Marcie Brown Music

Saturday morning. The Druids are playing a gig somewhere way up north today. It was way too far for me to go up there, so I'm going to stay home.

Isabelle has been singing "Ode To Joy", the melody from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which she plays on her little cello, and also now the last movement from Brahms Symphony Number One. She sings the Brahms to some words we made up:
My dog's name is Jebbie and he is a yellow lab
My dog's name is Jebbie, a beautiful yellow lab
My dog's name is Jebbie, so call him Jebbie,
Cause Jebbie is his name--
My dog, oh my dog, yes my dog's name is Jeb,
My dog's name is--Jebbie Jeb...

There are not too many gigs happening right now. I would like to start getting together the music for my new solo cello CD and research recording studios to figure out where to record.

Other than that, just my regular teaching on Sunday morning. I am starting to build up some students. Tomorrow I will teach from 9-2, on my back music porch that I love because it is an inside porch that is surrounded by green and I feel like I am in a treehouse there.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

This is really the first actual writing of this blog for me. I have written a few entries over the summer that I will add as a musical summer overview...but this is the first live writing.

I would like to use this blog to write about what's going on in my life musically and creatively.

So----what's going on musically and creatively this week?

Well, I played two weddings last weekend. Saturday I played a flute, violin and cello trio at a wedding in Sausalito at the beautiful Alta Mira Hotel, which is kind of in the side of a huge hill overlooking the ocean. It was windy! I was very glad that I had my scarf for this one. We played the Notre Dame fight song as a recessional. That was interesting! I met a new flute player named Gayle and the violinist was Mary Tanios from my string quartet. It was relatively painless and fun, as weddings go. The setting was gorgeous!

On Sunday, I played with a viola, flute, violin and cello group at another wedding. The violinist, David Reffkin, is a ragtime specialist that I have just recently met. He loves obscure music from the twenties. With David, we always do alot of sight reading and that means getting lost sometimes...there are tons of repeats and road maps in the music and I suspect that some of it might not even work really. David takes chances with the music and that is a little scary but also more fun than playing standard wedding music that everyone knows and has played a million times. So---did I get lost? Yes! A few times. But we had alot of fun. This wedding was at the Blackhawk Country Club in Danville. We played on a big porch that was beside a lake and surrounded by lovely rolling amber colored hills. On the far side of the lake was a golf course. I was a little concerned that a long foul ball might hit one of us in the head---but it didn't.

My next big musical adventure will be my audition for the Marin Symphony. Will I get in? Who knows! There are lots of great players around, and you never know who will be auditioning for this kind of a group. But I need to get going and start practicing! In fact, I should be practicing right now! For this audition, on September 12th, I will have to play excerpts from the symphonic literature and a solo piece of my choice, taken from the standard cello concerto repertoire. Also, there will be sight reading. (Ugh!)