ONE CELLIST, ONE VIOLINIST, ONE WILD MAN
posted by James Reel
In my continuing effort to catch you up on my contributions to Strings magazine, here are links my contributions to the March issue. First, a profile of a tall, dark and handsome cellist who has made a few appearances in our neighborhood (mostly Green Valley):
IF YOU’RE NOT LOOKING BEYOND the chronology and vital statistics, Zuill Bailey’s career in music seems like one big happy accident. As a four-year-old, Bailey literally ran into a cello backstage, and even before anybody could pick up the pieces (luckily, it was a cheap cello), young Zuill had decided that would be the instrument for him. He grew up in a place abounding in classical music, where Mstislav Rostropovich was one of the prime attractions on a regular basis, so taking up the cello just seemed as ordinary a pastime as skateboarding. Later, still in his teens, Bailey won several competitions that put him on tour performing, so by the time he finished his education, he already had a solo career in full swing. Later still, Bailey’s wife got a temporary appointment in El Paso, Texas, and while the couple was staying there—ostensibly just for a few months—Bailey was asked to run a music series, which he has done from his now-permanent El Paso home ever since. All the while, he’s continued to perform around the world: touring Russia with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra; performing with the Toronto Symphony and conductor Itzhak Perlman; appearing with major orchestras in Chicago, San Francisco, and Dallas; doing the Dvořák concerto in Colombia and Peru; concertizing at Carnegie Hall; and playing all the Beethoven cello sonatas to sold-out audiences in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yet, aside from happening to grow up surrounded by music, Bailey’s success is by no means a matter of luck. His dark good looks make him highly marketable, but he’s also highly musical, with a distinctly personal expression, and that’s something that requires careful cultivation. “I was given wonderful opportunities,” he says, “but I had to work very hard along the way.”
The full article is here. Then there’s a piece in which violinist Anthony Marwood of the Florestan Trio talks about life in a trio, and beyond:
Make the music speak. When violinist Anthony Marwood, cellist Richard Lester, and pianist Susan Tomes, all members of England’s Florestan Trio, studied with esteemed Hungarian violinist Sandor Végh, they came away from the sessions with those words as a mission statement. Violinist Marwood says, “Végh wanted to pass along to us an old European tradition that he felt was fast disappearing, which is very much about ‘speaking music,’ about going for the specific tonal colors that are appropriate, not necessarily trying to smooth everything out. He hated the idea of vibrato used to coat the theme—musical ketchup, just poured on everything. He emphasized using vibrato with great care and intention, and making sure that the real expression actually comes from the bow. That was fundamental to him and the school of playing that he was from.
The full article lurks here. Also on offer is a brief review of a quartet CD that features, in part, music by Raymond Scott.
Unless you remember the early 1950s, you probably don’t know Scott’s name, but you certainly know some of his music. Scott worked at CBS radio in the 1930s, running an oddball jazz combo called the Raymond Scott Quintette and playing witty originals with such eccentric titles as “Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals.” Scott went on to other things, including serving as bandleader on Your Hit Parade, writing music for Broadway, assembling (in 1946) one of the world’s first electronic-music studios, and inventing one of the first analog synthesizers. In 1943, Warner Bros. bought the rights to Scott’s back catalog, and composer Carl Stalling began working Scott’s maniacal music into popular cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny and pals. Scott’s “Powerhouse” was sure to back-up action in industrial settings, and decades later it accompanied the animated antics of the popular MTV cartoon characters Ren and Stimpy. Read about the CD here.
