Melissa

Defining the Intangible — by Melissa Kraut

Several years ago I was asked to contribute to an article for Strings Magazine on "what teachers look for in an incoming student."  I was excited about the article—what a fantastic idea—a compilation of suggestions from teachers who listen to 100+ cellists a year auditioning for music schools!  Despite my best intentions, I still haven't crafted a contribution. (Here is where I should publicly apologize to the cellist, who is no doubt reading this entry, for the 3 year delay in responding to your request).  My neglect  was not for lack of interest, or lack of knowledge or experience on the subject.  It came down to the difficulty in putting words to something that  is so nebulous—defining the intangible.  The title for this entry popped into my head during audition [...]

The Cello Can’t Learn

I am fairly certain that I would have been voted “least likely to have a teaching career” upon graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Music.  As someone at home on the stage, I had been pursuing a career in performance since I made the decision to become a cellist at the ripe age of 11.  Would I play in the Chicago Symphony?  Be in a String Quartet?  Play solo concerts?  The answer was undetermined, but the path I was on was well established. It was a seemingly random act of fate that forever changed my direction in the music field.  I met Doris and Bill Preucil when I was a senior at CIM.  They claim they recognized the “teaching spirit” in me, a fact I found strange at the time, [...]

By |2011-03-14T10:15:19-04:00March 14th, 2011|Categories: Teaching|Tags: , , , , , , |
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