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.