I’m not so sure you would have wanted a YouTube search for someone who hasn’t heard of her by name, to result in this being the first click! While her discography is full of bands I enjoy, I don’t see any of her own front-and-center stuff.
One more Steven Sharp Nelson video, because no cello thread could be complete without The Cello Song re-written for 8 cellos.
I’m no expert, and rarely listen to classical, new age, or whatever music, but I love his stuff with The Piano Guys, and the 2CELLOS fellas are also doing some current and relevant innovative stuff. Plus, they make funny faces. If their goal is to get people who don’t normally listen to music that features cello in the foreground, then they’re achieving it in spades. Just MHO.
I don’t care for the cello in certain settings, and I’m not the only one who feels that way.
Case in point: in the 70’s, Norman and Nancy Blake played many years at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, KS. Norman was a prominent figure in bluegrass and related music, and his performances were eagerly anticipated by the crowd. However, when he and Nancy entered the stage with her cello in tow, the audience groaned. The cello seemed to detract from the music rather than enrichen it. It doesn’t have the punch or presence of a guitar, and doesn’t have the power and authority of a bass. Nothing against Nancy, she’s a multi-instrumentalist and a fine musician, but that cello just didn’t do anything for the kind of music the folks there were hoping to hear. They would have rather heard Norman alone than have that cello in there.
The Canon was paired with a Gigue (i.e., a jig), so I’d argue that this is closer to the way Pachelbel intended it to be played rather than the soporific tempo it’s usually played at these days.
I saw a wonderful piece of art at the Mass MoCA, our local modern art museum. It was a black and white video of a woman enthusiastically playing the cello, in a darkened room, with the cello music piped over the loudspeakers. Only, the cello itself had been digitally removed from the video, so you just saw her body language, and her actions, and her motions, and expressions. I was quite impressed.
“a prominent figure in bluegrass and related music, and his performances were eagerly anticipated by the crowd. However, when he and Nancy entered the stage with her cello in tow, the audience groaned.”
Thus is illustrated the sophistication and musical sensibilties of the blue grass festival audience.
I’ve found Elementary a bit slow going in the first few episodes, but one of the things I’ve really enjoyed has been the music–it’s almost entirely solo cello. I’ve thought occasionally “Gee, that sounds a bit like Zoe Keating” and, lo, I just found on her websitethat it really is her. Cool!
It turns out not everyone loves cellists. I just watched an episode of the Swedish detective series Wallander, where the bad guy car bombed one. A cute chick cellist, at that. She had witnessed a murder, but still, you would think the just being around a cello would confer some degree of immunity. Plus, the cello was damaged in the explosion!
