Holy crap.

(Livia posted this on her Facebook).

Dawn left me two tickets to see her perform tonight Osvaldo Golijov’s Ayre at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, and Cindy Mong and I met up with Stephen Prutsman to see the show. We sat in the comps section with other guests of the band, and Stevie made a big production about seeing me there (even though I had just seen him in the lobby a few minutes prior).

“Dr. Cheng! It’s been a long time! We haven’t seen each other since that thing in, where was it, Stockholm?”

People stared at us. (read more »)

I was listening to a bit of Vienna Teng’s music tonight while going over to Obama’s website to donate, and an amazing thing happened when Obama’s video started playing… (read more »)

Geoff and I drove down to Santa Cruz this evening and met up with Warren, Elaine, Ray, and John to see Stephen Prutsman play Tchaik with the Santa Cruz Symphony. Stevie had left tickets for us at will call under his name, which was interesting because the folks behind the window refused to give them to us without photo ID. Uh… they were, like, comps from the performer? Of course my ID isn’t going to match. I had to call Steve and then hand the phone through the hole in the window for verification — and I hate disturbing performers before they go on stage.

The first piece (orchestra only) was awful. Someone in our group said, “it was like going to a five star restaurant and having the first course be half of a Big Mac… served cold.”

Luckily, Steve was on next. As usual, he was fantastic; whenever he was playing, the orchestra sort of faded out (at least, in my mind). There was no way the Santa Cruz Symphony was going to be able to match Steve’s musicianship nor energy, but they put good effort into it. Steve got a standing ovation, and followed the Tchaik with a jazz encore. (read more »)

Today is random Eric-vignette day!

iTunes has just started playing the second movement of Mozart’s String Quartet in E-flat Major, K.428 (Andante con moto ). It always reminds me of Kilimanjaro; the walking bass line is what kept me sane during pretty much the entire climb. During particularly boring moments, I hummed one note under my breath for every step I took. The reason it was so embedded in my head was that we had just played it at a housewarming party a couple weeks prior…

Last March, I went up to Napa with Livia, Corinne, and baby Jack to see Osvaldo Golijov at the Niebaum-Coppola winery. I knew Ozzie was working on a piece for Youth Without Youth, Coppola’s upcoming movie, but I didn’t find out much about it other than a few descriptive vignettes over dinner.

I just found a short feature on Osvaldo on The World’s website, where he talks about the challenges in writing a film score after working primarily with classical musicians.

I’m not sure when the movie is coming out, but I’m looking forward to its release!

Vienna Teng takes a break between sets

Vienna Teng performed this evening with Karmen Buttler at Bazaar Cafe, which was the first place Vienna Teng ever performed in public (back in 2001 or so — and just 1 song!). The Bazaar Cafe is a fairly small venue (but very cool — you should go), and it was so packed with people that it was literally impossible to move around. I even had to resort to crawling under the table in order to get from one side to the other. (read more »)

a reading of tchaikovsky’s souvenir de florence [photos @ flickr]

It has become tradition to have some sort of music party before my actual birth date, not because we don’t want to celebrate on the day itself, but because our schedules never quite work out. (read more »)

the good ol’ days

I’ve been having vivid dreams for the past couple of nights. The dream I had two nights ago is something I can’t post here, but the one last night involved playing the cello. I tell people I play the cello, but the real situation is that I am trying to hang on to my identity as a musician. Sure, some of my closest friends are musicians, which means that I hear the gossip and participate by osmosis, but it isn’t quite the same.

Last night, I had a dream that I was playing principal cello in some orchestra piece with a big solo. During our first rehearsal, I totally botched the solo, and was lectured by the conductor after the rehearsal was over. It was in a big hall and everything. I guess dreams do parallel things going on in real life, eh?

My good friend Livia Sohn’s upcoming CD entitled Opera Fantasies for Violin is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com! You can also pre-order MP3s from Amazon’s new(-ish) MP3 store.

The CD features Livia’s virtuoso playing along with compositions, arrangements and supporting performances by three more friends (and others): Geoff Nuttall, Stephen Prutsman, and Osvaldo Golijov.

As a bonus, you get a beautiful photo of her on the jewel box cover. Do you know how hard it is to get Naxos to put an author shot on the cover of one of its CDs? It’s *very* hard. Normally, you get an abstract rose photo, or a drawing of a composer, or weird stone carvings, or a close-up shot of strange spices…

Here’s a blurb from Livia’s bio:

Livia gave her first public performance at age eight. In 1989, at the age of 12, she won First Prize in the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition.

You know what I was doing when I was 12? I was playing computer games and lighting things on fire. Oh, there was a bit of piano and cello thrown in there as well, but laziness and two parents at work full-time meant that I didn’t practice 8 hours a day like Livia did.

Anyway, here are links to the Amazon preorders: [opera fantasies CD] [MP3]

Tonight, Livia performed the world premiere of Jonathan Berger’s new piece, “Jiyeh“, at Stanford University with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra. Livia was awesome, and piece is really great, but the SSO sounded the worst I’ve ever heard it. Livia was a finely cut diamond shining over a pool of mud (or maybe oil, in the vocabulary of Jiyeh). Maybe like a “TAH-KA-TAH-KA-TAH-KA” playing over a “WHAH-WHAH-WHAH-WHAH”. And the “WHAH” is lost, and is only using the upper third of the bow. Or something like that.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but there are definitely good players at Stanford. It’s just that none of them are in the orchestra. There is definitely a reason for their lack of participation, and it’s obvious what it is. I wish Stanford would just fix the problem.

Despite the SSO’s poor performance, I enjoyed the show. The piece is great, and Livia kicked ass. We all went out to Peninsula Creamery after the show and had yuppie diner food and milkshakes. Yummm.

I was called “Mr. Sohn” yesterday at Safeway while carrying Jack and walking around. We don’t even try to correct people anymore.

I went to have lunch with Jim and Dane over at visit VUVOX today, and the beta release of their new multimedia presentation product is really impressive. In just a few minutes online, I whipped up this remix of the Green Caravan Drive videos I made with Vienna Teng. Click on over to the old post, or continue reading here to see the Flash presentation… (read more »)

The new direction my life has taken in recent years is one that is particularly effective in keeping me away from the cello. During my brief stints at home, I spend most of my time frantically catching up on correspondence, checking my (snail) mailbox, processing photographic deliverables, and coordinating projects for Wetpixel. But during all of the rushing around and multi-tasking, I constantly feel an almost tangible pull from within my cello case, which sits on a 90-degree bend halfway up the steps to the stage.

Here’s the unfortunate thing: it’s a race against time. As the pent-up, musical frustration builds, I am slowly becoming less able to respond to its call.

Sound check at Wolf Trap in Virginia [all photos]

After driving across the country with Vienna Teng, I accompanied the band down to the Wolf Trap in Virginia, where I heard them perform for the first time in over two years.

Man. I might as well rename this journal, “Adventures with Vienna Teng. :) (read more »)

(Cross-country drive with Vienna Teng) We made it to New York! And now, I am going to go to sleep.

Here’s today’s video: (read more »)

(Cross-country drive with Vienna Teng) We spent most of the daylight hours today hanging out with VT relatives (eating pizza, frolicking in the park, etc.) and didn’t hit the road for Cleveland until nearly 5pm. The roads in Chicago seem to all be under construction, but we made pretty good time and rolled into Independence at 1am.

For dinner, Vienna picked a random Chinese restaurant in Toledo from the GPS directory, but once we arrived, we decided that a Lebanese/Greek place a couple doors down looked more interesting and ended up eating there and socializing with Sam, the owner and cook.

Video follows: (read more »)

(Cross-country drive with Vienna Teng)
Departure from North Platte, Nebraska: 9:20AM
Arrival in Naperville, Illinois: 9:45PM

I had my first Cracker Barrel experience. I ate trout. Vienna is now called “Stormbringer” because every time she sits down in the driver’s seat, the clouds roll in.

Video follows… (read more »)

(Cross-country drive with Vienna Teng) It’s 2:35AM, and Vienna is sitting behind the wheel driving the final hour to North Platte, Nebraska. With Thelonious on my lap (he makes a great heat shield — this computer gets hot!), I am attempting to upload day 3’s movie (30MB) while we cruise at 70MPH.

Because most of the highways in Wyoming were closed due to a snow storm, we were forced to take a southern detour and ended up in Denver for a late dinner with Eric Miller and Alex King. We ate at a wanna-be fancy restaurant called Rioja, where they scoffed at Eric’s request for a glass of house red and gave Vienna and me attitude for trying to help the water guy by moving our glasses. Our server came by and asked, “is everything wonderful?” We didn’t answer (everything was not wonderful). Later on in the evening, she asked, “is everything still wonderful?” I had to try really hard not to burst out laughing. What a stupid question!

The company was certainly the highlight of the evening; we reluctantly parted ways a couple hours later and resumed our drive to Nebraska.

Departure from Logan, Utah: 10:00AM
Arrival in Denver, Colorado: 9:45PM
Arrival in North Platte, Nebraska: 4:10AM

Day 3’s video: (read more »)

(Cross-country drive with Vienna Teng) After arriving in Reno at around 3am last night, we slept in and got off to a late start to Logan, Utah. Nothing much happened today; we made it to Logan without much incident and spent the evening hanging out with Lorien and her roommate, Kirsten. We’re supposed to be up and out the door in just 5 hours. Wish us luck. :)

As promised, here’s the movie for day 2. (read more »)

Here’s a video I made documenting day 1 of a trip across the country with Vienna Teng. I’ll try to crank one of these out every day, if possible. (read more »)