SummerKeys!

I'm in Lubec, Maine, at the start of a week of cello lessons, practice, and playing with others. I was here once before, in the summer of 1999, I believe, after I had been playing the cello for about a year. I spent the week trying to perfect "The Happy Farmer," at the end of Suzuki Book 1. My teacher, Peter Levy, grew increasingly frustrated with my inability to get the bowings right. Finally, just before he was about to clobber me, I played it through correctly.

Summerkeys was kind of a lonely experience the first time. I stayed in a motel on Campobello Island, about ten miles from Lubec because someone had recommended Campobello Island. Nearly everyone else was staying in town, within walking distance from the building were lessons were offered and people gathered to practice. Also, most of the other students were much more accomplished than I and I couldn't really relate to what they were working on.

But, it was, all in all, a good experience. So, when my friend Marisa (a fellow lapsed cello blogger) texted me to say she was going up to Lubec this summer and could she stay with us on here way up (it is a two-day drive for her), I said sure, and I'll come with you to SummerKeys too.

We drove up to Lube yesterday from Cape Cod. Including stops, it took about 8 hours. Our motel is very pleasant, two double beds and lots of extra space for two cellos to play, refrigerator, microwave, coffeemaker, and views of sunrise and sunset. It's about 2.5 miles from town, which is not really walking distance with a cello, but feels close, and not at all isolated, like last time.

We met the cello teacher, Joachim Woitun, and  most of the other cello students--there are seven of us altogether, plus a lone violinist, a couple of flutes and clarinets, and about 10 classical guitar/classical mandolin students. Most of the cello students seem very accomplished, and most seem to be repeat attenders--a little more frequently than I have attended. I have brought music that I am struggling to play: Faure's Elegy and Scicilienne, and three movements from the first Bach Cello Suite (Prelude, Minuets 1 and 2), but feeling somewhat inadequate about. Hope to make progress this week!

This morning, we have a music lecture and a group cello class, followed by free time, individual practice time, and lessons. There is a group supper tonight.

SummerKeys has grown a lot in the past 15 years. I think lessons and practice were in only one or two buildings back then. This year events are spread out over numerous buildings, churches, and schools.

And this year, Lube has Internet and phone service! Last time I went, my cell phone was useless here.

Time for breakfast!

One Woman's Trash....

Our lovely mostly finished basement has, over the years, gotten filled with junk, and I am on a mission to get it cleared out and usable again for music and art. When he was in high school, my son used to have his friends over to play music (sometimes a rock band, more often a jazz band). I think it would be a nice place for fiddlers and cellists to gather, and for me to make use of my drafting table (left over from my city planning days).

Some stuff is easy to toss, other stuff, books, records, memorabilia is harder. One item is my old cello case, a big, hulking black case, of molded styrofoam covered with black canvas. I wish I had taken a photo of it before I finally hauled it off to the dump today. The dump has an area called "Pick of the Litter," where you can put usable stuff in hopes that someone will pick it up.

I figured that it was pretty unlikely that anyone would want a massive black cello case, but there are people who lurk around the Pick of the Litter in hopes of finding usable stuff to sell, and I was hoping one of them would think my case valuable enough to sell at a flea market somewhere. I just wanted someone to use it--I hate throwing things out. Thus the state of my basement.

So, I brought the cello case to Pick of the Litter and barely had it out of the car when someone--who barely knew what it was--showed it to a friend of his who happened to be a guitarist who knew a cellist who needed a case. Who would have thought? I left them marveling over the cello case, happy to be one step closer to a litter-free basement.

Fiddling in the Sun

My fiddle group, Ladies' Choice (we are all women--we chose Ladies's Choice because it is the name of a fiddle tune) performed outside at the art market on August 21. We had 10 members playing: three tin whistles, four fiddles, one guitar, one drum, and me, on cello.

I worked hard on these pieces, and felt pretty well prepared for this, but I still couldn't keep up with the fiddlers on a couple of the tunes. Sometimes I wrote simplified versions for myself, which helped, and sometimes I just simplified them on the spot (Notably Pig Ankle Rag). I was worried when a more accomplished fiddler joined us at the last minute and speeded up some of our tunes, but, in the end, all went well.

You will notice that we play from sheet music--that really helps, and enables us to play music with multiple parts. Of the selections below, Ash Grove is a three part version: whistles on one part, fiddles on the second, and me on the third. I love this one because the cello part flows well.

We had prepared an hour and a half of music, but the event was 2.5 hours long. We played through the entire repertoire without a stop, then took a break and started from the beginning again. I taped the tunes we played after the break. (FlipVideo camera on a tripod in the audience--I apologize for the audience noise. The shrieks you hear are kids, not fiddles!)

By the time we started the second set, the sun had shifted and some of the fiddlers and whistlers and the guitarist moved behind me--we had started out in a horseshoe, with me more or less in the middle with the drum and guitar.

Country Waltz/Molly's Waltz

http://youtu.be/A1DJ1ycUsAY

Jamie Allen

http://youtu.be/GDKO1iP3mZ4

Inis Oirr

http://youtu.be/btTUyRX3K_8

I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

http://youtu.be/1Ouw8QYfeVc

Ash Grove

http://youtu.be/_l4Z-9zzinQ

Boda Valsen

http://youtu.be/1Ngf4UrhjeA

Polka Set

http://youtu.be/ndKxfjfQfSQ

Pig Ankle Rag

http://youtu.be/B-gUaaX8R2w

Orchestra starts on Wednesday!

Fiddling Away the Summer

Every summer I tell myself I will concentrate on fiddle music. Without the weekly orchestra rehearsals (September to early May), I can learn a fiddle tune or two, or even learn to play by ear. And, I love playing outside, with the fiddlers at various events throughout the summer.

And, every summer, the days fly by without my having really focused on fiddle music much at all. This year is no different, especially since I am playing duets with two other cellists (each meeting weekly, most weeks), as well as playing flute in Town Band (10 weekly performances). The women's fiddle group I play in is meeting once a week too, to prepare for our performance at an art fair on August 21. And the larger fiddle group meets and performs regularly, but I have only been to a couple of their sessions.

This year, in preparation for the August 21 performance, I have made an effort to play through all the music a couple of times a week. It should be every day, as I am still struggling with some of the tunes, still rethinking which octave I should be playing in, which fingerings to use. Fiddle music doesn't always translate easily for the cello. Still, I am feeling much better about this music than I have in the past.

The women's group plays from sheet music, so I don't have to deal with the memory/playing by ear issue for this concert, but I am trying to memorize a couple of the tunes--if only because they are easier to play if I really know them.

(I attended a vocal concert yesterday, and talked briefly to another woman afterward. She was so impressed with the singer, not for her singing, which was wonderful, but for her ability to memorize all the show tunes and the little introductory talks before each one, as well as the order of the whole program. I politely agreed with her, but, but for me, it is easier to memorize vocal piece than an instrumental piece. Sometimes putting words to a fiddle tune does help me memorize it. Hmm, maybe I should try that more often.) 

There is another cellist in the group now. He plays entirely by ear, and has no problems at all with octaves or fingering. He just plays the tunes, and happily at that. It comes naturally to him, but he also goes to a lot more sessions than I do and no doubt practices more. It's both inspiring and discouraging.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a concert by Jo + Sorcha, a folk music duo consisting of two young women, one playing guitar and banjo, and the other playing cello. The cellist was classically trained, but learned to play by ear. I told her of my inabilities. She told me I could do it. She told me to sit down with a CD and just "bang out" the tune until I got it. She also improvises during performances, too, but of course you have to basically know what you are doing to do that well. She was very encouraging.

One of these days....

No Adagio for Orchestra

As it turned out, we didn't play Barber's "Adagio for Strings." The general consensus was that we couldn't get it sounding good enough in time for the concert.

While, this was probably true, I was disappointed that we gave up on it. After all, I had spent about 75 percent of my orchestra practice time on it, and I was feeling that it was coming together for me. And when I turned to focus my practicing on the other pieces on the orchestra program, I realized that I still needed to do a lot of work on them. Perhap the difficulty of "Adagio" had masked the lesser, but still real, difficulty of the other pieces.

Our concerts were in May and orchestra is on break until September, when we will start in on Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 and other works. I should be working on it, but I am focusing on fiddle music and playing duets with friends this summer, as well as weekly town band performances (on the flute). There is plenty to work on with this music.

My fiddle group is playing at an outdoor art fair on August 21. It's 2.5 hours of background music, and we have a playlist 27 pieces long. Fortunately we are not playing from memory, but there is still a lot for me to work on here.

More on that later!

Rebellion

The strings went off to practice "Adagio for Strings" last week, under the direction of the first violinist, rather than the conductor, who was spending the time rehearsing the wind instruments' solo piece, selections from Handel's "Water Music."

The grumbling began right away, the violins taking the lead. Well, there are far more violins than cellos, violas, and bass players. "Adagio for Strings" is a difficult piece, and we are not playing it well. We are having trouble with counting, fingerings, clef-reading, intonation, following the conductor, and staying together. We may simply not be at the level where we can handle this without better coaching. No one even mentioned bowings until last week, when I heard talk of "free bowing" from one of the violinists.

I laughed to myself, thinking it was a joke, but have since found out it is a real term. Wikipedia says it is "a performance technique used by a string section to create a fuller sound than can be achieved by synchronized bowing. Free bowing was popularized by Leopold Stokowski, who as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra experimented with many musical conventions....

"Under free bowing...the string members each determine individually the best way to play a set of notes, collectively producing a deeper sound, free of mechanical restriction. Free bowing is rarely used today due to its lack of communal focus, which can cause musicians to play out of step with each other. The Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom it was associated, discontinued the practice after Eugene Ormandy succeeded Stokowski as conductor."

I believe the violinist who suggested free bowing was not looking for a collectively deeper sound, but, rather, to eliminate bowing as one more thing we have to deal with. We are already using free bowing in this context. I don't know if audiences notice these things, but I am guessing our audiences would not. They are a kindly group.

We managed to get through the piece once during our rehearsal, in reasonable order, but no one is confident about their playing. It was suggested that we simply drop the piece from the concert program, rather than play something that will sound, ah, awful.

My immediate response was no, not yet. We still have three more rehearsals. I have spent most of my practice time, such as it is, on this piece! I am almost getting to the point where I can play it, though my consistency of counting in the long note section (whole notes, double whole notes) is still shakey.

The advantage of dropping the piece now is, of course, that it will give us more time to work on the other pieces. The disadvantage is that it could be that with a little more concerted effort we could actually do this. So my vote is to keep trying and drop it at the last minute, if need be.

Choosing or Being Chosen

"Did you choose the cello, or did the cello choose you?"

Not the usual question you expect from your cable guy. I was on the phone with him trying to get some help for our poor television reception. It was the second time in a couple of weeks that we had had a problem, and the first time what seemed to help was unplugging the cable box from one wall outlet and plugging it into another.

This time, my husband noticed when he got home from work that the television was unplugged. When he plugged it back in, the picture was poor, very snowy.

Perhaps because I had had such a fine conversation with the first cable guy, I explained that whole experience to the second cable guy, adding, in an uncharacteristically chatty way, that the television may have gotten unplugged as I stumble out the door with the cello on my back to go to orchestra. "It's a big instrument," I said, and sometimes I bump into things."

And, when I had replugged the cable box and TV, I had left them a little more vulnerable to bumping into.

He could not figure out what was wrong, and finally asked about the cello. He is a pianist, or in his words, plays around on the piano a bit. I never did get his full story on whether he chose the piano or whether it chose him, but I did relate to him some of the results of my daughter's Science Fair project of a few years back.

She was trying to find out if people who chose their own instrument, rather than had one chosen for them, were likely to continue to play longer. The study design was flawed (it included all those people who had to take up the recorder in third grade and dropped it immediately afterward), so I am not sure whether she proved her thesis or not, but one result was very clear: Many people do not choose their instruments.

A very successful saxophonist told us he took it up because there was one in the closet. Sometimes a band director would ask a student to play a particular instrument because the band needed it. Sometimes a mother decides for her children, based on her musical preferences or the logistics of carrying an instrument on the school bus. Or a child gives only superficial consideration: picking the flute because it is shiny or the trumpet because his friend chose the trumpet.

My answer to the cable guy was long-winded. I don't really know if I chose the cello. I was playing flute at the time, but was increasingly annoyed by the high notes. My flute teacher invited her adult students to play with the adult students of a local cello teacher and a violin teacher. I thought the cello really made the flute sound good. Someone gave me the [erroneous] impression that it was easy to play. Soon, I came to love it, even without the flute.

So, I don't really know. Maybe we chose each other.

P.S. The TV issue was not resolved on the phone, so a cable technician was sent to our house. He fixed the problem within 10 seconds of walking in. The television had been manually set to a channel other than 3 (probably when one of us turned off the TV manually; I can't blame this on a careening cello). He switched it back and left--without disclosing his musical inclinations.

Adagio for Cellos

This is worth listening to--an all-cello version of Adagio for Strings:

Adagio for Strings

My orchestra is working on Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" for our upcoming concerts in May. This is a difficult piece for me, and I am making excruciatingly slow progress. I am still getting dizzy in the treble clef part. I can read treble clef just fine when playing the flute, but it is still requiring all my resources and more focus than I seem to have to play smoothly through the treble clef part.

Other features of this piece, for those who have not played it, are 5 flats, parts in bass, tenor (way below where it needs to be tenor), and treble clef, and the use of 4/2 time. Focus, I tell myself.

Mstislav Rostropovich conducted this version in 1990, my favorite version so far. I am posting it here to remind myself to listen.

On the other hand, this one, the world premiere, the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini on May 11, 1938, in New York, is also pretty spectacular. Even without being able to see the orchestra.

iPad Fiddlers

I was delighted to receive the very generous gift of an iPad from my daughter this Christmas. I wanted one primarily to store sheet music. One of the women in the women's fiddle group I play with already had one. She plays the tin whistle, so it is a little easier for her to position the iPad close enough for her to see it when she plays, but it is, I have found, quite possible to use a iPad for cello music too.

So, I walked into the women's fiddle group this past Saturday, with my new iPad (still very few songs in my sheet musica library, and not yet ready to play from it,) I was amazed to see three other women with iPads--and actually using them!

I haven't seen anyone locally using the iPad for classical music, but the fiddleers have really embraced it. In part, this is because, I think, that fiddle tunes are short and more easily viewed on an iPad than more complex classsical musc, and because there is an abundance of online fiddle music libraries already formatted for iPad. Fewer for cello--I have to transpose a lot of the fiddle music for cello or otherwise convert the music to PDF.

The Borromeo String Quartet uses laptop computers to store and play from their sheet music, but such use of digital devices is still apparently rare in the classical world.

I am currently using a program called Scorecerer to store PDF files. It also allows you to ddfingerings, bowings, and other markings, just as you might with a pencil, except you mark with your finger. There are some other programs I might also try, but for now, I think I need to focus on getting my music into PDF files so I can actually use this wonderful little device in sessions.

Orchestra Music

It was nice to get back to orchestra this week, though the music is challenging. We (the cello section) received an e-mail the day before the rehearsal with fingerings for Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings." It is in five flats, with bass, tenor, and treble clef--goes up to a high G flat, but only briefly. The rest remains more playable, no higher than a high D, thumb-positiony.

After going over it a bit, myself, in orchestra, and with my teacher today, I think that it is going to be as horrendous as I though it would be.

It is, at least, adagio. The hard part might be remember which clef I am in.

Here is a fine version of the piece, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich:



There are eight other pieces, all with their own challenges.

I am very happy to be playing Bach's Fugue in G Minor (the Lesser), which I used to play with my flute quartet. Playing it fast enough will be the issue.

We are also playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever," which I know well from playing it on flute every week in the summer during our Town Band concerts. It is fun taking the lower part for a change.

Our pops tune is Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Symphonic Reflections," a medley of Jesus Christ Superstar, Don't Cry for Me Argentina, King Herod's Song, and Memory. That one seems pretty doable.

Unfamiliar to me is "Tatarian Dances" by Elena Roussanova Lucas. We don't have much in the way of melody, but I really like these dances.

"Band of Brothers" by Michael Kamen has an unrelenting section of triplets that will require some focused playing, and counting.

We are also playing "Variations on a Theme by Handel," by Maurice Whitney, "Legend" by Merle Isaac, "Poem Symphonique 'Les Preludes,'" by Franz Liszt.

It will keep us busy for a while.

Cello Resolution!

I am in my 12th year as an adult beginner. Sometime I think I am making excellent progress and am clearly an adult intermediate! Other times, such as when I record myself, I am distressed at the sound I make, Not music at all. Funny how the ear seems to correct pitches and rhythms and emotive content when one is listening to oneself play; yet the ear is not tricked by a recording. Yikes. Suddenly one can really hear how one sounds.

At least this is the case for me. But, something about the cello pulls me onward. A good practice session makes me think, yes, I can do this. The trouble is that the good practice sessions are not so frequent as they ought to be.

So, here is my simple resolution for the new year, bright, hopeful 2012: to practice every day, even those jam-packed days when work consumes my every waking minute.

I want to improve pitch, vibrato, dynamics, and musicality.

Orchestra starts this week, and I want to, for once, feel really confident of my playing. This means more time spent on practicing the pieces than I have in the past.

Fiddle music is ongoing, and I want to improve my ability to play by ear, to increase my repertoire of fiddle tunes (by memory/ear) by one a month. My favorite fiddle tunes for cello are still those by Abby Newton.

I hope to play cello duets or trios with others this year, depending on everyone's busy schedules.

Finally, I need to spend more time on scales and etudes. I know they are important, but I tend to skip over them to quickly.

I started on the resolution early, since I had the time off around the holidays. I have now practiced 2 hours a day for four days in a row. I don't expect to be able to continue that, but, as they say, even 10 minutes on those busy days is better than skipping a day.

Happy New Year to all!

Concert Tomorrow!

Our first orchestra concert is tomorrow, Sunday, 3 PM in Brewster. We are playing:

Brandenburg Sinfonia by J. S. Bach/Isaac
Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens/Isaac
First Essay for Orchestra by Samuel Barber
Sea Song by Vaughn Williams (just the winds)
Jazz Pizzicato by Leroy Anderson/Applebaum (just the strings)
South of the Border (5 dances) by Jerry Neil Smith
Remembering the Beatles arr. Bob Lowden
Hungarian Dance No. 6 by Brahms/Isaac
Skaters Waltz by Emil Waldteufel/Pfortner

We do it all again on Friday, November 18, in Centerville

I meant to spend yesterday and today practicing, but things came up.... Still time today, but I am off to play cello in the fiddle group now. The fiddle group performs frequently, and I join them occasionally. I do hope to join them on a holiday concert in December.

Orchestra

We are about halfway through the orchestra rehearsal season (concerts are in mid-November), and I still haven't managed a regular practice time. Fortunately this music is much more doable than last season's array of difficult music, so it is easier to manage on my minimal practicing, but there is still a lot of work to do.  My work schedule remains overwhelming, so it is hard to squeeze in the time, but I really need to do it.

In other news, a group of about nine cellists have agreed to get together after orchestra ends to play Christmas carols at nursing homes. We will only have a couple of weeks of rehearsal for this, but we've got some easy music, and some music that we've played together before in smaller groups. The nine cellists have played together in several cello quartets over the past 8 or 10 years. I'm really looking forward to this!

Fiddling through the Earthquake

As the members of the fiddle group (2 fiddles, guitar, tin whistle, bodhran, cello) readied ourselves to play at 2 PM on Tuesday, outside in the ArtMarket, the Washington DC-based earthquake struck the town. I wish I could say that the earth moved when we started to play, but, honestly, none of us felt a thing.

We were probably too engrosed in our first "public" concert. We had performed twice before, both for large family parties hosted by the leader of our group, but this was the first time we were out in public. It wasn't really a concert--there were no chairs set up for people to sit down and listen, but our music was amplified and sent throughout the art fair, so everyone could hear. There is a grassy area in front of the musicians so that people could sit there (some did), but music at the fair is mostly background music.

We had prepared (to varying degrees) lots of music for this 2 and a half hour concert, and for the most part it went well. I probably made a mistake in every tune though. Some more than others. Some because I knew the "hard part" was coming up and froze, some because I was thinking, "This is going well...."

Our list of music did not last the full 2 and a half hours, and when we started at the top of the list again, I felt I was playing better, more relaxed, less inclined to give in to the "hard parts." A friend in the group assured me that no one heard my mistakes. Maybe. But I knew they were there.

Initially we got no response from the audience. No applause, no one looking and smiling, no one coming over to say something nice, as had happened the previous week with the classical group. Then, midway through, people started show some interest (in part families and friends of the players). But a man asked if he could videotape us ("My mother would love this!"), promising he would not put it on YouTube. We said sure, and played our best "Over the Waterfall" for him. I noticed someone else videotaping too. I tried to look pleasant, as I am frequently scowling in photos of my playing the cello.

All in all, it was fun and the weather was gorgeous. I am looking forward to the next time, hoping to weed out a few more errors.

Where Did the Summer Go?

Ok, we still have a couple of weeks of summer, but it has slipped by so quickly. Our end-of-summer performance that was so far in the future is this Tuesday. This will be the fiddling group concert. The classical music quartet performed last Tuesday.

Both performances were/are at an outdoor art fair, where people do not actually sit down and listen to us, but get to hear us amplified throughout the entire craft fair. There's no escape for them. I have pretty much gotten over my "don't mike me" attitude, having been convinced by the "when in doubt, play out" school of performing that a strong, resonant, robust wrong note is better than a scratchy, tentative, wimpy right note. That, and we have improved.

Our recent quartet performance, a 2-and-a-half-hour gig, was much better than our June concert. We did have a few breakdowns, but nothing terribly dramatic, and some pieces we played better than ever. Pachelbel's Canon, for instance. As you may know, the cello part for this is the same 8 notes over and over and over and over again. And, even though I have them memorized, I read from the sheet music so I know where we are, even though I admit this is silly.

One of our flute players has had problems with the piece, and we omitted it from our June performance. This time we decided to go for it. The flutists played perfectly. My mind wandered and I got lost, briefly. The viola player also got lost, but she is a great improviser, and found her way to the end.

Because there wasn't really an audience, there was no formal applause after each piece, though we did get intermittent applause and yells of appreciation, and some people came over to tell us they enjoyed our playing, pleased to hear chamber music outside.

I don't remember if Pachelbel's Canon got any applause, but more important for me was our satisfaction in playing a mostly intact version of it. In addition, we played Haydn's London Trio, no. 1; a long-time favorite, Handel's Water Music excerpts, a new favorite; Ash Grove, Simple Gifts, Sellinger's Round, works by Boismortier, Wiseman, some Rodgers and Hammerstein show tunes, and more. We prepared a lot of music for this event, given its length. We only had to repead a couple of short pieces to round out the 2 1/2 hours.

This Tuesday, it's 2 1/2 hours of fiddle tunes! This is a women's fiddle group with fiddles, guitar, tin whistle, mandolin, and me on cello. We use sheet music, which I love because it is hard for me to memorize so many fiddle tunes and harmony parts. But I have probably spent more time transposing fiddle parts and working out playable arrangements (simplifying the fast runs, figuring out which octave works best, etc.) than I have practicing.

Practicing--a good idea! I will do it now!  

Two Concerts

This summer I am playing in two ensembles, the M&M's group (2 flutes, violin/viola, cello) which plays mostly classical music, and Ladies' Choice, a fiddle group of varying numbers of women playing varying instruments: fiddle, guitar, mandolin, bodhran, tin whistle, and me on cello.

Both groups will play at a weekly arts market (different weeks in the second half of August), so both groups are practicing. Again, I am hoping both groups pull it together in time!

I love playing outside in the summertime, but it is still hard to find the time to practice. Two performances are a good motivation though.

Still playing....

Periodically, I like to return to this blog, and, yes, indeed, I am still playing the cello! It is just that life is so busy, or, more truthfully, that I am not making enough progress to report it here.

Of course, that is because I am so busy. Still struggling to find time to practice.

My quartet is still meeting weekly for a 2-hour rehearsal. We love this opportunity to play together, and we do occasionally sound good. The mid-June concert did not go well though. No matter, it was at an outdoor art festival, and there were very few people in the audience: a fellow cellist, and the family of one of the flutists. And the people scheduled to perform next. There may have been a couple of others, but attendance was slim.

No matter. I just like playing outside on a beautiful summer day.

We had some problems staying together on a couple of the pieces. Maybe the acoustics affected our ability to hear each other. Maybe we were not quite prepared. But we did stop a couple of times. It was not as humiliating as it might have been, given the sparsity of the audience, but it was disappointing.

We did not record it. :-)

Personally, I am working on some intonation issues and making some progress. I am still trying to find time to practice every day. I managed about every other day last week, and hoping to keep to that, at least.

My teacher suggested practicing first thing in the morning, coffee cup at hand. Oddly, that is what I had done that very day, deadlines hanging over my head and all. A very nice start to the day!

2 Flutes, Violin, and Cello

We have added a violinist (who also plays the viola a little) to our chamber group (now respelled as M&M's), and are looking for appropriate repertoire. Not much is written for 2 flutes, a violin, and a cello. We are working on a piece now by Boismortier, arranged for 1 flute, 2 oboes, and piano. I am playing the left-hand piano on cello, and the flutes and violin are divying up the flute and oboe parts. It sounds surprisingly good.

We also have some four-part recorder music, some standard quartet music (with either 3 violins or 2 violins and viola), though some of it is more violin-y than flute-y, but it is fun to explore what we have and see if it will work, for us, and for our instruments.

We have a another performance, too, though not until mid-June. About 45 to 50 minutes this time. A nice goal!

Meanwhile, the fiddling group is coming along. There were 9 people at the rehearsal today: tin whistle, mandolin, bodhran, guitar, 4 fiddles, and me, on cello. We have a performance in March.

And the orchestra is playing February 9 at a local school, and again in May (2 concerts).

That should keep me busy.

The Em & M's

Ok, I've been busy. Work, work, work, but lots of music too. I am playing in orchestra, in the fiddle group, in the women's fiddle group, and now with a new trio, made up of remnants of  the flute choir, after it dwindled down to a precious few.

We call the new group the Em & M's because of our names: Emma, Marilyn, and Marilyn. We all play flute. Marilyn and I play cello, and Emma has expressed interest in learning the cello. She also plays piano and guitar.

We got together just before Christmas to put together a 10-12 minute performance for a benefit concert for a group that collects care package items to send to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The flute choir has always participated (as has the fiddle group), so we gathered what was left of it and created a 2 flute/cello trio. I randomly selected a piece from my stack of mostly unperformed trio music: Trio for 2 Flutes and Cello, by Carlo Wiseman, written about 1750, and a folk song, "The Ash Grove."

The cello parts were not difficult (mostly first position--I would recommend both pieces for an adult beginner), but it did take us a while to get it all together. We performed it this past Saturday, and my husband videotaped it (and missed the first few measures of each piece; the Wiseman has 3 movements).

I am not entirely please with my performance--you can hardly hear me! I really thought I was playing louder than it sounds on the video, and my husband thought the instruments were well-balanced during the performance. On the other hand, I was worried about pitch and sound (the cello sounded scratchy to me), and may have deliberately played softly. I felt good about "The Ash Grove" though, and thought that was louder. But it isn't.

Oh well. I will post them anyway. I am hoping we will perform again in June (again taking the flute choir's regular slot at an outdoor arts fair), and we can see the progress!

The bowl in front of us is not for donations--it is full of M&Ms for the audience to munch on.

(All the videos are cut off in my view of this blog. You can see more on the right side on Youtube.) 

Wiseman, movement 1
 

Wiseman, movement 2


Wiseman, movement 3


The Ash Grove


Oh, I also played with the Falmouth Fiddlers:


And later, Marilyn and I played flute to accompany the Mashpee Singing Seniors, but we were drowned out by the trumpets, the piano, and the chorus, so I won't post that here!