The soggy leaves and muted raindrops on my backyard deck here in the quiet upstate New York countryside are providing a peaceful, perhaps melancholic backdrop for the writing of this overdue post. It’s hard to believe that we’re already more than halfway through our fall semester, though the ripe apples at Cornell Orchards and and the delicious roasted squash at Bethe House dinners are a good giveaway…
As I finally recover from a rather brutal summer (my feeling is that shingles plus a bedbug infestation while nursing a broken heart should be against the laws of nature), I’ve been delighted to look back on the artistic joys that pulled me through it all.
August began with a return to my beloved PACO Camp where a team of faculty usher nearly 90 brilliant, bright-eyed teenagers through the wonderful world of string quartets. From there it was off to Italy for my first summer as co-director of the Paesaggi Musicali Toscani festival in Siena. I was honored to play two concertos – Piazzolla’s Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (arr. Desyatnikov) and the European premiere of Jorge Grossman’s Mosoq – under the Tuscan moon to a sold-out crowd for opening night. A few days later, a three-hour drive to Rome, a nine-hour flight to Detroit, a 90-minute flight to Minneapolis, a 45-minute flight to Duluth and finally an hour in the car brought me to NLCMI 2019 up in Minnesota’s untouched Boundary Waters. Playing and coaching chamber music on Lake Vermilion amongst family and friends is pretty much the best life has to offer.
September started with a bang as my studio settled into their groove – five fantastic new freshman have joined the crew and they’re doing a bang-up job. My new bluegrass “band,” (a generous use of the word) String Theory did some fabulously fun gigs at the Fall Friends of Stewart Park Festival and La Tourelle. I was tickled to learn a bunch of new tunes and fiddle my way back to childhood alongside Ithaca’s finest folk musicians. The next week, shoe-shine bowings gave way to Schubert bowings, and I headed to Minneapolis for the CMSM‘s first concert of the year, celebrating Tony Ross’s 60th birthday with Schubert’s monumental cello quintet. Just a few days later our entire family and so many friends found ourselves out in the Bay for my little brother’s wedding! It was a beautiful weekend filled with laughter, tears, dancing, a video montage, great food, and deeply special music – plus a surprise baby shower for dear cousin Yoonie. Congratulations, Nathan and Natali!
And here we are in October, which started with another family wedding, this time for cousin Andrea and her new hubby Rob. The rainy day brought good luck upon the couple and we closed the night with an Italian feast – evviva gli sposi, Mr. & Mrs. Glass! After a swing back to NYC for another dive into the world of Indian classical Carnatic violin-ing with my teacher Arun Ramamurthy, I headed back up to Ithaca for a some whirlwind teaching and meetings. Just a few days later, I found myself at Bucknell University for a wonderful weekend of master classes, rehearsals, and a recording of Dan Temkin‘s gorgeous piano trio, Flow which we will perform live with Bucknell Dance later this year. Tomorrow it’s down to the City for a week of Knights camp to inaugurate our 19-20 season alongside BalletCollective plus a reunion of the whole Ne(x)tworks gang for a “then & now” retrospective to bid farewell to the group, of which I was a part for 10 years, as past and present members take the stage together one last time.
And as always, a photo diary…
