MY OTHER CAR IS A CELLO posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, May 21st 2007 at 9:44

    Harry, my cello teacher, sent me a link to an interview with his old teacher, George Neikrug, who spent some time talking about one of his old teachers, Demetrius Dounis. Most of Neikrug’s comments fall in line with what Harry has been telling me for two years, including this ...

TEODORA MITEVA posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, April 13th 2007 at 6:51

    A listener has e-mailed me a link to a video of Teodora Miteva playing Bruch’s Kol Nidre, and my correspondent has high praise for Miteva’s performance. I haven’t had a chance to hear enough of it to form my own opinion, but I like what little I ...

TOWING THE CELLO posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, December 1st 2006 at 7:47

    Yesterday afternoon I developed car trouble on the way to my cello lesson, limped on to my teacher’s house and from there arranged for a tow to the garage. Not wanting my cello to roll around in the car during the long haul across town, I stashed it in ...

SUITE SUCCESS posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Monday, November 6th 2006 at 6:24

    My cover story for the current issue of Strings magazine is all about Bach’s suites for solo cello. I myself don’t have much to say on the subject; I left that to the cellists I interviewed: Yo-Yo Ma, Jian Wang, Maria Kliegel and Suren Bagratuni, with some comments ...

THE CELLO TYPE posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Thursday, October 26th 2006 at 7:34

    Oboeinsight points the way to a blog I’ve managed to overlook: Daily Observations, the musings of Charles Noble, the Oregon Symphony’s assistant principal violist. According to his profile, “Charles enjoys cooking, hiking, cycling, reading, and blogging.” Sounds like my kind of guy, except for his adherence to the ...

BAD CELLIST posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, July 25th 2006 at 8:56

    ABC News reports that a model college student and cellist faces sentencing for bank robbery:

    On Dec. 9, 2005, … [Greg Hogan Jr.] walked into an Allentown, Pa., Wachovia bank and handed a teller a note that said he had a gun and demanded money.
    The frightened teller gave Hogan $2 ...

SEARCH, FIND, SORT posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, June 28th 2006 at 7:30

    While checking out an Internet rumor at the invaluable and entertaining snopes.com, I thought I’d search the site for debunkings of urban legends and phony photos involving my instrument, the cello. But the word “cello” apparently appears nowhere on the snopes site, meaning perhaps that the instrument is ...

GORDON EPPERSON posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Friday, May 12th 2006 at 7:46

    Retired University of Arizona cello professor Gordon Epperson died Tuesday. I interviewed him for a newspaper article several years ago, and I didn’t know him personally, but he did immediately strike me as a very nice, genial person, and that impression is supported by the testimony of those who ...

POP THE CLUTCH posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Tuesday, January 10th 2006 at 7:05

    My right thumb is still a little numb this morning from yesterday’s cello practice. Obviously, I’m not following the advice I reported in a recent issue of Strings magazine, where the subject was playing with a tension-free bow hand. Here’s the beginning:

    THE FIRST TIME A TEACHER ...

REUNION posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, November 23rd 2005 at 8:05

    My cello has come home! It’s been in the shop for what seems like three but is probably only two weeks. Zoran, the cellist/luthier from whom I bought the instrument, had promised to fix up the many scratches on the old thing when I wrote him the check last spring, but only recently did his schedule and mine allow time for my cello to go to the spa.

DON'T CALL HIM MELLOW CELLO posted to Cue Sheet

From the desk of James Reel on Wednesday, September 7th 2005 at 7:36

    Harry, my cello teacher, called early yesterday afternoon to cancel this week’s lesson; he was frantically preparing to leave town for a week and a half. Fine, I told him; I’d fill the open cello slot on my schedule by reviewing Pieter Wispelwey’s new set of the Beethoven cello sonatas and variations on Channel Classics. Harry merely grunted. When pressed to elaborate, he groused about Wispelwey’s capricious interpretive choices, not to mention his tone. “He doesn’t even make it sound like a cello!” he complained. Then, with a laugh, “Our instrument has gone downhill since Jacqueline Du Pré bit the dust.”