Brian Cobb's Opera "O Pioneers"

I think that's the name. We just finished a set of recording sessions for selections from Brian Cobb's chamber opera "O Pioneers" It's a cool one that includes cello, clarinet, two percussion, flute, violin, soprano voice, baritone voice, flute, guitar, and banjo. Julia Tai conducted and I played the cello part.

The music was generally slow to moderate with lots of extended techniques. The trickiest parts were segueing from scratch tone to scraping vertically on the strings with the bow, to pizzicato to snaps to everything else in between.

The banjo parts were very interesting also because numerous places in the score asked the banjo player to scrape or rub on the sound skin. This performer was a little skittish because he was playing a borrowed instrument and didn't want to damage anything. The quirky part about it is that the very same sound can be effected by scraping fingernails on a snare drum. I don't mean to jest when I say that banjo and snare drum are kindred instruments. Deal with it.

I finished the last session on Saturday by punching in the cello part on some circular bowing techniques and overdubbing onto what the other players had just done. It was easy, got it in two takes. Whew!