“But I played it perfectly at home!”

In cello choir class the other night, after we both bumbled through a tricky passage, the woman who was playing first with me turned to me and said: “I practiced this part! I played it perfectly at home! I really worked on it.” I stopped her by saying, “I did too, and I marked all the fingering, but now when I look at those numbers they mean nothing to me.” She, too, had worked out the fingering. Then I admitted I only worked on it in one or two practice session, over the last two weeks—and so did she. We both finally did get it right, but it was a struggle.

This is something one should learn early on in practicing, that, to “set” a passage, you have to slow it down and play it over and over again, even after you get it right. The brain remembers all those times you flubbed it. Another woman had trouble because she kept slowing down when she got to her tricky passage. This is another reason to play the whole piece slowly in practice, rather than to try to play it up to speed immediately. I’m working on this!

The cello choir is one of several adult cello choirs at the local conservatory. The more advanced choir has eight players; ours, an intermediate level group, has five. There are one or two less advanced groups with 3 to 5 players. There is also a string orchestra (which I joined for a time) and a community orchestra, both of which have numerous cellists.

It is amazing to me that in this small area there are so many adult cellists, all of whom absolutely love the cello. I think it is largely due to the cello choir teacher, the teacher of most of the other cello choir students, who welcomes adult students with endless patience and gentle support. My own teacher has group classes only rarely, and far fewer adult students, so the cello choir classes are a great way for me to play with other cellists.

This week, however, we were teacherless, as our teacher had another commitment. We did just fine on our own—there is much we students can learn from each other and from being left on our own to figure things out for ourselves every now and then.