Music has been a part of my life since before I was born, thanks to my mother. Throughout my childhood, my family didn't have the money for an instrument, so lessons were out of the question. I chose to dance instead, which not only trained by kid-klutziness out of me, but instilled within me a love of sound, movement, and story, preferably all at the same time. My mother sang a lot to me, and we played all sorts of LPs. Two stand out: the recording of Beethoven's Ninth symphony, and the recording of Chopin piano pieces. I'm still a huge Beethoven fan. My parents also made sure they took me to ballets, theatre, and concerts whenever possible, for which I am eternally and deeply grateful.

I somehow managed to miss the basic musical training most people get in grade school -- no recorders, no ukuleles, no maracas or xylophones. By that point I was much more interested in my dance classes, which was crafting a different sort of music appreciation. (At seven, my dance teacher wanted me to try out for the touring National Ballet School auditions; my parents vetoed that immediately. Life could have been very different. But I digress.) When high school came around, I wanted to take music, but they only offered brass and woodwind training, and I've never really wanted to play a wind instrument. So I went the drama route instead, something else which rather changed my life. For a few months in grade ten, I borrowed a friend's flute and took informal lessons from another friend, but that didn't really work out too well: learning from your peers at the age of fifteen is a rather difficult endeavor.

By the time I began university, I was doing two or three plays at once with various local troupes. At around the age of nineteen I bought myself a low-end student flute and with some really good books I taught myself for a couple of years; I can still play decent scales, but it wasn't really for me. I'm not exactly sure when or why I decided that it was time to take music lessons, only that by the age of twenty-three I had made up my mind to find a cello teacher and rent a cello. Why the cello? Because I've always had a dislike for the sound of a violin; it's just too high, and unless you're really really good, it sounds dreadful. The sound of a cello, however, thrills me. So I found a teacher through networking with younger theatre friends who also played with a local youth symphony, and met with her, and touched a cello for the first time. When I went to find one to rent I ran into major difficulty involving the lack of available credit on my student credit card (the only luthier in town who rents them neglected to inform me ahead of time that they also freeze the total value of the cello on your card), so plans were put on hold for a month or so. I eventually bought a secondhand instrument sold by one of my teacher's students. My mother, bless her, put up three-quarters of the money (so that I could finally have the opportunity to take music lessons as I hadn't been able to do as a child, she said), I paid the rest, and as of July 1995 I owned my very own cello.

Cello

I play a thirty to thirty-five year old cello made in Hungary, which, according to most luthiers I've taken it to in Montreal and Toronto, is a remarkably high-quality student instrument. Some parts of it are laminated, and some of it's carved. I've had the finger board planed a couple of times, the bridge replaced twice, and recently the soundpost and endpin were replaced. I've experimented with many strings over the years, and I can firmly say that all the hype about Jargar and Larsen strings being the best for any cello is dead wrong, because they sound dreadful on mine. I have two setups that I like for different reasons: I love the deep, mellow sound of Pirastro Eudoxa wound gut strings, although like any gut string they need a lot of TLC and the ever-changing Montreal climate is unkind to them. To achieve that mellower sound I prefer I used to use synthetic-core strings (let's face it -- they're also a lot more stable than gut!), and while I've tried a lot of different brands I usually go back to stringing the cello with Pirastro Aricores: the balance is excellent on my instrument, and it's a great compromise between the darker sound I like and adequate projection. In early summer of 2006 I received a test package of Pirastro Evah Pirazzi steel stings (thanks, Pirastro!), and they sound incredible on my instrument, providing balanced, focused, and clear tone across all four strings. They're more expensive than synthetic core strings, but they're absolutely worth it for me, and I will definitely be continuing to use them.

I have about four different bows, all low-end intermediate or high-end student bows. They're all brazilwood strung with regular white horsehair. One is a viola bow, with which I enjoy experimenting for a lighter sound. The other three are all cello bows of various weights, which I use according to my mood or the type of sound I need to pull from the instrument depending on the music I'm playing. One of them is a decent all-purpose bow that I use as a default.

I began playing the cello at the age of twenty-three. I took lessons for three and a half years, until my teacher moved away. On and off over the next four years, I tried a lesson or two with a handful of different teachers, but I didn't connect with any of them the way I'd connected with my first teacher. I either disliked their teaching styles, their personal cello technique, or, in the case of the final one, the policies of the music school with which he was affiliated. In the case of the music school, I also resented being forced to participate in a yearly recital. I understand that performance enhances the development of musical experience, but having no say in the matter, and learning that admission to the recital was twenty dollars per audience member, I balked and quit. It wasn't the only reason, of course; the school catered mainly to schoolchildren, and their policies reflected that. As an adult who worked as an assistant manager downtown in a retail environment, there were days where I simply couldn't get away to travel to my weekly lesson (for various reasons such as scheduled staff not showing up, last-minute replacements, and a high volume of clientele which resulted in me extending my shift). The policy of the school was such that replacement lessons had to be scheduled to complement the weekly lesson; simply adding another lesson to the end of your paid period wasn't allowed. I had enough difficulty reaching my lesson once a week; finding yet another time when both the teacher and I were available was impossible. The school simply wasn't flexible enough for my needs. (Later, I discovered that he wasn't a cellist; he was a violinist, which would explain why he never showed me technique, only described it or moved my hands on the bow or fingerboard.)

In the late summer of 2001 I finally took an old and yellowed scrap of newspaper that I had clipped out of the local arts listings in 1998 and tucked into my cello notebook. The tiny ad gave the name and number of the conductor of the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra, and invited interested parties to call and attend a rehearsal. I called and spoke with Andres Gutmanis, founder of the orchestra, who shared the location and time of the next rehearsal with me and encouraged me to join them. I have great difficulty in social situations where I know no one, and quite apart from this, I had never played in the presence of anyone other than a teacher or fellow students. I don't remember that first night, which is probably a very good thing. I was welcomed, and assured that sight-reading was expected, and (the eternal orchestral secret) to only play the notes I could, and to not worry about the rest. I sat with another cellist relatively new to the group, who was originally a saxophonist until a sinus operation, so I had a partner who was at a similar level of skill and familiarity. I went back again the next week, and the week after that, so I suspect that either things weren't as bad as I thought they were at the time, or I was determined to make this work (or perhaps both). Although there have been times when I've wanted to quit (mostly from sheer embarrassment or tearful frustration), I have now been with the orchestra for four seasons, and I now count it one of the joys in my life. My stand partners have changed every year, and I learn something from each of them (even if it's what not to do!).

Playing with an orchestra has enriched my cello experience in a way that playing solo never did. In an orchestra, there is a give-and-take; I find solo performance boring. Orchestral work is rich, varied, and offers a sense of being a part of something larger, producing a thing of beauty which is immeasurably more than the sum of its disparate parts. And, yes, there is the performance aspect; whereas as a solo player I played only for myself, now I have the opportunity to work towards a concrete goal: four concrete goals, actually, per orchestral season.

In March of 2005 a handful of women friends got together to form Random Colour, a band composed of rather non-traditional instruments to cover a very eclectic range of musical styles. This is forcing my musical awareness to develop in a different direction, making me think about music in a different way and to experiment with how I produce sound. The type of sound required by the bass line to a jazz song or a punk song, for example, is very different from the bass required in a piece by Grieg. I also have to deal with a different method of sound processing, as amplification of my acoustic instrument is required via a pick-up. For Random Colour performances, I use a Schatten C-12 cello pick-up, and a Yorkville Acoustic Master 100-watt amplifier (both of which I heartily endorse for any cellist looking to play in coffeehouse-type venues, as both pickup and amp reproduce the full range and true mellow sound of the cello without loss of sound quality).

In July 2007 I bought a secondhand fretless electric bass, almost exactly thirteen years to the day after I bought my cello. She is a Vantage fretless bass, model number 330b, with a lovely grained rosewood fingerboard, satin-finished neck, and a deep emerald-green stained body with darker forest green woodgrain; the effect is something like malachite. She’s about ten years old but has only been played a handful of times, and never gigged, so she is in almost original condition. There is an entire subculture of basses with cello tuning, called tenor basses. I'll bet you didn’t know that; I didn’t until I started researching it idly in June of 2007. You see, I can’t even conceive of finding the time or brain space with which to learn new fingering and scale system on an instrument with different strings. I knew that if I was ever to play an electric bass, I would want to up- or downtune it to cello tuning, because then all my fingering would be the same. And then… a fretless bass showed up on Craiglist at a really excellent price. (I didn’t even know there were such things as fretless basses. Shows how much attention I paid at the instrument and lutherie exhibit I attended in 2006. Although to be fair, I was searching for electric cellos to test, not looking at basses.) The idea of a fretless appealed to me because I can’t stand the idea, sound, or feel of frets under a string when I play. It’s not like I was actively seeking a bass. It was just a vague if-ever thing sitting in the back of my mind. Then I saw the listing, and that, as they say, is that. (Ironically, after messing about with the fretless bass in cello tuning, I've restored it to proper bass tuning. For the style of music I play on it, it's easier.)

Orchestral Repertoire

The following list is a relatively complete reference of the orchestral repertoire I have built up in the past four years. All pieces have been performed with the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra, unless otherwise noted. CD indicates "Canada Day". If a date is missing, it means that the piece was rehearsed extensively although not performed by either myself or the orchestra, or the original date has been forgotten (question marks also indicate the latter). This list currently records pieces played up to and including the Canada Day 2008 concert. It's mainly here for my own reference, although I have discovered that other members of the orchestra have been using it as well! It's nice to know that it's helpful for others.


Adagio for Strings - Tomaso Albinoni (Feb 2004)
Concerto for Two Oboes , Op.9 No. 12 in D - Tomaso Albinoni (Feb 2004)
Concerto for Two Oboes Op 9 No 3 in F - Tomaso Albinoni (May 2004)


Cello Concerto in C major: Adagio - J.C. Bach (Nov 2003)


Concerto No. 1 for violin and orchestra - J. S. Bach (CD 2004)


Rumanian Folk Dances - Bela Bartok (Apr 2003)

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