The Helen Zell Matching Gift Challenge
We are thrilled to announce that Helen Zell and the Zell Family Foundation have chosen
to support CelloBello through a remarkable Matching Gift Challenge program to provide
the organization with sustaining financial support.
Make your donation now to expand educational resources, support emerging talent,
and promote community engagement!
to support CelloBello through a remarkable Matching Gift Challenge program to provide
the organization with sustaining financial support.
Make your donation now to expand educational resources, support emerging talent,
and promote community engagement!
Sunday, September 8th 2024 at 2:00 pm ET
Live from Columbia, SC
CelloChat: Robert Jesselson
and Theodore Buchholz
Join the conversation!
Faculty at University of South Carolina
The Joy of Scales (and Arpeggios!)
cellosophy
If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t trying.
Artistry is in the details.
Teaching moves through generations. If you believe in the principles that represent the truth in the masterpieces, then you try to preserve those principals. They can be preserved only through teaching.
Our bodies continually provide us with information, yet we too often ignore or do not understand their messages. Awareness is the first step.
When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling… our actions and lives are always the richer for it.
Many people are too small to be teachers, but no one is too big.
Living in question is the most creative and stimulating state of being. Doors are always opening in the mind, one is motivated to explore, to observe and to take note.
Intelligence is everywhere in the body, nature and the universe.
Cello playing is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration.
Practicing is the art of making your ears happy.
Real art is one of the most powerful forces in the rise of mankind, and he who renders it accessible is a benefactor of humanity.
The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.
My goal is to convey a true masterpiece in whatever I play.
Creative talent has an irrepressible hunger, and for the musician, music is the food it cannot live without.
Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.
Music is one of the essentials in human existence, almost identical with eating, sleeping, making love, the basic functions that keep a human being alive. Music simply, is one of the blessings and joys of civilized human existence.
There is a performance nirvana, a miraculous interaction of ears, hands, and emotions. Listening awareness is primary in this zone of creative transcendence.
Everyone knows what they can’t do – our weaknesses scream at us every day. To perform, you must know what you can do and bring the attention of your audience to those strengths.
Cello playing begins in the back, before the sound.
Even the smallest motion involves your entire body. Your body functions as a unified whole rather than as a collection of isolated parts. Those who focus too much on small motor movements can easily lose this vital connection with the rest of the body.
Progress is impossible without change.
Just a little progress every day makes big progress over time.
Practice like it means everything in the world to you. Perform like you don’t give a damn.
As a teacher, my first task is to teach students how to practice. Once they understand this, they begin to make progress.
Vibrato is like lipstick – too much is ugly – the right amount and color is beautiful.
Tension is our biggest enemy. We must spend our life undoing it.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.
Music is powered by ideas. If you don’t have clarity of ideas, you’re just communicating sheer sound.
I still have not found anything more permanent or more beautiful than music.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Through discipline comes freedom.
I was born with an ability, with music in me, that is all. No special credit was due me. The only credit we can claim is for the use we make of the talent we are given.
The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing you will make one.
On artistic conception: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free”.
Compassionate people are geniuses in the art of living, more necessary to the dignity, security, and joy of humanity than the discoverers of knowledge.
The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Criticism does not disturb me, for I am my own severest critic. Always in my playing I strive to surpass myself, and it is this constant struggle that makes music fascinating to me.
Listening awareness is primary in the zone of creative transcendence.
The fingers have no brains, and they have no ears!
Variety, variety – no two snowflakes are alike, no two notes are alike.
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
My involvement in the political arena is to make sure there’s a place for culture.
Thinking is the biggest mistake a dancer can make. You have to feel, to “become”.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
I’ll stop teaching when I stop learning.
Teaching should support, inspire, motivate, impart high ideals, and help each to discover and trust their unique talent and strengths.
Art is an activity in which one human heart communicates with another human heart.
Like love, performance is not about me, it’s about the other person – giving to the audience.
There is no top – there are always further heights to reach.
Listening is the conduit through which all physical actions creating expressive results are filtered.
Don’t perform – just be yourself.
Play the fear out and then tone it down.
Creativity takes courage.
Improper body use is like a pebble in your shoe. A nagging discomfort, it can cause severe damage over time.
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