I wanted to share with you my latest adventure at AWARE. Since I started volunteering there four years ago, I have wanted to play my cello for the permanent residents there. I finally got my chance this year, when I had no opportunities to play for humans.

I grabbed my "outdoor" cello and my mobile studio (all the technology I needed, attached to a chair), and got to work caroling for the animals.  Apart from a few memory slips and my noisy buttons (I really need a cello bib for my "outdoor" cello!), it was a huge success! Even if the animals weren't sure how to feel about it, I had a blast watching how they reacted. 

Have a great holiday and happy new year to you all! 

This picture was taken mid-March, just after that one crazy weekend where all  my imminent and future gigs simply evaporated.  I couldn't blame the powers-that-be. Their decisions were difficult and meant to keep everyone safe. 

But my musical life - as I had known it - was over. Or on pause?  No one really can say what the future holds at this point.

My husband saw it coming. He runs a wildlife rehab center, and he had been planning for this since February.  He had stages of practical protocols which he had been implementing for weeks. These protocols are the reason the center is still in operation as I write this today. 

(Side note: As my performance opportunities diminished, my volunteer responsibilities at the wildlife center increased.  Check out this video of a day in the life of an "outdoor-only" volunteer, ME!)

​As I realized that in person lessons were too risky, I scrambled to poll my students:

Are you willing and able to keep going with your lessons via Skype?

​Thankfully, most of them were.

A student and friend asked me to play a solo concert over Zoom. 

How on earth would I manage that?  I would need to practice a ton, but also figure out how to wire myself up for optimal sound quality.  Ugh. 

I had started dabbling a bit with Zoom once I bit the bullet and signed up for a professional account.  I use it all the time now, for most of my lessons, and virtual ACE rehearsals as well.   But I wasn't sure at that time how to navigate all the customizations. 

Luckily, a student of mine who works in the tech industry generously offered to give me a tutorial. (I am forever grateful, Patricia!)

And then another student shared an easy tutorial as one photo (Thanks, Karen!), that together with my own material, I will share with you below, so you can have an easy time setting up your Zoom and making it just perfect for cello.

​Here are the easy steps you can take to sound your best over Zoom (without fancy microphones):

That's it. Easy peasy, right?  It's really just a few tweaks and it helps so much!

​Now, I did end up setting up a vocal mic for talking and my Remic C5300 to capture my cello sound, but unless you are giving a concert over Zoom, you can do without all the tech. 

The concert went so well and was incredibly fun!  If you're interested, check it out HERE or below. My hosts recorded all but the very first few notes.

(In the first days of the lockdown, I read Galina, in which I learned more about Shostakovich's plight in Russia during his lifetime through the recollections of Rostropovich's wife, an amazing woman who was herself a famous opera singer. There was also a good bit about Britten in there, since they were very good friends. I learned so much and highly recommend this book!)

After practicing, I do some computer work at my treadmill desk (exercise definitely helps my state of mind), and then I teach in the afternoon/evenings. 

After that is dinner with a TV show.  Not sure what I am going to do once I am done with all the available episodes of The Great British Bake-Off!

​What have you been up to and how are you coping with the new Covid lifestyle? Please let me know in the comments. 

It was about a week before Christmas and I was massively overscheduled--but the Falcons wanted Celli to be involved in a project for the playoffs. 

Sure, I thought. AFTER Christmas!

In case you didn't know this: Christmas is when most musicians make most of their money.  Sometimes our extra earnings from the month of December are the only thing that keeps us fed in the lean summer months! And because there is so much work to be had then, it keeps us extremely busy. 

Step 1:

We had to go into the studio to record a track. The idea was to remake Jermaine Dupri's legendary "Welcome to Atlanta."  Luckily, I had a 10-hour bus ride a few days before we were scheduled to go into the studio to record, so I could listen to the track and write out parts for us to play. 

Then we spent a day at Silent Sound Studios having fun and recording the track. 

It was HARD to find a day where we could reschedule everything to try to fit in a video shoot.  But we were told it was to be on the ROOF of the new Mercedes Benz Stadium, so we had to make it work!

The day before the shoot, we were told it was going to be too foggy to get any footage of the skyline behind us on the roof so they asked if we could reschedule. We couldn't make it work, so we would just have to shoot our part of the video indoors.  

We were so disappointed! 

In the meantime, I had to figure out how to do "edgy, goth" makeup!  That was an adventure in and of itself!

This was very nice--much better than the press room!  But there was one disgusting aspect...

The toilet! 

I know.  Weird, right?  I definitely took a picture, but I won't post it here in case some of you have sensitive stomachs.  Let's just say that I had never seen that many different colors of MOLD before. 

Of course, the powers-that-be sent in someone to clean it ASAP.  

It only occurred to me after the shoot that this was probably a good luck dirty toilet.  You know how that sport-ball jinx stuff goes. Maybe this was a "don't-clean-until-after-the-playoffs-are-over" type of dirty toilet. 

Ooops. 

The shoot itself was so much fun, but it was lots of hard work too.  I had to concentrate on looking mean (not my usual face as you probably know!), and we had to make the same wild arm motions over and over and over...  Luckily we were playing to our previously recorded track, so we didn't have to sound good. Whew.

​When we were finally finished, my faux leather jacket was soaking wet!  

Though we didn't actually get to shoot on the roof, they let us go with the whole crew to the roof to watch Jermaine's shoot after our part was finished filming. I have never in my life been that excited to climb so many steps!  At one point we were standing on a catwalk right behind the halo screen which I had watched from way down below at so many Atlanta United games!

Well the Falcons made it to the playoffs, so our video was released on January 4th 2018. If they hadn't made it, I would have felt so guilty about that toilet cleaning... plus the video would not have been released until NEXT SEASON!

You can find the article they put out about the video HERE.
And the finished product itself:

Another side benefit is Jermaine Dupri and I are now besties.  Although I am not sure he knows that...

I wonder what he would think about my rap video.