Friday, June 08, 2007

WEDDINGS

If you look at some of my web logs over the past few years, you will find that I have played live cello solos for quite a few wedding services, and some receptions as well.
In my classified ad in the Shelton-Mason County Journal (WA, USA), I have described what I play as "From Bach to the Beatles." That is to say, I have a good program of classical repertoire as well as a lot of light rock and jazz standards that I play. Each time someone makes a request, I tend to add one or more related pieces to what I can offer everyone from then on. So my songlist of performance-ready pieces now totals more than eight hours of music. That is a LOT of 5-minute songs. Yes, I play Mendelsohn's WEDDING MARCH and all the other common classical wedding pieces. Yes, I play them as unaccompanied cello solos. Yes, I worked up my own arrangements for a lot of the songs that I play. Yes, I have a lot of songs by Bach and the Beatles in my repertoire. Yes, I do play modern pop and rock & roll melodies from the '70s, '80s and '90s up the present day. I don't discriminate against musical styles, so I have a bit of everything available, including country, Celtic, and originals too. It all depends on what you want me to play.
Instead of adding one or two songs from a given genre or style when I get a request, oftentimes I can now offer a whole program if I need to in some styles and genres. For example, I play over three hours of great songs written from about 1920 to 1960, the "greatest generation" music from before, during and after the WWII years.
Do you want to know what the really fun part is for me? The fun part is that I know enough music now that a lot of the time, when someone requests that I perform a certain piece, I already know it. And if I don't have it in my existing repertoire, I can usually find it and work it up to performance level in less than a week if I need to (though I prefer having more time whenever possible).

It was an honor for me to perform the wedding music for Angela at Steven's Fine Dining at the restaurant on December 29, 2007. It was packed and very beautiful in every way possible (all chairs and no tables that day). Thank you and congratulations Angela!
Since it was the Fifth Day of Christmas, wedding rings were certainly appropriate. I mostly played Christmas music, including "White Christmas," quite a few standards and several beautiful melodies from The Nutcracker. Of course, I played plenty of traditional, classical wedding music also.

Throughout this web log are many more wedding entries. These notes are for my personal reference as well as to provide examples of how I customize music according to the individual needs of people for each event I play at. For those of you who live in or near Mason County, WA, please e-mail me at cellodad@juno.com if you are planning a wedding (or other event) and would like to hire me to perform for you, so we can work out the details. --Dave