Great fun at the gig!

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

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.

the cello is not a violin

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...