New, contemporary classical music is a vehicle for the expressive nature of music. It allows us to take something that no person has heard before and make it our own, and then offer it to the listeners of the world. It is the most profound thing that we can do as musicians.

When a kid tells me that they’re going to go to school to major in cello, I ask, “Why?”

Making the transition from a life of professional practicing to a life of professional teaching was harder than I thought it would be. I believed, ignorantly, that my analytical practicing skills would transfer to the teaching studio. In fact, I was an awful teacher. Just terrible. When it comes to their cello lessons, I feel bad, a serious sense of empathy, for those Pennsylvania kids from my first year of teaching. The truth is, I had no idea what I was doing.

Jefferson is the model of the perfect music student: he absorbs any and all information presented to him and synthesizes that information in ways that inform and enhance his playing. He’s endlessly experimental and he accepted any and all music that I threw his way. Now a freshman at Columbus State University in Georgia, where he is a student of the incredible cellist, Wendy Warner, I asked Jefferson to reflect on his first few months as a full time music student and write down some thoughts. He dutifully agreed!

This part of summertime has always been an interesting time of year for me, as I tend to be moving around the world, in some form or another. Facebook, for all its joys and faults, has recently been reminding me of all of this: in 2014 at this time, I left Pennsylvania to move back to the Atlanta area, a move that would prove to be, simultaneously, the best and worst decision I'd ever made.

What is the difference between a good performance and a great performance? For that matter, what is the difference between a bad performance and a great performance? In the short time that I’ve been out “in the world,” I’ve noticed some things about youths of today and their expectations about music performance: they want to be praised; they don’t want to work very hard to receive that praise; criticism is met with a litany of excuses; and the end result - usually - is that they quit.

On August 1, 2015 I woke up with some pep in my step. I had slept well. I felt excited about all the things. It was Saturday and I had nothing to do. I spent it relaxing and it ended on a high note. Life was good in Buford, GA. On August 2, 2015, I woke up and took my car to get an oil change. Then I came home. Twenty minutes later, after a pile of pancakes and maybe some OJ, my life stopped.

I enjoy nice things. I like coffee from micro-roasters and fashionable denim and Apple products. I enjoy traveling. I like visiting new cities and building my SkyMiles balance and seeing Asia.

But, I am an artist. I am a musician. I am starving. So, I can’t do these things. 

Right?

Wrong.

A few months back, I was delighted to watch Red Land Little League, my hometown team, advance through the gauntlet that is the Little League World Series, eventually winning the United States championship (only to be crushed in the final by Japan). Though I was brimming with pride - I played (poorly) on those RL Little League fields, myself - I couldn’t help but compare Little League Baseball to cello playing.