Career-boosting Young Concert Artists organization is celebrating its 50th anniversary

Canadian violinist Scott St. John and the St. Lawrence String Quartet have more than each other in common: they are also alumni -- from different years -- of the annual Young Concert Artists Inc. competition.

The New York City-based organization, which is dedicated to giving promising young talents a practical career boost, is celebrating its 50th anniversary as it prepares for its next round of competitors,arriving in just over a week.

Guelph-based freelancer writer Marcia Adair wrote an excellent feature on Young Concert Artists for today's Los Angeles Times. It's an inspirational read.

Here is a promotional trailer the organization prepared for its anniversary:

On TV tonight: Why Canada Council Instrument Bank competition is like no other

Cellist Denis Brott puts everything in perspective about halfway through the film, when he says: "A great instrument is when the limitations are always yours." That is what makes Old Master violins and cellos so valuable musically, and why so many string players dream of getting one in their hands.

Last year, Montrealer Ari Cohen followed a pan-Canadian competition for young, talented string players that awards the use, for three years, of one of 14 stringed instruments from the Canada Council's Instrument Bank.

We meet many of the competitors and several past winners, and discover what a close relationship these people have with their instruments. We find out how the enterprising Brott hooked up with William Taylor, a prominent business CEO, to raise some money for this project three decades ago. We also see how this competition is not just about musicality, but having a serious career plan.

The Instrument Bank competition is about the total artist and, satisfyingly, Cohen also manages to connect the viewer with the total person. It's a fine way to spend some time in front of the TV this evening -- on Bravo! at 8 p.m. (Eastern), with a repeat broadcast on Oct. 30 at 7 p.m.

Here's the official trailer:

 

Yo Yo Ma showed 1,000 children some engaging musical attitude at the Royal Conservatory yesterday

Yo Yo Ma at Koerner Hall on Friday morning. Photo: John Terauds

I was lucky enough to get invited to the first of this year's four Learning Through the Arts events at the Royal Conservatory of Music, where students from primary schools are connected to something or someone special in the world of music.

As part of his gorgeous solo recital on Thursday night, Yo Yo Ma agreed to speak to more than 1,000 kids on "The Power of Music Education" on Friday morning. At least that's what the printed programme said.

But instead of a lecture or a class, Ma persuaded the kids on stage with him to step out of their comfort zones and pushed them to open up to the message of the music they were making.

An Orff-method group from the Claude Watson School did an beautifully polished job with text, song, percussion and dance in two poems by Chief Dan George. Ma thanked them, then, with the help of a visiting Korean drummer acting as impromptu facilitator, asked everyone present to improvise something.

While this would make most adults freeze in terror, the singers, dancers, xylophonists and even the audience gamely got in on it.

With actions instead of words, Ma showed everyone in Koerner Hall that the first thing you need to make music happen is be open to possibilities.

Then, with an older group -- 21 teenagers and 20-somethings (as well as a couple of teachers) from the RCM's various programmes -- Ma tried to tease out something magnetic from the first movement of J.S. Bach's Concerto for Two Violins (BWV 1043).

Essentially, he used various intrusive means -- poking, making faces and asking seemingly silly questions -- to snap the musicians out of being concentrated on the score into a zone where they are focused on communicating the music to the audience.

In the end, he forced the little orchestra to move forward to the edge of the stage. When he asked the kids in the audience what they thought, they overwhelmingly preferred the more in-your-face performance.

Most inspiring for me was being reminded of the message rather than the medium. It's too easy to get caught up in the details of overcoming technical hurdles and crafting a polished interpretation, at the expense of remembering what the magic of a great concert is really about.

And if the person making the music is open, the listener is going to be more receptive in return. That's why we all gave Ma a rapturous standing ovation on Thursday night.

As a sweet little extra, here is Ma in concert with bassist Edgar Meyer, in a live performance of Meyer's Duet for Cello & Bass (they recorded it together for the Appalachian Journeys CD back in 2000):

Cecilia Quartet changes cellists on the way from Banff prize to Glenn Gould School residency in Toronto

Fresh from taking first prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition during Labour Day weekend, the Cecilia String Quartet arrives for its residency at the Royal Conservatory of Music's Glenn Gould Professional School with a new cellist.

Founding cellist Rebecca Wenham has decided to pursue some opportunities in California. She is being replaced by Hamilton-raised Rachel Desoer, pictured right, who has much student experience experience as a collaborative musician under her bow.

It looks like the new formation will give its first public concert -- for free -- during Nuit Blanche, at the Telus Centre, on Bloor St. W.

Want a little live Bach on the beach? The Prakticello might be just the ticket

Andrea Hsu/NPR photo

Yesterday, National Public Radio aired a featurette on Washington, D.C.-area amateur cellist and retired civil engineer Ernest Nussbaum, who makes something called the Prakticello, which can be neatly packed into something that fits into the overhead compartment on an airplane.

Nussbaum's is not the first practice-only version of a cello, but the wooden skeleton of this exclusively acoustic instrument is ingeniously conceived, and, at $1,295 (U.S.), reasonably priced.

The enterprising musician also makes practice violins and violas. You can read details on his website.

There are sound clips to go with the story on the NPR site, and this shadow-of-a-cello sounds good enough so that you could entertain friends and family at a picnic, on the beach, on the deck at the cottage, or on even on a boat on a lake.

The story says Nussbaum has sold about 450 of his Prakticellos since the 1980s. One of the buyers was Yo-Yo Ma.

For the full story, click on the picture.

Here's someone only identified as Michelle, playing Bach on a real cello on the Beach. Who knew the surf could be this noisy.

United Airlines flight crew instructs cellist to buy first-class ticket for his instrument, or wait for another flight

Ever since 9/11, airport security people and flight crews have looked askance at the odd-shaped, often large cases that musicians refuse to check in at the baggage counter. If the instrument is large enough, it needs to get its own seat on an airplane (that was the case before 9/11, too). The musician has to swallow the expense of the extra ticket, but that's that.

The New York Post reported yesterday that the crew of one United Airlines Flight from Denver to New York City insisted that Greg Beaver, of the Chiara String Quartet, either buy a first-class ticket for his cello, or wait for another flight.

The article says that the American Federation of Musicians is trying to get the FAA to recognize the special needs of musicians. Right now, decisions about where and when a musical instrument can be brought onboard a flight are up to individual crews.

You can read the whole article here.

After a short video clip showing musical instruments as "passengers" on a plane, I've added a clip of the Chiara String Quartet performing a section of the final movement of a quartet they commissioned from Jefferson Friedman, at the Poisson Rouge in New York two months ago.

Endless metamorphosis of Bach takes has its turn in the world of hip hop

It looks like J.S. Bach has triumphed once again in the unending and endlessly fascinating attempt by each generation to make him their own in contexts other than church or traditional concert hall.

Today's Berliner Morgenpost gives the thumbs-up to last night's premiere of Flying Bach, a multimedia, hip-hop-meets-The Well Tempered Clavier dance show at the New National Gallery in Berlin. You don't have to speak German to appreciate glimpses of what's happening on stage in the two-and-a-half-minute video that's posted with the review.

The review says that director Christopher Hagel has successfully walked the perilous rope bridge that connects popular and high culture. There are moving visuals inside the gallery space. The succession of Preludes and Fugues -- some played piano, others on harpsichord (probably for rhythmic clarity) -- become part of a play-like narrative that, as far as I can make out, is focused on the intermingling of cultures.

Bach was appropriated by the Big Band movement, by disco and techno freaks and any number of modern dancers. Now it's hip hop's turn.

Here are a couple of fascinating recent examples.

The first is unaccompanied-Cello Suite No. 1-meets-hip hop, where even silence is used creatively (the two dancers, performing in Rotterdam in 2008, are Michal Rynia and Besim Hoti, choreographed by Ed Wube). The second is music only, a little something fashioned from Nun komm, der heiden Heiland:

Electronic device promises to 'play in' your stringed instrument to give it bigger, better sound

Anyone who seriously plays a string instrument knows that a brand-new violin, viola, cello, bass or guitar doesn't sound great fresh out of the box. It's the case with a lot of pianos, too. The thinking is that all the woods need time to get acclimatized and used to vibrating together.

There's so much mythology around this whole issue -- starting with people trying to figure out the magic behind the golden sound of Old Master instruments -- that it's hard to separate fact from fiction, but, the basic rule seems to be that, the more you play an instrument, the better it will sound (quality of strings, etc. being equal).

This is where a product called ToneRite steps in. It's an electronic device that attaches to the bridge and sends sonic vibrations through the instrument, conditioning the wood while you sleep, teach, read or go to the beach.

There was an article in Monday's New York Times that piqued my curiosity. You can also read all about it on the company's website.

Although the product's advocates make a logical case for it, I can't help but feel that there is a lot of wishful thinking involved. But I know nothing of the physics of wood.

Here's Adam Schlenker, a talented bluegrass guitar player, who insists he has no ties with the makers and marketers of ToneRite, giving the product a test:

Finding the music's 'design' is not as simple as Pablo Casals often made it sound

The death of cellist David Soyer on Friday brought to mind Pablo Casals, who was one of his teachers. Casals also spent a lot of time encouraging young talents, which included regular visits to Soyer's favourite summertime haunt, the Marlboro Festival.

A few weeks ago, a cellist friend lent me a copy of David Blum's Casals and the Art of Interpretation (the paperback version I'm holding is from University of California Press, 1980), which lays out Casals' approach to music in seven chapters filled with anecdotes and practical instruction.

For some musicians, what Casals proposes is an intuitive process. But, for most, shaping a piece of music is a long journey, which has only begun the first time they play a piece of music in public.

I believe that, as a critic, I have to have some awareness of how much thought the musician has put into making sense of all the little black dots on the printed page. I may not agree with their interpretation, but that doesn't matter much if there's a coherent and compelling story coming from the stage.

The second chapter of the book is titled "Finding the Design." It's something both the artist and the critic have to do. As instructive as Casals is, translating his words into music is not as simple as following a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

Here's a short passage from Chapter 2:

'Variety,' Casals would say, 'is a great word -- in music as in everything; variety is a law of nature. Good music has never monotony. If it is monotonous it is our own fault if we don't play it as it has to be played .... We must give o a melody its natural life. When the simple things and natural rules that are forgotten are put in the music -- then the music comes out.

What Casals means here is balancing yin and yang -- modulation. Then stringing the modulation into the arc of a rainbow, and movement in time: "Each note is like a link in a chain -- important in itself and also as a connection between what has been and what will be."

I thought we could see how Casals' advice applies from a critic's perspective. 

I chose a cello work, of course, Richard Strauss's Op. 6 Cello Sonata -- which I don't think we hear nearly enough. The opening section is particularly challenging, because most people treat it as a sort of short fanfare (we hear a similar pattern in other works by Strauss, most notably in Der Rosenkavalier). How long, exactly, is the true "phrase" of the opening measures?

The first video clip each time is from a 2003 performance by cellist Misha Maisky and Pavel Glilov. I am not a fan of their interpretation, so I've chosen some alternatives (from the limited number available on YouTube) that I think are more compelling. (I love what Duo Amets is doing, but the two French 20-somethings haven't posted more than the final movement.)

1 "Allegro con brio": Maisky and Glilov vs Aleksander Knyazev, cello, and Boris Berezovsky, piano, from a 2008 recital:

2 "Andante con moto": Maisky and Glilov vs cellist Karmen Pecar and pianist Srebrenka Poljak, from a live, 2003 recital in Zagreb:

3 "Allegro vivo": Maisky and Glilov vs Duo Amets (Claire-Lise Démettre, cello, and Antoine Moulas, piano) in the third movement:

Cellist David Soyer, inspiration to hundreds of budding chamber musicians as a member of the Guarneri String Quartet, dies at 83

I've just found out that cellist David Soyer, one of the founding members of the Guarneri String Quartet and a fixture at the Marlboro summer school and festival, died earlier today, just a day after turning 83.

Soyer retired from the Guarneri quartet in 2002, but continued to be active at Marlboro, where he and the other members of the quartet, which they founded in 1964, influenced and inspired hundreds of aspiring chamber musicians, several of whom went on to form their own string quartets.

Soyer, a Philadelphia native, taught at the Juilliard School, at the Curtis Institute and the Manhattan School of Music. His public concert debut was with the Philadephia Orchestra and conductor Eugene Ormandy, in 1942.

Here is Soyer with flutist Julius Baker performing Heitor Villa Lobos's Jet Whistle on an old TV broadcast, followed by a bit of Brahms (the opening movement of the F-minor Piano Quintet) with his quartet-mates and pianist Arthur Rubinstein: