natesviolin

Last night was quite a rush! The CSO and Redmoon Theater collaborated to put on a show called Mercury Soul. This show has been performed elsewhere before (including Berlin and San Francisco), but this was the first time for Chicago, and my first time as a participant. You can check out my pictures from last night at the following link:

Mercury Soul gallery

I'm excited! This is the beginning of a project I've been imagining for a while now: an online collection of videos dedicated to the orchestral excerpts. I've always loved William Preucil's CD of selected excerpts, but I've often wished that I could see just how he was doing what he was doing! Today I took out my Panasonic Lumix LX5 and put together a Schumann Scherzo. Here's the video, below which you can download PDFs of my actual part, with bowings and fingerings.

My third year of Curtis, 1998-1999, Zach DePue transferred from Cleveland and we immediately began playing in quartet together (along with Priscilla Lee and Jessi Thompson, the Grancino Quartet after a violin the school was lending me). But Zach grew up in Ohio, the youngest of four violin-playing brothers, and fiddling was his first love. So for the Holiday Party in December, which used to be a sort of vaudeville show, we volunteered this act, Flaming Fiddles. Zach's brother Jason played guitar and stuntman.

I've written about Evgeny Kissin before here, specifically about his appearances with the CSO at Symphony Center. 3 years ago, these were some of the comments I heard after his performance:

"That's scary." "There's just no one like that." "Do you think he does anything else?" "That look in his eyes, that explains it." "This is the best I've heard." "I'll remember this one for years."

I went on to describe how he earned these comments:

Fleur and I are anxiously waiting for Akiko to return from LA tonight, where I'm happy to report that yesterday she won the violin audition in the Los Angeles Philharmonic! It's an unexpected return to the orchestra for her, since she was a member from 2000 to 2004 before winning her job in Chicago.

I call this article to order! OK, I had to put Robert's name in quotes because when I asked him about his rules of the metronome last night, he said I was "imagining things". His official rule, therefore, is "whatever works". But I'm sure that years ago he gave me, if not rules, then ideas about how best to use the metronome in my practicing. So, as long as we all understand that he doesn't exactly endorse these rules, here they are, with explanations to follow:

I was reminded today while teaching a lesson just how much of a difference it makes to practice with the same kind of sound you will make in performance. This sounds obvious, but most people from time to time will begin to "slow practice". This usually means playing a passage divorced from all musical meaning and timing. The sound is often of a shockingly low quality, either wispy or scratchy; the posture slouched; the tempo pushed and pulled to suit the convenience of the moment.

This week's program at the CSO is the standard overture, concerto, intermission, standard... except that the concerto, far from being a warhorse, is the Penderecki Concerto Grosso for 3 cellos. Our maestro for the week, Charles Dutoit, commissioned the piece ten years ago, and has been touring with it since then. Three of our cellists, John Sharp, Katinka Kleijn and Ken Olsen tackled it for the first time in rehearsal this afternoon, and it may end up the highlight of the show. They sound great, and the piece is well written for the cello.

and we still have the equivalent of a Bruckner symphony to play in the second half! Can my back/shoulder/brain survive? Maybe this diet Coke will help?

This week's singers are great, and the music is beautiful, which is really all you can ask for. This one would probably be fun to follow from the audience, lengthy though it is, because of its Old Testament story. There are great moments of drama, all wrapped in a sound that's somewhere between the 18th and 19th centuries.

The bell has rung, time to go do it!

Here you can read stories from my life as a violinist. Right now, all my stories are about just one man: Felix Galimir! You can read the collection by clicking his name.