cellist switched to cello so that we could play a Beethoven piece (op87) arranged for 3 cellos. I was really happy with the way I played - since I was playing first cello for it I spent the entire time (4 movements) in tenor...and even managed to figure out how to play the thumb position parts that were written in tenor. We had been practicing for a while...and this was the best we'd ever played the whole piece (good timing!) We played a Vivaldi violin and cello concerto but I got to take it easy with the cello part while our other cellist (we were at her house) did the solo. The big piece we did was 3 movements from the Schubert quintet - wow! We had our moments good and not so good, but it was so much fun to play it since it is one of my all-time favorite pieces of music.

After the gig was over we drove home in a snowstorm! It was the last bit of snow for us, now that it's warmed up. Poor Washington state, first hit by an unusual amount of snow and now it's warmed up, raining and it's flooding everywhere.

One Thing After Another

2008-12-20T21:14:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy month since I last posted...Thanksgiving, travel, concerts, an unusual amount of snow for Seattle, and getting sick (while on a trip, ugh). I had a nasty bug -- sore throat and coughing (still coughing after 2 weeks) and haven't felt so sick in a long time. I managed to keep from coughing during the last concert (I managed to hold the coughing except during the loud parts from the brass...holding it in during some of the solo parts was really hard)

Where has practicing fit into all of this? It's been tough, especially having to stop to cough and drink hot liquids. But at my last lesson (we had to cancel this week because of snow and the previous week because I was sick) my teacher asked me to think about the weight of my bow hand/arm and to keep applying pressure while staying flexible. So among all of the other things I've been working on I've been thinking about that...and it is helping. I can hear more consistency in tone up and down the stick, and I am starting to feel the string as I move the bow across it. It sounds funny describing this feeling, but it is a good one!

It's Not a Good Idea to Wash the Phone

2008-11-18T20:25:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago my husband and I went for a walk. He has recovered from surgery so quickly that at 6-weeks post surgery, he is able to walk our normal 4-mile walk after a 6-month hiatus! Hooray!

It was raining when we went for our walk, normal weather for the rainy Pacific Northwest. When we got home, he stripped off his wet clothes and left them on the washing machine. Later that day, I just threw his pants into the wash along with the rest of the load of laundry.

When I started the dryer, there was a loud clanking noise. "What is that noise?" says my husband, who proceeds to open the dryer to find the source of the noise. Lo and behold, he pulls out a wet phone from his pants pocket. Oops.

I took the phone out of its carrying case, took off the cover, and took out the battery, and let the phone dry. Later that day, I put the battery back in. The phone actually turned on. But, it started making a hideous vibrating noise, and wouldn't stop. I took the battery out and let it sit overnight. The next day, the phone turned on and could actually make and receive calls....but continued to make the same hideous vibrating noise. I tried another battery (I have the same model of phone). Same hideous vibrating.

So, we took the phone to the local wireless carrier store. "I need a new phone," my husband announced. "I put it in the wash," I said. The salesman replied, "It makes a horrible vibrating noise, right?" "Apparently this isn't the first time you've seen this problem."

My husband likes his new phone.

It's clearly not a good idea to wash a mobile phone.

Infinite Loops

2008-10-27T20:11:00.000-07:00

First, my husband is recovering quickly from surgery. He is able to walk without using a cane for miles without pain in his hip. He said that he had actually forgotten what a 'normal' stride felt like. He still can't bend past 90 degrees, so if he can't pick it up with his grabber device, it stays on the floor until I can get it. So he's in his own loop, learning to walk again.

My infinite loop is going back to the beginning days of playing cello. My teacher told me in one of my lessons that he could still see a scoop in my bowing when I changed directions. So I went back and isolated the problem. It was that I couldn't stop my bow on an upbow. I noticed that I couldn't stop the bow movement at the frog without the bow wiggling around a little. Now doesn't that sound basic? Starting and stopping the bow?

So, I started the very tedious process of fixing the problem. For a while every time my bow went near the frog, I stopped the bow. If it wobbled, I played whatever it was I was playing again and stopped it. I even did Emily's scale challenge stopping the bow at the frog every single dang time the bow went near the frog. And guess what, it got better (not quickly, though!). I can now hear the string still ringing when I stop the bow. I still stop and have a 'do-over' if the bow wobbles at the change of direction. One of these days I'll get past lesson 1!

Also, my teacher had me go back and play grade 1, then grade 2, and now grade 3 repetoire again. This time he demanded that I control the tone, the volume, my bowing, and to play even the 'easy' stuff musically. It's quite hard to do, but my husband has noticed a change in my playing...guess returning to the beginning is useful in its own way...

where is the time going?

2008-10-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

It's been crazy here the past few weeks.

Get home from Singapore. Try to adjust rapidly back to local time (-15 hours difference)

Following week. Take husband to hospital. Spend days in hospital while he recovers from hip replacement surgery.

Take husband home. He is doing very well but can't bend more than 90 degrees, and is fogged up by pain medication the first days at home. Take his walker up and down the stairs. Freak out the cats because he can't bend down to feed them. All of the chores he normally does around the house are mostly impossible for him to do..

Travel again. Fly out early one morning and arrive home very late the following day. Wake up the next morning in a fog for the 7am conference call. Worry about husband left alone at home (with neighbor on call to help and check up on him).

Oh yes, what about practicing the cello? Ha. Hoping that I get some time to play soon.

Out-of-Body Cello Playing

2008-09-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

It's almost time for me to go to bed. I got up in Singapore 32 hours ago. I got some sleep on the way home; but sleeping in the economy class section in a contorted sitting position just isn't the same as lying down in a bed. The problem with arriving home early in the morning is forcing the adjustment back to the local time - I've stayed up all day so that I can go to bed at a somewhat early but still normal bed time.

I tried playing the cello this afternoon and it was quite the out-of-body experience. I didn't sound as bad as I thought I would after not playing for a week and being exhausted, but maybe this was because my expectations were very low (or that my brain is so tired that I wasn't listening very well). I did get some amazing head rushes while trying to remember and then play what my teacher wanted me to practice before my next lesson (and then gave up). I missed my cello while I was traveling and am happy to be home with time this weekend to play it!

There's No Place Like Home

2008-09-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

It sure was fun to be in Singapore. The people are so friendly and it is my favorite place to eat. Even the hotel food for the event that I attended was spectacular. None of the usual chicken breast with some sauce. The service at the hotel was exceptional. I finally gave up trying to get myself a cup of coffee during the breaks; the serving people who were supposed to get the coffee/tea for us would get very upset if we tried to get it ourselves, so we quit trying.

I'm trying to work now, but after flying for 17 hours (thank goodness it's faster to fly east) and arriving home about 10am this morning...I find that my concentration is slipping. Good thing I don't have any presentations to make today!

I did get some amusing pictures in the Tokyo airport - of the vending machine with the bottled water "Pocari Sweat" and of the high tech toilet with its volume level controls for "Flushing Sound".

Singapore!

2008-09-19T20:19:00.001-07:00

I arrived about 10 hours ago! I'd forgotten how brutal flying to Singapore is - first the 11-hour flight to Tokyo, then the 8-hour flight from Tokyo to Singapore. I arrived at 1:30am local time and love the efficiency - I didn't check any luggage, so got through customs, changed money, and was in a taxi on my way to the hotel within 15 minutes. This is the view from my hotel room:

I love visiting here; I'm stayed at this hotel many times before. It has been at least 5 years since I've visited, but I still remembered how to take the route through 2 shopping malls and an underground link to get to the MRT transit system (took a memory walk this morning - even after the flights I didn't sleep well last night)

I am looking forward to eating here!!! Yum yum!!!!

Ziggy at Work

2008-09-09T17:03:00.001-07:00

Ziggy, hard at work

thank goodness for digital cameras....for every 1 shot with the hat on there were 10 where the hat was in the air or on the floor.

for more amusing pictures, check out stuff on my cat

Sight Reading Tips

2008-09-06T20:39:00.000-07:00

I was wondering what had happened to the wonderful teacher I had for the 3 years that I studied fortepiano while in college.

A fortepiano is a piano, but in this case it was a piano that had been built in 1811 by Broadwood of London. Pianos have changed and developed quite a bit since its invention in 1700. The piano as we know it today came into its glory in the middle of the 19th century. So this 6-foot grand piano that I played, a twin to the one that Broadwood sent to the deaf Beethoven, has some significant differences in both construction and sound. For one, there is no iron frame (Steinway's patented cross-strung frame for their grand pianos was a major invention and greatly increased the piano's sound volume) and in fact no metal frame whatsoever. The next significant difference is that the hammers are covered with leather. Felt-covered hammers were introduced in 1826. Leather is harder than felt, so the timbre of sound from this fortepiano is not as lush as a modern piano, and the sound decayed very quickly. Whenever I played the fortepiano I finally understood why piano players regularly broke strings and how delicate the instrument was. And Beethoven's 'Moonlight' sonata on a period instrument...ahh..that's a topic for another post.

But that was a long digression, but into one of my favorite topics (the history of the piano is absolutely fascinating, at least in my opinion!). I Googled my former teacher's name and one of the first things that came up was a link to some videos she's recorded recently. I've linked to one on sight reading tips, because listening to it reminded me of the lessons I had with her and it was so nice to see her!

Gig Report, and it's been a while since I posted!

2008-09-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

We had a great time at our gig last night!

We've been rotating around to people's houses - last night was at our house. I have a music room and we squeezed into it, but everyone liked it because you could hear us throughout the house, but people were free to move around, eat, and talk while we were playing. That was the way chamber music was played - at people's homes, not a formal concert setting, and not as the main activity of the evening. A friend of mine brought 2 of her kids and 2 of their friends, and the kids had a good time running around or standing outside the room listening to us. One of the little girls plays the violin, and I think it's cool for them to see adults playing music for fun (not forced to perform at a recital!)

We played 2 different tangos (those were very fun to play); our other cellist and I did the Vivaldi double cello concerto (we were really happy with the way we played together!); Vivaldi's Autumn; a movement from a Schubert quartet (only 4 of the group played - I sat out so I could do some hostessing type duties); Handel's Entrance to the Queen of Sheba, and we closed with one of our violinists playing Bach Violin Concerto in A minor. I played the piano for "Autumn" and the Bach - I spent a reasonable amount of time practicing the Bach (normally I don't have much time these days to practice the piano, but needed to do some work to get it ready...)...we had fun and the next gig will be close to the holidays.

My Saturday chamber group met this morning, and I was tired but ready when everyone showed up. We had a quintet, 2 violins, viola, and 2 cellos, so we played 2 quintets I found in the public domain sites - a Carl Goldmark quintet and another by Ethyl Smyth. They were both very nice, especially the Goldmark quintet. Last week we had a piano quartet, so we played the Schumann Piano Quartet and the 3rd Brahms Piano Quartet (c minor - has a gorgeous cello solo in the slow movement).

I had my lesson today instead of last night because of the gig, and now I'm working on placing my fingers down accurately - no wiggling or edging into the right pitch - I'm especially inaccurate when I shift down. I showed my teacher some of the exercises I made up and he gave me some pointers and wants me to work on some of the exercises in Sevcik op 8. I'm modifying the exercise to stop and check that I've actually placed my fingers in the right place (when you put down all of your fingers you can't tell whether all of your fingers in the right place unless you remove some of the fingers and check, which is what I've been doing). Who would have thought that half steps and whole steps would be so hard?

A few weeks ago for fun I tried playing the violin! Our versatile member of my Sunday group who plays violin, viola, and cello, handed me a viola and a violin after one of our practices and showed me how to play them. The viola was pretty big; and on both instruments my bow was wandering all over the place. So one day we had 2 cellos, 1 violin, and 1 viola and we wanted to go through the Schubert we played for the gig. So I volunteered to play violin II. It was pretty funny, I even played it twice through. The quartet was Schubert's first; he wrote it when he was 16. It really was a violin I solo with accompaniment from the other parts, which worked out well for me trying to play the violin part. The note/patterns were repetitive and didn't change to often, which gave me time to think ahead of time about which string and where my fingers were supposed to go (and fortunately I didn't have to get out of 1st position either). Of course when I shifted back to the cello I couldn't play it for a few minutes while my brain was trying to shift back to where my fingers were supposed to go. I've never had problems bouncing around between the piano and the cello and it must be because the instruments are so different, or that I've played the piano for so long ...

My Staycation

2008-08-20T19:29:00.000-07:00

I took this week off from work, and am being trendy by spending it as a 'staycation'

This week's activities:
--Seal the kitchen counters
--Polish all of the wood furniture and cabinets (days later, still have a few rooms to go...ugh, at least I am clearing off junk and cleaning up as I go)
--Buy solar-powered walkway lights (still have to install)
--General house cleaning...trying to get rid of the clutter...
--Organize all of the stray music (bought file storage bins today)

Practicing is in there, too, not as much as I would like! There are more things on my list, but I think that I'm going to be stretched to finish what I've started.

It's amazing how busy I've been and how little I feel that I've accomplished (but the cabinets sure look good!). I could happily retire and keep extremely busy.

On the practice front: still working on landing my fingers in the right spot, and this week my teacher asked me to make sure that I'm doing that AND keeping my bow hand loose...sigh, something goes when I work on one thing. My Sunday group is getting ready for our next gig, so I need to practice my part of the Vivaldi Double Cello concerto (yea!) and the piano part of the Bach A minor Violin Concerto. I don't need to work as hard for the other pieces. And, need to spend time on chamber orchestra stuff. If only my hands weren't so tired...

Chamber group on Saturday was fun; we played piano quartets. I found the score and parts of the Faure Piano Quartet No 1 (C minor) online, and printed it for us to play. The string parts weren't too bad, but our pianist said that the piano part was really hard and would take a long time to prepare The slow movement was absolutely gorgeous. We finished with the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet, always a favorite!

random notes - chamber groups...

2008-08-09T20:24:00.000-07:00

Just so it's clear that not all of my time has been spent practicing tedious exercises, my groups have been going strong and we've had some excellent sessions.

Last week...we had a sextet! We played the Brahms sextets. I am more familiar with no. 1, the B flat Major sextet. I was glad I was playing second cello on that one - the other cellist sounded incredibly awesome during her solo parts - we had to repeat it so that we could listen to her play it again! It was a level of playing I am aspiring to! we traded and I played Cello 1 on the G maj sextet, but quickly was wishing that I was on Cello 2. One of our violists came a little late, so we had started with a string quintet by Carl Goldmark, 2 violins, 1 viola, 2 cellos, and got through the first movement and defintely want to play the first movement again and explore the rest of it.

Today - we had a piano quintet! Yeah! We played the Schumann and the Brahms piano quintets. It was so much fun. I'm glad I had spent time working on the piano parts, it made playing the cello so much easier today because I had some sense for what was going on in the rest of the parts after staring at the score when playing the piano. Not that the cello parts were easy - the rhythms in the Schumann are tough and the Brahms has some hairy parts for everyone too. They are amazing compositions...

Chamber orchestra rehearsals have been good...I've broken out my metronome to practice my parts. Playing at speed and in an early classical style has been challenging, especially when we are doing the fast movements. And then, sounding good during the slow movements...also challenging. With only 3 cellists (still waiting to get cello #4) we all need to sound good. Instead of playing a concert we are going to record the pieces and produce a CD. It will be fun to get into a studio to play!

Hope is Not a Strategy

2008-08-02T20:41:00.001-07:00

This is the title of a book by Rick Page, one of so many about sales strategy. It also describes what I was doing about intonation.

My teacher pointed out that I was opening and closing my hands, and that I was sliding my fingers to get the correct intonation. What I have been doing is just putting my fingers down and hoping that they landed in the right spot, and if not, then trying to correct it later. I also have a problem with my second finger not staying put; I have a weakness with how much my second and third fingers stretch so a lot of times my second finger slides down towards my third finger. So, this week I've been thinking about that title while I work on some of the exercises I'm doing to fix the problem.

My left hand is tired. The exercises are tedious. What I am doing is placing all of my fingers down, then checking the notes (plucking or bowing) then I move 2 fingers (or 1 or 3) to a new string while holding the other fingers down. I check the intonation, and then move my fingers back. I've been doing this with every finger combo (1-2 move, 3-4 stay, 1-3 move, 2-4 stay, etc.), putting my fingers down on every string and practicing putting my fingers down on the correct spot on the other 3 strings. My teacher also is having me keep my fingers down where they land and only moving them when necessary. This latest thing is about placing my fingers down accurately, and 'hovering' over the strings to improve the speed in which I get my fingers down into the right spot. Oh, and keep my thumb relaxed too...

Yesterday at my lesson, when I looked in the mirror, my hand position actually looked pretty good, in fact, it looked the best that it ever has! I can't say the I've completely fixed the problem, but in a short amount of time those tedious exercises are paying off. So, onwards!

work - life balance (not) this week

2008-07-26T15:52:00.001-07:00

I'm waiting for my flight to go home - I got spoiled after spending a month at home, the longest period I've spent at home in about 2 years. It was really nice to be at home!

This trip was pretty tiring - and my days at work have been getting longer. At first it was the meetings that started at 8am, which isn't bad. Then most of them crept up to start at 7am. The day I flew down to San Jose, my first meeting started at 6:30am; I left for the airport at 2:30pm, arrived into San Jose (on time!!!) at 7pm, had dinner with my brother, and then jumped online to work again before going to bed. The rest of the week has been similar, and this is a work - life balance that is skewing in the wrong direction.

I returned the cello I had in the Bay Area in June, so I was cello-less (can't wait to get home to try to play a little tonight!) but I'm not sure I would have time to practice much anyway. So there's a little whining going on here; I really love my job but the constant demands on my times during periods like these without the relief of the cello are hard.

practice and other notes

2008-07-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

My teacher recorded me playing Bach Arioso at my lesson on Friday. He had me play it with a recorded accompaniment track, thinking that I'd relax more if I was playing with something else. He was right; it was fun playing with the 'piano' because it helped me keep the beat steady. I was pretty happy with how much I've improved since the last time he recorded me playing it, about 1 year ago. For the first time I asked for the file - I'll probably post it in the cellobloggers space.

For the past few weeks he's had me work on loosening my right wrist and to practice making my fingers very flexible. It's starting to pay off, but I noticed that my stress response is still to tighten up on vibrato (at least for the very first time on the Arioso I actually kept playing vibrato throughout the note even when stressed out!) and to tighten up my wrist. At my previous and at this lesson he's had me starting to work on keeping my fingers flexible while crossing strings. Never a dull moment!

Today for our chamber group we were back to a piano trio. Since it's been quite a few weeks since we had this configuration, it didn't feel too bad. I was glad to be on piano because my right thumb is a little torn up and sore (thank goodness for bandaids!) so playing the piano was pretty nice to give it a rest. We made a cool discovery, playing Saint-Saens Piano Trio No. 1 in F major. What a lovely piece. Then we attempted to play the Beethoven Piano Trio #5, the "Ghost" but the ghost movement eluded us.. we started to play it but ended up giving up...slow movements weren't our friends today. Fortunately we had a rousing finish with Clara Schumann's piano trio. What a nice day!

I think I'm off tomorrow - most of my Sunday group is out of town. That means I'll have time to practice for chamber orchestra...Monday we played a Boccherini symphony and a Stamitz symphony, and got warned that we'd better practice the Dittersdorf symphony that we will be playing on Monday (which I've been diligently practicing at the end of my practice sessions)

and later this week it's travel time again, 3 weeks in a row :-( thougth I was going to get a break but I have these 3 weeks, then a break, and then September I'll start traveling more again....

Great Gig! Fun Weekend!

2008-07-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

We played Friday night, the gig was fun. It was a party hosted by one of our members, and we had food, conversation, music, and lots of fun.

We played
--a tango...can't remember what it was
--"Meditation" from Thais, a violin solo with a bunch of us pretending to be the harp accompaniment
--Vivaldi "Summer"
--a Mozart bassoon and cello duet (I got to be the bassoon!)
--Dvorak's "American" quartet

We played really well. Our unison parts in the Vivaldi rocked. I nailed my solo bits in the Dvorak!!! It was very exciting. I like this group because no matter what happens we manage to stay together. There were times when we all saved each other, like the time our first violinst sotto voce told me what measure number we were in when it was clear to him that I was a little lost.

A group of Chinese exchange students came to the party. They literally had just arrived - a friend of our host's son called and asked if he could bring them over. They looked like they enjoyed the music, and took pictures with all of us before they left.

I was very tired on Saturday but was hosting our Saturday group (not the same people who played the night before) but the funny thing was that one of our violists (who attended to listen but not play) said that she had spent time with the Chinese exchange students, who asked if the party was a typical American gathering. Don't we wish that every party had a group playing chamber music!

we had a quintet on Saturday and a lot of fun playing. We started and ended with string trios from Hadyn (people come and go in this group). We played a Bruckner quintet (2 violins, 2 violas, cello) which I had never heard before. It had some really lovely bits and the slow movement was fantastic. Then our violists doubled up and we read the Sibelius "voces intimae" quartet, which I wasn't familiar with but again, just amazing harmonies throughout.

Our Sunday group took the day off after the Friday gig, so I had time to practice! I have a lot to practice; my teacher said that next week he wants to record me playing Bach Arioso and Rachmanioff Vocalise - we haven't recorded me playing that in about a year and I'm playing so much better than a year ago - it will be really cool to hear the difference!

Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas!

2008-07-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

This headline is a palindrome! Why?

Last night we had the first rehearsal of the chamber orchestra that I was invited to join. We played Haydn's Symphony No. 47 in G major. The Minuet and Trio are written "al Roverso", meaning that the minuet is played through once forwards, and then played backwards. The Trio is played the same way, once through forward and then played in reverse. Hence the name, "the Palindrome". If you think sight reading is hard, try sight reading from right to left (although our conductor might have argued that explaining to us what we were supposed to do was harder)!

The first rehearsal was fun! Our conductor wants to keep the group small. We still need a few more players, but he wants 6 first violins, 6 seconds, 4 violas, 4 cellos, 2 basses, 2 oboes, and 2 french horns - 26 for those of you who are counting.

Hot Concerts

2008-07-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

It was hot this weekend for Seattle - 90+ which for the Pacific Northwest qualifies as a heat wave. When we moved here from California we found it astounding to hear Pacific Northwest natives complain about the heat when the temperature rose above 80 degrees.

We played very well for both of the concerts, hot as it was, with all black (poor guys in their tuxes/suits!) on Saturday inside a church with no air conditioning and thankfully in the shade for the outdoor concert on Sunday (shorts of any color were allowed with our official black orchestra t-shirts!)

There is no rest for the weary! One of my groups is getting ready for a gig on the 11th and yesterday I got an email from our conductor asking if I would join in a chamber orchestra he is going to lead during the summer. Sounds like fun!

Concert!

2008-06-24T18:15:00.000-07:00

Our orchestra played concert #1 of 3 last night. The theme was music from film. It is a fun program! I thought we played very well. The program was

Star Trek Through the Years - Custer
Prince Igor Overture - Borodin
Outdoor Overture - Copland
Fantasie Brillante - Borne
On the Beautiful Blue Danube - Strauss
Movie Suite from 'Year of the Comet' - Mann
Our Town - Copland
Raiders March - Williams

On Sunday we play an outdoor concert at the Ballard Locks, and we will add
The Colonel Bogey March
The Liberty Bell March
and Stars and Stripes Forever

I have been outed...sort of. When I arrived at the venue, our conductor stopped me and said, is cellogeek your blog? I said, why yes, it is. He said that he figured out it was me...someone who plays cello in the Microsoft Orchestra and who travels a lot (I miss a certain number of rehearsals because of travel)...had to be me. He was right!

Summer Play

2008-06-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

We played lots of string quartets this weekend!

Saturday we played 3 Schubert quartets. One very early (D74) and the op post. 125,1 and I can't remember the other one. Our violist liked them so much that she borrowed the book so that she could see if anyone in her other string quartet had them...so that they could play them for an upcoming gig. They were very readable, fun to play, and sounded really nice. We read the first one and kept going through more because they were so much fun to play.

Today we played a number of pieces, incluing Vivaldi Summer, a 3-cello piece by Beethoven, and the first movement of Beethoven Piano Trio op. 1 no. 1, and ended with Dvorak 'American' quartet. The group has been working on it and today we had a lot of fun playing it. My favorite movement is the 2nd one, which has some awesome cello solo parts. We ended with a high - playing the last movement the best we've played it. We finished and said, wow! that was fun!

Chris Dungey called me yesterday with an update on my new cello - he is hoping to have it done by late summer/early fall. His complication is that he had started my cello with a 2-piece back, and when he decided to switch it to the one piece back, it delayed my cello - the gist of it being that he is working on 2 cellos simultaneously and isn't very well set up to work on more than 1 (given where they are in the process - molding the ribs to the back). He absolutely needs to have it done for the makers competition in November in Portland. He will borrow my cello and enter it into the competition. I am busily trying to improve my playing as much as I can so that I can be ready for it! He also told me that Lynn Harrell is touring and playing almost exclusively with his Dungey cello - I'd love to hear him play that cello...

The Cute Little Cello

2008-06-11T21:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight I returned the rental cello that I've had in the Bay Area. I've been here all week wrapping up some projects and will go home on Friday. After that I finally get to take advantage of the budget cuts we've been asked to make (i.e. reduced travel) and will be happy to stay home most of this summer. Hooray!

When I returned the cello the owner of the shop showed me a 1/10 size rental cello that had just been returned. It was incredibly cute! It was just slightly bigger than a viola. I had to scrunch my fingers up to play it. The bow was about 1/2 the length of a full-size bow and and the frog was smaller. I wanted to tuck the cello under my arm and strum it like a ukelele. I did tuck it under my chin to pretend it was a viola.

Puppies, kittens, 1/10 size cellos -- they are all so cute!

Innovation

2008-06-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

Right now I have one of the coolest jobs I've ever had. I get to spend my days thinking about innovation. One of the projects I've spent a lot of my time on recently is a contest sponsored by my employer, Cisco Systems, looking for innovative ideas from outside the company. We just had an article published in Business Week about the contest. We were trying to learn how we could tap into innovation globally and have been amazed by the creativity and enthusiasm of the participants from all over the world.

Disclaimer: Because I've actually named Cisco, I have to add this disclaimer that says that what I've written in this blog posting reflects my personal views, and not necessarily those of Cisco.

One of reasons why I've been fascinated with Christopher Dungey is the commitment he has to change his process of making cellos to improve the sound. He's invented a new endpin and a new tailpiece that make cellos sound better. I've been able try out some of his prototypes and give feedback. It's fun to be part of the process of improvement, which is why I suppose I don't mind the process of learning how to play the cello - which for the entire time I've been playing has been all about changing what I've been doing to try to make my sound better.

Gigs

2008-05-29T15:39:00.000-07:00

Saturday I'm playing in a studio orchestra for the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program where we will record original music for some student films. I've done this for the past few years and it is always a lot of fun.

A week from Friday my Sunday group has a gig at a local artwalk. I don't have many details other than when to show up! This Sunday I think we'll have to rehearse the program.

Last night our group got together for a potluck and after eating some really yummy food we broke out our instruments (well, I had to borrow our host's cello...he's the one who plays violin, viola, and cello) and tried out a different arrangement of Handel's Entrance of the Queen of Sheba that we liked much better than the string quartet arrangement we've been playing. This arrangement was scored for 2 violins, viola, cello, and 2 oboes and we are going to use this arrangement next week. We also ran through the Bach double violin concerto and it was really fun to hear our 2 soloists play!

And I'm home for 2 weeks!!! The last time that happened was in early March when I had a stretch of almost 2 weeks at home...

Graduation

2008-05-26T17:53:00.000-07:00

We returned from Longmont Colorado today after attending my niece's high school graduation. It was a festive event; she was co-valedictorian, following in the footsteps of her older sister who was also a top student. We are so proud of her!

We arrived Thursday after the tornado which destroyed about 85 homes in Windsor, about 50 miles north of Denver. My mother-in-law's cousin lives in Windsor and he and his wife were fortunate that their house was not in the path of the tornado, which was 1 mile wide.

We got home early enough today so that I had time to practice after days without access to a cello. Tonight we have orchestra rehearsal, getting ready for our concerts at the end of the month!

Random Notes - while I have some time to post!

2008-05-19T17:16:00.001-07:00

I had a rescheduled lesson today, because I was traveling on Friday. I'm off again tomorrow for work, back Wednesday, then out again on Thursday for the holiday weekend to attend a family event. It will be nice to be able to spend most of June at home!

Today's lesson was a continuation of the bowing lesson...I worked really hard all week on making my right hand more flexible, and there was a definite improvement between last week and this week! I have to keep working at this! My control isn't what it should be, especially when practicing fast bows!

On Sunday we had a quartet. I tried to think about playing with a flexible bow hand the whole time and could hear some of the difference in tone and control. We played some gig music (gig on June 6th) to tune it up, and then switched to the Dvorak American quartet. The second movement has such lovely cello solos... After the Dvorak we started reading Beethoven string quartet No. 7, but only got through part of the 1st movement before realizing that we had been playing for over 3 hours and were all toast.

It was so lovely that we got to play outside. Hopefully the neighbors liked what they heard. A few houses down there are some pigs and llamas which I always slow down to see. The llamas were sitting in the shade trying to keep cool. The pigs were resting too...

Back to Lesson #1: How to Bow

2008-05-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

I had my lesson today, to make up for the lesson I missed last Friday while I was traveling. This month is a disaster when it comes to lessons and schedule; I think I only have one lesson this month during its usual time on Fridays. Thank goodness my teacher has been flexible in rescheduling my lessons!

I joked with my teacher that today's lesson was a lot like my very first lesson, when it was the first time I had ever played a cello. Today we spent time working on bowing. At last week's lesson he commented that my eighth notes weren't very even - my up bows were shorter than my down bows, making the baroque piece (Marcello) I'm playing sound more like it was swinging (not a good style for baroque music!). Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but it reminded me that for far too long I've just settled for not playing even notes very evenly.

So, this week I set out to do something about it. I followed Ms. Emily's very timely advice and tried to figure out what was causing the problem. Actually it wasn't hard to figure out; I knew it already but have not spent any time to fix the problem: my hand and fingers aren't flexible enough on the up bow. The diagnosis was easy but fixing it - well, let's just say that all week I have felt like I can't play the cello.

I told my teacher how awful it's felt to play all week, and we started working on my bowing. He had all sorts of fun analogies. The one that worked best for me was thinking about my index finger like a windshield wiper - back and forth, back and forth. We spent a lot of time during today's lesson with me just bowing on an open string. Playing the open G string was the easiest one for me to feel some semblance of bowing with a flexible hand, wrist, and fingers. I have other problems like the twisting of the bow (teacher's advice: try to grip a little harder, but not too much harder...) and keeping my pinky from locking up too much...

Anyway, I feel like I just started playing again.

The Mother's Day Weekend Move

2008-05-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

We got my mom moved to her new place this weekend and celebrated Mother's Day with her yesterday instead of today. We had to fly home today in order to be home tomorrow for doctor's appointments, work, etc., so it wasn't possible to celebrate on the actual day. Over Friday and Saturday we got most of her things unpacked, the essentials organized, and cleaned and got her out of the old apartment.

I am so glad she found her new place. It is an assisted living facility about a mile away from the house she sold 2 years ago. She and my dad bought the house shortly after they married, and she lived in the house for 50 years before deciding that the house was too much for her. For the past 2 years she has been in a very nice apartment complex, but in the past 2 years she has slowed down considerably, and it has been downright terrifying to watch her go up and down the stairs at the old (hurrah!) apartment.

I am so pleased that she was able to find this place while she could choose where to live. She knows people who live there. When we arrived, there were signs everywhere welcoming her as the new resident. For her first week there, a different person has signed up to go with her to dinner, so that she won't eat alone. One of her dinner 'dates' called not more than 15 minutes after the phone started working, and the person turned out to be someone she knew from elementary/middle school! Everyone we met in the hallway said, "oh, you're the new person!" and welcomed her. One of my dad's cousins lives there and has already signed her up to go on a field trip next week. I think she's going to be very happy with her new living situation.

I travel again on Thursday, so I actually get 3 full days at home! Hopefully some time to practice, which lately in cello blogosphere seems to be a shrinking resource. Hopefully we will all experience an expansion of time and cello practice!

The too much travel rant

2008-05-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

These past few weeks haven't been good for practicing and playing. I came home on Thursday, after a 10-day stretch where I was home for 1 day. I leave again this Tuesday and come home on Sunday. My travel was supposed to decrease, but instead I'm spending most of the month of May away from home. The mix of work projects and helping my mom move means lots of May in the Bay Area and not much time at home.

I don't like to play on the rental cello that I have in the Bay Area. The bow is hideous and my hand starts to hurt after a 1/2 hour of playing, so I rarely play longer than that (assuming I even have time to practice when I'm there). I not planning to keep that cello much longer, which is why I haven't done anything about the bow. My plan has been to take my current cello down after I get my new cello. I'm still not sure when I'll get my new cello, and when we'll be able to drive to the Bay Area.

Yesterday I was on the piano for most of the time for our Saturday group. We played the Arthur Foote piano quartet (it's really nice!) and the first movement of the Brahms C minor piano quartet. Our first violinist summed up the first movement, "That would be really nice if we could actually play it!" Our 2nd violinist showed up and rescued us from the Brahms and we played the Schumann piano quintet. I love the quintet but have only played the piano part once before, and had a really hard time yesterday with it, keeping the rhythm steady. sigh. I will have to add it to my practice list for the piano, along with the Dvorak and Brahms quintets so that I can be ready to play it when needed. Then the other cellist had to leave, so I switched to cello (yay!) and we played Puccini's Chrysantheum - very lovely! I'd like more time on cello..maybe in 2 weeks when I'm in town again!

Dungey Cello Update

2008-04-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

This weekend was really fun. Chris Dungey was in Seattle for a conference sponsored by the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers. On Sunday they hosted an event called "Players Meet Makers". Chris had intended to show my new cello at this event, but for a variety of reasons my cello isn't done, so he borrowed one of his cellos from a member of the Portland Symphony to show. I tried out all of the cellos there (Chris had the best cello) and a variety of bows on his cello. It was so nice to play on such nice cellos! There was even a photographer from the Seattle Times and he took several pictures of me playing. One of the pictures got published online on Monday!

But, onto why my cello is delayed. Chris now intends to enter my cello into the bi-annual competition of violin/viola/cello makers in Portland in November, so he's decided to take some extra time with mine. Also, he managed to get some very large pieces of maple from a fellow maker while he was at the show- big enough to make a 1-piece cello back! He's decided to use one for my cello. So my cello will have a 1-piece back! We have it at our house (he flew to Seattle, so we're storing the other pieces of wood until he can come pick it up in November). Here's a picture of the piece that will become my cello back...

The major reason why my cello is late is the cello that Chris just finished in March...for Lynn Harrell. He lent me the DVD of Lynn Harrell playing his new Dungey cello for the first time and the sound is astounding. He's already used his new cello for a few recitals. Chris said that he was so nervous when he delivered the cello...and just so thrilled now about how well the cello turned out. He's going to use the same model for my cello...so if only I could play half as well!

Orchestra - starting up again!

2008-04-17T16:34:00.000-07:00

Monday I went to orchestra instead of to the rehearsal for the Dalai Lama event. Attendance was sparse because many people were at the other rehearsal. We read through most of the music we're playing for our next concerts, and it will be fun!

The theme is movies. We're even playing the world premiere of a suite of music from "Year of the Comet". Now I've never heard of the movie, so when I looked, the movie itself has very bad reviews but the music doesn't. I'm listening to some of it on Hummie Mann's web site and the music is gorgeous - orchestral celtic music.

The program is:
Star Trek Through the Years - Custer
Prince Igor Overture - Borodin
Outdoor Overture - Copland
Fantasie Brillante - Borne
On the Beautiful Blue Danube - Strauss
Movie Suite from 'Year of the Comet' - Mann
Our Town - Copland
Raiders March - Williams

We laughed when we played the Star Trek theme - someone started reciting the opening monologue in the appropriate spot.

This program is going to be a lot of fun to play! And it's much easier than the last program, which is a good thing because my travel schedule has gone haywire; I'm going to miss about 1/3 of the rehearsals as well as the first concert (and I thought my travel was supposed to be cut back because of tightening budgets!)

Pulling Back for Sanity

2008-04-09T17:29:00.000-07:00

There was no orchestra rehearsal on Monday because we take a week off after a concert. Our conductor graciously offered to hold a rehearsal for any one who is playing for the Dalai Lama event instead, so about a dozen of us showed up. It was the second time I had played through the cello part, and as we went through it at the speed he thought we'd take it for the performance, I realized that it just wasn't going to be realistic for me to expect to be able to play it next week. I'm traveling now, waiting for my flight home to Seattle, and then my husband and I are going to take some time off to celebrate our anniversary. So as I thought it through, I decided that the stress of trying to learn the 4th movement of Beethoven's ninth in 2 days just wasn't worth it. Once I decided, I felt much better.

So I am looking forward to our trip! Our anniversary was on Tuesday, the day I left for my work-related trip. We're going to the Powell River area of Canada, which I am very much looking forward to! He starts a new job on Monday, so the timing is perfect for a few days of R&R.

Better the Second Time!

2008-04-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

Today was the 2nd concert - same program as the previous concert on Monday night.

But this time, we played so much better! The acoustics in the venue were better, we fixed some of the problems from the first playing, and the Popper was way better! The whole program went very well - I think this concert was better than the previous one.

We could hear each other much better in this venue - that made a huge difference. I still had a few moments where my vibrato disappeared, but I felt so much more relaxed this time and had a lot more fun playing. It was sheer relief to finish and know that I won't have play the Popper again...for a long time.

My teacher came, with his family. He said that when his 6-year old daughter heard us start the Popper, she said, "I know that piece!" He said our ensemble playing sounded good - yay! My mother is visiting from California, and since she is 82 I'm not sure that she will want to travel here again any time soon. It was very special to have her listen (and I told her that it doesn't matter how old children get; moms have an obligation to attend their kid's performances ). Some of my friends came to listen - I love that! I think having them in the audience made me relax more; I like playing for friends and family because they're already biased and will give me the benefit of the doubt!

I'm so glad we decided to peform the Popper with the orchestra - my teacher was commenting when I left my lesson last night that over the past months as I've been getting ready to perform that my playing has improved a lot - the nice thing about a goal and deadline!

Now for the next deadline, the concert for the Dalai Lama - in 11 days!

Concert! First Popper Performance!

2008-04-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

We played the Popper last night - first performance!

I don't remember the last time I had sweaty palms or the shakes before a performance...but I had both last night. But by the middle of the piece I felt a little more relaxed, and was feeling less of that out-of-body experience. I'm glad I had all of the hours of practice as a background because there were moments when I was playing on autopilot.

I've played it better in practice; in fact we've played it better in practice. I lost some of my vibrato during my solo bits, but we managed to stay together most of the time. My husband said that he could hear me over the orchestra, that was good!

The rest of the concert went very well. We played 3 of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances (#2,#3, & #4); Vaughn Williams' Norfolk Rhapsody; the Popper Requiem for 3 cellos; and Kallinikov Symphony No. 1. I was exhausted at the end of it...the Kallinikov is a very tiring piece to play.

I want to play the Popper better for our second concert on Saturday! But what a relief...my debut with the orchestra is done!

Feast

2008-03-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

Today we had 6 of us, 2 violas no less! For a long time my Saturday chamber group has been 3 of us playing piano trios. I love piano trios but we were longing for a change, and I wanted to play the cello. It started last week when I was gone, but for some reason all sorts of people have found out about our group and are asking to join...

A new violist joined the group. She said that she began playing 7 months ago after a 20-year break. She fit right in and we are happy to have another violist. A string chamber group like ours can never have too many violas! The leader of the other group I play with on Sundays was able to join us today. He is the versatile person who plays violin, viola, and cello, and today he got to play each one (not at the same time, of course!). A new person, a flautist, came too. I felt bad for her. This group reads through music, sometimes not too much slower than speed, and she could not play with us. We had her double with our first violinist, but she spent most of the time sitting there not able to play. We slowed down one fairly easy piece quite a bit, to try to have her join in, but she couldn't keep up even at a slow speed. So, we went back to playing faster. I wonder if she'll come back...this shows how hard it is to find a group to play that is at the right level. This group has been so patient with me during my efforts to keep up. Everyone has been playing for a long time and playing with people who play better than me over the past 2 years has helped me improve my playing.

We started with string trios - a Beethoven Divertmento and a Schubert trio. Then our new violist came and we switched to a Mendelssohn quartet. Then another violinist came and we played quintets for the rest of the time. We played through some of the Schubert 2-cello quintet, the Vivaldi g-minor double cello concerto, and a Mozart string quintet (2 violas! what a luxury!). We played for a very long time today. It was so much fun! My fingers still hurt, though!

I just want to get home....

2008-03-20T19:27:00.000-07:00

I am stuck at the San Jose airport. The flight time kept creeping back...from 6:30pm to 7:30 to 9:00 and now about 10pm....meaning if we actually leave at the new time I'll get home around 1am. I'm exhausted from the week and really didn't need a severely delayed flight. For a while it wasn't even clear whether the airline could even get us out tonight. I tried to switch to a different flight but everything is sold out, even at the other nearby airports (San Francisco and Oakland airports aren't far away).

What really tweaks me out was that I wanted to take an earlier flight, but my manager switched a meeting that was originally scheduled for Friday to this afternoon, forcing me to stay on this extremely delayed flight...and then didn't bother to show up for the meeting. Aargh...

Sneaking off to Play the Cello....

2008-03-19T21:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a very busy week - my days have started at 5am and finished at 10pm, with the exception of Sunday, which started at 1pm and ended at 10pm. I am really tired - one more 1/2 day to go and then I can fly home.

It was a delight to play the cello with my friend! We both brought music, and of course didn't get to play through much of it, so we have a lot to look forward to if we ever get to play together again (and fantasize about playing together with better cellos!).

On Sunday her flight was late, so she hadn't arrived during the time we were going to play; but we managed to sneak away for a 1/2 hour and play! We played some of the de Fesch sonatas for 2 cellos, while she got used to her rental cello.

On Monday we snuck away for another 1/2 hour at lunch time and then again before dinner - playing through some of the Bartok duets (the ones originally written for 2 violins but of course arranged for 2 cellos), more de Fesch

Yesterday we played 2 movements from the Vivaldi double cello concerto, some Popper duets, and then tried to play a Haydn duet but were too exhausted to play any more. There never was enough time to play....

Today we were going to play, but work interfered for both of us and we were never free at the same time. I'm afraid that the little time we had to play was it for this trip; tomorrow we are both leaving as soon as the program is over. I need to rush back to my brother's house to drop off the rental cello plus other assorted stuff and get back to the office for one last meeting before I leave for the airport.

I brought orchestra music and the Popper Requiem to practice since our concert is now less than 2 weeks away. I managed to get some practice time in late at night, since it is now panic practice time to get ready for the concert.

Good thing I will have part of next week to recover and get back on my cello! And it will be nice to be able to sleep in this weekend...

The start of a busy week...

2008-03-16T09:27:00.001-07:00

It is the start of a busy week. It may be Sunday, but I have a full work day ahead, with the first meeting starting at 1pm, the next at 3pm, then a full evening ahead when the program that I am working on kicks off at 5pm. I expect to be completely exhausted by the time I get home Thursday night.

But there will be some time for cello! One of the people coming (well, actualy teaching) the program, is a cellist, but she lives in the Boston area. We have talked about playing together for over a year, but the challenge has always been how to get 2 cellos in the Bay Area. This week she has arranged to rent a cello from the same place where I rent the one I have here in the Bay Area...so we are going to play together! Hooray! I picked the cello up yesterday (she arrives today, when the place is closed), and later today will be transporting both cellos from my brother's house (where I stayed last night) to the hotel where we will both be staying for the rest of the week. I am really looking forward to playing with her!

I even brought a bow down with me; I haven't really liked the bow with my rental cello. Last night I played around with both cellos, switching between the 3 bows. It was fascinating to hear the differences between the cellos and the differences in sound with the same cello and the various bows. The bow that is paired with my rental cello is by far the worst bow - I now understand why I've disliked playing the rental cello so much.

The 2 cellos had very different sounds; the one my friend is renting has a much more mellow sound than the one I have, which was set up to be more powerful in the upper range. I'll have to try to mellow out the sound of my rental when we play together, which I was playing around with last night. I think it was a sign of the progress that I've made that I was able to even tell the difference in the sounds and even more to the point, begin to feel like I could control the sound even a tiny bit with my bow. Last week I was waffling about carrying a bow down with me for this trip, but now that I've had the chance to play with all 3 bows and the cellos, I'm glad I did.

I am going to be quite the sight when I arrive at the hotel! Suitcase, 2 cellos, computer, extra bow, and bag of stuff with things I normally leave at my brother's house - definitely not my usual travel light scenario!!!

Playing for the Dalai Lama

2008-03-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

During last week's orchestra rehearsal, our conductor mentioned that we needed to look for the invitation to play the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for the Dalai Lama.

There is a 5-day event in Seattle in April hosted by a group called Seeds of Compassion, featuring the Dalai Lama. For the last session of the 5 days, the organization is partnering with the Seattle Symphony to gather a mass orchestra and choir to play the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth. Our conductor said that Maestro Gerard Schwartz of the Seattle Symphony wanted 300(!) people from the community to play in the orchestra, so he has reached out to many of the area community orchestra and choral groups to assemble a massive number of musicians to perform.

We got the invitation today. I signed up, hoping that I'll be able to fit it into my work schedule. Who could resist playing not only for the Dalai Lama, but for Desmond Tutu as well? There will be one rehearsal the night before the event. Maestro Schwartz will conduct. I'm kind of giggly about all of this...if I actually do this I'll be able to say that I've played for the Dalai Lama!

Playing Nice with Each Other: Not!

2008-03-09T20:05:00.000-07:00

Popper rehearsal today: we are starting to sound pretty good when we're on our own; only 2 more rehearsals left with the orchestra before our concert. Playing with the orchestra is so different than playing with just the 3 of us. The first concert is in 3 weeks but I will be in the Bay Area all of that middle week, and will have to practice with the rental cello. I'm glad I have a week back on my cello prior to performing. It takes me a day to switch back to my cello.

I'm still trying to figure out why Cello1's advice rubs both me and Cello2 the wrong way. Her playing is incredible technically; she sounds great. I've learned a lot from her. Her advice is right - what she recommends does improve how we're playing the piece. We are definitely playing and sounding good because of her passion and insistence on how we should play. But there is something about the way she delivers the advice that sets me on edge (and from Cello2's comments after last week and this week's rehearsals, him too).

Today's advice to me was about vibrato. She kept showing me how my vibrato was wrong and then demonstrating how it "should" work. She also wanted me to time my vibrato so that I did 4 vibrations per 32nd note. Now, those of you who have been reading my previous posts may have read about my trials and tribulations with vibrato - I can barely keep my vibrato steady and keep it going through a long note, much less control how many I am doing per beat! We went through some of my bits a few times, with her correcting me every time (showing me what I was doing wrong and then demonstrating how to do it 'right' saying each time, see, it sings better this way or see, it sounds better when you do it this way). I was definitely trying, but...I really need some time on my own to practice. Cello2 got even more of a lesson, on bowing - she kept telling him that he wasn't bowing sections of his solos correctly, and she showed him how she thought they should be bowed (saying, see, this is how to make a beautiful sound) and then kept making him play it over and over again, even after he said, I'll practice it this way this week...

I know we're playing the piece better because of Cello1, but it has been so darn unpleasant. Neither he nor I have any desire to play an ensemble piece with Cello1 again. Ever.

New Strings!

2008-03-08T16:36:00.000-08:00

I changed my strings today! I'd forgotten how wonderful new strings sound. It was like I'd suddenly improved a lot - all just from the new strings! I use Larsen soloist for my A & D strings, and Piastro Permanent for the G & C strings. The strings had been sitting there for a few months waiting for me to take the time to change them. Actually, I decided to wait until a few weeks before our concert. I need all the help I can get!

Yesterday at my lesson we continued to work on improving the form of my left arm and worked on using it more, especially for speed work. It's amazing how good form improves tone. We were laughing about why my teacher hadn't gotten me to do this before. I feel like I've been constantly making changes to improve form, and I suppose that I haven't been ready to work on this part of my form prior to building up form and technique with other things.

Chamber group this morning was fun. We had a piano quartet again, although people straggled in during the morning. Cello2 (who I'm playing the Popper with) arrived first, so we spent some time reading through some Offenbach cello duets, Op. 52 Nos. 1 & 2. When our violist showed up I switched to the piano and pretended to be a violin for a Hiller string trio. When our violinist showed up we read through a piano quartet by Novak. It had some good moments; the 2nd movement was nice; the 3rd movement felt like a counting exercise (it kept changing from 6/8 to 3/4 to 6/8 to 2/4 to 6/8 to 4/4....so keeping together was pretty challenging). After that I pretended to be a violin again. Our violinist had found a (or perhaps I should say 'the') Puccini string quartet, so I played violin 2. The quartet was pieced together from a variety of manuscripts. He apparently wrote the quartet as a student composition, and none of it survived together. There was even an alternate version of the trio in it. We really liked the last movement of it. Once we finished that we were done for the day.

Dances with Cello

2008-03-02T19:22:00.000-08:00

Today we rehearsed the Popper Requiem, and the tip of the day was about moving with our cello. I tend to be rather stiff when I play, not freely moving around and dancing with my cello.

My attempts to dance with my cello are much like my attempts to dance in general: stiff, awkward, and rather uncomfortable. But when I loosened up a bit I could hear my tone singing in ways that it hasn't before.

So do you waltz, foxtrot, tango, rhumba, or just plain get down with your cello? This week I'm going to try to become a better dance partner with my cello!

Random Notes to Start the Month

2008-03-01T19:56:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted - I've been really busy at work and still commuting to the Bay Area nearly every week. Although I heard what I think is good news - tight budgets mean that we have to cut our travel budget - meaning that I hope I get to stay home a bit more!

Today our violist came for the first time in 15 months! She hopefully is cancer-free - she's now in the clear after a year of surgery, etc. It was really good to have her back. We played piano quartets. Mendelssohn Op 1; he had to have been a very young child when he wrote this piano quartet but it already sounds like him. Not a mature (ha! as in 15 years old!) Mendelssohn but most definitely him. We also played the Arthur Foote piano quartet that I've been eager to play for over a year. The slow movement and the last movement of it are spectacular, and the whole piece was a lot of fun to play.

I had a week where I felt like I didn't make much progress, even though I had my usual amount of practice during the week (not enough!). We worked on vibrato again. My teacher had me make some changes to my left hand position, so that when I place my fingers down I am using my arm more to get my hand in position, not hovering over the fingerboard putting fingers down like playing the piano. It was tough trying to figure out how to change my perspective of how my arm/hand/fingers reached for notes, but after a while I finally could do what he asked for a short period before I would lose it. It really helps with speed - I found that I could articulate notes much more cleanly and faster during a fast descent down the A string when I thought about using my arm. It also helps my vibrato.

Tomomrow I will miss my chamber group in order to get together with the other 2 cellists to rehearse the Popper. Hopefully this time my vibrato will be better than the last time we played it!

Shake Shake Shake!

2008-02-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

Last night I told my teacher about the 2nd rehearsal we had playing the Popper Requiem with the orchestra. We were all louder, and hopefully can get even louder. I felt like my volume compromised my tone, and my vibrato pretty much disappeared. For a long time I've had a problem with vibrato that I've known about - that I'll start a long note with vibrato, but then I'll stop doing vibrato before the note ends. Plus I haven't been happy with my vibrato anyway--it's always sounded a little tight and felt very uncomfortable. It's that pat your head and rub your tummy thing, I think. Now seemed like the perfect time to start fixing my vibrato problems!

So, we went back to something he had told me a while ago but finally clicked. Funny how many times this has happened during my cello journey (like we joke...everything we need to know about playing the cello is in Suzuki Book 1). He told me to concentrate on doing the vibrato from my arm, not my fingers, and to remember to keep my bow arm relaxed (as I've been working on for the last few weeks to get my volume up). Shake shake shake from the arm! And it worked...I could hear my tone warming up, and for the first time my vibrato looked, sounded, and felt pretty good.

I played the Popper during my lesson concentrating on vibrato...my vibrato got better but my bowing and timing went haywire...so I'm going to spend time this week trying to pull things back together and concentrate on shaking....from the arm.

meaning... practicing my F# minor scale with lots of vibrato. Today I started doing a shortened version of my shifting exercise but practicing doing a lot of vibrato as soon as I land the shifts...and everything I'm playing this week gets a lot of vibrato whether it requires it or not. I need to burn that shaking feeling in all sorts of positions on the fingerboard into my brain....the next thing that I want to become automatic!

Random Collection of Happy Things from this Week

2008-02-10T16:59:00.000-08:00

--My mother has found a new place to live. She has been in her apartment for about 2 years, after selling the house she and my dad bought not long after they were married and where she lived for 50 years. When we were visiting over Christmas, we had the conversation with her about moving to a place with independent and assisted living...it was much easier than I thought it would be. I'm thankful that she's in good health, but cleaning, cooking, and climbing stairs is getting to be quite difficult for her. She started looking a few weeks ago, and found a place that looks like it will work out very well for her. What a relief. Once she gets dates, etc. we will have to figure out how to get down there to help her pack and move. I'm sure it won't be as traumatic as cleaning through 50 years of things, but I know it will be stressful for her nonetheless.

--A good Popper rehearsal today! I was playing much louder than before and the others liked it and wanted me to play even louder. I also got some tips on how to play my solo parts; need to practice what I learned today. Cello1 told us some stories of her cello journey; including having to overcome her grandfather's objection to girls putting a cello between their legs to some of the national-level competitions she won.

--A really fun end of Saturday chamber group. Piano trios again, with one cellist who doesn't come very frequently. She stayed afterwards so that we could play Scottish and Irish tunes from Renata Bratt's Celtic Grooves for 2 cellos. What fun!!! We alternated playing rhythm and melody on each tune. She started telling me about some of the groups in the area and promised to send links so I could figure out if I could actually make it to a session. She also told me about a week she spent in Canada, on a train, that was a musician's week - Alastair Fraser was on it and she said there were jam sessions in every car every night. Now that sounded like an amazing week...

Louder, part 2

2008-02-02T13:19:00.000-08:00

I've been spending this week's practice concentrating on playing louder. At my lesson last night I told my teacher that while I was playing louder, I didn't feel very relaxed. So we spent the lesson working on loud, fast, and relaxed. I'm just playing the F# minor scale these days because of the Popper, so he had my play the scale progressively faster, but using a lot of bow. One point of this was to get me using lots of bow, be loud, but not worry about intonation. The other task was to use more bow at a higher volume and faster than my current comfort level. Also, he wanted me to disassociate my bowing from my right hand. It was actually harder at some of the middle speeds because I was still trying to hit the intonation. Oh, and I was supposed to be relaxed too. Oh, yes, use lots of bow on a consistent basis. Once it got too fast for me to hit the notes and I concentrated on my bowing, my tone actually seemed to get better. We also noticed that on the up bows I don't bite into the string enough when I switch directions so the bow has a tendency to slide across the string - something to work on fixing. Maybe one of these years I'll actually get notes, speed, and tone all at once!

The next exercise was even more useful. We pulled out the Popper and he had me play a passage. Then he said, ok, now we're going to have a conversation. Talk to me while you're playing; don't worry too much about rhythm and notes. What was amazing was that my right arm immediately relaxed, and my tone sounded much better. The parts that I know very well sounded fine, and if there was a part I didn't know very well, our conversation suffered (now it wasn't a deep philosophical discussion, just talking about my day) while my mind tried to think about what I was playing. After that I played through the whole Popper piece with that same relaxed feeling, and while I muffed up some sections, from a tonal standpoint it sounded the best that I've ever played it!

Now if I can only be that relaxed all of the time! I played this morning with our violinist, just the 2 of us, and we played through 3 B. Romberg violin/cello duets. It was really fun. Then she switched to the piano and we played through the Schubert Arpeggione sonata. I am planning to work on it next...it's one of my favorite pieces. My loud exercises are at least working...I can now easily play at a volume level over the piano (a year ago I couldn't play over the piano) but I know I wasn't relaxed enough since my right hand was sore after playing today. Loud AND relaxed....Loud AND relaxed....Loud AND relaxed!

The First Playing of the Brahms Piano Quintet!

2008-01-28T17:16:00.000-08:00

No orchestra rehearsal tonight! We got 3 inches of snow at our house, which doesn't sound like much, but my husband could not get his car up the hill today. He ended up taking my car, effectively keeping me at home all day. It is icy and snowy outside and our conductor emailed us all saying that he was stuck at home because of the ice on the hill by his house. So now I don't feel guilty about having to miss orchestra.

Yesterday I got to play with my Sunday chamber group - Cello2 has a bad cold and cancelled our Popper practice. Everyone in the Sunday group was really happy to see me! The cellos show up early so we can play cello-only music before the rest of the group arrives. We started off with a 3-cello piece by Beethoven. It was an arrangement of a 2-oboe + english horn piece. Now I don't remember what it was but we didn't get through all of it and will finish reading it the next time I'm there. My part was completely in tenor clef and it was challenging reading the thumb position parts in tenor way up there...

When the others showed up I switched to the piano and we (finally!) played through the Brahms Piano Quintet. Wow! It is very challenging for everyone. I finally got to find out which sections of it I don't know well enough to fake. The rest of the group did an awesome first reading. We had to stop and restart and figure out who was playing with whom (or not). The rhythms were challenging too - lots of 2 against 3 or 3 against 4, and lots of triplets where the first note of the triplet was a tied note from the previous beat or a rest. When we finished the scherzo, actually all together, we all laughed with sheer joy and relief. If you hear a recording you can hear the straight 16th notes, but in reality the strings alternate who's playing so counting and being dead on the rhythm is crucial for playing that particular section (the piano is playing all the time but is all over the keyboard - and most of the time at the extreme ends of the keyboard). When we finished the last movement, again, there was lots of laughter of sheer relief. That did us in for the day - it's an exhausting piece. But everyone wants to work on it and play it again!

Louder

2008-01-26T19:40:00.000-08:00

I told my teacher last night about our first rehearsal with the orchestra. He asked me how it went. I told him that we all needed to get louder. So my lesson was mostly about how to play louder while staying relaxed. Easier said than done.

I have a bunch of new exercises to work on, to try to learn how to crank up my volume, stay relaxed, and not lose tone quality. There's no such thing as playing softly with an entire orchestra backing you up. My husband said that he can finally hear my cello all through the house now, over the TV and over a whole bunch of other things on. I told him that I need to be even LOUDER.

We had another false start with my Saturday chamber group. We thought we would have a string quartet. And I thought, hooray, finally I will get to play the cello! But, our violist couldn't make it again, and our second violinist comes late. So for quite a while it was just our first violinist and me. She brought Beethoven violin/piano sonatas so we read through #3 and #4. #4 is really nice - worth doing again. I love playing the sonatas because the piano is an equal partner with the violin. #3 and #4 had early opus numbers but were very clearly not Hadyn influenced--very much Beethoven's own voice. Lovely pieces. We started #5 (the "spring" sonata) when our second violinst showed up. I stayed on the piano while they played a Bach double violin concerto. Then our first violinst did an awesome job of being the viola while we played some string trios - one by Schubert, a few movements of a Mozart Divertmento, and a few movements of a Beethoven string trio. She had to sit out when the viola part got too low for the violin, and there were a few times when we had to stop while she figured out alto clef but it was sure nice to have a little time on the cello. My tone has improved a lot as well as my reading ability and it was fun to hear how much I've improved.

As they were leaving I asked how loud we were during the Popper. They both said that all of us needed to be louder....I think only the strings could hear us and that the brass couldn't hear us at all. I've got to figure out how to make my cello project more sound...

First Popper Rehearsal with Orchestra!

2008-01-22T17:55:00.000-08:00

I wasn't expecting it, but last night we played the Popper Requiem with the full orchestra for the first time! The pre-rehearsal blog only had one entry, the Kallinikov Symphony #1 so I wasn't expecting to play the Popper and didn't bring my stand. My stand partner always brings his stand, so I've been lazy and never bother to bring mine. Since he's playing Cello 2, I had to borrow a stand for the Popper (at least I had my music!).

We faced the orchestra for this rehearsal so that the orchestra could hear what we were playing. Next time we'll face out as if we had an audience. Some of my observations:

1. I have to play louder! We did a bunch of runs through my solo part (more so that the orchestra could hear/practice their parts) and I was wondering how well my volume projected

2. We all have to play louder - but need someone to do a balance check on our volume together and with the orchestra

3. We cellists played together pretty much most of the time - no major gaffes - there are some bowing changes and volume changes we will need to make and of course we still need a lot of practice, but I think in general we sounded good. A lot of people came up after rehearsal to say that they liked hearing us and that they liked the piece.

4. I had fun! I wished I had played some parts better, but I know that my playing get better with more time/practice. Cello1 and Cello2 both said that they had performance nerves. I had some nervousness but midway through the first run I started thinking, This is so cool! Playing with an orchestra backing me up!!!!

I got used to playing for an audience during the 3 years that I spent playing the organ for my church..way back in high school...since then I've really enjoyed playing for an audience.

5. I really need to work on my solo bits and getting relaxed! Under stress I fall back to what I can do automatically and I don't have as many skills on "automatic" as I would like (many of those skills are what I wrote about in my previous post!) My playing quality rapidly deteriorates when I'm stressed out, nervous, or thinking too hard about some little detail..so I need to be loud and relaxed (and Sing! Sing!) I hope I'm not deluding myself into thinking my playing sounded better than what it really sounded like...

Random Practice Notes

2008-01-21T16:33:00.000-08:00

These past few weeks I've heard some random (or maybe not so random) comments about my playing that have given me new things to think about and work on during my practice time...

...my bow hold
I'm continuing to work on thinking about my hand following my arm, and on the equal and opposite reaction (to counteract the problem I have with my hand sliding towards the tip of the bow)

...my bow speed
At my last lesson, I told my teacher that I wasn't happy with the way I was playing part of one of my solo bits on the Popper Requiem. This has a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note, followed by a quarter note where I have to shift up to hit the quarter note. He watched me and said that I was speeding up my bowing when I was shifting. That darn right hand/left hand independence thing again! I've modified my shifting exercise this week to change the rhythm of the shifting but keeping the bow speed steady. Another skill to burn into my brain...

...controlling the rate of my vibrato
That was the other thing I told my teacher I wasn't happy about. It's the right hand/left hand independence thing again...and the overall coordination thing (you know, the pat your head and rub your stomach thing). Plus I can't seem to hold my bow speed steady and increase or decrease the rate of my vibrato. My right hand wants to speed up or slow down with my left hand. Sigh. Another set of exercises...

...starting a note
During our Popper rehearsal yesterday, Cello1 gave me a little lesson on starting a note...putting some pressure on the string and then getting it to vibrate immediately, but without the horrible scratching sounds that I sometimes make. My teacher has been saying the same thing...I think it's a skill that I can't do automatically yet...what happens when I start a note doesn't always feel like I have it under control, even though I am trying.

...and the previous week's Cello1 tip on bowing
She's been telling me, "Sing, Sing!!!" and finally told me to bow with a "Round bow, round bow! not straight...it's not natural!!" She showed me what she meant, and I've been practicing...and it's helped my overall tone. This week she told me that my solo parts sounded a lot better . I told her that I've been practicing round bows and she was really happy.

I finally figured out why she doesn't want to get coaching from my teacher...she believes that teachers are not useful to learning how to play well. I don't agree, but it did explain why she doesn't want to have my teacher listen to the 3 of us play the Popper.

Popper rehearsal notes
I think we have decided where we are bowing together and where we are not...we made some major bowing changes yesterday that improved the overall sound. Cello1 suggested fingering changes to both Cello2 and me on our parts; they were good suggestions but then she kept reminding us about the changes when we'd forget. Cello2 finally said, I need this coming week to practice the new fingerings and bowings...I'll have it changed by next week.

...And the Saturday Chamber Group
We were foiled again...Our second violinist is out with an injured finger. We thought our violist would make it but she wasn't able to and we were back to...piano trios. I love piano trios but am really looking forward to another configuration..plus we thought we would be able to play piano quartets or string trios and I have a piano quartet by Arthur Foote that I really wanted to play...maybe next week. I was looking forward to playing the cello but ended up on the piano. We played a Frederick Gernsheim piano trio (can't remember the opus...it just was loaded to the Eastman School of Music site) and it had a really hard first movement (rhythmically hard) but was really nice overall. Then we switched to Beethoven and played Trios #5 and #8. #8 was fun because it was a set of 10 variations.

...and the Brahms Piano quintet
I'm still working on it...playing bits and pieces of it when I can find time to practice the piano. I've been using a method that I read about from a link on Gottagopractice's blog - a flexible tempo - to learn the music - it really works. I've found that the sections that I've played through very slowly but concentrating on learning the music really well, that I'm able to speed it up much more quickly and accurately. I still only have small sections that I can play at speed, but more and more of each movement is starting to come together.

...and orchestra rehearsal tonight!
I missed last week's rehearsal; the first of this cycle...it was snowing so hard last week that I decided to drive home rather than stay at rehearsal. I even postponed my trip to the Bay Area for a day from Tuesday to Wednesday because I figured that it would be really icy...and for once I got lucky with the travel gods because the San Jose airport was closed Tuesday morning and I didn't have to deal with it!

My Bow Hold Post

2008-01-12T08:03:00.000-08:00

January is Bow Month at Emily Wright's blog.

I got a very helpful and detailed response from her about my bow quandary, which are 2 things - keeping my thumb curved and keeping my hand from sliding towards the tip when playing.

I've been trying to keep my thumb curved. What I've noticed is that there are times when I play when I'm not thinking at all about my bow hand, but it is relaxed and I can tell it's ok. But, there are times when I don't notice that my thumb has straightened out. A lot of this battle seems to be the figuring out how to have a heightened sense of awareness of what my hand is doing but not really be thinking about it. When I start obsessing over my bow hand (or anything else) I tend to tense up, and then I make the problem worse.

In fact, that's another dilemma. During a practice session I can stop, shake my hand out, reposition my hand, try to relax, and begin again. I can't do that during a reading session or during a performance. I think that's a skill I don't have yet - being able to figure out that I need to make an adjustment and then be able to make the fix on the fly, especially when my hand has migrated.

Yesterday, my first practice session after getting the tips, I tried hard to think about an opposite and equal reaction with my hand, and about having it follow my arm, to try to fix the sliding hand problem. Like all of the changes and adjustments I've been making to my-bow-hand-that-is-a-work-in-progress, I think it's going to take a few weeks before I will be able to tell how much this approach helps - and if it doesn't I will be knocking again on Ms. Emily's door (metaphorically speaking!)

I really liked what Emily said about spending time on basic technique. I've tried to do that with one thing every week since I started playing. Even though I will be working on multiple things, every week I pick one thing that I will spend a lot of concentrated time on making better...like the shifting exercise I wrote about in a previous post. During my lesson yesterday my teacher remarked on the improvement I've made on the Popper Requiem from the concentrated work I've done on shifting since the last lesson I had before Christmas. My goal with spending that concentrated time is to burn the correct technique into my brain so that I don't have to think very much about it when I'm playing. I spend quite a bit of time sight-reading music with my various groups and my philosophy is that the more skills I have that are 'automatic', the better I play pieces where I don't have the luxury of practice time.

I've found that by spending a week or a few weeks on that one thing, other parts of my playing improve too. What do all of you do? What's your practice philosophy?

Popper practice

2008-01-09T14:11:00.000-08:00

Since orchestera was still on break Monday night, we got together to practice the Popper Requiem. Now that our dates to play it with the orchestra are set, for the next series of concerts at the end of March and beginning of April, we know we need to practice regularly.

It was a productive session, with good progress and a lot more that we need to make to be concert-ready. We played through it multiple times, and spent a little bit of time starting to discuss bowings, entrances, endings, and ensemble-related things. There are some things that you can't practice alone. I definitely need to work on playing out on my solo bits. I was really happy that I played my sections with 32nd notes pretty well (the piece is in a slow 3/8 but the shifting on the 32nd passages is very tricky). Cello2 and I really need to practice the bit where we're together on a run of 32nd notes. We were together rhythmically most of the time, but we need to work on our intonation while playing together. The piece is in F# minor, and since I'm cello 3 I play a lot of F sharps on the C string. I am still having trouble with the intonation of the F sharp. Many times I come in after the others are playing and tuning it to them is really hard. But all in all, for a first rehearsal it went well.

There were 2 weird incidents during practice. I've written about Cello1 in another post, about Cello1 absolutelty having to play the first part (of course she's playing cello 1 for the Popper!). She also has very definite ideas about how the piece should be played...she spent time correcting Cello2 and my fingerings and bowings, which wasn't a bad thing. I appreciate her passion about playing the music, but on the other hand, she won't really listen to our ideas about how sections should be played.

Weird incident #1: The last phrase has Cello1 and Cello2 playing a figure together that goes "daaaaa..da.dummmmmmm". I simply play "daaaaaaaa.dummmmmmm". The "daaaaa..da" is written as one beat long and the "dummmmm" is held until we stop playing. We spent a lot of time arguing about the rallentando at the end. Cello1 kept playing the "daaaaa..da" 2 beats long during every run through. The first time we all did different things. The second time Cello2 and I listened and we followed her lead. Later, Cello2 said, well, there should be a rallentando at the end of the piece but I don't think it should be 2 beats long...we've followed you and stayed together which the most important thing, but I think 2 beats is too long, especially since there is no 'rit' written in. Cello1: Oh no, it has to slow down like that. 1 beat is too short. I'm playing it right! Her attitude the whole time: "my way or the highway" Cello2 and I finally just said, Ok, we don't agree but we at least have to do it the same way every single time and let our conductor know how we're playing it because the orchestra has to follow us and we need to be consistent.

Weird incident #2: My teacher recorded all of the parts for us as practice files - 1 version with all 3 parts, and versions missing a part (1 and 2 only, 2 and 3 only, 1 and 3 only) so that we could have practice files. I also asked him if we could take one of my lessons as a coaching session, which he agreed to do. Cello2 has been enthusiastic about having him coach us. So, at the end of our session, when we were trying to set up future practice times, I said, We need to pick a Friday night some time to have a coaching session with my teacher. Cello1: Oh no, I don't want to do that. Cello2 and me: Flabbergasted. A little more discussion. Cello1: No, we don't need a coach. All we need is the conductor. (who, by the way, is not a string player). No budging from this position. Needless to say, at this point I don't think we're having a coaching session. Maybe I'll take Cello2 with me for one lesson and the 2 of us can get coached together.

Cello1 is an excellent cellist, and I have learned a lot from playing with her, and most of the time it's pleasant. However, I am finding these behaviors really disturbing. I think that if we actually make it to the concert without killing each other we'll be doing very well. I also think that I won't be trying to play with her again if I can help it!

the last amusing note - figuring out why we haven't practiced together much prior to this (besides the feeling like, oh yeah, it's so far away...which we don't feel now). We went through every week night. Monday night is orchestra, and we've tried to practice before rehearsal but it hasn't worked well, and I don't want to rehearse after because I leave on the first flight on Tuesday mornings and already don't get much sleep....which cut out Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the days that I'm gone nearly every week. Thursday nights Cello1 has rehearsal with her other orchestra. Friday night is my cello lesson. I don't remember when Cello2 has his harp lesson. That left Saturday and Sunday. Cello2 and I looked at each other and I said, either we (Cello2 and me) don't play on Saturdays or I don't play with my Sunday chamber group. Cello2 said, waaa, I want to play on Saturdays! Anyway, it looks like I'm going to take a short break from my Sunday group. No wonder we haven't practiced much together!

The Shifting Exercise

2008-01-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

This is a very tedious exercise, but has been paying off...the finger patterns are:

1-1
1-2
1-3
1-4
2-1
2-2
2-3
2-4...etc....

I have been rotating strings each day (A string yesterday, D string today, etc.).

I start on a high postion on the fingerboard...my teacher had me start in first position, but since I have had so much trouble placing fingers on other notes in other positions, I've been practicing from other positions (getting the practice hitting, for example, the D on the A string with any finger when my hand is not on the cello)

I then start the shift patterns, using a finger pattern described above. Say it's 1-2 on the A string; I do shifts on the same string from that high position (if I start from first position it would be B-D, B-E, B-F, B-G,etc....or by half steps...your choice but to the point in Gottagopractice's post, have decided where you're going so you know whether you've shifted to the right note). Then I move to the harmonic A and practice shifting back on the A string...harmonic A back to the B in first position, harmonic A back to C, and so forth.

Then I do it again from both high and low positions but this time switching strings...on the A string I can only shift to the D string. When I'm on the D and G strings I shift to strings on both sides. In this case I usually play octaves, just so that I can hear whether I've shifted to the correct position.

Okay, now repeat with the next finger combo! With 16 possible finger combinations you do this shifting exercise many, many times...so it is very tedious. Some days I start with my 4th finger because I've found that by the time I get towards the end of the exercise it is really hard to concentrate on doing the shifting correctly and I really want to be done with the exercise. Oh, and don't forget the replacement shifts (shifting fingers but same note on same string) with each finger pattern combo.

During all of this I am trying to remember to keep my fingers on the string. Because I spent so long playing the piano before starting the cello I have a bad habit of lifting fingers and not keeping them down (well, it works on the piano!). Also, when you place fingers down or remove them matters...I've found that when I miss a note when shifting it's because I didn't put my fingers down (or remove) soon enough.

I've been doing the same bow stroke when and making sure I hear the glissando when shifting on the suggestion of my teacher, so that I can hear that I've placed fingers down, He did also suggest that I practice different bows and practice shifting without the glissando so that I practice shifting cleanly. I haven't been good about the different bows, and I also have been rather random about whether I shift with or without some sound in between the shifts. I suppose I could get even more anal about it...but this whole thing is long enough as it is. Perhaps I'll just rotate things...glissando one day or with certain fingers, or no glissando.

Whew! that was long, almost as long as the exercise! But as tedious as it is...it really pays off. Yesterday with my Sunday chamber group, we started with 3 of us playing cello (us cellists have started getting together early to play multiple-cello music together). For some reason we started playing The Swan. For the very first time I hit every single shift perfectly and felt very confident as I was playing it (oh yes, different finger, different string! oh! different finger, same string!)

The Case of the Missing Rosin

2008-01-05T19:06:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I needed to put some rosin on my bow, but, the rosin had disappeared! How could it have vanished into thin air? My cello has been home for a few weeks...and the rosin was last seen in its normal resting place on my piano.

But aha! I put my thinking cap on...On New Year's Day I decided to put away the Christmas tree and decorations. I put our tree in my music room because it has doors that close, keeping curious kitties away from ornaments.

With that clue, I nagged my husband for a few days to take the boxes down from their storage spot in the garage (why couldn't I do that..don't know...think that it's a husband job to store things in our garage..) This morning he got the boxes, and after opening and pulling out decorations from carefully packed boxes, I found the rosin, hiding at the bottom of a box. Case solved!

I found the rosin just in time to play with my Saturday chamber group. We've been on a long break, and hopefully this will be the last week for piano trios. Our violist is finally healthy after multiple surgeries and is planning to start playing with us again next week. Our 1st violinist got to my house early, so we started by playing Romberg violin/cello duets. I was really happy that the intonation and shifting work I've been doing has really helped--my sound was cleaner than it's been. I was happy that we didn't play too long because my right thumb is pretty torn up and holding a bow is painful, even wrapped with a bandage. I've had to cut back practicing time because of the pain.

Once our other cellist arrived I switched to the piano and we started with Beethoven Piano Trio Op.1 No.l, and then read through Trio No2. No.2 sounded like it had a lot more influence from Haydn. The first trio was probably a student composition, but wow--genius from the beginning! We took a break from Beethoven and read Trio No.1 by Arensky, a romantic work with a really beautiful slow 3rd movement. The other movements were really rough for me...much faster and many more opportunities for me to screw up (with 10 fingers to make mistakes!). We finished our session with the Beethoven "Archduke" Piano Trio. Wow! That was more than enough for a day!

I've been practicing the piano part of the Brahms Piano Quintet in the hopes of playing it some day with a group...I've told both of my groups now that my goal is to play it with them...what I need is time and right configuration of musicians! Hopefully now that the new year has started we'll have more people show up. I don't have enough time to practice cello and piano...but the quintet is one of my favorite chamber music pieces and I've wanted to tackle the piano part for a long time (it is not very easy...)

New Cello - April!

2008-01-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

I have a delivery date for my new cello! It will be in April, when Chris comes to Seattle for the annual convention of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers. In fact, he is going to use my cello for the Players Meet Makers event. I am planning to go - how much fun will it be to look at cellos!

I won't have my new cello in time for the concerts when we play the Popper Requiem, but on the other hand I'll be practicing with my current cello and none of us (including me!) will have to adjust to a different instrument before we perform.

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T20:21:00.000-08:00

After a week's break from music it was sure nice to get home and pick up my cello. No lesson this week, so I've been having fun reading through music and playing mostly for fun (isn't that why I took up the cello in the first place?). Although I still am working on those interminable shifting exercises...

It's hard to play the piano after a few glasses of champagne.

We have concert dates set for the Popper Requiem...guess I need to step up practicing it.

We learned how to make tamales from a Mexican-American grandmother - wow they were good. She taught me how to make "red sauce" - here I was thinking that it was some secret recipe that took hours to make, and it took all of 5 minutes to make and was incredibly delicious...

Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rat, begins February 8th.

I'm on page 810 of 1474 pages of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy and am trying to finish it before I have to return it to the library.

Happy New Year!

Heading Home for the Holidays

2007-12-23T19:57:00.000-08:00

I'm glad we decided to leave tomorrow morning for, yes, the Bay Area! As if I don't get enough of it for work. Everyone at work laughed at me when I told them that I was coming back down for the holidays. Last week was so hectic for both of us that nothing got done, so this weekend was a frenzy of baking, cleaning, putting together gifts (including the results of the frenzied baking) for our neighbors, and organizing for the trip. What is it about going away for a week that makes me think that I have to clean something that hasn't been cleaned in months?

Our groups didn't meet this weekend. I think everyone is in a similar situation with family and holiday events. I had my last lesson for the year on Friday. The funny thing was that since I was home this week and am on a break from all of my groups, I had about as much time to practice as a normal week, even though my previous lesson was on Monday. This week's lesson was on shifting, so I have added a long set of shifting exercises (same finger, same string; different fingers, same string; different fingers, different strings; same finger, different string) in all sorts of configurations. I have to fight my piano training to keep my fingers in contact with the string.

I brought my cello over to our next-door neighbor's house last night. Her parents are visiting, and I brought my cello over to bring them all some Christmas music. It was so much fun. They started requesting different carols, and it was so much fun to start playing what they wanted to hear. The only one that I had a little trouble with was Silver Bells. Let's see...I played What Child is This?, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Away in a Manger, We Three Kings, Joy to the World, O Holy Night, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, O Tannenbaum, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, ...can't remember what else. I really enjoyed watching them...it is such a pleasure to watch people enjoy listening to music. And it was so much fun to hear them say "can you play ...." and then to just launch into it.
Hmm...should have played Silent Night and O Little Town of Bethlehem! It definitely got us all in a holiday mood!

Good Vibrations

2007-12-18T15:50:00.001-08:00

I had my lesson yesterday rather than last week, since I had to be in the Bay Area for most of the week. I came home late Saturday night and am still exhausted from last week - leaving at 5:30am and returning at 10pm after work-related evening events wednesday, thursday, and friday nights. It was pretty tiring and I'm still not quite recovered.

But back to my lesson report. I thought I wouldn't play very well given the nearly non-existent amount of practicing I had done over the week on the rental cello I have in the Bay Area, but I had a good lesson anyway. We worked on getting the strings to start vibrating quickly and with a lot of vibration when I cross strings at different volume levels - this week I'm practicing stopping, getting my bow in the correct position on the next string, then working on grabbing the string, moving it, and getting the vibration going fast (without funny extra sounds like scratching). We did this with my part on the Popper Requiem, and I could hear the difference in sound. Now one of these days the goal is to be able to do this without stopping in between notes! At least I'm working on getting muscle memory in the right places.

For the past few weeks I've also been working on some intonation exercises that my teacher gave me, there are a lot different ones and I've made up some of my own, but the basic goal is to teach me how to get to the same note with different fingers from different places - like from my hand not even on the cello, on a different string, or shifting from one finger to another. It seems like it should be much easier than it is to hit say, the G on the D string that you would play with your 4th finger if you are in 1st position, with any finger (1, 2, 3, or 4) when starting from off the cello or from the harmonic on another string or just shifting. The exercises are quite tedious but it is awfully irritating when I don't hit the note correctly!

Our Sunday group was 3 of us - the rest of the group was playing a concert with their other orchestra (I'm one of the few in the group who plays with just 1 orchestra!). We started with 3 cellos and had a lot of fun playing music for many cellos. This time we rotated who played cello 1, complete with a lot of jokes about "oh, but I have to play the first part!" I was really happy that I was able to actually sightread and play one of the Klengel pieces we played - the cello 1 part was completely in tenor and treble clef! After that we switched to piano trios - our host is very versatile; he plays violin, viola, and cello, so he got out his violin, and I got on the piano. To honor Beethoven's birthday we played the Archduke Trio and part of the Trio #8 op121 (set of variations). We were going to read through the "Ghost" trio until I discovered that I had printed the violin part twice and we were missing the cello part. Oops.

Holiday Concert #3

2007-12-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

Our orchestra had its third and final holiday concert yesterday. The venue was new for us and we will be using it for 2 more concerts this season. We should have gotten there earlier and played a little bit before the concert. The sound balance was so different (but much better!) than where we practice but it took us a while to adjust to the difference. The woodwinds and brass sounded so much louder from where we were sitting. My husband said that the balance sounded good and that we sounded better in the church. I thought we didn't play as well as we did on Monday night. Our ensemble playing suffered a bit during the first piece (Warlock's Capriol Suite) and got a little better when we played the Karelia Suite. After intermission we were fine.

There was some confusion with times with our harpist, so she wasn't able to be at the concert. The harp is a crucial part of The Waltz of the Flowers, especially the gorgeous harp solo at the beginning of the piece. So, here we are at a concert where we're playing the Nutcracker Suite and we don't have a harp. We were all wondering what was going to happen. She started coming to rehearsals a few weeks before the first concert, so up until she came, we'd listen to our conductor say, "Harp, harp, harp, harp, harp..." and then cue us in. It got to be a joke; however, quasi-singing "harp, harp, harp" wasn't really going to be the right thing to do in a concert. Well, thank goodness for technology. We already had an electronic celesta, so our conductor programmed the harp part in, and cued in our keyboard player to "play" the harp parts. He did this with no rehearsal, and we didn't even know what he was going to do. Our "harpist" got a nice round of applause at the end.

Now we're on break until the new year.

So Much Effort to Make It Seem Effortless

2007-12-08T08:12:00.000-08:00

"Loosen your wrist"
"Try not to accent the down bow - play evenly"
"Play it this time with this pattern...[demo].."
"Pluck the string when you are lifting fingers off, especially before the open string - get that vibration going"
"You're a hair late when you cross a string - you probably are getting there at the right time but you need a little extra time to get the string vibrating - you need to compensate for that"
"Careful, when you shift you are slowing down your bowing just a little bit - disconnect what your right hand is doing from what your left hand is doing"

I'd spent the week working on playing sixteenth notes - prompted by the panic practicing I start doing 2 weeks before a concert. There is a long run of just sixteenth notes in the second movement of the Karelia Suite, and I wasn't happy with the way I was playing it. I hadn't worked on playing fast passages in a while and it was time to circle back to work on playing fast. So many things to think about (see above list for some of the advice from my teacher!) and when I do one thing something else suffers.

At least for this week I got double duty out of the practicing - a little better on the 16th notes and preparation for the concert. Think I'll spend time this week trying to play arpeggios quickly - to tackle some of the shifting and crossing strings challenges...

I'm always so amazed at the uneven effort it takes to play something that sounds even (and hopefully effortless!)

Last concert is this afternoon - will post something about it later!

Bronzed Goddess

2007-12-07T17:09:00.000-08:00

It would be nice if "Bronzed Goddess" referred to moi. Unfortunately for me it is the name of my new pair of glasses. I picked out the frame without looking at the name and just looked at it today when I picked them up. Ah...marketing!

My Latest Excuse for Not Practicing: 3 Tons of Frozen Corn

2007-12-06T19:43:00.000-08:00

I tried to practice tonight but was thwarted by the blisters on my thumbs from helping to package 3 tons of frozen ears of corn on the cob. Our office volunteers once a year at the local food bank, and instead of sorting food this time, our job was to package up frozen corn. It was quite the assembly line, with people packaging 6 ears into a plastic bag, passing it to a set of us who were sealing the bags (squeeze all of the air out of the bag above the corn, twist the bag shut, push the bag through little sealing machine, throw to end of table, avoid getting hit by very hard bags of ears of corn flying by), which were then placed into boxes weighing ~ 25 pounds. I forgot my nice warm gloves and with only latex-free gloves on, my hands got very cold very quickly. I didn't feel the blisters until after we were done; I suppose that was one benefit of very cold hands. Nor did I warm up until much later today. I remember doing the corn thing a few years ago, but that time I was putting ears into bags and remembered my gloves. Tonight when I started to practice my fingers hurt so much that I decided not to push it and let my hands heal for tomorrow's lesson and Saturday's concert. I do hate to miss a chance to practice, since traveling and work eat up so much of most of my weeks (but I did get to stay home this week!!!!)

4 Inches of Rain Couldn't Stop This Concert!

2007-12-04T12:01:00.000-08:00

It was a wet and wild day in the state of Washington yesterday. After the 4 inches of snow at our house on Saturday it warmed up and a warm tropical front dumped 4 inches of rain in Seattle. Even a section of Interstate 5 between Seattle and Portland shut down last night, with the expectation of the river cresting today, covering the highway with 5 feet of water...

But snow didn't stop us on Sunday, and the rain didn't stop our show last night. Quite a few brave souls came out to listen to us play and we had a great concert! I love playing for a crowd! A very good friend of mine was in the audience. It really means a lot to me when my friends come to listen.

The program was:
Sibelius Karelia Suite
Warlock Capriol Suite
Traditional Slavic Christmas
Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite
Carol of the Bells
Canadian Brass Christmas (arrangement for full orchestra)

We were very tight through the Nutcracker, even during the mind-numbing cello parts of the Arabian piece...we managed to hang together during the carpal-tunnel parts of the Karelia Suite, and played one of the fast dances in the Capriol suite faster than we've ever played it in rehearsal, but it was together, light, and felt like a dance! When we finished you could hear a collective gasp of pleasure from the audience, then a smattering of applause (who came up with that rule that audiences aren't supposed to applaud between movements of a piece, anyway?) The orchestra has been getting better and better with each concert over the years...it's nice to hear us getting better.

concert report

2007-12-02T18:59:00.000-08:00

Our orchestra performed the first of 3 holiday concerts today, for the city of Redmond Festival of Lights. I was surprised at the number of people who turned out to listen as the weather was terrible - windy and rainy, after snowing yesterday and today. Seattle doesn't get much snow and so the area tends to shut down when it snows. Combine that with not much snow-clearing equipment, lots of hills, and temperatures that swing above and below freezing to produce a lot of ice, and you get...either gridlock or people who are smart enough to stay off the roads. I grew up in California and am not at all used to driving in snow, so I try to stay off the roads when it snows. I'm not afraid to say that I'm wimpy when it comes to driving in snow.

But back to the concert...it went really well. It was a short one; we only had an hour to play and we played together really well. The Nutcracker Suite was lovely, the holiday music was fun to play (with the exception of Sleigh Ride, which we all detest playing but is such a crowd pleaser!), and the audience clearly enjoyed it. Our orchestra has really improved over the past few years. We played the Nutcracker Suite a few years ago but nowhere near as well as we are playing now.

Tomorrow night is concert #2, when we add in the Karelia and Capriol Suites which we skipped today.