My comments were given amid a busy time of family gathering for my youngest daughter's high school graduation, which followed three consecutive weekends of travel, performing, and conference hosting!! It is a miracle that I'm able to make subject and verb AGREE!!
Whenever musicians gather together, the first spoken (or unspoken) truth is the fact that THE WORLD IS SMALL!! My freely transcribed and paraphrased comments bear out this fact: I first met my Durham colleague, Julius Prescott when I was a few weeks away from graduation from Baldwin-Wallace College (University). He was auditioning, and would begin his undergraduate studies there the following fall, studying with our shared mentor Regina Mushabac--a student and former teaching assistant for Janos Starker at Indiana University. From B-W I went to The University of Michigan, where I studied with Jerome Jelinek. Jelinek studied with Luigi Silva shortly after having finished his undergraduate degree. While still in Cleveland, I sought out and introduced myself to the cellist Donald White, who in 1957 joined the Cleveland Orchestra as its first African-American member. White also studied with Silva sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s. When White passed away in 2005, I discovered that he made a small sensation when the Orchestra went on a Southern concert tour, which included Birmingham, Alabama. The city had a local ordinance forbidding the "mixing of the races in public onstage performances", which became an issue when it was discovered that White was a contracted member of the Orchestra. In response to the ordinance, General Manager and Music Director George Szell circulated a petition among the Orchestra membership and presented it to the Mayor of Birmingham (threatening to cancel the performance if White was not permitted to perform). The concert went on as scheduled, and the event faded into obscured history in the wake of a mounting conflict over civil rights for "Negroes" and unrest over the American military presence in Vietnam. Another African-American cellist, Ralph Curry would join the Cleveland Orchestra in 1977; his brother William Henry is well-known in the Triangle Area as the music director of the Durham Symphony Orchestra and (departing) resident conductor of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra. The Cleveland Orchestra came to Ann Arbor on concert tour, and I managed to catch Donald White at the concert and arranged to take him to meet Jerome Jelinek--a first meeting of two former Silva proteges who had been teacher and mentor-figures to me.
Both men have since passed on, but the value of their knowledge of Silva's technical approach (and David Popper High School For Cello Playing Etude #17!!) serves me each day as both practitioner and pedagogue. I recall that my remaining "wisdom" comments were as follows: 1. When you work with a good pianist, treat them well!! My mother is a pianist, accompanist and choral director; so I didn't know how GOOD I've had it all along back then!! NOW I DO!! 2. The Left Hand must ALWAYS move ahead of the Right Hand. If the bow doesn't allow the left hand to do its work first, the notes of music sound as the equivalent to a 32mm film out of balance--no stable image is visible, just a blurred version of that image...times 32!! 3. The bow is to the cellist--what the "tongue, teeth, lips, lungs and throat" are to the voice; and "when you need more bow TAKE more bow!! Image keeling over in suffocation amid passionate conversation...simply because you've run out of breath!! 4. All types of repertoire have a distinct message. Our challenge and responsibility is to study the details of each respective message, and bravely communicate it to a receptive and engaged audience. I referred (over-extensively) to the comedian Bernie Mac as my piece of "wisdom" that I now impart to my students amid this aesthetically "worrisome period of performance, entertainment, education, criticism (or the lack thereof).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMCB8eUUuNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbwcEsW1bVw
