Celery Success

Last night in drawing class we finished up our vegetable still life drawings and presented them to the class. I mentioned my little celery obsession of the past week, and the class responded by saying, "You can really tell that is celery!"

I do want to thank Marisa for her little celery sketch, which made it look so easy.

In a moment of celery fascination, I named my hometown setting "East Celery" in my NaNoWriMo novel. (It's a humorous novel, hopefully.)

Next week we are to bring in personal photos to draw from. I will bring cello photos. I want to draw both a realistic cello and an impressionist one, being played with joy and expression. Marisa (and anyone else), please feel free to draw cellos too. There is apparently a great demand for cello drawings: according to SiteMeter, many of my recent visitors come looking for cello drawings.

Classical Music, Alex Ross, and Jamie Foxx

In the October 22 issue of the New Yorker, Alex Ross writes about classical music on the Internet: blogs, information, audio files, and such, concluding that the Internet helps promote classical music. (His definition of classical music includes all that modern stuff).

Ross's blog, The Rest is Noise, looks interesting, though I have not have time to read much yet. There was a reference Jamie Foxx, who played Ray Charles in the movie, Ray (a movie I have been meaning to see, but have not yet found the time for). Foxx is going to be a cellist in his next movie. Here is a snippet from the article Ross linked to in the Daily Record (U.K.)

His interest in ladies is one of the reasons why he's working hard on his new challenge, learning violin and cello for his next film, The Soloist, where he plays a homeless schizophrenic who plays classical cello and violin brilliantly on the streets of LA.

And when the Record arrived at Jamie's hotel, so did a courier with a cello for Mr Foxx to practise on after our interview.

"The guy who shows up to show me how to play the cello is nothing like what I expected," says Jamie. "I thought it would be a stiff guy. But my guy is like a Ninja cellist. He's a really fit, goodlooking Asian dude, and he comes to my place with his cello strapped to his back. The first time he came, there were some ladies at my place when he started to play, they just went all dreamy over him. They were fascinated and when I saw how impressed they were, I thought: 'Oh, my God, I got to learn to play the cello!' "

Whatever it takes! I will definitely make time to see this movie, and maybe even take a look at Ray first. (I thought I read this book, but I don't remember the "homeless schizophrenic who plays classical cello and violin brilliantly on the streets of LA" part. Perhaps I am thinking of another book? Perhaps the storyline has been changed?

Eleven to Two

I haven't watched much of the Cleveland/Boston playoffs, but it was an exciting series, with all those lop-sided scores and the Red Sox's big come-from-behind win. (For those too busy practicing to watch the game, the Sox won the first one, and the Indians won the next 3 games. The final game was last night, and the Red Sox won 11-2.)

My daughter left about 7 pm last night to drive a friend back to UMass/Amherst. They stopped in Boston on the way to see another college friend. I called her about midnight to see if they had made it safely to western Mass.

"We're just leaving Boston," she said, and, as if to confirm their location, someone shouted something about Huntington Avenue.

Oh, no, I thought, they're right near Fenway Park and they will never get out of Boston, with all that traffic. They did, though, and she called me at 3:40 am to tell me they were safely on campus. "Luckily" I was up until 6 am myself, finishing up a project due a week and a half ago. I am running a little late....

When she got back home today, she gave me a few more details. They deliberately went to hang out around Fenway Park during the game; it wasn't just that they were lost finding their way out of Boston. They had a good time though, and even saw a homerun ball hit out of the park. (I felt a little guilty, not even bothering to flip on the tv.)

I worked in Boston for twelve years. It's a great city, but I just couldn't understand why anyone would subject themselves to all that traffic congestion! Oh, I guess for the fun of it. Maybe I will at least watch a little of the World Series.

Isn't it funny how, when "your team" wins, you feel good, even partly responsible, even if you didn't really watch the games?

Eight Female Fiddlers

The women's fiddle group met for the first time today. There were eight of us, two fiddle players, two mandolin players, a guitarist, a tin whistler, a bodhran player, and me, on cello. The idea behind the group is that the women want to spend a little more time learning tunes and sometimes feel intimidated by the male players, who tend to play faster and louder. I enjoyed the women's group. It looks like it will be an opportunity to learn new tunes together and work out problems people might have with various tunes, in a friendly, low-key way. We remain part of the larger group; it is just an extra practice and learning session.

I brought three tunes from Scottish fiddle camp for people to learn, and they were well-received. I have been wanting to play these tunes with others, as they are more cello-friendly than some of the fiddle tunes. The fiddlers struggled a bit with the one in F major, but I think we can do it. We will meet twice a month, which seems doable. The only drawback is that I can hear the cello much when I play with this smaller group. I am going to have to practice more.

Ten Tunes

Cello-eye view of Coonamessett farm, where we performed outside last evening.
Click to see better pumpkins.

At a recent fiddle session, one of the fiddlers admitted that, though he knew a lot of tunes, he did not know a lot of tunes well. He could play them in a group, supported by the other musicians, but sometimes had trouble with them on his own. So, he decided to learn ten tunes, really well. He learns all tunes by ear, as he does not read music or even know the names of the notes he is playing. But he is doing a good job with his ten tunes.

This seems like a reasonable strategy. I know a lot of fiddle tunes in a half-baked way: tunes I initially learned on the fiddle that I haven't really worked out on the cello; tunes I had memorized at one time, but keep forgetting; tunes I can play reasonably well at home, but not fast enough for the group. Tunes I fall apart in the middle of, for one reason or other. (This does not seem to be too uncommon--people agreed that the group sound is more than the sum of its parts and tends to make up for the inadequacies of the individual players.)

My first list of ten tunes to learn really well had more than twenty tunes on it. I eliminated the ones I know reasonably well and the ones that I need to rewrite for cello-friendliness, and just limited it to tunes my fiddle group plays with some frequently:

Over the Waterfall
Road to Lisdoonvarna
Spotted Pony
Jessica's Waltz
Westphalia Waltz
Golden Slippers
Two-Dollar Bill
Red-Haired Boy
Redwing
Girl I Left Behind Me

Then I added five Scottish tunes that I hope to add to the group's repertoire.
Kinrara
Da Old Rocking Chair
Wagonwheel notch
Crossing to Ireland
Sister Jean

Forty Cellists

Of the 42,000 writers who have thus far signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMO) and filled in a personal profile, 40 people list cello playing as one of their non-noveling interests. Some of them also blog, but I haven't gone through the list yet to see if any of them are bloggers who blog about the cello. Of the few profiles I have looked at, many are teenagers. Wish I had started my novel-writing and cello-playing when I was a teen!

There are only 13 people listing fiddle or fiddling as an interest. 98 people list flute, and there are 150 violinists. 721 people paint, and 1,920 people draw.

Last year there were 79,000 nano participants so I am guessing a lot of people will be signing up this week, including, probably, another 40 cellists. Cool.

Looking at my blog, you'd think all I did this week was celery-related, but it was in fact a very music-filled week: two cello lessons, an early music rehearsal, two church concert rehearsals, a fiddle session, and, tonight, a fiddle performance. Tomorrow is the first gathering of a new group of women fiddlers, so I am going to have to go to that too.

Meanwhile, I have yet another project to finish up, so will get back to work for now.

More Celery

For those of you who want to draw celery (and who wouldn't?), here are my celery photos. The first is the difficult-to-draw foreshortened view, the second is how our brain perceives, and wants to draw, this celery, and the third is what happens to celery after a grueling photo shoot.



I am sure there is an analogy that can be made to practicing the cello, but I will leave that to your fertile imaginations.