SPRING 2015

SPRING 2015

Contents
Spring 2015
Publisher’s Note
FEATURED
Spotlight: Kansas City 5
Symphony Orchestra
Interview with Paul Katz 6
CONTRIBUTORS
Ranaan Meyer
Publisher/Founder
Brent Edmondson
Editor/Sales
Karen Han
Art Director/Designer
I
couldn’t be more thrilled to be sharing the first Audition issue of
Next Level Cellist with our readers all over the world. Much is made
of how the audition process is fair or unfair, how its very nature creates
competition in a field that is truly about collaboration, and how that
competition grows year after year to an almost unsustainable level. Setting
all that aside, the audition is now and has been for a long time the only
path to college admission, to professional employment in an orchestra, and
increasingly a means of developing a career as a freelance musician as well.
Given that, it is our individual duty to learn as much about this great undertaking
and to prepare ourselves to the highest level for the challenges to come.
I am so grateful to Paul Katz for the time he spent in developing his article
on auditions. When we began research on successful teachers, we looked at
the membership of America’s largest and highest-paying orchestras. Quickly,
we found a few names that came up repeatedly when reading the biographies
of the cellists in each orchestra, and one name came up more than any other.
Paul Katz has trained an unbelievable number of musicians to achieve success
at the highest levels of American music-making, and it is no wonder when
you look at his incredible resume. Beyond his experience as a member of the
Cleveland String Quartet, he has a long history as a pedagogue and has gone to
great lengths to create lasting resources for cellists to come through his website,
www.cellobello.com. His discussion of the importance of relaxation is so spot on
and valuable, and his insights on the admission process for prospective college
students are a must-read.
Our profile of the Kansas City Symphony touches on a very interesting
subject. Many people pay attention to what the orchestras on our two coasts
are doing, and miss the tremendous excitement and talent of musicians
in America’s Heartland. We’re hoping to change that in our pages. The
Kansas City Symphony warrants a close look and a long focused listen,
not only because of its growth and expansion into a new hall in a climate of
cutbacks, but because of the great musical contributions of its members.
We are excited to feature the Cello Section in our spotlight!
Many musicians will spend their entire careers in pursuit of audition successes.
We take on the greatest challenges because it is the journey that fulfills us most
deeply. Whether you are hoping to find yourself in a great college studio,
or make your living as a performer, or supplement a fulfilling career with a
position in a regional orchestra, auditions are the gateway to opportunity. I hope
you take the messages contained here and use them to realize your dreams!
RANAAN MEYER
Publisher Next Level Journals
Ranaan Meyer
Time for Three Founder and Bassist
Education We All Deserve Foundation
Founder
Ranaan Meyer Entertainment
Indianapolis Symphony Artist in Residence
Sun Valley Summer Symphony Artist
and Composer in Residence
Charley Creek Arts Festival Artistic Director
2 NOV/DEC SPRING 2015 2013 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST BASSIST
SPRING 2015 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST 3

SPOTLIGHT
JOSEPH HILL RAYMOND J. MELANSON JOSEPH CHAROTTE-MILLOT ANNE COLE
NICOLAS GILLES CARLO ANTONIO TESTORE ANTOINE CAUCHE DIDIER NICOLAS
BOYD POULSEN PAUL HART JAMES B. MIN CARLO CARLETTI GIOVANNI TONONI
GUY COLE RENATO SCROLLAVEZZA CHRISTOPHER SANDVOSS LAWRENCE WILKE
AMEDÉE DIEUDONNE DIDIER NICOLAS E.H. ROTH JOSEPH HILL W.H. HAMMIG
EDWARD DANIEL TETSUO MATSUDA PAOLO ANTONIO TESTORE GAETANO COLAS
BRONEK CISON DANIEL HACHEZ ANDRANIK GAYBARYAN CHRISTIAN PEDERSEN
STANLEY KIERNOZIAK GIOVANNI TONONI DAVID TECCHLER WILLIAM FORSTER
GUNTER VON AUE DIDIER NICOLAS JOHANNES CUYPERS J.B. VUILLAUME SACQUIN
robertson reCital Hall
www.RobertsonViolins.com
Tel 800-284-6546 | 3201 Carlisle Blvd. NE | Albuquerque, NM USA 87110
2014 Cello ColleCtion
partial
If you live on the East Coast in the United States, chances are your
image of musicmaking in Missouri and Kansas probably involves
guitars and harmonicas. In American classical music culture, a
tremendous amount of focus tends to center around the Northeastern
region, with old references to the “Big 5” orchestras in the country
being heavily inclined toward Philadelphia, Boston, New York.
The Kansas City Symphony, under the leadership of Michael Stern
(son of the great violinist Isaac Stern), provides an incredible foil to
that image musically rich and competently run. In addition to steady
growth in wages and a stable orchestra roster, the orchestra moved to
a new hall in 2011, the beautiful Helberg Hall in the Kauffman Center.
With a history stretching back to the beginning of the 20 th century,
including numerous incarnations and alternating stretches of
expansion and contraction, the Kansas City Symphony as we know
it today was founded in 1982, only a short time after the dissolution
of the Kansas City Philharmonic earlier that year. Progressive at heart,
the organization has embraced many modern strategies to stay
relevant in today’s tumultuous climate of orchestral uncertainty.
Having a world-class orchestra in a city known primarily for its
barbecue and jazz music demonstrates that American treasures exist
around every corner. In today’s competitive audition environment,
the Kansas City Symphony and orchestras of similar size and budget
are attracting applicants in the hundreds, and the ensemble’s level of
musicianship is incredibly high. We spoke with newly minted cello
section member Matthew Beckmann about his experiences as a
member of the Symphony and what makes playing there such a treat.
What type of repertoire do you feel most excited about?
I am most excited about lesser known and seldom played repertoire,
both contemporary and from other style periods. It is very exciting
for an orchestra to add to its repertoire and explore a new piece
together; those experiences are fulfilling for both the audience
and the orchestra.
Did you change or adapt your playing
to fit in with this section?
Well I have only been with the orchestra since September, so this is a
work in progress! I try to balance blending with the section and fitting
into its sound with making my own contributions to the style of the
section. All of the members are great players individually, and it’s been
exciting seeing how they adapt to different repertoire and different
conductors. Flexibility is the key!
How is playing with your orchestra different
from playing in other orchestras?
The KCS is a very close-knit group. Everyone is very supportive
of each other, and especially welcoming of new members. The
management and orchestra have a great relationship, and with
so many cases of the opposite of that in the news these days, it’s
something we’re proud of. ■
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SPRING 2015 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST 5

IMMANUEL & HELEN OLSHAN
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON | MOORES SCHOOL OF MUSIC
2015
May 29 – June 27, 2015 | For college and young professional musicians (ages 18–30)
All participants receive a fellowship covering tuition, housing, and meals.
INTERVIEW WITH
PAUL KATZ
RepeRtoiRe Adams Short Ride in a Fast Machine | Barber Violin Concerto | Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3
Beethoven Symphony No. 5 | DiLorenzo Phoenix for Horn and Orchestra | elgar Cockaigne Overture | prokofiev
Romeo and Juliet | Schoenberg Pelleas and Melisande | Strauss Ein Heldenleben | Stravinsky The Firebird Suite
Verdi La forza del destino Overture ConDuCtoRS Josep Caballé-Domenech | Franz Anton Krager | Rossen Milanov
Lavard Skou Larsen SoLoiStS Glenn Dicterow, violin | Timothy Hester, piano | William VerMeulen, horn
Participant Winner, Mitchell Young Artist Competition FACuLty Violin Emanuel Borok | Andrzej Grabiec
Lucie Robert | Kirsten Yon | Zuo Jun Viola Wayne Brooks | James Dunham | Ralph Fielding Cello Norman Fischer
Lachezar Kostov | Brinton Smith Double Bass Paul Ellison | Eric Larson | Dennis Whittaker Flute Leone Buyse
Aralee Dorough oboe Robert Atherholt | Jonathan Fischer Clarinet Thomas LeGrand | Michael Webster Bassoon
Richard Beene | Elise Wagner Horn Robert Johnson | William VerMeulen trumpet Mark Hughes | Thomas Siders
Jim Vassallo trombone Allen Barnhill | Phillip Freeman tuba David Kirk Harp Paula Page percussion
Ted Atkatz | Matthew Strauss
Join today’s rising stars at the 2015 TMF Orchestral Institute:
www.tmf.uh.edu
UH is an EEO/AA Institution
All programs and faculty are subject to change. For the latest updates go to www.tmf.uh.edu
6 SPRING 2015 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST
SPRING 2015 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST 7
PhotograPhy: Jeff grass

Next Level Journals is made possible in part by Robertson and Sons Violin Shop
Q: You seem to have a very comprehensive
physical approach to the cello, in terms of comfort
and relaxation. How did you arrive at that, and how
is it important to cello playing?
PK: Over the years, I’ve come to believe very strongly
that mastery of the instrument comes from mastery of
the fundamentals. I use Tiger Woods as an example.
He’s a great golf player, and he was winning world-class
tournaments, but he took about 18 months off early in his
career because he wanted to change something in his
swing. He made that change, and when he came back,
he became the superstar that we have all come to know.
That drives me a lot! My approach to teaching, which
owes a lot to Janos Starker, Leonard Rose, and Bernard
Greenhouse, stresses principles of healthy approach and
relaxation. These principles not only keep the professional
player safe during demanding and strenuous careers,
but I think they also lead to a higher level of playing.
Tension blocks mastery, blocks agility, blocks virtuosity.
You can’t produce a beautiful sound with excessive
or unnecessary tension in the hands - you are inhibited.
I stress that in my teaching, the concept of healthy
physical habits.
Q: Can you give an example from your teaching of a
problem and your approach to solving it?
PK: Tension in the left hand which blocks shifting or
vibrato. Tension in the right hand which blocks virtuoso
bowings or string crossings, or blocking the release of
arm weight so that you can’t play as loudly as you would
like. In terms of stage fright or dealing with nerves, if
the body is tight, you’re less prepared to cope with the
additional tension of anxiety. This very often sends
people past the point of no return.
There are several places in the bow arm that are
traditionally tight. The bow grip itself can block agility.
It’s very easy to tell people not to squeeze the bow
too hard, but most people do just that, stiffening their
fingers. As soon as you stiffen your fingers, string
crossings become angular and more difficult, and bow
changes without finger flexibility become less smooth.
When you tighten your bow grip, you tighten your arm
and push down to play loud, instead of being able to
relax down and release your arm weight into the string.
As I said, it’s easy to tell someone to release their arm
weight, but it’s quite another thing to do it. A tight bow
grip usually happens because a student worries they
will lose control if they release too much, that the bow
might slip or get away from them. The other possibility
is that, in the wrong way, they are looking for strength
and power. My counter-measure is to tell them that the
key to the bow grip is balance and flexibility, rather than
strength. If the bow is balanced properly in your hand,
and your fingers are sufficiently flexible to respond to
changes between the A string and C string, you will have
replaced the need for strength and be on your way to
ultimate mastery.
Q: Could you describe a remedial exercise that
you employ to overcome this sort of problem?
My website, www.cellobello.com, has many lessons that
can help a student approach these issues.
http://www.cellobello.com/lessons/12
Q: When you’re considering a student to study
with you, what’s the mentality you’re searching for?
What makes you excited to work with someone?
PK: It’s very intuitive. For me at this point, I’m looking
for people I would enjoy teaching. Occasionally I’ll come
across someone with an enormous talent, but I don’t feel
as though I speak their language, and that is something
I’ve learned not to pursue. Sometimes, I might see
someone with a more modest talent, but they have
something I feel like I can fix and take to the next level.
That’s someone I will choose to invest in too. If I feel like
I can have success in changing someone’s life or helping
them over great personal hurdles, then that’s something
I will also find personally rewarding. I enjoy working with
musicians - I’m not interested in working on technique
for technique’s sake. I care a lot about the artistic side
of playing the instrument. One could get a skewed
impression from the CelloBello site that technique is the
primary focus, but artistry is rather hard to teach over
the internet, so the lessons tend to be more technically
oriented. I’m still looking for the key to discussing artistic
and interpretive matters, to affecting people, through
video. I do this a lot in my cello teaching. I think the
reason I have several former students as principal cellists
in orchestras around the country is that I think I know
how to make them comfortable in expressing themselves
in that position. Principal players need some personality,
they need to project, they need big sounds. I like to think
I can help people with that.
Q: You could argue that principal players have a
personality profile that’s not suited to section playing.
Do you aim to impart those skills, or are you
trying to enhance artists on a wider spectrum?
PK: When I get a student, I’m very interested in what
their career aspirations are. Some folks dream of playing
in an orchestra, others are more taken by chamber music,
and so on. I’m very much aware of what I’m preparing
my students for, but the advice I give is that there is
no way to know what doors will open for us, and what
opportunities will present themselves. The best way to
prepare ourselves is to become the best cellists, and the
best artists, we can possibly be. Having experience in
orchestra, chamber music, and solo playing ensures you
are prepared for anything that comes your way. I had a
career in the Cleveland Quartet, and my life was devoted
to making music, so that is the direction my mind tends
to head in - I cannot stand to hear unmusical playing,
or a sound that isn’t beautiful.
I can’t say that I’ve ever prepared a young student to
become a principal cellist in an orchestra, but I’ve had
former students or older professionals
come to me to prepare for a principal
audition. There’s a distinction there,
in that preparing for these auditions
is more specific and short-term goal.
Q: So it sounds like aspiring to be
an orchestral cellist is made easiest
when you expose yourself to other
styles and playing settings?
PK: Absolutely, 150%! Chamber
music teaches listening, and you
can’t play in a major professional
orchestra without listening. That’s
what makes sections tight and what
makes orchestras play together as
a whole. I think many professionals
will agree that listening to the other
musicians in the group is often
more important than the way the
conductor is giving the beat. Ear
training in the broad sense, the type
of training where you learn to listen
to other voices and learn to fit your
part into the music, is part of chamber
music success and orchestral success.
It’s interesting in the world of the
professional orchestra how many
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ensembles have chamber music series.
I think many groups have gone to
that not only to keep their players
happy, but because it also makes
them better orchestra players. Beyond
that, many orchestra auditions are
beginning to require chamber music,
so there seems to be a definite trend
towards those skills and an obvious
advantage to learning them from
early on in one’s training.
Q: Could you illustrate an
example from the chamber
music literature that would be
demonstrate these benefits?
PK: When you play chamber music,
you learn from the experience of
making music, regardless of the
piece. You learn to listen to another
voice, you learn to react and adjust
yourself when someone else makes
a change in dynamics or speed. Your
reaction-based music becomes more
conversational. There is an interactivity
to playing this way. When you play
with an extroverted player, it draws
you out to play out more, and when
you play with an introvert, you find
yourself matching their energy in a
different way. Listening and response
are only half the formula, because
you also learn to lead, and make
your own ideas clear so that people
can play with you. When you learn
to give cues in chamber settings, you
learn how to lead others through a
solo where you want to make use of
vibrato, to get someone else to feel
the ritard that you are making as it
happens. All of that is enormously
applicable to the orchestra experience
or a solo context. You can learn that
from anything you play.
You once quoted Mischa Schneider
of the Budapest Quartet, who said
“You can inspire the sound of the
whole group from the cello position.”
That’s one of the things we all love
about the cello - you can add or
subtract density from the sound,
coax others into your sound world.
PK: You might think of it as directing
traffic. You can move the piece
forward and backward. A good
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SPRING 2015 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST 9
© Photo Jean-Baptiste Millot
© Photo Aloisia Behrbohm
© Photo Andreas Malkmus
© Photo Andreas Malkmus
© Photo Uwe Arens
© Photo Christian Steiner

metaphor is being a solid foundation
on which the tonal “house” is built.
Your tone has to be solid and earthy
enough for people to build on top of
it, and the pitch needs to be focused
and not diffuse so that intonation
and harmony can grow out of your
line - it has to be easy to tune to you.
Q: What are some objective skills
that you think are vital for auditioning
successfully, both at the professional
and at the collegiate level?
PK: I think the two settings are very
different, and it’s important to know
and acknowledge that. Those of us
that are hearing auditions by aspiring
college students are mostly looking
for potential. What we want to hear
from a young person is a sense of
integrity, caring about detail - so
sloppy playing is usually not a good
sign. Sloppy playing is very different
from an occasional miss. You can
tell if a person cares about details,
and has thought about the way they
make music. If they get emotionally
involved, or if their inexperience
causes them them to miss a note,
that’s not important. What we’re
looking for in a high schooler is the
right value. Some of those values are
totally instinctive, some of them have
been instilled by a teacher.
We’re looking for communicative
ability, the artistic element. Some
people just don’t know how to make
a ritard, and their musicality reads
as stiff. If I feel someone plays fairly
beautifully but there are some left
hand obstacles, I will gladly take
that challenge on. If someone plays
musically but seems a bit shy or
inhibited, I can make that work.
Another example is getting someone
with a lot of technical mastery but
difficulty in controlling their energy
and temperament during a performance,
which is another skill I think
can be taught in this setting.
There are all different scenarios from
a professional audition setting. In the
professional world, it comes down
to the way you are playing on that
given day, not the long term vision.
Rhythm, intonation, sound quality,
musicality - these are all key elements
that need to function at high levels
to have the kind of success we’re
talking about in an orchestral audition,
or in a solo competition. I don’t have
career-long orchestral experience
personally, so I rely on my former
students who are in those positions
to help me better understand the
demands and expectations of those
situations. It’s a myth that musicality
is not important in an orchestral
audition. The committee wants to
hear music-making, a knowledge
of the score and context around
the excerpt, and informed phrasing
on top of the basic technical skills
outlined above.
Q: Can you walk us through the path
you might put a student on to help
them perfect the fundamentals of
music on their way to a successful
career?
PK: That’s the life of a teacher, of
course! I think that it’s the instilling
of values that is so important. If a
person has the right values and cares
about the things they are playing,
they can go forward and have a
wonderful life after leaving my
studio. I have a freshman who is studying with me
now that already possesses a wonderful temperament,
beautiful sound, a communicative gift, and because of
that, they have had a lot of success since an early age
in playing concerts. As a result, after playing a lot of
concerts, it’s becoming time to focus on the small stuff,
which was a bit easier to overlook before contemplating
a professional career. It’s a different ballgame! My job is
to take that person and get them to hear better. Anyone
with that much talent has ears, and the question is
whether they are using them. If I can get a student to
desire certain sounds out of their own cello, and teach
them the values that will make sifting through the details
clearer and more important, I will have done my job. At
the moment I have another person in my studio who
is just the opposite - a very musical person, and a very
clean player, but extremely anal in their approach. It’s my
task there to get that person to break out of their shell,
play with a little risk, and avoid being so careful that the
music gets lost in the details.
Musicians have different balances of strengths and
weaknesses, and I think the job of a good teacher is to
help shore up those weaknesses and create pride and
awareness of the strengths. Whether you’re walking on
stage to play a concerto, an audition, or a string quartet
concert, it takes guts. You have to be able to deal with
stage fright, you have to draw on faith in yourself. I
believe a teacher should build a student up rather than
tearing him or her down, which is hard to do when you
spend most of your time addressing weaknesses.
You have to praise their strengths simultaneously.
Q: Can you elaborate on the idea of
balancing a student?
PK: Imagine that the complete picture of a fine cellist
and musician is made up of all the pieces we’ve discussed
and many more. Everyone walks through the door with
some pieces in place and some missing, and a teacher’s
job is to help that person find what he or she is missing.
One of the common scenarios in my studio, which
is a symptom of my accepting very musical people, is a
tendency towards very “approximate” rhythm. Occasionally
I get a person like that whom I feel I need to gently steer
away from an orchestral career, because I can sense that
they are going to have a hard time winning an audition.
At first I work with these students to get them to hear
the difference between a triplet and a dotted eighth-sixteenth
rhythm, and some people just don’t have that. It’s
one of the major determining factors for success in the
orchestral world.
I get very fussy about rhythm in orchestral excerpts and
certain instances of the solo cello repertoire, particularly
the Beethoven sonatas and the Haydn concerti. Rhythm
as an artistic tool goes beyond simple objective decisions
like this though. You need to determine whether the
music flows like water, or sits up straight in a military
fashion, or pulls back as in a Brahms sostenuto. This is
the sort of rhythm I teach all the time. I try to describe
composers in terms of how their music moves.
Mendelssohn to me is perhaps the most “flowing” and
forward feeling. Beethoven has a rhythmic power which
depends upon precision, and Brahms tends to sit on the
back of the beat. I teach these through repertoire because
it is the most effective way to grasp the nuance of these
distinctions. I teach rhythm through scales as well, by
imposing rhythms on scales such as the Galamian pattern
of 2+3+6 (2 eighths, 3 triplets, 6 sextuplets). You can mix
this pattern up and find tremendous variety and challenge.
I also like to have my students play scales in fives and
sevens as well, because I think there is a musical
application for this.
One of the most frustrating things about teaching
is that there’s never enough time to do all the things
that need to be done.
The way I teach intonation is by teaching listening
awareness. Your intonation depends on how sharply you
are listening for it. I think of a high level of intonation as
a way of life. It’s in your scales, solo playing, chamber
music, orchestral music. Intonation has to be something
the ear is picking up all of the time. It’s too important to
say that it’s background. It’s always present, it’s always
in your consciousness, there’s so much more that goes
on that it can’t be your major focus. If it’s the only thing
you are aware of then things get tight and small, music
doesn’t get made, and sound becomes less beautiful.
One of the mistakes out there is that people think of
concentration in terms of thinking. Thinking gets in the
way of what we do - we can think about a bow change,
a shift, tempo, playing with the others in our ensembles,
but we can only do one at a time. The best the mind is
capable of doing is quickly flitting from one thing to the
next. I just don’t believe you can ever have comfortable,
natural playing that way. I think the way we can keep
track of all that stuff simultaneously is through the ears.
The ears are kind of a miracle. They can hear intonation,
rhythm, sound production, ensemble, and everything else
simultaneously, and they can adjudicate it simultaneously.
Tremendous listening awareness means expanding what
the ears take in.
If intonation becomes a preoccupation, it can be a
negative. Being afraid to play out of tune hampers
your musical career, and yet you’re expected to play in
tune at all times. There’s a psychological balance, and a
way of thinking (or not thinking) that can allow you to
paradoxically use your ear and hand training to work in
harmony. You have to be constantly aware of intonation,
but only in the larger context of the whole experience,
rather than excluding other elements from your focus
to isolate intonation.
I have this story I tell on my website - when I go out on
stage to play, I have this image of my ears growing very
large, expanding on my head until they’re huge. They
become like vacuum cleaners, sucking up all the sounds
around me so that nothing can escape my ears. That is
how I visualize the acute level of hearing that I think is
necessary to control everything you are doing. You can
make a shift and feel the distance to get yourself close
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SPRING 2015 NEXT LEVEL CELLIST 11

to the right note, but if you wiggle your finger a little to
either side, you’re no longer in the right place, so feeling
isn’t enough. Your ear is the final adjudicator for that last
bit of precision, which comes from such a small muscular
movement, to reach precision. If you make a crescendo,
your ears help regulate how much crescendo you make,
just as they regulate the magnitude of an accent. Everything
has to be decided by the sound, and thus it all comes
back to the ears.
Q: How do you build the musical sensibility
that allows your ears to make these decisions?
PK: I think it comes from a variety of experiences,
including listening to recordings, seeing live performances
by great musicians, studying scores, listening to your
teachers, and experimentation on your own. I think that
today’s generation plays at a generally higher level than
my generation. Of course, mastery is mastery, but when
you look at the general population you see the difference
in aggregate. On a typical day of high school students
auditioning for a school, everybody plays so well. Part of
that is due to teaching, but a large part is also because
of digital sound and the accessibility afforded by resources
like Youtube. A student today can sit at home and listen
to in-tune string quartets, immortal performances of
all the repertoire - I think conceptually this has had an
impact on the way young people think they want to
sound. Aside from this, you also need the ears of a
teacher. I have spent a career steeped in tradition, in
the sounds of Beethoven and Brahms, and I’m part of
the older generation that is passing on knowledge to the
younger. The whole mentoring system is so important in
terms of teachers with high standards and ideals making
students listen, challenging them on tradition and style.
Musicians are also influenced by the people they play
with, and the people they play for as well. It’s basically
life that helps mature people the most. I think the mistake
is made when somebody chooses one path, like only
going to concerts to develop ideas. For all the amazing
good that Youtube and other digital resources can
provide, it’s totally different from going to concerts and
experiencing wonderful cellists playing in that acoustic.
The communicative aspect of a performer’s charisma,
the tone in the room, the sensation of the performance,
that is all irreplaceable. ■
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