Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Good to be back!

So over the weekend, I played cello for the Easter Masses... it was a tremendous amount of fun & I don't know if it's because it made me feel physically better from being sick, or if it's because of something deeper inside, but there were some truly beautiful music-making moments & there was this accompanying joy & sense of pride with what I was doing... it's great to feel that again.

To follow that up, I practiced for somewhere around 3 hours today ... I got some really great stuff accomplished, and I used my laptop to record & video for the first time ... so helpful. It makes a tremendous difference to pause & reflect verbally after each exercise ... and also to set goals makes a tremendous difference...

My bow technique is bothering the crap out of me after that conversation with Ostrofsky, though I love the way my left hand is coming along... truth be told, my bow hand isn't that bad... but it could be so much further... I'm going to really try to focus on it as much as possible... it's sort of like focusing on your left hand when practicing piano...

One thing that helps tremendously is if I think about the bow motion coming from the upper arm muscles, and think of the elbow as a hinge (I really need to just work/study with Ostrofsky ... all of his ideas & concepts 3 years later still work great for me... I love my teacher, there's just certain limits he has in his concepts of technique & his idea of playing & I'm not saying that I know better than him or that I know more, because I don't ... I'm just saying that there's other things that I need ... other ways to do and learn... still, I could write a whole post on the good things about my teacher... maybe I should do that sometime...)


Speaking of other teachers... I'm absolutely calling Julia Lichten tomorrow ... making myself do it... been putting it off way too long...

Also speaking of other teachers, Richard Slade conducted our chorus rehearsal tonight instead of our usual conductor (he's listed on the links to the right as Richard the Tenor) ... what a tremendous difference! We got so much more done, not to mention the general morale was a lot higher & I felt like I actually learned a ton in the class, because the teacher actually talked about musical and technical issues, instead of just taking a brute force approach to things... sort of another example ... our usual teacher is not a bad teacher, but there's just so much more that could be done...

Anyway, point is, some good music stuff has been going on lately & I'm gonna keep it up! So thrilled to be back in my inner performing world... I realize I still never responded to peoples' comments... I think I'm gonna have to let those ones go at this point... thanks for the support from anyone who did comment though...

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