Heading Home for the Holidays

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

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

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

"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!

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

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!

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

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.

Posting, finally!

Wow, it's been a bad month for posting! I've been absolutely innundated at work, where I am monitoring a contest (sponsored by work) where we are asking people around the world to submit ideas to us - the prize is funding for their idea. I've been monitoring the site along with 2 other people, posting comments, writing a blog on the site, answering email inquiries, and doing the first reading and evaluation of the ideas. It is amazing to see the creativity of people from around the world pouring out - we have hundreds of ideas submitted so far. This in of itself has been pretty time-consuming. Then I got another large time-critical project thrown at me, and so...well everything not work-related this month has suffered, including, to my sorrow, cello. I've been working every day since the contest started and it won't be over for months.

Tomorrow's orchestra rehearsal is dress rehearsal for a set of 3 concerts we will give starting Dec 3rd. I'm not sure how those dates crept up so fast and now I'm spending some practice time getting ready, including practicing what I have now nicknamed the "carpal tunnel suite", otherwise known as the Sibelius Karelia Suite. I continue to practice finger exercises and thumb-free bow holds, hoping that it will pay off. At least I can do some of the exercises without a cello, on a plane, etc... I've been practicing my part of the Popper Requiem; we've had a few rehearsals but will need many more to be ready for our concert date in late March/early April.

Today's rehearsal with my Sunday chamber group was weird. Recently another cellist joined us. She asked if we could join our group, and my input was that she is a "first cellist", but we decided to let her play with us for now and to see what happens. Our group jokes about what different attitudes first and second violinists have, and most of the jokes aren't necessarily that complimentary towards the firsts (our violinists take turns playing first violin, and play second violin the orchestras they are in). Those of you in orchestras probably know what I'm talking about! Anyway, today, since there were 5 of us there we decided to play the Schubert quintet. Our new cellist hasn't played it with our group before. As I was handing out parts, I said, well, I've been playing the first part when our group has been playing this so why don't you play second cello. She refused. Flat out refused to play anything but first cello. So, finally,I just said, ok, I'll play second. It was very strange...I didn't mind reading the 2nd part but everyone else in the group (including a few people who weren't there) is much more relaxed about which part they play and would have instantly taken whatever part they were given. I thought it was pretty weird, and so did everyone else when we were standing around talking after the other cellist had left. At least it wasn't just me who thought it was weird. All through rehearsal, too, she just assumed she would always play first cello. The other cellist who plays with us wasn't there (I adore playing with her) and we generally alternate parts - a much better system, in my mind, since one of the reasons why we're there is to have fun. Well, enough for the ranting. Back to reading what new thing we should be doing....

Look Ma! No Thumb!

My main exercise this week is to hold the bow without using my thumb. I'm allowed to put my pinky (curved, which I struggle with) on the top of the bow to keep it from falling. I am dropping this bow constantly, so I'm careful to keep my cello away and the bow over a carpet. I'm supposed to be doing finger exercises too, such as pushing the bow down with my pinky, but so far I am just struggling to hang on to the bow.

Seven Things

I was tagged by Maricello, another cellist and Renaissance woman and will share seven things that I hope you will find interesting.

1. I started playing the piano when I was four, and took lessons through college. In college I had the privilege of playing and studying on 2 period instruments, a square built in 1806 and a grand built in 1811 that was a twin to a piano Beethoven owned. Pianos have evolved so much over their history, really appealing to the geek in me. Mozart sounds edgy on these instruments, and I could feel firsthand why Beethoven broke pianos and why his music was really written for an instrument he didn't have.

2. My first job was becoming my church's organist and choir accompanist, a post I held for my 3 years in high school. I learned to enjoy playing for a crowd on limited or no rehearsal time, sight reading organ music (talk about a full body experience), and experienced every embarrassing thing that can happen to a performer (including the mouse that ran out from under the organ while I was playing, during one memorable service). My worst accompanist experience was playing for a blind singer - I couldn't tell what he was going to do at any given time!

3. When I was growing up, I wanted to become a famous scientist. But no, alas, I ended up majoring in mechanical engineering, indulging my love for figuring out how things work and my passion for technology. My first job was as a manufacturing engineer, where I got to shock machinists decades older than me that I was the engineer.

4. I love the job I have now - after going to business school and getting my MBA I did what many engineers do when they burn out of engineering - I went into marketing. After doing 4 startups, about 4 years ago I returned to a large company that had acquired one of my startups. I am on a team that figures out what internal startups to incubate. It really appeals to my love for looking at very new technologies and working with new businesses. Hence the travel that I whine about in my blog...

5. I love to swim, and met my husband while I was swimming with a Masters group. He had just joined the coaching staff of the swim club and, well, the rest is history. He has retired from coaching and doesn't like to get near a pool, but I am still swimming. I never was very fast, but for a while my competitiveness won out and I was always trying to go faster and set personal bests. Now I've mellowed out and I swim so that I can eat more. The slowing body metabolism that accompanies getting older is not very pleasant!

6. I've often had to do a icebreaker exercise with groups at work where each person tells the group 3 things about them, 1 of which is not true. The group then has to try to pick out the lie. I've fooled every group (did I say I was competitive?) into picking out one of my true statements as the lie. It is this statement: "I've swum across the Golden Gate." No group has ever believed this is true, but it is. No wetsuits; the swim was scheduled during ebb tide, and I remember flipping on my back when I went under the bridge just to take a look at it from underneath.

7. I love to travel (for pleasure) and have had the opportunity to see many parts of the world - Asia, Europe, Australia/New Zealand...with many more places on my list to go!


I found CelloDonna and MusicGal's seven things quite interesting, and you will too!

As it is my turn to tag others, I'd like to tag (hopefully they haven't already been tagged by someone else)

CelloGal - who lives in Scotland and blogs about her orchestra and other ensemble experiences;
Cello teacher Emily Wright - whose passion for cello and teaching inspires me and whose blog educates and amuses me;
Celliste - an aspiring cellist who lives in Singapore;
and Yarnplayer, a cellist who shares her experiences playing in a community orchestra.

The Gig Report

It's been quite a week. I'm not sure which direction is up at the moment. I thought I'd be able to stay home but ended up having to trek down to the Bay Area this week anyway. We're about to hit a major milestone on a project that has been on a whirlwind schedule, so by the middle of next week I hope I can take a little time to breathe. As a consequence I've had very little time for practicing or blogging.

The gig on Sunday had its ups and downs. I think it was because we had a really good rehearsal the week before. We didn't do a sound check before we started, a mistake, because it was a little hard to see and hear everyone; not a good thing for ensemble playing. On one piece we had a really hard time staying together and I got lost and realized later that the reason why I had so much trouble figuring out where to come back in was because the rest of the group weren't all playing together either. I finally pulled myself back in and we managed to end together which was a victory for that particular performance. We did play Copeland's Hoedown better than we've ever played it before - real tight together on the rhythms (which are very tricky!) and even had the audience clapping and stomping with us. The Bolling piece (flute and jazz piano) went extremely well; the flutist and I were tight the whole way through and I had fun swinging through my solo bits. The piano sounded ok, not well balanced volume-wise from bass to treble and with no sensitivity to touch - I had to pound the keys to get sound out of it. The pedal was fine though (I agree, Cellodonna, some pianos have awful pedals!) The group wants us to come back, though, so all in all there were more good bits than bad bits.

I hope I'll have time to play this weekend - work will definitely be taking over part of my weekend and I am hoping that it won't interfere with either one of my groups....

A Heavier Arm

The flight I took home yesterday was actually early. And I managed to work my schedule out to come home on an early afternoon flight, rather than in the evening. The bonus to coming home early was getting to see my husband, the kitties, and actually getting a little piano and cello practice in.

I'm as ready as I'm going to be on the piano for the Bolling suite - this morning I ran through it a few times and my solo parts feel very solid - I'm at the point where I can start thinking about how I want to play with each note or phrase while I'm playing. There are still a few rough spots, but they are going to be what they are. Our gig is tomorrow, and the flutist and I are meeting a little early at the venue to run through it before the gig, so we can get back in sync, and more importantly for me, so that I can try out the piano and find out what its idiosyncracies are. Every piano is different. Pianists have to play the instrument that is provided (unless, of course, you are willing to travel with your own!) and every one has a different feel and tone that can vary note to note, may or may not be in tune note to note, responds differently to things like fast repeated notes, and has pedals that engage differently. At least with the cello you bring your own instrument.

This morning it was just our first violinist and me. She's been nice about helping me get ready for the gig, but I was tired of playing the one piece of the Bolling suite that we're playing, so we played through the rest of the suite. Then we switched - she played the piano and I got to play my cello. It was really fun - we read through Schubert's Arpeggionne Sonata, which I love. We've tried to play it before, and I'm getting better and better each time. I had trouble with the 3rd movement, but then again, we were just reading through it. This was the first time that I've played it where I've felt that I could actually play it if I worked on it....during prior times playing it I've felt that many of the sections were beyond my level of playing. Then we read through a Klengel piece that I found (I think it was on the International Music Music Score Library wiki, which unfortunately as of Oct 13th has been taken down). It was titled "Three Mazurkas" and was a lot of fun to play.

My lesson this afternoon was good; we worked on increasing the weight of my arm and increasing the speed of my vibrato to get even more sound out. My teacher wants me to "kick up my playing another notch by getting another gear." I could relax and make my arm heavy to get more volume, or I could increase the speed of my vibrato. I have trouble doing both at the same time. Most cello skills seem to me to be some variation of patting your head with one hand and rubbing your stomach with the other, and then switching what you're doing very quickly. I guess that's the point of practicing...

At the Airport, Yet Again

In a twist on my usual wait at the San Jose airport, I'm stuck waiting for a flight at the Seattle airport. It's Alaska Airlines. It's late. That is my normal experience on an evening flight. I'm really bummed to have to leave tonight, in order to make it to an early meeting tomorrow morning. I try really hard to protect Monday nights so that I can make it to orchestra rehearsal. My worst showing was one cycle where I missed half of the rehearsals because of my travel schedule. This cycle I'll miss about once a month. The same with Friday nights, when I have my lesson, although I have to be in the Bay Area all week, so I had to reschedule my lesson to Saturday. Good thing it is bow and hand exercises, because they are easier to do on the road. I have a horrid rental cello and bow in the Bay Area, but I hate practicing and playing on it so as a consequence don't play as much when I'm there. Also, I'm usually pretty busy, since I cram all of my face-to-face meetings during the time I'm there so it isn't unusual to have a day that starts at 5am and ends at 10pm.

the other bummer is that my sunday chamber group is doing a gig on Sunday, and I don't have access to a piano when I'm in the Bay Area. The Bolling piece we're doing is really hard on the pianist - i've practiced and practiced my solo riffs. yesterday I rehearsed with the flautist and we fine tuned the transitions, entrances, playing in total synch with each other. It's a really fun piece but I am worried about not being able to play until Saturday - it'd be really nice to play it every day this week. oh well. Rehearsal was mostly getting ready for the gig.

looks like they might be ready to board us...thank goodness!

Flexibility and Suppleness - My Bow Hold Dream

It's been a busy week with a trip to the Bay Area and working on a large project with a tight timeline. I haven't had a lot of time to practice, but will be able to practice some of the exercises I got from my lesson without a cello.

This week's lesson was about bow holds. I've been trying to modify my bow hold yet again, to get a different position for my thumb. I'm trying to make sure it stays flexible and supple - much easier said than done. When I'm not careful it tends to slip back to a more straight, rigid hold, which makes it hard to produce a full tone.

My teacher gave me a lot of hand exercises - I tried some of them while on my walk this morning. I definitely do not have a supple, loose hand. When I practiced today I tried some of the exercises - moving the bow up and down with just my fingers, rocking the bow back and forth over my (curved and relaxed - ha!) thumb, lifting the bow with just my index finger and letting the bow drop on the string. I really feel like I've started at the beginning again. Well...maybe not. For kicks I shifted everything to the other side --- bowing with my left hand and fingering with my right hand (and moved the cello over to my right shoulder) -- now if you really want to feel like a beginner again you should try that! I don't know why I did it but after I attempted to play that way I felt better about my attempts to play normally - definitely it was much easier!

My teacher also asked me to practice relaxing and putting more dead weight into my arm - asking me to ratchet up my volume even more. That was easier to do than relaxing my right hand! It was nice to hear my volume come up even more than before - need to get better control over it - sometimes I would press to hard and the sound would get scratchy.

Chamber music this morning was ok - I was on piano again for piano trios. I'm only playing the piano about once a week so it's always a little painful to play. We started out with some Haydn trios to warm up (they are nice for warmup - if my fingers are in the right location on the piano everything is just under my fingers). Then we played Mendelssohn's C minor trio (we had a laugh when we started when for some reason my brain spazzed and I thought it was in C# minor and I had to stop and reset my brain to the right key). We played a trio by Rheinberger, and then Schubert's Nocturno (for piano trio - gorgeous)! before calling it a day.

The Cello Trial

I mentioned in the previous post that I was able to watch a world-class cellist (WCC) try out a Christopher Dungey cello.

First, we were in a concert hall so the acoustics were really good. WCC had her cello and 2 bows. Chris stood ready to make any change she wanted while she played. She started playing and immediately said that she didn't like the sound of the A string, that it sounded 'closed'. Chris jumps in and in a few seconds changes the string. She plays some more. The sound is still not open enough. Chris changes the A string again. She continues to play and makes comments about the sound from all of the strings. She also said she heard a buzzing in the G string and said, is it a soundpost problem? Chris jumps in and adjusts the soundpost. By the time she gets a combination of strings she likes Chris has changed every string at least twice, with 4 strings on the A and G strings. As soon as he found the right combination of strings you could see the delight in WCC's face and hear the sound of the cello open up. Of course, it all sounded amazing to me from the very start....

Then she started comparing - she'd play a short passage on the Dungey cello, and then play the same passage on her cello. When she picked up her cello, you could hear a noticeable difference in sound. The Dungey cello had a fuller tone and had more power, especially in the lower registers.

Then WCC decided that she wanted to hear the cello while sitting in the concert hall. So, she asked me to play the 2 cellos! Terror! Horror! Oh. No. First, I have to say that hearing the cellos project in a concert hall from behind the cello is quite an experience. I played bits and pieces of various pieces (badly) so that she could hear all of the strings up and down each string. I did this with both cellos so she could compare the sound. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy the experience of playing her cello and bow because I was so uncomfortable. Think master class but being completely unprepared.

When I was done (and oh I was so ready to be done!) she took back the cellos and gave me a quick lesson. I appreciate the kindness and the suggestions (they were good - I practiced later doing what she suggested and it really helped) but still feel the mortification of playing so poorly in front of someone who plays so well.

At the end of the session WCC also decided to switch endpins, to try his endpin in her cello (I wrote about the endpin in a previous post.) WCC had one of the tungsten carbide endpins (Emily Wright had a post about this endpin). This has happened every time I've seen this - as soon as she put in the ChrisP'IN endpin into her cello and started playing, she immediately said, "wow, this sounds better".

The whole session ended with us going out to lunch (bringing both cellos into the restaurant) and my getting to hear some wonderful stories of musicians, concerts, music, ...

Knocking on Wood

I have so much to write about the past few days that I think it's going to take a few posts. I got to ask a bazillion questions about how a cellomaker makes a cello with a phenomenal sound. I got to play one of Chris's newer cellos. I got to choose the wood for my cello (with a lot of help from Chris). I got to listen to a world-class cellist try out and evaluate Chris's cello in a concert hall. I got a quick lesson from her after she had me play his cello and her cello so she could hear both instruments in the concert hall (I'll write about what she did and how mortifying it was to play for her in another post!). I got to see the block of wood that will become the one-piece back of a cello Chris is building for another Very Famous Cellist (trust me, you all have heard of this Very Famous Cellist).

One of the basic questions I had was how do you know what kind of sound the blocks of wood are going to make as they get formed into the top and back of a cello? I got a real education about what Chris looks for - wood grain, density, split of the wood, and yes, he knocks on the wood to hear its sound. Every piece of wood he showed me had its own ringing sound when he (or I) would knock on the wood. This was actually one of the last things we did.

The first thing Chris did when I got there was to hand me a cello and watch me play. I played a cello he built recently (that the world-class cellist was going to evaluate) and student cello with identical dimensions to my current cello so that I could compare the dimensions of that particular cello with something familiar. (with the hassles of flying I only brought my bow). I'm not very tall, and my arms relatively speaking are short for my body. Consequently one of the things I've found difficult is putting a lot of pressure on the A string when I'm at the tip of the bow. So we talked about what he could do to make that more comfortable for me without compromising the sound of the cello. He watched and asked about what I wanted in neck thickness, what it was like to move into thumb position, and how the width of the cello felt along the lower bout. The questions he asked were related to choosing the model/pattern of the cello (this is for the top and back of the cello). I'm so glad that Cellodonna recommended John Marchese's The Violin Maker, which I read before this trip. After we spent a while distilling down what was important to me, he recommended a pattern that is close to (but not exactly the same) as the pattern that he is using for the Very Famous Cellist. It will have some characteristics similar to a Stradivarius cello, but will not follow it completely. He will build my cello from a pattern that will be my very own!

I'll write more about some of the things he is doing to make a finished cello sound amazing in my next post...

Weekend report

It was so nice to be home this weekend and to spend time playing music. As much fun as it was to be in Barcelona, missing out on 2 weekends at home really took it out of me.

Friday night's lesson was good. I had started working on exercises to loosen up my wrist, so we took a look at what I've been doing and my teacher made a few suggestions. Then we spent time looking at the 3rd cello part for Popper's Requiem. We are definitely going to play it with the orchestra, probably in March. I spent time this week playing bits and pieces of all 3 parts very slowly, to start burning it into my brain.

My Saturday chamber group finally met again - we've had quite a break with people traveling. There were only 3 of us, so I spent the whole time on the piano. Since I hadn't played the piano in a while it was a good workout. We warmed up with 2 Haydn piano trios, and then moved on to 2 Dvorak piano trios. We played an early trio, Bflat major, op. 21, and one in G minor (op. 26). I recognized the G minor trio once we started playing it. We definitely want to play this one again. Then we finished up with a piano trio by Fibich (it apparently was Czech composer day) and then we were finished.

My Sunday group is rehearsing for a gig in 3 weeks. The end was fun. For some reason every flautist I have ever met wants to play Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano. So, I am playing the piano for one of the flautists in the group. We're playing the first piece in the suite. Now I'm most definitely a classical stiff so jazz is tough for me. After the end of practice today we played a few of the pieces together (the first to rehearse and then the others for fun) and I think we sounded pretty good. In the limited piano practice time I have I've been starting the piece we're playing cold, with no warmup, to simulate what my hands will feel like when we perform it in a few weeks.

Tomorrow night is orchestra, and then on Tuesday I am off to Pocatello to go visit Christopher Dungey, to get started on my new cello! More on that this week!

Copying the Masters

It is so nice to be home. I even got to cancel this week's trip to the Bay Area so I'm home for the whole week! I got home Sunday afternoon around 4pm after being in transit since 6pm Saturday (that's when I left for the airport in Barcelona). I tried to play the cello when I got home but after days of very little sleep I really had a hard time playing and finally just gave up.

Yesterday and today were better. I had orchestra rehearsal last night and while I felt fine for most of rehearsal it was tough going to stay alert towards the end of rehearsal. With the time change it was as if I had been up all night. We played through Carol of the Bells, some of the Nutcraker Suite, the Karelia Suite, and the Capriol Suite, mostly the fast movements of the suites to work on speed and dynamics.

Today I got to practice and I started working on Popper's Requiem - I'm playing the 3rd cello part. I still don't know when we're going to perform it but I hope I have my new cello when we do! I spent time listening and then playing the Sarabande - both the du Pre and the Casals recordings that I have. I had to fight the urge to play it the way I wanted to - will have to do that later.

Trying to emulate duPre and Casals reminded me of the Picasso museum I visited in Barcelona. I didn't know that Picasso lived in Barcelona, and in fact, started art school there before finishing his formal studies in Madrid. The museum focused on his early work, and had many drawings and paintings that he did as a young art student. I didn't realize how good he was at the basics of human form, landscape, portraits, etc.; his talent and skill were evident from a very early age. Many of his student works were copies of great paintings. It made me think about how art students learn the basics of their craft by copying the masters. As I walked through the museum I kept thinking about how I could see him becoming Picasso, and for the first time I could see in his art the evidence of his training and his mastery of the fundamentals in his later works. As I tried to play in a similar style as Casals and duPre I kept thinking that I was doing the same thing - trying to learn how to play the cello by copying the masters, and that it would help me become more of myself playing as I master the fundamentals of playing this beautiful but difficult instrument.

Looking forward to home and cello

I'm sitting in the Amsterdam airport waiting for my flight home. I have a long layover here. There was a nice exhibit from the Rijksmuseum in the airport - 10 paintings demonstrating Dutch realism. I spent the last of my euros buying gifts since I don't think I'll be back in the EU anytime soon and it never seems worthwhile to keep exchanging money.

I really enjoyed Barcelona - it's a lovely city, with very nice people and great architecture and art. I came a few days early to look around but once work started up it was a nonstop, exhausting time until Saturday afternoon. I had time on Saturday to look around some more and there was a huge festival going on in town. I was told it is the largest festival in Spain, but no one could tell me exactly what it was for. Some saint. No one could identify which saint. The streets were packed with people of all ages, with music stages and booths everywhere. I love this part of Europe, everyone out walking and enjoying themselves.

I have become a big fan of Gaudi. He's certainly not to everyone's taste. On Saturday while touring one of his famous houses (Casa Battlo) one of my colleagues called Gaudi "a builder's nightmare" because of all of the curves and extraordinary tiled designs.

I would have posted a few more pictures but on Tuesday my phone was stolen while I was in the subway. I felt the bump and in the few seconds it took to register what had happened it was too late. Oh well. I was thankful that all was taken was my phone; one of my colleagues had his wallet pickpocketed. And I was grateful for the annoying security application that is mandatory on our phones (because we are given access to company email and corporate data from our phones we are required to run some security software) - there wasn't much that the thief could get to on my phone. With the magic of technology, once I got back to my hotel and onto my software phone on my laptop I was able to call my cell phone provider and freeze my phone. Now all I need to do is live with the inconvenience (how did we ever live without mobile phones???) until I get a replacement.

I'm going to try to play my cello when I get home. I really miss it...

Gaudi's cathedral

This panel on the Gothic side of the Sagrada Familia Cathedral contains the musicians in a Nativity scene. The cathedral is still under construction, with 30 to 80 years to go. Construction began in 1882, and it is amazing that the variety of styles of architecture and sculpture all seem to work together. Inside you can see stones and other materials being worked upon, as well as all of the construction scaffolding.

Gaudi Dragon

Gaudi designed this dragon, which is in Guell Park in Barcelona. After looking at some of his architecture I made the connection to the word "gaudy". I loved all of the curves, bright colors, mosaics, and variety of stone shapes; it's all so over the top but still works together.

My Inner Casals

I had a good lesson tonight - first I played scales on a single string with various 7th chords - every single key. My fourths were a little sharp and my fifths were a little flat, but by the end of 12 keys I was really hitting it well. I could hear when I was right with the chords - the reinforcement of tone was really nice.

Then we switched to the same thing we did at my last lesson, listening to Pablo Casals play the Sarabande from Bach's first cello suite. I'd been listening to it at full speed and a slower speed all week. Today we listened at a variety of speeds and would talk about what Casals was doing, then I would try to channel Casals and play what I had just heard. I had been doing this all week (well, at least when I had a cello, traveling makes it tough to play) and it was fun! At the end of one passage, my teacher said, "That was the best Casals I've heard all day!" Grin.

We ended by listening to a Jacqueline du Pre recording of Sarabande and starting to analyze it. Her version is much slower than Casals and she uses silent spaces between some of the notes more than Casals does - it's really effective. This is what I love so much about making music - every musician puts his or her own stamp on what they play.

Off to bed - leaving for Barcelona very early tomorrow morning - will try to post pictures from my phone while I'm there next week.

First Orchestra Rehearsal! and Our Fifteen Minutes of Fame!

Monday night was the first rehearsal of the season. We had 10, yes, 10 cellos!!! Yay cellos! During my first season we had 3 cellos, and the orchestra has grown in numbers and skill over the past few years.

We even got our 15 minutes of fame, with a full page photo and short article about our orchestra in Conde Nast's Portfolio magazine. I've never heard of the magazine before, but who cares? The photo was taken in June of this year, and the article is in the September issue..

Rehearsal went well, just reading music that will be in our December program plus starting work on a symphony we will play in March. We read through Sibelius' Karelia Suite, Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite, the Nutcracker Suite, Carol of the Bells, and the last movement of Symphony #1 by Kallinikov. It was so nice to hear all of the cellos!

I now have the 3 cello parts for Popper's Requiem; I will be playing it with our principal and one of the first cellos sometime. When? I don't know. Our conductor found the orchestra parts for it so now I think we're commited to playing it... The 2 other cellists get to fight over who plays 1st cello and I will end up with the 2nd or 3rd part. Woo hoo!

The Weekend Report

Our gig on Friday night went pretty well. Our whole group (9 of us!) doesn't rehearse together because of schedules - part of the group practices on Fridays and part of the group plays on Sundays. We also didn't do a good job of figuring out our program until Friday morning. I got some of the music Friday night. Oh well. I think we sounded pretty good in most cases and little rough in some spots. Two of the violinists played the first movement of the Bach double violin concerto and they were on fire! It was lovely listening to them. We played an eclectic mix of things - some Mozart, Copeland, an arrangement of "Hey Jude", a few rags, some Irish tunes - the audience appeared to enjoy it. One gentleman even came back; he listened to us that last time we played (the gig was part of a series of Art Walks that have been going on all summer). We've also had some other people inquire if we could play for them.

My lesson (moved to Friday morning) was interesting. I now have a CD with chords playing about every minute, some form of 7th chord (major, dominant, diminished..) in a variety of positions, in a bunch of different keys. The exercise I have this week is to play a scale or something against the chord, to really fine tune my intonation against the chord. One thing that I noticed when I was playing against a major 7th chord was that the 4th note in the scale had to be tuned down just a hair to sound good against the chord. The purpose of all of this exercise is to give me a chance to practice tuning against something else during practice time. The only time I get to do this is when I'm playing with a group, and I can't very well do this exercise with my groups.

The other exercise we did was taking Pablo Casals recording of the Sarabande from Bach's first cello suite (the G major one) and dissected the first few measures. This is a similar exercise that I wrote about in a previous post, for the Janos Starker recording of Bach's Arioso. Only this time I have homework (I hate homework!) - I'm supposed to listen to the Casals recording and mark up what I think he is doing - bow changes, dynamics, etc. - with the stated purpose of training my ear to listen better.

I think my objection is mostly to having to do the homework, not the actual assignment itself. And I don't mind practicing, either. I'm not sure what the difference is, but in my mind there is a difference.

Beautiful Bow with Unusual Frog!

I'm not convinced that the bow has a very unusual frog. That is the claim: check it out. The bow, however, is beautiful.

Now if only the bow were purple...

Amazing Acoustics, How Sweet the Sound!

Our Sunday chamber group meets at a member's house. He is in the middle of expanding his lab space, and right now what will be the lab is just a big empty room, all lined in concrete. We played in there on Sunday, and the acoustics were absolutely amazing. The reverberation of our instruments made it an absolute delight to play and to listen. We were all just giggling at how wonderful everything sounded. The only other time my cello has sounded so good was when my teacher added reverb to one of the recordings of me playing - he did it just to show me what my cello could sound like in a concert hall.

At first it was just 2 of us, and we played the 2nd movement of Vivaldi's g minor double cello concerto - I was just shivering with excitement to hear the slow movement with those wonderful acoustics in that room. When the others arrived they all said the same thing, about how amazing the sound was. We are getting ready for a gig on Friday, so we ran through some of the pieces we're going to play. Mozart's string quartet K387, an arrangement of Copeland's Hoe Down, and then, sadly, I had to leave early. I got to listen to a little bit of the others playing as I walked away, and wow, what a difference a space can make to the sound.

New Cello Anticipation, Oh, I Am So Excited!

I am so excited - I just heard from Christopher Dungey, the cello maker whose waiting list I've been on for a few years. I'm next on his list!!!!

To be fair, I've been waiting on his list because I wanted to improve my playing enough to be ready for a better instrument. I have a fine student cello that Chris set up for me. My current cello also has some of his inventions on it. One is a cable hanger assembly (attaches tailpiece to endpin). The other, and more dramatic improvement in tone quality, came from the ChrisP'IN endpin that Chris designed. I used a few prototypes of both the ChrisCABLE and ChrisP'IN on my cello before getting the final versions. Maybe sometime I'll write about what it was like to replace the cable hanger (I switched out a prototype to the final version myself, a process that included having to reset the bridge and tailpin in the right relationship). The most amazing change in tone was when we would switch endpins, old and new, and literally hear the improvement in tone. Even my husband, who doesn't normally notice changes in tone, could hear the difference. I did the same switching endpin thing with my cello and my teacher's cello during a lesson, and the change in tone with both cellos was remarkable (my teacher didn't want to give the new endpin back to me). Okay, how was that for a shameless product endorsement? If only improvements in tone could be so easy all of the time!

I really like the fact that Chris is experimenting with different technologies and inventing things to try to make cellos sound better. That really appeals to the geek in me. The engineer in me has been fascinated with the process of making a cello and I've had a lot of fun learning about cello making from Chris.

I'll be writing more about the making of my next cello - right now I have lots of questions, and the one burning question is how do I tell him what I want from a cello? I feel like such a novice in so many ways - I've only really played a few cellos (a couple of rentals and my current student cello) so I don't even know what I should ask for!

Work Wins, This Week

This was not a good week for work-life balance. Work won this week. Between the late night meeting with a team in India on Tuesday, flight delays on Wednesday, and work on a project this weekend, my cello has suffered from neglect. The balance thing is really pretty hard. I am looking forward to the day when I can balance retirement activities with cello! Although, if my dad and other retired people I know are any model, I know that even that balance won't be easy.

My lesson this week was good, despite the lack of practice time. My bowing has gotten straighter - after the previous week's video session I was able to straighten out my bow even more, based on this week's video. I'm now working on varying my vibrato speed during long notes, plus working on crescendos and decrescrendos during long notes (it's really hard to do a crescendo while getting towards the tip of the bow!). It was pretty fun during my lesson; my teacher played bits of a Janos Starker recording of Bach's Arioso and had me dissect what Starker was doing from an expressive standpoint and had me play the same passage, trying to emulate Starker's playing. It was fun - doesn't mean that I can't do my own thing - and enlightening to think about the range of things I could do with one phrase. It was really interesting to hear how Starker did something slightly different each time he played the first theme.

Saturday chamber group was fun - our other pianist was there so I got to be on cello the whole time. We played 2 Schumann piano trios, #1 (the d minor, for our pianist who was dying to play it - I'm not sure the rest of us were) and #3. He is such a good pianist - wish I could sight read on the piano as well as he does. We played through the Franck Piano Trio Op 1 #1 in F# minor. I really liked it but sightreading 6 sharps in tenor clef was pretty challenging. It's on our list to play again sometime. We finished with 2 movements of Novak's Piano Trio Op.1 and ran out of time. We liked it enough to want to finish playing through it another time.

Unfortunately I had to cancel out of my Sunday chamber group to work. I hate missing opportunities to play. I did get some practice time in this evening after finishing up work.

Dangerous Moon Cakes

I'm stuck at my home away from home, the Alaska Airlines gate in the San Jose airport, waiting for a flight that is now 2 hours late. Sigh. This happens far too frequently.

I did get a laugh going through security. My backpack (dutifully emptied of laptop and 1-quart bag of 100ml or less liquids/gels) got searched. The TSA person went straight to the box of moon cakes that were in my bag. The look on his face when he opened up the box was priceless. The inspector saw some suspicious dense blobs in the X-ray image, which triggered the search. Those dense blobs were the egg yolks in the moon cakes!

This wasn't as funny as the time I got the full luggage search in the airport in Paris - that time I had found a gag gift that I was bringing home. I'll never forget the look on his face and the way he said with his wonderful French-accented English, "Cat Butt Magnets????"

Lesson and Chamber Group Notes

I had a good lesson on Friday. My teacher put the video camera on me to let me take a good look at my bowing, and it has definitely straightened out. It isn't good enough yet; I could see that my up bows were at a slightly different angle than my down bows, but at least they were straight going in one direction and within a fairly narrow range on the string. I can hear the difference in sound. I played "The Swan" at the end so that I could see and hear what I sounded like playing something other than scales or exercises. After pointing out some other things I need to work on, my teacher said that my playing was the most consistent it's ever been! So, progress! Yay! And so much more to work on! He has been reading Daniel Levitan's This is Your Brain on Music which I read a few months ago, so we had a good time joking about how many hours I had left to go on my 10,000 hours to become an expert.

I got to play cello this weekend with my Saturday chamber group. With people still out we were still only a piano trio. We played through a Raff trio (can't remember which opus) and the Clara Schumann trio (so that our other pianist could play/hear it). I think it was the first time I got to play the cello part for her trio - all of the other times we've played it I've been on the piano. We finished up with a Spohr trio. Hope next week one of our violas can come - and our other violinist - so we can get back to piano quintets (or some configuration other than piano trios, which are nice, but we were getting quite a bit of variety for a while).

My Sunday group was a hoot. Our other cellist, who has been playing the cello for over 60 years (I kid you not) was there after an absence of 3 weeks. I love playing with her. We played the Vivaldi G minor double cello concerto and had a blast. We're trying to get it gig-ready, which means that I probably ought to spend some time practicing it on my own...I only seem to play it when I'm with this group. We played through the first 3 movements of Dvorak's "American" quartet, which really gives the 1st violin a workout! The 2nd movement gives the cello some lovely parts to play, but pretty high - hate that false treble - and even playing an octave down it was getting way up the fingerboard. We finished by reading through Mendelssohn's 3rd string quartet (Op. 44, No. 1) - lots of fun - and not quite as tricky on rhythm as the Dvorak. What was encouraging (to me, at least!) was that I could hear that the bowing exercises are paying off - I could hold the volume of long notes much more consistently (not dying off when close to the tip of the bow!!!).

We got a note from our conductor! Orchestra rehearsal starts September 10th!

Getting a Little Bit Smarter, Perhaps?

Last night I was inspired by Cellodonna's comment on my previous post that she warms up with Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca (last movement of sonata no. 11 in A major kv331). I stopped midway through playing the Mozart sonata I warm up with to switch to the Rondo. I had to drag out the music for the Rondo because I only have bits and pieces of it memorized. Since I had my collection of Mozart piano sonatas out, I decided to play the next sonata KV332, No. 12 in F major, all of KV333 (my warmup sonata, No. 13 in B flat major), and KV283, No. 5 in G major. It's been a long time since I've played any Mozart sonata other than the one I warm up with and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I could feel the effect of the rhythm practice too, I was having a much easier time with the ornaments, and I even added extra ones and improvised for fun. My last piano teacher was really big on improvising within the context of the music - a common practice of the period - but I digress.

I figure that since I played Mozart last night I must be a teeny bit smarter! I've always wondered if listening to Mozart really does make a difference in kids' performance in other school subjects.

It's been so nice to be home and play the cello every day. I've continued to work on bowing straight - mixing in exercises to try to burn the feeling of the changes I've made in wrist position and bow angle into muscle memory. I've spent time playing through pieces, making them progressively harder, trying to concentrate on bowing straight, to see at what point I start losing it. Once I notice that I've lost control I step back and try to bow straight again with just simple rhythms and bowing patterns.

Warmup Routines

I read Guanaco's post about his warmup routine and it got me thinking about the warmup routines I have for cello, piano, and swimming. I definitely have developed routines - they are comforting. Plus I really need them now as I've gotten older.

I've been doing a very similar piano warmup (when I actually sit down to play, which seems to be rather infrequent these days) since high school, I think. I start with an exercise that I got from the teacher I had from age 9 until age 18. It is 2 hands, in unison, playing a simple pattern (C-D-E-F-G-F-E-D-C) repeated 4 times, then doing that pattern 4 times with the minor third (C-D-Eflat-F-G-F-Eflat-D-C); then 4 times diminished (C-D-Eflat-F-Gflat-F-Eflat-D-C); then 4 times with an augmented 5th (C-D-E-F-G#-F-E-D-C). When I'm done I move the whole thing up a half step. I keep going until I've done all 12 notes, checking for evenness of sound (volume and rhythm), how precisely in unison every note is, and checking how stiff my fingers feel. Next I move to arpeggios, doing major and minor, every key, 4 octaves or so. Then I do a major and minor scales in octaves, thirds, sixths, and tenths (I just keep cycling around the keys - c major/c minor one day, Dflat maj/C# minor the next, and so forth). I've just added in doing some 7th chord progressions. The last thing I do for warmup is play the first movement of Mozart's sonata KV333, no pedal, just to see how my fingers feel and to get a feeling for how well I'm playing that day. I'm not sure why that piece - I studied on 2 different period instruments while in college and usually think about how different a modern piano sounds compared to a piano built when Mozart was playing/composing.

My cello warmup is not yet as ritualized or elaborate. I warm up with bowing on open strings, then bowing a cross string pattern, then follow with scales and arpeggios (random keys, 2 or 3 octaves). Usually I try different bowing patterns. It takes me about 15 minutes or so before I feel loosened up. I've been trying to incorporate some of the exercises Emily Wright posted on her blog.

For swimming, I usually swim with a group (great cross-training for cello playing!!! develops arm strength!), and I'll do whatever warmup set we are doing that morning. We usually start off with some easy swimming, then kick or pull (or do some of both) and/or do drills. I can't just jump in and go full blast any more - I have to warm up (and at the end, do some easy swimming to loosen up). I don't usually feel good in the water until I've been swimming for a while - lately it's takes a mile before I feel good - I must have a lot of slow twitch muscles.

Cat-atouille and Cat-atonic

We went to see Ratatouille today and I really enjoyed it. Animated movies seem to be the only films we go to see these days (with an exception for Lord of the Rings). When we got home our cats were being their usual selves - we decided that Marley (our crazy black cat) was really Cat-atouille and Ziggy (the Queen of Comfy) was really Cat-atonic (she does spend most of her day in bed).

My lesson yesterday went well. It really helped to have a mirror so I could see whether I was bowing straight. I may have to break down and buy one. I could hear a marked improvement in tone (yay!); I've spent most of the week concentrating on keeping my wrist in a neutral position and it is starting to pay off. Hopefully within a few weeks I won't have to think about it so much--after practice makes something permanent (thanks Cellodonna for that insight!), I can focus on some other aspect of my playing. Using the mirror I could see how much my bow wandered up and down over the string, and by the end of the lesson I could see it traversing the same spot much more tightly. So that's this week's task - practicing bowing in a straight line!

My chamber group was small today, just a piano trio. I was on piano today, and boy did I get a workout. I haven't really played the piano much in the past few weeks - too much travel, work, and focusing practice time on cello - so when I started warming up this morning I could feel how stiff my fingers were. Actually I'm not really playing the piano much now other than playing for groups. We started out with Clara Schumann's piano trio. I've also been reading through some of her solo piano music (thank you Dover!) as well as music from Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. Both composers have been sadly neglected - women weren't really 'allowed' to be composers in their day, a major loss to music. I am looking for Fanny Mendelssohn's Piano Trio which I have heard is really wonderful. Clara Schumann's trio was a good warmup for the rest of the morning.

We then moved on to Robert Schumann's piano trios, playing the first 2 trios (No. 1 Op 63 and No.2 Op 80). The first movement of No.1 is a killer rhythm-wise (but all of the rhythm work I've been doing is helping immensely!). The last movement of No. 1 was the most playable, and No. 2, while not easy, was easier to play than No. 1. I like No. 1 better but, wow, I nearly died trying to play the first movement - like always, wish I had more time to practice.... After those 2 trios we were Schumann-ed out and switched to Lalo's third piano trio (op. 26). We've played this one a few times before, and we did the first movement pretty close to tempo, and managed to hang together while killing me on the piano. The 3rd movement is beautiful. We all nearly died on the 4th movement, which we again took close to tempo (why, I don't know...maybe it was because we were running out of time.) I have to admit that it is sounding better; the first time we played it months ago, especially the 2nd movement, it didn't sound much like music. I was ready to toss in the towel after the Schumann; after the Lalo we were done and I was definitely Cat-atonic.....

Home for a Week!!!

I am so excited that I don't have to travel next week!!! I just looked through my calendar for the year, and there have been only 3 weeks this year when I haven't been on a plane, and 2 of those weeks were on vacation trips, where I wasn't home. And I think that the 3rd week at home was supposed to be a travel week, but I stayed home because I was sick.

I will need to take a picture from our deck.

And what joy, I will have more time to practice since I'll be home! Unfortunately I'm doing the 2 steps back, 1 step forward thing and am on the 2 steps back. At my last lesson we started tackling something that I've been doing - when changing bow direction at the frog I do a little downward hook that throws the bow off of its straight line. I think part of the problem is caused by too much wrist rotation up and down rather than side to side.

I think it was Guanaco who wrote about unlearning things and relearning - this is where I am right now. I'm having a real hard time figuring out if what I'm trying to do to fix the problem is really doing anything, because it's hard to see where my bow goes out of the straight line. I am looking forward to today's lesson so that my teacher can look at what I've been trying this week to see if it's made any difference.

And I wish it weren't so hard to unlearn and relearn - the "if only" always kicks in: "If only I could have not started doing what was wrong in the first place!" I have to keep reminding myself that practicing the same wrong thing over and over again doesn't make me a better cellist, it is being willing to change what I'm doing to make a better sound...

Reticulating Splines (Helpful Status Message of the Day)

I recently signed up for an online backup service (Mozy, in case any of you were wondering) for our home PC. I had been using a free service from Streamload (or MediaMax) because it let me store 25GB for free, but I was getting frustrated with how clunky and awful the user interface was. I wanted to make sure that all of our digital photos and my growing collection of digital sheet music were backed up somewhere outside of our home.

Each time I launch a backup, I get a most amusing status message, "reticulating splines..." Now I wonder if any of you can tell me what that has to do with backing up files. I think this message goes right up there with other cryptic messages that I've seen in software programs!

Sore Fingers

Whew! I have been playing a lot in the last few days. My fingers are sore!

Last night my Sunday chamber group had a gig at a local art festival. It was a lot of fun and one gentleman even said that he thought that he was listening to our favorite classical radio station, KING FM (yeah!, Cello Gal!! my favorite too!). I think he was being really nice but it sure was a nice compliment to hear!

We played the 3rd Brandenburg concerto, Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, a couple of Scott Joplin rag tunes, a few pieces from Handel's Watermusic, and some Scotch and Irish airs (Irish drinking songs in an arrangement by Beethoven). It was a lot of fun and many audience members came up afterwards to say how much they enjoyed it. I think we'll even get a few more gigs out of it too. In a move that I don't recommend, it was the first time I had seen the Scotch and Irish airs so I was sightreading when we performed it. The group practices twice a week, and I can't make the Friday practices since practice time is during the day when I'm at work. For some reason I had never had a chance to play those tunes until last night. Fortunately the other cellist in the group does go on Fridays, so I just followed her lead and listened to whomever was playing the melody to figure out what to do. What is really fun about this group is that we're good at listening to each other - I noticed many times when our tempo drifted a little bit that we drifted off together, and returned back into tempo together. The other fun(?) thing was that my partner cellist and I seemed to make the same mistakes! We both screwed up and missed a repeat in the Mozart and both came back in at the same time, together. Like a cat! Like we meant to do it! It was very amusing. We liked the fact that we screwed up together (that example wasn't the only time ) - but that way no one could tell!

This morning my Saturday chamber group met at our other pianist's house. I was thankful that I could at last play the cello - I've been on piano for so many weeks. The group was really not balanced well, though - today we had 3 cellos (at least for a while), 1 piano, and 1 violin. We started out with the first Lalo Piano Trio and then had a real treat. Our violinist sat out (very happily, to listen) while us cellists played the Popper Requiem for 3 Cellos (I've linked to a video of it with the piano reduction of the orchestra score). What a gorgeous piece. I played the 2nd cello part. I had never heard it before, and got teased about not knowing about it - (but what would I know about about the cello repetoire - having been a solo pianist for most of my life???) Afterward we talked about playing it with our orchestra - wouldn't that be fun???? After playing the Requiem (again, the second time for 'redemption', as our pianist put it to describe the decision to take repeats when we were playing the Lalo trio), we played through Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat major (op.100) (with some opportunities for 'redemption'!). If that wasn't enough, we played though Arthur Foote's first piano trio - what fun - I had only played the piano part before and it was so much fun to play the cello part this time. And much easier since I had spent a bunch of times playing through the piano part, reading the score too (pianist's job!). Foote was a late Romantic composer who was entirely educated in the U.S., and then unjustly neglected partially because he had not studied in Europe. We've played through some of his other chamber works and they are wonderful to play and hear. I was exhausted at the end of this, and I still had my lesson to go later in the afternoon!

I have sore fingers...good thing my Sunday group is taking a break...will spend some time on Sunday on some sorely needed practice time instead. More on my lesson later...

Purple Bow Hair

Last night we went to a concert presented by the Seattle Chamber Music Society. The pre-concert recital featured Schumann's Carnaval, which I absolutely love. It was such a treat to listen to it live.

The actual concert started with a 2 violin + piano piece by Moritz Moszkowski. One of the violinists had a bow with purple hair. It was color-coordinated with the violinist's dress. I want a bow with purple hair! It looked so cool!

The last piece in the concert was Dvorak's Piano Quartet in D Major, Op. 23. I had never heard it before and was so in awe of the cellist, Robert deMaine. He sounded incredible, as did the rest of the ensemble. I was really focused on watching him play and wishing that I could play half as well.

Purple bow hair. How awesome is that??? That, to me, was the real hit of the evening!

Finding the perfect sine wave

I'm listening to a recording of a live performance of the Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor on our local classical station KING FM from the Olympic Music Festival. We've really enjoyed heading out to Quilcene and listening to music in the barn. The donkeys that live on the farm are very nice too! The quartet is one of my favorite chamber music pieces. I do love so much of his music. Our chamber group read through this quartet a few months ago. Sightreading it on the piano wasn't a whole lot of fun, but I have to say that it was a good thing it wasn't his Piano Quintet. The Brahms Piano Quintet was originally written as a string quintet; then he changed it into a sonata for 2 pianos, 4 hands. I think Brahms thought he still had 2 pianos when he changed it into the quintet as we know it today. With cello, travel, and work I don't have a lot of time to practice the piano. Sigh. Wish I did - there's so much great chamber music that I'd play better if I actually had some time to practice.

On the cello front my husband commented that he could hear my vibrato smoothing out. Yay, progress!! He normally only notices big macro changes over a few months, so I was pretty excited when he said that my vibrato had gotten much steadier. I am continuing to work trying to control the speed as I move from finger to finger. The other thing my teacher is having me do this week is really concentrate on keeping the bow steady. Those 2 things are all I'm thinking about during practice this week and I can already hear the difference. My revelation for the week was that I don't have to try as hard as I thought I did to make a decent sound!

Figure Eights, Not Fish

Continuing on a break from all of the rhythm practice, I decided to spend some time smoothing out my bowing. One thing that has bothered me ever since I started playing is the gap in sound that I hear when I switch strings and bow direction.

I went back to an exercise that I had worked on previously. There were quite a few weeks worth of lessons where we'd attach a laser pointer to my bow. The laser pointer was perpendicular to the bow so that I could track my bow motion by looking at the laser light. What a revelation! For one, just playing on an open string, I could see how uneven my bowing was - I could see the laser light bouncing along, instead of being a straight line.

The real test was a simple string crossing pattern -- alternating between 2 strings, for instance the D and G string, playing (D G) (D G) (D G) etc with the (D G) on one bow stroke. When done well the pattern looks like a figure eight. Not mine. It looked like a fish. This week I went back to thinking and practicing figure eights, not fish.

Fish is one of my favorite foods. In fact it's a family joke about ordering a fish (whole fish, steamed! Yum!) every time we go out for Chinese food. I had one waiter trained at one of my favorite restaurants to go find the nicest fish for me as soon as we showed up.

Too bad that fish don't have any place in cello playing!

Vibrato, Naturally

This week I'm easing up on the rhythm practice - I did have a breakthrough -still working on the Sevcik exercise of straight eighth notes (includes over 200 variations of bowing!) I put the metronome on 40 to cover 2 beats (4 notes) and then played around with moving the metronome beat to different parts of the measure. The breakthrough was being able to play steadily with the metronome beat on the 4th and 8th eighth notes in the measure, or with it on the 2nd and 6th eighth notes of the measure. I wanted to put the metronome on the 'and' to see if I could hold a steady rhythm. Finally, after a few weeks, I can! I couldn't do this when I started working on this exercise.

A while ago my teacher mentioned that my vibrato changed speeds as I moved from finger to finger, so I decided that this week I would try to do something about that. I needed to work on something else! So, this week I've been spending a lot of time doing vibrato to a rhythm (guess I couldn't really get away from the rhythm exercises!) seeing if I could make the vibrato 2 to a pulse, 3 to a pulse, 4, 6, and 8, and move from finger to finger keeping the same pulse as whatever I was doing previously. Half of the battle seems to be keeping each finger steady (story of my ongoing rhythm battles) but I hope the side benefit is improvement of tone overall and more control over my vibrato.

Recording, Track 2

It was really fun today to be part of the studio orchestra recording music for 4 films. The film scores were composed by students from the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program. The founder and director of the program, Hummie Mann, conducted. The music was the culmination of a 2-year program for the students. We were allowed to give feedback; for most of the students it was the first time they had written something for an orchestra. A friend of mine from orchestra composed one of the pieces we played and right before we played it she said she was terrified to hear it for the first time.

We were in a full studio - during one of the breaks I wandered into the soundroom to watch and hear one of the pieces we had just recorded, and it was amazing how good the orchestra sounded! With a headset over one ear to hear the click track and sitting in the middle of a section, and playing, it was impossible to really hear the music. Getting to hear and see what we had recorded along with the film was pretty cool.

It was an exhausting day. We started at 10am and finished at 6pm with 10-minute breaks each hour and an hour break for lunch. By the last 2 hours it was really hard to concentrate and play with the same energy as in the morning. We would run through and rehearse a piece a few times, then we recorded it twice. The first film had a jazz soundtrack, and the other 3 were animated films, one with more of a cartoony feel to the music, and others much more dreamy/sweet music. I loved the first animated film we recorded - it was a story set in New York's Central Park about 2 old women. They competed with each other to feed the birds that had gathered around them. There was one scene where they were feeding the birds so much that the birds were visibly getting fatter (I was sitting where I could see the monitor that Hummie was using to watch while conducting) and you could hear the birds getting heavier in the music - it was hilarious. I would love to see that film when it is finished.

At the end of the day, I was brain dead. Needless to say practicing is going to wait until tomorrow.

Recording, Track 1

At first my teacher wasn't going to record me - I'm still sick with that sore throat - cold thing that is going around (exacerbated by my flying ordeal this week) and he thought I wouldn't be at my best. True enough, but he did end up recording me anyway.

We went through my rhythm exercises. This time he had a drum track where the drum pattern would shift by an eighth of a beat every two measures, so that the pulse of the beat would be on the beat for 2 measures, then on the off beat. I played exercise No. 6 of the Sevcik bowing exercises (just straight eighth notes) while the audio track shifted while I was playing. The purpose was to see if I could hold steady while the pulse was shifting. The first time I couldn't do it, but by the next time and subsequent times I was able to lock into a steady rhythm even as pulse was shifting. One time my teacher recorded me playing without anything else, to see how steady I was - it was actually pretty good!

Then since we were already set up, he asked me to play something "more lyrical" to get recorded. I chose to play Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, mostly because we had recorded it previously. I was really pleased to listen to the recording - especially after we listened to the last recording I did from June of last year. I could definitely hear the difference in the amount of control I have now vs. 1 year ago. What I could hear that needs to improve is shaping the overall volume and feel of phrases - taking more time for the crescendos and decrescendos.

Today will be a fun day, and I'll write about it later today. I've volunteered to be part of the studio orchestra for the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program and we will be recording the soundtracks for about 5 student films today.

Glad to Be Home

Whew! What an ordeal getting home! about 30 minutes into the flight (only supposed to be 1.5 hours), the pilot announced that because of mechanical problems and bad weather in Seattle, we couldn't land in Seattle, and that we were getting diverted back to...Oakland. After 1 1/2 hours in the air, we landed all of 50 miles away from San Jose. I could have driven there faster. Or were we just connecting through Oakland to get to Seattle?

Anyway, the first plane was completely packed -- I got put on another flight from Oakland to Seattle and finally got home late last night after spending 5 hours in planes. I was starving, unless you count the little bag of pretzels as a full meal.

I am really looking forward to being able to practice tonight!

Musings from the San Jose airport

I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home. I had every intention of practicing while I was here, but with a sore throat that threatens to turn into the cold my husband brought back from Ireland, it just didn't work out. I just crashed last night, and this morning my day started pretty early, so no time in this morning to practice. I didn't even do the rhythm exercises that I've been trying to work on. I did play around with holding a pen with the modified bow hold that I've been working on and I can really feel the difference in how much control I feel that I have with my hand.

I was noticing the difference on Sunday when I played with the Sunday chamber group - a fuller, louder tone than I've had before and more control while crossing strings. We played one of the Brandenburg concertos - it was my first time playing through it and I know that there were passages that a year ago I would not have been able to play on a first reading.

One of the things I've tried to do on a periodic basis is to go back and play pieces that I played months ago or a year or so ago, to measure my progress. Progress for me seems to come in little bursts, where for weeks or months it seems like nothing is happening, and then seemingly out of the blue I notice a large improvement. It's nice to go back and play pieces I've played a while ago and to find that they're much easier to play now! And I sound better!

aargh - the flight is going to be late again. I take these flights enough that I know many of the other regular commuters who do the Seattle-Bay Area thing, many of the flight attendants, and have my favorite car rental return agent at Hertz. It's nice to chat with everyone but I'm not sure this familiarity is a good thing.

Meeting Mick Lavelle

While we were in Ireland we visited Matt Molloy's bar in Westport, County Galway. Matt Molloy is the flautist for the Chieftains and his bar is famous, with music every night. We were waiting in the bar for the doors to open up for the band that night when an 80-year old gentleman sat down next to us. We started chatting, and pretty soon he joined us at our table and began to sing. Really well. He claimed that he knew a thousand songs and I believe him. He would start singing and got everyone in the bar to sing along. In between he told a few off-color jokes. He mentioned something about pictures with him in it, but we had no idea what he was talking about and just let that comment slide by. It was extraordinary sitting with him.

The next day we were in Roundstone, checking out the bodhrans. We took a look at the posters and there was one called "Irish Pubs", with pictures of about 20 pubs. Naturally we had to look for Matt Molloy's. There it was...and there was Mick Lavelle in the picture! He is holding a fiddle. We had no idea!

Later, when I got home, I googled Mick Lavelle. He's something of a local celebrity, and also is the singer of a track on the CD "Music from Matt Molloy's". Unbelieveable.

The group we saw at Matt Molloy's was great, too. It was a memorable night.

Awake and Alert, Finally

I'm finally feeling semi-normal after flying on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We had a rough time travelling back from Ireland on Monday. There were thunderstorms in Chicago so our plane got diverted to Milwaukee, where we had to sit on the tarmac for 3 hours before being allowed to fly back to Chicago. By then it was so late that we ended up sleeping at O'Hare while waiting for our flight early Tuesday morning. It's been a long time since I've slept (or tried to) at an airport. Then on Wednesday it was back to work and on a plane. The silver lining about being awake for most of 2 days was that I adjusted back to Pacific time very quickly.

When I finally tried to play the cello on Tuesday it was pathetic. I think I was too tired to play. All I remember was that I felt terrible, my playing felt terrible, and finally I just quit. Then on Friday, before my lesson, I played a little and lo and behold, my tone sounded better than it ever has before! Go figure. I think the adjustments I made to my bow hold a few months ago are finally starting to feel natural and are paying off in much better tone quality.

My lesson was more rhythm work - my teacher set the metronome to 40 and had me play quarter notes, eighth, or triplets on that slow beat, with the goal of making my sound change exactly with the beat. It is surprisingly hard to do when the beat is that slow. When I switched between eighth or triplets on that beat I would either be a tiny fraction too slow or too fast, and it would take me a few measures adjust my playing to lock into the beat. Well, guess what I'm working on for my next lesson!

Music is just like my swimming - it goes away fast and comes back slowly. In the case of swimming it is speed that goes fast and is really hard to get back. I could feel that I had lost ground on the cello by not playing for about 2 weeks. But on the other hand, even playing today I could hear a difference in tone - so the break wasn't all bad!

My Saturday chamber group was just our first violinist and me. She brought a lot of violin music and I played the piano. After not playing the piano for 3 weeks my fingers felt stiff. I had to warm up with the Franck violin sonata - not the easiest piece for stiff fingers! We played a movement of Frank Martin's violin sonata, a Bach violin concerto, and finished up with Beethoven's violin sonata No. 4. We'd never played that one before and it was lovely - written just before the "Spring" Sonata and very different.

Home Again, Briefly

I got home late last night, exhausted from long days, not sleeping well while on the road, and dealing with airports. It's definitely summertime--it's been really crowded. I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I watch what people do while going through the airport security lines. There are the people who have to practically undress to go through, the people who get the random selection for the full search and body scan, and people who look completely bewildered at all of the TSA people screaming "take out laptops!" "Take off your shoes!" "Take out liquids!"

What I don't get is when someone forgets to put their less-than-3-ounces-container-of-liquid into a plastic bag and it gets caught, the TSA people will tell them the same-container-of-liquid will be OK if that person puts the same-container-of-liquid-or-gel into a quart size plastic bag and puts it back through the screening machine. I really don't understand the logic there. It's the same container of liquid! Or wonder how many 6.4 ounce tubes of toothpaste get thrown away (would you go out of security again to check your luggage so that you can take that big tube along???)

Well, enough ranting. I had a great lesson today. I've been working on a whole bunch of rhythm exercises, trying to really get steady while playing. I am wearing out my metronone with all of the variations of where I am placing beats. Today during my lesson we started off with the metronome with every eighth note, then kept backing off the metronome until it was only beating the first beat of the measure. Today I was able to hold it steady or at least recover if I was a little off (early or late). Victory! Or at least, progress! It did become clear as I continued playing that I get really unsteady when I cross strings. So my next round of rhythm games will be try to fix that...although it will have to wait until we get back from vacation. More rest for my thumb. The enforced rest from travelling was good for it - it felt fine today.

On an airplane again....and a break from music...and swimming. I always hate what I feel like when I've taken a break. With swimming I feel like I can't swim when I get back in the water. Same with the cello...I know I'll be happy to see it when I get back but who knows whether it will feel great or feel awful????

Sore Thumb

How frustrating. I tweaked my right thumb again. I had been trying to shift my bow hold (get more flexible thumb) and have only managed to make my thumb really sore. It had gotten better after I cut back playing time and iced my thumb after playing. Unfortunately I am on the road (I guess I am getting rest from playing) but it is hard to ice my thumb. Right now I'd settle for a little more rest - I had a long day yesterday, have another long day today, and tomorrow too when I fly home. Then I get one day home before we leave on vacation.

I am definitely not looking forward to getting back; the day after we fly home from vacation I have to jump on a plane again and travel for work again.

Chamber Music Weekend, Part Deux

Today I played with my other chamber group - it was fun. Everything today was gig music. I won't be at the gig because we'll be on vacation, but it was fun to play. One of the members of the group plays violin, viola, and cello, and I think it's really amazing to watch him switch between instruments during the session. The other cellist in the group is amazing - she has been playing for over 60 years. I love listening to her and playing with her. She can't make the gig either so our versatile member is going to fill in on cello. Cello is the latest instrument he has started playing and he's doing really well. He was especially interested in going through the cello parts for the gig to make sure that he could play the cello parts.

I've got to get packing - instead of travelling my normal Tuesday - Wednesday, I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Yuck, getting up at 4am to catch a flight hurts.

Chamber Music Time!

Ahh..it has been a good music day. I love it when I have time on the weekends for a lot of music. This morning my reading chamber group came over to my house and we were all exhausted at the end of the morning. The one frustrating thing is that every week we go through the email ritual of figuring out who's going to be there. We've gotten better at it - we haven't had a week in a while where we haven't had music for day's configuration of players. But various members will show up at different times,so we change what we're playing as people show up.

This morning our first violinist showed up first. We've had many weeks on the past where it has just been the 2 of us, so I've gotten to the point where I don't even have to look at her while she's playing anymore to know what she's going to do. We played the first movement of Beethoven's "Spring" sonata while waiting..then our other cellist showed up. Because we knew we were going to read through the Arthur Foote piano quartet later, we decided to play his first piano trio. It is a gorgeous piece that we've played before (except for the ending of the last movement is somewhat weird) and it was lovely to play it again. My rhythm practice is paying off as I felt steady throughout, even during parts where the piano part was all over the keyboard. We had time to play part of the first movement of Lalo's first piano trio (another gorgeous piece with lots of lovely cello solos, but alas, I was still on the piano), but we played it rather poorly (took it too fast for our state of consciousness) and fortunately our violist showed up. We only got through part of the 2nd movement of the Foote piano quartet - but oh it is gorgeous - when our 2nd violinist arrived. We will definitely have to play through all of the piano quartet another time.

I finally got to play cello! We switched to string quartets (I doubled with the other cellist), but the first one was weird. I can't even remember who the composer was; it was a modern piece with all of the weird harmonies and timing. We had to give up on the first movement - it was in 5/4 but the cello part had measures with 7 notes for 3 beats and other weird combinations. We couldn't figure out where the first beat of the measure was. The second and third movements were weird too but at least we think we managed to stay together. At least we ended at the same time (one definition of victory)!

The second quartet we played was by a Brazilian composer, Alberto Nepomuceno; we played his first string quartet. It was supposed to have been influenced by Brahms and Mendelssohn but with Brazilian melodies. It was hard to hear the influences. Good thing I had a partner playing the same thing. Then we got tired of very unfamiliar music and ended with the Mendelssohn Op.44 No.2 quartet - I think we may have played it once a while ago - and it was nice to be back in more familiar territory. After that we were exhausted.

Just the Eighth Notes, Ma'am

Who would have thought that just playing straight eighth notes could be so hard? At today's lesson that's all I did. Sometimes really well, but for a lot of my lesson, my playing was just slightly off. I had to switch bowing patterns after playing the first 4 bars of No.6 of the Sevcik, and my up bows were most definitely a bit shorter than my down bows. It was harder to play strict eighth notes when the metronome was on the off beats - but that was the point. The only thing that was different was the relationship of what I was doing physically relative to my sense of where the timing was, but it was hard to do. Also, the effort involved in playing something that sounds smooth and even is anything but that. That's certainly not so true on the piano!

Of course, playing eighth notes in strict time is not necessarily the most musical way to play, but you have to have the foundation before you can deviate. Plus I want to become a better ensemble player, and my timing/rhythm needs to improve. Being trained as a solo pianist didn't prepare me for this.