the cello in my life

NEWS: the cello in my life was awarded the 2021 Edison Klassiek “Discovery” award. Read more about the Edison Klassiek awards here.

I am so pleased to introduce you to my latest project: the cello in my life. Recorded in the Netherlands under the label 7 Mountain Records, the cello in my life was released on 17 July 2020. Thank you to everyone who supported this project through my fundraising campaign!

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about the cello in my life

My love of sound is inextricably linked to the physical creation or mechanisms of sound. To put it another way, I love the correlation between sound and gesture. It doesn’t matter if those sounds are created directly or indirectly, by the intentional (direct) gesture of a person or the secondary (indirect) gesture of a tree branch scraping against an old rusty road sign on a windy day. Whether direct or indirect, sounds produced through gesture mean something. They can mean good things and bad things, ugly and beautiful, simple and complex, the list goes on nearly ad infinitum. What they all have in common is that they come from something beyond themselves. And it is that which is beyond them that gives them their meaning, even if they may also be appreciated simply ‘as they are’.

This understanding of sound is central to the music I have chosen for this album. Through the recording we move from the tonally sophisticated, developed, and embellished forms of gesture in Bach and Galli into the more simple and impersonal gestures explored in Feldman. These are followed by the pure mechanisms of gesture - both delicate and harsh - in Lachenmann, and finally by the brutal, over-embellished, super-gestural, hyper-harmonic colors in Xenakis. Although these pieces are a worthwhile journey without explanation, I feel inclined to make the listener aware of two cross-relationships: Bach in relation to Xenakis: they are both highly specific in ‘ornamentation’ and gesture and both tell extremely dramatic stories. Galli in relation to Lachenmann: both have simplified forms and much ‘thinner’ specifications than the Bach and Xenakis and thus leave much room for adventurous realization and interpretation.

The album’s title the cello in my life can be taken a number of ways. The primary motivation for making this album is to share music that I love with anyone who wants to listen. It is meant as a personal and heartfelt gift. One should also not take oneself too seriously. While the cello in my life may evoke some laughable - even strange - images in ones mind (i.e. a cello laying on a heart shaped bed in a sleazy Las Vegas motel), it actually finds its inspiration in two composers featured on this album, Feldman and Lachenmann. In a wonderful interview with Lucas Fels (Arditti Quartet), Lachenmann references “The Viola in My Life” - a work that was a compositional turning point for Feldman. He then goes on to call Pression “The Cello in My Life” because of it being a pivotal point in his own approach to sound.

We are constantly bombarded with an overload of aural stimuli. Because of this, it takes intentional effort to prepare our ears for a meaningful listening experience. My advice is simply to take our minds back in time, to a time when there are no trains, planes, TV’s in the background, or earbuds constantly stuffed in our little faces. Start from silence. Once you have opened your ears to silence, you realize how unsilent silence is and how meaningful sounds then are! Stay in this awareness of silence a moment, and then select a beverage and get comfortable. Listen to the album with a decent speaker if you have one, and listen all the way through, as a concert in your home. Invite someone you love to sit and listen with you.

Full tracklist:

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)
Suite V in C minor BWV 1011I. Prelude 6’51
II. Allemande 6’21
III. Courante 2’20
IV. Sarabande 4’10
V. Gavotte I & II 4’51
VI. Gigue 3’06

Domenico Galli (1649 – 1697)
Sonata VI in F majorI. Adagio 1’45
II. Allegro 1’39
III. Andante-Vivace 0’57
IV. Giga 2’11

Morton Feldman (1926- 1987)
Projection 1  4’09
Intersection 4  5’27

Helmut Lachenmann (1935)
Pression  9’24

Iannis Xenakis (1922 – 2001)
Kottos  10’51

Reviews

• WINNER: 2021 Edison Klassiek, “Discovery” Award

• NRC: “Een cello-CD waar je mond van open zak” (5 stars) by Joep Stapel

• Cleveland Classical: CD Review by Nicholas Stevens

• NRC: named one of best albums of 2020

• Columbia Daily Tribune: “Lust for life” by Aarik Danielsen

• Opus Klassiek: CD Review by Aart van der Wal

• The Whole Note: CD Review by Cheryl Ockrant

• Hollandse Nieuwe: A podcast interview with Lex Bohlmeijer