Banfftastic

That's a word I learned from the amazing cellist of the Cecilia Quartet - Banfftastic. I love it.

It's a week in to the Banff Center Chamber Music Residency and this is our first post. What?! We're so sorry! But there's good reason for our delinquency... we've been crazy busy with all of the amazing things Banff has to offer!

First I flew to Montana to spend a few days rehearsing with Heather. We had already begun our long-distance rehearsal process of discussing the music and exchanging recordings of ourselves, but we were eager to tackle the stack of music we had in the same room!

It was great to see Montana again and rehearsing with Heather felt as good as if we had never spent time apart. On Sunday, June 10th, Heather, her husband Bill, and I headed to Banff! 10 hours of driving later, we had arrived.

Now, people had told me Banff would be beautiful, but I was totally unprepared for how amazing the mountains are up here. It's beautiful. However, there wasn't a lot of time to enjoy the beauty at first - coaching started the next day! We were thrilled and terrified to begin our coaching with Joel Krosnick - one of the most preeminent cellists and teachers in the world. I can't even begin to express how wonderful Mr. Krosnick was to work with. We had three coachings with him in which we worked on Hands and Lips of Wind by Mischa Salkind-Pearl and 9 Settings of Lorine Niedecker by Harrison Birtwistle.

We also worked on some Stravinsky and Shostakovich with the amazing Mark Steinberg and many pieces (including a new commission from Sarah Hersh) with Nan Hughes. If any of you read this blog - THANK YOU. YOU HAVE CHANGED OUR MUSICAL LIVES!!!

In addition to the incredible faculty, we're surrounded by some of the best chamber musicians of our generation. Making friends has been exciting and an honor. The performances we've seen have been breathtaking.

Last night we had our first chance to perform. Mr. Steinberg co-hosted a discussion between the literary translators and musicians in residence at the Banff Center. The parallels between our two fields are stunning, and I feel like the discussion enriched our understandings of each others's and our own disciplines. The talk was concluded with our performance of The Owl and the Pussycat by Stravinsky, which was originally for soprano and piano. (The fact that we had translated it to cello and soprano was a whole other area for discussion!) After the performance we were honored that Margaret Atwood (in residence to assist with the translation of one of her books) came to congratulate and thank us!

Tonight is performance #2! We'll present Hands and Lips of Wind to the Banff Center community - a Canadian premiere!

~ Jen