I recently had breakfast with Interlochen faculty pianist Steve Larson who told me that he enjoyed reading my posts. So, since I know I have one devoted fan, I decided to write again after almost a year’s hiatus. 
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   How to summarize another action-packed year? First, there were the academic developments. Another year of doctoral coursework down and only one to go. That being said, if anyone knows of a collegiate cello position opening up that combines with teaching responsibilities for a strings program or as an instructor for core music theory / musicology courses, hit me up. My spring recital, Bach’s Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 3 in A Major, and the Martinu Variations on a Theme of Rossini, went off without a hitch. I give credit to pianists Michael Stafford and Hsin-I Guo and the coaching of Dr. Jon Ruck and Prof. Stephanie Shames for our success.

   In the area of teaching, my assistantship at OU has been advanced. Instead of grading for the musicology department, I’ll be teaching two sections of Understanding Music, OU’s non-major gen-ed music history class. This week, I returned from Interlochen’s Institute Week (my third summer) as an assistant to Crispin Campbell, Dr. John Marshall, and our special guests Dr. Melissa Kraut of the CIM and Portland Cello Project cellist Gideon Freudmann. These world-class musicians have been superb mentors since and I am constantly learning from their examples. I must give a special thanks to Dr. Kraut for her masterclass suggestions for my Dvorak Concerto and also to Gideon for his words of wisdom. And back here in OK at the Norman School for Strings, I continue to teach violin, cello, and group classes. Emily Stoops and Dr. Rob Bradshaw have their NSFS cello camp in July which I will also help with.

   Performance opportunities in the greater Oklahoma City area and beyond have also picked up. Between playing for worship services at St. Luke’s Methodist Church of Edmond and being contracted for the Fort Smith Symphony’s 2016-17 and 2017-2018 seasons, I squeeze in the occasional quartet gig with the Norman School for Strings Quartet. One of the biggest performance developments has been working with concerti. Yet again, I made it to the finals of concerto competition but I still have yet to grasp that elusive title as “winner”. One must have many irons in the fire. Composer Gene Knific is writing a brand new cello concerto for my last doctoral recital this fall and just this last week, I performed the first movement of the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Benzie Area Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tom Riccobono. It was a great opportunity to reconnect with former teachers and colleagues as well as perform this great masterwork.​

    “The days are long but the years fly by.” This statement captures how attention influences our perception of the passage of time. Nothing demands your attention quite like juggling multiple endeavors. You keep your eyes on your commitments as they rise and fall and you hope that you don’t drop the ball. I admit, writing on my blog this spring was a ball I dropped and didn’t bother to pick back up until now.
 
     The main endeavors of the spring semester were preparing for my first doctoral degree recital and my coursework at the University of Oklahoma. However, other avenues outside the school of music opened up. I’ve been playing at a church in Oklahoma City. I visited schools to promote our Summer Cello Club at the Norman School for Strings. I subbed with the Fort Smith Symphony and I will return next season. Good fortune has grown my studio from three students to now having five violin students and four cello students. In August, I will return to Northern Michigan to deliver a lecture on Hildegard von Bingen for the Bay View Association's Scarrow Lecture Series.
 
    Lately, I've been pondering this mad juggling act. When I first started my musical studies seven years ago, I was ignorant in two ways. First, I didn’t understand that studying music and having a career in music would be so multifaceted. Solo, chamber, orchestra. Core repertoire, early music, new music. Pedagogy, instruction, teaching how to teach. Free lance, gigs, personal projects. Research, papers/lectures, discourse. Personal development, interpersonal relationships, and the building of community. The list goes on. Second, I was unaware of the limiting factors of time, focus, and energy. There are only so many hours of the day that you can devote your best attention to complex tasks. When I was younger, I don’t think that I had more energy. I simply ignored how tired or burned out I was.
 
    I just finished my second year as an assistant at the Interlochen High School Cello Institute and while I was there I began to notice how the faculty all were experienced "jugglers". So Thursday, when we did a Q&A with the faculty, my former teacher Crispin Campbell of the Interlochen Arts Academy, Dr. John Marshall of the University of East Washington Spokane, Astrid Schween, cellist of the Julliard Quartet (absent from the Q&A due to travel for an upcoming performance), and special guest Mark Summer, former cellist of the Turtle Island String Quartet, I made a point of asking the faculty, "how many different hats do you wear?"

Cris: Teacher. Quartet cellist. Orchestra cellist. Band member. Recording artist. Artistic director. Institute director.

Dr. John Marshall: Professor. Performer. Music technology teacher. Humanities instructor. Arranger. Conductor. Orchestra Principal.

Mark: Quartet cellist. Composer. Arranger. Improviser. PR. Clinician. Orchestra musician.

    This is by no means a comprehensive list but it illustrates the diversity of skills that a successful professional can have. Perhaps versatility is simply a matter of self-preservation. The more ways you can make yourself useful, and sometimes indispensable, the more roots you put down and the deeper your roots reach. I would also propose that the multiplicity of music lends itself to making connections beyond one skill-set. Yes, practice and play the cello. But how do you, your cello, and your cello playing relate to the rest of the world and the people that inhabit it? I would also guess that this is why Interlochen seems to be a good fit for all of us. It is community built around sharing the individual excellence of artistic disciplines.

    I look forward to returning to Norman and to continue this crazy juggling act there with my own students. Updates about the Cello Club coming soon.

     The last two days have been relatively easy for me. I got up at a sensible time to either practice or do schoolwork. Yesterday I went to a museum and today I’ll go grocery shopping. A normal life in Norman Oklahoma.

      The last two days have not been easy for the community of the greater Kalamazoo area. And while many people's days probably mirrored mine, safe, domestic, and for all intents and purposes, ordinary, we have a sense that something isn’t right. A suspect has now been charged with the murder of six people in a seemingly random torrent of violence. It has shaken us at our core.

     Though my two years living in Kalamazoo flew by, it nonetheless left a profound impression on me. Inclusiveness defined the Kalamazoo way of life. Whether it was its many theaters or the multitude of arts organizations, its accessible secondary education options or the Kalamazoo Promise, or even its ever friendly breweries and restaurants, it is hard to feel left out or “on the outside”. For example, any night of the week you can go into Bell’s Brewery and find an extremely diverse yet completely harmonious group of people. Families, businessmen, college students, or just eclectic townies… the bar’s vibe was very eccentric but equally accepting. Artwalk, Downtown Kalamazoo, the Dalton Center, there is something for anyone and everyone.

      I think this is why these acts of violence are so, for lack of a more fitting word, violent. The suspect was arrested only blocks away from Bell's. The inclusive community, the open format, the willingness to share and celebrate what we have in common has been challenged. Yet it has been challenged, not by an ideology or by raging emotions, but by something much more unsettling.

    NPR reported an emotionless interaction between the driver and his rider six hours after the first shooting.

    "I jokingly said to the driver, 'You aren't the shooter, are you?' and he either shook his head or said no, and I said, 'Are you sure?'
    "And his response wasn't like you would expect, like a laugh. It was just very calm and quiet. It was, 'I'm just tired. No, I'm just tired.' "

     Moreover, upon hearing the charges brought against him and asked if he understood the situation, he replied, “I would prefer to remain silent.” The absence of a clear motive is unnerving. And perhaps it is not that a motive is not known at the present time but that there doesn’t seem to be one at all.

     I intentionally want to bypass any debate over the politics of guns in our country for an alternative reading of this situation. I offer a possible solution that, in concert with many other efforts, could be part of a comprehensive plan to create a more peaceful and just world.

      If you experience art, if you are in contact with beauty, if you share experiences communicating emotions and ideas with other people, you are less likely to feel alienation from other people. Alienation, or more strongly, the divorce of yourself from a sense of humanity, is an underlying cause of senseless violence. What brings a 20-year old to kill twenty six children and teachers? What motivates a man to kill a seemingly random set of people on an ordinary Saturday night? I do not know. What I do know is that it is a lot harder to engage with the mental/emotional processes that might lead someone to do these things if you are connected to other people.

     I don’t know what role guns are supposed to play in our society. I’m not sure how our social services can reach people who need help the most. But perhaps in order to fight the good fight, to put an idealistic end to violence in our society, we should do so how Kalamazoo does it. Inclusion. Besides its cultural value and personal meaning, the arts have the potential to be one of the most inclusive communities that brings our civilization together. No one is good at everything it takes to playing a musical instrument and I don’t know of anyone who is bad at everything either. At any stage of life, for any walk of life, music is a positive and bonding universal force.

     You might be saying to yourself, “but Kalamazoo was already inclusive and it didn’t work.” You’re right, it didn’t. We have to try harder. We have to work every day to reach out to anyone and everyone in the hope that something like this will not happen again. And in all probability, it will. However, that is one of the best qualities of idealistic romantic starving artists. We don’t care. In fact, we like those odds. These are the conditions that we fight every day in the creative process. Perfection is only a dream but we carry on anyways.

      Don’t let your spirit be broken. Reaffirm your commitment to whatever good you do, with your family, to your friends, at your job, and in your community. Take action and make great art. It might be the lifeline that someone didn’t know they needed.

    I’ve been in Oklahoma for three months and I’ve just returned from my first trip away from Norman. It seems strange to want to write about my new home after being away but maybe the space gave me some perspective to piece together the puzzle.
 
    Good fortune has connected me to many good people at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Ruck has helped me feel at home in the studio. His students have been nothing but helpful and welcoming as we dove into the Villalobos Bachianis No. 1 for our first concert. We are a fellowship of relaxed but very focused cellists here in Norman and I wholly enjoy this environment. Moreover, academic opportunities are flourishing. The faculty here are engaged at a level that inspires me intellectually. From the undergraduate class that I assist as GA to the theory course on performance and analysis that I’m taking, the scholarship is rigorous and insightful. Even outside of the school of music, Norman is presenting great professional opportunities. Not only am I playing with the Norman String Quartet and the newly formed Pacha Cello Duo (http://www.thepachaduo.com/) but I have also started teaching violin, cello, and coaching a chamber group at the Norman School for Strings.  

    Capping all of these Oklahoma activities has been the International Festival, Cello Fresno 2015. Artistic Directors Emilio Colon and Dr. Thomas Loewenheim brought together a roster of amazing faculty. Philippe Muller, long-time professor of the Paris Conservatoire, and Csaba Onczay of the Franz Liszt Academy, were the special guests. Masterclasses and performances were also given by Antonio Lysy (UCLA), Thomas Landschoot (ASU), Jonathan Ruck (OU), and Brian Schuldt (Felici Piano Trio and Unbound Chamber Music Festival). Four days of masterclasses and rehearsals culminated with a grand celebration of cello with a 50-piece cello ensemble playing Prof. Colon’s arrangement of the Beethoven Coriolan Overture, the Junior and Senior division Popper Competition winners, Olivia Jin and Sonja Kraus, and a performance of the Penderecki Concerto Gross for Three Cellos featuring Onczay, Muller, and Colon.

     I want to frame this event with something I’ve been meditating on since my arrival to Norman. In Dr. Ruck’s first studio class of this year he posed a provocative take-away question.
 
     If you look out into the world at large, it is a complicated place with many problems. The news is filled with tragedies unfolding both at home and abroad. As citizens of state, nation, and world, we have a broader awareness that dire needs exist. On the other hand, pursuing music can be a rather introspective and maybe even selfish vocation. We dedicate an enormous amount of time to perfecting our art by practicing and investing in our own playing. The time and energy that we spend… why do we dedicate it to cello and not to another worthy cause?
 
     I feel that this is a pressing question that is abstractly existential and pragmatically relevant. After experiencing such a wide array of performances and teachers, I ask myself the following questions. Where do I belong, what is my purpose, and how do I fit into the community of cello, music, and the world at large? On a micro-level it seems that all is well. I practice to make myself better at the cello. I study to advance my academic career. I teach to earn a living and impact lives on a small scale.  

    But when I consider things on a macro-level, when I look beyond my own day-to-day struggles, my assuredness falters. What purpose does this serve the world, a world that is in dire need of dedicated servants for important causes? Are there not people who go hungry, are there not injustices needing righting, and is the world itself not growing ever more complicated, and I might add, warmer? I was once told, “don’t do what the world needs, do what you love, that is what the world needs”. And while I do agree with this millennial outlook on vocation and lifestyle, I’m not sure if I’m completely sold. With every human on the planet pursuing his or her own desires, how do I contribute to more than just myself and how does classical music contribute beyond its hallowed halls and venerated academic institutions?
 
    I would argue that in a world that is filled with conflict, turmoil, and despair, art can become more than just art. It can have a higher cause and greater purpose. Consider Cello Fresno. Teachers and students from across the country and around the globe convene for four days of pedagogical and performance exchange. Every student who participated in a masterclass made a musical offering, not only for the teacher, but for every other student in the hall. We are, in a sense, equalized by the challenge of presenting our very best technical and musical performance. Then the teacher, wise with experience, bestows their best insight and knowledge to the student and audience. Thus, we learn from each others' differences. We celebrate the variety of approaches and styles of music making. We progress together.
 
     And in the end, we assemble together as a single entity, a cello choir of massive proportions. With so many schools of thought, individual personality quirks, and sheer numbers, I’m sure that not everyone knows or even likes one another. But that is beside the point. We put all of it aside for something greater than ourselves. While this may even be different for each individual yet it yields a single outcome: art, a constructive and positive force. Let us honor this universally understandable achievement, for it is a living monument to education, cooperation, and human expression.
 
     A special thanks to Prof. Jonathan Ruck for helping make the trip possible by providing our rental car, Leo Kim for finding us cellos to use in Fresno, to the Stefanacci family for hosting us, and Prof. Colon and Dr. Loewenheim for organizing this festival. Thank you also to Dr. Loewenheim for your work with me in your masterclass. I look forward the reuniting for the next Cello Fresno!

P. S.
I took more pictures in five days than I have all year. Take a look!

​ This blog is now almost four years old. It has been (and continues to be) an effort to catalogue the accomplishments of my career. Another way of looking at it is that it’s just internet bragging. You don’t have to come to my website to know what I’m talking about: our Facebook and Instagram feeds are littered with photos and videos of who someone played with, what prestigious program where they went to study, or what incredible job they just won. I don’t mean to be cynical. These are all good things, and good things should be shared. However, it’s easy to become discouraged about your own standing in life by voyeuristically watching carefully edited and filtered internet avatars. Thus, it comes as no surprise that social media can sow the seeds of “grass is greener on the other side of the fence” syndrome.

   What we don’t see behind the shared successes of social media is ‘the hustle’. When I was playing youth soccer in elementary school, my dad would always yell “HUSTLE!” from the sidelines. During both those failed attempts at child athleticism and today as a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-some, hustle means get your butt in gear and go get it. Hustle is what turns a chaotic schedule into a dynamic life. Hustle is what gets you the gig, gets you to the gig on time, and gets you asked back for the next one. Hustle means that you take every opportunity you have and if there are no opportunities, you make them yourself. And, most importantly, hustle translates into constantly thinking about what your next move (or moves) will be. All these hours of planning, practicing, and performing eventually add up to those photo-finish moments and triumphant feelings. The thing that social media and the limits of our human perception strain out is the process of the product, or, that is to say, the hustle.

   With the uncertainty of today’s job market and the continuing trend toward a fragmented ‘gig economy’ (not only in music but in other disciplines as well), we have to sew together a patchwork of vocations to produce a functioning career. I’m painting in broad strokes here, but the vast majority of successful musicians, both contemporary and historically, have worked multiple multifaceted jobs and even changed those jobs often. Honestly, I can’t think of a single musician that only does one thing. Every one of my colleagues or mentors who is hammering out success on a daily basis is hustlin’ like nobody’s business.
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   This very human ability to adapt and respond to adversity or challenge provides fulfillment in our lives. Like Gideon Freudmann said to me, and I’m paraphrasing here, “people like watching other people do stuff.” It doesn’t matter whether it’s a caveman hitting two rocks together, a football game between two rivals, or a great musical performance. We are drawn to human-made spectacle. This brings me great comfort since the profession of performing and teaching music can’t be automated by technological advancements. Boom. Job security because robots can’t play or teach cello! I never would have considered that when I started this career almost 9 years ago. I hope to make year 10 the best one yet!

     Recent adjustments to the timeline of operation “Leave-Michigan-Move-to-Oklahoma” has pushed back the blog post. I am now writing, not from Kalamazoo, but from Petoskey, Michigan. I had previously planned to have the next two weeks to pack my worldly possessions little by little but alas, opportunity did not knock. Instead, it just kicked the door down while singing in the voice of Pavarotti since I was asked to play in the pit for the Bay View Music Festival’s production of La Boheme. So, in four days, everything got boxed up and packed into the van so that I am ready to drive over a thousand miles to Oklahoma on Saturday/Sunday.

    News flash: Between the expedited packing/moving and the rehearsals, I failed to realize something… The blog turned 2-years old this summer. That’s over 24 months of publishing my personal take on my professional activities online. Sometimes I feel like the description that was made by an existential philosophy professor about the human condition. Man, standing on the edge of a cliff, shouting into the void but hearing nothing in reply. Here I am, sitting at my laptop, sending my thoughts into the abyss of cyberspace with no way to know who is reading… Whatever the case, I’m still here. And if you’re reading this, so are you.

     I’ve been reflecting on my time in Kalamazoo. None of this transition to Oklahoma felt “real” until I was driving away from the house I have lived in for two years and I said to myself, “that’s no longer my house.” Then it hit me all at once like a train of Choo-Choo-All-Aboard-To-Oklahoma. But then I ate some fried catfish and I felt much better (shout-out to anyone who has been to Fish Express on the Eastside). Even before the whirlwind moving-out process, the end of summer has been productive. In the last three weeks, I have played with the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra, finished a year of teaching for Marshall Music of Portage, played with Southwest Symphony, said goodbye to the twenty students I taught this summer, and have been neck-deep in La Boheme pit. The struggle has been trying to figure out how all these pieces of the puzzle connect.
 
     If there is one thing that I have learned since finishing the M.M. at Western Michigan University, it is that two is always better than one. As musicians, there is a tremendous pressure to develop our technique, musicianship, and professional position in the world of the performing arts. And while this is our own responsibility as artists, it is nearly impossible to do alone. Or, to propose a positive thesis, while there is personal satisfaction in improving yourself, your playing, or your career, the greatest joy is what can be accomplished as a team.

     I feel that many of the seeds that were planted in grad school are now coming to bear fruit. University Symphony Orchestra, the Graduate String Quartet, Birds on a Wire, Cellicatessen… I didn’t fully realize what my purpose in these groups was. I think being neurotic about “am I doing this right” blinded me from the guiding principal that so many teachers have taught over the years. It’s about the music. Their words fell upon slightly deaf ears, not because of lack of experience or willful ignorance, but because of lack of perspective. It was when I was alternating between playing in and conducting the cello ensemble at Interlochen that the spark met the tinder. If you haven’t heard one before, a group of cellists produces one of the most full, rich, and resonant sounds imaginable. Yet, when each person dedicates themselves to making a group pianissimo sound, it is truly awe-inspiring. It is an effect that could never be created by just one cellist. Like the stars that form the night sky, one star on its own can be beautiful, but the constellations in their multitudes, inspire something magnificent.

     Thus, the highest order was what individuals could produce together. What I experienced upon this awakening from my anxious little brain was a wave of tremendous relief, a feeling of liberation that great art, beauty, or expression didn’t depend on an individual’s talents but on the individual’s dedication to a higher calling… the music. And the more I put that first, over the hours, the pay, the politics, or the personalities, the more simple practicing, rehearsing, and performing became. I knew what to focus on. I knew my function and purpose. Most of all, I was happy with what I was doing.

    I realize how little I myself have achieved, but how much I have accomplished with the help of others. I know that I am not the man in the bleak picture of existential angst, alone and uncertain, but that I am part of a vast network of family, teachers, colleagues, and friends. On that note, I am looking forward to expanding the network and forming new bonds in the coming year in Oklahoma and online.

     Interlochen.

     Every camper, ranging from the creative writing major whose craft it is to distil experience into words, to the excited instrumentalist regaling their parents with an entire summer’s worth of stories on the car ride home, all try to universalize our Interlochen moments.

     There are clichés which are rooted in truths. The mosquitoes are terrible. The practice huts are primitive at best. We simultaneously love and hate the uniform. The mornings are shockingly cold and the nights are hot and humid. Sand and dust find their way into every crack and crevice of your possessions (especially when you live in a cabin). And who can forget all those camp meals in the cafeteria.

     Yet, in spite of its rustic edges, Interlochen shines bright in our collective consciousness. There are tranquil mornings that contrast the excitement of world-class concerts. People who begin as complete strangers become life-long friends in a matter of weeks.  Interlochen is an unforgettable blend of work, play, and most distinctly, a sense of wonder that lingers throughout your year leaving you questioning if it really happened or not.

     This summer I had the privilege of serving as the Interlochen Cello Institute’s assistant working with twenty-three high school students and four faculty members: Crispin Campbell of the Interlochen Center for the Arts, Dr. John Marshall of East Washington University of Spokane, Astrid Schween, the newly appointed cellist of the Julliard String Quartet, and special guest John Sharp, Principal Cellist of the Chicago Symphony.

      I felt like a camper in the sense that my experience was so real that it was almost surreal. It is not every day that one plays Purple Haze with the principal cellist of the Chicago Symphony or that you sit at the helm of a twenty-six piece cello ensemble conducting your arrangement. This is all part of that Interlochen magic. These things only happen at Interlochen. But the highlight for me was to watch and learn from the instructors that impacted my adolescent years. Crispin taught me for almost 6 years through my middle school and high school years and introduced me to John and Astrid in the summer of 2007. John gave me some free lessons and let me play in the large cello ensemble. And Astrid and I reconnected in the summer of 2013 at St. Olaf’s Cello: An American Experience. Operating day-to-day with the faculty seemed less like work and more like hanging out with cello these mentors.

    The institute’s students were total troopers. Morning technique class always started the day while masterclasses, orchestra repertoire, bow class, and cello ensemble filled the rest of our time. An enormous amount of information was thrown at these cellists and they took it all in and came back every day looking for more. It is incredible to see how quickly they absorbed the information though the most impressive quality of the group was their great attitudes.

    In the flurry of events that transpired, I spent a good amount of time reflecting on my own development. How far have I come since I was their age? Perhaps the impetus behind this was also seeing the teacher who taught me through elementary school, Jean Coonrod. I made a point of asking both her and Crispin during that week, “why on earth did you ever keep me as your student?” I wasn’t patient. I didn’t listen. I didn’t really practice for more than an hour every day until my senior year of high school.  In effect, I wasn’t a what you would call a star student.

      From what they told me I came to the following conclusion: I have never been and I never will be “the best” but my strength is that I always improve. Progress, not perfection, is the same quality I look for in all of my students. The ability to move your butt from Point A to Point B is perhaps the single greatest tool both in musical development and personal development. And no place on earth showed this to me more than Interlochen. It tested my potential and pushed me beyond those limits. The level of artistry, the closeness of community, and yes, all of the rugged-outdoorsy aspects, makes you aspire to the kind of “sky’s the limit” attitude that is the life-force of all creative artists.

     So, what was your favorite Intelochen memory that inspired you? And if you didn’t get to go to Interlochen specifically, what was your favorite music camp experience?