The last couple of months have been a whirlwind and I apologise that some concerts and events have gone unnotified (although I always keep up a list on my website)! I had a few great projects first with the LARK in the east and then with Contrasts and the Driftwood Duo out in California in the Bay Area. It was a treat to eat such exotic fresh fruit in November while in Berkeley and then to enjoy such sunny days in between travel and fun concerts. 

Below is a short chronicle of my window of time working with Elliott Carter in October. Other news from that month is that my disk is now recorded - all 9 works (7 for solo cello and 2 for cello and piano). I'm now looking forward to a few weeks of personal cello work, leading up to projects happening in ... yes ... 2010!

In October, the week before the three days of recording for my CD, I had the opportunity to play "Figment" for Elliott Carter. My time with him was a truly memorable moment in my musical life.  

I met him at his apartment on 12th street at 4:00 in the afternoon and he greeted me at the door directly. I’d brought some flowers, which seemed to charm him enormously, and we got to work. What a boon to get direct feedback on "Figment", one of his works for solo cello, both in specific information on articulation and in general comments about sustain in the long high pitches – not to mention to have the satisfaction of making him jump in his chair when it was the way he liked it.

What an inspiration he is, not just to artists, but to anyone on living healthily into old age; he's coming up to his 101st birthday this month. This photo is candid - I was describing the canonic second movement in Nadia Boulanger (his former teacher)'s pieces, and he recounted how he was told that Nadia Boulanger perpetually wrote canons while sitting “listening” on musical juries, possibly not hearing a note of what was presented! He is enormously serious about his work, he is still writing, and what a gift it was to have this time with him. 

All my very best for a lovely American Thanksgiving and upcoming Holiday Season,

Carrie