Wendy is an absolute institution in the Los Angeles string world, and her latest project to catalogue and promote the work of women composers is just one example of her tireless efforts to make a difference in the music community. In a fabulous crossover, multiple pieces by Ailbhe McDonagh (half of the ingenious team that created PopperStudies.com) are in her list of recommended works! Zoom in to view or right click to save! Here’s the episode, which is a long casual chat and catch up session between two total nerds. Enjoy ..read more

If you have lesson anxiety or find it hard to strike a balance between caring about the result (essential!) and holding yourself accountable for every tiny flaw (misery!), have a listen to this. Lots of love to all the tender hearts out there ..read more

There is a nature preserve not too far from where we reside that has a bench with an excerpt from Thoreau’s Walden pressed into it. In the spring and summer, the place runs wild with ferns, soft moss and lichen, and dozens of mushroom varieties. In the autumn, it is a burnished explosion of red and gold foliage, and the branch of the Shepaug river that courses through it moves with a kind of ancient, solemn purpose that is comforting. I haven’t been there in the winter, yet, but I plan on exploring the changing face of Bee Brook the next time it snows. It is a gratuitously stunning area: Som ..read more

Making a podcast is such a cool way to have conversations with interesting people that you’d otherwise have no excuse to talk to. One thing I really miss about being in an academic environment is having (and hearing) discussions with colleagues and students about absolutely every aspect of music and the humanities. More and more, I think of Lonely Cello as a casual conversation inside a practice room that you can stop by and listen to. Afterwards, we all go back into our private practice space, close the door, and get back to whatever it is we’re working on. But for an hour, this tangent with ..read more

read part 1 here. The route from DC to Litchfield county has a number of variations, most of them involving whether to cross into NY via Manhattan or Yonkers. Strangely, it is frequently faster to go through Midtown, but I knew I wanted to avoid all of that in the monstrous Penske truck. I also knew that the scenic Merritt Parkway, the most direct route to Roxbury, had its entrance off of Henry Hudson—a stretch of old road hugging the western edge of the peninsula that features multiple low bridges. P and I remarked upon this as we made our way back to DC: “We’ll have to plan our route to avoi ..read more

The last two years have been just…really…something. Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of a particularly gnarly moment in what has been a period of almost exclusively gnarly moments, and it made me realize that only a few people have had any idea about what’s been going on since our move from DC in the summer of 2021. Buckle up, friends. Here goes. Summer 2021. We knew we wanted to get out of the DC area, even though it meant leaving behind nearly every essential rhythm of our life: playing hockey with friends, teaching and gigging, going to Caps games (which had become harder and harde ..read more

For about a month now, there has been a post nearly ready to publish. For some reason, I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I’m not certain if this is a sign of maturity or lack of nerve, but for now, this will have to serve in its place. The draft is more of a screed than anything; a primal scream of release after having been pushed past some boundary I didn’t realize I had erected. It felt good to rage, and I’m still as angry and dispirited as I was when I first started writing it, but I wonder how much good it would really do to put that out into the world. This beautiful, war-torn ..read more

As promised, here are some lesson notes. This student is a marvelous and highly motivated student whose main outlet is playing in a community orchestra. These notes are from a period of time when I was also introducing them to a broad survey of musical ideas, so the listening at the end serves as an introduction to the ideas of minimalism and a distinct departure from the usual construction of phrases. Reich instead uses motifs that sort of melt into each other over countless repetitions and permutations so that if you’re not used to it, when you get to the end and then listen to the beginning ..read more

Back when I started this blog, social media was a sort of nascent entity—we had no idea if it would stick around or fall into the waste bin of internet things that didn’t last. It was easy to do what we’re now calling creating content and feel secure that the right people would eventually find their way here. Now, anyone trying to cultivate and maintain an online presence has all these disparate platforms to appease: pithy epigrams for Twitter, photos in proportion for Insta, daily short videos for TikTok, longer ones for YouTube, who knows what? for Facebook. Is Snapchat even a thing any more ..read more

Thom is a friend and colleague who offers some practical tips for anyone who wants to write music but feels like they don’t know how to start! The post New Lonely Cello podcast: Thom Limbert appeared first on Emily Wright ..read more