#celloblr

november 4th, 2019 | didn’t even know you could get so behind on your classes but oh well

My teacher told me I keep my bow too close to the fingerboard, which results in a crunchy sound :(

Music Monday!

I've been meaning to start a "Music Monday" post for months now...so I'm starting it on a Wednesday. Go figure. Anyways...I'm always posting about running and biking and swimming on here, which really isn't all that I do. I thought you guys might find it interesting to see what I'm doing in my life as a professional musician. So I'll feature a piece that I'm working on each week.

This week is the Brahms: Piano Trio in B Major. I first performed this piece back when I was a student at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival when I was 19 (in Bowdoin, Maine)...the work is known for the great cello solo right at the beginning of the piece and for the monstrously difficult piano part. Its actually crazy hard for all of the instruments. Brahms wrote the piece very early in his life, but came back to it very late in his life and basically rewrote everything. We play the edited later version now, so you get the great youthful exuberance with a more mature sound.

I got the opportunity to perform the work with several trios when I lived in Houston (while a student at Rice) and performed it again last night with one of my newer groups ARmusica (Julie Cheek, piano and Drew Irvin, violin).

I spent my afternoon trying to figure out how to play a tricky passage in George Crumb's "Black Angels"...he asks you to play with the bow on the opposite side of your hand (so everything gets reversed)...its supposed to sound like a "consort of viols"...