By Daniel Hoppe Three travelers met at an inn along the road. “Inn Keeper,” they called “tell us the way to the glorious city, Constantinople!” The Inn Keeper replied: “The way is short for some, interminable for others. For some it is effortless, for others it is arduous. Follow the road and you will find your way.” At daybreak the three set out hoping to conclude their journey quickly and easily. Before long they came upon a mighty river. The first traveler waded in and began to swim as hard as he could. The second traveler squelched into the mud, and, feeling overwhelmed by the t ..read more

Search for resistance—enjoy the friction! I have been considering the topic “sounding point” (contact point, in German) for a long time now. Where bow hair and string meet is where everything we have to offer—regarding material, technique, power and ease—is channeled. This is the origin of the sound! This is where the action is! Isn’t the sounding point therefore the most erogenous region of the cello? But at first a little anecdote: After the Christmas mass the priest stood at the exit, shaking the hands of the parishioners and wishing them a Merry Christmas. What a nice gesture! So I to ..read more

I only learned about the importance of the spinal column to cello playing as I was introduced more deeply into the Alexander Technique. Of course I knew the superficial facts about the spine and especially how vital it is to the health of the nervous system. But its particular relevance to cellists was not brought home until I began training in the work of teaching the Technique. Here are a few interesting facts about the spine to start off 1: The spinal cord is surrounded by rings of bone called vertebrae. Both are covered by a protective membrane. Together, the vertebrae ..read more

“We are learning to do consciously what Nature intended.”  —F.M. Alexander Spending a week remembering Bernard Greenhouse on CelloBello brought back memories of many hours of lively conversations and shared experiences. Bernie had naturally what we call ‘a back’ in the Alexander Technique, and there is no faking or pretending to have a back…you either do or you don’t, and the evidence of it is felt in the power of presence. The back mediates all our responses—a strong and expansive back gives one the ability to speak and act from a place of natural authority ..read more

“Change involves carrying out an activity against the habit of life.” “You can’t do something you don’t know, if you keep on doing what you do know.” —F.M. Alexander Summers take musicians to new places where teachers and students meet for the first and sometimes the only time, and within this one or perhaps two or three encounters, Chance and Fate can open unexpected doors. Being out of our familiar circumstances and roles and away from the people we see every week in the same place—and for the same reason—provide just the right marinating sauce for Serendipity. It was during a summ ..read more

“In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.” —Jimi Hendrix Here is a question for you…what is the foundation of good balanced movement at the cello? There are many answers and many ways of defining balance and coordinated movement. The CelloBello website offers some great advice here. In this short blog, I propose to turn the question on its head, as we do in our work as Alexander Technique teachers. “How can we prevent interference with our balance?” And by defining what gets in the way of balancing ourselves with the cello, we can discover what to let go. Ye ..read more

The Alexander Technique has its own process of training to become a teacher of the work. Much like cellists, we take lessons from established teachers, we attend school daily and we begin from the beginning, with lots of preconceptions which are called habits. Our teachers constantly bring our attention to them, rebalancing and releasing negative patterns of use, mostly through their hands, sometimes through words, and often both.   from http://www.alexandertechnique.com   As the inner fog lifts and our sensory awareness improves, we begin to be able to “put hands on” others a ..read more

“The world is a ladder, which some go up and some go down.” —Gypsy Proverb   ‘Think up along the spine’: five of the most important words in the Alexander Technique. It takes as much hard work, patience and humility to understand and live these words as it does to interpret great works of music, perhaps more, because thinking up along the spine means that every waking moment we can be conscious of ourselves, not only when we are making music. For cellists, thinking up along the spine is going for the gold. So given its importance to us as players, what does this phrase tell us? Working ba ..read more

“The words of truth are always paradoxical.”—Lao Tzu Paul Katz was here recently in London giving a workshop on the bow to the members of the London Cello Society and raised an interesting point about strength.  His Tai Ch’i teacher once said to him, “Hardness is Weakness, Softness is Strength: Hardness is Death, Softness is Life.”  This remarkable saying inspires this article. As cellists we need to be able to call upon reserves of power to play our big repertoire, to perform long concerts and tours. No way are we not interested in knowing about power and strength, but as soon as we ..read more

“Under the ordinary teaching methods, the pupil gets nineteen wrong to one right experience. It ought to be the other way round.” —F.M. Alexander A young instrumentalist aiming for a professional life onstage puts in a staggering number of practice hours during their formative years. I heard the director of our Conservatoire recently state the figure of 8 to 10 hours a day for the 18-24 year olds at undergraduate and graduate levels. Does he think that’s what’s happening in the practice room or wish that it were so? Either way, it’s alarming to think that so much time is spent sitting and usin ..read more