Fugue State

The other cello in my life. Temporarily.

I picked up my hire cello and despite a booming C string, and slightly crappy strings overall, it's not too bad. It was one of those moments where you're sitting in the middle of an all-purpose music shop trying cellos (no private room with humidity control for me, apparently) trying not to act like you're too up your own arse about the whole thing... anyway, I picked the cheaper of the two because I couldn't get a decent sound out of the other one.

The lighter bow has been good with the Bach, I wonder whether I should try another one on a regular basis.

The jetlag is killing me. And I can't figure out why there is so much water in the loo bowl... I keep thinking they're going to overflow.

Crossing the pond

I'm about the leave for the airport, so I'll post in a couple days from the other side. No doubt with complaints of the state of the hire cello we end up with.

Back in the throng.

Home after our first day of term at orchestra, and the pub of course.

Christopher and I play with the East London Late Starters Orchestra, which is a hilariously diverse group of adult learners of all sorts. Truly all sorts. The first day of the autumn term is when the beginners arrive. Our orchestra will taken you on even if you don't know how to read music, and have never played an instrument before in your life. It's quite fun to watch these new beginners with a violin in their hands for the first time looking terrified and incredibly excited. Today there were about 30 new beginners clutching instruments straggling back to the tube station after rehearsal.

Film students from Ealing Studios have found us, and are spending a term with us making a documentary. I'm surprised this hasn't happened before really, because we're tailor-made for one of those heart-warming and funny films. We ended up at the pub with them after orchestra today and they were saying how fun it was to watch everyone welcome the new beginners and how chaotic yet somehow still organised we managed to be.

And it's good to remember, no matter how hungover you are, or how much you're ready to kick your music stand over in frustration with listening to the first violins go over a passage for the eighth time, or how pissed off you are that someone took the last decent sandwich at tea time, that this is, in the end, pretty fun. And pretty incredible it's happening at all.

Read this (very old but still relevant) Sunday Times article about the orchestra.

Across the pond soon

Christopher and I are off to Vancouver for two weeks as of Monday. Never one to do one thing when I can cram in three, we've got orchestra tomorrow morning and a cello lesson on Sunday. I've also rented a cello from Northwest Music for our visit, so we can skip the whole hellish transporting a cello overseas malarkey, but still practise. And I think I'm getting ill. No time! I have no time for illness!

Sinfonia Concertante coming soon

I start a new term of ELLSO this Saturday, and, more thrillingly to me anyway, I've joined a new orchestra on Thursday evenings. It's a new amateur orchestra in East London organised by the same people who ran that chamber music course I went to in the spring. This term we're playing Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for viola and violin. I didn't know this piece before it turned up on the repertoire list, but I've since downloaded it and have fallen in love.

After downloading the score to have a quick look at the cello part, it looks damn well doable. I am so excited about this one. It's a beautiful piece of music - go listen to it if you haven't heard it yet.

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I'm not quite sure about Passionato

Most of you have probably run across Passionato by now, the new online shop for classical music downloads. A few little things make it different from iTunes: the quality of their audio files, the lack of DRM and their relationship with classical labels. The CEO, James Glicker, expands on his plans for the site. Not sure on his community with blogs, reviews, etc running alongside the music service.

I wanted it to be brilliant, but the truth is there's still loads of work to be done to make this an alternative to iTunes. To test it, I looked for a recording of Vaughan Williams' Variations on a Theme of Thomas Tallis [edited later - Pete has kindly pointed out, in the nicest possible way, that it's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, but I maintain if the search worked well I would have still found it], that I've been meaning to buy for awhile. I searched Vaughan Williams and came up with what looks like an unordered list of albums, some of which don't look like they have any Vaughan Williams on there at all, though I suppose they must. When I instead searched Variations on a Theme of Thomas Tallis I came up with no results. I went back to my composer search and used the drop down menu on the left to narrow my search to orchestral works, and ended up with a Best of British album. Though when you click through to the track listing, there's no way of telling which composer's works they are, as it's not listed with each track - just things like Communion Service in C major, Op.115: Gloria. I'm gathering that means Passionato doesn't have it yet, but I'm not confident at all.

For comparison's sake, I searched for the same work on the iTunes store - two clicks and I had the option of the BBC Symphony Orchestra or St Martin's in the Fields with Sir Neville Marriner.

To their credit, there are some interesting things on Passionato, and I did end up buying Marin Alsop and the LPO doing Brahms 4 and some Hungarian Dances (which is Jessica Duchen's fault, I'm reading her book of the same name right now) for £4 for the mp3 version. It's nice to be able to take advantage of Naxos' great pricing and interesting choices in repertoire and performers online, as they aren't on iTunes.

I remain unconvinced.

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Spot the cello

Many buses, one late evening with the cello

 

It's ten to one in the morning and I've just gotten home. I drafted my friend and violist Jennifer and an incredible violinist from our orchestra to play for a friend who is recording an album. I wrote out the parts last week, and then tonight we did the recording. 

It's funny, this isn't even the same thing I was posting about before, but something else entirely. 

I was quite stressed about this, because a) I wrote out the parts when I was tired after work and my alto clef skills are limited at best and b) I've not done this before. 

It's funny, because loads of the music I listen to that isn't classical is nowhere near virtuoso performance, and I enjoy that aspect of it. Lo-fi folk, loud and messy punk rock - I enjoy the sheer exuberance. But when it comes to cello, I consciously only listen to performers who are, essentially, some of the best cellists in the world, so it when it comes to recording tonight I was pretty much freaking out. The parts were dead simple, and virtuoso performance was not required as it will all be treated and processed anyway. Free musicians were required, so you know, he got us!

I reckon it's similar to my paranoia of speaking foreign languages. Growing up in Canada next to Quebec, my French is quite good. I can listen to people and pretty much know what's going on if it's a general conversation, I know how to order food and explain most simple things without looking like a fool. But yet I am terrified of saying anything unless I'm sure my grammar is flawless. Which is ridiculous because I talk to people all the time for whom English is not their first language and I excuse incredible lapses in grammar, including never bothering to conjugate verbs. I'd rather die and sink deep into the earth than speak French that way, but I excuse it in everyone else.

So when it comes to playing less-than-professional level cello as a favour to friend, why on earth would I think I have to be Slava to pull it off? Sheesh. As I said before, waiting until you're magically perfect is pointless. And will never arrive anyway. So whether I felt brave enough or not, I took a bloody beta blocker and did it anyway. First steps, my friends, first steps.

But... we recorded in this huge old insane asylum, and the man at the pub we went to afterwards thought we'd been recording with Tom Bailey of the Thompson Twins as he lives around the corner from the asylum. Ha! 

The reoccurring theme of non-impossibility

It was my first lesson in quite awhile this afternoon. Sometimes I go off the rails a bit when I haven't had a lesson for a bit, either not really concentrating when I'm practising or just, well, not really practising. That didn't happen this time, which is nice.

As you know, I've been working on the Bourée quite a bit, and I've made good progress. The tricky fingering passage is nearly there - as my teacher said today I need to stop thinking about the fingers because I can do it. I've got myself convinced it's Hard, so every time I come to it I sound 'uneasy', was the phrase he used. 

So. The plan of action is to stop freaking out so much, essentially. I need to relax, give it a lighter touch. I am not as far from getting the hang of it as I thought.

Most importantly, I think, it doesn't feel impossible. Which is miles from where I was even two weeks ago.

Do the robot wave

Via Cello Geek I came across this great website by cello professor Jamie Fiste. There are some truly helpful videos there, as well as extensive articles about technique. At the moment, I'm trying to get the hang of vibrato and found this video had some hilariously named, and informative, exercises.