Readers of my blog will realise that it has been a while since my last entry. In recent months, my day job got so busy that there just was not enough time left over to write about all the wonderful things that have happened.

I have written several started bits. Here is one of the unposted blog bits – from October 3, 2012:

I am sitting in an aeroplane. It is late afternoon, and I have just seen a thin, beach-sand highlighted line between ochre and azure blue – the Australian coastline – slide by somewhere far below. The aeroplane is headed into a darkening sky towards my first stopover – Bangkok. After that, its straight on to Zurich, where I will land in about twenty hours. The next leg will be a train bound for Montpellier – where I will meet my new cello and perform on it for the very first time. It is surreal to think that I will soon perform Bach suites on the wonderful new cello Frederic Chaudiere has made for me. I am also going to the Frankfurt book fair. It is the perfect combination of passion and work, and I am filled with anticipation and excitement.

That was almost a month ago.

On that day, I landed in Zurich at about six in the morning on the fourth of October.  I was groggy from the long flight, but felt pretty OK after a shower in the Swissair arrival lounge. From then on, the events of the day were so completely dream-like that even the act of remembering doesn’t quite give a reassuring sense that the events of the day actually happened. The train journey through Geneva and on to the south of France took the best part of the day. I watched a jetlag infused blur of lakes, towns, villages, fields whiz by in colours that gradually metamorphosed from Swiss greens blues and whites into the ochres and pastels of the Languedoc region of France.

The journey’s two cups of double-shot espresso were barely necessary.  I think I drank them to pass the time rather than to stay awake.  The meeting with Chaudiere and the cello he had made for me were waiting just hours away, and the excitement I was feeling was everything but a soporific. This day held a special focal point, and had grown a larger-than-life significance in the preceding days, months, years, and even decades. [New readers of this blog should read the “about” page - it puts the situation into perspective] . The iminent future held a sure event: one of the most incredible and meaningful events in my little life-history, and it would culminate when I got off the train in Montpellier.

Montpellier is one of France’s most beautiful mediaevil cities. It sits on a small hillock a short distance from the Mediterranean coastline. I am told the original coastal site was no match for the Vikings, so the hamlet was moved inland for a better vantage of the coastline. The streets and buildings are old and deliciously chaotic. But not so much so as to obscure the escargot spiral of the original street plan, which leads to the main civic buildings on the fulcrum of the hill. The streets are almost narrow enough for outstretched arms to reach the buildings on either side. It’s a lively city. Students, artisans, beggars, motorbikes, street markets, children, cars, clergy, and cigarette smoke jostle with café life for the small amount of viable street space.

When I stepped off the train into a warm Mediterranean evening in Montpellier, I was suddenly aware that dragging my suitcase through the throng might be a challenge; and would certainly leave me horribly lost if I tried to find my way by map to Chaudiere’s workshop. So I waved down a taxi, and gave the driver a piece of paper bearing Chaudiere’s address. He looked troubled, and tried to explain something to me in animated French. Eventually, I understood that the part of Montpellier where I was asking him to take me was too narrow for his taxi. He seemed to know who Chaudiere was, and eventually called him from his mobile telephone. We arranged to meet in the best and nearest taxi accessible spot, and we would walk together from there.

The taxi disgorged me and my luggage on the corner of a busy civic square. Not long after, I recognised Chaudiere from some distance. I had not met him in person before, but despite having seen his photo, I have no doubt I would have known it was him.  There was an unmistakable sense of purpose in way he strode towards me. People who share rare and long anticipated emotion are visible in a very crowded space. I did also see, in those first moments before and after shaking hands, a slight nervousness that said: “What if he does not like this cello into which I have put all my heart skill and effort?”

We walk a short distance to the Hotel Magnol, a 1701 courtyarded building where Chaudiere has apartments for artists, apprentices, an art gallery and his atelier. We climb the stairs in silence into his workshop. There are several violins and cellos in the workshop, and I have no idea which one is “the” cello. He casts his eye to an instrument that looks like it has been loved and used for about eighty years. It has exceptionally beautiful wood, and all the usual marks from the careful handling of two generations of cellists. I sit down, and Chaudiere carefully and somewhat self-consciously picks up this cello and hands it to me. He says: “So, this is the cello”.

I put it on my lap, belly-up and look at it. I turn it over, and gaze at the rich, marbled pattern in the wood he has chosen for the back. I don’t trust myself to play on it. I pull out the end-pin, and check the open strings are in tune. As I play the C-G fifth of the lower strings, I am enveloped in a strength of resonance in the bass that I have rarely experienced from any cello. I wind the bow a little tighter, and start playing the Prelude to the first cello suite of Johann Sebastian Bach. The sound is warm, rich, powerful, incredible.  I lose myself in it, and play through to the Prelude’s last major chord. The sound floats out through the open window and into the street. I look up, and see that Chaudiere is crying. He knows what this moment means, and why I am too overwhelmed to speak and cannot hold back my own tears. He has carved the thoughts, feelings and the life-time significance of this moment into this cello. He hears, and I hear, that this cello he has made is worth the significance of this moment, and that together we have somehow happened upon as perfect a beginning and ending as anyone can ever experience in a life-time.

The cello playing is getting more comfortable, bit by bit, and I am having an idea or two about ensuring I do not become a closeted cellist. I don’t believe one should practice purely for personal satisfaction – it is good to have a goal that puts the music into a context where it will be presented in performance. I already have the goal of the Montpellier concert. But its quite distant, and I am thinking of ways in which these cello suites I have been playing might be aired a bit before October.

I have had the idea of approaching art galleries, churches – or any other reasonant spaces that might be enhanced by a bit of Bach. I thought that I might get a brochure distributed to gallery managers and a church or two under the title “Random Acts of Bach”. My idea is to choose suitable spaces, and send an invitation for them to visit a website where an online booking can be made and Bach Cello suite can be ordered for their space at no charge. Or if any venue manager wants to pay, a donation to a charity of my choice would be just fine. I am picturing that some of the foyers to the skyscrapers in central Melbourne could do well to be softened by bit of Bach at lunchtime. And there are some beautiful churches where having a cello suite at the end of the service might be just the thing to send people home with Bach’s little contribution to heaven on earth ringing in their ears. One of my publishing colleagues has already offered some sponsorship for making a brochure, and I’m being driven by a very strong “have a go” mentality at the moment.

At very least, I am thinking Betty – my borrowed practice cello – deserves a bit of an outing before I move on to the super-cello Chaudiere is making for me. She has come through more than two centuries to be here to help me get ready for my new cello. I enjoy looking at the patina of wear from the hands of the many cellists who have loved her. I also look at the centuries of cracks and chamber music chips – the kind that come from sitting a fraction too close to the violist. I wonder at the many untold stories that are hidden behind them. She’s travelled a long way. 1785, when she was born, is just fifteen years after Captain Cook had first sailed into Botany Bay; it is three years before the first bedraggled convicts arrived in Australia; Mozart was twenty nine, and had just written The Magic Flute; Marie Antoinette still had her head on; and Beethoven was a serious-looking adolescent.

I don’t know when Betty came to Australia. She has had a hard life, and some of her wounds can’t be repaired. I have low tension steel strings on her at the moment. Steel strings are not ideal. They’re modern inventions – even at the turn of the (19t-20th) century, players like Pablo Cassals were well and truly in the pre-steel strings era. Although they have an excellent and immediate response, steel is not what Betty was made for. For the Bach suites, I’d be glad to string her up in gut right now except that the playing style of gut strings is so different from steel. However, as I will start on steel strings on the Chaudiere cello, and will have only one day to prepare for my first concert on it, I do have to stick with steel for now. It won’t be much longer for Betty with the steel strings. I will get her set up purely for baroque and classical music when the new cello arrives. I think she’s going to love being strung in raw gut, and having her tailpiece, soundpost and bridge replaced in the style of the late 18th century.

I’m very keen on exploring a more authentic tonal palette with Betty, and having her set up in her original garb will be a great way of avoiding the constant changing and restringing of the new cello when I play repertoire that requires extra projection and power.

Looks like playing the cello is getting my creative juices flowing again.

In fact – today (29 May), I started doing something to get the concerts going:

Have a look at: http://randomactsofbach.wordpress.com/

(Continued from previous post)

When I started my self-sustaining approach to being a musician, I had deliberately sought a life where music and my own sense of freedom and integrity as a performer would not be compromised by my need to earn an income. The contract I had with myself was this: either find a way of growing an audience following based on my merits as a musician, or hang up the gloves and move on to another career. I carried an awareness of enjoying a very particular freedom as a musician, and I always felt a sense of privilege and impermanence in being part of the musical tradition. Bit by bit, the audiences at my concerts grew in numbers along with my own sense of amazement and relief that I could make a living from being a musician and that I could do it in a way that I found acceptable, challenging and very enjoyable.

But I lived with the mistaken belief that managing my own concert life successfully and having a growing audience base would give me immunity from the deceptions and random events that can make life difficult – or even diabolical. And living in a very finely balanced personal economy, as I was, left me much more vulnerable than I cared to admit.

Sometimes a small error of judgement can change the course of life. This error for me, came in accepting an opportunity that at the time looked very promising, but remembering the moment, I did have some misgivings I should have heeded about both the offer and the person who was making it.

In 1999, the parent of one of my students who came from a prominent and wealthy family of Melbourne doctors asked me if I might be interested in creating a recording of calming music that could be used to play in the waiting area where parents and children sat before undergoing painful lumbar puncture procedures. I had taught her son and daughter for some years, and had formed a close friendship with the family. They attended most of my concerts, and took a keen and helpful interest in the maverick way I went about being a musician. The mother of my student was a junior doctor at one of Melbourne’s larger hospitals, and had involved herself in promoting music therapy as a component of her work at the hospital.

At first I was reluctant to be involved. I did not believe I understood enough about the set requirements of music therapy; and I was aware this doctor, although well-meaning, had very little understanding about music or the way I as a professional musician viewed my role in relation to the art-form. However, over the next year or two, our conversation kept coming back to the subject, and I started to think it might be an interesting and worthwhile thing to do. At the time, I had an on-and-off cello duo going with Scottish cellist, Niall Brown, and I had been arranging the occasional well-known encore piece for the concerts we had been playing together. I started choosing Arioso styles over lively Paganini in my encore arrangements, and discussed with Niall that we might have a go at recording the growing repertoire of restful encores so they could be played for the benefit of stressed parents and their very sick children. Niall thought it a good idea, and with the best of intentions we made a recording of a good forty five minutes of restful cello music which was soon being played in the lumbar puncture waiting area of the hospital. It drew very grateful and appreciative feedback from patients and staff.

Had I left it at that, the recording would still be playing soothing music within the confines of the hospital. However, I had the idea that if the recording were made into a proper compact disc, it could become an outstanding fundraiser for the hospital. The idea was met with some enthusiasm from the doctor who had commissioned the recording. She suggested I put together a business plan setting out how this fundraiser might work and present it to the director of the hospital’s foundation.

Not long after, we were sitting in the hospital fundraising foundation’s office. The director of the foundation thought it a great idea, but said that the foundation could not put any money into getting the project up and running and did not have the staff resources to administer the marketing and management workload that would be involved in getting a project like this off the ground. He said that if I could find the resources to do this work myself in such a way that the project would not suffer from a false start, the foundation would be happy to oversee the fundraiser once it was a going concern. I explained to him that I had been through the process of creating and successfully marketing compact discs several times, and was confident to do the work. I also explained to him that as music was my livelihood, and the creative and marketing effort I would have to make to get the project to succeed could not be remunerated whilst the work was being done, I would be happy to be paid after the project was a success. This met with approval, and we decided that setting up a royalty system based on the number of discs manufactured for sale would be a fair way of remunerating me for my work without putting the foundation out of pocket.

We agreed that I should come back with a detailed and complete marketing plan, which the foundation’s director would either approve or reject. We agreed that if the project was approved, I would do the planning, supply the graphics, do the marketing legwork; and be remunerated by a royalty of ten percent of the sale value of the compact disc, which the hospital would pay to me as soon as funds from the project were sufficient for the royalty to be paid without any impact on the foundation’s finances. It was also agreed that I was to be given some control over the project in that production rights for the recording were to remain with me, but I was to accept that if the project was a failure, I would not be paid at all.

I had already committed my imagination to the idea, and I believed it would be an outstandingly successful fundraiser if I put enough time and effort into it. The doctor who had commissioned the disc was part of the Melbourne’s moneyed network, and it would be relatively easy to draw media attention if she used her influence to open doors. I had set out a plan that included selling the discs through postal outlets, on Virgin flights, from bookshop counter tops and along with an outline of how the project could go national by co-opting hospitals in other states of Australia.

I started creating graphics for the disc, point of sale material, press releases and I created a detailed plan for a national retail campaign. This was then presented to the hospital foundation and approved. After a month of banging on doors and meeting with various buyers and retail managers, the disc was produced, point of sale material printed, and distributed for sale from counter tops all over Victoria and not long after – nationally.

After the disc went on sale, I continued to put most of my of time and effort into building a brand image for the recording, and following through on all the marketing ideas and plans I had put forward to the hospital foundation. At first, the process of working with the foundation and the doctor who had commissioned the recording was energizing and fun. It was hard work, but really exciting. We were a team of two on a mission. I strategized the campaign and created the marketing material, and did a lot of the legwork; and my doctor colleague opened doors so we could meet the right people to get the disc talked about in the media and on counter tops the shops and post offices.

It took off like a rocket. Everyone was happy with the result. The first production run sold within weeks. I was paid my royalty and signed off a second production run, which also sold out very quickly.

I was proud of the project, and I felt very relieved and grateful for the royalty payments. They were a perfect stop-gap for the decline in income from my teaching at the Victorian College of the Arts and the University of Melbourne. There had been more cutting of funding for music tuition, and one-on-one teaching had taken a heavy toll. I was having serious trouble making ends meet for the first time in ten years. However, I lived with the belief that everything would be fine. More and more people were attending my concerts, and I had signed off thousands of discs for production for which, eventually, the royalties would be paid. I knew exactly how much I was owed, and it was more than enough to cover for the lost teaching. I started with one credit card to cover the shortfall while I was waiting, and as this one maxed out, I took another one. It was a time of easy credit, and in any case, I knew the royalty payment would cover it soon.

In the first six months, the hospital was more than happy to pay my royalty on time. However, as the project became more and more successful, the payments slowed down, and I had to remind and cajole to get the payments to come through at all. Along with this, I noticed that the doctor who had worked with me as a team in getting the project up and running had seen a career opportunity as a consequence of the project’s success. It was a bit alarming that she had no qualms in appropriating my creative ideas, marketing initiatives and hard work as her own. But I took the attitude that I had no long term plan or involvement with the hospital, and I was not looking for recognition through this project, so if she needed that as a boost, good luck to her. I did feel proud of the success my hard work had created, and the six figure amounts it was raising for the hospital were pretty amazing. I wanted it to continue to have as good a run as its product life cycle would allow. I had worked hard for that, and I waited patiently for the hospital to honor their promise and pay my royalties.

The first rude shock came when one of the staff at the hospital foundation told me tens of thousands of compact discs had been produced without my knowledge or approval. I was told the hospital was currently holding more than 14,000 units in stock that I had not been informed about.

Up to that point, I’d had complete trust that my production rights would be honored by the hospital. When I questioned my doctor colleague about this, the responses were vague and evasive, though she did tell me that the production rights and royalty arrangement would have to be re-negotiated, and she would meet with me about it when she returned from her summer holiday. This was just before the Christmas of 2003, and I told her that I did not have enough money to get through the summer and there were back payments owed for previous that I had been promised and was depending on receiving months ago. She said she would make sure the hospital paid me, but that this was not her responsibility and in future I would have to negotiate with the hospital myself.

She didn’t follow through. After that my phone calls to her went unanswered. When I called the hospital, they told me my doctor colleague would have to sign off on the royalty payment, and as she had gone on holiday, it would have to wait until the end of January.

I had no money at all and two credit cards that were up to their maximum. It was the week before Christmas, and January was not a month in which there was much teaching to be had – or any music related work of any kind, for that matter. In desperation, I went to another bank and was issues with yet another credit card.

When my doctor colleague returned from holidays, she called a meeting with me. She said she had decided to “pull the plug” on my recording, and she wanted to be selling discs only if she could control the production rights. She said she had been planning a series of recordings with other prominent Australian musicians, and would be putting her energy into that from this point forwards. I asked her about the royalties that were owed to me going back more than six months. I also wanted to know what was happening from now on with my disc, and I was desperate to have any information that could give me an indication when the financial nightmare I was in might be over. I could see that her new project was intended to replace the cello duo disc, and I begged her to hold off with it until at least until the sales of my disc had tailed off.

I think she sniffed vulnerability and went for the kill. She said she would no longer be involved with my recording, and I would have to negotiate with the hospital foundation for the payment of any owed royalties.

I had a chat with the hospital foundation. They gave me vague answers, and referred me back to my doctor colleague.

I was aware that if I mounted a legal battle with the hospital to be paid for the royalties they owed me, I would probably win. But it might be long and drawn out, and the only way of affording it, would be to sell my cello – which was the only item of value in my possession. It would also mean being tied to a dispute for a long period, which I do not regard as a good use of precious life-time, and my situation was too desperate to consider solutions that might come a year down the track – if at all.

The window faced envelopes from the banks stood in a pile on my table; my children needed me to provide for them; and for the first time in my life, I was terribly depressed and unhappy about my situation. I saw no way out except to sell my cello.

I wrote a letter to the hospital foundation informing them that I would be donating any owed royalties, and that they could dispose of the stock of discs as they pleased.

To my surprise, the cello sold quickly. I paid out my debts, and enrolled in a Master of Commerce degree. The grief and hollowness of that period was terrible, and I don’t know how I got through.

Some time later, the director of the hospital foundation invited me to lunch at his club and thanked me. He was relieved that I had solved his problem. Nevertheless, I never received an official thank you from the hospital for the hundreds of thousands of dollars my music and hard work raised for them. I believe they remain under the mistaken belief that the project was the brain child of my doctor colleague. It was not. She contributed no creative or commercial initiative in the project. She did make good contacts for it, but hers was a glory role that relied on the creativity and hard work of others. The music, the very idea for the project, and every strategy and idea that went into the commercialization and marketing of it had come from me. On top of that, I did most of the hard yards in getting the project going and driving it on to succeed.

My doctor colleague was promoted into a senior position at the hospital, and has built her power base within the hospital on the sale of a series of fundraising recordings.

I have changed my career, and set about rebuilding. 2004 was a terrible year, and I don’t know how I survived it.

I still love the cello. Its been eight years without it, and I can’t describe how relieved I am, that to some degree, I can still play.

Necessity is driving more and more outstanding musicians into becoming self-managed privateers. A quick Google search brings up hundreds of beautifully designed websites spruiking chamber musicians and soloists touting for work in festivals, subscription concerts, and for a coveted concerto spot with an orchestra. These websites are windows to the hopes and aspirations of a new generation of artists. They give an instant overview of repertoire, discographies and even the occasional video clip or recording sample. Outstanding and unknown musicians abound, and going by the amount of effort put into self-promoting, the current state of the art consumes as many midnight candles on self-promotion as it does on practicing. And there’s no doubt that exercising marketing nous has become a key survival skill for classical artists. The standards are higher than ever before, the market is smaller, and at least for as long as the European and US economies are on life support, the pool of opportunities and rewards will continue to shrink.

Looking back, I now realise I was an unwitting trend setter in the way I ran my own musical enterprise. Although a lot has changed since then, the challenges and pitfalls of living from a micro-business built around selling your own concerts remain the same now as they were in the nineties when I started out. However, the accepted norms for getting a concert booking were very different. Self promotion through the web was not possible – and insofar as it was possible to promote through phone calls, legwork and letters, it was frowned on by serious minded musicians. You either had the imprimatur of an institution, or you weren’t quite the real deal.

At the time, I had a good think about what was important to me, and decided that I had personal and musical priorities that would be suffocated if I went with the prevailing institutional flow. I really wanted to find a way of making a living from music that fitted the language and my own ideals about it. I was happy to make sacrifices to live in a way that allowed me to keep a direct sense of contact with the music, without having to become an institutionalized puppet in an orchestra or university. I didn’t have any interest in thinking about about what earned frowns versus what earned musical elephant stamps. I was really only interested in the music and finding a way of making it work without making too many musical and personal compromises. I wanted to know if what I had to say musically could sustain my life simply by attracting a following. I had a belief that if you have something worth hearing to say, you could sustain a life on it; and if not, that would be a good indication that it was time for a career change. Essentially, my choice meant running a small business that presented my concerts and living from the ticket sales, and I was more than willing to give it a go.

With the benefit of hidsight, what I did was pretty brave. I had no money, no business or administrative experience, and no role model. I also had a young family and needed time to practice as well as putting many hours into the business of becoming a self-managed and promoted musician. At least I did recognise my shortcomings, and very early in the piece, I got some marketing and business training and took a series of administrative stop-gaps outside the musical profession while I honed my plan.

Although I did have a reasonably wide repertoire to sell, the larger the ensemble I took on tour with me, the less likely a concert would break even, as each musician had to be paid and accommodated. So I started out with solo Bach. The cello suites were well-known, and there were few Australian country towns where a live solo Bach concert had been heard. I figured that playing Bach in country towns was worth a try, and the Don Quixote in me was in full accord.

The routine involved making contact with local arts councils and the like to get as much on-the-ground local support as possible; booking the local church; hanging posters and dropping leaflets all over town; getting a story in the local paper; and showing up on the night. It was hard work, but it did have some success, and for the better towns, the concerts were well enough attended to warrant returning with my favorite chamber music colleagues. Within a couple of years, I wasn’t exactly getting rich, but I was living OK on musician’s standards, and I had managed to stay clear of institutional dependence for my livelihood. Of course, the off season was being subsidized with teaching – which I enjoyed, and along with several hours a day of private teaching work, I spent a day a week teaching at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts.

In 1993, I had the slightly radical idea of performing the Bach cello suites without stage lighting. It was a way of forcing the audience into a shared mind-space, and although I did not think it would work, I believed this to be a worthwhile exploration of a new way of hearing live music. With some trepidation, I set up concerts in Melbourne and Sydney. To my surprise they sold out. The concerts in darkness were different, but I was prepared to do anything that did no insult to the musical language. These concerts became successful and contributed reliably to my income. I continued to play Bach in darkened auditoriums until 2002.

Along with the work that came from setting up concerts from scratch, there were a range of festivals and arts councils who booked performances and paid a fee for the event, and for a good decade, there was always just enough to keep going yet another year with a way of life that suited me just fine.

I can’t say it came to an end all of a sudden. I had created a little enterprise that existed on optimism, a deep love of music and the cello, and a hundred small threads that linked me to various sources of work. The first threads to go were snipped by the economic rationalists who counted the beans for funding the Victorian College of the Arts and the University of Melbourne’s conservatorium. One-on-one lessons were regarded as a shocking waste by the University management. The official allocated lesson time was slashed to 40 minutes, and allocation of lessons per year were cut by twenty percent. Of course, after remonstrating, most music teachers – me included – taught our students for as long as they needed, and got paid less. A lot less. Effectively, my income from teaching tertiary students was halved.

Even at the end of the 1990s, the institution based music industry was starting to unwind. Orchestras were being privatized, the Victorian State Opera was on its last legs, and many of my colleagues were in a very bad way. Funding was very tight, and in the twisted logic of the economic rationalist, wealth was measured in infrastructure and profit. Spending money on enhancing on intangibles like culture in the places where big infrastructure and profits were being made just didn’t seem to rate.

But I had a good line of work through my little concert enterprise, and although times were tight, I felt happy and lucky – especially when I compared myself to the many colleagues who had lost full-time positions at the University and in the increasingly cash-strapped orchestras. However, despite the optimism I felt based on the increasing popularity of my concerts, my livelihood was finely balanced. Had I known that it would only take one or two more broken threads for my self reliant musical existence to unravel, I would not have felt as complacent as I did in the lead-up to the new century.

More on that in my next post…

This week, it has come as a shock to me to hear that the very well educated Vice-Chancellor of the Canberra based Australian National University, Professor Ian Young, has decided to solve the approximately 2.7 million dollar annual loss made my the School of Music by making its instrumental teaching staff redundant.  From what I can glean from media reports and on the web, the Australian National University plans to reinvent professional music training with a view to minimising costs.  Prof. Young claims the biggest cost per student across all of its faculties, is individual music tuition, and in concert with the ANU’s accounting department and the marketing department, has set out a creative new way of providing training for our future professional musicians that will be: “more flexible, more connected with the community and offer more student choice(…)the ANU School of Music has taken a creative and comprehensive approach to regeneration and devised what I believe will be a sector-leading curriculum model”.

As a compensation for losing their weekly lessons, students have been offered (quote):

• a Professional Development Allowance (PDA) that will be allocated to students, allowing them to choose between specialist one-to-one tuition, attending a summer course, master class or conference, or learning a new piece of music software, and
• real-time, video-linked lessons and sessions with the support of the Manhattan School of Music.

Canberra is an entirely planned city – an urban utopia that was designed, funded and built with vision and careful forethought. When you visit Canberra, you are immediately aware of a palpably deliberate urban design focused on quality of life over factors that might favour industry and production.

As well as being the home of one of Australia’s premier music academies, Canberra is the seat of Australia’s government. Canberra houses the High Court and numerous government departments and agencies, along with the Australian War Memorial; the Australian Institute of Sport; the National Gallery; National Museum; and the National Library. I think the forefathers wanted the city to be full of monuments that made Canberra look cultured for visiting dignitaries. In fact, the School of Music is the only long standing cultural icon in Canberra that regularly provides a cultural identity to the city that is not based on a monument, a war or an administrative function.

Due to the presence of the Canberra Music School, this city has attracted some preeminent Australian performers and composers. Current staff include Geoffrey Lancaster, Calvin Bowman, Larry Sitsky, Timothy Kain, Tor Frømyhr, Barbara Jane Gilby, Alice Giles, Max McBride, David Pereira – to name just those I can recall off the top of my head. These are musicians who have no reason to be in Canberra except for their commitment to their teaching duties at the ANU.

Canberra is an inland cultural island. It is a long way from anywhere, and with only 360,000 citizens, Canberra does not have a sufficient population to cover the living costs of a freelance musician – even one with entrepreneurial chutzpah in very large doses. By merit of these outstanding musicians being in Canberra for the School of Music, Canberra citizens enjoy a lively concert calendar. Very talented younger musicians also benefit from having access to the best available tuition without having to make journey to Melbourne or Sydney to get lessons.

I find it very difficult to understand that a city can lavish hundreds of millions of dollars of public money on its built environment, its botanical gardens, its historic institutions, and for some very weird reason, cannot see that sustaining people who make culture is more important than the buildings and institutions that carry a plaque that says “National Musical Academy” or something similar. You can have the most amazing monuments and concert halls (the one in the Canberra school of music is arguably the best in Australia); but without top musicians to fill them, what use are they? Imagine a city that has no wonderful monument to culture, but sustains its artists so well that the best of the best flock to be there. Of course  place is important, but it really doesn’t have a point if there’s no culture to fill it with.

So here’s my recommendation: If its really about funding, sell the damn building and spend the money on keeping the music going. We’re in the age of the virtual office, and millions of people liaise by computer whilst they do their work from home. I doubt there is a musician at the ANU who does not teach at least some of his or her students at home already. Canberra’s music school of music in right in the heart of the city and will be worth a bit.  I reckon the sale would raise enough to double the wages of the teaching faculty. There might even be a bit left over to hire some new ones. While we’re in a period of China driven resources wealth, it’s getting very tight in Europe and the USA, and I am sure someone pretty special would jump at a two year stint in the Antipodes on top wages.  And if rehearsal space is needed, there are enough unused church halls and bureaucrat’s offices in Canberra to house ten schools of music. Come to think of it, the old parliament house building would work a treat as a music school…

I think most of us have arriving at work rituals. Every morning when I get to work, the first thing I do after brewing a coffee, is check my email for new photos from Chaudiere. It is like a quick visit to a shrine of cellistic hope before getting on with the various tasks of the day.

Today, this photo of the belly of my cello arrived. The beautiful craftsmanship and the sense of expectation and becoming in the wood are inspiring me along with my practice. Whenever I see a photo of the cello, I have a renewed sense of expectation and anticipation about playing on the instrument in October. I am also strangely moved by seeing the cello in bits that is going to be sharing the rest of my life once it is fully formed. It is like seeing an ultrasound of a yet-to-be born baby, except this image has more definition and colour. There’s also the knowledge that this cello in becoming will be completely my own, and will move through the rest of my life with me as an extension of my happiest self. Babies are born to become their own selves in life. Yes, it’s happy, amazing and incredible – but they should be loved and never owned.

It has not been an easy ten days for finding practice time. Tingleman has had several container loads of books and catalogues raining down on our warehouse in Springvale, and along with the never-ending pile of administrative stuff that goes into keeping the business running, I have traveled the length and breadth of Australia attending to the clients who entrust printed representations of themselves to our firm. Mostly, my clients provide interesting and stimulating encounters, but they all have expectations and demands which must be met if we are to keep their business, and being more professional than our competitors takes energy and attention to detail. I always get home intending to play cello, but the intention often gets deferred due to tiredness. The next month or so looks pretty good, and I am looking forward to some solid cello time.

I have decided as a contingency, to work first on the cello suites I will perform in Montpellier in October. This will give me longer preparation time for the concert works. They are suites one, three and six. I have decided that because the event is such a happy one, I will stick to the suites in the major key. There are four in major keys and two in minor keys (numbers two and five). I could also have chosen number four, which is in E flat major. However, I will not be all that familiar with the new cello, and E flat is a tricky key at the best of times on the cello. I will leave the E flat suite for a concert later in the year when I have had time to grow into the new cello. I might play it on Bach’s birthday – March 21 – now there’s an idea…

So here is the plan: I’ll prepare three suites to performance standard on Betty (the John Betts cello I am using to get my fingers ready), and if there is time left over before October, I will upload the other three onto the alfredcello blog to keep my fingers moving and my musical mind challenged. If I run out of time, I might upload suites 2 and 5 on the new cello after October.

The uploading of suites has been great way staying on track and keeping me honest. It’s not only a public commitment that’s keeping me working even when Tingleman has stolen most of my energy. It is also a true snapshot of my progress and standard at a set point in time. Once a performance is publicly available online, you can’t get confused between reality and hope. I have to admit it’s a bit humbling. It would be easy to soar away on the cello, leave the rough bits for later, and imagine it sounds just like it used to. But in committing to complete performances of a work, I am having to face the reality that although the bones and foundations might still be there, in places the flesh has wrinkled, and there are flabby spots. The hardest thing, I am finding, is getting the intonation reliable. Although the fingers are happy to play all the notes, a lot of them seem to be randomly a millimeter or two out of place. I’m working at it, its improving; but I may have to accept that the two percent gap between can-play and really polished might require an extra three hours of daily practice. I will do my best to get the tuning really polished with the time I have available, but I may have to accept that this is about getting things as good as I possibly can, rather than working for the absolute standard that drove me when I was a professional player. Let’s see how I go.

The other aspect of my musicianship that is not coming back immediately after eight years without a cello – is stamina. When things are in very good shape, playing for longer and holding a deep musical concentration is easier simply because body and mind are more relaxed about the task of playing. That’s both a benefit and consequence of being fit. I am finding the fitness is improving the longer I play, and I believe it will be just fine well before the concert in October. To keep real about this, once I have uploaded all the movements to this site one at a time with each blog post, I am uploading a complete performance end-to-end of each suite. With this post, I have uploaded a complete play-through of suite one (below). Unfortunately I could not upload it in one file, as it is more than the maximum file size for WordPress, so if you want to hear the complete performance, you will have to download the first and second section one at a time. It’s actually much more gratifying playing the whole suite in one sitting, as the movement flow from one to another, and it’s easier to get good mood and tempo relationships by moving through the transitions and taking on the completeness of each suite.

Lastly – I have received lots of encouraging messages and remarks via the site, Facebook and Email. Thanks everyone! I have had the occasional flat spot about this whole thing, and the positive comments are a great help in keeping me going.

Yesterday, I read two articles about the lives of classically trained musicians in a shrinking market. Both are insightful and disturbing. The issues discussed are ongoing and were already having a major effect on my life as a professional musician in the nineties.

The first is written by David Beem: once a top cellist who became a writer after a muscular disease crippled his left hand. David discusses the business of being a classical musician in the United States, and has written a powerful piece about his own thoughts, experiences and observations. You can read it at:

http://davidbeem.wordpress.com/

For those who read German, the Frankfurter Algemeiner Zeitung published a thought provoking article on the same subject last week:

www.faz.net

I have just been writing about the impact on me of a forced career change and how I grappled with the issues of redefining a self without music. These articles give an insight into the work environment that is pushing musicians in their hundreds into the daunting business of changing careers. Interesting, and unnerving for those who have devoted themselves to this wonderful art-form and are now on the threshold of a professional future in music.

I might write a bit more about these articles and my own experiences later.

While I am on the subject of musicians who make brave changes in their lives, I want to give a quick plug for John Tesarsch, who has made two migrations of self – from cellist to Barrister to writer. John has hero status for me. He was an outstanding cellist. I admired John’s extraordinary skill on the many occasions I heard him perform. After moving to Vienna, John developed an allergy to rosin so severe that cello could not remain a viable career choice for him. He dusted himself off, went back to Melbourne, finished a law degree and became a barrister. However, the challenges had only begun for John Tesarsch. On a holiday in South America, he developed an ulcer in his mouth, which, on returning to Australia, after being misdiagnosed several times, turned out to be a malignant cancer. A good portion of his tongue had to be removed, and John found himself suddenly unable to articulate the words and sentences that sustained his life as a brilliant barrister.  A process of relearning and daily practice has John Tesarsch talking again. Remarkably, John did not lie down and give up.  Having been a top cellist, and a top barrister, John has recently published his first book. “The Philanthropist” is extraordinarily well written. This is no ordinary character novel, and if you enjoy good writing, I am strongly recommending that you go out and buy it. This is top quality English literature, and with a life like John’s behind it, I am not at all surprised. “The Philanthropist” is not an autobiographical book in any way, but carries the depth of a man who has adapted, endured, overcome. A wonderful read, and hooray for you, John!

Career change has some special challenges for those who move away from the cloistered world of music.

To reach a professional standard, musicians make a total commitment of self from an early age, and few actively plan out career steps or expect financial rewards for their chosen life-path. It is really more priesthood than profession, and no musician sees their path in a linear sequence running from training to joining a club or professional group and then climbing a career ladder. Being a musician gets right into your definition of self, and completely immersing and committing is a key component to reaching an acceptable standard.

In 21^st century life – at least in Australia – we accept a mantra that says a work-life balance that is all work and no life is disordered in some way. No doubt a balanced life is a good thing to have, and we’ve taken the need to be work-life balanced to heart as a prerequisite for the modern ideal that’s called the Happy Life. We’re all so work-life balanced that it’s not even cool to write on your curriculum vitae that you’re a workaholic if you’re going for a job that expects you to be one.

In the music world, the norms and expectations are completely different. Few musicians stop to think about things like work-life balance. If you live from music, you live in music, and the intensity of involvement with the music and the instrument is very different from what is expected in most other professions. You make a commitment to this life from quite early regardless of the future outcome, and you attach yourself and your sense of self to the whole thing without even giving it a second thought.

Not surprisingly, for many musicians – me included –there is a kaleidoscope of life to be found within the chosen instrument and amazing world of beauty and complexity hidden behind the notes on the page that fully justifies the entwinement of self that one can experience by living with music every day. It is a world that quickly becomes a way of life that feels complete in every possible way. Even the material sacrifices one makes in order to sustain it become an accepted normal part of life for which the trade-off is a very special world of purpose, structure and beauty. Consequently, one of the main challenges for musicians who move away from this world is to come to grips with a self that actually does have meaning, shape and definition without being completely filled up with music.

For me, when I lost the cello in 2004, rediscovering who I am as a being separate from music was a challenge that I found almost insurmountable. The first month of no cello was a period of total numbness. I didn’t know what to do with a mind that kept painfully defaulting to a forbidden world cello repertoire, lieder, chamber music and symphonies; I didn’t know how to fill my time, which was now carrying the weight of a cello shaped black hole; and worst of all, my body, which had lived the physicality of the cello for more than three decades felt bruised, lost, hopeless. I saw my hands at the end of my arms as weird appendages that did not belong to me. I felt the unfitness of missed daily practice creeping into them, and they sent a feeling of vegetable-like uselessness up my arms and into the depths of my being. It was a really terrible time, and I hesitate to describe just how low I was. But there was a rock-bottom to be found, which luckily became a turning point for me. I was able, at a very bleak moment, to have leaked to me some small shimmers of light through the extraordinary luck that there were some people in my life who loved me, and carried with that love the reminder that I was worth something and had an obligation to give something back. The point I had reached when I realised this was hopeless and frightening. Nowadays, when I see people in a situation of total hopelessness, I think “there but for the grace of god go I”. To become one of society’s lost souls, to be vagrant, homeless, beyond return to normal social comforts does not take much in a modern city, and I am not surprised the streets are full of people who live rough and can’t find a way back into living at standards of civilised normality that most of us learn to take for granted. It was a humbling thing for me to be on that threshold. It was only that chink of light that came from remembering I mattered to some people who loved me and for whom I still felt love that gave me the impetus, imagination and courage to start making the steps that would pull me out. I feel immeasurably grateful that there were enough important and significant people in my life to give me the incentive to see from that depth that I mattered to them. This helped me to admit to myself that life matters, and as a next step, that there did exist within me, fragments of a self that could be put together and enhanced and built into something of worth – if not for myself, then for those who loved me.

At the point where I did not care for my own safety, I woke up to what was happening within me. Knowing I had a responsibility to loved ones, I decided to seek help. I paid for a parade of psychologists and hypnotherapists. There were a lot of charlatans among the occasional gems – some of which, I admit, did come from the charlatans, so I should not be too off hand about them.

But I don’t want to write this blog about my recovery – this chapter in my life is for my cello, so I won’t go into too much detail. In brief: I found part-time work of various kinds ranging from labouring to doing graphics. I enrolled in an MBA. Before I finished it, I started a publishing business (www.tingleman.com.au), which has been modestly successful, and has put me in a position where the revisit to my cello is both possible – and according to my wife – a priority. The starting of Tingleman from a position of absolute zero is a good story in its own right, but I will keep the cello focus for now in this blog.

I am hoping I can manage the love of music and cello as an extension to my self rather than at the core of it. I can say that my daily cello work is very seductive and it is taking clarity of purpose and discipline to balance everything I have learned about being a more complete self to keep me from throwing my whole self to the Lorelei within the cello. As well as filling my day with purposeful other stuff, Tingleman can be a demanding, time-eating monster. But the firm is a source of pride and sustenance, and I really like my job. It is the duck that is paddling along frantically while there is peace and calm on the musical lake.

It is a challenge to juggle both cello and day job, but for the time-being, the challenge is a good one.

Sometimes things happen that are so full of life’s good stuff that they hit you in the face like a splash of cold water from the purest mountain stream.

Well, this week, something has come along that is so invigorating it is almost unnerving.

Frederic Chaudiere is organising a Bach suites concert in Montpelier for me in October on the new cello!

I have not played a solo concert in nine years. Until late January 2012, I did not play on a cello for eight years. Besides the feelings of elation, excitement and anticipation, I have to admit, I have a little voice in me that is saying “f-f-f-ruitcake”. Nevertheless, the Bach suites were my most often performed repertoire in my previous incarnation as a cellist, and although I will have to face and conquer a few demons in climbing this summit, at least the repertoire will be as familiar as my favourite old boots.

The one thing that is absolutely and resolutely certain: come what may, I am doing this concert. I hope to do it really well; but even if I do it badly and am terrified to a total jelly, I am doing it. Yes, I could give in to the “run like for your life” impulse, but as Beethoven said, sometimes you have to grab life by the throat and shake it. That’s what I am going to do.

So – here is the picture I am focusing on for October: I will be well prepared on Betty, my trusty borrowed cello, and I will have practiced and shared all of the Bach Suites online as live video uploads – a good way of ironing out bingles. I know what the venue looks like, and I have it in my mind every time I practice. Lucie Chaudiere has kindly sent this photo (below) of the hall. I can see myself there in October, and this is helping me a lot.

Pinceau & Piano at Hôtel Magnol © Lucie Chaudière

I am told the acoustic is superb in this hall. I will be filling it with the sound of this cello (below is exactly how it looked yesterday), after one day familiarising myself with its finished form and a cello voice that, in this concert, will speak publicly for the very first time.

I am staring at this photo. I have stared at it for more than an hour since last night when I first saw it. I think this might be the most beautiful piece of maple I have seen, and it is going to be playing Bach with me in October, in Montpelier.

I have a lump in my throat. I must be dreaming.

In the last week, many friends have asked: “What was it like when you first picked up the cello after eight years of no cello?”

Well, in a word, it was weird. What surprised me was that the larger movements – those that emanate from balance and base muscles – were in reasonably good shape.  It was the fingertips that felt the worst, followed by the smaller muscles – fingers, hands, forearms.  Intonation was shot to bits, and remains a bit tangential. It was troubling that there were bits of some very well learned repertoire that I could not remember at all.

Good technique is about being comfortable, and I did work hard on getting a technique that served me very well when I was student and in the three to four years after I finished my post-graduate studies in Freiburg. I don’t want to get bogged down in a lengthy discussion on cello technique. But in a nutshell: each muscle should do its job in balance with the other muscles. Like a good golf swing, everything that can move from stronger muscles and leave the extremities relaxed and free should be handed to the big muscles. Many big muscle jobs can be delegated to gentle and intelligent shifts in balance. However, none of this functions effectively if the body is not relaxed, well balanced and aligned with the instrument. On the cello, everything is built around two perfectly straight lines: the strings – along which the left hand must move with complete freedom; and the bow – where every movement that deviates from a perfect contact point and ninety degree angle to the string registers itself in loss of clarity. Generally, the freer and looser the small muscles can be, the better the playing feels; and for me, the more effectively I can enjoy and express the music I am playing.

So when I picked up the cello at the end of January, all the small muscles felt like they had packed up and left me. Technique-wise I was faced with a fork in the road. I could go the easy way, and force my way around the instrument using strength and willpower; or I could sit back and work out a strategy to attack the weaknesses in a way that would hold my interest for as long as it would take to have things in good working order again.

I have chosen the latter. The first thing was to get the caps back on my fingers and start building some muscle definition in my fingers and hands. At this point, the caps are back – consequence of being on the cello at least two hours a day since late January. Only the thumb – where I once had a bar of callus from the point near my knuckle almost to the tip – has remained a bit tender. The muscle development is a work in progress. For the smaller muscles: as well as keeping a stress ball that has been kneaded to shreds in  my car, I have been playing repertoire that gives the fingers hands and forearms a very thorough work-over. The challenge with this is in finding material that does not bore a hole in my inner musician. I have sacrificed so much to get to this stage in my cello life that I do not intend to spend one second of it on repertoire I do not love. In my teens and twenties, I devoted a lot of time to memorising all the Popper studies. This was really useful in developing my technique, but with every due respect to David Popper, I have developed the impatience of a middle aged man who has learned to sort the seriously meaningful from the peripherally useful, and I just don’t get enough musical joy from these works to be spending a lot of time on them. My solution has been to pirate the very best of the violin repertoire.

My first instrument was the violin, which I started playing when I was six. Although I love the violin, I was drawn to the cello from as early as I can remember. My father was a musician, and I had pestered him for a cello from the start.  I come from a family of nine children, and we were not well off. There were already lots of violins in the family, so there was no need to purchase another expensive instrument, and my father could teach me himself, which would save the lesson fees. But I did not give up on my desire to play cello, and when I was nine, I finally got my way. I can clearly remember every tiny detail of that first instrument –the sound of the zipper on the brown cloth cello bag; the bits of crushed rosin that where dusted all over its shiny belly; the clanking of the notched spike as it was drawn from its position within the cello; and the wonder of that warm, rich sound as I tuned it for the first time. In the early stages of my cello life, I progressed very quickly. I abandoned myself to the cello repertoire based on what I wanted to play rather than whether or not it was within my skill level. Perhaps it’s not the most ideal way of getting started. There were many gaps in the way I learned, and I know it irritated the hell out of my early teachers; but it did no damage in the long run, and at this stage, done is probably better than perfect. In the end, there were lots of chances to tidy things up after I had made the decision that I would devote my life to playing the cello.

The legacy of the violin was that, although I did not want to play one, I kept a deep love for the many gems from the violin repertoire, and I have always coveted them. I am sure violinists must tire of hearing violists, cellists and even double bassists labour through their repertoire. Regardless, I have found in the violin repertoire, the perfect solution for rebuilding my cello playing, and as I am on a Bach binge, I have used the Violin Sonatas and Partitas as a starting point. They are jolly hard to play on the cello. In fact, some are pretty much impossible. I don’t care – I am still having a go. I’m playing from the violin score. The transposing is a good work out for my musical left brain, and I am trying to keep adulterations from the original to an absolute minimum.

At the moment, I am working on the Chaconne in the original key and the E major partita – which I have had to transpose to D major to give it any chance of being reachable on the cello. Even in that key, its sad that there are some notes that can’t be played using normal cello techique. For example in the prelude, there are two pedals that run through the second semiquaver of each beat in the beautiful tessellated passage near the start. It returns in the dominant mid-way through the movement. I have been playing these with my chin – which is a very blunt instrument for playing the cello, and the tuning is like throwing ping pong balls at a fairground clown. I have asked my wife to buy me a lovely walnut pipe for my birthday. She’s a doctor, so smoking it is going to be verboten. I have realised that Pablo Casals may have completely missed the hidden potential in his pipe. It may well be the perfect implement for holding down unreachable pedal notes. Watch this space. If anyone reading this blog has any better ideas, please let me know.