Category Archives: Cello

Slight Change of Plans

The two Tchaikovsky pieces will not, in fact, be on our programme for Canada Day. The soloist has been grounded by his doctors until an emergency triple bypass has been performed.

So, y’know, if you were fortunate enough to hear him do a lovely job on the Beethoven violin concerto a year or so back with us (or even if you didn’t), keep him in your thoughts, please.

We will be presenting the Water Music suite we played at our last concert in lieu of the Tchaikovsky. I will be digging out the mp3s and listening to them in moments. Let’s hope I remember how to do the bourree and the subsequent attacca into the hornpipe between now and the dress rehearsal tomorrow.

EDIT: Er, evidently my brain was flashing back to June 2005 when I had a baby and subsequently missed playing bunch of Tchaikovsky in the 2005 Canada Day concert, including a couple of pieces with violin solo performed by this same soloist. For this concert we’ll be dropping the Tchaikovsky ‘Meditation’ of course, but not the ‘Mozartiana’. The other piece we’ll be dropping is the Kreisler.

Concert Countdown

Excellent, excellent rehearsal last night, despite my apparent inability to approximate correct intonation, and the sudden feeling that I’d never seen the symphony before in my life (this is particularly unnerving as I’ve played it previously in concert, as well as working on it these past three months). “Well,” the conductor said to me, “at least it’s… fresh.” He has a quirky sense of humour that I enjoy. I keep forgetting to record this: a few weeks ago we had a string-only rehearsal, and at one point we all sat there counting bars as he conducted a winds-only passage in silence. “This part was written by John Cage,” he said almost under his breath before we came in precisely where we were supposed to. I might have been the only person to hear him, or maybe I’m just the only one who found it funny.

This concert is, as usual, going to rock. And the weather isn’t going to be horrendous: at the moment Sunday looks like around 20 degrees and overcast. Let’s hear it for concerts at which no one melts! (Miss the announcement? Check back to this entry for all the details.)

Things I must drill into my head: I must not spontaneously decide to try a new fingering in the middle of performance. No, no, no. No matter how good an idea it seems at the time. Not that I think this sort of thing through; sometimes I just find myself with my hand on a different part of the fingerboard and I freeze with no idea how to get to the next note, and then three bars have gone by and where are we now, and being in fourth position would explain why when I played a 3 it didn’t sound like a 3 in first does, and how long was I playing in fourth position anyway? (And again I express my amazement — fourth? Fifth, okay, I could understand — but fourth?)

Tomorrow I sit down with my coloured markers and underline dynamic markings that I miss, write in easy fingerings and shifts that I always mess up (and the hard ones too), and highlight nasty key changes (the Les Miz medley is going to look like a bloody rainbow).

Rehearsal was the high point of two very bad days. I usually come home from rehearsal mildly frustrated with my inability to pull off things I know I can do, but I came home in a really positive mood last night that was extremely welcome after the day. And then I didn’t sleep (probably because of the bad day; I read half of Gaudy Night waiting to be tired). Liam didn’t sleep well either so today both of us were off, and he didn’t nap at all today. When this happens to the kid who regularly sleeps between two and two and a half hours, it’s a hugely bad thing. We went to the Chapters in Pointe-Claire for an hour or so where he played with the Thomas the Tank Engine table in the kids’ section, and I bought a book he pointed out to me while wandering about ( “Cello! Cello!”), called The Violin Maker: Finding a Centuries-Old Tradition in a Brooklyn Workshop by John Marchese. Which is what I’m off right now to read in bed with a glass of white wine and a square of Ghiradelli chocolate with caramel filling, because life has sucked lately and I deserve it.

Concert Announcement!

July 1 is coming up, which means that the annual Canada Day concert presented by the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra is also nigh!

On July 1 the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra will be giving a free (yes, free!) concert as part of the overall Canada Day celebrations in conjunction with Pointe-Claire Village. We do this every year, and it’s always terrific fun.

This year’s programme includes:

Overture to La clemenza di Tito, by Mozart
Praeludium und Allegro, by Fritz Kreisler
Theme and variations from Suite no. 4 “Mozartiana”, by Tchaikovsky
Souvenir d’un lieu chere: Meditation, by Tchaikovsky
Selections from Les Miserables, by Claude-Michel Schönberg
Symphony no. 31, by Mozart

The concert begins at 20h00. As always, this concert is being held at St Joachim Church in Pointe-Claire Village, below Lakeshore Road right on the waterfront. The 211 bus from Lionel-Groulx metro drops you right at the corner of Sainte-Anne and Lakeshore, and you just walk a block and a half down Sainte-Anne to the lake and the church. Here’s a map to give you a general idea. I usually encourage those facing public transport to get together and coax a vehicle-enabled friend along by offering to buy them an ice cream or something. It works nicely, and it’s fun to go with a group. And hey, you can’t beat the price. Be aware that if you’re driving, parking will be at a premium because of the whole Canada Day festivities thing going on. Give yourself extra time to find a parking place and walk to the church, which will be packed with people.

Free classical music! Soul-enriching culture! And as an enticing bonus, the fireworks are scheduled for ten PM, right after we finish, and the church steps are a glorious spot from which to watch them.

Write it on your calendar, tell all your friends! The more the merrier!

Nine-Thirty? It Feels Like Three In The Afternoon

It occurred to me as I pulled into the driveway last night that I should assign myself lines to write. Something along the idea of, I will not listen to ‘Jack Sparrow’ with volume set at 22 while driving through construction zones at night on the way home from orchestra. A hundred times or so.

Slept horribly again, and Liam is fractious. So naturally, HRH was called in to replace someone at work today. We made pancakes together after he left; Liam stirred. There is currently a movie playing, because I am weak of will this morning and can’t keep up with him, and I have things to do.

There are a pile of things to do before Sunday. Like figure out what people are eating, find a good cake recipe, find a good frosting recipe (which is even more important, and no, I’ve never found one I’m completely happy with)… appropriate wrapping paper would be good, too. Ingredients for whatever I decide to make need to be purchased. I still haven’t found a cake board, and I don’t particularly feel like cutting up one of our good strong moving boxes to make one. I did find a new cake pan, but not as big as I was hoping for. I’ll double the cake batter and make cupcakes as well to be sure to have enough. I had intended to send some over to daycare on Monday on the actual birthday anyhow, along with streamers and balloons and such; might as well be a full batch instead of the half I was thinking of making.

Today I learned how to make my printer print much much faster (yes, it took me a year to find the fast draft mode). I thought I’d figured out how to do manual duplex printing too, but the printer out-thought me. It seems I have to select the option both in the Word print options and the ‘advanced’ printer options for it actually work. Now I have a two-hundred page document to edit that I was hoping would only use one hundred pages, and of course I forgot to paginate it. Yesterday I bought a photo ink cartridge, and discovered only after I’d gotten home that it replaces the black cartridge, not the dangerously-low-on-ink colour cartridge, so I only got another half-dozen photos printed before the regular colour ink gave out entirely.

On the other hand, I picked up an excellent selection of summer tops and two skirts yesterday as well, so I can throw out all the t-shirts that have somehow developed microscopic holes in them. I still don’t own a pair of shorts, which is fine with me.

I wrote eight hundred and something words yesterday. Granted, they were slightly expanded transcription from handwritten notes in a notebook, but it counts. My record sheet tells me that I haven’t put a single word into Swan Sister since early February, which sounds about right. That would be when I had to stop because there was a huge gap between everything I’d plotted and the outlined ending, a gap I didn’t think was as big as it was until I got there and couldn’t see the other side, as I’d expected to.

All right. Into the living room to keep the boy company. I will read with sticky notes and a pencil while he watches Buzz Lightyear, his favourite movie character these days.

It’s What You Do Right

… and yikes, do I ever need to work on some of the orchestra stuff. Once again, it’s the Broadway medley giving me grief. I know how the Les Miserables themes go, backwards and forwards. Maybe that’s part of the problem; this is an arrangement, and so it’s not exactly what I remember. Also, key changes from A flat major to F major to E flat major to B flat major to D flat major (probably B flat minor, now that I think about it) back to B flat major to D major to F major again to finally return to and end in A flat major are more than enough to reduce me to a desperate wittering fool. Particularly when it all has to be played in a sprightly, dissonant, or expressive mode.

I just have to play it over and over. And trust myself in the higher registers, as the celli play in the encore we’re working on. It’s hard to feel good about a beautiful piece when you’re massacring it the first time you play it through in rehearsal.

Scott and I were trading reassurances about our musical ears and playing skills yesterday, with support and reality checks from t! thrown in as well, and I thought of the subject again when I read this post from Matociquala this morning:

Book report #42: Richard Restak, MD; Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot

This is all right for what it is, I guess. I am more interested in the mechanisms of neuroplasticity than self-help books on how to be smarter, but hey, it did give me this little passage:

First, avoid playing over negative scenarios in your mind in which all of your worst fears are realized. As Freud pointed out in 1925 in an insufficiently appreciated paper, “On Negation,” the brain doesn’t deal well with negatives. If you concentrate on ways of avoiding a bad outcome rather than bringing about a good one, your brain will lock onto the negative. As every tennis player knows, the surest way of coming up with a bad serve results from energy wasted on avoiding gaffes rather than concentrating on the intended ace. Concentrate on your ideas and your goals rather than focusing on the bad things that could happen, or on how nervous you’re feeling.

Or in other words, it’s not what you don’t do wrong. It’s what you do right.

It’s what you do right. It’s so easy to say. But it’s hard to look at a piece of writing, or listen to a recording of a musical performance, or look at a drawing, and see what you did right in it, because we look for the errors in order to improve upon them. And that’s not a bad thing. What’s bad and self-destructive is when we can’t see the good things at all, or stress too much about the mistakes. Why do we expect perfection? The only entity who can manage perfection is God, and I’m not at all certain the Divine doesn’t fall short a lot of the time too. Why do we beat ourselves up over what could have been done better instead of celebrating the much larger percentage of what we did right?

It’s ironic, too, that we notice errors more when things are going well, because they jar us out of a sense of security and comfort. And why is it that as soon as you think, “Hey, this is going pretty well”, you trip? How can it be hubris to allow yourself to cautiously appreciate something you are creating?

Did I mention that the gig was fabulous, by the way?

Listening

There’s a difference between hearing and listening. Listening implies paying attention to specifics, whereas hearing suggests taking in a larger soundscape.

I have to keep reminding myself of this when I listen to recordings that involve me playing the cello. I listen to the cello, and thus hear everything that’s unpleasant: technical errors, timing, weak sound production, bad shifts, bow imbalance. Anyone else hears the overall product, the song.

I also have to remind myself that a recording is a sterile capture of something that’s larger than life. The recording equipment doesn’t reproduce the deeper tones of the cello; it grabs on to the higher sharper overtones. On stage in real life, the sound was much better. A live audience is also being swept by the sound; there’s no time to dwell on technical evaluation. It’s an experience. It’s why films made of stage productions rarely work.

Having said all that, my main response to much of the recording of Saturday night’s show was “Is the cello always that sharp? Why does no one ever tell me?”. I wonder if it actually is sharp, as in the intonation being off, or if I’m just not hearing the rest of the sound that is there in real life.

Deliberately putting that aside, I could appreciate the recording as it was transferring to the hard drive yesterday. I could hear how we were working with one another, how we moved and adapted and recovered from hiccups and the technical challenges, and I could appreciate the beauty of certain songs. We’re far from professional; we don’t have the time or the inclination. We do this for fun. And in the last two years, we have come a long, long way, and the band work I have done has informed my orchestral playing as well.

So now I focus on orchestra as we prepare for the Canada Day concert, and mess about with Zimmer and Badelt for fun throughout the summer. And I will allow myself to keep thinking about band and the songs I’d like to do in the future, and perhaps make the attempt at arranging some songs.

Gig Recap

Honestly, this has been the Best Gig Ever. It makes me wish we weren’t going on hiatus, and that’s a good thing: it means I’m looking forward to getting back together already. Actually, I’ve been feeling increasingly positive about band for the last couple of months, as our set coalesced and we just got better and better. As much as I’m excited right now and wish we could just keep going, I know the break will do us all some good.

I was thrilled that my parents and in-laws could finally come to a gig, particularly as this might have been the last gig Random Colour presented (it’s possible; after all, the original proposal was to stop entirely, commuted to a six-month hiatus before re-evaluating). I was also thrilled at the size of the crowd, even though about half of it left before Random Colour took the stage (your loss, people). I know Invisible is a more crowd-pleasing group because of the kind of music they play; that’s the sort of live experience people expect. It’s just a shame more people didn’t or couldn’t stay to experience something totally different and intriguing. It’s mildly annoying that we can’t seem to win: if we open the night people arrive late and miss us, and if we close the night people leave during the equipment change or halfway through our set. Anyway, the evening started out as standing room only, even with extra chairs being brought in. I loved the new venue: the stage itself, the sound, the lights. A heartfelt thank you goes out to everyone who came to share the evening with us. I even saw people I hadn’t seen in a year or more, which was a lovely surprise.

The sound check experience was covered very well by Mousme here (along with gig notes too). I may have been one of the only people who didn’t get a lesson on technique from Perry the sound guy, despite his efforts to reposition my pickup ( “No, I guess you were right, that does seem to be the sweet spot.”) Despite his scolding and pointing out our flaws and weaknesses, we all love him and want to annex him permanently as sound guy and manager. We didn’t get to actually start checking until after six, which was when we’d all expected to be finished, so I raced home as soon as Random Colour was released to change and eat and bring HRH back with me. The guys started about twenty minutes after their expected start time, and we danced and sang through their set. (Note to self: Don’t sing and scream so much, if you want to have a voice left for your own set directly following. It ended up not mattering much because I forgot to position my mic for the song in which I do backup vocals, and I couldn’t get it close enough during the song itself, so my lack of voice wasn’t much of an issue.) There were a half dozen or so originals mixed in with the covers, and the range of music they presented was eclectic enough to give Random Colour a run for their money. I am so glad the “notes guys” got the chance to do an instrumental, and the fact that it was what they refer to as the PPK medley (Peter Gunn into the Bond theme) was tremendously cool. I Blame My Woman was hilariously suited to the three vocalists who each took a verse. The Blue Moon medley was also absolutely phenomenal. And of course, the new original The Rocking Thing, written primarily for Mousme (but played for the whole girls’ band, we were assured) was thrilling and just plain fun. It was fascinating to see and hear how the Invisible sound is really settling into something unique.

I have been reassured that it’s not a bad thing that I want to throw myself at the lead guitarist’s feet when he’s onstage. Bandmates tell me that I am in good company.

Our set and presentation were solid, and this was absolutely the most secure we have felt going in to a performance. So naturally, there were technical difficulties, but they were all dealt with coolly and professionally and didn’t adversely affect the performance. (Hands up, everyone who saw my cello endpin slip multiple times!) I’m not going to describe it in detail, as both Mousme and Karine have already done so. I played with my eyes closed a lot, just listening to how the sound was blending, with that ten percent of my brain that provides a running commentary (the other ninety percent busy doing what it’s supposed to do) marvelling at how excellent the sound was. The speed and energy were ideal, except in two songs, J’veux pas viellir and Enter Sandman. I ended up improvising a cello solo around the bits that I actually remembered in J’veux pas viellir (which the rest of the band says was slower than usual and I know was actually a touch faster, being the one who has to keep up during the verses, but it makes sense that it would be perceived as slow because of how it’s positioned in the set list and because of the adrenaline of the final rehearsal and the gig) … but despite these two very minor things it was absolutely beautiful and I loved the sound. Enter Sandman had so much energy that it ended up being played much faster than we’d ever done it. We kept up with one another and aced it, however, and I’m really looking forward to listening to the recording to hear the crowd response to Sandman once the cello and the kick drum start and the song digs in, and again when the unison riff begins. Wheat Kings, First We Take Manhattan, Moon Over Bourbon Street — they were all smooth and beautiful, and I loved playing them. We made real music. And it was good.

What I really love about Random Colour is how we arrange songs. There are no songs that we can play without adapting and arranging them, because we’re never going to find a song written for the instruments we have (unless we write them ourselves, and yes, we have one, and at least one other on the way which has been on the way since May of 2006, but they’re for the future; the latter is now waiting until Jam Sessions is released for the DS, thank you very much!). We really, really nailed these songs, and one of the reasons they succeed the way they do is because our arrangements are fresh and showcase the songs in a completely different way. One of the bits of feedback I’ve been hearing from various people, particularly about Wheat Kings, is “How did they do that with those instruments?”. We have inventive and experimental musicians. Ironically, this is also one of the reasons why we have to take a break from the band. We have to invest a stupid amount of effort and energy from the very start in order to make the songs work, and it’s very draining. We cut an excellent song from our set list the week before the gig because it was an almost-but-not-quite-there song, and it broke everyone’s heart because it was very possibly the song we had put the most work into over a year or so. It’s challenging, being the band we are. We get cross with one another, and frustrated, and worse, we get really really down on ourselves individually for not being as good as we think we ought to be. We tend to forget that what we’re doing is incredible in the first place, that we choose really tough songs to cover, that some of us have only been playing for two or three years. Hell, we get up in front of people to do this. That takes guts, and determination, and a soul of steel. Nights like the one this past Saturday remind us of why we do it.

I will miss band a lot. The hiatus will be good for us. But I’m already sorting through the wishlist of songs I’ve been building up.

PS: Didn’t make it? Were you there and want to see things from a different angle? Check out the gig photos taken by Everyone’s Mother’s Favourite Guitarist!