Latest news with #cello
NZ Herald
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Listener's Songs of the Week: New tracks by Blood Orange featuring Lorde, Nine Inch Nails, David Byrne, and more
Lorde's choirmaster Dev Hynes, aka Blood Orange. Photo / Michael Lavine Reviews Mind Loaded by Blood Orange, featuring Caroline Polachek, Lorde & Mustafa UK producer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Blood Orange (Devonté Hynes) arranges himself quite a choir on this dreamy, airy, melancholy bit of chamber pop, driven by a gently arpeggiating piano before talking a harsh left-turn with a minute to go. It's one of two advance tracks from his first solo album since 2018, Essex Honey. The Lorde vocal cameos follow Hynes' cello, bass, synth, and guitar playing on the Virgin track Favourite Daughter and him being a support act on her forthcoming Ultrasound world tour. – Russell Baillie She Explains Things to Me By David Byrne, Ghost Train Orchestra Byrne's amusing ode to male befuddlement might be partly inspired by Rebecca Solnit's 2014 book Men Explain Things to Me which popularised the phrase 'mansplaining.' But it could also be read as a sweet love song from this spry 73-year-old's coming solo album, one that sounds like it will be fun to put on the gramophone right after Talking Heads' Remain in Light at my next rest home happy hour. – Russell Baillie As Alive as You Need Me to Be by Nine Inch Nails Welcome to a brief sub-section of this week's column devoted to bands you might have once seen at a Big Day Out (younger readers, ask an uncle). Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have had a dignified parallel career as creators of movie soundtracks since the BDO era, while Reznor has occasionally dusted off his old Nine Inch Nails band-brand. Here, under the NIN banner, they unleash the first song off the soundtrack to the new Tron film – Daft Punk did the last one – and the instantly anthemic As Alive as You Need Me to Be should have fans of Reznor's electro-goth-rock beginnings from his Pretty Hate Machine era wondering where the time has gone? – Russell Baillie My Mind is a Mountain by Deftones And now for your daily dose of angst-filled, shouty, head-crunching, decibel-abusing Californian metal from a band which played the BDO a couple of times. Claustrophobic consciousness metal? 'The storm remains and my heart's entrenched. Fate explores me now. Why do we bathe in this psyche?' It's a good, loudly delivered, question. – Graham Reid Desire by Georgia Knight Like a sensual trip-hopped Kate Bush, this steamy single from Melbourne-based expat Knight is a deep and smoky dive into interesting new territory. She tours with Folk Bitch Trio in September, and it'll be interesting to see how something like this slice of nightclub/noir art-pop plays out live. Meantime check it out. If it signals a new album let's hope she gets on with it. – Graham Reid Sundog by Babe Martin Babe Martin (Auckland's Zoe Larsen Cumming) possesses an extraordinary voice which here opens high and lonely then just keeps pushing upward as this confident piece becomes a swelling slice of something beyond folk and moves into evocative art music. If we judge people by the company they keep it's worth noting in her circle is Jazmine Mary, that's good company. Debut EP Not a Bee, but a Wasp coming soon. Definitely one to watch out for. – Graham Reid Give Into My Fears by Jamaica Moana As on previous singles Living Out West and Keep It Real, this Sydney-based, Samoan-Māori, queer artist – with links to the Hokianga and Waikato – keeps the backing stripped right back so her rap messages come through with clarity. It's about creating herself, assertion, the drive towards fame ('I've been doing this for years') and never compromising. She's convincing. Six-song debut EP Bud & Deni (named for her parents) out August 1. -- Graham Reid Death in the Family by The Sophs Who would have thought 'WEEZER-like' would become a thing? But here the LA-based alt-pop Sophs tap into a Weezerness with a song which is droll and disturbing ('I need a death in the family to turn my page') which cleaves a bit too close to Weezer to be totally satisfying. But the message of seeking redemption for past mistakes is interesting. Too soon to send flowers, and this only their second single (their previous Sweat was more convincing) so maybe that Next Big Thing description could go on hold for a while. – Graham Reid Time by Curtis Harding Vocally, American soul man Harding can deliver from the tradition of classic Motown and Stax artists (Temptations, Rufus Thomas, and other raw singers). But on this drum-driven single he initially dispenses with horns and backing vocals which means he immediately catches attention. When those other elements arrive there's tension and a sense of desperation which cleverly winds down into a moody second half. A crafted and quietly compelling notice of a new, as yet unscheduled, album. – Graham Reid Fine by Meg Washington, featuring Paul Kelly Seasoned Brisbane singer-songwriter Meg Washington ropes in wise elder Paul Kelly for a tight-harmony duet that runs a fine line between subdued country folk ballad and uplifting ode to surviving the storm. 'Everything's going to be fine,' they sing on a gentle song that snowballs into something Cohen-esque and hymn-like. Would suit a choir treatment which brings us to … – Russell Baillie Didn't It Rain by the New Zealand Youth Choir, Karen Grylls conductor We've always produced good choirs. It's not surprising – famously, more New Zealanders sing in choirs than play rugby. Our leading choirs, though, are much better than good. They proved it again recently during the NZ Youth Choir's Northern Hemisphere tour, where, under the stewardship of music director David Squire, they've won two major competitions. They took top honours at the Grand Prix of Nations at the European Choir Games in Denmark, and a few days later were named Choir of the World at the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod in Wales. It's not the first time they've claimed the latter title – they won in 1999, too. It's from that competition that this recording of NZ composer David Hamilton's Didn't It Rain comes. Go Kiwi. – Richard Betts Dig Deep by Fat Freddy's Drop You could spend a long time looking for a track that showed what the late Chris Faiumu brought to Fat Freddy's Drop. This, from 2021's album Wairunga and accompanying concert film (see below) shows him effortlessly busy in the electronic engine room that he built and powered the band with. – Russell Baillie
Washington Post
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Heather Stebbins is making music from sounds inside her home and her head
Music is made of memory — sounds heard, feelings felt, lessons learned, all funneled through the intentionality of the moment. If you need a reminder of this fundamental truth, the music of Heather Stebbins can make it feel as vivid as life. Rich in timbre and exploratory in form, her latest compositions somehow involve just three main memory layers: the synthesizers Stebbins began studying in college (she teaches students at George Washington University how to use them today); the cello she took up in childhood, then abandoned in adulthood, then retrieved in recent years; and various field recordings of her everyday life — a practice Stebbins traces back to the private plot of real estate inside Maryland's Patapsco Valley State Park where she grew up paying sharp attention to the sound of the birds and the breeze. 'My formal musical training started when I was 6. I started cello lessons,' Stebbins says, 'but prior to that, I was just so absorbed in the sound of my natural environment. … Now, I'm like a hoarder of sound, always recording stuff.'
The Guardian
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
David Watkin obituary
In 2013 David Watkin, who has died aged 60 from complications caused by the autoimmune disease schleroderma, recorded the six Suites for solo cello by JS Bach. The following year his illness compelled him to step back from a distinguished performing career to become head of strings, and later professor of chamber music, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. When the CD set of the Suites was released in 2015, it proved to be an instant success, winning awards from Gramophone – which this year rated it as one of the 50 greatest Bach recordings – and BBC Music Magazine. His rhythmically alive, tonally beautiful and scholarly playing was realised by using a baroque bow by John Waterhouse and two historic cellos, one by Francesco Rugeri from around 1670 for the first five Suites, and a five-stringed instrument by the Amati brothers, Antonio and Girolamo, for the Sixth Suite. As well as teaching, he continued to conduct such ensembles as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music, Swedish Baroque Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Born in Crowthorne, Berkshire, David came from a musical family. His parents, Christine (nee Horney) and Ken Watkin, were violin teachers, and his elder brother, Simon, gravitated to the viola. When the family were living in Beckenham, Kent, he began taking cello lessons with a local teacher, eventually enabling the family to play quartets by Haydn and Mozart. When David was nine, the Watkin family moved again, to Pembrokeshire, where his mentors were Bridget Jenkins and the recitalist Sharon McKinley. He became the star cellist of the West Glamorgan Youth Orchestra, and went on to be a member of the National Youth Orchestra, and its principal cellist for two years. At 15 he won a scholarship to Wells Cathedral school, where he studied the cello with Margaret Moncrieff and Amaryllis Fleming. There he encountered historically informed recordings directed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Frans Brüggen, and a friend's father made him a baroque cello. Vocal lessons from the tenor Kenneth Bowen led to his seriously considering a career as a singer. His gap year was spent as a lay clerk, singing in the choir at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he went on to take a music degree (1984-87). He continued cello studies with William Pleeth and played in the Cambridge Baroque Camerata. As a full-time performer he led the cello sections of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, English Baroque Soloists, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Philharmonia Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Other ensembles he conducted included the Malta Philharmonic and Manchester Consort, and he had a stint as assistant conductor at Glyndebourne. While working with John Eliot Gardiner in the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, he and three colleagues – Peter Hanson, Lucy Howard and Gustav Clarkson – felt they should adapt the orchestra's authentic styles for Romantic music to quartet playing. Thus in 1993 the Eroica Quartet was born. Watkin adopted a transitional approach with this ensemble, playing with an endpin: until the mid-19th century cellists had held the instrument unsupported between their legs. The quartet's recordings of Beethoven, Mendelssohn (the quartets and the original version of the Octet), Schumann, Debussy and Ravel brought fresh perspectives to listeners. Characteristic of their approach for the Mendelssohn quartets was studying the bowings and fingerings adopted by Ferdinand David, the first performer of the composer's Violin Concerto, for his own ensemble, and the selective application of vibrato for expressive effect. Tours took them to France and the US, and they gave Beethoven cycles in the UK and abroad. With various colleagues, Watkin recorded concertos and sonatas by Vivaldi and sonatas by Boccherini. He and the fortepianist Howard Moody recorded three sonatas by Beethoven (1996), and to the book Performing Beethoven (2011) he contributed an essay on those works. In an article in the journal Early Music (1996) Watkin pointed to how Corelli allowed for the possibility of violin sonatas being accompanied by a string bass without a keyboard, by filling out the chords indicated by the numbers of the figured bass, and extended the principle to recitative passages in opera. As a teacher he aimed to lead students to think for themselves. An extract from a masterclass on Bach given at Kings Place, London, in 2017 can be seen on YouTube. In choosing Watkins' Bach recordings for its 50 best, Gramophone commented on the 'warm, expansive, generous and friendly' character of the playing, and many found the same qualities in him as a colleague. In 2002 Watkin married Sara Burton, and they had two sons, Noah and Sandy. They separated, and he is survived by his partner, Lisi Stockton, his sons, his parents and Simon. David Watkin, cellist, conductor, musicologist and teacher, born 8 May 1965; died 13 May 2025
ABC News
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Drive Live with Simon Svoboda
This week on Drive Live, Simon Svoboda joins Vanessa in Eugene Goossens Hall, treating us to a performance of his ethereal cello-vocal act. Born and raised in Queensland as part of a musical family, Simon's upbringing includes a formal classical education as well as one that involved jamming along with friends in bands. He is an alumnus of the AYO, Australian National Academy of Music and the Sibelius Academy, and has recently been appointed the new associate principal cello of the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in Finland. His solo act merges his impressive calibre as a classical cellist with a contemporary and minimalist sound world where the cello and the voice work together to create an immersive and ambient musical experience. On today's Drive live, playing on his 1892 Eugenio Degani cello which once belonged to his grandfather, Simon performs two of his own works – Halla, meaning 'frost' in Finnish, and Homesick, reflecting on his experiences of missing home, family and friends while living abroad. He celebrates the release of his recent EP Kaamos with two concerts in Australia, including at Phoenix Central Park last night, as well as at Tempo Rubato in Melbourne on 11th July. MUSIC: Halla by Simon Svoboda Homesick by Simon Svoboda Performed by Simon Svoboda (cello & vocals)
New York Times
17-06-2025
- General
- New York Times
Does It Matter How a Cello Is Held? It's a Centuries-Old Debate.
Picture an orchestra. How are the cellists holding their instruments? Chances are, in your mental image, they're playing with endpins — the pointy-tipped metal rods that anchor the cello to the floor and raise it to a comfortable playing height. Musical instruments, like technologies and fashions, adapt to the changing times. These days, playing the cello with an endpin is considered the default, but it hasn't always been that way. Before endpins became standard, cellists often played by gripping the instrument between their calves, a position that requires strength and finesse. Even today some cellists opt not to use an endpin. At Trinity Church's holiday performance of Handel's 'Messiah' in December, the cellists cradled their instruments between their legs for the three-hour performance — no small feat of endurance. Uptown on the same night, the New York Philharmonic was playing the same repertoire. Those cellists used endpins. This divide between Baroque cellists (like Trinity's) and modern players (like the Philharmonic's) is often explained by a generalization: Cellists after 1850 or so used endpins, whereas before 1850 they didn't. And so, cellists playing earlier music in a historically minded way often forgo an endpin. But the history of the endpin is far more complicated, having to do with issues of gender, disability and plain stubbornness. Valerie Walden, author of 'One Hundred Years of Violoncello,' writes that the endpin, throughout its history, has had 'decidedly amateur or womanish overtones and professional musicians probably regarded it as an affront to their male pride.' Some of this may have to do with what musicologists call the 'interface' between cello and thighs, an area often sexualized, which seems to be a major source of cellists' anxiety both historically and today. But the endpin's story is also about cellists not wanting to change their ways, even when they would benefit from something to lean on. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
