Musical Meanderings

Il Fuoco at the Sonoma Mission Chapel

2010-03-18T20:25:00.000-07:00

Steve Albini is a terror! He sings Italian songs with an amazingly romantic tenor voice. He is always right on. He spins the mood the minute he starts to sing. Not to mention that he is a virtuoso accordionist who plays lightning fast runs with his right hand and who never misses...

It was a great show last Friday night. The band was Steve LaPorta on percussion, John on horns, me on cello and Steve Albini, the Italian terror! What fun!

It really was a hoot backing Steve up. He's very humble, and mild mannered, and then, when he opens his mouth to sing, one is just suddenly transported into a cafe in Italy somewhere, where the lights are low, and the mood is...just something amazing and foreign and ever so smooth...and romantic. Yes, this band, "Il Fuoco", the fire, is about the most romantic band I have ever been in...

Hopefully we will be playing together more soon.

Next performance i at the Freight and Salvage on April 3rd, my birthday, with the Rmana Vieira Ensemble.

Don't ask how old I am going to be...

January 2010

2010-01-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

The last post for me was in September? Goodness! Time is a jet plane! (B. Dylan)

We are going to Disneyland tomorrow! For a Monday thru Thursday trip. It's going to be...fun? I hope. I am not really ready to go on rides so I snagged my 20 year old niece to meet us there. I don't mind watching the rides.

Musicwise- I am teaching quite a few students now, kids and adults. That's pretty good. Fun and pretty steady. It's not so easy to keep all of their schedules down, but I enjoy managing the Alameda Cello Academy. Yeah- I named it finally!

Let's see---I have a new group that's called the InStep String Quartet. It's a killer group and we have our first gig at the end of January. We play California Alternative music---that means some of everything. And this group can really attack all kinds of compositions. We're best when there is only a chord chart in front of us. WE come to life thru improvisation.

As far as keeping Isabelle, who is now almost 8, motivated to practice her cello, it's been difficult lately. But, we have a new thing. She now plays violin too. On our next concert, which is going to be February 21st at 3pm in Berkeley (see www.marciebrown.com for more info), she is going to debut her violin playing. And I think I am going to accompany her on violin too. I just got my first violin recently, and it's real pretty, so I think this is a good time to do something different and have some fun.

The Ramana Vieira Ensemble is still kicking the Portugese Fado music too. We have a nice gig at the Freight and Salvage on April 3rd in the evening in Berkeley. I love that music.

I am also putting together music for a new CD, to be recorded this summer. The last one, Butterfly Girl, has been doing really great, playing on radio stations across the states and in Canada. I am most proud of that. The new one will have more compositions with vocals. I'll be singing on it!

Well, I have to get ready for my students to appear. Bye bye for now!

Alameda Music Academy?

2009-09-19T07:21:00.001-07:00

I am looking for names for my new music school. Alameda Music Academy? I think that's going to be it. Anyone have any other suggestions? It has to work for cello, violin and piano students. I have been starting to slowly get some more students and would love to advertise and get the music school up and hopping...:-) I have lots of adult beginners and a few intermediate cello students. I have some new kids on piano, violin and cello, but would like to get some more. I would like to keep the back door open and let the students come in and out of my music studio all day long...

September, 2009

2009-09-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

OMG, is it already September? How did that happen? We had a great summer. We did a million fun things this summer. We went to the Colorado Suzuki Institute where Isabelle was an amazing soloist. We went to Water World in Denver and a tornado came after us there. (We escaped!) We went to the Grand Canyon and spent some time in Flagstaff Arizona. We went to Cape Cod where we went whale watching in the bay. We did so much!

Isabelle and I. We went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and rode the skywalker ride. We went to the Alameda County Fair and Isabelle rode on Michael Jackson's "Samba" ride from Neverland Ranch. We went to Aqua Adventure in Hayward, and to the Livermore Water Park three times. We went to the San Francisco Aquarium and Isabelle did flips on the bungee trampoline. We really did this summer up!

But, September, already? Now my little girl is in second grade!

Getting her to practice her cello? Difficult, but not impossible. I let her practice by herself alot. Two days a week we have "lessons." I am pretty easy on her. After all---she's seven, and she needs to have fun and love music. We got her a violin after she begged for awhile, and she plays that every day too. I was surprised. She loves it.

My CD "Butterfly Girl" is playing all across the United States. Really. On college radio stations. It's kind of cool. The cities where it is playing are listed on my website. I wonder who is hearing it? And I wonder who is playing it? It's number one world CD on Radio Phoenix, so somebody there likes it. It's in the top ten in four or five cities...it's kind of fun and exciting.

I went to Los Angeles and to San Diego last weekend to perform with the Ramana Vieira Portugese Fado Band. Interesting. We had alot of fun. We traveled there in a kind of a Partridge family van setup...it was a marathon trip...but ultimately there were lots of laughs and there was lots of good music, which is what I am looking for in life...

Lots of new students. That's the other thing I am looking for in life. Today I had a three year old violin student. She was serious, too. But she switched to cello, after she heard Isabelle play. That happens sometimes. It happened yesterday too, believe it or not. Two new students came in, a brother and sister. One wanted to play violin and the other wanted piano. But, they heard Isabelle, and now they both have decided on cello. :-) I guess she is my best recruiting method so far. When the kids hear her, they want to play cello like she does.

Practicing for Nickels

2009-07-30T22:46:00.001-07:00

Okay---so I admit it. It's difficult to get seven year old Isabelle to practice her cello. She has played most of Suzuki Cello book 3, and she is now working on the first piece in Suzuki Book 4---the Breval Sonata. She's a great little player. She's amazing, really. But she is seven, and she does not want to practice, and she does not want to listen to my ideas about how to make her playing better. I am her mom, after all!

So I have to continually come up with new ideas to try to make it fun.

Here's the new game for this week. We are playing for nickels. She has a newfound love for money, and more importantly, money that is hers. So I thought, well, why not earn money by practicing? I wrote down five things to practice on a piece of paper. After she does each one, she gets a nickel. The nickel will go into a smiley face jar. At the end of the month, we will count up all the nickels that she earned. Twenty percent of the money will go into her savings account. The rest she can use to buy something.

But---if she doesn't complete a task on the practice page---I take a nickel out of the smiley face jar and it goes into an unhappy face jar. That money is then mine again, and she has to re-earn it.

This is a new attempt at making practicing challenging and fun. I will let you know how it works out. So far so good though.

Anything to keep her on the road to becoming a great and accomplished musician. I think if she can learn to play the cello, then she can learn to do anything.

Colorado Suzuki Institute

2009-06-18T06:46:00.001-07:00

Isabelle and cello friends backstage at the orchestra concert

Wow. That was a great trip! Isabelle performed a big solo at the Colorado Suzuki Institute Honors Recital. She's amazing. She's solid. She's musical. She has great dresses!

It was a tiring week though. I took Isabelle to four music classes a day. She had master class, rep class, musicianship class and --- da da da da! Orchestra! She was so excited about orchestra. They asked her to be in orchestra and it made here feel so happy and big! She really did do great in that class, too.

She performed on Wednesday in a lilac purple shimmery ball gowny kind of dress. Gavotte by Lully. She got tons of compliments all week and was kind of a star then at the camp. She loved that!

The musicianship class was really good too. It was a theory class. We used a computer program called Auralia by Sibelius, and she loved it. So we have ordered it for her.

The teachers were really fine.

We did some fun activities throughout the week. Ice skating, bungee trampoline jumping, mini golf, lots of swimming and hot tub at our Beaver Creek Resort called The Charter.

We had a day free before flying home, so we decided to go to WaterWorld in Denver on Sunday. It was very expensive to get in, but such a cool park. An hour and a half after we got in, it started to rain. The winds were blowing like mad. Everyone was running to take cover. It started to hail. There was actually a tornado! Unbelievable. We had rainbow colored umbrellas and after trying to wait it out for about ten minutes beneath a concession stand that sold funnel cakes with whipped creme (not kidding), we made a break for the car.

We spent the rest of the afternoon swimming in a Holiday Inn pool and hot tub. We were very happy to get home to Alameda on Monday!

Yoshi's again and the Stewart Brothers

2009-05-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Lots of playing going on! Lots of weddings, memorials, recording sessions...driving to wine country alot. It's not too bad---like 65 miles...not so bad for some good gigs.

I did Yoshi's the other night with Ramana Vieira and her Ensemble. It was fun. Two shows, at 8pm and 10pm. By 11:30, we were exhausted. Scott came and brought Isabelle. She was coloring while the band played. It gives her great inspiration. She told me that she rated my cello playing that night as a 10. I'll take it!

The real fun was the recording session I did yesterday with the Stewart brothers. They are both dancers with the San Francisco Ballet. Both of them! Matt is recording a CD of his own original compositions. So he hired me in to play on some of the songs. I drove out to a house in the hills in Belmont with my cello, the home of OTR Studios.

From the minute I met these guys---they were smiling. They smiled the whole session. They had such positive energy, it was wonderful to play for them. Matt was the leader of the project, and Ben was a helpful assistant to his brother. Ben had played on the CD too- piano. Matt was the composer, the guitarist and the singer. He told me that he wrote these songs when he was backstage in the dressing room in between rehearsals and concerts at the ballet.

Well, they are both artists with a very prestigious ballet company, so I was not sure what to expect. But the music was fun---and I enjoyed playing on it. The last song we did, called, "Please Sir", sure sounded a bit like early Beatles...These guys were really great. It was one of those fun moments in the life of a freelancer- where you get hired, get paid well, get treated with respect, and all the years of hard work that you put into learning music and your instrument is highly appreciated.

Yay! Horray for the Stewart Brothers. Can't wait to hear the CD, and to go and see them dance.

The Magic

2009-05-13T11:37:00.001-07:00

Just a short note here: Isabelle has won an audition with her eighth size cello and she will be performing as a soloist on the honors recital at the Colorado Suzuki Institute at Beaver Creek (Vail) on June 10th. This is very exciting! I am certainly not a competition winner, but, well, she's better than me!

The day we got the congratulations letter in the mail,she said to me, "Mom, why did I win?" I said, "You know what I think? I think the judges watched the video of you, and they saw the magic." She smiled. Later that afternoon when her father came home and she told him that she won, he said, "Wow, that's great!", to which she replied, "Yeah," (turning and running up the stairs, shrugging), "They saw the magic."

Chapel of the Chimes Aids/Lifecycle Series

2009-03-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

Bravo Isabelle! You did a great job last night. You dug into the Lully Gavotte with confidence to open the show at the gorgeous Chapel of the Chimes. You didn't miss anything, and you played it very musically. Then you played an Irish song which was fun. But the show stopper was the Irish traditional slow song, Star of the County Down. That was played beautifully honey. It even gave me chills. You are a true performer. Bravo, sweetie! I am so proud of you for giving your music to the world at such a young age.

March 2009

2009-03-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

Butterfly Girl: classical-gypsy-circus-world cello music

I have been really trying to figure out how to promote my brand new CD "Butterfly Girl", and I have found something out. You know what? There's no one way to do it. You just have to go at it and plug away. Which is what I didn't do with my last CD "Night of a Thousand Rains". It's a beautiful record, but I never did any promotion for it, and I only sold it at gigs. This time, with this new CD, I am going to get into the promotion arena and try to get my music out there. It's going to be fun!

Whose on the CD? Here's a list: Marcie Brown on cello, Terrence Brewer on guitar, Katja Cooper and Steve LaPorta on percussion, Ana Nitmar and Ramana Vieira on vocals and the Agave String Quintet with Robin Lewis on guitar. A star studded cast. Also, a cameo performance by Isabelle Brown-Lyden on her cello and singing.

After doing some research, I have decided to start my own record label. It's going to be called "Classical Gypsy Records." How does that sound?

So, we here at Classical Gypsy Productions are working on a new website design that has the CD cover on the home page and is easily accessible for people who want to hear a little of it or buy it. We are going to go with a radio campaign and the CD will be sent around to college stations and world music stations. "Butterfly Girl" is classical-gypsy-circus-world cello music, but I guess it can be classified under "world music". Sure, why not?

I am busy getting promotional materials together to send out. It's alot of work!

But let's see, what else is going on?

I have a new string quartet, and it is going to be great. We met for the first time last week. The violinists are Julian Smedley and Ben Cortez, and the violist is Katie Wrede. The group can play alot of things that string quartets can't normally play. Gypsy jazz! Standards! And lots of improvisation. It's exciting. I will keep you posted on that group. First, we need a name. Anyone?

Also, the wonderful Portguese fado group that I am in, "Ramana Vieira and her Ensemble", are recently signed to a record label, "Pacific Coast Jazz". Our new CD is entitled "Lagrimas de Rainha", which means "Tears of a Queen." We have a CD release party at the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley on Saturday, April 18th, and we are also playing at Yoshi's in Oakland on Tuesday, May 26th, at 8 and 10pm. Yay! Go Ramana!

With my little daughter Isabelle, who is now seven years old, I will be performing a March 14th Aids/Lifecycle Series concert. It's a Saturday night 7:30 show at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland. We will probably play a few Irish cello duets and then we'll break out Suzuki Cello Book 3 and show off her Lully Gavotte. Go Isabelle!

Oh, and one more concert I just added, another of the Aids/Lifecycle Concert Series shows. It's on Sunday, April 5th, at 4pm, at the Orinda Community Church. I will be playing a few selections for solo cello from my new "Butterfly Girl" CD. This is going to be videoed for my website, so I better be good!

Okay, that's the musical update for now. I should go play some music instead of just talking about it!

St. Marks Episcopal Benefit Concert

2009-01-25T08:07:00.000-08:00

Last night Isabelle and I opened the show at 7:30 in Berkeley at St. Marks Episcopal. St. Marks is a beautiful church and we were very excited and a little nervous about playing. There were alot of people in the audience. I was trying to get Isabelle to think about the music and to go over the music in her head before we went up to play, but, being six years old, she just said, "Mom, I already know the music!", and continued coloring in her Hello Kitty book. Hmmm, maybe she has something there. Maybe it is better to do something fun and relaxing before performing, instead of stressing about the music that we know so well already.

We were called to the stage and our cellos were already up there so we walked up hand in hand and took a big dramatic bow, which the audience loved. We performed Schubert's Berceuse, Gavotte by Lully, (Suzuki Book 3), and then two fun Irish songs, the last of which is called "Star of the County Down." Isabelle played with determination and musicality. It was really fun. We were not perfect, but we made some magic, I believe, which was our goal. The crowd was very appreciative, and the clapping left a wonderful echo that filled the church.

Isabelle was very tired, but we managed to stay and listen to the entire first half. Valdez Hill played some lovely piano music. (He is the organizer of the event.) There was a flute trio headed by flutist Carol Alban that was really nice. A very macho tenor sang some Italian arias, and there was a student jazz trio. Last was a clarinet concerto performed by a young girl. This was a variety show kind of a lineup. It was a benefit for the San Francisco Aids Society.

Isabelle got all kinds of nice comments as we left the church. It was freezing outside! They handed us two teddy bears for performing, and Isabelle held them tightly as she fell asleep in the back seat on our way back to Alameda.

We are now planning our summer, or trying to plan our summer. One of my groups, Ramana Vieira and her Ensemble, has just signed with a record label, Pacific Coast Jazz, and a booking agent, Maria Matias, and so I am supposed to be ready for some tours of the east coast. But I have to book my own gigs and trips...so it is very difficult. I would like to take Isabelle to Beaver Creek, Colorado again this summer, to the Colorado Suzuki Institute, in June. It will be much fun! We love Colorado!

I have also been looking at the Strings by the Sea camp, in San Diego. This Suzuki music camp is run by a family friend: Karla Holland-Moritz. I have never met Karla, but she is a prominent San Diego cellist. Her parents used to come on trips with my family when we lived in Michigan. Her father, Helmut, played trombone in some of the same orchestras where my dad used to play viola. I remember sitting around campfires, telling stories and making jokes with her parents and my parents on Drummond Island, Michigan, where we used to vacation often. What a beautiful spot!

Anyway, I think it would be fun to try to go to Strings by the Sea in August. San Diego! I could drive us there, as it's only 500 miles. And, we could go to Sea World too, and maybe Disneyland...Wait a minute---this trip is getting a little bit out of control...my summer is getting too packed...help!

Monterey

2009-01-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

Ramana and I on the water.

Hi everybody! Monterey was beautiful. I performed with Ramana Vieira and her Ensemble Wednesday night at a venue called Monterey Live. It was a sweet place and we filled the house. The audience was very receptive. Ramana sold some CD's to admiring fans, and I sold my new CD "Butterfly Girl" to some fans too. After the show there was loud music being piped into the house and I was trying to talk to the people that had enjoyed the show and that had bought CD's...but, I was losing my voice and had no volume at all. It was awful---I kept trying to shout over the music but could not find the voice to do so...

Ramana's group has a new record label- Pacific Coast Jazz, and so we were meeting with them, and with a possible booking agent after the gig for dinner. Donna Nichols was this great lady from PCJ--she reminded me of Holly Hunter---she was very spunky and fun. She was there with her friend Judy. I sat beside her but could barely talk, much to my chagrin. The booking agent's name was Maria---she wants to take us on and get us some bookings and some tours, so this was very exciting!

We stayed at the Monterey Hotel, this awesome old Victorian place in the center of town on Alvarado Street, and in the morning we walked down to the pier. What a gorgeous spot! I only wish I could take my little daughter Isabelle with me to the same area. She will love it! Not to mention getting her to the Monterey Aquarium, which is also within walking distance.

Last week there was alot going on musicwise too. On Tuesday I met with JoAnne Tobias, who is writing an article about me for Alameda Magazine. She talked with me for a long time. She is going to help promote my new CD in her article, and she is hoping to make it a feature. On Wednesady, I went on the Doug Edwards show on KPFA, and he interviewed me and played some cuts from my past shows at KPFA and also four or five songs from "Butterfly Girl". Later, I sold some CD's from my website to people that had listened and loved the music. Yay!

On Thursday, JoAnne Tobias' husband, Mitch Tobias, did a photo shoot of my cello and I. He had me up on this big concrete block next to the ocean out here on Alameda Point. It was very funny, as Mitch wanted me to dance with the cello and spin around with it. There was a big hole in the concrete and for some reason he wanted me near the hole---he kept shouting, "Great! Now spin! Near the hole! Closer to the hole!..." I think we got some good shots---??? Lucky to be still alive though!

I have to go to bed now---I have no voice and am totally sick....I hope I can fall asleep!

Christmas!

2008-12-23T07:33:00.000-08:00

My favorite Messiah to play is at the Unitarian Church of Berkeley. The conductor, Bryan Baker, dresses up like Handel!

Wow- Christmas is already here. Unbelievable. We have inlaws in town. They are even in house. Help! No- just kidding. I really enjoy Scott's parents. Probably more than he does!

I have a Christmas Eve midnight mass to play, and then a church service on Christmas morning. After that, Isabelle and I are off to Lake Tahoe to ski. (If we can get over the pass!) It should be fun.

Not too many concerts coming up. Isabelle and I have two benefit concerts though. They are both for the Aids/Lifecycle series, to benefit the San Francisco Aids Society. One is on January 24th in Berkeley and the other is on March 14th. You can certainly check my calendar on my webpage at http://www.marciebrown.com/ to find out details. These are variety shows. Isabelle and I get to go first because they don't start until 7:30 at night. I am not sure what we will play yet. She might sing this year. But definitely we'll do some cello duets also. We are working on some great Irish music, so maybe we'll put some of that on the program. Isabelle is now working on Suzuki Book 3. She has learned the first two compositions and she is playing beautifully. But, as always, it is still a challenge to get her to practice. We pretty much try to practice every day, except on Sunday, when she gets the day off from cello.

The big surprise recently has been her vibrato. We talked about it a little bit this summer. She just started shaking her arm one day at the Colorado Suzuki Institute after watching some of the other kids doing it. Her teacher at the institute, David Evenchick, told me to just really exaggerate my vibrato when I played my cello around her. So I did that, and she now has developed this really great vibrato. I haven't told her anything about how to do it---I only encouraged it and told her how beautiful it sounds. She is very proud of that vibrato. Vibrato, at age 6!

The other big concert coming up is on Friday, February 13th at the Gallo Center for the Arts in Modesto. It's a really nice concert series in this beautiful theater. I am playing there with Ramana Vieira and her Ensemble, my Portugese fado band. We are excited about it. We have a new CD that is almost out now, and a new record company, Pacific Coast Jazz, that is promoting it. We are also on the prowl searching for the right booking agent for the group. To find out more about that group, go to http://www.ramanavieira.org/ .

Butterfly Girl is here!

2008-12-12T12:34:00.001-08:00

I got the new CD! It's very exciting, and I just want to give it out to everyone. Very bad for business... I can't listen to it because after writing the music, making the sheet music, arranging the music, rehearsing it, recording it and mastering it, I don't want to hear it ever again. But you can listen to it with a pair of fresh ears! I hope you like it! Seriously, the new CD "Butterfly Girl" is a fun listen. It's classical-gypsy-circus-world-cello music at it's finest. It combines cello, guitar, percussion, vocals, and a little mandolin and violin. Some of the performers are: Terrence Brewer, Katja Cooper, Ana Nitmar, Ramana Vieira and Steve LaPorta, and Robin Lewis and the Agave String Quintet. Oh- and also, Kelly Park and Reid Whatley make a guest appearance on the song "Lost in Isabelle". Go Alameda musicians!

I am working on updating my webpage---but, you can hear the title track on it right now. So, have a listen at http://www.marciebrown.com/ . Let me know what you think!

I would like to find a record label that would be interested in promoting the new CD, but I am not sure where to begin to look for that. In this economy...well...it won't be easy to find. But I am hopeful that someone will help me to share this soulful CD with the world! If not, then I'll just have to promote it and distribute it myself.

We played a party Wednesday night in Mill Valley for a new company called Newzonia...it was very interesting to say the least. It was a gorgeous giant house in the hills, with dark wood floors and picture windows with amazing views and outdoor fountains and hot tubs...the people seemed to be wearing kind of strange costumes...it wasn't clear what the theme was...it kind of reminded me of Rocky Horro. Anyway, the people were nice and very attentive. They seemed to love the fado music of the Ramana Vieira Ensemble. I enjoyed myself very much. It left me with the feeling that I love to perform and that if I could just be doing this kind of thing every night, I would be forever happy.

Last night I finished "The Soloist", a wonderful book by journalist Steve Lopez. It's about a bass player that went to Julliard and then had a mental breakdown and ended up playing a two string violin on the streets of Los Angeles. This story greatly touched me. I went to Manhattan School of Music in New York City for my master's degree, and then, after that, I played on the streets of New York for about six years. I fell in love with the street music and the musicians that made it. I wrote a fiction novel, based on truth, about a doo wop group called "Hot Ice" that I managed and ended up singing with. I fell in love with one of the men in the group, and the book is really about the duality between a classically trained well educated cellist and a street oriented doo wop singer. It's called "Four Part Harmony", and I sell an audio version of it on my website, at http://www.marciebrown.com/ . But my dream is to get it published in novel form. Anyway, this book by Steve Lopez touched my heart and, at times, I shed tears. For Nathaniel Ayers, the street bassist in Steve's book, and also for those I loved on the streets of New York City: Bobby Thompson, street singer, Jaco Pastorius, bassist, Charlie Barnett, comedian...

Grammys

2008-11-21T07:45:00.000-08:00

I have joined the grammys! That means that I will be able to vote on which CD's will get a grammy. This is exciting. I had no idea you could just join the grammys- but, there it is. Also, I think I am able to submit CD's for consideration to win a grammy.

Last night I went the the members party with Ramana Vieira in San Francisco at the Hotel Kabuki. I got lost for what seemed like forever...and then had to look for parking for hours.

Finally we got in. Saw some friends, met some new people in the music business.

My favorite part of the evening? Meeting a Barry White impersonator, who sang for us right there in front of the giant stairway. ( "My darlin' I---I can't get enough of your love baby!") These are the moments that I live for!"

November 2008

2008-11-16T10:21:00.001-08:00

I have been meaning to update forever! This morning I have a no show student so I have a few minutes.

The summer went by so quickly! We had a family reunion in Jenner for a week in a big house on the ocean. That was awesome. We also went to the Colorado Suzuki Institute for a week where Isabelle worked with her favorite teacher, David Evanchick on Suzuki Book 2 pieces. She loves him because he is so silly! (She is now almost seven years old...)

My new CD is almost done. I recorded it gradually and it was a fun proccess. I really had time to listen and make decisions instead of doing it all in one or two weeks. And now, the artwork is almost complete. "Butterfly Girl" is finally being born! The instrumentation is cello, guitar, percussion, vocals, and some piano and bass. The best thing for me was that I got to play mandolin on the title track! (I have never played mandolin before...) There's lots of cello improvisation on this CD. It's a fun journey. So, follow the classical gypsy cellist into the world of the Butterfly Girl...

Well, my Portugese Fado band, Ramana Vieira and her Ensemble is doing quite well. We went to the Western Arts Alliance conference in September. That was interesting. And now we have a record label that is going to promote our new CD. It's called Pacific Coast Jazz, and we are their first world music ensemble. We are also very close to getting a booking agent to represent us and to send us touring to promote our new CD. We also have a big gig at the Gallo Theatre in Modesto coming up in February.

Isabelle and I will be performing next month at several old folks homes in Alameda, and we are also doing benefit concerts for Aids research in March and April. I will get it together and update my webpage so that the new CD can be purchased, and so that my upcoming concerts are listed. It would be great to send you the CD, and to see you at my shows! I haven't seen you in a long time!

Agave's first Concert is today!

2008-06-08T06:47:00.000-07:00

Well, it certainly has been a long haul in putting this concert together. It started off as just a concept with a few arrangements that our guitarist had written for us some years ago, for a live radio show at KPFA.

Agave is a quintet---a string quartet plus seven string guitarist/arranger Robin Lewis. And so now---I somehow got him to make eight arrangements for the group. We were trying to rehearse them as he wrote them---he would bring in scraps of paper and parts of the score to see what they sounded like. The music was and is definitely hot off the press.

It's interesting, the different personnel within the group and their contrasting personalities. Our second violinist has a doctorate from Eastman---he is very organized and loves to account for each rehearsal minute. He wants things done efficiently, and he wants to know exactly what is going to happen and how it is going to happen far in advance. Where as Robin comes from a jazz background and he enjoys the element of exploration and possibility within a concert. I am somewhere in the middle on that topic. I like things to be well rehearsed and I like to be able to improvise and try for new things at a concert. Our violist wants always to play the perfect solo, and she tries to achieve this and is almost always disappointed, because there is no perfect solo. Our first violinist will try anything in a solo---so he comes up with some amazing things, and also he goes way out sometimes so that you wonder what in the world he is doing.

Yup, that's the group! I am anxious about our first concert. We had a dress rehearsal in Il Pirata yesterday, a dive bar in San Francisco, and it was really loud in there. Everyone was drinking and talking through most of the runthrough and we could not hear each other. I think that the quintet members got kind of discouraged from that runthrough. There were alot of mistakes and it just didn't go too well. But with my experience, a bad dress rehearsal can be a really good thing. It keeps people on their toes and makes them practice...

Doug Edwards of KPFA will be our MC today for the concert. I love Doug! I have been on KPFA several times in the last few weeks to advertise. It was fun.

Oh----I wanted to mention something that happened a few days ago. My six year old daughter, Isabelle, who plays the cello quite well, and I, were out on a walk with our yellow lab Jeb. We walk out here on the Alameda Point Navy Base---surrounded by water and planes and boats. It's right across from the port of Oakland where the big freighter boats load and unload cargo.

So anyway, we stopped at a treeswing and I was pushing her, higher and higher, and she was giggling. And then something really interesting happened. A big boat blew his horn---real loud and long. Isabelle listened, and then she sang the note.

"Mama, that's a g," she said.
"It is?" I asked. "How do you know?"
She shrugged, and said, "Mama, it just is."

So, when we got home, we went to the piano, and sure enough, it was a g. Several times then throughout the day I tested her on pitches, and, much to my amazement, that girl has perfect pitch. I am still in shock about it, because it's a pretty rare thing. It's like a seventh sense or something. But when I ask her to sing an open string note of the cello, she gets it dead on, every time. She can get the cello strings because she is familiar with them, I think, but the other notes, she usually just knows by finger number, so I don't think she can identify them by note name. I will work on this and see how it develops. But, I think what is surprising to me is that I didn't pick up on this before. She has been playing for two years now, and is almost through Suzuki Book 2. Next week, we go to the Colorado Suzuki Institute for music camp in Beaver Creek. She will take student classes and I will do teacher training, Book 4. It will be a fun thing to tell her teacher there, about the perfect pitch discovery.

There has been alot of rehearsal and recording and performing in these past few months, and it is still going on. I am almost done recording my new CD, but we can't mix it until mid-July, so that project is basically on hold. There is this show today, which will soon be over. And I have been playing with the Ramana Vieira Ensemble quite a bit. I have to record on her CD next week. There's alot, and I love it!

April and May at San Pablo Recorders!

2008-05-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

It's already May. Unbelievable!

I have been in the studio, working on the new CD. It's fun, exciting, tiring, and a little scary. (What if the music sucks?) But mostly, I would say, this process is eye-opening and interesting to me.

My cool engineer, who is a bass player and an excellent musician is Jon Evans and his studio is San Pablo Recorders. I am enjoying working with him. He has big ears---and big insights. He speaks gently, and not too much. He is great to work with.

Instrumentation varies for this project. Terrence Brewer and I played some original cello and guitar duos that came out really nice. We added Katja Cooper on hand drums and percussion to one of those yesterday. And Katja played some cello/percussion duos with me as well. Kelly Park came in with a bass player named Wade to record the title track, "Isabelle". (I keep changing the name of it!) That was a big party- as the music goes into a calypso groove near the end of the piece. The way Kelly was playing on this---we all agreed that if I put his picture on the CD, there should definitely be a pineapple coming out of his head in that photo!

How could I define the music? It's kind of worldy classical ethnic, I would say. For one of the songs, Butterfly Girl, Terrence Brewer summed it up best: "Native American gypsy circus..." Yup, that's about the feel!

There are a few more surprises for the recording. I am going to try to get Isabelle in the studio to record on her cello and to sing a bit. Also, I am hoping to have guest appearances by Ramana and Steve from the Ramana Vieira Ensemble, which is my new Portugese Fado Band. Fun! My Alameda friend Ana Nitmar, who is from Guatemala, is going to sing in Spanish too.

So- I am excited, but so busy right now. I have to go! Isabelle is attending a special princess tea party today complete with costumes and a castle, and we have to get ready for this exciting event!

Benefit Concert with Isabelle Yawning

2008-03-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

Early Sunday morning. My head is hurting. Thank god for coffee this morning!

Friday night Isabelle and I performed at a benefit concert for the San Franciso Aids Foundation at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church. We were first on the bill, at my request, but the show did not start until 7:30. Isabelle is pretty tired at that hour, even though she would never admit it. She had also been sick for the whole week, like everyone else around here, so she didn’t feel that great and was acting a bit out of sorts, like children do when they don’t feel well, frowning when you asked her a question, hiding her head in her coat when someone new would come up and talk to her...

So, anyway, we finally played our four cello duet pieces. She played well, not missing a note, but everytime I looked over at her, she was yawning. It was pretty cute, I have to say, if not the best stage presence. The wonderful man who was in charge of the concert, Valdez Hill, awarded us with gift packages for performing, filled with Easter goodies, and off we went to sit with dad in the front seat and listen to the rest of the variety show type concert.

It was kind of a refreshing concert filled with variety, true to it’s name. So, there was a dapper young man singing some tenor arias and filling the church with more vibrato, bravura and volume than it might have ever known before, there was a young woman (girl?) playing some kind of a modern oboe piece, there was man with salty hair and a white beard singing opera selections, complete with hand and facial gestures, there was an African American woman singing some long and slow gospel selections with an amazingly wide vibrato, and the last performance before the intermission was a Vivaldi picolo concerto, with an alleged allegro that started off somewhere in adagio, and as the sixteenth note passages came around, it tended to get slower and slower.

Isabelle was fast fading. She was laying back against me, clutching her new stuffed Easter bunny. She kept asking me, "mommy, when can we go home?" She also had this celophane bag that was filled with chocolate easter eggs that she kept rattling throughout the concert.

It was kind of fun being in this community setting, for the evening.

Last night, I played with Ana Nitmar’s latin band somewhere in San Francisco. It was a fundraiser for some school, I didn’t catch the name. The music was loud! Too loud, as is often the case with bands that play electric. Too loud! I’ll say it again. That’s why the headache. At least I got to play next to my pal- buddy seven string guitarist Robin Lewis, who is always good fun at these kinds of events. Last night, I labelled him a silly intellectual, as he did a goofy dance to the music. That’s the silly part. The intellectual Robin is the guy who took a look at one of my new compositions and suggested that instead of modulating from C major to C minor, which I was perfectly happy with, that I try to go into five other keys there, and see what I think. (I chose A flat minor after that experiment, unbelievably.)

So, anyway, now I lost my train of thought. I had a bit of a headache and drank a marguerita that Ana gave me. That made it feel better for a time.

But now, this morning, it’s back again. And I have to teach.

Title Song for the new CD!

2008-03-11T07:09:00.001-07:00

The title song for the new CD has been born! Yesterday I started humming the tune and it kept going through my head. I am working it through and through, upside down and inside out. I don't have the whole thing yet and it will take some doing, but I love the part that I do have. It's melodic and moody. Yes.
This composition is not coming easily, as some do. I will have to put some time into it and think and feel it out both musically and intellectually. In my own little musical world, I envision this creative process to be similar to that of Beethoven's. (Did I just compare myself to Beethoven?)
Sometimes a tune will come naturally. Easy as pie. Smooth. It is already complete when it comes to you. Up there in the universe, just waiting for you to sing it and play it and write it out, maybe. Like Mozart. He didn't have any trouble writing music. But he had other troubles.
I am excited about this title composition. What shape will it take? When will it be done? What's it going to sound like, ultimately? I recorded a rough version of it, with the melody going several different ways, and put it on my computer desktop, so I can listen whenever I feel like it. This will help me to keep in mind the different twists and turns that the song might take. We'll see where it goes.
Tonight I have rehearsal with the Portugese fado group, Ramana Vieira's Ensemble. We are in the process of recording a new CD in a San Jose studio. Rehearsals take on a new meaning when you have to make decisions for recordings, choices that you will have to listen to and be responsible for for a long time. It's certianly not like a musical choice for a single performance!

New Recording!

2008-03-04T06:48:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am, very early in the morning, trying to work out a new piece for my upcoming recording project and program it into Sibelius so that I can print it out for tonight's rehearsal with the percussionist. I am new to Sibelius, and so this is all very exciting to me. To have a beautiful score to hand to fellow musicians is an amazing feeling, not to mention that changes can be made without having to write the whole thing again.

But it certainly is time consuming. The recording for my new CD will take place on Thursdays and Fridays in April and May. Most of the music is written but needs to be arranged and programmed into Sibelius. And the musical group is not hired yet.

I am just kind of going on a whim this time. Reserve the dates first, and then let the whole process fall into place. It's a little scary, but exciting. I have not recorded my own CD in quite awhile, and so I felt I needed to jumpstart the thing to get it going.
So now it is taking shape! And I have to go work on it.

Instrumentation for this project will be: cello, guitar, percussion, clarinet, violin and maybe string quartet.

Bye bye! Talk later!

La Pena with Ana Nitmar

2008-02-04T07:09:00.000-08:00

Last night was a La Pena show with Guatemalan singer Ana Nitmar. I really like La Pena, as it is a cozy, down to earth community center setting, with a nice stage and wood floors.

I drank some brandy before opening the show up with guitarist Carlos Olivera. Carlos and I started with my own composition, "Love Chant". I forgot to turn my amp on for this song, but it was okay anyway, I think, as my cello is pretty loud acoustically and Carlos is not a loud player so I think we balanced. We then performed two of Carlos' compositions. He is a great composer and player and I think those pieces went well and were well received by the audience.

And then the whole band came on and we played Ana's show, a kind of pop/latin mixture of original compositions and traditional favorites in the Latin community. It was fun, if a little too loud for my taste. Why?

Why do bands have to play so loud? Why? I don't get it. I remember my father always complaining about this, and I thought he was just grouchy and a little crazy back then, but now, well, dad, I'm right with ya. At the Cirque du Soleil, when I went out into the audience from time to time, I had to wear earplugs so as not to damage my hearing. In my kickboxing class, I wear earplugs always. What is that all about?

Okay, anyway---good show, great folks, another fun evening of brandy, music and friends...

Lots of new shows coming up soon----I am performing with Ana again in March at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco, and with Ramana Vieira and her Ensemble here and there and everywhere. Check for these shows on my performances page if you are interested...I will try to keep it updated!

Rainy January Morning

2008-01-21T08:03:00.000-08:00

Early morning in late January. It's raining outside and this is lovely from my music porch. The green outside the windows is vibrant. But the rain always makes my tendonitis flair up.

And if I am practicing alot it is an unpleasant thing to deal with. So I try to do self massage and then also, I have a new massage therapist who is excellent. So I am going to try a massage every other week as maintenance on this tendonitis.

I got it years ago in college, and then the tendonitis came again when I was playing two shows a night at the Cirque du Soleil. There, we had massage therapists who would work on our problems a little bit every day or so. The gymnasts and swimmers had big physio problems, but so did the musicians.

Anyway...so there is a big show coming up at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley. It's on Sunday, February 3rd at 7pm, with Ana Nitmar. She is a Guatemalan singer and a great friend. So last night Ana came over and we worked on vocals for a new song of mine that will be on the show. It's called "Rain Dance", and it has made up, African sounding vocals, and a second half that seems to be some kind of an Irish jig. I don't know, I just wrote it one night while walking my dog.

We are performing this piece with just cello and vocals. And maybe a conga drum. So we recorded the vocal part on my little tiny hand recorder. And we were able to put it on the computer and send it in a file to the other singers on the show. Amazing!

Technology! I can never quite figure out what is going on with it, but every once in awhile I can do something like this!

Also on the calendar are lots of performances with Ramana Vieira and her Ensemble, playing traditional Portugese fado music, and a big performance on June 8th with "Agave!", my new string quintet group. "Agave!" will be doing jazz standards arranged for string quintet by guitarist Robin Lewis, and also some originals by group members. This will be an interesting show. And hopefully there will be more for that group, as I love playing with Robin and his arrangements are beautiful and inventive.

Isabelle is up! I have to go make her pancakes and try to get her to practice her cello on this rainy morning by letting her win marbles. And then---it's off to my Suzuki teaching gig in Livermore where I have some small boys to teach. I will bring lots of games and lesson plans to keep them busy! They are not the easiest! Especially in the group class. But I think I can do it.

Sycamore Strings Academy Concert

2007-12-14T07:27:00.000-08:00

Lots of concerts happening during this very exciting time of year. I wanted to write about my favorite character, my little daughter Isabelle, and her last concert esperience

She's funny! You never know what a five year old will come up with. She and I play quite a few concerts here and there. We played a benefit that Natasha Miller put on for the Midway Shelter here in Alameda. We do old folks homes. We perform whenever we can. So Isabelle is used to performing.

When we performed for the Sycamore Strings Academy Concert on a Sunday afternoon in early December, we were very excited. It's a large hall that has just been built and opened in Livermore. There were all kinds of instrumentalists running around backstage. There were probably fifty violinists and thirty-five guitarists, all playing together for this concert. Isabelle was the only cello student playing!

I have just started a program for cellists there, and so my three students there were not ready to perform yet. Isabelle and I played duets. We played Beethoven, Brahms and a Bach Minuet. After we played, Isabelle wanted to stay on stage with me as I performed an improvised piece, but our friend Sachiko came and got her so I could play.

I had to run up to El Cerrito to play a Handel Messiah with this cool guy named Bryan Baker. He dresses up like Handel in a white wig and velvet robes for this performance...anyway, I had to leave Isabelle with Sachiko, and Sachi would drive her home to her father for me.

Well, the crowd loved Isabelle! Everyone was completely quiet when we performed and when we bowed, people were cheering bigtime.

So the next day, I asked Isabelle how she had felt, after playing so beautifully in such a lovely hall with such a great and appreciative audience. She was so funny!

She said, "Good. It was fun mama. But, mama, that's the last concert I'm going to play, okay?"

I asked her why, and she said, "Mama, I was afraid when you left, that everybody was going to take me home with them. They were all strange people."

So, I thought that was interesting. She had been kind of intimidated and overwhelmed by the audience response and by people coming up to her after the show and telling her how much they enjoyed her performance.

I told her that from now on, I won't leave her at a show, that either her papa or I will always be there with her, so that she won't have to worry about coming home with anyone but us. And she thought that that would be just fine.

She also said, "Mama, they said that I was the best cellist. Me. Not you mama, me. So, too bad for you mama. I was the best, they said." She giggled as she said this.

I had to agree and giggle along with her. "Yup, you are, honey," I said.

Palace of Fine Arts

2007-11-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

Well, there are a few exciting things happening. Isabelle and I are doing some Christmas concerts! Tonight we have a rehearsal in Livermore, as we are playing at the Sycamore Strings Academy concert on December 2. It will be fun. It's a nice big theatre and there will be lots of kids performing on violins. They have just added a cello department, and the teacher is me. So Isabelle and I are going to perform to show them how it's done and to recruit some cello students. (We only have three currently at the Academy, and they all just started the cello.)

I have some new students, and two of them are only three years old. This is something else, learning to teach three year olds! I have made some games and I have a big basket of little prizes to get their interest. I think the most important thing is to make it fun for them. And for the parents to keep bringing them.

Also, we got a piano in the Alameda studio. So I will now be teaching piano lessons to little ones too.

On the performance front---I had a big show with a Persian singer last week named Shahrokh. This was a nightmare gig! I contracted the strings. It was all last minute. But they didn't even have a studio booked for rehearsal until the afternoon of the rehearsal. These guys just yelled at everybody through the whole sound check. Unbelievable. They were so rude! They yelled at us for tuning backstage before the show.

We were at the Palace of Fine Arts all day on the day before Thanksgiving, but we all had headaches because the singer was just yelling at the arranger guy...it was bad. We were lost most of the gig. But, actually, I thought the singer was very good. He had an amazing voice and I really liked his music. It was kind of like dancy pop old school with strings in Persian. Now, he just needs to learn how to get along with people and how to have a successful rehearsal!

Friday I am playing with Terrence Brewer here in Alameda. We will play Christmas songs, and some jazz standards and some classical standards. Terrence is a guitarist friend of mine- so it will be guitar and cello duos. Fun!

Summer is gone!

2007-09-29T07:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess summer is gone! How did that happen? I spent alot of time trying to make it a special summer for Isabelle, who is five. It was the summer before she started kindergarten, so I thought it might be fun to spend the whole summer with her. No day care or preschool or anything. We did things like waterparks and ferry rides and carnivals and Amtrak to Reno and tennis lessons. We practiced her cello most every day together. It was a great summer. But gone in an instant. And now she is a big kindergartner!

It's funny, but this summer was not very hot. We didn't use her pool much. But in September, we have gone swimming almost every day. We are self-proclaimed members of the polar bear club, so even when it's cold, we jump in and bounce around and have lots of fun being polar bears. September has been an Indian summer, though.

But now, October! So soon! Lots of great scarecrows and fall leaves and pumpkins in and around our house. We love this time of year.

My students have been missing tons of lessons this summer. Hopefully they will be back to a more regular schedule now. Lots of interesting musical opportunities coming up. Vivaldi's Gloria on Christmas Eve in Oakland, which I love, some Vaughn Williams soon in San Mateo with the choir there, a solo cello classical concert in a few weeks in San Mateo also. My string quartet has been very delinquent with rehearsing. Bad string quartet! But we have a concert on Wednesday at the City Center Cultural Series in Oakland. It's a noontime concert and should be fun.

Isabelle has started cello lessons and group class at the Crowden School in Oakland, with Katherine Baird. She is a fellow free-lance cellist, and she is a fine teacher. I decided to switch Isabelle over to a teacher that is not me, as I don't want her to hate me, or the cello. This way, she can blame the fact that she has to practice on Katherine! It feels good though, to have others involved in her musical education. She is doing great on the cello. She performs once in awhile in Alameda, at benefit concerts, or old-folk homes, and she is almost all the way through the Suzuki book 1. So, I have to say, I did a great job starting her!

But, do I really want her to be a cellist? Well, if she is going to be a cellist, she's going to be a better one than I was...that's my idea of what I want for her. I had to struggle so hard! She won't have to, because she will have a very good foundation and a very young start.

Well, we have to practice! Bye!

Judging for Alameda's Got Talent

2007-08-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

Alameda's Got Talent! Does it? It was fun judging for this competition. I was on the highly esteemed panel with Drew Harrison, the John Lennon guy from the Alameda Beatles imitaters group called "The Sun Kings," and Abra Rudisill, the founder and head teacher of the Alameda Ballet Academy on Park Street. I had already known these two a bit, as Drew had been talking to me about possibly putting the string parts behind some Beatles songs for some shows of his, and Abra was my little five year old daughter's ballet teacher this summer.

So anyway, when I got to the competition in Alameda's Town Center, the judges table was all set up nicely, with complimentary wine glasses holding little chocolates and bottles of water for us. I felt very special! (This was the work of Natasha Miller, who was putting the event on, I think.)

Judging a competition is not so easy. This one included kids between the ages of 5 and 16. There were singers, dancers, and pianists. How to compare the 12 year old boy who played a Bach Minuet to the 8 year old who was doing hip-hop dancing? What about comparing the 7 year old twins who sang little songs with no musical accompaniment to the 13 year old girl who seemed to be a good singer and had great attitude, but who for the most part, was lip syncing to a seemingly karoake track?

Yes, it was nuts. But I enjoyed the judging. It really reminded me that there all all kinds of factors going on in a competition of any kind. And it also convinced me not to let my five year old cello playing daughter get lost in any of these kinds of contests. People and their talants can't really be fairly compared. Better to just let her perform and allow everyone to appreciate what she can do!

Speaking of performing, the Enchante' String Quartet had our first concert in a long time on Saturday night. It was at the Crosstown Coffeehouse here in Alameda. I think we all had alot of fun and we played quite well. I really enjoyed the different Alameda folks coming out to support us. It was nice to see them all in one spot.

When we finished the concert we got some dinner and then we hopped on over to KPFA, where we were interviewed by Doug Edwards and we played a few numbers on his late night show "Ear Tyme." We played the Bachiannis Brasilieras #5, and we played Manha de Carnival. But we didn't play until about 12:15, so we were al trying to stay awake. I am not sure how we sounded there, but I'll let you know when I get the CD this week.

The Enchante' String Quartet's next concert is this Friday night, August 31st, at the Pro Arts Gallery in Jack London Square, at 7:30. We will be performing Beethoven Opus18 #4, Bachiannis Brasilieras #5, and a wonderful new piece by a good friend of ours, Durwynne Hsieh, his String Quartet #1.

Enchante Baby in August

2007-08-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

The Enchante' String Quartet will be performing a free concert in Alameda tonight! We are playing at the Crosstown Coffeehouse at 7 pm. On the program will be the Villa Lobos Bachiannis Brasilieras, the Beethoven opus18 #4 String Quartet, and piece by our friend Durwynne. It's exciting. Although we play for weddings and parties and everything else you can imagine, we have not performed a recital in a long time.

We have been getting all the rehearsal time in that we can, although it is certainly not enough. The pieces are coming along but there are still alot of rough spots. The Beethoven is just very intense and it takes alot of concentration and brute strength to get through. The Bachiannis is lovely and flowing and a treat, I think. But Durwynne's piece has been a complete struggle and a joy combined. What a great thing to play a piece like this that was written by a peer.

We all love the Durwynne String Quartet, but it is very difficult. It is filled with energetic rhythmic shifting meter motifs that we sometimes get and sometimes don't. The other side to the music is this lovely Barber-like, VaughWilliamsesque twisty turny bittersweet melodic material. It's beautiful and we love putting it all together.

Our group has an awesome new violinist named Anthony Blea. Anthony is a very fine musician and he's a fun guy to work with. So far we have all worked together pretty well. No major fights, and everyone feels pretty good about the group.

Playing in a string quartet can at times be like being married to three people. You have to make important decisions together and you don't always agree. What pieces should we play? Where should we be performing? How much money should we ask for? How fast should this piece be? What should the bowing be? What should we wear? What should our business card look like?
These can all seem like life and death decisions at any given moment...

After tonight's performance at the coffehouse we will all go out for some dinner and then head on over to KPFA studios in Berkeley where we will be interviewed on Doug Edward's radio show "Ear Tyme". The show is so late it's difficult to stay up for. We will be cramming into a sound booth and performing a few pieces to promote our upcoming recital on August 31st at the Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland. To find out more information about this recital, you can check my website at www.marciebrown.com and click on the groups page.

And now, I have to go practice for tonight's performance!

Yoshi's in July

2007-07-24T07:38:00.000-07:00

My new friend Anthony Blea has a Latin band. He invited me to sit in last night at Yoshi's. His band rocked the house. And the house was actually packed. There were people dancing all over the place.

Anthony is the new violinist in the Enchante' String Quartet that we found a few months ago through auditions. I am used to him as a classical violinist playing Mozart and Beethoven, so it was fun seeing him on stage with the guys, in front of the timbales, singing background parts in Spanish and doing dance steps with his violin. Yes!

Before the show, dinner was served in the dressing room and I was invited to eat. All the guys in the band were at one table, speaking in Spanish. The food was a hodge-podge of scallops and sushi and chicken and calamari. It was very tasty. I ate quietly, feeling as if I were in some sort of a strange dream, surrounded by men speaking Spanish and eating. Where am I?

A little later, after the band had played a few numbers, Anthony called me up to the stage and I put on my Schertler pick-up and played with them. Fun! I love their music and i need to do this kind of thing more often.

After my guest appearance, I snuck out the stage door with my cello and jumped into my car. As I was driving home, I heard Khalil Shaheed on KPFA talking about an Oakland Music Festival that's happening on Saturday. Khalil is a good friend and an awesome trumpet player that lives in Oakland. I taught with him at Oakland School for the Arts. So, anyway, Khalil was talking about the line-up for Saturday's festival, and he mentioned that Anthony and his band will be playing. He said that they are playing right now at Yoshi's too, so everyone should go on out to the ten o'clock show!

It's only four miles to my Alameda home from Yoshi's Jazz Club. That was the best part of the evening. I was able to play with Anthonythe first set and also make it home in time to read my little girl to sleep. I got the best of both worlds there.

Brava Theatre in San Francisco!

2007-07-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

First of all, thank you Terrence Brewer, wonderful Alameda guitarist and friend! I bought the AER amp that you suggested. My cello sounds great through it. The tone is warm and lovely, and it's powerful. It's also compact, so I can put it in a gig bag and sling it over one shoulder while carrying my cello on the other side. Life is good!

I played shows this weekend with Ana Nitmar. Ana is a singer from Guatemala who recently released a CD called Forest in Spring. She hired the band from the CD to do these live shows at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco. The personnel was Robin Lewis on guitar, Jerry Grosz on vibraphones, Yehudit on violin, Phil Thompson on drums and percussion, Pedro Rosales on peruvian cajon, Nate Brenner on bass and Claudio Silva on keyboards. There were also two background singers named Lynn and Rosa.

Friday night was a little bit stiff and uninspired and though the band was playing the music, it felt like it was not quite happening. Ana was very nervous. So last night, I snuck down to the corner store after the sound check and bought a bottle of brandy. I opened it up in the dressing room before the show and everyone had some sips. I offered some to Ana and she was happy to sip along with the band. When her boyfriend Manuel came in I thought he might be upset about the brandy, but he was happy. "Yes," he whispered to me, "make sure you get her to drink a little more before she goes out. This will help with the nerves for sure."

A marimba band played before us. It was made up of three men, all performing on one giant Marimba, and a bass player. (Marimba six hands?) They dressed in black outfits with silver buckles and black Mexican hats. Their faces showed no expression as they played long arrangements of songs to perfection, swelling on tremolo chords here and there for dynamic effect.

Soon the dancers came out to join in the festivities, twirling about the stage joyfully in brightly colored dresses and scarves, moving to the marimba music. The last group of dancers wore wild Guatemalan folklore masks.

There was a poet who recited something in Spanish. I enjoyed listening to the romantic sounds of the language. I was able to translate phrases here and there but never a complete sentence. "Me recuerda", and "es la vida" and things like that kept coming up.

When our group went on, we were ready to rock. Ana sang beautifully and the band was right with her, providing the magical background that we were hired to provide. It was so much fun to sit across from Robin Lewis and see him step on his volume pedal before a guitar solo, and then hear his wonderful guitar lines soaring throughout the theatre, to hear a very tasteful phrase played by Gerry Grosz on the vibes, and then to turn around and share a knowing smile with him. I loved watching Ana dance around in her white dress that had butterflies painted on it, in yellow and red and green, and hearing her channel her vibrant spirit into songs in three languages. Go, Ana!

Of course, adding the soulful cello lines was the best part. And with my new amp, I could hear myself. Imagine that.

2007-06-17T06:38:00.000-07:00

Hello from the Colorado Suzuki Institute, where my five year old girl did her first big concert last night! It was something else. There were maybe sixty cellist on stage, all lined up, the littlest ones in the front. They play the hardest pieces first, and the little ones have to sit through these pieces until it's their turn to play. It's not so easy for a five year old to be sitting on stage in the spotlight in the front for eight pieces, waiting to play French Folk Song and Twinkle.

Isabelle got up about four times and tried to come down and sit with us in the audience. We had to motion for her to sit down. She bowed after the first three songs that she wasn't even playing on. She played with her belly button a little bit.

But she played like a pro and we were all thrilled! Go Isabelle! After the concert, I gave her a special necklace with a cello charm on it. She was very proud and showed it to all the cellists at the cello pizza party afterwards.

She loves her teacher here, David Evancheck. I do to. He has been my teacher trainer for Suzuki Book 1. Today is my last class for six hours (uggh!). But I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

In the Suzuki teacher training course, we have eight cellists, ranging in age from 15-48, of varying levels but mostly professionals. We sit around in a class room and talk about which bow stroke to teach on which piece, and how to size a cello on a little one, and what the philosophy of Suzuki really is. It's kind of fun, to be having all kinds of musical discussions with these cellists.
I haven't been in a group of cellists like this in ages, it seems.

Anyway, we will rent a house near here for the next week and try to explore the Vail area a little bit, and then, back to the Bay Area next Friday.

Colorado Suzuki Institute

2007-06-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

We are in Vail, at the Colorado Suzuki Institute. I am taking nine intense days of teacher training, and Isabelle is studying Suzuki cello for five days at cello camp. Wow---I can't believe how tired I am from this teacher training. We have six hours of class daily and then we have to go back to our condo and watch two hours of videos each night.

Is it lovely outside? I don't even know. Is it nice in Colorado?

This afternoon I took Isabelle to do her first "play in", which is a big gathering of all the cellists of all levels. They play selections from all the Suzuki repertoire and everyone plays the pieces that they know, together. At first when the teacher was chekcing all the student bow grips, Isabelle noticed that her bowgrip was not a "Suzuki" bowgrip like everybody else's, and she started to cry. She was panicking in front of the class, saying, "mom, where's my bowgrip? Mom!???" I felt so helpless and guilty because I've let her slide on bowgrip and her bwgrip isn't good---she just would always refuse to learn a good bowgrip---so she hadn't gotten there yet.

After that she tried to imitate their bowgrip and came up with this really bizarre looking configuration of her hand on the bow that made me cringe. She used it for awhile. They played a few of the easier tunes that she knows and then they totally went into the harder pieces. Isabelle was crying for about a third of this "play in", because she only can play the first half of Suzuki Book One, and they were playing all kinds of music that she doesn't know. She also would cry if I played on the pieces that she doesn't know, so I didn't play.

It was kind of a nightmare for me, to get through this. I felt really guilty and like I'm a bad teacher...but we went home and we practiced together a little and we went swimming and we felt better.

So she doesn't seem that traumatized by this experience. (I am, however.) But she starts her classes tomorrow morning, and I am very excited about this as I will go with her and we will get some great teaching from the man who is my teacher here also, David Evancheck. He is really great with the little ones, and so I am hoping that he can straighten out this bowarm trauma gently. Good luck David! Let's put it on you for now, and I'll be the at home parent/teacher.

In other news, Isabelle went ice skating for the first time last night! She was stubborn as an ox and would not hold on to anything. Her balance is great and she only fell a few times.

We have another week of the Suzuki Institute, and I am looking forward to observing her classes as a part of my teacher training. This teacher training is really giving me some good ideas for teaching the little ones. Teaching 3-5 year olds is definitely an art within itself.

Sick Weekend Survival

2007-06-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

Well, first of all, I would like to announce that the Druid Sister's Tea Trio Recital is not happening on July 27th at Jack London Square. Our singer is doing a festival in New York, so we had to postpone it. And, I don't know how to update the performances page of my website. Does anyone want to help me with this? Anyway, that Druid's concert will not be happening.

And now I would like to talk about the weekend from Hell. Last weekend. I had four gigs lined up. And on Monday, I got some terrible form of food poisoning, or something, and I was not able to get up out of bed. Not even to make a phone call to cancel the things that I needed to cancel. But that should have been no problem, right? I had all week to recover until the weekend, when I would be performing.

It turns out that I did not recover all week, and on Saturday afternoon, I was dragging myself out of bed and into black clothing to go and play a wedding at the Berkeley City Club. I really didn't know if I could do it as I had a sick stomach and a foggy head. But it was only an hour long wedding ceremony and the guitarist and flutist were great. So it was not so bad. After the wedding, I hurried home to lay down.

Sunday was not so easy. I considered cancelling my students, but I felt kind of okay in the morning so I decided to give it a shot and teach them. I was a little shaky, but I got through four students. Then I had to run out to play a show at the Altarena Playhouse, in Alameda, called "The Last Five Years". I was just filling in on one show, and so I didn't know the music, but it was really fun. When music is new like this sometimes it's a blast to play. It's kind of like a roller-coaster ride. You have to be on the edge of your chair, waiting for cues, trying to feel the music and understand the score all at once, listening to the parts that your fellow musicians are playing beside you. It was really fun. I was playing with keyboard, violin, another cello, and guitar and bass. FellowAlameda Josh Cohen was playing the violin on this. I loved playing beside him, as some of the music had some klezmer flavor to it, and Josh can nail that style.

After the show, I was feeling kind of euphoric. I hadn't played a broadway type show in a long time, maybe since my 600 performances with the Cirque du Soleil "O" show in Las Vegas in 2002-2003. So I was kind of in this strange space, feeling kind of sick and weak from the food poisoning, but kind of exhillarated from the great music and the live performance, and I was thinking thoughts like, "Hey, why am I not playing shows? I love shows. This was so much fun. And I live just outside of San Francisco. There must be tons of shows in San Francisco that I could play. I wonder how I could get some of that work. I should be playing tons of shows in San Francisco and everywhere else..." It was a typical euphoric conversation that I was having with myself during an upside in my manic personality, as I was maneuvering with my cello through a really tight space, down the steps and out of the musician's loft, when suddenly, "crack!". I heard this loud and awful sound and realized that I had somehow banged my cello against the wall there.

This is a terrible, terrible thing, to hear this kind of a sound. This is really, the kind of sound, for a string player, that comes sometimes in nightmares, and you wake up shaking and in a cold sweat, and then you wipe your hand across your dampened brow, and lay back against your pillow, and you say, "Phew. It was only a bad dream..." It's that kind of thing.

Oh man! My stomach tightened into knots right then and I was afraid to look at the damage. Armando, our conductor, was very kind and he looked at it for me. Ouch!

So, there is a crack now in the side of my new and previously perfect Polish cello. This cello is called the Alabama Slammer, because it gets such a big and beautiful sound, and because I purchase it, believe it or not, on e-bay, from a man in Alabama. But that's another story.

I packed up the cello and headed for a wedding at the Brazilian Room in Tilden Park. Mary Tanios and I played cello and violin duos at this lovely venue. It was kind of fun. It's always a joy to work with Mary. By this time, my stomach was feeling better and I was not whoosy anymore, although I was still feeling very tired from the week of food poisoning.

I forgot about this awful crack, (conveniently blocked it out?), until last night when several friends and I were playing trios at a Phillipino Catholic High School reunion somewhere in the Presidio in San Francisco. After playing for an hour, I saw the crack and showed it to my friends, and we "oohed", and "ahhed", about it for awhile. We all decided that my cello needs to be taken in and adjusted and looked at.

So---that's the story of the weekend from Hell, and I am just thankful that I lived through it to tell about it. This weekend, there are more weddings and shows to play. (Carmina Burana with the Masterworks Chorale in San Mateo, and a wedding in Los Gatos.) Hopefully, it will turn out to be better than the last weekend. I'll let you know!

Summer's Coming

2007-05-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's May already! Enchante' String Quartet auditions are going on this weekend. It's exciting! But I really hate auditioning people. It's pretty awful to audition for things, but it's not fun to be the auditioner, either. I always try to be extra sensitive and nice to the poor person who is nervous and a bit shaky, having been there many times. Hopefully, we will find our new violinist this week, so we can get on with rehearsals for this summers shows.

In other big music news, Scott and I are taking little five year old Isabelle to Beaver Creek, to the Colorado Suzuki Institute! She and her cello will attend classes for a week with Scott, while I go to Suzuki teacher training. We are all happy about these last minute plans that I just put together last week. After eight days of camp, we are going to rent a house on the Eagle River, near Vail, so Scott can fish and we can just enjoy being in the mountains. What will I do with Isabelle out there? I don't know! We will be gone from June 8- June 22nd.

I have been very busy piecing together my summer freelance schedule. I am trying to play weddings and things on Saturdays, and teach on Sundays. So far it looks pretty good. I have some work with the string quartet, and some duos with violin (Mary Tanios, usually), and then I have some solo cello work. Also, we have a Druid Sister's recital coming up at the end of July in Jack London Square, and an Enchante' recital coming up at the end of August in the same place. (Check schedule page for details).

Last night I went to a party at Natasha Miller's in Alameda. My love, eighty three year old Bobby Sharp was singing and playing piano and I got to sit next to him on the piano bench and sing some of his songs with him. It was thrilling! I love it! Other people were playing music and it was fun. I would like to have a music party soon...well I have to go teach this morning, and then on to the violin auditions for the string quartet. Bye for now!

St. Patrick's Day Druids 2007

2007-03-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was a Druids weekend. I actually drove up to Mendocino by myself, (something unheard of with a five year old daughter around at all times), and had a weekend on the amazing California coast. I got to perform two shows with my Druid Sisters.

Friday night was at the Caspar Inn. It's an old Inn just off the highway with a lovely view of the ocean. There were actually whales playing in the water there! I would love to post a photo of this Inn. I had to laugh when I pulled up after driving the over two hundred and more like three hundred mile drive to this venue, as it's so small and country and I couldn't believe that this was the site, in the middle of a field, in the middle of nowhere, but it was.

We had a soundcheck that lasted forever, as soundchecks tend to do, and I was wondering if my cello batteries were going to explode again in my Zeta electric cello. They had exploded in the previous rehearsal much to my horror, but I was hoping that was a one time thing. Even though we were not going on until late, (around nine pm, I think?), I didn't get a chance to go out for a nice dinner of real food, as I had hoped to. But we had apples and bananas and Claudia, my wonderful Druid Sister incredible drummer friend, had brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which hit the spot for me.

I had found a faux leopard skin vest at a thrift store on the way up and got changed into that and some black velvet pants. I was ready to go, but exhausted already, before putting the bow on the cello strings!

We played several sets, until one am. At first I was really tired with a headache and the music seemed way too loud for me. But then the bass player, Kate, gave me an aspirin (thank you Kate, you life saver!), and for the second set I was happy and getting into the Druid sounds.

Saturday morning, even though I had no little daughter to wake me up, I couldn't sleep in. (Darn!) I awoke rather early to an amazing ocean view, and went into Mendocino for breakfast and some shopping and walking along the bluffs. In the afternoon, I drove the long and windy road along Route 1 to Garberville, where our St. Patrick's Day Dance was to be.

When I got to the Mateel Center in Redway, it was 5pm, and a sound check was already happening. Apparently my batteries in the Zeta had exploded, so I had to change them. I remember playing the composision called "Electricity" the night before, and I was making all these really cool Jimi Hendrix type electric sounds on the cello. It was really fun at the time, and I thought I was really making the cello go acid. I now know that was was really happening was that my batteries were exploding inside the instrument.

Anyway, after a long sound check at the Mateel Center we all got dressed up in true Druids fashion, the wilder the outfit, the better. Kate had on some kind of a bright blue and green egyptian suit with a blue wig, and our lead singer Cyokha had a kimono type jacket and she had a green hula skirt upside down on her head, so that she looked like a tree. I wore this big red skirt that was really wide, like a tutu I think, and lots of orange scarfs and a light green flowered top.

It was a fun performance. The Mateel Center reminds me of a big barn, and they had a delicious St. Patrick's Day meal that we got to eat on picnic tables with red checked table cloths. Everyone danced to our music. Kathy did alot of Celtic fiddle numbers, which the people seemed to really connect with.

Saturday night we stayed at a place in Redway and then Sunday morning it was time to take off and get back to my home and my little girl! When I got home, I was exhausted, but I was happy.

Next Druids concert will be here, at Jack London Square, on the last Friday night in July. I have to get the music ready for this one, as we are going to be doing some of my original compositions.
This will be a good inspiration for me to practice!

Bach in the Parking Lot

2007-02-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

So-this is going to be a difficult one to believe. I was out running on Saturday afternoon with my little Isabelle and our sweet yellow lab Jeb. When we go running, we bring the stroller, and Isabelle will run a block or two and then she'll jump into the stroller for awhile as Jeb and I keep running and she gets a free ride. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. The sun was bright and warm, even hot, and the feel in the air was somewhat like a summer afternoon. Isabelle had on her new sundress that has grapefruits and lemons and strawberries on it.

So anyway, there we were running, around the navy base, past the Bladium Sports Club, past the huge old navy boats and the bay, past the skateboard park where the kids were whizzing along happily in the sun and performing stunts on their myriad boards. We were looking at what is an amazing view of the Bay Bridge and the city of San Francisco beyond, and commenting on how great that view is from there, when we heard, coming from somewhere, and you won't believe this, a solo cello.

The three of us stopped in our tracks and looked around us. It was definitely a cello! A very soft, very timid sounding instrument, playing one of the songs from the Suzuki book that Isabelle plays from. Where was it coming from?

There was the old navy base gym on our left across the street, and a parking lot on our right that was about three quarters full. The soulful sounds of the instrument seemed to be coming from the parking lot. It was one of those moments when you think you might be going insane...because I seem to have my sanity right now, but when hallucinations set in for me, they will probably be filled with Suzuki cello lines, as those are the lines that I teach my students, over and over. My husband sings them around the house, (much to my chagrine), long after the students have left, and I sometimes dream them at night.

Anyway, there we were, looking around for the source of the cello lines, Isabelle and Jeb and I. We followed the sounds to a spot in between two vans right there in the parking lot, where a little girl had set up a small chair and was evidently practicing her Suzuki cello pieces as her mother looked on from inside her van and gave instructions as the girl played.

"Second finger there," said the mother adamantly. "Okay, that's better, now keep going, and remember, straighten your bow..."

The little girl was very serious, and I have to say, quite good! The three of us sat to listen for awhile. There were two other sibblings in the car, and apparently one brother was playing soccer in the gym across the street. The mom was using this time as an opportunity to get the little girl's cello practice time in. She told us that the girl, Natalya, was five years old, and that her siblings all played Suzuki violin.

So, she played "Etude" for us, and a few other pieces. I watched closely, comparing this Natalya, who was a little older than my Isabelle, to my girl celloistically. I think Isabelle rates pretty good, that is, I think the girls are pretty comparable as cellists, although Natalya seemed to be reading, and Isabelle plays by ear.

We exchanged phone numbers, and I hope to get Isabelle together with this little cellist to play music and have some fun.

As we ran the rest of the way home, it seemed to me to be a bit of a miracle to hear some cello lines coming from between two vans in a parking lot. What are the chances of that?

That night, I e-mailed Natalya's mother, who lives in Albany, and asked if we could get together sometime soon. It's two days later now, and I have not heard back yet. It's no surprise. She has four kids under the age of ten, and they all are musicians! She has her hands full there. If I don't hear from her though, I might just conclude that this was all a strange dream.

Sunday Morning in February 2007

2007-02-04T07:42:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning again! Teaching day. I have five students today in a row. So, I will be teaching from nine to two. It's a long stint but I kind of enjoy just getting lost in the music world this way, on my backporch treehouse music studio. There are hummingbirds that hover outside the window and listen, and lots of trees creating a woodsy feel back here.

The Druid Sister's are up and running again after some injuries and personel changes. We had several rehearsals this week. Yesterday we rehearsed without our amazing singer and it was interesting. It was the trap drummer, Claudia, a new bass player Kate, and Kathy the fiddler and me. Since the singer is the one who really tends to do alot of improv and to lead the group, it was good for us to rehearse without her and to just work on the regular forms of the songs and the background. We have some shows up north in March that we are working on. I have to put together my schedule and get it listed on this website. Remind me to do that!

My little daughter, Isabelle had her five year old birthday party lasts Saturday! It was fun. We had a big princess castle bouncy house for the kids (and some of the adults, myself included), and I made a great pink castle cake. And no, I didn't use the mold, I made it myself from scratch. If I could figure out how to add a photo to this blog, I would put up a picture of it. So she is five now! She is all about princesses and dress up and presents. We have been eating pink cake leftovers every day and we have been taking the week off of cello for her. A much deserved break, but tomorrow we will start up again. She is doing quite well holding her own on the melody of the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the "Ode to Joy" theme, while I play the counter melody. I seem to remember that some of this is the real counter melody and then I think I made some of it up? Anyway, that's one of our big hits right now. I am finding that in teaching Isabelle, variety is key, so I have to keep putting new tunes in there that she likes, like the bassline for the Ay Yi song from her piano class, You are My Sunshine, and whatever else comes into my mind (or hers).

Oh yeah, and last week we were playing little songs for each body part and making up silly words. Her favorite was the head song...that had words something like: My head, fell off my shoulders, and rolled down the stairs...I picked it up, and put it back on my shoulders...

January 2007

2007-01-14T08:46:00.000-08:00

It seems like a long time since Isabelle and I did our old folks home performances, which I think were the last performances that I had. Maybe there were a few church concerts in there in December somewhere.

Isabelle and I went to Arizona for one week for Christmas, and that was lots of fun, although we got no snow in Flagstaff and we got cold weather in Tucson, so we didn't get to play in the snow or go swimming.

Anyway, back into the January swing of things here. Isabelle has been practicing both her cello and piano, but I have been delinquent and so need to get back into the woodshed and hone my chops again for upcoming Druids gigs.

The Druid Sister's Tea Party is a really good women's band that I love, but we had some injuries and some personel problems last year. Now we start up again in a few weeks. There's an awesome drummer, a psychedelic trance singer, a fiddler and a gypsy cellist (me). I love working with these gals.

We will be performing at the Mateel Center in Humboldt on St. Patricks day, March 17th. We did this gig last year and it was pretty funny to me. We were the backup band to Shauna Morrison's band (Van's daughter).There were alot of mountain people with long hair and bad teeth that came out to whoop it up. The Druid sister's did not let them down. We know how to make people dance with our groovy jungle rhythms and our Celtic jigs and reels and our African trance fairy music!

Water's Edge Retirement Concert

2006-12-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

It was kind of a depressing setting, which I well knew that it might be. But the spirit is to go and play your music and hopefully cheer someone up. I want to teach that spirit to my little girl. When we got to the retirement home, we had to navigate our way through lots of hallways with old and sick folks hanging out in wheelchairs all along the way. I had Isabelle, aged four, and another mom with me and her two toddlers, so that they could watch Isabelle when she was done with her performance. I took a deep breath and thought about how I would explain old age to a four year old, as I knew it would be coming up in our conversation very soon.

Well, we finally made it to the performance room, which was kind of dimly lit and filled with people that are half there, either sleeping in their wheelchair beds, or peering out of eyes that have known alot of life and are unable to function anymore on their own in society, with stories to tell, no doubt, but noone to tell them to anymore.

I set up Isabelle's little red chair, which we have to take along always because she will not fit on a big chair. She sat down and said, "Mama, I want my cello. My cello, please!" She started to get a little agitated as she didn't understand that I was trying to set up, getting my stand out, rosining the bow, getting the music together for my set with Terrence, the guitarist that was to come after her little performance.

We began playing in unison, the Twinkle Variations, and it seemed that people thought it was cute. Isabelle was concentrating very hard. I noticed that her bowarm seems to go wacky in performance and the little sound she usually gets is even smaller when she performs, as she is thinking so hard about the notes and the music.

So we played a few variataions together, and then the last one I broke off and played a harmony part and let her take the melody. It was at this point that I could see a look of pure delight on people's faces, because she was playing the melody by herself and they could hear her, and she was strong enought to do this with an accompaniment.

They loved it! We played the rest of her pieces the same way: I played in unison with her for a time and then broke off and let her play the melody alone with some pizzicato accompaniment.

She was definitely a hit.

After that, Terrence Brewer and I played some Christmas music and some popular classical pieces, like Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. There was not too much energy in the half sleeping crowd, but I think they liked it. One woman was saying, "Help me," really softly in between our selections. It was a bit unnerving, but Terrence later said that he thought our music did help her.

There was a very sick woman who had some vocal problems and was talking in a very deep voice. It was a little scary sounding. When we went into the bathroom, Isabelle asked me why that woman had a man's voice. I told her that when you get older, you start to get sick and sometimes things break down and stop working. This woman was having problems with her voice, I said. Isabelle looked at me with her big blue eyes and said, "Mama, when I'm bigger, that's not going to happen to me."

What do you say to protect your kid from all the terrible realities of life?

"No honey, it's not going to," is what I said, hoping that I was right. "But today you did a great thing, because you gave your gift of music to all these people who really needed it. And you made them happy."

She reiterated. "I did. I made them happy."

After our show, we went out for ice-cream to celebrate the success of our performance. Three toddlers and two moms, bubble-gum ice cream for the kids and a hot fudge sundae for the adults.

Now this morning we have to practice for our show tomorrow at a different retirement home. That one will be in a better environment I think, as I played there with my high school students from the Oakland School for the Arts a few years ago. I am thinking that maybe Isabelle and I will change our show around and do some different pieces, just because we can.

December Performances

2006-12-04T06:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I got to play with my new violin friend Saturday night: Mr Zin Violin himself, Chris Kranyak. We played a wedding in a tent in Danville. He's awesome! The wind was howling outside in the trees while we played duets for a wedding. There were about a hundred people there. In addition to our regular Bach/Handel wedding music selections, we had to accompany a tenor who said he had woken up with a sore throat and so didn't have any high notes. The piece was a John Denver composition called "For You", which, of course, required high notes. But it was fine. The bride was very nice and also the groom, who stood and talked with us for quite some time during the reception. ( This never happens). He is a scientist that is developing a cutting edge laser and he was explaining it to us. He has been traveling to Germany with a team of international scientists. It all sounds very exotic and exciting. We were waiting for dinner and the butternut squash soup at the reception, but it took too long, so we just left a little hungry. In the meanwhile, though, I discovered these amazing pecans with some kind of sweet and sour coating that were hella great, so at least there was that.

And then on Sunday I played two church performances. On the first one I had a nice cello solo at the very opening of the show. That was fun. And I met a nice bass player named Dave and a violist named Jason who has a doctorate from Eastman. The conductor let me out early to run to my next show, which was a sing-along Messiah in El Cerrito. We did the entire Messiah, which was long. The conducor was dressed up in a big white wig and some great clothes from the baroque period. He was posing as Handel's brother!

We have shows this week at two retirement homes in Alameda. Isabelle, who is still four, I am proud to say, is going to perform selections from her repertoire! We will play some pieces together and then I am going to play some Christmas music with a guitarist friend, Terrence Brewer. It should be fun. You never know, though, what Isabelle will do in performance. Last time, at the preschool performance, I had brought a violin for the children to look at and to try out, and Isabelle decided that she wanted to perform on that. I had to let her play it for awhile before she would play her cello. It's always an adventure with a performing four year old.

Faure Requiem

2006-11-06T07:15:00.000-08:00

What a beautiful piece we performed yesterday. I say we, because I don't really know who the group was. That's the way it is with playing these things here and there and everywhere, you don't even know who the group is sometimes. I know the name of the man who hired me, which was Jim Gilman. He was this great church conductor who was blind as a bat. He was one of those guys that has to put the music literally all the way up to about an inch in front of his face to check it. So, he memorizes the score, of course. This man had a great spirit, and he was all excited about the music and the performers, and I always love to play with someone like that.

So the Faure Requiem is a chamber group of strings with no violins. This is kind of odd but it makes the music sound very rich. And then, somewhere near the middle of the piece, when a section violist picks up a violin that he had tucked away somehwere and plays a violin solo, it sounds really high and almost eery in this lush context.

There is also a large choir, and, get this, a boys choir, singing these wonderful lyrical melodies way high up in angelic voices. This particular choir came from some boys academy in Berkeley and they were very good. The boys were something else---somewhere between sweet and cute and handsome, somewhere between being little boys and young men, aged, maybe 8-12, with matching blue pants and plaid shirts and green vests, big eyes blinking, very serious and solemn
with the subject matter of the requiem and their very important musical mission...

There was an Asian boy who sang a solo in the Pie Jesus movement. The tambre of his voice was perfect, the ultimate of innocence and sadness and beauty, I think. He was definitely an angel accompanied by an organ, and when he sang, we were all transfixed.

The orchestra part was fun to play, as it was real chamber music, four cellos, and we each had different parts, so we could all be heard at different times. And the cellists were all new to me, and they were all very good, so this was great.

It was a memorial to all those that had died on the streets of Oakland in the last year. The names were read during the service: 120 murders. The families were in the audience. They all seemed to enjoy the music and the memorial service.

We finished at about 6pm and they were serving food, so, on my way out I got some little sandwiches to eat in the car on the way home. A very nice way to end a pleasureable concert!

ps: I have now found my program from yesterday's performance. So Jim Gilman is the Director of Music at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Oakland. The adult choir was the Laudate Chorus, and we apparently were the Laudate Orchestra. The boys were from the Pacific Boychoir Academy.

Brahms in the Park

2006-10-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

Hah!

Isabelle and I were playing in the park with Isabelle's friend Stella. Isabelle is four now and Stella is three. We were having a good old time and the girls decided that they wanted to swing.

So I was pushing them on the swings when I noticed a woman who I thought might be Frederica von Stade, the famous opera singer, playing with her granddaughter. Well, I know that she lives in Alameda, and I see her from time to time, and I am always all flustered, and wondering to myself, "is that her? that must be her..??? I think that might be her...???" This is the way my conversation with self always goes around an encounter with this amazing musician. I saw the man she was with, and he was very tan, and I know that Ms. von Stade is married to a sailor, as I heard her say so herself at a Christmas concert last year here in Alameda. So I'm thinking to myself, "well, he's very tan, and he is wearing a white sailor's hat that says 'Alameda Marina' on it, so he must be her husband, and is that her?That must be her..."

So here's this wonderful singer, playing in the sand with her beautiful blue-eyed granddaughter, and I'm pushing the girls, thinking how interesting it is that true greatness can be in your midst at any given moment, when Ms. von Stade and her tan sailor husband come on over and put the little girl on the swing right next to us! So now I am starting to get excited. I'm wondering what to do. Should I talk to Ms. von Stade? Start a conversation about music? No, lame idea. Should I introduce myself and tell her that I think she is awesome? And that I absolutely love her renditions of...no, that would make me sound truly dumb. I don't want to sound truly dumb. So I decide to try to get Isabelle to sing her version of the chorale to Brahms' First Symphony. A four year old singing Brahms in the park? That's not truly dumb. That's awesome. That's the stuff that might even impress a world class opera star.

Isabelle has words to the chorale, that go something like this:

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...

So anyway, I start singing this real soft, to try to get Isabelle to belt it out, like she sometimes does. But she'd have none of it. She wouldn't sing a note! Not one note.

She knows better than to try to impress an opera singer, I guess.

Why don't I?

Isabelle's Debut: Reno Art Opening

2006-10-22T07:53:00.000-07:00

Well, technically, the Reno art opening was not Isabelle's debut cello performance. She performed a few weeks ago at her preschool. The kids were all gathered around, twenty of them, as she dug into her repertoire of Twnkle Twinkle Little Star Variations, Ode to Joy, and You Are My Sunshine. As she played, you could hear a pin drop in the room. And I must say, I had never heard the children be quiet like that before, ever.

But last week was Isabelle's first professional gig. We drove up to play at my sister in-law's art opening at the Western Nevada Community College in Carson City, just outside of Reno. I was going to play some cello and bass duets with my brother Gary, who is an artist and a high school art teacher. Isabelle told me that she wanted to perform too, so I said okay tentatively, but I was not sure how the whole thing would turn out.

First of all, when we were driving to the show, Isabelle fell asleep in the car, so I let her sleep awhile. We arrived about a half an hour later than our scheduled performance time.

When we got to the show, I was really impressed with the work that my sister in-law, Jill Brugler, had done. Her sculptures were large busts of women with birds on their heads and masks with interesting facial expressions twisted this way and that and wall hanging platters with painted rock sculptures. It was very soulful and well-crafted work and the site was beautiful.

People were milling about and, after we visited the food table and had some cookies and chocolate covered raisins, I got my cello out. Isabelle said she wanted to play first. A small crowd gathered as I tuned her little cello. Their faces were curious and I could tell they were wondering if she could really play or not. She's only four!

Now, Isabelle sat on her little red chair that we brought for the occasion. She was all dolled up in a burgundy red velvet dress with flowers on the front, a red velvet beret and red cowboy boots to match. She certainly looked the part!

When she broke into her compositions, the faces all broke into smiles. Especially happy was her uncle Gary, who had never heard her play before. When she finished, the small crowd clapped and Isabelle stood up and took a bow. She loved the attention!

After that Gary and I played some bass and cello duets. I played the violin part and he played the cello parts from some classical favorites, such as Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring by Bach, and some of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. The combination of bass and cello was really sweet and mellow. We had just started in with some jazz standards when Jill came up and told us it was time to go.

I felt like we were just getting warmed up and I was ready to play more. It was just beginning to sound really good. But we packed up and left the gallery. This was the first time I had been asked to leave a gig! Usually I am running out the door the minute we are done.

So, we did our Reno debut. And Isabelle did her first real gig, at age four! Bravo, little one, and may you have many more chances to perform your beautiful music and spread happiness throughout your lifetime!

The American Ragtime Ensemble Recording

2006-10-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning. Teaching day again! It seems to be recording session season for me. A few days ago I did a rehearsal with David Reffkin and his American Ragtime Ensemble. He is a ragtime specialist who does a radio show every Monday night on KUSF, I believe it is. He is a very good violinist with eclectic tastes in music, and he's always fun to work with, although he makes me nervous...

He sent us the music about a month in advance, and then he called me two or three times and left messages to make sure that I was practicing the music. He's so funny! He wants to get the best performance out of everyone, and he will do things like that to make sure you practice. David is very organized and I think he is used to dealing with flaky musicians that would just show up to the gig without any idea of what is going on.

So anyway, I went to the rehearsal Thursday in San Francisco. It was in a little church. I was there an hour early, because I am paranoid about getting lost, bad with directions, and also because David is so paranoid about anything going wrong that I am scared to death to displease him...So the whole three hour rehearsal was on two little ragtime pieces that have been arranged for a small ensemble. We went over and over and over these pieces. They were sounding pretty good. They are actually kind of cool pieces with lots of dissonances and lots of layers of interesting things going on.

So David was happy, in the end, thank god! The actual recording session itself is this Tuesday in Berkeley. It should be fun...

Later this afternoon I am going to check out a recording studio here in Alameda, to hopefully book some dates to record a new cello CD. The last CD that I made of my own music, "Night of a Thousand Rains" was ten years ago. It's high time for some new original music, which I have been writing.

Well, off to my students and to another delicious cup of Joe!

Brazilian Recording Session

2006-10-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

Hey---yesterday I played a Brazilian recording session. It was alot of fun and I loved the music. I had to wait around for a few hours at the beginning of the session because the recording engineer left and there was supposed to be a sub, but noone came for awhile. People were sitting around talking in Spanish and I wasn't sure what they were talking about so I felt a little uncomfortable. The producer didn't speak any English, but he smiled alot. The arranger kind of reminded me of a Latin version of Paul Simon. He was very easy going, and I said to myself, good, this is good for a recording session, because they can be very stressful.

But when we got to playing the music, it was great. I loved putting cello lines down. There were some songs in Portugese and some in Italian. The singer was a Brazilian woman named Anna Nitmar and she was very kind and sincere. I had to play two and sometimes three parts on top of each other, and along with the recorded rhythm section.

I had gotten this gig from my good friend Robin Lewis, who is an amazing musician. It was really fun at one point when I was playing along with the recording, and I realized that Robin was playing the guitar solos. So I was playing with him, but he wasn't even there!

After playing five songs, I was tired! I felt spent, but inspired. I skipped out of the studio with a Latin beat andPortugese lyrics running through my head, and jumped into my car and headed home to my baby girl. When I got there it was just about time to put her to bed.

Freezing

2006-09-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is the thing about playing weddings and such in California: it's always freezing here. Everyone thinks that the weather is so nice because there is no snow and the sun shines. But what people don't realize is that is that there can be no snow and there can be sunshine and it can still be freezing. The people that know this are those that work outside, like me!

It always looks beautiful on the water but the wind is so cold it is unbelievable. We have to use heavy stands that can hold up in the wind and big heavy wind clips to hold the music down and, believe it or not, I always bring black winter mittens to wear when I am not playing, to try to thaw my hands out in between musical selections.

So, I played a wedding yesterday afternoon on Treasure Island. It's a gorgeous spot in the ocean, between Berkeley and San Francisco. To get there you have to take an exit that is kind of halfway across the Bay Bridge. Why was I not surprised that the wind was gusting and everyone was freezing? This happens all the time. The bridesmaids were trying to stay warm by hopping up down and blowing on their hands while running around in their halter dresses and high heels and trying to look elegant at the same time.

Meanwhile, I was wearing a great outfit that I picked up at a thrift shop here in Alameda a few weeks ago. It's a long black velvet jacket with matching pants and it's warm. I was also wearing these cool black patent leather shoes that are really pointy that I got on e-bay. So I felt really on top of things. I actually felt kind of like Paganini in that slick black outfit.

I had on tights, a pair of long socks and then another pair of warm socks on top of that. I had forgotten my scarf, a nice woolen green plaid thing that I have worn for years, but I was sitting right in the sun, so it was okay.

This was actually a fun wedding. The quartet was well organized, thanks to Mary Tanios, our first violinist, everyone could read well enough, we didn't get lost or anything like that, and we we didn't have to play at the reception. (Yay!) So we were out of there within the hour...

It happened!

2006-09-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

Well, it happened! It has been a long time. But every once in awhile, you play with a musician that really makes you listen. And you get all happy and all inspired and you just feel great.

That hasn't happened to me in a long time. I can sometimes get inspired by people playing other instruments, but I think that some of that is the unfamiliarity with the particular sound that they are getting, or often it is their technical ability that is inspiring. Like for example, if someone can play really fast, that's inspiring usually, as long as they are playing something that is interesting too. Or if someone has a large repertoire and knows all kinds of different scales, that can be fun.

But it is rare that someone hits me with the simple beauty of music itself, and with the expression of feeling on an instrument that is similar to mine. I am so familiar with the strings sound that I didn't think it could excite me anymore. Wrong!

The violinist that I played with Thursday night, for a three hour party gig beside a pool, is an extraordinary musician! His name is Chris, and I met him the other night at my Flamenco gig. He was really good and seemed very kind and interesting, so I hired him for a gig that came up this week. It was a great move.

Three hours is a long time to fill with duo music, but the time flew with Chris.

First of all, he showed up in a flashy, Liberace type vest, which was perfect for this party. He's kind of tall and stately to look at, and he's got the Kevin Klein debonaire kind of look going on.

I had told him to bring some music if he had any. He brought an amp, two pickups and an orchestra recorded so that we could play some popular favorites along with them backing us up!

It was really fun playing some overplayed, romantic tunes like the Titantic theme, Pachelbel's Canon, and a couple of the Puccini arias...Everyone loves to hear these kinds of songs.

But, anyway, back to my new inspiring friend. He plays beautifully! His sound is so soulful---and he puts everything he has into every little melody. I have to say that I was blown away by his artistry and his musicianship. And even when we read some classical Stamitz duets, he was a master. His comments, too, were very humble: "This is so difficult to read and play well," he said, after ripping through an allegro perfectly at a fast tempo. But it wasn't just the tempo, it was how well he played this thing musically. The expression of it all.

I walked away, changed.

The last time I was thrown into a state like this by a string player was when I first heard and played with Lei Quiang in the Cirque du Soleil "O" show. Leigh plays the Chinese violin, or "erhu", with a hauntingly beautiful tone. It was a tone that I had never heard before, but similar to a standard European violin sound. When I first heard it, sitting there in the audience at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, I just had to smile. I was so excited that I would be playing duets with this instrument and this musician.

After playing 600 shows with Lei, and sitting right beside him every night for over a year, I feel the same way about him and his musicianship.

Of course, one of the most fun things about Lei was jumping up from the sound booth when we both had a three minute break in the music every show, and running up and down the backstage ten flights of stairs four times, as fast as we could, and then skipping back into the sound booth, jumping into our chairs and coming in on our next melodic entrances with a heightened sense of energy and with a very fast vibrato! Now that was fun! Every night!

But anyway, I have diverted. I have to go practice.

Flamenco!

2006-09-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

Last night I played with a really cool Flamenco group. These guys were fun and interesting and good! The instrumentation was guitar, latin percussion, violin and cello. There was no rehearsal and it seemed that we played forever. (Four hours!) We played in someone's backyard in Menlo Park. The house was gorgeous and the party was very exclusive- so exclusive that we never even knew who was throwing it. Were they even there?

But the musicians were really great and I so enjoyed working with them. After a few hours, we were shoveled off into the garage to eat some dinner. (No mingling with the guests!) The food was really tasty, little sandwiches and pizzas and stuffed mushrooms and such. Then we went out to play some more.

Playing with these guys was the opposite of playing with symphony musicians. No rehearsal! Anything goes! Just play!

I enjoy the contrast between the different musical groups that I play with. Variety really is the spice.

A nice gig with great musicians who were nice guys too. After the gig, they helped me to carry my gear out. That's what I'm talkin' about! That certainly doesn't happen in my all women band, the Druid Sister's Tea Party, or in my all women string quartet Enchante'.

Pascal's Coffee Shop

2006-09-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning. Today is my teaching day! But I get to write for a few minutes first with a nice cup of hazelnut coffee with cream. It's nice here in my treehouse teaching porch.

Yesterday I played at a coffee house called Pascals French Oven in Danville. I played solo cello. It was fun! Students and friends came and it was like a party. Isabelle was there. She has never seen me play before at something like this, because her father never comes, and so she can't uusually come. But yesterday we had friends there that took care of her while I played.

I really enjoyed this venue. I played classical favorites and jazz favorites and some new originals. Isabelle and her other little friends ran around and played with stickers and dolls and things.

I remember back in Tucson, when I was a freshman. My friend Wayne Smith was playing in a coffee house there. He was reading Bach Suites. At the time, I just thought it was the most amazing thing, that he could just go into that coffee house and play like that.

And now... I really felt a sense of community there, as though I was bringing my music to the neighborhood with kids and friends and good pastry and coffee. And I certainly need to do more of this kind of thing, because this feels good.

When I was in the Cirque du Soleil, we played two shows a night, five days a week, but we were behind glass up in a sound booth. The theatre held about two thousand people nightly, and it was usually always sold out. There were always famous people in the house. This was thrilling in a way, but, after the shows, we never got to meet anyone. So we would just quickly get dressed in the dressing room and slip out into the Bellagio. We walked out beside the audience, but they didn't know who we were. We almost never talked to anyone who had just seen the show. We never got any comments or anything. That was kind of a lonely way to perform.

Yesterday's performance was fulfilling in a different way.

This afternoon I will be playing a wedding here in Alameda with my friend, Lylia on the violin. We are going to play a duet rendition of the Mendelsohn violin concerto, the slow movement, for the bridal march...that should be interesting. Lylia is a fine player so it will be beautiful, and I will try my best to fill in some bass and harmony from the piano score. We'll see...

The next big musical venture on the schedule that I know of is the audition for the Marin Symphony. I have to get myself practicing for this. It is happening on September 12, so I have about nine days to prepare, but with Isabelle around, it is difficult to get any practicing done!

Well, off to my students this morning! And another cup of coffee!

Marcie Brown Music

2006-08-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

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!)