Climbing every cello mountain, a decaptiated cello, and the D.C. metro

Autumn Hiscock has been looking for a 7/8 cello, and in a moment of serendipity has been lent a beautiful, albeit currently decapitated, unlabeled old German cello which is not quite 7/8 but close enough. She had recently tried some cellos in a shop. “I tested the two 7/8s and as I noted before they were lovely and balanced, smooth, and very easy to play in the higher positions. I would be happy to own either of them. But I didn’t fall in love with them enough to rent one.” (emphasis added) That’s the key to choosing an instrument–you have to fall in love with it.

And how did Autumn’s beautiful “mystery cello” get decapitated?

Here’s another story on the mountain-climbing “Extreme Cellists, who also have a blog, and I couldn’t help but think that with all that climbing, one of their cellos is at risk of decapitation, if it hasn’t hapened already. I hadn’t noticed in the articles I posted Thursday, but they raise money for charity with their climb. And they sound quite nice in this video:

And finally, KateR (aka “pooplord“) has a nice post about traveling with a cello on the D.C. metro: ” . . . apparently on a weekend train, it’s a conversation starter. Not even necessarily for conversations with ME so much as everyone else’s individual conversations.” Worth reading.

Cellists in the news

These UK cellists (articles here and here) give new meaning to “scaling the heights” of cello playing. I would definitely take the Luis and Clark carbon fiber cello were I to follow their footsteps!

And here’s a nice tribute to Eugena Slezak, retiring from Concordia College. “She made us laugh, she made us cry, she made us proud to play cello. Ms. Slezak was probably the best teacher I had. She was tough and that’s part of what made her great. I learned much more than cello skills from her.” What more could any teacher want to hear from her (or his) students?