Illinois State University - Residency

October 21-24, 2024 I’ll be “in residence” at Illinois State University in Normal, Iliinois.

Cello Masterclass

On Monday, October 21 I’ll be giving a public cello masterclass to the cello majors at the university. It’ll probably be 3 or 4 students, 30 minutes each, who will play a full movement of a concerto or sonata and then I’ll give a public lesson. It’s like studio class, but instead of focusing on how we perform I’m probably focusing on one aspect of technique or musicality or memory, etc.

I’ve participated as a student in a few notable masterclasses over the years.

My second masterclass was for Ronald Leonard in 9th grade at Western States’ Honors Orchestra. Ron was principal cellist of Los Angeles Philharmonic for many years and then a major teacher at Eastman who turned out all sorts of successful students of their generation. Eventually, Ron returned to LA to teach at the Colburn Conservatory when it opened in the early 2000’s and is now retired. I played Haydn’s C-Major Cello Concerto, first movement. He talked with me about tension and relaxation - at the time I played cello like a linebacker.

Another notable masterclass was for Alan Harris during my second summer at the Aspen Music Festival before 12th grade. Alan taught at Eastman concurrently with Ron and I was convinced I was going to go study with him (though Richard Aaron ultimately stole me away). We had been working on some specific vibrato things in lessons and we worked on that in the masterclass.

A much later notable masterclass was immediately before the recording of the Dutilleux recording I posted from 2007. I spent the summer before my senior year of college at the Chautauqua Music Festival in New York and played the Dutilleux for Colin Carr, who won the ultra-prestigious Naumberg Cello Competition in, like, the late 90’s. He teaches at SUNY Stonybrook which is a super competitive music school because, like Colburn above, it’s free to attend.

Colin gave me some of the most important advice ever about performing “new music” - with conventional music, Bach told every composer the tropes they should use to guide the listener’s experience of one note going to another (counterpoint). So western music has a few hundred years where the listener knows subconsciously what to expect from the next note, specifically whether it will be higher or lower. With “new music,” he said, the same rules don’t apply, but it’s still our job to guide the listener’s ears in the direction of the next pitch. I think about this basically all the time when I’m preparing new music for performance.

Composition Class

On Tuesday, October 22 I’ll be teaching a class to composition majors. I’m working out the final material in the next few weeks and I’ll keep you updated. It’s not a masterclass, it’s a typical lecture.

Solo Recital

On Wednesday, October 23 I’ll be performing a solo recital at the university.
I think the repertoire will be:

Once I receive the two new works tomorrow, I’ll make some final decisions. Alex S is basing his piece off the Dutilleux, with the same score d’atura tuning (A-D-F#-Bb) and has alluded to dividing each half step into thirds to match the natural overtone series (so, from C to C# I will have 3 tiny notes available) so I’ll be practicing a lot of 6th tones… And I don’t know anything about Alex Taylor’s piece yet. I’m super stoked. More about both composers in a future post.

Recording Session

On Thursday, October 24 I’ll be recording Alex Stephenson’s piece at ISU. I imagine the session will be a few hours long.

Notable recording sessions I’ve previously done include:
Wet Ink - TEXTUREN: The Music of Katharina Rosenberger.
Wet Ink was the 2017 New York Times Ensemble of the Year, and when we recorded this back in 2011 this CD received Album of the Year accolades from a number of magazines and critics. I performed Scatter 2.0 and Parcours.

Lei Liang - Verge for 18 Musicians
Recorded at UCSD in 2012 and available from the Naxos record label, this was part of Lei’s big grant for the so-called Rome Prize in Composition. Verge had been premiered earlier that year by the New York Philharmonic.

Martin Torch-Ishii and Eric Moore - Darkness, Odyssey, Reconciliation and Vortex
Martin (who was then in Break of Reality) and I recorded our cello duos professionally for YouTube and later for one of his solo albums.