Diet Coke and Menthos

Wow! I see millions of science projects this fall featuring these two items!



More here.

Misaddressed email

I own a domain name that is very similar to that of a community music school in England. I registered the name some years ago for a project that never took off, but I can't bring myself to cancel it.

So every once in a while I get an email message intended for someone at the school. I just correct the address and forward it on. (My little bit of volunteer work for a school I've never seen!).

Today's email brought this misaddressed message (I've changed the names):

Hi Tim,

Trust the cheque got to you! Have booked/diarized Edward and Ron for drum lessons, commencing Wednesday mornings :

Edward 7.25 – 7.55 a.m. (students need to be seated in homeroom 8.30 a.m.)

Ron 7.55 – 8.25 a.m.

Unless otherwise told, the boys will be outside your drum lesson room (high school building) at 7.20 a.m. on Wednesday 30th August, 2006.

Please would you confirm by return email that this is okay!

Have a wonderful summer break!!

I love drumming (hand drumming, in my case). But giving drum lessons at 7:30 AM? I'd need a good summer break, too!

Old and New Concert Marketing

I'm fascinated by this review of this recent chamber orchestra concert on Manhattan's Lower East Side. From what I can tell from the review, it's an example of young professional classical musicians being innovative, bringing in a different kind of audience in a different kind of setting. Of particular interest is Bernard Holland's (the reviewer) empasis on the quality of the playing, and also his interesting observation about the physicial circumstances of classical concerts.

As Greg Sandow keeps writing about on his book-in-progress blog as well as his general blog, the future of classical music lies at least in part in creating new performance circumstances.

As far as old performing circumstances go, I was saddened to receive a letter yesterday from the Inidianapolis Symphony offering me 20% off for tickets for next weekends season-ending subscription concert. Obviously, ticket sales aren't going well.

Ironically, I'm planning to go anyway. The soloist is the up-and-coming cellist Alban Gerhardt, whom I want to hear. (And, wow, one of the review quotes says he "oozes" passion. Never seen passion "ooze" before--certainly don't want to miss that!)

The letter focuses on Gerhardt. It was sent to my home address, meaning it's from a database of past ticket buyers, not one of cello teachers (unless they bought the American String Teacher Association mailing list for this area). I did buy 5 or 6 tickets to a Lynn Harrell concert with the ISO last fall, and took some students. That may be why I got the letter--it's the first such letter I've received.

I was planning to see if I could get a comp ticket from a friend in the ISO. But as I know from running my own little chamber music series, every dollar helps. So I may buy a ticket!

It's been a great season for cello soloists with the ISO, by the way. The opening concert featured Arkady Orlovsky, the orchestra's wonderful principal cellists, playing Bloch's Schelomo. Then in early December came Lynn Harrell playing the Dvorak concerto. And now Gerhart.

And, unfortunately, plenty of seats available for all three. Now, that's nice if you need to get a ticket at the last minute, and it's nice to get 20% off anything. But it doesn't suggest things are going all that well with the ISO in terms of getting people to come to the concerts.

Cello Videos on Youtube and Elsewhere

I love watching cello videos! And I'm not the only one. Some of the great folks at the ICS have been putting clips of both commercially produced videos and their own performances up on www.youtube.com.

Most of them can be found in the ICS youtube group at www.youtube.com/group/ICS.

Some of my favorites include Leonard Rose and Glen Gould playing Beethoven, and Casals playing Bach and his arrangement of the "Song of the Birds."

And someone posted this link to the videos and MP3s at Daniel Mueller-Schott's site. Fabulous playing, including the entire Haydn C Major concerto. Another incredible young cellist of whom I was previously unaware.

Whew! Some time to write again.

Well, I took about a month off from blogging, didn't I?

There was the end of school crush, which coincided with the start of the summer concert series I organize and play on. Organzing the series, doing fund raising, writing press releases, desiging posters and programs, etc., is both time and energy consuming--especially at the start of the season.

The support for the series here in Greencastle, Indiana, which has a population of only eight or nine thousand people, has been wonderful. This is the series' second year. The number of contributers has more than doubled. We've been able to go from six to seven concerts, double the amount of the small honoraria we pay the performers, give a bit of gas money to those who come from Indianapolis and Bloomington (each about an hour away), etc.

Now that the start-up phase is done, I have some time to write. Most of the writing the last couple weeks has taken place in the Internet Cello Society web forums; Mike L nudged me in a thread to start blogging again.

There are many great things about getting the concert series going. One unexpected one for me is that I'm developing a new set of skills, ones that I think add a new dimension to my teaching, as well as to my personal/professional life.