Hello Paul,

I don't know but I wasn't about to leave you unanswered, there's little enough activity as it is. It seems this forum is not getting the attention it deserves.

Just recovering from a huge Spam attack...see residuals in the recent comments list.

Hope someone has some useful info for you.

Tony.

Thanks,

Yeah, I was wondering about those goofy posts. I wonder what they were trying to accomplish. Denial of service? There sure wasn't any sort of message unless you you think everything is in code..... but if you put on your "Nostradamus" filter, they kinda make sense. A little. OK, very little.....

Paul

Paul Goelz
Rochester Hills, MI USA
paul at pgoelz dot com
www.pgoelz.com

Well, Paul,
I'll offer my memories/impressions from NDCF 2007, which was only the 2nd NDCF I attended (2006 was so good I came back!)

I learned last time to plan to stay up for late-night jam sessions, so this time those were definitely among the highlights. The "Break of Reality" cats were great, and those multi-genre jams were fantastic. Between Nancy Kulkarni's Indian cello and Dana Leong's varieties of technique I definitely left with more things to practice and play with that could be applied in my own "jazz/world/trippy music" band . . . Another personal highlight for me was connecting with Alex Kelly (of San Francisco, for those of you in this area), who is now my cello teacher -- after several years of studying with horn players I finally found a real cellist who does the kinds of things I want to do. Yay!

Other highly personal reactions -- there were several performances of solo cellists with looping electronics, and having several of them together for me actually brought out the limits of this kind of playing. After several looped pieces in a row, I was extremely hungry for music involving interaction between human players. I bought Gideon Freudmann's band CD "Caravan Gogh" at the festival, and the same tunes done by an actual band (instead of just Gideon and his looping machine) were, for me, many times more intriguing. Now, although I don't think of myself as any kind of rocker, "Break of Reality" was a super-highlight for me because that group had incredible communication and interaction going on between themselves and the audience. It just highlighted for me how much music is really about connection and communication, and something is missing when all we're doing is playing with ourselves.

I'd certainly be interested in other people's comments. It probably won't work for me to go back to Ithica for NDCF 2008, but I hope I'll be able to connect with y'all again in this lifetime.

Laura Boytz
Oakland, CA

Hello all,

I am ready to start playing cello seriously and am looking for an instructor in the Los Angeles area. Any thoughts, guidance would be appreciated.

Thank you, debra

“If my hands were cut off, I would continue to write music with the pen held between my teeth.” Dmitri Shostokovich