Livia Sohn warms up

Livia Sohn came over today to run through Britten Violin Concerto (with Dmitry Cogan on the piano), and we invited a few people to listen. (read more »)

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After the show: Scott St. John, Chris Costanza, Fred Weldy

They played Ravel duo for violin/cello, another duo (slightly atonal, but blended with czech folk melodies), and Dvorak piano trio op.65 (my favorite). It was incredible.

Two signs that classical music is dead/dying:

1. only 100 people in the audience, with lots of empty seats
2. searching Google for “ravel duo” shows my mid-concert tweet ranked third

How depressing. But at least I got to enjoy the show with some friends.

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Vienna Teng and Alex Wong work with Eddie Jackson @ Dubway Studios

As many of you know, I went to New York for a few days last month to record with Vienna Teng in the studio. It was my first time recording in a non-classical setting, and I had a lot of fun (both recording and hanging out). Here are a bunch of photos from the shoot, which took place at Dubway Studios. (read more »)

me, with Vienna Teng in the cottage

On Sunday, June 29, 2008, I drove up to Healdsburg to see Vienna Teng perform at the C. Donatiello winery. It was the first paid show of their new music series, and the venue was really great. Seating was cafe style (holding about 150 guests), and Vienna performed from a stage just overlooking the seating area. (read more »)

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alisa weilerstein, cellist
from her website

Bill and Miki invited me to see Alisa Weilerstein perform Dvorak Cello Concerto tonight with the SF Symphony and David Robertson conducting. Strangely, I was offered tickets to the Thurs and Sat night shows within an hour of Bill and Miki’s call; someone wanted me to go to this show.

I’m glad that I have friends who call up to see if I want to go concerts; I’ve been so busy with non-music stuff that I’ve all but dropped out of the scene in the last few years. Between subscriptions to the SF Symphony and SF Performances, plus last-minute comps to shows that my friends play in, I was probably going to 2-3 concerts a month — and it was fantastic! These days, I’m lucky if I get to a few concerts a year, and the vast majority of them are SLSQ shows.

Anyway, back to Alisa and Dvorak. I met Alisa three years ago at the Green Music Festival in Sonoma. I had only heard her before in chamber music, and was very excited for the opportunity to see her play a concerto with SF. We sat third row center, which was the perfect place to observe and hear the nuances of every note. Cello concertos can be hard to enjoy live because it is often hard for the cello to project over an entire orchestra. I like to sit close… but it makes me feel like the music is washing over me instead of through me.

In any case, Alisa was AWESOME. As a cellist myself, I can’t play well enough to enjoy everything that goes into a well-executed, passionate performance of a concerto (I mean, with me playing), but I was able to at least get a glimpse of it again through her performance. I also really enjoyed David Robertson’s conducting. Mi-Parti by Lutoslawski was a good opening piece for its cool textures and funkiness, but it didn’t do much for me. The orchestra was really tight in Janácek’s Taras Bulba, Rhapsody for Orchestra, and I really enjoyed their performance despite not being familiar with the piece. I thought Robertson let the orchestra indulge a bit too much in the opening of the Dvorak, which stole a bit from the cello entrance, but Alisa’s raw emotion took control immediately, and I was hooked.

Thank you, Alisa, for the wonderful performance!

Vienna Teng in the recording studio

… taken on June 19 in New York. I spent a day in the studio recording with Vienna Teng, which was a lot of fun. She managed to assemble a fantastic group of musicians, who learned their parts pretty much in real time. Fun stuff.

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 »)