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.