I can’t believe that it has been so long since my last substantial post. But out of the dead stillness of the winter solstice and the holiday festivities, I have emerged with excitement and optimism for the new year ahead.

I don’t have anything profound or crafty to put together for this blog post but I wanted to let you know how the past year’s journey has shaped my current musical goals for 2012.

Last year was my first year back after Montana, and as such was a year of meeting new musicians. It seemed that each month brought new venues, new programs and new colleagues to work with, and I was busy with over 20 concerts, in some cases preparing a different recital from one week to the next. I am someone who enjoys a plan and structure. But this was not possible last year. I literally booked barely a month in advance and had to learn to live with the complete unpredictability of my life. At one point I believe I counted that I had worked with six different pianists in a four-month span. It is dizzinging to imagine how I adapted to such different musicians and repertoire so quickly. And the stress of financial uncertainty was a struggle at times. But I made it through the first year of my new direction as “mainly a performer”, and I am beginning to see signs that, as they say, “the first year is the worst”!

From this wild year I am proud to say that I learned a great deal about efficiency in practicing and learned to perform with few rehearsals and still do my best. I learned a huge amount about business and have a shiny and organized business plan to show for my self-education in this area. I learned about persistence and flexibility, about booking and publicity. I discovered where my limits were in terms of how quickly to turn over repertoire. But I also learned that I really crave more stability and consistency. So I have determined that 2012 will be a year of greater order and clarity.

I am pleased to say that I am beginning to move in the direction of booking further in advance, with eight dates already set for 2012. This is excellent since my goal is to play 30 concerts this year, between solo and chamber music. But, more important than the number of gigs or how far out I book is that many of musical “dates” with colleagues have led to deeper musical partnerships of various kinds. Performing with people with whom I have good chemistry in concert and in rehearsal gives me the possibility to grow musically and to feel connected to others. So I have settled into a duo with only a few pianists. Also, after four years of almost exclusively doing solo work, culminating in my CD folkfire, I began to feel a deep longing to have a committed Piano Trio again.

In the spring of 2011 I met an amazing pianist, Pei-yeh Tsai just finishing her Doctorate at BU, and she introduced me in October to the beautiful playing of Klaudia Szlachta, also finishing up her DMA at BU. When we three finally found a time to read trios together it was love at first sound. I am extremely excited about this new venture, which we are calling Trio Lumiere (which means light in French), and look forward to our debut concert together in February.

Of course I am sure this year will be filled with surprises, but it is nice to know that not EVERYTHING will be new for me.

Today I walked through the marrow deep, cold stillness of December. The pale light of the winter solstice and the dry crunch of frozen dirt hold more austerity than the cheerful glitter of January’s white snow-filled festivity. Even the bark of the dog sounds hollow echoing between the naked trees. But somehow I welcome the dry bitterness of the air. It awakens life in me, like a good gin and tonic or the smell of the boughs of balsam that I gathered for the mantel. The air is icy hot. By contrast my body feels vibrant and noisy. But then also the stillness creeps in so profoundly that I have no desire to disturb the silence or thaw out from the moment. Of late, against this backdrop, my cello sounds brassy and unkempt. It is hard to find notes worthy of winter’s wholesome silence. But necessity requires it.

Yet, sometimes I feel that the music could almost play without me if I waited patiently and stopped chasing my scales. Even if just one note came, effortlessly, it would capture the essence of dark December. This note would rest in a quiet place, like a seed in the frozen dirt. It would wait there for a very long time, hopeful and filled with possibility.

As I packed for the New Directions cello festival I paused over the sheet music on my stand: Chopin sonata, Barber, some Amy beach pieces. I tucked them into my suitcase, even though I knew I would not have time to practice. Just the presence of the music comforted me somehow. With the main goal of having a good time and connecting to other cellists, I wondered if I should let people in on my background and career focus as an “old directions” classical cellist. I feared that I might be seen as the enemy, the tradition embodied coming to ruin their safe zone. I imagined a bumper sticker with the word Bach slashed through with a red mark. Despite the fact that I have always dabbled a little in non classical styles and never felt 100% secure of my membership in the classical field, my choices of earning a DMA, being a cello professor, and programming all written composed western art music, give me a clear branding.

If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind as to my specialty, I am sure it became clear in the first workshop I attended when I boldly offered to take an improvised solo on a chorus with a good number of chord changes and failed to even remember to play a B flat in an F major key, lost my place, and sat frozen in confusion for the rest of my solo. That was tragic, I thought.

But later, in a mostly dark dorm lounge, at some unimaginably late hour I found myself jamming on a Led Zeppelin tune surrounded by a circle of male cellists. The two other women who had been there were wise enough to relocate to a second lounge across the way. The unbridled pulse of each players creativity vied for the spotlight, in a cellistic joust of unprecedented volume and force. Bold in my cello voice, I offered into the circle a slow and haunting rendition of the Star of the County Down, when the latest blues or rock song had played out. The room grew totally still. But after the moment of acknowledgement the group plunged into the next rock classic. After a few more attempts to offer topics of musical conversation that I had some experience in, at last I entered into the fray with reckless abandon, despite my near ignorance of improvisation, in wild electric guitar type solos that consisted of trance-like rhythmic figures, virtuosic leaps, slides and scales.

During this hour or so of manically charged, screaming at the top of my lungs cello playing, I felt a confidence, freedom and exhilaration that I had rarely before experienced on my instrument, I was completely consumed in the unbridled joy and physicality of the cello. But I do hope no one recorded me. Exhausted from the battle, I went hunting out for the other group of more tame cellists, but they were huddled around a music stand and there was no way for me to squeeze in to see the music. At last I retreated to a hallway to play a lyrical O Carolan Lament with one kind fellow cellist, who happened to be quite experienced in Celtic music it turns out. Each note had a full beauty that resonated to my core and the sound brought out, one by one, the circle of male cellists from the other room. I found myself surrounded and embraced by a curious and engaged audience wishing to hear more, join in and try my instrument. But soon another battle ensued and we had a tug of war between rock and classical. Two of us dominated with a wild rendition of the Dvorak concerto, played with the same unbridled ferocity as we had earlier played Jimi Hendrix. It felt amazing. But I looked up and everybody was gone accept one person.  A sadness swept over me.

I determined that for the rest of the weekend I needed to set aside my classical self to allow space for another voice to emerge, the New Directions voice. I found myself embraced by an unusually imaginative, good hearted and accepting tribe of cellists with an incredibly large bag of skills and techniques and an equal desire for mastery, excellence and precision as any classical musician I know. I found myself a beginner again learning how to “chop” with my bow, struggling over chord progressions, improvisation and extended pizzicato techniques. At times this was slightly humbling, but also fun.

I was wowed by cellists who had invented entirely new pizzicato techniques, who played with alternate tunings, sang and plucked their instrument like a guitar, interacted with poetry, improvised over jazz chords, played jigs and reels and read chords as fluently as any theorist. If I had gotten it right from the workshops and examples of featured performances in the evenings, the New Directions cellist is an arranger and innovator, able to pick tunes up quickly by ear, improvise, be fluent in fiddle and jazz styles, and have virtuosity over the whole instrument. For the most part I was able to embrace and celebrate this image of the masterful cellist, and even found many examples in the classical literature where I had been taken, if not to the same places, to very similar ones. There was also a great deal of mentioning of the value of being “classically trained” as a jumping off point for new and better things and most everyone present had been through the classical tradition in some form or another, but had moved on or expanded their interests. I found myself in a small minority of dabbling classically identified cellists.

As I engaged in this open musical exploration and reinvention of the image of what it means to be a cellist, I discovered what my voice was beyond notation and convention, and felt a deep sense of healing. As the normal assumptions about low and high art and genre superiority fell away, I found myself at the same cross roads that I imagine most New Directions cellists must have reached at some point in their lives. I felt a deep surge of truth about what my music is, arming me with the powerful courage to be true to this voice, regardless of the rules and ideals of the culture around me.  I allowed myself to question my long held identity as a classical cellist and to consider other paths. As I played Jazz, fiddle and summer of love music, I had an enormously good time, but I didn’t feel completely engaged. I missed Brahms.

That night at the jam session I didn’t get my cello out. I just listened and enjoyed. After a time, I withdrew to my room and took out the third movement of the Chopin cello sonata. As I played, the notes vibrated from some deep awakened corridors of my expanded musical soul, and tears flowed down my cheeks. I was home.

But something nagged at me; with my home in the classics, can I be a New Directions Cellist? I want to belong to this culture of acceptance and fun and know that I am on the cutting edge of music making and artistic conversation with the culture around me.

Aside from the obvious work involved in interpretation, my creativity finds an outlet in an innovative approach to programming, performance of newly composed music that reaches backwards and forwards at the same time. I have moved past the outdated formal concert to informal venues and explanations of the music to the audiences. I have an entrepreneurial spirit that is expressed in an inside out approach to marketing and promotion. I play for a wide spectrum of audiences from all class and racial backgrounds, and I make it a priority to connect to them in performance. I play often to packed houses, receiving standing ovations, and have several concerts booked into the future.

But I am terrible at playing over chords. I don’t like to write my own music and arranging is not usually a skill I cultivate. I doubt that I will ever have the time to develop into a jazz cellist, and it takes me a while to learn a tune by ear.  Just give me the sheet music already!!! But more importantly, I find that I need all the time that I can spare to stay on top of the repertoire demands of my performing career, and I feel completely fed and challenged by simply being a cellist in the more conventional sense of the word.

So why did I go to the festival? I have dabbled in improvisation and Celtic music for many years and it has offered me creative sanctuary from a conservatory experience that was not always the most nurturing to my musical voice. I have watched myself and my colleagues get pulled away from our musical selves in our aim for technical perfection or pleasing our teachers. Sometimes being true to the composer or the score translated to becoming mistrusting of our own creative impulses. Often the most creative individuals are brushed aside for the next technical prodigy or the obedient imitator. As a result, I now believe strongly that free form improvisation and Baroque style ornamenting need to be part of the training of any classical musician. I am also heartened by the growing Jazz and Improvisation study tracks at places like Oberlin and NEC, allowing for more choices in high-level training for young musicians.

As for me, I have always found opportunities to step outside of my classical box, to question my choices and be sure about my identity. And I seem to always find my way back in, and when I do, that box has usually expanded and become more comfortable. As well, each time I reassert that this is indeed the box where I belong.

So am I a new directions cellist? Certainly I am not so in my choices of repertoire, style, technique or skill. But, in my commitment to being joyful and free in music and offering a voice of compassion for the universal and timeless human experiences, perhaps I am not “old directions” either. The internal journey I need to take in order to stay true to this commitment requires a constant forward growth in my relationship to my music and my role as a performer. A New Direction.

I find myself reflecting on my parent’s hippie days and how their generation had started a revolution of freedom that allowed for more choices in our society. I feel a depth of gratitude for the conventions and boundaries that they questioned. They have given me the freedom to choose who I want to love, what I want to eat and what music I want to play and listen to, among many other things. Another less concrete revolution was the consciousness revolution that offered an experience of something profound through meditation, and well, yes, drugs too. Even as my passion leads me to embrace a musical tradition that many hippies rejected, my hope is to do so with a similar freedom and joy that they discovered at Woodstock with Bob Dylan and pot.

I walked down the windy downtown streets enjoying the beautiful sunshine of spring. As I passed strangers they marveled at my red cello case on my back, and I took small pleasure in the attention. Entering through the backstage door I was greeted with a smile, my name was checked off a list, and I was then directed to a group practice room. The room, whose periphery was covered with mirrors, held about six cellists facing the mirrors their backs to the center of the room. I was greeted by a cacophony of sound and a few nervous glances. With a mixture of smug rebellion, friendliness, curiosity and insecurity, I scouted out a spot in the room to warm-up. I wanted to look around me, but felt it would be rude. Instead I sized up someone beside me playing through Debussy La Mer while I unhurriedly unpacked my cello. Not bad. I worked up to a brave peak and a quick smile at an Asian woman in the corner. Then I noticed an obsessed looking middle-aged man anxiously repeating the same phrase over and over. He was hunched over and tense. The sound of his cello reminded me of someone screaming with a stuffed nose.

On my right a friendly young male said hello, and said he thought he knew me. I laughed. Maybe it was the hat he said. He liked my hat. I liked his La Mer. He had a sweet, clear tone, and beautiful phrasing. “Sounds good” I said. I pulled out my pile of excerpts, than decided instead to practice Louange a l’eternite de Jesus from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. It felt appropriate in the midst of this apocalyptic cacophony of unemployed cellists.

Another cellist arrived. This one was really strange. He looked European with fancy shoes and hair cut long, with rimmed spectacles. He found a spot in the middle of the room and in slothe-like fashion slowly, and painstakingly carefully began settling in, removing each article of his craft. After five minutes he was to be found standing above his cello, his legs straddling either side of the lower bout, staring down at it, stone still. I think he was having a transcendent moment. Or maybe he just overdosed on beta blockers. At intervals I peered over to see if he had made any progress, and he seemed to alternate between poses staring down at a score, and poses straddling his cello. What a neurotic bunch, I thought, looking at myself in the mirror. I dug around for a piece of paper and started taking notes. This was too good to forget.

I finally started playing through my pile of excerpts slowly. More cellists dribbled in: a forty something woman with her own chair and stand, complaining all the while about the conditions. Then came an extremely small man with large mouse-like ears. Maybe he is really good, I thought. You never know. In a rush of compassion, I felt an overwhelming sense of connection to each quirky cellist in the room, struggling to master their instruments, and get work. I wanted to know their stories, their trials and tell each of them that they mattered, even if they weren’t picked today.

As it turned out they didn’t pick any of us. They heard us in two bunches of about ten. No one advanced in my group. I might have been a bit sloppy in my spiccato, but it mostly went well, considering the time I had to prepare. I even had a moment of appreciation of my sound in the Brahms excerpt. After my two minutes playing behind a screen to the faceless judges, I was utterly unconcerned. I have never been passionate about excerpts, or trying to discover how others want me to sound. I love conquering technical challenges, but only so I can express more poignantly the depth of a work. I knew I was a mismatch, but something had compelled me to take the audition. Maybe I needed to be sure.

With the exhilaration of rebellious joy several of us convened a raucous conversation in the back room. We exchanged numbers and stories. As I walked out of that hallowed hall of mirrors and judges into the sunshine, I felt light and free. I had people to play for, recordings to make and stories to tell.

The sky soars above with the piercing blueness of spring. Lying on my back I rediscover the sun’s warmth that feels so new though I have felt it many times before. With the gentle singing of chimes in the breeze behind me I am reminded for a moment that I am a cellist. With a flash of insight I know: everything will be OK. Not because of success, accolades, riches or fame, but because of the beautiful intensity of the thousand tree buds ready to burst forth into life, resilient, persistent and driven by an ecstasy for sunshine and rain.  There is smooth stillness to their shiny pods, a reserved, unfaltering confidence in their right to be. Yet it takes little effort to imagine their leafy lushness covering the branches. And soon I remember only that I am alive basking in the sunshine. And everything will be OK.

The 95F heat bears down on me. I am perched on the edge of a half broken dusty stool, moving my fingers over my cello, waiting for my stage cue, which may or may not come. I am trying not to get dirt on my beautiful ruffled skirt and sequined top while squeezed in the cluttered hallway. I can barely move my bow without hitting a piece of broken furniture. An hour earlier the orchestra crashed through my concerto in our only brief 15-minute rehearsal. The third movement is cut and I only hope that the oboe player remembers his accidentals in his solo. I rub my fingers on my forehead for lubrication, to combat the humidity that causes my fingers to stick to my cello, not so good for fast passages. When I get on stage, nothing matters. The music consumes me and my soul expands. I fought hard for this experience. I spent hundreds of hours practicing and fundraising for this moment. Not in a million years would I choose anything else. It was magic.

Despite the magic, there have been painful moments were I have really doubted the feasibility of a performing career. Recognition and nice venues, good reviews, standing ovations-these are nice things, they feel good. Having money for small luxuries is wonderful. But without these things I am quickly cured of tying my sense of worth or value in how the world responds whether positively or negatively to my music. Yes, becoming too attached to the positive stuff is also dangerous, because ultimately it sets up expectations and traps for the future that can be limiting. In the bad times when I put myself out there constantly, deal with rejection or criticism, practice hour after hour and then sometimes not even be able to pay my bills, allowing this to reflect on my worth as a musician is very treacherous. I would have quit by now if took these things too much to heart. Instead, I buy a silken sparkly top at the thrift store for my next concert to cheer me up.

It helps me also to realize that I have a set of particularly challenging external circumstances: I have to deal with a general population that thinks classical music is boring and stuffy, and I find myself needing to win over new recruits to the genre constantly (which I do manage). Without the status of a major competition award or some super famous teacher or parent musician, it will take time for me to convince the high brow classical music listeners that I am top pedigree enough to be worth their money, despite a Doctorate in Music, years of performing experience and chops to prove it. And I may never convince them. But when I can’t make external progress I focus on further refining my craft. I find joy in constantly improving my musicianship and I have come to love practicing as a form of meditation and stilling the mind. Finally, I remind myself that it is the small things in life, the people you love, the integrity of your work, the day to day that matters.

My husband says I am one of the most proud people he knows.  It is true, I will admit that there have been times in this wild ride toward my dreams that I have had a Cinderella fantasy of being discovered as the princess cellist that I am, and be whisked away to perform in luxurious venues, receiving honorable treatment and large pay. So much of my sense of self in the past has been tied into my success as a musician and academic, and all of my present challenges are hard on the ego. At the same time, I am learning to connect to a deeper sense of self, beyond the roller coaster ride of the ego. And now, most of the time, I recognize that my worth and ability to be loved has nothing whatsoever to do with anything career related.

Yesterday my audience was a group of slumped over and half conscious elderly. My pianist had an upright, and I played the first piece on the program on a table with books, until a stand was located. A week before I played in front of a shelf of groceries beside a groaning freezer. But I didn’t care. I was in heaven. Both performances were pure magic. Wonderful. I was lost in the beauty of it all. And the audience was moved; they felt it too.

I find a depth of gratitude in recognizing that the gift of this adversity is that it is a catalyst that reveals the true nature of my music. The untouchable part of my soul shines brighter with each performance, as I become more practiced at letting go of the results. Finding the freedom and strength to shine and to connect to my audience under any circumstance, is deeply meaningful. In fact, this is the only thing that truly matters.

I don’t know if I will ever make it to Carnegie Hall. But I imagine if I do, I will have the fortitude by then to care less about the results than being alive and free in the experience; to shine on like a crazy diamond, exquisitely beautiful and virtually indestructible.

I am going to admit something finally that I should have realized a long time ago; my musical voice is an unstoppable force. It is a very large and at times clumsy wild Divabeast that I have been given a lifelong task of taming. No matter how hard I try, I can’t really get rid of him. And, in fact, if I don’t give him the proper attention and performance opportunities, he gets more and more pent up and pretty soon there is a frantic trampling and snorting and pawing of the ground that makes my life so miserable that ultimately I must take action. He’s not entirely keen on practicing either, and you can just imagine what happens when this unstoppable force meets the immovable object of my cello.

It has gotten better over the years mostly because I have had allot of help with taming and refining. But sometimes the world just feels too small for this massive animal. It is a good thing I play the cello and NOT the piccolo (this is for all of you people who have asked me if I wished I had studied the piccolo while I lug my cello up a flight of stairs or onto an airplane).

So now that I have admitted this I want to ask you to not be scared of him, and I will try too. He is actually very sensitive and wants to be loved. He doesn’t bite, he loves Brahms and he won’t do anything morally reprehensible. And I vow to keep working on his manners and learning how to pay the bills. I am trying really hard to love him, even though sometimes he can really cause trouble in my life.

Please be aware that I am not marching on stage for some narcissistic personal gratification, or for attention. Actually, sometimes I truly crave a more normal life. But I don’t really have a choice about this. Sometimes, frankly, I am just plain embarrassed. The whole thing is so ridiculous. Being a musician is ridiculous. And humiliating.

Accepting that I can’t get rid of the Divabeast has made my life much better. I used to lock him away and live a tormented life unintentionally trying to hide, or not even noticing, the muffled growls and grunts. But now I am actually nurturing him and doing my best to give him what he wants. In return he is way less wild and has admitted that he actually really loves people. He tells me that he can’t help his size, or the loudness of his roar, but he can pretend to be small and tiptoe, when needed. Even more wonderful is when he has a chance to take center stage. He transforms into the most beautiful creature, whose purr of gratitude warms to the core. It is the most profound sense of joy I know.

So, feel free to feed and pet the Divabeast. He does not bite.

Lorenzo, the cello, sings to the tree:

“Look how grand you are, how perfectly balanced! Your roots are buried deep in the soil pulling the earths nutrients and water into your veins. Your leaves soak in sunlight and are kissed by the rains. You see the skies change above you, from dusk till dawn, and millions of stars. Creatures climb in your branches; birds nest in your crevices and in the fall your acorns feed the squirrels. Some even become new young trees, your children. Friends surround you, you are alive, and you will go on forever”.

The tree sways and creaks in the wind:

“Beautiful Lorenzo, you are from the woods and will always carry the sound of the trees in your delicately carved shape. Hour-by-hour patient and loving hands whittled your body thin and sealed you with dark varnish. And hour-by-hour patient hands dance on your neck, and a warm human heart beats at your back. Thousands of ears will hear your song, as the very soul of human kind is coaxed from your wood. You will see Rome, Paris and Buenos Aires, and watch for centuries as the world changes, yet also stays the same. Your sound will deepen, grow wiser and you will perform, be recorded and embraced. Friends surround you, you are alive, and you will go on forever.

So you see, we are the same, and as I go with you through all the world, you will always return and sing to me.”

FOLKFIRE and HEARTHFIRE: The joys of performing and wood stacking

Maybe five pounds of carrots was more than I needed for the week, but they looked so enticing in their multicolored glory-yellow, purple, white, and of course orange (TWO shades of orange!). I kept imagining all the salads, soups and stews that I would make with them and added more and more to the bag. I stuck cash into the jar on top of the chest freezer after picking out yogurt and beef from the fridge. It felt good to put money directly into the jar while talking to the farmer Amy as she bagged up beets for her loyal customers. I have seen her hard work, I have tasted the wonderful results of her farm and cows. And she is right around the corner, a beautiful drive through tree lined winding New England roads. Done. Sold. Happy.

Happier still is where the cash came from. Hours sweating in a recording studio with passionate Piazzolla, connecting to audiences across the state, shaking hands with dozens of people, running to the post office to mail off CD’s, performing for sold out crowds in big halls and little halls. Bowing before standing ovations, mingling at receptions, and accepting the whirlwind of congratulations. Practicing with the sun slanting into my studio. Done. Sold. Happy.

In case you think this is a situation of “money for nothing” let me clarify that Amy and I both work extremely hard. And it isn’t that much money. When I apprenticed on farms for one year in my early twenties I came to realize that farmers work even harder than musicians do, and make even less money. But we musicians are a close second. Like a farmer, or I should say like a good organic farmer, there are really no shortcuts to good musicianship. My skill perishes quickly like food, and I must constantly weed the garden of my technique to keep it clear of wrong notes. This means hours of practicing each day. But because I love what I do, and take pride in my skill, this kind of work feeds my soul. It brings me joy because it is the work I know that I was born to do.

Slightly more tedious, but necessary, is the cottage industry of self-managing, publicity, sales etc that is a necessary part of being a performer. Additionally, working from home and then leaving home has a set of challenges that are new to me. I have found that I need to create a schedule while I am here that is rhythmic and logical, and then suddenly switch gears to being flexible enough to endure the unpredictability of travel, audience size, acoustics and income. I have started to grow accustomed to the rhythm of book/practice/promote than travel/perform/sell. Sometimes they all happen at once and that is when I head for the caffeine. Because the business end gets a bit dreary sometimes, my hope for the future is to generate enough success to justify hiring a manager and publicist.

Putting a whole life together that fits my skills, passions and life choices seemed like an impossible task even one year ago. But, as an idealist who has always believed in the human ability to manifest even the most implausible dreams, I took the leap of faith anyway and moved from the stability of an academic job to a rural area in New England with the intention of being nearer to family and the land I love while building a bigger performing career. The combination of trail and error, following my gut and having an intellectual vision for what would bring me happiness has guided my choices in creating my current life. And it looks like I have finally put all the right pieces of the puzzle together. The large and quiet space of my home and land offsets the travel and constant interaction with audience members. The reflective, tedious and repetitive aspects of booking, teaching and practice balance out the expansive surrender of performance. And the grungy girl in cords is also the diva on stage.

Last week I played for 300 people in a red dress with sparkling heels and signed CDs. Today I stacked wood, took a walk with the dog and mulched the yard.  Done. Sold. Happy.

As Shuichi sipped his Sam Adams, Azusa made silly faces as she devoured yet another clam from the bucket on the table. I was practically swooning over my wood grilled tuna, and all of us lounged with tired satisfaction after another good day of work. Any one of the hundreds of people passing by the window of Legal Sea foods that night would have seen three people beaming with satisfaction. They would never guess that one week ago it seemed like the entire recording project was about to unravel. After hours on the phone with the American Embassy in Vietnam, and begging the Bureau of Consulate affairs in Washington, my stepfather and I managed to help facilitate my producer’s departure from Vietnam, belated by a street theft of his Green Card and wallet, just in the nick of time. The intricate interweaving of small puzzle pieces fell into place the day before we began recording. The key pieces in this puzzle being the airlines, the Vietnamese government, a recording engineer about to leave for another job, the building schedule, the availability of hosts, back-up producers, and a Brazilian drumming class. But by Wednesday night, this was more than forgotten. We had recorded the bulk of the CD in three days; only possible with a group of people who collaborate with heart felt dedication to their specific role in the recording process. Ironically, it was in my most soloistic endeavor to date that I relied most heavily on the effort of an entire team for the success of the project.

On Monday, the first day of recording, we decided to tackle Piazzolla. Under any circumstances this Tango is exhausting to play, but sweat was literally dripping off of my elbows in the sweltering humid heat of our non air-conditioned hall. Ahh, New England in July!!!! It seemed like each take was getting worse, and as I shifted to a high A octave, I missed it so badly that my cello squawked and screamed! Azusa and I squealed with laughter and the session unraveled from there into exuberantly regressive behavior. We decided that it was time to go to dinner.

In the midst of many good laughs in the fun company of Azusa on stage, the first day or so found me aiming for technical accuracy, adapting to my role in the team and learning to manage my mental and physical stamina so as to make the most efficient and affective use of our limited time. By Tuesday we had mastered the art of enduring the 90 F hall for 5-7 hours with a cooler full of cold washcloths, ice, electrolytes and towels to mop up sweat. Azusa and I were the musicians in the incubator while Roberto, our sound engineer and Shuichi, the producer sat up above in an air-conditioned office, analyzing, organizing and capturing our sounds. They were barely visible from the stage by a small window, left over from the days when the manager looked down from his office on what used to be the showroom for a car dealership. The main form of communication was through a loud overhead speaker that boomed before each take in a warm yet commanding voice “Bartok, take 1-32, go ahead”. My form of communication was a beautiful, large Neumann microphone in front of me, who, by the end of the week had taken on a human personality. He was the one who heard my cello, loved my music, and then shared it with the world.

In the middle of the third day of recording it was time to record De Falla. As I prepared for a full run through of “Nana” at that very moment something clicked for me about the piece that I had never quite understood. The movement is a lullaby, but it has an unusual sense of melancholy and longing, a depth of emotion a small child could not understand. I had a sudden image of a young widowed mother, comforting herself while comforting her child, from the loneliness of lost love. I could feel the child in my arms, the tangible result of a passionate love, and the tug of war between the desperate needs of my sorrow and my child’s helplessness. The poignancy of a moment so filled with both pain and tenderness captivated me so completely that, as my producer put it, I “played the shit out of the piece” on the very first take, and miraculously without a single scratched bow or out of tune note.

As Azusa and I made our way through four doors, our bare feet slapping on the stairs up to the cold studio to listen, I was choking back the tears. It was exactly as I imagined it. Roberto, always prepared, offered me a box of tissues, while I blubbered how “every now and then…and it makes it all worth it”. With his nurturing steadiness and uncompromising professionalism he seemed unsure as to how to respond in that moment. Shuichi looked pleased, and gave me his first “great” in the notes, where typically a “good” or “OK” was the norm.

This is how “Nana” was born. One beautiful straight take. DONE. The rest of this day and the next had an ambiance of magic, and we moved with precise enthusiasm and joy through the rest of the repertoire. Each piece, like a baby, had a different way of being born, and no one seemed to question this organic asymmetry. We had a great team, and despite needing to quickly adapt to the needs of each different piece, by the second day there was a familiar rhythm to our process that relied very heavily on mutual trust and respect. And TONS of caffeine.

The act of recording combines the mental focus and careful, repetitive execution of practicing with the emotional and physical output of performing. In a word, the process is utterly exhausting. Since most of the technical challenges and success of the repertoire rested on my shoulders, I quickly realized the importance of having a healthy sense of my own limitations, while at the same time not accepting less than my best. This was an interesting line to draw each moment and each hour. I felt lucky when I expressed 95% of my intentions spread out over several takes, and aimed for this. When I was tired it wasn’t my arms that went, it was my ability to discern when to stop recording a certain piece. After repeating a passage with chords numerous times, finally Shuichi intervened, telling me I must be tired, because it was fine by the second take. He must have been tired too since it took him five takes to stop me.

When the recording was finished, I was extremely grateful that I had not truly comprehended the permanency of what I was doing while I was doing it. I became momentarily paralyzed with fear when I realized we were done and customers, maybe critics, would be hearing only these particular moments in my life, and it was too late to change them. As a performer I am used to the pressure of realizing the importance of every bow stroke and shift, while remaining connected to a larger musical intention. Live performance frees the musician from any permanent humiliation of missed notes when the concert has ended and the possibility to endlessly improve and do it better the next time around. Not so in the studio. When you have your takes, you have them. Wrong notes are circled, and then rerecorded, and ultimately easily fixed in the final editing. But the interpretation and phrasing, the depth of a performance, this becomes frozen in time.

Nevertheless, it is a bizarre but some how satisfying feeling to know that long after I am gone, one of my CDs may be hanging around, recalling again and again the musical moments we captured that one hot week in July in Boston.