Videos from our last concert

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





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




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

it's been a while!

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

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

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

Holiday concert report

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

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

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

Concert report!

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

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

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

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

Concert report

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

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

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

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

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

Busy!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hot Concerts

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

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

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

Concert!

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

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

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

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

Graduation

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

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

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

Orchestra - starting up again!

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

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

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

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

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

Pulling Back for Sanity

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

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

Better the Second Time!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concert! First Popper Performance!

We played the Popper last night - first performance!

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

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

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

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

Playing for the Dalai Lama

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

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

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

First Popper Rehearsal with Orchestra!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!